Archive for the El Salvador Category

Violence in El Salvador

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on May 10, 2019 by dsmith41

Emma Lightizer

El Salvador has been gripped by violence since its twelve-year civil war that ended in 1992. At the time, thousands of Salvadorans sought asylum in the United States, and some of them ended up forming gangs for mutual protection in Los Angeles. When the United States initiated its policy of deporting foreign nationals found guilty of committing a crime in the United States, gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 were exported to El Salvador and grew to unprecedented levels of membership and violence. Decades after that initial increase in gang activity, what does violence in El Salvador look like?

            Most violence comes in the form of extortion, rape, and murders (especially of people aligned with rival gangs). Extortion is the main source of income for many cliques (Wolf 78). Gang members feel entitled to demand “rent” from local businesses: regular payments from bus drivers, local shops, restaurants, students, and teachers (Savenije 153). These payments are accompanied with threats of physical violence, robbery, or murder, and if anyone is unable to pay, they are forced out of business or killed (Wolf 78). An inability or unwillingness to pay gangs extortion money leads to hundreds of retaliatory murders and dozens of arson cases, among other violent consequences (Wolf 78). Gang members have no remorse for this method of getting money because “nobody gives us [gang members] work,” (Savenije 153).

Rape of women and children is also common in El Salvador. Gang members often demand sex and use their power over certain territories to force women and girls to comply (UNHCR 9). They sometimes use rape as a bargaining tool, promising not to use other forms of violence if girls are compliant: for example, gang members told one eight-year-old girl that they wouldn’t kill her little brother if she let them rape her, then they killed both children anyway (Martínez 118).

In El Salvador, many types of murders are common; these include retaliatory killings in cases of extortion or refusal to join a gang, the murder of women or girls who refuse to sleep with gang members, and sicariato (murder for hire) (Wolf 85). It is also common for gang members to kidnap and murder wealthier individuals as an additional source of income; they use their credit cards, steal their belongings, or post a ransom for them under the false premise that they are not yet dead (Wolf 82). Murder is also common against ex-gang members who testify in court; for example, El Niño Hollywood was murdered in 2014 after he testified against nineteen fellow gang members for murder (Martínez 139). Although he was supposedly under witness protection by the state, and although his murder occurred within mere meters of the police station, “there was never any search for or investigation of the killers” (Martínez 139). El Niño’s case was not unusual: most murders in El Salvador go uninvestigated, and even when investigations into murders or mass graves do occur, they are often underfunded and therefore unsuccessful.

A large portion of the murders that occur are directed against rival gang members (Wolf 85). Disputes over territory lead to shoot-outs, and murders of rival gang members are sometimes required as initiation rites (Wolf 72). Additionally, gangs sometimes kill “homeboys that couldn’t handle their shit”: that is, they kill fellow gang members who endanger other members through recklessness or who cannot deal with the harshness of gang life (Martínez 99). Even within overfilled jails, rivalries are not controlled and sometimes lead to massacres (Martínez 176). In cases like the Mariona massacre of 2004 or the Apanteos massacre in 2011, rivalries between MS-13, Barrio 18, and civilian prisoners erupt and inmates break down the walls in order to “pull out nails,” or collect payment for debts and exact revenge for past wrongs (Martínez 174). Guards are unable to stop these massacres from happening and often don’t even try to. For example, the warden of Apanteos said of the 2011 massacre that “[w]e can’t be held responsible for what we can’t avoid” (Martínez 169). The lack of resources both inside and outside of jails means that impunity is widespread for crimes committed by Salvadoran gangs.

Bibliography:

“Children on the Run – Full Report.” UNHCR, 2014, www.unhcr.org/en-us/about-us/ background/56fc266f4/children-on-the-run-full-report.html.

Martínez, Óscar Enrique. A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America. London: Verso, 2017.

Savenije, Wim. Maras Y Barras: Pandillas Y Violencia Juvenil En Los Barrios Marginales De Centroamérica. El Salvador: Facultad Latinoamericana De Ciencias Sociales, 2009

Wolf, Sonja. “Mara Salvatrucha: The Most Dangerous Street Gang in the Americas?”. Latin American Politics and Society 54, no. 1 (2012): 65-99. (JSTOR)

Further Reading:

https://www.thenation.com/article/diary-of-not-excavating-a-mass-grave-in-el-salvador/

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/el-salvador-women-gangs-ms-13-trump-violence/554804/

https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/central-america/el-salvador/life-under-gang-rule-el-salvador

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-el-salvador-extortion-idUSKCN0Y71QW

Mano Dura (Firm Hand) policies in Central America

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on May 10, 2019 by dsmith41

Emma Lightizer

Gangs have been an issue in El Salvador since before its twelve-year civil war ended in 1992. However, the problem became much more visible and violent after the United States initiated its policy of deporting any foreign nationals found guilty of committing a crime. Thousands of gang members from the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, both founded in the U.S., were deported to their countries of origin, intensifying the violence and instability already present in Central America during the 1990s.

One set of policies that Central American countries have employed to try to gain control over the gang problem is known as “Mano Dura,” meaning “firm hand” or “iron fist.” In El Salvador, this policy was first put in place by President Francisco Flores in 2003 (Wolf 49). Mano Dura created joint military and police anti-gang squads who made a spectacle out of arrests, hoping to gain public support by looking tough on gangs. The policy also included the Ley Anti Maras, or Anti-Gang Law, which made gang membership itself a crime and allowed the squads to arrest people based on their appearance alone (Wolf 50). The law applied to anyone at least twelve years of age, meaning that many children were arrested for looking like gang members (Wolf 50). However, the Ley Anti Maras was challenged in court, and many judges refused to charge those arrested for alleged gang membership on the grounds that the Ley Anti Maras violated Salvadorans’ constitutional rights. Ninety-five percent of those arrested under the law were released without charges due to lack of evidence (Wolf 51).

There were several claims that Mano Dura wasn’t doing enough, so the policy was rebranded as “Súper Mano Dura” under the next president, Antonio Saca. This version of the law added “Mano Amiga” and “Mano Extendida,” purported policies of rehabilitation and prevention for gang members, but the two new policies were more talk than reality. They were chronically underfunded and poorly organized, and were only there to offer the president some credibility on paper of taking a more complex approach to the gang problem. Official policy continued to ignore the realms of prevention and rehabilitation, instead focusing on harsher punishments against gang members (Wolf 54).

Although Mano Dura is a Salvadoran policy, it has corollaries in other Central American countries. Honduras, for example, launched its “Blue Freedom Plan” the year before Flores’ Mano Dura in El Salvador. Honduras’ plan included several of the same measures as Mano Dura: zero tolerance, the cooperation of police and military forces against gangs, and the use of tattoos and other physical traits as markers of gang membership (García). In Guatemala, indiscriminate arrests of possible gang members were initiated in 2003 under “Plan Sweep.” Even though this and other anti-gang legislation was explicitly rejected by Guatemalan courts, officials continued to arrest suspected gang members under a zero tolerance policy; much like in El Salvador, most of these arrests were overturned due to a lack of evidence (García).

All of these policies have been wildly unsuccessful–and even counterproductive. Since gang members were being targeted based on appearance, they adapted and started being less obvious about their gang membership, hiding tattoos under clothing or foregoing them altogether (Wolf 72). More importantly, the abuses by police under the Mano Dura policies led gang members to be even more distrustful of authorities and therefore more loyal to their gangs and fellow members. The gangs became close-knit in a way that makes rehabilitation a much more formidable challenge than it was before (Wolf 72). Additionally, the few arrests that did successfully lead to imprisonments were counterproductive: now, gangs are run from within prisons by gang members who gained street credit through their arrests. Since the prisons are overcrowded and poorly run, clique leaders are able to work with their gangs and order hits from within the relative safety of the prison: after all, they cannot be arrested again while they are still in prison (Wolf 72). The legacy of Mano Dura-type policies has been one of increased violence, better organization of gangs, and failure of governments to successfully introduce any significant rehabilitation or prevention efforts against gangs.

Bibliography:

García, Carlos. “Tracing the History of Failed Gang Policies in US, Northern Triangle.” InSight Crime. September 20, 2017. Accessed May 10, 2019. https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/tracing-the-history-of-failed-gang-policies-in-us-northern-triangle/.

Wolf, Sonja. Mano Dura: The Politics of Gang Control in El Salvador. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017.

Further Reading:

https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/tracing-the-history-of-failed-gang-policies-in-us-northern-triangle/

https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/how-mano-dura-is-strengthening-gangs/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/06/el-salvador-gangs-police-violence-distrito-italia

https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/24136/el-salvador-s-iron-fist-crackdown-on-gangs-a-lethal-policy-with-u-s-origins

Mara Salvatrucha – Overview

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Leslie Rivers

Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, started off as a small group of Salvadoran immigrants that were Black Sabbath metal heads in the early 1970s and early 1980s. They were just a few kids hanging out on the street corner looking to escape an imminent threat of becoming a child soldier if they continued to live in their home country of El Salvador (Grillo, 200). Salvadorians began to flee to the United States in the 1970s to escape from the debilitating and incomprehensibly violent civil war due to the opposition of the government due to supposed “fraudulent elections, police fir[ing] on protests, and death squads hunt[ing] dissidents” which led to an outright war in the 1980s (Grillo 194). During this time period, you start to see the formation of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a leftist guerilla group still present in Central America today that like the national army, recruited child soldiers in an attempt to combat the army’s “scorched earth” campaign (Grillo, 196). This initial massive flow outward from Central America of natives of El Salvador resulted in many young kids being thrown into downtown Los Angeles where previously-established gangs were a threat of violence to them. This resulted in Salvadorans banding together and forming the Maras. The name was taken from a Charles Heston movie, The Naked Jungle. In El Salvador it was translated to “When the Ants Roar”. The Maras took this and named themselves after ants because they protected one another much like ants do (Grillo, 200). The addition of Salvatrucha in Mara Salvatrucha 13 was due to the Maras being targets for other gangs due to them being a small and not well-defined group that looked like hippies, a vast difference to the other gangs that dressed in the cholo style of wife beaters and shaved heads (Grillo, 200). They added “Salvatrucha”, which is speculated to mean street smarts. The addition of the “-13” was when the Maras merged with a gang called the Mexican Mafia in prisons to gain protection from other gangs of inmates. The Mexican Mafia uses the number thirteen (M is the 13th letter in the alphabet) to symbolize their gang (Grillo, 201).

           The rise in gang violence in Los Angeles was largely due to the proliferation of gangs throughout the region. Following the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, police determined most of the looting and violence stemmed from the gangs, including MS-13 (Arana, 2005). This resulted in California charging Latino gang members as adults with felonies while they were minors. Following in 1996, a federal immigration law stated that any non-citizen that was sentenced to over a year in prison would be sent back to their country of origin to finish their prison sentences (Farah, 2012). These young men that had gang affiliations were shipped back to their home country of El Salvador that had very little political power to keep crime at a minimum due to the recent civil wars. This meant that effectively the gangs could go unchecked and establish local branches of the gang but maintain their American connections (Demombynes, 2011).

Eventually, with little to control them in terms of either police force or political laws, gangs like MS-13 flourished in places like Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. This led to unchecked gang violence and deaths that lead to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to have some of the highest murder rates worldwide (Grillo, 187-188). MS-13 initially gained its primary source of income from extortion through local cliques and was not considered sophisticated enough to be as organized like the drug cartels that operate out of Mexico and South America (Wolf, 2012). Therefore, prior to 2000 most cartels were the ones producing the drugs and relied on gangs like MS-13 to transport and sell drugs like cocaine and marijuana that they produced en masse in Central and South America. Post-1990 the increase of drug trafficking of cocaine through Central America went from 30% to 90%, as gangs like MS-13 moved from extortion to cocaine trafficking and human smuggling (Scott and Marshall, 1998).

Further Information

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocBLgAaud_4
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvRUc59PVS4
  3. https://www.insightcrime.org/el-salvador-organized-crime-news/mara-salvatrucha-ms-13-profile/
  4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-ms-13/2018/06/29/5860f1c4-7b17-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html?utm_term=.8cc7f35db5a4

Bibliography:

Arana, A. (2005, June 07). How the Street Gangs Took Central America. Retrieved December 8, 2018, from https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/20050501faessay84310_arana.html?_r=1

Demombynes, G. (2011, May 30). Drug trafficking and violence in Central America and beyond. Retrieved December 8, 2018, from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/761351468235453648/Drug-trafficking-and-violence-in-Central-America-and-beyond

Farah, D. (2012, October 01). Central American Gangs: Changing Nature and New Partners. Retrieved December 8, 2018, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/24388251?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Grillo, I. (2016). Gangster Warlords: Drug dollars, killing fields, and the new politics of Latin America. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Scott, P. D., & Marshall, J. (2005). Cocaine politics: Drugs, armies, and the CIA in Central America. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.

Wolf, S. (2012, April 01). Mara Salvatrucha: The Most Dangerous Street Gang in the Americas? Retrieved December 8, 2018, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/41485342?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Gangs in Central America

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Isabelle Schecter

Central American gangs are primarily associated with the “Northern Triangle” countries: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. In the United States, the most prominent gangs associated with these countries are the 18th Street Gang and Mara Salvatrucha. The 18th Street gang has roots going back to a few years after WWII. goes by various names such as Barrio 18, Calle 18, or M18 (Grillo 202, Farah 54). The number 18 derives from their place of origin near the 18th street area of Los Angeles. This faction of a traditionally Mexican street gang let non-Mexicans join, so many Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans took this opportunity. Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 is thought to have began in the late seventies/early eighties among Salvadorans in L.A. (Grillo 198, 200).

           The 18th Street Gang and MS-13 both originated in the U.S. among Latin American immigrants but shifted to Central America beginning in the early 1990s. According to historians Scott and Marshall, the U.S. government popularized the rhetoric of “narcoterrorism” referring broadly to illicit and dangerous acts associated with Latin American transnational criminal organizations. This included but was not limited to: drug trafficking, extortion, resistance to law enforcement, and unmitigated violence (Scott and Marshall 23). By popularizing prejudice, the government created a racially divided environment in the U.S., leading various non-White ethnic groups to search for solidarity and community by forming groups with one another (Grillo 197-198). This is not to say that being non-White or searching for this type of solidarity is a determining factor in joining a gang, however it did play a role in the Central American context. Racist rhetoric stalled the integration of non-White migrants into U.S. society, thus leaving foreign ethnic groups more vulnerable to isolation and, in this case, gangs. Gang initiators lure youths in by providing food, shelter, and a network to vulnerable and ostracized members of society (Grillo 232).

           After the 1992 L.A. riots, prosecutors charged young Latino gang members as adults though they were minors. Thus, hundreds were sent to prison on felony charges. In 1996, a new immigration law was passed which mandated that noncitizens serving felony sentences longer than a year were to be deported to their countries of origin. These deportations repatriated tens of thousands of young Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran gang members. Many had lived in the U.S. for the majority of their lifetime and had little to no connections in their countries of origin. These repatriates, whether gang members or not, often had trouble getting a job, and in some cases did not speak the language. Joining a gang provided a social framework, an income (through means such as drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping), as well as protection. At the time, Central America was recovering from years of warfare, so the police forces were underdeveloped and the judiciary systems were dysfunctional. These factors allowed for a further expansion of the 18th Street and MS-13 gangs, particularly in rural areas where the central government was weak (Farah 55-56).

           After the gangs gained traction in Central America, violence tremendously increased. This violence was and currently remains a key reason why people flee to the U.S. (Grillo 203). Border policy is strict, so many Central Americans are sent back to their countries when trying to escape gangs and succumb to the typical pressures of joining. As a result, gangs grow, crime increases, death tolls rise, and more migrants try to flee. The LA Times recently reported that many school districts are reluctant to allow these children in, fearing they are already connected with gangs. This leaves them home alone, lacking a network, and thus even more likely to turn to a gang for social support (Demick). The Mara Salvatrucha requires immigrants to report to the local gang affiliate in the U.S. after they arrive. Many do not have immigration papers, thus are scared to go to the police and have a hard time finding a source of income (Grillo 203, 230).

Suggestions for further reading:

Ioan Grillo, Gangster Warlords (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

Gerardo Lopez, “I was an MS-13 gang member. Here’s how I got out.” TedXMileHigh, accessed 9 Dec 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qkSMkiGWdg

Hannah Dreier, “The Runaways,” This American Life, Podcast, published 21 September 2018, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/657/the-runaways

Bibliography

Demick, Barbara. “Trump heads to Long Island, using brutal MS-13 murders to justify deportations,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ms13-trump-20170727-story.html

Farah, Douglas. “Central American Gangs: Changing Nature and New Partners,” Journal of International Affairs 66, no. 1: 53-67.

Grillo, Ioan. Gangster Warlords (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

Scott, Peter Dale and Marshall, Jonathan. “The CIA and Right-Wing Narcoterrorism in Latin America,” in Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkely: University of California Press, 1998), 53-67.

Gangs in El Salvador

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Margaux Miller

Central to the formation of gangs like Barrio 18 (or ‘Dieciocho’) and Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) is the history of civil war in Central American countries. In the late 20th century, a series of Civil wars erupted across the smattering of small countries in Central America. These wars were largely fought in resistance to layers of social, economic, and political inequality, a legacy of the region’s long relationship with colonialism (Grillo, 188). The conflicts proved to be some of the fiercest and bloodiest ever in the Americas, entailing full scale aerial bombardment, scorched earth tactics, and the laying of mass graves. In El Salvador, the fighting was between the leftist guerilla army Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMNL) and the U.S.-trained and -financed dictatorship, and left nearly 70,000 people dead, including many innocent civilians (Grillo, 196).

The rampant violence and political instability of the years leading up to and during the Civil War – which last from 1980 until 1992 – caused massive swells of immigrants to flee El Salvador to the United States (Grillo, 196). Most of the migrants were forced to live clandestine lives, due to the limited nature of Reagan-era asylum policy that denied most claims to asylum-seekers (Wolf, 71). Migrant experience was also one of marginalization: a majority of migrants lacked access to education or employment, consistent support networks, and access to state services and validation. Conditions of marginalization produced ethnically-specific Salvadoran gangs in Los Angeles, (including Barrio 18 and MS-13), because gang formation offered secure social identities that mainstream society denied to gang members (Wolf, 70). Notably, the formation of gangs by marginalized, ethnic minorities is not a new phenomenon in the U.S.: gangs date back to the early 1800’s (Ibid).

It was in the late 1980’s that tension and violence between Salvadoran gangs in L.A. started to grow particularly intense. The gangs had gone through processes of change: they had formed connections to other Latino mafias through prison sentences; they had swelled their ranks with new recruits; and they had actively hardened their street identities (Grillo, 200-201). L.A. police forces and the U.S. government were desperate to rid the city of seemingly insatiable, violent gang members. Rather than address the systemic issues that produced gang culture in U.S. cities, authorities began to repatriate gang members to their home nations. U.S. authorities were delighted when the Salvadoran government and the FMLN brokered a peace deal in Mexico in 1993: rather than repatriate Salvadorans to war-torn and violent country, they could return them to their homeland under the guise that the young men would be contributors in building the new democratic state (Grillo, 203). Immigration reform in 1996 stipulated that non-citizens who were doing more than a year in prison and/or committed a minor offense could be repatriated, allowing further repatriation. In dealing with “the immigrant problem”, the U.S. authorities send thousands of Americanized Salvadorans with violent street experience to a country still struggling to grasp stability, where the deportees – in coping with their deportation and marginalization – reproduced gang culture within a new and fragile setting. (Douglas, 56).

Salvadoran gangs have since grown and mutated. One of the central forces behind this has been the implementation of mano dura – or hard hand – policy. The policies put hundreds behind bars, but were still largely ineffective at eradicating gangs. the policies prompted MS-13 and Dieciocho (18) to toughen and increase the risk of their entry requirements, increase their militarization and lethality, diversify their leadership hierarchies, and become more covert in communication and style, in order to reduce infiltration and amplify control. The policies also had the “cockroach effect”: fearing arrest, gang affiliates dispersed to nearby neighboring countries, serving to actually spread gang influence. Murder rates rose due to increasingly fierce competition over territory under governmental fire (Farah, 57-9).

Popular perception of gang activity is often wrapped up with that of drug trafficking organizations, and it can be very difficult to piece apart the two entities. Notably, a relationship between the two does exist. Gang influence is so expansive that drug traffickers – who largely exist in criminal organizations institutionally distinct from gangs – were forced to incorporate gang members into the trafficking process. The geographic positioning of Central America also exposes it to drug trafficking: around 90% of cocaine designated for U.S. markets flows through Central America, deeming it an important “transnational shipment route.,” (Farah, 53, 57). In the past decade, gangs have shifted from being primarily protectors of shipments, to holding larger and riskier roles, which has increased their economic input and allowed for accumulation of larger weapons. It should be noted, however, that gangs and cartels are very different in their capacity for crime, even if some of their criminal activities overlap. Trafficking organizations tend to execute longer-term, advanced strategic violence in the defense of criminal enterprise, while street gangs typically use short term, tactical violence (in crimes such as extortion and kidnapping) that lacks logistical sophistication. In short, street gangs tend to be weaker in organization than myth makes them out to be (Wolf, 82-84).

In 2013, a covert truce was brokered by the Salvadoran federal security minister David Munguía Payés in attempts to quell rampant violence between ranking members of Barrio 18 and MS-13. The 2013 truce brokering did contribute to lowering murder rates: officials released ranking gang members who supported demilitarization to lower security prisons, where they were able to spread the message to put down arms in “violence free zones,” (Grillo, 223). Within days the truce was uncovered by independent journalists and released to the public. Just a year after it began, the truce ended due to administrative shifts and deep criticism of the government’s willingness to work with gangsters. Sinces its end, violence has picked back up (Grillo, 224). The truce tactic is especially interesting to think about in relation to mano dura policy, and this comparison begs the question of what successful gang suppression truly could look like.

Further Suggested Reading

“El Salvador Is Trying to Stop Gang Violence. But the Trump Administration Keeps Pushing         Failed “Iron First” Policing,” by Danielle Mackey & Cora Currier (October 2, 2018) https://theintercept.com/2018/10/02/el-salvador-gang-violence-prevention/

            This article, published by a trustworthy source, provides anecdotal evidence about the nature an individual’s gang involvement, an interesting perspective on economic rehabilitation of former gang members, and a look into the tenuous politics of United States-Latin American foreign policy.

“Five myths about MS-13,” by José Miguel Cruz (June 29, 2018)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-ms-13/2018/06/29/5860f1c4-7b17-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html?utm_term=.7fca84218475

            This piece by the Washington Post is a straight forward, comprehensible attack on popular myths about MS-13. It debunks narratives that have been used and abused in national rhetoric about the “threats” gangs pose to national security, and fills in the vacuum with actual facts.

“Time for a US Apology to El Salvador,” by Raymond Bonner (April 15, 2016)

https://www.thenation.com/article/time-for-a-us-apology-to-el-salvador/

            This article discusses the involvement of the United States in increasing the violence of El Salvador’s Civil War (1980 – 1992). The Salvadoran Civil War was the context that prompted thousands of Salvadorans to flee their homes. The end of the war and the subsequent establishment of democracy in El Salvador acted a justification, despite its fragility, for the United States in repatriating large numbers of Salvadorans convicted of gang violence and other crime.

Central American Gangs and Women

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Sasha Hull

Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, also known as “the Northern Triangle,” could not offer a more perfect environment for gangs and drug violence. The region’s geography, which serves as a land bridge “between the world’s largest cocaine producers in Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru and the world’s largest market in the United States,” coupled with its economic instability and weak state power has allowed gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha 13 and Barrio 18 to thrive and promote drug-related violence in the Northern triangle (Farah 53).

Central American women are in every way at the mercy of the physically and psychologically abusive orders and tendencies of gang members. Gender violence in this region has been historically justified; women hold a subordinate status to men in these societies, and violence towards women has little consequence or punishment, thus allowing it to become both perpetuated and tolerated (Stephen 46). In recent years, this violence towards women has been exacerbated due to the escalating presence of gangs in the region. While some of this gender violence stems from drug-related gang activity, much of it is normalized and has been engrained into the daily lives of gang members.

Before examining this violence and its many forms, we must first understand the history of the relationship between women, gang abuse, and violence. War and economic instability in the 1980’s and 90’s caused many individuals, specifically males, to emigrate in order to find better jobs to support their families. This left single mothers and young girls vulnerable to predatory gang members, who oftentimes fled to other men in search of protection, many of whom became abusive. Violence, abuse and intimidation from gangs towards women takes shape in many forms, and in both private and public spheres, making it impossible to escape.

Women who do join gangs often do so in hopes of escaping domestic abuse, only to find themselves abused physically and emotionally by their fellow gang members. Female former gang members report that their initiation processes involved rape by each member of the gang, sexual favors, and even orders to kill or rob members of their communities (Lacey). Physical consequences involve sexually transmitted infection and pregnancy, and psychological damage is incalculable.

Although the majority of women are not members of gangs, they usually become involved by extension of a male family member, or most commonly, a gang member who is pursuing them. There are many accounts of gang members sending death threats or killing the family members of girls who refused to go out with them (Grillo 193). Gang members also harass young women in public which creates a constant “state of insecurity and unease among women” and engrains in them a deep-seated fear of sexual violence (Winton 175).

Single mothers who have left their home due to domestic abuse, or women whose husbands have fled or been killed by gangs are subject to absurdly high extortion fees, ‘la renta,’ and threatened with violence or death if they do not comply with the gangs (Schmidt and Buechler 147). These demands cause much anxiety among mothers who are already financially insecure and trying to support their children. Consequently, many Central American women are forced to either turn to prostitution and sex trafficking to make ends meet, or stay in abusive relationships, relying on their partners for financial stability and protection from gangs (Schmidt and Buechler 147). Violence by gangs, combined with domestic abuse in the home and sharp increases in femicides in the Northern Triangle have led many women to flee. This journey can be extremely dangerous and is often traumatizing. Reports reveal that “80% of women and girls crossing into the US by way of Mexico are raped during their journey,” and many are preyed upon, manipulated, or killed (Lacey).

Abuse, intimidation, and violence—both physical and psychological—stem from deeply engrained ideas about gender roles, machismo, and gang membership. These historically misogynistic values have wreaked havoc on Central American women for decades, and have intensified in recent years due to increased gang activity in the region (Winton 175). Violence at this level is not new; women in the Northern Triangle have suffered from multiple layers and generations of trauma, with gangs only exacerbating the existing problems.

Further Reading:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/central-america-migrants-rape_n_5806972.html

https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/news-and-politics/violence-against-women-central-american-street-gangs-how-trump’s-immigration

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/el-salvador-women-gangs-ms-13-trump-violence/554804/

Works Cited (MLA)

Farah, Douglas. “CENTRAL AMERICAN GANGS: CHANGING NATURE AND NEW PARTNERS.” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 66, no. 1, 2012, pp. 53–67. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24388251.

Grillo, Ioan. Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America. Bloomsbury Press, 2017.

Lacey, Marc. “Abuse Trails Central American Girls into Gangs.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Apr. 2001, www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/world/americas/11guatemala.html.

Schmidt, Leigh Anne, and Stephanie Buechler. ‘“I Risk Everything Because I Have Already Lost Everything’: Central American Female Migrants Speak Out on the Migrant Trail in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Journal of Latin American Geography, vol. 16, no. 1, Apr. 2017, pp. 139-164., doi: 10.1353/lag.2017.0012.

Stephen, Lynn. “Violencia Transfronteriza de Género y Mujeres Indígenas Refugiadas de Guatemala.” Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionales, no. 117, Dec 2017, pp. 29-50. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.24241/rcai.2017.117.3.29.

Winton, Ailsa. “Youth, Gangs and Violence: Analysing the Social and Spatial Mobility of Young People in Guatemala City.” Childrens Geographies, vol. 3, no. 2, Jan. 2005, pp. 167-184., doi: 10.1080/14733280500161537.

El Salvador Civil War

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on March 21, 2019 by dsmith41

David Smith

Geographically, El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, but it is also the most densely populated. With a population of over six million people in a country the size of the state of Massachusetts, El Salvador has been notorious in recent years for the high levels of murder and violence in the its capital city of San Salvador. About 20% of El Salvadorans live abroad, many of whom reside in the United States, and a significant portion of the El Salvadoran economy relies on remittances from these citizens (CIA World Factbook). Why El Salvadorans immigrate to the United  and why the country experiences such violence in the present can be directly traced to the Civil War in the 1980s.

El Salvador’s Civil War has roots in the conflict in La Matanza (The
Massacre) of 1932 when the military regime of General Maximiliano Martinez repressed a rebellion led by indigenous peasants and communists. Half of the communist party was killed or exiled in the aftermath while tens of thousands of indigenous people were murdered. While the military maintained control of the government for the next 50 years, the historical memory of 1932 would play a decisive role in the Civil war that ravaged the nation in 1980’s.

In addition to La Matanza, the context of the Cold War and the larger regional conflicts is important to understand. While El Salvador is a unique case study with its specific context, the descent into Civil War fits into a larger Central American framework in which the United States funded and trained ethically abhorrent military regimes in an attempt to combat communist insurgents who recruited indigenous people to support a people’s revolution. When the Reagan administration assumed power and took an extremely hard-line stance against communism in Central America, the US increased military aid to a repressive El Salvador regime that ordered and carried out devastating human rights abuses throughout the 1980s, such as executing a thousand unarmed peasants at El Mozote.

The Civil War began in 1980 with the formation of the communist FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). Previously, there had been a dirty war in which right-wing death squads and the military were fighting the communists. Events that sparked the official Civil War was a right-wing death squad’s assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a figure associated with Catholic Liberation Theology. Military forces assassinated Romero, a popular bishop of the poorer people in El Salvador, while he was saying mass in 1980. From a domestic point of view, this assassination was one of the events that sparked widespread participation in the Civil War. Also of import to this period was the rape and murder of four American churchwomen by the Salvadoran military in late 1980. The FMLN launched their first military offensive in 1981. Realizing they could not out-gun a well-organized, well-armed army in an open war, the guerrillas employed non-traditional tactics that kept the government chasing them into the mountains and across the countryside. In an unexpectedly successful campaign, the guerrillas used hit-and-run attacks to capture and consolidate control over about 1/3 of El Salvador’s territory. The US increased aid in the form of air support that forced the FMLN to go on the run again. A stalemate ensued in which the FMLN could not penetrate further into government territory while the military could not dislodge the FMLN from the regions they controlled. The FMLN launched one last national offensive in 1989, temporarily claiming territories in Salvadoran cities. The government responded to this offensive with panic and murdered six Jesuit priests, drawing heavy international criticism and devastating the military’s image in the eyes of the Salvadoran people. With no clear end in sight and the Cold War now at an end, both sides sat down for a peace agreement.

The violence was staggering. 75,000 civilians died at the hands of
the military, with many more thousand people killed in battle or by FMLN
perpetrators (it is important to note that the UN Truth Commission found the government responsible for 85% of war-time atrocities and the FMLN accounted for 5%). Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, many ending up in the United States. In the peace process, the UN formed a truth commission that detailed the human rights crimes of the government. The Atlacatl brigade, a counterinsurgency force of the military that had been directly trained by the United States at Fort Bragg, had been found responsible for numerous massacres of unarmed peasants, as well as the murder of the six Jesuit priests.

Justice, peace, and democracy is post-war El Salvador have been challenging to achieve. The FMLN transitioned from a guerrilla army to a political party and has won elections in 2009 and 2014. While the UN Truth Commission outlines the crimes committed by the military, the prosecution of people responsible has been impeded by the politics and the courts of El Salvador. Immunity for soldiers following orders was established for people in the military who had been mass executing peoples. When considering the today’s violence and the prevalence of gangs in El Salvador, the legacy of the Salvadoran Civil War cannot be untangled from the present.

Source: Erik Ching, Stories of Civil War: A Battle over Memory. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Further Reading:

  1. For an overall introduction to El Salvador’s economics, politics, and demographics, see https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/es.html
  2. For more on Oscar Romero’s assassination of Oscar Romero and the profound impact this had on El Salvador’s collective conscience from the Civil War into today, see https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/archbishop-oscar-romero-becomes-a-saint-but-his-death-still-haunts-el-salvador
  3. To read more about the UN Truth commission and the peace process that took place in El Salvador during the mid 1990s and brought the Civil War to an end, see https://www.usip.org/publications/1992/07/truth-commission-el-salvador
  4. To read more about the brutality of the Atlacatl brigade, the death squad that was trained by the CIA and carried out atrocities such as El Mozote and the murder of the Jesuit priests, see https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-09-mn-1714-story.html
  5. To read more about US involvement and complicity in the El Salvadoran Civil War, see https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-and-el-salvador/550955/ and https://medium.com/s/story/timeline-us-intervention-central-america-a9bea9ebc148

El Salvador Recent History-Present

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on March 21, 2019 by dsmith41

David Smith

In 1932, a loose alliance of rural, indigenous peasants and urban, ladino (mixed race) communists revolted because they were unhappy with the elite landowners’ control of the coffee economy. In a country the size of Massachusetts, land ownership was tightly concentrated into a few families, and these elites used coercive methods to compel the labor of indigenous people and poor ladinos. Economic and social reforms through the electoral process appeared possible in 1931, but visions of change ended with General Maximiliano Martinez’ overthrow of the first democratically elected government in El Salvador’s history. Thus, in response to Martinez’ coup, the peasants and communists executed a poorly organized revolt that resulted in one of El Salvador’s defining historical moments. Though the 1932 revolt lasted a mere three days and killed about 100 people, General Martinez responded by ordering a military repression that beat back the revolutionaries but then continued into the countryside in a quasi-genocidal campaign that slaughtered thousands to tens of thousands of indigenous people not involved in the Revolution in what has come to be known as La Matanza (The Massacre). The military repression left an indelible mark on the nation’s conscience, and it worked to consolidate power into the hands of the military for the foreseeable future. This conflict in 1932 formed the fault lines along which the two armies fought in the Civil War about five decades later.

Authoritarian military dictatorships governed El Salvador from 1932-1979, the longest consecutive stretch of military rule in Latin American history, a region notorious for such governments. These years leading up to the Salvadoran Civil War can be characterized by a tense military-elite alliance that kept the concentration of wealth into the hands of the powerful while trying to institute enough reform for the lower classes to avert general insurrection. These reforms were ultimately not enough to avoid Civil War, and the country, like its neighbors Guatemala and Nicaragua, spiraled into violence.

During the Civil War, hundred of thousands (millions?) fled the violence, with many of these refugees ending up in Los Angeles. There, witnesses of unbridled violence in their home country came into contact with the already established network of gangs in Southern California, one of which was MS-13. Young boys became involved in violent crime, were arrested, put in prisons where gangs flourished, then deported to El Salvador in the early 1990s, around the same time the Civil War was entering a peace process. Due to deportation laws in the United States, the US was not required to tell El Salvador’s government the criminal record of the deportees that were being released back into the war-torn country, and they didn’t. Thus, in the wreckage of post-Civil War society, MS-13 took root and drastically expanded its’ influence across El Salvador.

MS-13, Barrio-18, and other gangs have had a pervasive presence across El Salvador in the 21st century. In recent years, El Salvador has become known worldwide for excessive murder and violence, especially in the capital city San Salvador, which had the highest murder rate in the world per capita in (insert years). In order to address the gangs in the 2000s, El Salvador’s government turned to Mano Dura (Firm Hand) policies that used state force to battle gang members and arrest the leaders. Mano Dura enforcement increased violence in its’ efforts to eradicate the gangs, and though the state was able to imprison many of MS-13’s leaders, the existing body of evidence suggests that imprisonment has done little to hinder the erratic nature of MS-13 and may have even helped to better centralize the leadership’s lines of communication from the prisons. In 2014, the government agreed to negotiate a less hard-line policy and began negotiating with the gang leaders, which temporarily decreased the murder rate, but is unsteady. Extortion, rape, domestic violence, and kidnapping are serious threats to the citizens of El Salvador.

Source: Erik Ching, Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880-1940. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.

Further Reading:

https://cja.org/where-we-work/el-salvador/

This source offers more information on the historical background that preceded the Civil War. It offers an account of the Civil War, and the peace process that ensued. The article concludes by exploring the impunity for military and police personnel that participated in crimes against humanity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/us/el-salvador-ms-13.html

This article from the New York Times explores the relationship between the United States and El Salvador and how interwoven these countries and their circumstances are. It further explores the topic of gang violence in the region and offers perspectives and offers insight as to why migrants flee their home nations.

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