Barrio-18 Overview

Posted in Central American Gangs with tags , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Sarah Rousse

            Barrio 18, otherwise known as 18th Street Gang or M-18, is a street gang originating in Los Angeles, gaining prominence in the 1980s and 90s. While the gang began with only Mexican immigrants, they soon started to recruit immigrants from various Latin American countries (Insight Crime). The immigrants had trouble adjusting in America and found surrogate family in the gang, a vital recruitment tactic, as well as safety, drugs and women (Verini 41). The violence and crimes committed by gang members forced a crackdown on gang activity in California in the 1990s.

            In 1996, the state of California increased the number of deportable crimes exponentially. The crimes could be as small as drunk driving or petty theft (Arana 100). Many of the deportees had spent most or all of their life in America and were not welcomed into the communities in their home countries. The struggle to fit in and adjust once deported drove most to continue with they knew, and gangs grew in Central America (The Wire). The result of the deportations was understandably a disaster. The gangs took over weak countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. As soon as they had established their territory, they collected “war taxes” from local officials and businesses (Verini 39). In order to create funding for the gang, they soon turned to robbery, extortion and drug trafficking (Arana 105). Central America quickly became one of the most dangerous places to live in the world.

            Barrio 18 is one of two dominant gangs in Central America. The other, and the gang’s bitter rival, is Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. The rivalry between the two has proven extremely dangerous for innocent civilians as well as the members themselves. In 2012, Honduras became the murder capital of the world because of the feud (Verini 36). The violence became so unavoidable that the government attempted a ceasefire the same year between Barrio 18 and MS-13 in exchange for relaxed prison conditions (Insight Crime). The two agreed and the murder rate immediately plummeted in the country. However, this did not last as the truce was broken in 2014 and violence spread everywhere again.

            In 2002, Honduras’ president, Ricardo Maduro, implemented “Mano Dura” or Iron Fist policies in regard to the gangs. Mano Dura was a zero-tolerance policy that used mass detentions and extrajudicial killings to deter gang activity (The Wire). A member could receive a sentence of 12 years in prison for mere association, although officials did not need much evidence to convict (Arana 102). Often police officers will check the suspects skin for the signature tattoos of Barrio 18’s members (Discovery). Prisons soon swelled past their limits, which only backfired for the government. The gang was forced into closer corners, allowing them to reorganize (Insight Crime). Prisons had to be separated into sections, Barrio 18 members, MS-13, and unaffiliated in order to keep them from each other’s throats.

            The violence that came with Barrio 18’s deportation into Central America forced many innocent citizens to flee their home country in search of refuge in America. The gang capitalized on this desperation and began their human smuggling business (Arana 104). It is made clear to the refugees that they can pay the smugglers and they will bring them into the United States or they can not pay, and they will not make it alive. The gang is so far spread throughout Central America and the United States that they have no issue finding drug or human smuggling routes (Arana 105). Many blame the U.S. for the violence Latin America now faces at the hands of these gangs. The Wire claims that drugs consumed in America makes cause for trafficking and loose gun laws supply the violence. The mass deportations sent members to places they were not welcome or did not fit in, where banding together with their gangs gave them a sense of belonging.   

Arana, Ana. “How the Street Gangs Took Central America.” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 3 (2005): 98-110. doi:10.2307/20034353.

This source focuses on both MS-13 and Barrio 18 in the 1990s in America and their effect in Central America in the early 2000s. Arana also concentrates on the violence brought about by the gangs but because the source was written in 2005, does not cover recent violence statistics or policies made to deter gang activity.

VERINI, JAMES. “DISPATCH: Prisoners Rule: Welcome to the Deadliest City in the Deadliest Country in the World.” Foreign Policy, no. 196 (2012): 36-40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41726704.

            In this source, Verini reports on a prison in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. At the time, Honduras was the murder capital of the world, and Verini interviews gang members from both Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. The piece incorporates the personal stories of members with the history of how the gangs become so prominent in Honduras.

“Barrio 18.” InSight Crime. February 13, 2018. Accessed December 06, 2018. https://www.insightcrime.org/el-salvador-organized-crime-news/barrio-18-profile-2/.

            This source is good for a basic overview of Barrio 18. Insight Crime gives a history of the gang starting with their emergence in Los Angeles to their status now in 2018. It also focuses on the gang’s effect on Central American Violence.

“What Lies Behind Central America’s Gang Violence.” The Wire. Accessed December 06, 2018. https://thewire.in/world/what-lies-behind-central-americas-gang-violence.

UK, Discovery. “Prison Leader Sharky – 18th Street Gang – Inside the Gangsters’ Code.” YouTube. February 26, 2013. Accessed December 06, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tI9zo9j40Q.

Documentary, Gang. “Gang Documentary – 18th Street Gang.” YouTube. December 07, 2016. Accessed December 06, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43BJ9eSDJ4s.

CIA-Contra Connection

Posted in Nicaragua, US-Latin America Relations with tags , , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

David Smith

In 1979, the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the Nicaraguan government that the United States had supported. Many people in Washington, including the incoming president Ronald Reagan, thought Jimmy Carter had been too soft on communism in Nicaragua. The incoming administration vowed to fight Central American communism much more enthusiastically, and one of their goals was to overthrow the new Sandinista regime. Congress, however, had passed laws prohibiting the government from funding the Contras, the right-wing paramilitary resistance to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. In order to circumvent licit funding from Congress, the Reagan administration devised illegal schemes to provide the funds necessary to continue their proxy war in Nicaragua. The most notable of these illegal schemes is the Iran-Contra affair in which Oliver North and the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran and then funneled the proceeds to the Contras without any Congressional oversight. The Contras were also linked to selling the first batches of cocaine that were turned into “crack,” or cocaine hydrochloride, in Los Angeles so that they could increase their war chest. Whether or not the CIA organized and directed these drug deals has been the subject of much inquiry and speculation since the Contra-crack connection has been established, and what can be concluded is that the CIA was complicit or extremely irresponsible in the Contras crack cocaine networks in the poorer communities of Los Angeles. The CIA-Contra connection is very important for a few reasons. It reveals truths about the Central American Cold War and the War on Drugs that are difficult to reconcile with the professed morality of such wars. While the Iran-Contra affair is obviously a massive chapter in modern US history, the Contra-cocaine connection has stunning implications for 1980s US-Central America relations.

The only reason we know about the Contra drug ring in Los Angeles is due to the reporting of Gary Webb. In 1995, Webb published a 3-part story in which he detailed the connections between the Contras and a man by the name of “Freeway” Rick Ross. As the story goes, Norwin Meneses and Oscar Blandon, two Contras, came to San Francisco with the direction to sell a bunch of cocaine. The Contras didn’t know how to sell the cocaine, so they tried their luck further south, in Los Angeles. Around the time the Contras were in Los Angeles, some people had begun experimenting with cooking cocaine into “crack,” or adding baking soda to cocaine in order to make a cheaper, smokable form of the drug. When the Contras got to Los Angeles, they encountered a young, street-wise entrepreneur names Rick Ross. Ross bought the Contras’ cocaine, cooked it into crack, and then sold it to gangs in Los Angeles, creating an infamous empire in the process. Thus, the crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged Los Angeles and other black communities across the country was started, in part, by a Central American para-military that was sponsored by the CIA. Webb’s reporting never definitively established that CIA directed these activities or knew about the specific drug ring in Los Angeles, but there is evidence that the Reagan administration knew that the Contras were involved in drug-trafficking operations. There is much speculation as to how these Contras were able to transport the amount of drugs they did with the aircraft that they did and go unmolested by authorities in the United States for decades.

Here, we see what could be considered a paradoxical intersection between the Cold War and the War on Drugs in the 1980s. In one sense, you have the United States funding paramilitary activities against a Communist regime, which is normal and expected. On the other hand, the United States is involved in a regional, even global, War on Drugs in order to stop the flow of illicit substances into the United States. However, with the CIA-Contra scandal, the Reagan administration clearly violates it’s prohibitionist approach towards drugs and drug traffickers and uses them to help fund their unsuccessful war on communism in Nicaragua. At the same time that tens of thousands of black people across the county are suffering from an addiction to crack cocaine and being incarcerated for it by the US government, the CIA was working with the drug traffickers responsible for selling the cocaine that sparked the epidemic. For obvious reasons, this hypocrisy outraged the South Los Angeles community, and the response was so forceful that it required an unprecedented response from the CIA chief.

Source: Scott, Peter Dale and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 23-50

Further Reading:

  1. For a history of the Sandinista Revolution and its origins, motives, and consequences, see https://vianica.com/go/specials/15-sandinista-revolution-in-nicaragua.html
  2. For access to an Iran-Contra affairs database compiled by Brown University that explains the facts and Congressional investigations, see https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/iran-contra-affairs.php
  3. To see the evidence that supports the conclusion that the US government was aware of the drug trafficking activities of the Contra army and explores memos written by government officials, as well as testimony from Contra drug dealers, see https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/iran-contra-affairs.php
  4. To read Gary Webb’s original reporting on the CIA-Contra-Los Angeles crack connections, see https://www.mega.nu/ampp/webb.html
  5. To read about how “Freeway” Rick Ross grew up in Los Angeles and built an empire from crack cocaine, see https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jpz79y/a-drug-kingpin-and-his-racket-the-untold-story-of-freeway-rick-ross
  6. To read about the meeting between the Los Angeles community and the Chief of the CIA in 1996, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/11/16/cia-chief-faces-angry-crowd-at-los-angeles-meeting-on-drug-allegations/d6d7dcaa-c429-4feb-94d6-496717211916/?utm_term=.1f53d93f0a67

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Gangs in El Salvador

Posted in Central American Gangs, El Salvador 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.

U.S. Drug Policy in Latin America (1970-Present)

Posted in US-Latin America Relations with tags , , , , , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Sarah Tosto

As the global demand for drugs by United States increased, who is now the number one consumer of drugs with 50% consumption of the $150 billion of the world drug supply, came the declaration of the War on Drugs in the 1980’s as drugs became a “national security threat.” Conveniently for the U.S. during this time period, most Latin American countries had been under severe economic stress and were in desperate need of debt relief. In addition to economic stress, these Latin American countries showed similar political instability and lack of government protection from the drug cartels. This failure of government led to the rise of leftist guerilla groups and paramilitaries.  From here on out, the United States implemented drug policies that economically incentivized the crack down of drug production in Latin America and helped Latin American countries fight opposition groups. This supply-side approach to drug eradication, however, resulted in failure due to the idiosyncratic nature of the drug economy in that demand never falters. These policies ended up highly militarizing the War on Drugs in Latin American, bringing unprecedented levels of violence.

Mexico and Colombia are two countries that have become increasingly violent after the United States’ foreign policy and aid. The article The U.S.- Mexico War on Narcotics: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, discusses the introduction of the Merida Initiative in 2007 in which the United States provided over $2.5 billion to the Mexican government for narcotics detection resources, training of justice sector personnel, crop eradication efforts, and other anti-narcotic strategies (Logia, 2017). Between 2008 and 2010 they received over $300 million in foreign military assistance which only moved through the corrupt government into the hands of the cartels (Logia, 2017). In response to this corruption, paramilitaries emerged and acted as a task force to protect citizens from cartel violence. This created a new wave of violence in Mexico after 2007 and has led to the deaths of over 200,000 since the help of the U.S. and the militarization of the drug war.

In Colombia, we see the Andean Initiative taking on a similar role in supply-side policy approach without the acknowledgement of paramilitary groups. The article Andean Regional Initiative: A Policy Fated to Fail discusses the 35-year history of internal conflict from leftist groups (the FARC) and guerilla groups (paramilitaries). The FARC came to power in the 1960’s during times of poverty, political exclusion of the masses, lack of confidence in the state, and violence towards the rural population. They protected the rural population against the government’s eradication efforts. In efforts to fight the FARC, the Colombian military, with the aid of the United States, allowed paramilitaries to escalate the violence and human rights abuses in order to comply with the drug eradication effort. The increased militarization, with the help of the U.S., has led to the doubling of politically motivated homicide between 1998 and 2000—to almost 20 murders per day (Amatangelo, 2005). In 2000, almost 85% of these murders were attributed to state agents and paramilitary groups, with the remaining 15% attributed to guerrilla groups (Amatangelo, 2005).

The United States was able to outsource their anti-drug efforts through economic incentives and increased military aid. These policies, however, proved to be a failure in the eradication of drugs and often led to increased violence, deaths, and human rights violations in Latin American countries. The failures of these policies can be attributed to the supply-side approach used by the United States. In the article US War on Drugs and Its Legacy in Latin America the article goes in depth about the issues created in Andean Countries as well as Mexico and suggests policy reform as a way to diminish violence in these areas.The United States should implement policy that acknowledges human rights violations and the victims of cartel violence (Huey, 2014). The U.S. should also soften their marijuana drug policy so task forces can focus resources on harder drugs (Huey, 2014). Latin American countries could also benefit from the taxation of marijuana for their economies and be less reliant on foreign aid (Huey, 2014). Without policy change, Latin American countries will continue to fight this war at the cost of their citizens.  

Bibiliography

Amatangelo, G. (2005). Andean Regional Initiative: A Policy Fated to Fail. Foreign Policy in

Focus. Retrieved from https://fpif.org/andean_regional_initiative_a_policy_fated_to_fail/

Huey, D. (2014). US War on Drugs and Its Legacy in Latin America. The Guardian.

Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/feb/03/us-war-on-drugs-impact-in-latin-american

Logia, L. (2017). The U.S.-Mexico War on Narcotics: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

Global Americans. Retrieved from https://theglobalamericans.org/2017/08/u-s-mexico-

war-narcotics-one-step-forward-two-steps-back/

Central American Gangs and Women

Posted in Central American Gangs, El Salvador, Guatemala 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.

Central American Gangs and Drug Trafficking

Posted in Central American Gangs with tags , , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Monique Martin

The history of Central American gangs and drug trafficking is a complex one filled with murder and extortion. Often people believe that gangs and cartels are the same, but they are different. Gang members are given inferior jobs and serve as hired muscle for drug cartels. Due to their drug trade involvement being at lower risk, and their lack of ownership of drugs, they do not profit in the same way as cartels. Cartels mainly focus on drugs and in terms of economics gangs are far below them. Gangs mostly earn money through extortion and human trafficking. Moreover, gangs became powerful in Central America through the influence of the United States.

One of the most known Central American gang includes Mara Salvatrucha also referred to as MS-13. They are most known for their crude acts of violence all over Central America and have become one of the scapegoats for the United States to justify their resistants’ in allowing people from Central America into the U.S. MS-13 was founded in the 1980s in Los Angeles, California. By 2004 MS-13 had spread to about “42 states and Central America” (Wolf, 66). Gangs such as MS-13 are usually created as, “[F]irst a group of friends, an alternate “family,” a group for mutual protection” (Grillo, 198). When Hispanic people from El Salvador moved to Los Angeles they went in search of jobs and better lives. However, because of xenophobia and racism, they were isolated in society by the majority forcing them to find an alternative way to gain an income. Politicians have used these gangs to push narratives of narcoterrorism and, “[T]o capitalize on popular fear of terrorists and drug traffickers in order to mobilize support for foreign interventions against leftist regimes” (Scott & Marshall, 23). For years this specific gang has been used against Hispanics to help justify political agendas that garner support in baring Hispanics from immigrating to the U.S.

Young Hispanic males have been profiled as the aggressors of gang violence, but they are also the overwhelming victims of gang violence. People join gangs for protection from rival gangs, and protection from the gang presiding in their neighborhood. Moreover, males are “recruited at a young age including elementary school-aged children” (Farah, 63). Also, gangs are more appealing to impoverished young men. This does not mean a person being impoverished will inevitably join a gang. However, poverty can make gangs appear more appealing. On the other hand, some young men join gangs willingly partly because they have grown up around gang members, so these gang members are their only example of how men behave.  The violence these gang members can exude has been enabled through the access to guns legally purchased in the U.S and smuggled into Central America. Therefore, many politicians in Central America have advocated for the U.S to create stricter gun laws.

Women have also been victims of gang violence predominantly through human trafficking and domestic violence. Many women have been forced to marry gang members who supersede them in age. Women have also suffered sexual abuse by gang members. If a person reports an incident to the authorities, they would be murdered because the police often work with the gangs (Osten, Oct. 29, 2018). Just like men, women are forced into tough situations by gangs to survive.

All around most people who are not a part of gang life are subjected to extortion and if they refuse to pay they will be murdered. The conditions in Central America has caused people to desperately want to flee the country. “Due to the historically large amount of people seeking to leave… MS-13 quickly moved into the human smuggling business…”(Farah, 57). Gangs usually charge people hundreds of dollars to help them cross the border, which many people from poor economic backgrounds cannot afford. Therefore, people have recently traveled in a large caravan to cross the U.S border because when they travel in groups the gangs are less likely to attack them. Moreover, when they travel in groups it is free, so they do not have to pay gang members to help them cross the border. Overall, extortion and gang violence are prime contributors to why many people desperately want to leave Central America.

Bibliography

Farah, Douglas. “Central American Gangs: Changing Nature and New Partners.” Journal of International Affairs 66, no. 1 (2012): 53-67. 

Grillo, I. (2017). Gangster warlords: Drug dollars, killing fields, and the new politics of Latin America. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Scott, Peter Dale and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 23-50 

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

External Sources

  • Children on the Run in Central America
    • This short documentary pertains to children of Central America and their experience growing up in Central America. It also discusses their journey leaving Central America and their experience in America.

Gangs in Guatemala

Posted in Central American Gangs, Guatemala with tags , , on April 2, 2019 by dsmith41

Emily Ciatto

Currently, Guatemala is the 16th most violent country in the world (Business Insider, 2018). This is significantly due to the extremely high level of gang violence that terrorizes the country. Two street gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 for short, and Barrio 18 account for 95% of total gang members in Guatemala, with a total of 53 other known gangs working in Guatemala City alone (Guatemala Human Rights Commission). In 2012, it was reported that there were 17,000 Barrio members and 5,000 MS-13 members (Council on Foreign Relations, 2018), with likely higher numbers today. Both gangs were originally formed in Los Angeles, United States, and now have almost complete control over Guatemala City, Villa Nueva, Mixco, Amatitlan, and other areas surrounding the capitol.

Guatemala’s horrific Civil War, which lasted 36 years over 1960-1996, left the state incredibly weak and the country accustomed to high levels of violence, which has remained after the war. During this civil war, funding was removed from public education and other services and transferred to military expenditures, making schools underfunded and inaccessible to Guatemalan youth. The combination of the lack of post-war recovery with high levels of poverty fuel the participation of gangs, with boys joining as young as 12 years old (US Bureau of Diplomatic Security, 2018). Since these gangs are mostly made up of 15-24 year olds, the public opinion towards youth in general is negative, leaving them socially barred; this is where we see gangs opening their arms and showing them acceptance and promising a better, more powerful life. By supplying these young, inexperienced individuals with deadly weapons, they become trigger happy and eager to impress their “boss”. Most violence is targeted towards rival gangs over turf wars, as each gang tries to spread their influence and even trafficking routes around the country. These gangs can also participate in robbery, drug dealing, kidnapping, and human trafficking (GHRC). In 2016, it was reported that there were 26-50 homicides per 100,000 individuals (CFR, 2018), mostly caused by gang violence.

In terms of control, there is very minimal action being taken to subdue these gangs and the violence that accompanies them. These high-profile gangs have a stronghold on businesses, communities, transportation systems, and law enforcement, due to extortion. Those who do not pay the extortionists face extreme violence and death as well. Law enforcement is incredibly corrupt, accepting bribes from gangs, allowing them to rule over towns and communities. There is very minimal trust in police forces due to human rights abuses that occurred during the civil war. When action is taken, only about 3% of crimes are prosecuted (CNN). Prisons are overcrowded and are ruled by gangs, recruiting new members from the inside. In 2007, the United Nations created the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala to help investigate and prosecute criminal groups that may have infiltrated state institutions, which gangs have done (CFR, 2018). The country has seen seen other reforms, but few are successful and can actually cause an increase in gang participation. There has been a slight decrease in homicides in the past decade, especially from 2008 where there were over 40 homicides per 100,000 people. Although this seems like a major change, gang violence is still an issue that is driving many families to seek refuge in the United States, joining the caravans that are currently heading through Mexico to the US border. Unfortunately, current U.S. policies are preventing these people from seeking asylum, and President Trump is demanding countries of Central America to stop these caravans from continuing on their long journey.

Additional informative websites:

Brice, Arthur. “Gangs, Drugs Fuel Violence in Guatemala.” CNN, Cable News Network, 9 Sept. 2011, www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/09/09/guatemala.violence/index.html.

  • Here is an overview of the ties between gangs and drug trafficking, along with criminal activity in the country and how it is being handled.

“Central America’s Violent Northern Triangle.” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, 26 June 2018, www.cfr.org/backgrounder/central-americas-violent-northern-triangle.

  • This article gives an overview of the Northern Triangle, which consists of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, which are three of the most violent countries in the world due to gang violence.

“Guatemala 2018 Crime & Safety Report.” Bureau of Diplomatic Security, 9 May 2018, www.osac.gov/Pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=24030.

  • This is a really helpful resource for those looking to travel to Guatemala; it explains each type of violence and the presence of gangs and drug trafficking zones.

“Guatemala Human Rights Commission.” Guatemala Human Rights Commission RSS, 2018, www.ghrc-usa.org/.

  • This is a helpful resource to learn more about the history of Guatemala and the actions that are being taken to prosecute human rights violators.

Guatemala: Recent History-Present and Civil War

Posted in Guatemala with tags , , on March 23, 2019 by dsmith41

David Smith

To understand Guatemala’s Civil War, the defining moment in modern Guatemalan history, that officially began in 1960 and ended 36 years later, it is necessary to first explore the economic and social conditions of the country with an indigenous Maya majority. Dating back to Spanish Colonial times, Guatemala’s governments have been racist, elitist, militaristic, and corrupt. Access to land and resources, the lifeblood of the Maya people, has been historically restricted, and the landowners who controlled the agricultural economy have consistently used coercive methods to extract extremely cheap migrant labor from indigenous and mixed-race (ladino) people. In the 20th century, United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, employed what was essentially a monopoly over Guatemala’s economy, acquiring 40% of the arable land in the country through a series of contracts that they signed with dictator Jorge Ubico. In October of 1944, Guatemala’s government changed when the people elected Jose Arevalo, ushering in the “Ten Years of Springtime,” a brief era in which democratic reform in the country blossomed. Arevalo enacted a series of reform that provided basic social services to poor people across the country, but the glaring obstacle to a truly independent Guatemala was United Fruit Company’s concentration of land and their dominance of the economy. Arevalo’s democratically elected predecessor, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz, decided to confront the foreign influence over the nation’s economy by nationalizing the land and re-distributing it, principally to the indigenous Maya.

Arbenz’ move, while perhaps justified, was certainly radical to the United States. What was perhaps even more radical was that Arbenz had legalized the Communist party in Guatemala, and while Arbenz was not himself a Communist, the members of the PGT (Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo) were active in the government, especially on the issue of land reform. In an Eisenhower administration that was engaged in militant anti-communism around the world, the United States saw the seizure of land, the re-distribution of land, and the existence of an active Communist party as a serious threat to regional security. In 1954, in an operation named PBSUCESS, the CIA planned and executed a coup against Jacobo Arbenz by supporting Colonel Castillo Armas in the first Cold War conflict in the Western hemisphere. In a daring and, perhaps, arrogant display, the United States asserted control over the domestic affairs of Guatemala, ensuring the restoration of United Fruit Company’s landholdings and providing military and economic assistance to a military regime that supported US interests. The consequences of the 1954 coup against Jacobo Arbenz, executed nearly flawlessly from a US perspective, would reverberate around not only Guatemala for the next four decades, but around the entire Western Hemisphere for the duration of the Cold War. The events of 1954 played a direct role in the Cuban Revolution five years later, including that a young Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who was in Guatemala City and an ally of Arbenz when the United States executed the coup, was profoundly impacted by the experience.

The vast majority of the people in Guatemala were opposed to the United States influence in their country, but any outward expression of opposition to the new military regime was met with secret police death squads. Castillo Armas unleashed a repression that murdered thousands of communists, teachers, students, and others who they perceived to be a threat to stability. The armed resistance to the government began in 1959, when some members of the military became angry that the United States had used Guatemala as a launching point for their Bay of Pigs invasion. They launched a coup that failed, but the seeds of revolution had been sown. Members of this attempted coup fled the cities and retreated into the countryside to form the origins of guerilla factions, like the FAR (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes), who were determined to lead a communist revolution.

The communists failed miserably in their mission during the 1960s. Superior government forces who had been trained by the United States routed the communists, including a visit from the Green Berets that nearly decimated the communists into non-existence. After their failures, some leaders decided to change strategies. Whereas before the communists had tried to re-create the foco strategy of the Cuban Revolution of the island nation just across the Gulf of Mexico, some of the leaders now believed that they needed more of a prolonged people’s war, similar to the likes of the successful North Vietnamese movement. In Guatemala, the “people” are indigenous, so the communist guerilla Mario Payeras started creating alliances with indigenous people in the remote Western Highlands. Payeras’ band of guerillas, known as the EGP (Ejercito de Guerillas Pobres), built a coalition with the largest indigenous peasant organization in Guatemala, the CUC (Comite de Unidad Campesina). As the road to widespread war became more and more inevitable, the communist guerillas believed they had the support of hundreds of thousands of peasants by 1980.

What followed is one of the saddest chapters in the spiral of violence that encompassed the entire Western Hemisphere through the second half of the 20th century. A difficult question that Guatemalans and historians have to confront is how and why this Civil War, a common experience among Latin American countries at the time, turned to genocide. There are no easy answers. When the communists launched their offensives against the military, the government responded with a scorched-earth campaign that is responsible for the slaughter of 200,000 Mayan people. The government would sweep through the village and murder anyone who was there, regardless of their involvement (or lack thereof) in the guerilla movement. Unarmed women, children, and men were raped, terrorized, tortured, and murdered, their bodies desecrated by soldiers who were often recruited from the same types of communities they were razing. The Reagan regime funded the military’s efforts, afraid of another Nicaragua in Central America.

Following the genocide, the guerilla movement was essentially over. After the Cold War, the military regime was forced to negotiate a peace process and conclude the Civil War. Their crimes against humanity were investigated by the United Nations. Their report details the genocidal terror unleashed upon the Maya people.

Following the peace process, Guatemala dismantled 2/3 of its military. The soldiers who had belonged to one of the most highly trained and organized militaries in the Western hemisphere were largely granted immunity, allowing them to participate in private and public life within Guatemala. Some of these soldiers formed criminal organizations that provided intelligence gathering and hit squads for people willing to pay. Many former officers in the military became high-ranking politicians, ascending to the presidency and the Interior Minister in some cases (Insight Crime investigation). In addition to these criminal organizations who are highly connected to corruption in Guatemala’s government, there has also been the development of a serious gang problem in the country. Thus, a highly complex picture of crime, corruption, impunity, and violence in Guatemala arises. Alliances among criminal organizations can quickly disintegrate, people with enough money and power can bribe judges and dismantle investigations, and  in order for anything to be done, international organizations attempting to bring some semblance of justice to the country must work with government officials who are often profoundly corrupt.

International and domestic attempts have been made to hold high-ranking members of the military accountable for the genocide they ordered and carried out. These efforts have produced mixed results. One such example was the trial of General Efrain Rios Montt. In 2013, a court in Guatemala City convicted Rios Montt of genocide and other crimes against humanity, but, three days later, the Guatemalan Supreme Court nullified the decision on a technicality. Before the re-trial, Rios Montt died. Some military officers and criminals responsible for extraordinary violence have been found guilty, but the reality is that most of the former members of the military and the members of the criminal organizations that exist today live with impunity from their crimes, though it remains a violent, tumultuous, and uncertain impunity.

What is overwhelmingly tragic about the circumstances in Guatemala is the vulnerability of indigenous and mixed-race women and children. Indigenous Maya have faced violent oppression from racist governments for centuries. Now, heavily-armed gangs and criminal organizations control the territories in which these people live and exert a reign of terror over these communities. Over time, these people have responded to this oppression in a variety of ways. Sometimes, they protest non-violently, sometimes they take up arms against those persecuting them, sometimes they co-exist with their enemies and carve out whatever opportunities they can find, and sometimes they flee the violence, seeking a better set of circumstances than those in their home country.

Source: Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America and the Cold War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Menchú, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Edited and Introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. Translated by Ann Wright. London, UK: Verso, 2009.

Further Reading:

https://thepanoptic.co.uk/2016/11/19/american-intervention-guatemala/

This article offers a detailed description of the Guatemalan Civil war, its origins, and its impact. Beginning with an analysis of the economic and racial conditions that preceded the Civil War in Guatemala, it describes the Arevalo and Arbenz administrations and the land reforms they pursued. The article then offers an account of the CIA-sponsored coup in 1954 and the Civil War that was started in 1960. Finally, the conflict between the government and the indigenous communities that resulted in a genocide is explained. This article focuses on the role of US Intervention and claims the responsibility for the genocide lays in the United States government and the military regime of Guatemala.

https://www.insightcrime.org/guatemala-organized-crime-news/guatemala/

Insight Crime is a fantastic resource for learning more about organized crime in Central America. This Guatemala profile reflects on the history of the Civil War, and connects this history to the modern circumstances in Guatemala. It explains the rise of drug smugglers, or transportistas, and how they established drug transportation networks with the support of corrupt military and police. As the country exited Civil War, it explains that the military and police stayed heavily involved in organized crime, and it also explain the growth of gangs, such as MS-13 and Barrio 18. This profile also seeks to explain the relationship between Mexican cartels and the organized crime networks in Guatemala. Additionally, the profile explores the judicial system and the prison systems in the largest Central American nation. Insight Crime has also conducted numerous investigations about Central American corruption and criminal organizations that offer a clearer picture of organized crime across the region.

https://www.usip.org/publications/1997/02/truth-commission-guatemala

This is to read more about the conclusions of the UN Truth Commission that found evidence of the genocide, find the report here. This also has some information about the prosecutions of war crimes over the last 2 decades.

https://www.thenation.com/article/border-patrol-guatemala-dictatorship/

To read about direct United States intervention in Guatemala and to learn about how Washington trained army commanders that ordered a genocide, see this source.

https://www.thenation.com/article/guatemala-refugee-crisis-jakelin-caal-maquin/

To read a heartbreaking account of what is happening at the border in the Trump administration, and to read about the intersections of race, gender, and age that produce particularly vulnerable migrants, read this source.

El Salvador Civil War

Posted in El Salvador 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 Central American Gangs, El Salvador 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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