Ironically, the crackdown helps gangs tighten their grip. The latter two scenarios can have serious medium- and long-term consequences for the country: gangs associating with each other can give rise to another force that is more difficult to control than those already plaguing El Salvador, and if there is an outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons, the gang members who survive it will be seen as heroes by the groups to which they belong. El dominio que tienen es real. The “maras” (gangs) Salvatrucha and 18 have modified their strategy in order to survive police raids and maintain control over the neighbourhoods where they … Bukele contra las maras: cuáles son las principales pandillas de El Salvador y por qué es tan peligroso que las mezclen en las cárceles Roberto Valencia Especial para BBC Mundo, El Salvador No politician dares advocate for it in public. Together, these three organisations count around 65,000 members, according to police records. Despite the mareros’ youth, their faces are scarred and their eyes hollowed by years of dealing out death and taking abuse, making them look much older. Extortion at places of business is the bigger problem. Thousands of adolescents were roaming the streets with no jobs and little else to do. Members of Mara Salvatrucha listen to a mass in Ciudad Barrios, San Salvador, El Salvador. The mano dura operations have also caught numerous residents in the crossfire. Please tell us what you think about this story, Proper nutrition goes a long way to battling COVID-19 and other illnesses, Comcast RISE Investment Fund to offer $1 million grants to BIPOC-owned small businesses in Philly and Chester, Texas Rep. 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And that’s why it’s been so difficult to combat the threat the gangs pose. Unos más, otros menos. In a 2017 survey, 40 per cent of Salvadorans said they approved of torture as a crime-fighting technique and 34.6 per cent said the same of extrajudicial killing. A marero had thrown a homemade bomb into her neighbour’s house, killing four people. Not all gang members are so easily identifiable. Nayib Bukele, de todo el Triángulo Mara Norte (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador), es el primer mandatario que vino a darle a las maras tratamiento de criminales.Sin medidas complacientes. Another had shot her brother, who was a former government soldier and thus an enemy in the gang’s eyes. https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/central-america, El Salvador’s Politics of Perpetual Violence. Training and support for police, prison guards and judges could help the Salvadoran authorities target the most violent criminals and ensure that lesser offenders get a second chance outside jail. Many members and sympathisers, particularly from MS-13, become teachers, lawyers, local government officials and even police officers who serve the gang’s interests. But Salvadorans pay the renta and toe the gangs’ line for fear of retaliation – not out of loyalty or gratitude. In contrast with previous migration waves, there are now fewer young men making the journey in search of jobs and many more families with children and young or expectant mothers escaping poverty and gang violence. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. El Salvador’s government and its … Las noticias de última hora de El Salvador y el mundo sobre deportes, política, economía, tecnología, opinión, editoriales, negocios, cultura, entretenimiento The Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, is perhaps the most notorious street gang in the Western Hemisphere. Alma Guillermoprieto, antigua corresponsal, regresa al país tres décadas después para documentar este nuevo ciclo bárbaro. The President also made known that he was willing to use the nation's resources to defend members of the public force who were sued for the excessive use of force. El Faro's investigation sheds the following light: the increase in the number of murders appears to be a unilateral decision by MS-13, as the spokesperson for the faction Sueños del Barrio 18 declared that MS had cut off communication with the other gangs and they did not know what the reason for this change in policy was. In the U.S., politicians invoke the spectre of MS-13’s criminal and social power to promote an anti-immigration agenda. In El Salvador, gangs found fertile ground for recruitment with the country roiled by post-war political upheaval and mired in economic stagnation. The gang warned the rest of the family to depart. In Gangs in the Global City. Unfortunately, this trend changed after April 24, when the daily number of murders began to rise again. The climate of fear is such that thousands of families have abandoned their homes and headed north toward the U.S. border. One reason why gangs could sink such deep roots in El Salvador is that they provide a sense of pride and belonging to their members, many from poor, broken families. Alternatives to Traditional Criminology edited by J. Hagedorn. El presente informe para la discusión contiene un análisis preliminar del problema de la violencia juvenil y la proliferación de las maras y pandillas en el norte de Centroamérica y, específicamente en El Salvador, analizando las respuestas del Estado y de la sociedad civil. The same year, El Salvador’s Supreme Court labelled the MS-13 and the two factions of Barrio 18 as “terrorist” organisations. The sense of belonging offered by the gangs was too much for many of them to resist. But the politicians fear to sit down with the gangs because that becomes an excuse for another party to attack them”. President Bukele's hope in doing all this and then confining the men in the same cell, crowded and mixed, is that by having the members of different maras together, they cannot plan murders that would then be communicated to members outside the prisons. Girls can also be targeted at an early age, either to join the gang or to become sex slaves. Extortion and constant fear will likely become the daily reality for thousands of them. Five months into a historic ceasefire between El Salvador’s street gangs, El Faro profiles the complex history of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). But many more people – some 500,000 all told – depend on the gangs for their livelihood. The largest maras in El Salvador are MS-13 and the two factions of Barrio 18 (the 18th Street gang), the Revolutionaries and the Southerners. Es su territorio. Nowadays, the average member is around 25 years old, lives in either a house in a poor neighbourhood or an overcrowded jail, has never held a formal job and did not finish secondary education. Edgar Romero/DPA/PA Images,. Prison conditions for gang members worsened and the mano dura operations resumed. A state policy of reserving one prison for each gang has created incubators of crime, allowing mareros to strengthen their leadership, recruit new members and even run extortion rackets from behind bars. But the truce collapsed, mainly due to lack of support from the ruling party, as well as the Salvadoran public, much of which favours iron fist approaches. El 13 de mayo de 2006, Ernesto Smokey Miranda, un exsoldado de alto rango y uno de los fundadores de la Mara Salvatrucha, fue asesinado en su casa en El Salvador unas horas después de negarse a asistir a una fiesta para una miembro de la banda que acababa de ser liberada de la prisión. pic.twitter.com/FdlTqLjsbg, — Osiris Luna Meza (@OsirisLunaMeza) April 27, 2020. This may explain the effort by the mareros to recover their territories. Though MS-13 and the two Barrio 18 factions are mortal enemies, they forged an informal ceasefire in order to target army and police officers, as well as their families, creating a cycle of revenge. In January 2018, the U.S. announced that in September 2019 it would be terminating the Temporary Protected Status designation, which had allowed 195,000 Salvadorans to work and live legally in the U.S. for nearly twenty years. Stay on top of El Salvador latest developments on the ground with Al Jazeera’s fact-based news, exclusive video footage, photos and updated maps. If a family refuses to leave, they threaten all its members. The lead contributor was Sofía Martínez, International Crisis Group’s analyst for Central America’s Northern Triangle, with editing by Chris Toensing and design (print version) by Kjell Olsson. foto edh / ARCHIVO The second factor is the increase in aggressions, humiliations and beatings of both the gang members and their families. SAN SALVADOR, Mar 28 2008 (IPS) - Youth gangs in El Salvador are changing their recruitment methods, targeting ever younger potential members in the slum neighbourhoods of the capital, authorities report. Porque es cierto. The night is for the maras, which do most of their killing then. El Salvador ha sido durante años uno de los países más violentos del mundo, debido en buena parte a las actividades de pandillas como la Mara … Many escape to stay with relatives elsewhere in the country. Gangs also claim to be providing a “community service” by protecting locals from other criminals and corrupt police. Había comenzado a estudiar Derecho y a trabajar para mantener a los niños fuera de las pandillas. Maras permiten hacer campaña territorial solo a Nuevas Ideas, dice investigadora. Todas las noticias sobre Maras publicadas en EL PAÍS. At least once a week, older gang members, or mareros, come by every shop and vendor’s stall in the neighbourhood market to collect the renta, or protection money, from merchants who can’t afford their own security guards. La Mara Salvatrucha, las dos alas de la pandilla Dieciocho, la revolucionaria y la sureña, y la Mao Mao. The last point on which the El Faro investigation sheds light is the one the official made known to them: the Salvadoran government has no plan to avoid the disputes inside the cells and they hope that they will organize some kind of amnesty in their confinement. Having suffered gang violence, Sessions said, will no longer be enough to claim asylum in the U.S. El Salvador Die gefürchteten Mara-Jugendbanden. Their influence has grown so great that every major political party in El Salvador and Honduras has at some point paid gangs during elections. “You can’t work anywhere without permission from the local gang”, says Alex, 46, who worked in construction but decided to leave El Salvador when jobs dried up in his hometown. Karim Lebhour, Head of North America Communications, coordinated the project. Behind closed doors the authorities agree that they are “fighting a war they cannot win”. A youth who lives in MS-13 territory but whose grandmother lives in Barrio 18-R territory will meet her only on ”neutral ground” or at a place where no one knows their names and faces. They have mounted massive joint military and police operations in the capital and other cities, arresting thousands. The combination of quarantine and the "barrio decision" made by the maras led to a historic decrease in the number of fatalities recorded per day in El Salvador. It could easily have happened to them or to their neighbours. Media reports about MS-13 and other maras depict the members bearing archetypal tattoos and speaking in trademark slang. A mara (or marabunta) is a form of gang originating in the United States, which spread to Central American countries such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. In 2017, 296,000 people were displaced. “The only living force that exists in our communities is the gangs”. Sencillamente, ellos mandan. Noticias Maras en El Salvador | El director de prisiones niega negociaciones de Bukele con las pandillas Tras la publicación en el diario El … Maras are a significant force in El Salvador’s criminal and political landscape. In 2015, the government again launched a “war on gangs”. But most people fork over the money. The gangs' decision was motivated by three concerns: first, the less the quarantine was enforced, the greater the presence of the army and police in the neighbourhoods; second, the growth of the pandemic could affect the prisons and infect their gang members; and third, the more COVID-19 infections there were in El Salvador, the less likely it was that medical centres would provide a ventilator for a marero, should he need one. It can promote more programs to rehabilitate jailed gang members and care for victims, especially the most vulnerable such as abused women. In recent days, Bukele, a 38-year-old former mayor of San Salvador, has moved to burnish his tough-guy credentials, targeting a long-time nemesis — El Salvador’s infamous street gangs, known as maras, which he blamed for a surge in homicides. WASHINGTON - Las pandillas, conocidas como maras en El Salvador, han mantenido a las autoridades de ese país entre los más violentos del mundo, llegando a tener por un tiempo la escalofriante cifra de 51 muertos por cada 100.000 habitantes. In neighbourhoods throughout the capital, San Salvador, residents heading to work or school pass through an informal checkpoint where a bandera – the term the gangs use for their young lookouts and errand runners – asks everyone for a dollar. Salvadorans living in “red zones” have to spend hard-earned money on private transport or after-school programs so that their kids don’t come into contact with gangs. The murder rate – an astonishing 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 – is still sky-high at 60 per 100,000 in 2017. “The maras are important when you have nothing, when you are born dead”, says the Salvadoran anthropologist Juan José Martinez D’Aubuisson. Both the press agencies operating in El Salvador and the prison authorities themselves have released chilling images where dozens of half-naked men emerge lined up, sitting in narrow rows, each one's chest touching the other's back, and where - a novelty for the Salvadoran press - men with the letters MS and the number 18 tattooed on their bodies were gathered equally. Anyone who doesn’t pay up might come to regret it later. Police officers always wear a gorro navarone, or face-covering balaclava, scared that gang members will come after them and their families. Former President Mauricio Funes made efforts to improve conditions for jailed mareros in exchange for a gang ceasefire. With U.S. help, the Salvadoran government should try to counter gangs with crime prevention as much as with law enforcement. The gangs remain rooted in the streets but have now penetrated every layer of Salvadoran society. Pure intuition can lead one to think of four things that could happen: either the mareros will try to ignore each other - which is impossible, more so in such a degree of overcrowding - or lethal fights will break out in the cells, or the mareros will associate with each other, or an outbreak of COVID-19 inside the prisons will produce a mass death of the prisoners. Óscar, the security official pictured above, uses a common Spanish expression, pagar los platos rotos. The gangs' decision was motivated by three concerns: first, the less the quarantine was enforced, the greater the presence of the army and police in the neighbourhoods; … Intensifying gang violence is one of the biggest factors pushing hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans to flee their homes. We come from disintegrated families and extreme poverty”, an unnamed MS-13 spokesperson told the Salvadoran news site El Faro. Police raids are often indiscriminate. They may also take neighbourhood women and girls there to be sexually abused. Bukele responded with two measures, both published via Twitter: authorising the public forces to use "lethal force" against the mareros and the decision to mix members of different maras in prison cells, in order to prevent communication between them. En octubre de 2008, sobre la autopista a Comalapa, autoridades salvadoreñas decomisaron a miembros de la MS-13, un cohete antitanque del tipo LAW y varios fusiles de alto calibre. Most gang members were around fifteen years old when they first joined. Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s.Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area. 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