And that’s why it’s been so difficult to combat the threat the gangs pose. The same year, El Salvador’s Supreme Court labelled the MS-13 and the two factions of Barrio 18 as “terrorist” organisations. It’s common for teenagers, especially boys, living in areas controlled by the maras to be harassed by security forces who consider them gang suspects. In June, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions slammed the door shut to still more Salvadorans fleeing life-or-death situations. Boys aged twelve and older are prime targets for recruitment. 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. Este análisis se basa en Jeannette Aguilar, investigadora de temas de violencia, señaló que esos grupos criminales restringen el … The second factor is the increase in aggressions, humiliations and beatings of both the gang members and their families. Many Salvadorans stay away from public places and even avoid walking down the street. 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. We can’t clean up everybody’s mess, he means. 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. 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. For their part, gangs repeatedly say they want to start a new dialogue to obtain better prison conditions and cut down the number of police raids in their neighbourhoods. Extortion at places of business is the bigger problem. The culprit in most of these murders is the maras, the country’s powerful, pervasive criminal gangs. Unfortunately, this trend changed after April 24, when the daily number of murders began to rise again. Gang-related murder is a topic of everyday conversation among families at home, children at school and patrons in bars. 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. To defy the gangs is to court death. The maras, including the infamous MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, are active in 94 per cent of El Salvador’s 262 municipalities. It was that or submit to the gangs’ rule somewhere else in the country. For details of Crisis Group’s analysts, their commentaries and reports countering the crisis of violent crime in Central America’s Northern Triangle and Mexico, please see https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/central-america. In Gangs in the Global City. The Iran Nuclear Deal at Five: A Revival? There are other steps that can be taken. Anyone who doesn’t pay up might come to regret it later. 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. In any case, the cure may result in aggravating the disease without solving the country's underlying problems of poverty and inequality. Â, El Salvador's brutal condemnation of the maras taking advantage of the Covid-19. Street gangs or maras, as they are known in the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), comprising El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have mutated from youth groups defending their neighbourhoods’ turf in the 1980s to highly organised, hierarchical organisations that coerce, threaten and kill to produce a menial subsistence for their members in the 21st century. 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 The night is for the maras, which do most of their killing then. After Washington toughened immigration laws, it deported thousands of mareros to their home country in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Información, novedades y última hora sobre Maras. That’s more violent deaths than in several countries that were at war during those years, such as Libya, Somalia and Ukraine. The mano dura operations have also caught numerous residents in the crossfire. The murder rate – an astonishing 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 – is still sky-high at 60 per 100,000 in 2017. Girls can also be targeted at an early age, either to join the gang or to become sex slaves. A partir de este día, El Diario de Hoy le presenta un amplio reportaje sobre el control que ejercen cuatro grupos de maras o pandillas. Gangs also claim to be providing a “community service” by protecting locals from other criminals and corrupt police. Members of Mara Salvatrucha listen to a mass in Ciudad Barrios, San Salvador, El Salvador. In the U.S., politicians invoke the spectre of MS-13’s criminal and social power to promote an anti-immigration agenda. Noticias Maras en El Salvador | El director de prisiones niega negociaciones de Bukele con las pandillas Tras la publicación en el diario El … El Salvador Die gefürchteten Mara-Jugendbanden. It can also ramp up projects to deter gang recruitment in poor neighbourhoods. Había comenzado a estudiar Derecho y a trabajar para mantener a los niños fuera de las pandillas. 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. Sencillamente, ellos mandan. It can promote more programs to rehabilitate jailed gang members and care for victims, especially the most vulnerable such as abused women. If a family refuses to leave, they threaten all its members. Less than a month ago, the news came out of El Salvador that the various maras had made a "decisión de barrio" to enforce the quarantine imposed by the government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. [6] These maras (sophisticated, third generation gangs) dominate local pandillas (smaller, less-sophisticated gangs) and challenge the state monopoly on force and political power. Alma Guillermoprieto, antigua corresponsal, regresa al país tres décadas después para documentar este nuevo ciclo bárbaro. 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. La Mara Salvatrucha, las dos alas de la pandilla Dieciocho, la revolucionaria y la sureña, y la Mao Mao. Nearly 20,000 Salvadorans were killed from 2014 to 2017. The large majority of gang members are among the poorest people in Salvadoran society, living on less than $250 a month. Gangs have mutated from youth groups defending neighbourhood turf in the 1980s to hierarchical organisations that coerce, threaten and kill. 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. 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. The maras, in this analysis, are the primary and most urgent problem facing countries such as El Salvador. After sunset, many streets in San Salvador are deserted. The borders of the competing gangs’ turf are invisible but well known and seldom crossed. El dominio que tienen es real. Ironically, the crackdown helps gangs tighten their grip. But the politicians fear to sit down with the gangs because that becomes an excuse for another party to attack them”. That’s why it’s so hard to arrest high-ranking gang members, who are usually tipped off about police raids in advance. 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. El Diario NY. — Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 26, 2020, Estamos ejecutado la acción de mezclar y recluir en las mismas celdas a los diferentes grupos de las estructuras criminales que tanto daño están causando al país.En este Gobierno no habrá beneficios y privilegios para ningún miembro de estructura criminal. Not all gang members are so easily identifiable. Many members and sympathisers, particularly from MS-13, become teachers, lawyers, local government officials and even police officers who serve the gang’s interests. 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. Al pasar los años, las Maras de El Salvador consiguieron tener un control territorial real. Ein Fluchtgrund für El Salvadorianer ist die extreme Gewalt: In dem mittelamerikanischen Land beherrschen Jugendbanden, die Maras, die Armenviertel. It was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by immigrants from El Salvador and later spread throughout the United States, Central America, and The affluent generally stay inside gated compounds. Top officials in El Salvador are aware of the magnitude of the challenge. If asked their age, for instance, they reply, “I’m 17 + 1”. Behind closed doors the authorities agree that they are “fighting a war they cannot win”. “We are open to dialogue with anyone who wants to hear the MS-13 voice, the gang’s spokesperson told El Faro. But most people fork over the money. Maras are a significant force in El Salvador’s criminal and political landscape. With U.S. help, the Salvadoran government should try to counter gangs with crime prevention as much as with law enforcement. We come from disintegrated families and extreme poverty”, an unnamed MS-13 spokesperson told the Salvadoran news site El Faro. Over the last fifteen years, various Salvadoran governments have tried to crush gangs con mano dura – with an iron fist. 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. Soon MS-13 and Barrio 18 had expanded across El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Less than a month ago, the news came out of El Salvador that the various maras had made a "decisión de barrio" to enforce the quarantine imposed by the government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.. 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. 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. 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. 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. Gangs routinely confiscate houses in locations they see as “strategic” and turn them into casas locas (literally, “crazy houses”). Todas las noticias sobre Maras publicadas en EL PAÍS. Eric Lemus. As more Salvadorans are expelled from the U.S., the situation will only get worse. A marero had thrown a homemade bomb into her neighbour’s house, killing four people. It could easily have happened to them or to their neighbours. Alternatives to Traditional Criminology edited by J. Hagedorn. La investigación concluye en que las "zonas de paz" suponen un camino peligroso donde las maras tienen el poder para negociar con el Estado. Former President Mauricio Funes made efforts to improve conditions for jailed mareros in exchange for a gang ceasefire. 2007. But numerous others head north to seek asylum in Mexico or the U.S. On the road, they meet other Central Americans like Luisa, fleeing towns and cities in Guatemala and Honduras that are also plagued by the maras’ extortion and murder. Edgar Romero/DPA/PA Images,. Óscar, the security official pictured above, uses a common Spanish expression, pagar los platos rotos. With 24 hours of the start of the truce, the homicide rate dropped by 50 per cent. 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. 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. Review our privacy policy for more details. 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. Again, most shopkeepers pay. Ya no se limitan a las esquinas del barrio; ahora, sus operaciones tienen otras dimensiones: son dictadas con base en sus fuertes vínculos con organizaciones del narcotráfi co" 31 .Al analizar el caso de El Salvador, la investigadora Sonja Wolf destaca que las maras Salvatrucha y 18 muestran grandes diferencias con las pandillas tradicionales. 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. The Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, is perhaps the most notorious street gang in the Western Hemisphere. Having no jobs in El Salvador, and having been away for so long, the returnees are particularly exposed to rampant gang brutality. The hatred between rival gangs runs deep. Es su territorio. MS-13 members will not utter the number “18”. After the failure of the 2012-2013 truce, the idea of negotiating with gangs is taboo. El accionar de estos grupos mantiene también alertas a las autoridades de Estados Unidos. So it’s ironic that Salvadoran gangs are partly the byproduct of earlier U.S. immigration policies. El uso de la fuerza letal está autorizado para defensa propia o para la defensa de la vida de los salvadoreños.Instamos a la oposición a que se pongan del lado de la gente honrada, y a las instituciones que controlan a dejar de proteger a quienes asesinan a nuestro pueblo. Porque es cierto. Maras permiten hacer campaña territorial solo a Nuevas Ideas, dice investigadora. Unos más, otros menos. Police raids are often indiscriminate. 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. 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. El Salvador: El violento paisaje de las maras La violencia desgarra a El Salvador, ante la indiferencia de sus élites y de la mirada internacional. Nevertheless, the government continues to rely almost solely on security crackdowns to tackle gangs. They may also take neighbourhood women and girls there to be sexually abused. While it has its origins in the poor, refugee-laden neighborhoods of 1980s Los Angeles, the gang's reach now extends from Central American nations like El Salvador and through Mexico, the United States and Canada… Thousands of adolescents were roaming the streets with no jobs and little else to do. The Trump administration is deporting tens of thousands of Salvadorans who have nothing to do with gangs – and refusing to admit thousands more who are victims of the maras’ predatory ways. It was here, in the early 1980s, where El Salvador’s two main gangs were formed: the Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and Barrio 18. No politician dares advocate for it in public. But Salvadorans pay the renta and toe the gangs’ line for fear of retaliation – not out of loyalty or gratitude. The story Luisa tells rings true for the Salvadorans who are listening. Over time, the gang grew into a more traditional criminal organization. Having suffered gang violence, Sessions said, will no longer be enough to claim asylum in the U.S. El Salvador presenta uno de los índices de homicidio más elevados a nivel mundial. Over the last three years, gang violence has killed nearly 20,000 people in El Salvador, propelling tens of thousands northward in search of safety. In 2015, the government again launched a “war on gangs”. Their influence has grown so great that every major political party in El Salvador and Honduras has at some point paid gangs during elections. 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. “The only living force that exists in our communities is the gangs”. El Salvador’s government and its … Karim Lebhour, Head of North America Communications, coordinated the project. They have mounted massive joint military and police operations in the capital and other cities, arresting thousands. Police officers always wear a gorro navarone, or face-covering balaclava, scared that gang members will come after them and their families. Tal … This may explain the effort by the mareros to recover their territories. Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), international gang involved in drug and human smuggling, prostitution, murder, and extortion, among other illegal activities. The sense of belonging offered by the gangs was too much for many of them to resist. Also, to prevent them from using sign language, he has asked that they be held without access to sunlight. 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. In private conversations, however, there are many voices among the authorities who are convinced that some form of dialogue is the only way to bring peace to the country. The president authorized the army to use "lethal force" against the mareros and ordered that in the prisons they mix members of different gangs. 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 … Las maras en El Salvador In Maras y pandillas en Centroamérica, edited by I. ERIC, IDIES, IUDOP. 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. The Global City: One Setting for New Types of Gang Work and Political Culture. Prison conditions for gang members worsened and the mano dura operations resumed. “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. 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). Another had shot her brother, who was a former government soldier and thus an enemy in the gang’s eyes. The gangs remain rooted in the streets but have now penetrated every layer of Salvadoran society. Extortion and constant fear will likely become the daily reality for thousands of them. 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. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. 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. Every Salvadoran knows someone who was shot dead by gang members or someone who pulled the trigger. At many of the roadblocks, the bandera is barely eight years old. “The maras are important when you have nothing, when you are born dead”, says the Salvadoran anthropologist Juan José Martinez D’Aubuisson. Illustrations for this commentary are by Molly Crabapple. “The state has forsaken these territories and we have taken control of what it abandoned. Together, these three organisations count around 65,000 members, according to police records. Todos los derechos reservados. The only exception to the iron fist policy was the “gang truce” – an experiment with negotiation from March 2012 through mid-2013. But many more people – some 500,000 all told – depend on the gangs for their livelihood. The U.S. can help by either allowing Salvadorans with Temporary Protected Status to stay in the U.S., or by assisting the Salvadoran government with reintegrating deportees through the creation of job opportunities and improvement of public services. 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.