The Americas | Violence in El Salvador

Rivers of blood

A crackdown on gangs has so far made things worse

|SAN SALVADOR

OUTSIDE the morgue in San Salvador, the family of 21-year-old Marcela Vargas waits patiently to collect her body. “I feel broken,” says her brother, Jónathan. “She was dating a guy—he wasn’t a gang member, but he had connections.” Along with her 18-year-old friend Liset she had been tied up and stabbed repeatedly. Police discovered their bodies on the banks of a stream that runs through the city’s centre on September 13th, nine days after they had disappeared.

Marcela and Liset are casualties of a ferocious clash of gangs which has plunged El Salvador into its bloodiest period since its civil war ended in 1992. Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, two maras (gangs) with a combined membership of 72,000, fight each other for control of territory across the country. Two factions of Barrio 18, the Revolucionarios (Revolutionaries) and the Sureños (Southerners), are meanwhile at war with each other.

The death toll is horrific. In the first nine months of this year, 4,930 people were murdered in a country with a population of 6.5m; that murder rate is 20 times that of the United States (see chart). El Salvador has overtaken Honduras as the most violent country on earth bar those that are at war. Life in gang-controlled areas is miserable. The maras recruit children in primary school and extort protection money from businesses. Terrified parents do not let children leave the house unaccompanied; many businesses go bust. Nearly 300,000 Salvadoreans were forced to leave their homes last year, by one estimate.

The current mayhem erupted after the breakdown early last year of a truce between the gangs, which had been supported by El Salvador’s left-wing government. Facing an election, the government reversed course and now backs a mano dura (iron fist) approach, which involves the police and army wresting control of neighbourhoods from the gangs. Its tough line is popular, but so far has made matters much worse.

The truce, negotiated in 2012 by local mediators, was effective. Gang leaders promised to curb the killing. In return, they were moved from maximum-security prisons to more comfortable quarters. The number of murders dropped by nearly two-thirds. Gangs and security forces scaled back their operations in 11 “peace zones”. In one, Ilopango, the mayor opened a chicken farm and a bakery to provide jobs for former gang members.

But the truce did not reduce extortion, the gangs’ main source of income, and it looked like a capitulation by the government to criminals. Although gang members killed each other less often, they did not stop killing ordinary people. Gangs used the lull to rearm and expand the territory under their control. They “took advantage of the situation to strengthen and extend their organisations”, says an American diplomat.

With the approach of presidential elections in February 2014, the government dropped its support for the truce. That helped Salvador Sánchez Cerén, the candidate of the ruling FMLN, to win the election. Attempts by gang leaders and the Catholic church to resurrect the truce failed. The government put gang bosses back into high-security prisons in February this year. “Suddenly all bets were off,” says Paolo Lüers, a businessman who helped negotiate the agreement. “The gang leaders who were still trying to calm the violence were suddenly taken out of play.”

The gangs responded with a war on three fronts: against civilians, the state and each other. They killed 53 members of the security forces in the first six months of this year; those policing gang-controlled areas wear balaclavas to hide their identities. In July the Revolucionarios faction of Barrio 18, hoping to force the government to re-establish peace on its terms, forced buses in the capital to go on strike. Traffic nearly halted for four days; eight drivers who defied the strike were murdered. On August 23rd Barrio 18 conducted an internal purge, strangling and stabbing 14 inmates to death at a prison. A car packed with explosives blew up outside the finance ministry on September 11th; no one was hurt.

There is no sign that the government will relent. “We will not speak to or reach any kind of agreement with these criminals,” Eugenio Chicas, the president’s spokesman, told reporters. On August 24th the Supreme Court ruled that the gangs, and organisations that finance them, should be considered terrorist groups. “We have to cut the cord that connects kids to the gangs,” says Rodrigo Ávila, a former director of the national police force.

But the government now seems to realise that the iron fist alone will not restore calm. In July it launched “Plan El Salvador Seguro” (Plan for a Safe El Salvador), which aims to boost the state’s presence in the most violent towns, improve prisons, strengthen institutions and do more for victims of crime. Its authors have looked to other countries for lessons. In August a delegation visited Medellín in Colombia, where the government induced paramilitary groups to demobilise and improved policing. The city’s murder rate dropped by more than 80% during the 2000s. That could provide a model for an agreement with El Salvador’s gangs, says Mr Ávila. But gangsters must make the first move by renouncing their membership, he insists.

The plan faces big obstacles. Gang members who try to get out are often killed. Opportunities to make an honest living are few. Economic growth is a sluggish 2% and new jobs are being created at half that rate. The plan will cost $2.1 billion over five years but it is not clear where the money will be found. Part of it will come from a tax on telephone bills, the government hopes, but mobile-phone companies say they will fight it. The United States has said it will contribute, but not how much.

The strategy will begin to bring results at the end of next year, the government says. The families outside San Salvador’s morgue are not hopeful. “I don’t think it’s possible for the government to control this violence,” says Josué García Rivera, Marcela Vargas’s stepfather. “Only God can do that.” So far, El Salvador’s leaders have done too little to prove him wrong.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Rivers of blood"

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