Fundamentally Important Points! Policy Edition

On the El Salvador side:

1.  In the post-war era, gang violence has attributed to more deaths in El Salvador – particularly in 1996 – than during many years of the civil war

  1. Most of these attacks / assaults took place in the capital city and involved murder, assaults, robberies, or a combination

2.  Majority of gang members in El Salvador are young, male, and are former migrants to Los Angeles that have recently been deported back to El Salvador

  1. Upon their return to El Salvador, they rejoined gangs and have used US-style gang warfare techniques to continue fighting; they have the advantage of easy access to weapons still circulating from the war
  2. This means gangs operating in El Salvador have easy access to weaponry to support their American-style gang operations
  3. Situation was worsened by the fact that any imprisoned deportees in the immediate post-peace era (1992 – 1996) would share cells with ex-combatants and guerrillas that had turned to crime once they were demobilised by the peace process

3.  Immediately following the peace agreement that ended the war, a national police force – the Policia Nacional Civil (PNC) – was established as part of the peace deal

  1. Was supposed to establish a new policing force that was separate from the military and intelligent operations, but the need for expediency compromised the success of the newly established force, which led to a lack of accountability and a high number of human rights abuse claims

4.  The Mano Dura policy was implemented first in 2003 by then-president Francisco Flores – this was declared unconstitutional by the Salvadoran Supreme Court for violating parts of the UNCRC, so it was scrapped and then repackaged as the Super Mano Dura policy by incoming president Tony Saca (July 2004)

  1. Allowed for incarceration of anybody suspected of being a gang member, mandatory adult trials regardless of age, deployment of militarised anti-gang units, extradition treaties between neighbouring countries
  2. Programme was heavily endorsed by the US; in 2004 the FBI set up a special task-force to combat gang activity and used El Salvador as its base of operations
  3. Programme has been inconsistently applied, which had led to increased tensions and violence between gangs and between gangs and law enforcement that has led to street-level conflict
  4. Super Mano Dura was accompanied by new gun ownership laws, military measures and police patrols in high risk areas, implemented in 2005; despite this, crime was up in 2006

5.  Deportations have had a significantly negative effect on the ability of Salvadorian law enforcement to tackle the gang problem and maintain peace

  1. Returnees integrate into local gangs, which leads to an increase in gang activities (assault, murder, assassinations, human and drug trafficking, etc) and undo the work of Salvadorian anti-gang efforts
  2. “Those deportations are a time bomb. When a gang member is deported from the United States, it destroys in one month what we’ve achieved in a year of [gang-prevention work].” – Oscar Bonilla, director of the National Council for Public Security in El Salvador
  3. Rejoining gangs upon arrival not just a measure of economic and personal security, but also one of social assurance – deportees from the US share a common language, reference points; gangs represent a move to back to the familiar

i.  “The ties that exist are more akin to a sense of identity, founded organically on individuals’ common experience of gangsterism in the US, deportation and stigmatization in Central America” (Rogers, 2009: 957)

On the American side:

1.  Anti-drug rhetoric began in 1989 with Bush Sr.’s first televised speech that declared a ‘war on drugs.’ Resulting policy was heavily based on military, paramilitary actions aimed at eradicating, disrupting, and interdicting drug sales (little focus placed on treatment for drug addictions or pre-emptively encouraging people to avoid drugs in the first place)

2.  Two Salvadorian-based gangs in particular operate in Los Angeles: Calle 18 (Mara 18) and Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13); they began operating in LA in the 1960s and currently have between 130,000 and 300,000 members between LA, Mexico and Central America

  1. Mara 18 is actually named for 18th street in Los Angeles, which serves as the largest hub for MS-18 activity

3.  Anti-gang policies exploded in 1992 after the race riots in Los Angeles; policies were accompanied by 1996 Congressional policies that introduced stricter immigration laws that expanded offenses that could lead to deportation

  1. This in turn led to an increase in gang violence in Central America, because deportees would join gangs as soon as they arrived back in their countries of origins (would have few other prospects for survival otherwise)

4.  Deportations became a major part of America’s anti-drug policies once peace had been established in Nicaragua and El Salvador

  1. Within the first few years of the deportation policies being enacted, deportations numbered around 4,000 – 5,000 people per year to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras; around one third had criminal records and had spent time in prison
  2. In LA, 200,000 young Central American criminals were deported between 2000 and 2004; most of them were from families that had fled violence in Central America in the 1980s

5.  In 2006, the FBI established and funded a number of bodies to help deal with gang violence and activities in the US, the most significant to date being a joint task force between the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take on gangs the way the FBI once took on the mafia

  1. After 9/11, funding anti-gang units has been difficult because funds are diverted away from gangs and drugs and anti-terrorism operations; this significantly diminished the operating capacity of the FBI in tackling these gangs
  2. Part of these task forces involves stationing FBI agents in embassies across Central America to monitor gang movements and activities across borders in the region

Sources

A. Arana (2005), ‘How the Street Gangs Took Central America,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 3.

A. Campo-Flores and A. Romano (2005), ‘The Most Dangerous Gang in America,’ Newsweek, Vol. 45, No. 13.

D. Heath (1992), ‘US Drug Control Policy: A Cultural Perspective,’ Daedalus, Vol. 121, No. 3.

M. Hume (2004), ‘”It’s as if you don’t know, because you don’t do anything about it”: gender violence in El Salvador,’ Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 16, No. 2.

M. Hume (2007), ‘Mano Dura: El Salvador responds to gangs,’ Development in Practice, Vol. 17, No. 6.

S. Johnson and D. Muhlhausen (2005), ‘North American Transnational Youth Gangs: Breaking the Chain of Violence,’ Trends in Organized Crime, Vol. 9, No. 1.

C. McIlwaine (1998), ‘Contesting civil society: reflections from El Salvador,’ Third World Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4.

O. Pérez (2004), ‘Democratic Legitimacy and Public Insecurity: Crime and Democracy in El Salvador and Guatemala,’ Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 118, No. 4.

C. Ribando (2007), ‘Gangs in Central America,’ CRS Report for Congress. Congressional Research Service: Washington.

D. Rogers (2009), ‘Slum Wars of the 21st Century: Gangs, Mano Dura and the New Urban Geography of Conflict in Central America,’ Development and Change, Vol. 40, No. 5.