Category Archives: El Salvador

Oh no, not another gangs and the church article

My typical response is oh no, not another gangs and the Church article from El Salvador. However, Danny Gold put together a really good article on The Redemption of MS-13 for The Pulitzer Center. The title is misleading as it focuses on the relatively small number of Salvadoran gang members who have successfully desisted from gangs, rather than redemption of the organization itself. The article is also very similar to Danielle Mackey's A Boundless Battlefield for the Intercept.

One of the few ways that gang members desist from gangs is through the Church. However, it is not always clear what getting out means, more specifically whether getting out is permanent. One can be called back to duty if gang leaders wish it to be so. There is also the fact that, for a variety of reasons, one is still at risk of torture or death from one's own gang, other gangs, police and security forces, and clandestine groups. Once a gang member, always a gang member. Life is hard for Salvadorans in general, even more so for former gang members often shunned by families, employers, the state, and society at large.

For an academic look inside Salvadoran gangs I highly recommend recent articles from Jonathan Rosen and Jose Miguel Cruz on Overcoming Stigma and Discrimination: Challenges for Reinsertion of Gang Members in Developing Countries and Rethinking the Mechanisms of Gang Desistance in a Developing Country. Greg Weeks also interviewed Jonathan recently for his podcast.

GANA’s Nayib Bukele favored to win Salvadoran presidential election



Less than two months before El Salvador's February presidential elections, GANA's Nayib Bukele remains the favorite. While Bukele holds what appears to be a commanding lead, he still needs to surpass 50 percent to avoid a runoff. Given what happened between the first and second rounds in 2014, I imagine Bukele will really want to wrap things up in February.

It's unclear what institutional support a president Bukele will have and, in some ways, his popular support looks soft as well. Of those who intend to vote GANA, 54 percent answered that Bukele had their vote simply to give someone else a chance / for a change. Salvadorans don't have a great deal of faith in any candidate to solve the problems of the day.

GANA’s Nayib Bukele favored to win Salvadoran presidential election



Less than two months before El Salvador's February presidential elections, GANA's Nayib Bukele remains the favorite. While Bukele holds what appears to be a commanding lead, he still needs to surpass 50 percent to avoid a runoff. Given what happened between the first and second rounds in 2014, I imagine Bukele will really want to wrap things up in February.

It's unclear what institutional support a president Bukele will have and, in some ways, his popular support looks soft as well. Of those who intend to vote GANA, 54 percent answered that Bukele had their vote simply to give someone else a chance / for a change. Salvadorans don't have a great deal of faith in any candidate to solve the problems of the day.

The United States accepts no responsibility for those fleeing for their lives.

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
“If the police don’t eradicate crime in El Salvador, and the United States cuts the funding, the gangs will take over my country — even more than they currently do,” he said. “More people would try to escape, running away from crime, to save their lives.”
Ali Watkins and Meridith Kohut explore the difficult relationship shared by the United States and El Salvador in A Conflicted War: MS-13, Trump and America’s Stake in El Salvador’s Security for the New York Times. After having just finished The Salvador Option, it's awful to see so many parallels with the 1980s.

The United States is deeply involved in helping to improve El Salvador's capacity to tackle gang violence. It is training police, soldiers, prosecutors, and judges. It is funding forensics labs and prisons. It is pushing community policing efforts. The homicide rate has decreased but it is difficult to assess the impact of the United States' contributions to Salvadoran security.

Security units with whom the United States has worked continue to commit human rights abuses. Some will say because of US training while others will say in spite of its training. At times, these units effectively carry out missions based upon US training "But at other times, they struggled to complete assignments and were openly skeptical of their own system." Thirty-seven years to the day after the El Mozote massacre, the parallels to the Atlacatl Battalion are hard to miss. The United States provided basic training to El Salvador's elite unit in 1981 but they threw what they had learned out the window and then reverted to what cruelty they had been committing prior to US training.

Like the 1980s, the US government in Washington and in San Salvador are at odds with each other. The US Ambassador to El Salvador says that officials in San Salvador cannot be distracted by what the President says. That is no way to run the foreign service.
The president has claimed that he is deporting Salvadoran migrants at a record pace, that asylum-seekers are flooding American borders and that the Salvadoran government is not doing anything to help. But according to data the State Department presented this year to Salvadoran leaders, the number of citizens fleeing and the number getting deported back have decreased significantly.
Jean Elizabeth Manes, the United States ambassador to El Salvador, said American officials there aren’t distracted by Mr. Trump’s remarks. “We stay focused on what the end goal is,” she said.
The mixed messages can be dangerous. President Trump is warning that criminals are overrunning the US southern border and that it might be permissible to shoot them. In some ways, he is following El Salvador's lead where its political leaders have given the impression that it is permissible to shoot first and ask questions later, if at all. Like the 1980s, Salvadorans are fleeing a war in which the US is deeply involved. However, the United States accepts no responsibility for those fleeing for their lives.

The United States accepts no responsibility for those fleeing for their lives.

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
“If the police don’t eradicate crime in El Salvador, and the United States cuts the funding, the gangs will take over my country — even more than they currently do,” he said. “More people would try to escape, running away from crime, to save their lives.”
Ali Watkins and Meridith Kohut explore the difficult relationship shared by the United States and El Salvador in A Conflicted War: MS-13, Trump and America’s Stake in El Salvador’s Security for the New York Times. After having just finished The Salvador Option, it's awful to see so many parallels with the 1980s.

The United States is deeply involved in helping to improve El Salvador's capacity to tackle gang violence. It is training police, soldiers, prosecutors, and judges. It is funding forensics labs and prisons. It is pushing community policing efforts. The homicide rate has decreased but it is difficult to assess the impact of the United States' contributions to Salvadoran security.

Security units with whom the United States has worked continue to commit human rights abuses. Some will say because of US training while others will say in spite of its training. At times, these units effectively carry out missions based upon US training "But at other times, they struggled to complete assignments and were openly skeptical of their own system." Thirty-seven years to the day after the El Mozote massacre, the parallels to the Atlacatl Battalion are hard to miss. The United States provided basic training to El Salvador's elite unit in 1981 but they threw what they had learned out the window and then reverted to what cruelty they had been committing prior to US training.

Like the 1980s, the US government in Washington and in San Salvador are at odds with each other. The US Ambassador to El Salvador says that officials in San Salvador cannot be distracted by what the President says. That is no way to run the foreign service.
The president has claimed that he is deporting Salvadoran migrants at a record pace, that asylum-seekers are flooding American borders and that the Salvadoran government is not doing anything to help. But according to data the State Department presented this year to Salvadoran leaders, the number of citizens fleeing and the number getting deported back have decreased significantly.
Jean Elizabeth Manes, the United States ambassador to El Salvador, said American officials there aren’t distracted by Mr. Trump’s remarks. “We stay focused on what the end goal is,” she said.
The mixed messages can be dangerous. President Trump is warning that criminals are overrunning the US southern border and that it might be permissible to shoot them. In some ways, he is following El Salvador's lead where its political leaders have given the impression that it is permissible to shoot first and ask questions later, if at all. Like the 1980s, Salvadorans are fleeing a war in which the US is deeply involved. However, the United States accepts no responsibility for those fleeing for their lives.