AS/COA Online | LatAm in Focus: The Strange Case of El Salvador's Plummeting Homicide Rate

AS/COA Online · The Strange Case of El Salvador's Plummeting Homicide Rate

In the year since Nayib Bukele's June 2019 presidential inauguration, El Salvador's murder rate plunged, dropping by roughly 60 percent. That’s a major feat in a country that just five years ago had the highest homicide rate in the world. The precipitous drop in violence is one of the main factors fueling remarkably high approval ratings for Bukele, Latin America’s youngest head of state—a 39-year-old who campaigned as a Twitter-savvy outsider and ended the two-party grip on power dominating Salvadoran politics since the end of the country’s civil war.

Then, at the end of April 2020, murders once again spiraled out of control. With 85 homicides over the course of just five days, the government’s ability to keep the peace seemed vulnerable once again to the power plays of El Salvador’s gangs. The president acted swiftly, enforcing 24-hour lockdowns in prisons and welding metal sheets onto cell doors to prevent incarcerated gang members from communicating. Bukele also drew international attention and condemnation for tweeting photos of large numbers of imprisoned gang members locked together in human chains in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s still a very fragile and very easily reversible equilibrium.”

This kind of mano dura response to gangs predates the current government. “Before Bukele took the presidency…homicide levels were already on a downward trend, which was mainly due to basically all-out war that was waged by the state security forces against gangs, combined with very tough measures in prisons that hindered the communications between gangs in jails and outside jails,” Tiziano Breda, Central America analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG), tells AS/COA Online’s Carin Zissis.

Still, the rate has dropped to record lows under Bukele, with the government crediting its security strategy, known as the Territorial Control Plan. Breda expressed doubts, saying: “Most of the measures that have been taken resemble the attempts from previous administrations, which didn’t provide these stark and immediate results.”

So how did Bukele do it? In a July 2020 report titled Miracle or Mirage? Gangs and Plunging Gang Violence, the ICG suggests there are other reasons behind plummeting crime. “We think it’s more likely to be the gangs’ decision to scale back the use of violence…probably as part of an informal understanding between gangs and authorities,” says Breda. This wouldn’t be the first time a Salvadoran government negotiated a gang truce. The 2015 surge in violence took place after the last truce fell apart.But there are reasons why this time around provides a new opportunity, says Breda, who notes that Bukele’s popularity means he has a great deal of political capital to engage in dialogue with the gangs. To some degree there’s little choice; gangs are active in 90 percent of El Salvador and involve some 400,000 people in a country with a population of 6.5 million. Interacting with gangs is “unavoidable” on a local level even when entering or exiting communities, says Breda, who adds that how Bukele decides to wield his influence has much to do with him having an eye on next year’s legislative elections.

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Luisa Leme produced this episode.

AS/COA Online | LatAm in Focus: Back to the Future in Chile and El Salvador?

In Chile, center-right Sebastián Piñera retakes the helm to replace center-left Michelle Bachelet as president on March 11. Meanwhile, El Salvador’s March 4 legislative and municipal elections saw conservatives picking up seats at the governing party’s expense. But, in both cases, to what degree did voters turn right and to what degree did they turn against the party in control?

In this episode of Latin America in Focus, AS/COA Online's Carin Zissis speaks to Héctor Silva Ávalos, founder of Revista Factum, about why El Salvador’s governing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front—the one-time guerilla group best known as the FMLN—lost a key number of legislative seats.

He says voters were disappointed with the FMLN’s handling of everything from violence to corruption to Washington’s cancellation of Temporary Protective Status for Salvadoran migrants. “What happened in general is that the FMLN hardcore voter didn’t go to vote,” says Silva Ávalos, who is also a researcher for American University and InSight Crime. He and Zissis discuss how the election made President Salvador Sánchez Cerén a lame duck and what the FMLN loss of the mayoralty of San Salvador indicates for next year’s presidential race.

As for Chile, Sebastián Piñera’s first 100 days in office will focus on pension, tax, and education reforms, political scientist Patricio Navia tells Elizabeth Gonzalez. But while the center-right leader’s coalition, Let’s Go Chile, gained the most seats in the congress, it fell short of a majority and will have to contend with an emerging leftist Broad Front. As such, Piñera is unlikely to backtrack on some of outgoing President Michelle Bachelet’s social reforms, including abortion and gender identity legislation. Navia, a professor at New York University also commented on Chileans’ consensus on reforming immigration law to better regulate an influx of Haitian migrants, as well as the chances of expanding regional trade ties depending on upcoming elections in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

Co-hosted with Elizabeth Gonzalez.

U.S. News & World Report | Learning from a Troubled Gang Truce

A wave of Central American children crossing the U.S. border caused President Barack Obama to label the crisis an “urgent humanitarian situation” earlier this month. With more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors making the dangerous journey since October last year, the tide of migration also draws attention to the crisis these children leave behind. Most come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, a crime-addled area considered one of the most dangerous regions in the world.

But despite bleak crime figures, one country — El Salvador — experienced a notable drop in homicides after a 2012 gang truce. Over time, the agreement between the gangs Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 frayed and, last month, then-President Mauricio Funes declared the truce dead. His successor, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, has disavowed it as well. Still, the truce offers a chance to examine lessons learned in combating the violence leading young Central Americans to seek escape.

The agreement began in March 2012, when Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 leaders were transferred from maximum-security prisons to lowen security ones...

Read the full article in U.S. News & World Report's online opinion section.

FOXNews.com | Children in Camo: Underage Warriors Become Growing Concern

In the early 1980s, Oscar Torres (search) and the other boys in his neighborhood would clamber up to the corrugated tin roofs of their one-room shacks to hide from military officers, who forcibly recruited children as young as 12 years old to fight in El Salvador's civil war. Boys who did not become soldiers often fought for guerrilla forces.

"That was our daily life," recalls Torres, 34, who fled to the United States in 1984. "We didn't think it was anything extraordinary."

Two decades later, screenwriter Torres was initially reluctant when Mexican filmmaker Luis Mandoki encouraged him to co-write a script based on his war-torn childhood for the film "Innocent Voices," which is being released Friday in major U.S. cities.

"He asked me, 'Why me?'" said Mandoki. "But by the end he realized, 'It's not just about me.'"

Before the film's closing credits roll, statistics flash across the screen about child soldiers forced to fight for national militaries and rebel groups. Although more than 190 countries agree that a person legally becomes an adult at the age of 18, the United Nations estimates that 300,000 children under that age are engaged in as many as 30 conflicts around the globe, from Uganda to Colombia, from Sri Lanka to Sierra Leone.

"It's become like a global virus," said P.W. Singer, author of the book "Children of War" and national security fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Read the full text.