Why are people fleeing Central America? A new race of gangs is taking over.
Why are people fleeing Central America? A new race of gangs is taking over.
APOPA, El Salvador. The El Salvador Congress agreed in April to extend the jailers' authority to keep gang leaders in solitary confinement. During the next five days, the two street gangs that died killed more than 100 people.
With the highest homicide rate of any country in the world, El Salvador is a hostage held by a nation.
Police officers estimate that a gang, MS-13, operates an extortion scam with little pressure from the authorities in 248 of the 262 municipalities of the country. Fight for control of the neighborhood with another gang, Barrio 18, which manages its own protection scheme in almost all regions.
Politicians must ask gangs for permission to hold rallies or polls in many neighborhoods, law enforcement officials and prosecutors said. In San Salvador, the nation's capital, gangs control the local distribution of consumer products, experts said, including diapers and
They extort daily commuters, call center employees and owners of restaurants and stores. In the rural east, gangs threaten to burn the sugar plantations unless the farmers pay.
A law enforcement officer checks the telephone number of a man suspected of working as a gang guard during a police raid this year in a neighborhood of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
They have grown so much that "you do not know where the state ends and where the criminal organizations begin," said Mauricio Ramírez Landaverde, minister of justice and security in El Salvador, who oversees the national police force.
Latin America represents 8% of the world population and a third of its homicides., which makes it one of the most murderous regions in the world. In its violent core is El Salvador, where a gang culture imported from the United States rivals the authority of the government, and its leaders dominate with a surplus of money, weapons and willing youth.
Unlike the main drug cartels that for years produced much of the violence in the region - using murder to sell marijuana, cocaine and heroin mainly to Americans - gangs in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala benefit of the extortion of their own neighborhoods.
The gangs have developed a more violent and chaotic economic model, one that is advancing in the drug-trafficking countries, including Mexico, where the big cartels have divided into many confronting groups.
Mauricio Ramírez Landaverde, Minister of Justice and Security of El Salvador.
"We have left behind the poster era and the capo," said Alejandro Hope, a security consultant in Mexico City. "Today, most of the violence in Latin America is the result of a new system that is more diverse, more difficult to control and much more local."
While drug cartels profit from customers abroad, with dollars and euros seeping into local communities, these gangs steal from their own people. Documents gathered in a recent federal investigation in El Salvador found that MS-13 earns up to $ 600,000 a month in extortion payments from bus companies, retailers and other businesses. Payments range from a few dollars per day in each operated vehicle to hundreds of dollars per month charged to vendors in public markets.
Anti-drug authorities said that El Salvador gangs earn around $ 20 million a year for extortion, with an estimated $ 3 million from businesses in the historic center of San Salvador. The gangs also sell drugs and stolen cars, which adds to the income of legitimate businesses that they have seized.
By consolidating their national role, MS-13 and Barrio 18 may be the largest employers in El Salvador. The defense ministry estimates that gangs hire up to 60,000 people as lookouts, collectors and murderers. In comparison, the two largest private employers, underwear manufacturers
Hanesbrands
Inc.
and Fruit of the Loom of Berkshire Hathaway, together they employ some 20,000 people.
A 2016 study commissioned by the country's central bank estimated that the economic cost was more than $ 4 billion per year, or approximately 16% of the gross domestic product. That represents only the application of the law, medical bills, property damage and loss of investment.
Salvadorans recently deported from the United States leave a bus at a governmental center in San Salvador.
"The highest cost is human," said Javier Simán, a textile and department store mogul and one of El Salvador's most successful businessmen. "We are losing the best people we have, either they flee the country, they kill them or they are constantly forced to move, they have to pay the gangs to enter the neighborhoods where they live and work."
The homicide rate in San Salvador of 95.7 murders per 100,000 people makes it the sixth most lethal city in the world. Throughout the capital, municipal workers rub the graffiti on the walls as quickly as it seems.
How to measure the misery of countries trapped by gangs
Street gangs in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala benefit from the extortion of businesses and residents in their own neighborhoods. The protection rackets are applied with violence and threats of violence that far exceed the levels of the USA. UU
Intentional homicide rate
50 per 100,000 inhabitants
100 per 100,000 inhabitants
800 per 100,000 inhabitants
Intentional homicide rate
50 per 100,000 inhabitants
100 per 100,000 inhabitants
800 per 100,000 inhabitants
Intentional homicide rate
50 per 100,000 inhabitants
100 per 100,000 inhabitants
800 per 100,000 inhabitants
Intentional homicide rate
100 per 100,000 inhabitants
50 per 100,000 inhabitants
800 per 100,000 inhabitants
People try to know which group controls the streets where they live, work and travel every day. A wrong turn risks theft, assault or death. Many in San Salvador do not say gang names aloud. If they have to ask, they say: "Numbers or letters?" Numbers for Barrio 18; Lyrics for the MS-13.
The difficult situation of Salvadorans is an explanation for the constant flow of migrants to the north. Thousands seek to enter the United States each year, either by seeking asylum or crossing the border illegally. The researchers found that most are driven by fear of violence. According to government data, immigration officers from Mexico and the United States detained 335,545 Salvadoran migrants from 2014 until the end of 2017.
José Gualberto Claro Iglesias, 48, sent his family out of El Salvador, fearing for his safety.
While a caravan of migrants is now heading north through Mexico, this week hundreds of Salvadorans joined a new one that points to the US.
José Gualberto Claro Iglesias, a 48-year-old truck driver from Suchitoto, an old Spanish colonial city in central El Salvador, sent his wife and four children to Los Angeles in 2015, after the family narrowly survived an attack by members of MS-13. The gang set fire to his truck while Mr. Claro and his family were inside because he had refused to pay the extortion.
In August of 2017, Mr. Claro attempted to cross the US-Mexico border. UU And Mexico near El Paso, Texas, to meet with them. He was caught and detained for almost 13 months in a US immigrant detention center. UU Before being deported. He owns three properties and two 18-wheeler container trucks in El Salvador. He plans to sell them to pay for a transfer to Panama, where he will bring his wife and children.
"As a worker and as a human being, you can not live in this country in peace," Claro said. "You spend all your time and energy trying to defend your business and your family."
A skull examined for homicide tracks by the authorities of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador and the sixth most lethal city in the world.
Rigid elections
Dr. Jose Antonio Rodriguez Porth Scholastic Center, an elementary school, is on a dirt road with open culverts in the Iberia Community, on the fault line between two neighborhoods, one controlled by the MS-13, the other by a faction of Barrio 18.
On the other side of the street there is a national police post. A few blocks away is La Tiendona, the largest wholesale market in the city, which according to the police is the source of approximately $ 300,000 a month in extortion payments made to Barrio 18 by fruit and vegetable sellers.
On a recent morning, when students in blue and white uniforms kicked a soccer ball, the school principal, Amilcar Rivera, described his perspectives. Many of his students, he said, start working for one or another gang as vigilantes when they are only 10 years old.
"The only opportunities they have are working in the nearby market, where they can unload or load trucks. That's it or they can join one of the gangs, "Rivera said." You can earn $ 300 a week doing manual labor, or you can get $ 1,000 a week from extortion. What do you think these young people will choose?
The choice is crude in a weak economy. According to World Bank data, a third of Salvadorans live in poverty, which means they earn less than $ 5.50 per day. The average annual growth of the national economy, which is based on exports of coffee, sugar and textiles, has been around 2.5% in the last 25 years, slower than in most developing countries.
René Del Cid, 25, had lived in the United States since he was 11 and was recently deported.
Brutal crimes committed by members of MS-13 in the US UU They attracted the attention of President Trump, who promised to expel them. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in October a new task force to get them off the streets.
The scope of gangs in the US UU., Which are found mainly in the neighborhoods of Central American immigrants in California, Long Island, Maryland and Virginia in New York, does not compare with their domain in El Salvador.
"It's not the same here as in the United States," said René Del Cid, 25, who was deported to El Salvador from Frederick, Md., In December 2017. Police stopped him for a traffic violation while driving with a vanquished vehicle. license. He had lived in the USA. UU Since I was 11 years old. As an adult, I worked in landscaping teams and as a parking attendant.
When he returned to El Salvador, Mr. Del Cid got a job to handle customer service complaints for banks in a call center in downtown San Salvador. He lived with relatives in a section controlled by Barrio 18 in San Vicente, a city about 40 miles away. It took three buses on a tortuous three-hour trip to avoid passing through areas controlled by rival gangs.
In March, MS-13 gunmen stopped their bus and demanded to see passenger ID cards. When they saw that Mr. Del Cid lived in Barrio 18 territory, the members of the gang took him off the bus. He was held in a house for almost three weeks, he said, demanding a ransom and threatening his life.
Former gang member Manuel de Jesus.
Mr. Del Cid was able to telephone a member of MS-13 in Maryland, a man he had befriended in an immigration detention center. The friend negotiated his release. By then, Mr. Del Cid had lost his job and the $ 200 hidden in his sock.
"Wherever I go, I'm a target," he said. "If I join the gangs, I will die for them or for the police."
Manuel de Jesús has Barrio 18 tattoos that cover his chest, arms and neck, marking a decade in gang life that, he said, was now behind him. He credits the church, which now provides a place to live for him, his wife and children. Gangs continue to grow with recruits from home and abroad, he said: "The United States is deporting a ton of people here, they're just reinforcements."
These same gangs had their origins in Los Angeles. MS-13 and its rival Barrio 18 were founded in the 80s and 90s by refugees from El Salvador's 12-year civil war. When the conflict ended in 1992, Salvadorans lost their protected immigration status and thousands of gang members in US prisons were deported.
Once in El Salvador, dozens of autonomous "cliques" operated under the direction of gang leaders. During the next two decades, rapidly expanding gangs gained influence, and eventually co-opted politicians and judges.
Drug cartels have historically put a premium on profits, which acts as a control of random violence. Street gangs are linked by loyalty to their clique, a group of neighbors that operates largely on their own. The common murders include alleged informants and policemen, as well as people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Two bodies await an autopsy in April, part of a wave of killings that followed the extension of a law that makes it easier to keep gang leaders in solitary confinement.
Hostage Nation
In a measure of the power of the gangs, the president of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes at that time, negotiated a truce in 2012 with MS-13 and Barrio 18 to reduce the murders. Under the agreement, the government moved the leaders of the solitary confinement regime and the maximum security prisons to a more permissive detention. Gang leaders were allowed to communicate with the outside world, as well as order deliveries of food, alcohol and visits by prostitutes.
The following year, the national homicide rate fell by 42%. Business leaders, lawmakers and many voters said that the FMLN left government had subjected itself to the same threats used by gangs to terrorize neighborhoods.
"The credibility of the government was destroyed by the truce," said Martin Rogel, an assistant judge sitting on the Supreme Court of El Salvador. "It was as if the Salvadorans stopped believing in God. Salvadorans have stopped believing in the rule of law. "
Under pressure from the United States, the government ended the truce after just over a year. The murders went off almost immediately. For 2015, the homicide rate in El Salvador reached 103 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Since then it has fallen, but it is still the highest in the world. El Salvador, a country of 6.6 million people, had a homicide rate last year of 60.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, almost 12 times more than in the US. UU., According to the United Nations.
The father of a young man found dead in Apopa, El Salvador, helped load the body in the vehicle of a coroner. Authorities believe that the young man and a friend were stabbed as they were heading to play a football game in April.
Prosecutors and police officers said that gangs have become even more powerful since the truce. He showed gangs how the threat of violence could help them achieve their political goals: control neighborhoods, perform more lax processes and win government contracts for gang businesses.
Earlier this year, the former mayor of Apopa, José Elías Hernández, became the first municipal leader to be convicted of gang corruption, prosecutors said.
Mr. Hernandez, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison, was found guilty of channeling money to Barrio 18 leaders and allowing the group to use municipal ambulances for private transportation, according to court documents. Gang members were hired to manage garbage collection and a city-owned office.
Mr. Hernandez, a member of the right-wing Arena party, denied having acted improperly, saying that he was attacked by the ruling FMLN party.
During the wave of killings that followed the April decision on isolation, authorities removed two bodies from a ditch in Apopa, a densely populated suburb of San Salvador.
The father of one of the two young men fatally stabbed in Apopa, El Salvador.
The two young men, aged 17 and 23, were apparently kidnapped on their way to play a football match, police said. Each was stabbed 20 times with a Phillips screwdriver.
"When you see a murder with so many injuries, when one takes the job, it means that the gangs wanted to send a message," said Dr. Juan Carlos Durán Chavarría, the forensic doctor who examined the bodies.
Assassinations by law extended until the summer. On July 20, agents of the national police intercepted a telephone call between an imprisoned MS-13 leader and one of his lieutenants abroad. The message instructed gang members of nearly a dozen MS-13 gangs to choose three policemen or soldiers to kill them, according to a report seen by The Wall Street Journal.
The following month, three officers were murdered, including Elmer Mauricio Beltrán, a father of two children aged 43 who lived in the rural town of San Rafael Cedros. He had worked for the national police since he was 19 years old.
Police told her widow, an elementary school teacher, that four armed men had surprised her husband by jumping out of a car while chatting with friends outside a convenience store. The friends escaped unharmed.
No arrests have been made. The brother of the murdered man, Raúl Beltrán, also a police officer, said he always carries a gun, even in the shower in his house.
"Gangs kill with total impunity," he said.
The widow of Elmer Mauricio Beltrán. Mr. Beltrán, a police officer, was 43 years old when he was shot dead in August.
-Juan Forero contributed to this article.
Write to Robbie Whelan in robbie.whelan@wsj.com
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