Margriet Zoethout

Master Thesis Latin American Studies CEDLA Master’s Program

10660984

11 December 2014

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kees Koonings Second Reader: Prof. Dr. Michiel Baud

Enhancing Citizen Security on the Frontline in a Contested

Playing Field

A Case Study of the Gang Truce in San José del Pino,

El Salvador

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Photo cover: Community Policing in San José del Pino Photo: Margriet Zoethout Translation page 3: To all protagonists, male and female, of the process of change, that one day your names will be out of anonymity

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Para todos los protagonistas, hombres y mujeres, del proceso de cambio, que un dia sus nombres salgan del anonimato

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Acknowledgements

My research in El Salvador coincided with the World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Being from the

Netherlands, this automatically generated conversations with all different kind of people,

about strategies, about famous players, and about opponents. I watched several matches at

the community police base in San José del Pino, and I remember one particular experience

when I left the neighborhood with the local police chief to watch a match of the Dutch

naranja mecánica on a big screen in a pub close to San José del Pino. For security reasons in

this occasion, the local police chief carried an M-16 rifle additional to his revolver. During the

match, I watched him carefully sitting next to me cleaning his rifle while watching the match.

This experience is exemplary for the many extraordinary situations, conversations

and experiences during my research on gang violence and pacification. While I had left

family and friends at home a bit worried about my safety situation, I learned that life in El

Salvador is not only about violence. During my stay I learned that even in a country with one

of the highest levels of homicides in the world, life continues and people always find a

reason to celebrate. For this reason, I am grateful to a lot of people. First I would like to

thank Johanna, for sharing her house with me in San Salvador, and for the same friendship

we shared twenty years ago. Living together for five weeks, I learned what it means to live in

fear, since Johanna had been victim of extortion, forcing her twice to move to another

neighborhood. I want to thank Hato for enabling me to attend the official inauguration of

the new president Sanchez Cerén and his administration. Thanks to Fidel for your friendship

and for sharing experiences in election events. In Santa Tecla, I would like to thank Isabel

Calderon, Oscar Ibarra and Stanley Rodriguez of the Municipality of Santa Tecla for

introducing me to the successful policies of security and coexistence at the local level, and

for introducing me to San José del Pino. I also want to thank the police officials of the

CAMCO municipal police for providing me transport to San José del Pino, and other officials

of the National Civil Police in Santa Tecla for introducing me to their work.

I am especially grateful to the local police chief of San José del Pino for receiving me

for almost three months at the community police base, for sharing his work and offering a

safe place to do my research. Many thanks to his colleagues as well. Special thanks and

gratefulness to all residents of San José del Pino and San Rafael for receiving me in their

communities and to share their life experiences in interviews, meetings, and special events,

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in particular the carnavál gastronómico the first of August. I felt at home and I really admire

your efforts to enforce peaceful coexistence with all members of the neighborhood. This

research is dedicated to all of you, and to other informants that for safety reasons have to

remain anonymous.

This research would not have been possible without the support and experience of

Kees Koonings who guided me smoothly through this process as supervisor on behalf of

CEDLA. I want to thank Michiel Baud for his thoughtful comments. Thanks to Bente for all

the logistical support, and the other staff members of whom I learned a lot during this

Master’s Program. I want to thank Chris van der Borgh for the first orientations in drafting

my research proposal. Next time in Salvador I will treat you to pupusas. Finally, I want to

thank my family and friends for having been so patient during all these months without

having much time to share together. Most of all I wish to thank my two sons Marijn and

Niels, and my partner Jochem, who have been incredibly patient, helpful and trustful for

allowing me to embark upon this adventure. With love.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. 4

Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 9

Scaling the role of the state and active citizenship ....................................................................... 10

Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................... 17

Violence and Fear ............................................................................................................................ 17

Social Capital .................................................................................................................................... 19

Citizen Security ................................................................................................................................ 20

Chapter 3 Santa Tecla ‘Violence-Free Municipality’ .................................................................. 25

Role model for citizen security .......................................................................................................... 26

Violence-Free Municipality................................................................................................................ 33

Obstacles ........................................................................................................................................... 36

Political Ownership ............................................................................................................................ 39

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 42

Chapter 4 San José del Pino ............................................................................................................ 45

A History of Violence in a Governance Void ...................................................................................... 46

Restoring State Presence................................................................................................................... 51

Effects of the Gang Truce .................................................................................................................. 55

Violence and Victimization ................................................................................................................ 56

Access to Public Goods and (Economic) Livelihood Strategies ......................................................... 60

Social Values and Social Networks .................................................................................................... 63

Constraints ........................................................................................................................................ 69

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 72

Chapter 5 Gang Violence and the Gang Truce as an Ambivalent Process ............................... 75

Role of the State ................................................................................................................................ 76

Non-transparent Process ................................................................................................................... 79

Contested Playing Field ..................................................................................................................... 85

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 94

Chapter 6 Conclusion and Recommendations ............................................................................. 97

Recommendations ......................................................................................................................... 101

Epilogue ............................................................................................................................................. 103

Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 105

Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 109

Footnotes ........................................................................................................................................... 115

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Chapter 1 Introduction

When I first came to El Salvador in 1992, I witnessed the celebration of the Peace Accords on

the first of February in the capital of San Salvador, where a huge mass of euphoric citizens

gathered at the Plaza Cívica in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral. Twelve years before, this

place had been the scene where many people were killed during the funeral mass of the

assassinated Monseñor Romero. The peace agreement, a result of negotiations between the

government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and brokered by the

United Nations, ended a civil war of nearly twelve years that caused the death of 75.000

citizens. That particular day in 1992, and the first post-conflict years afterwards, I witnessed

hope, relief, renewed mobility, and daily life experiences that were no longer determined by

violence. At the same Plaza Cívica, two years later, I experienced a violent act during the

closure manifestation of the elections campaign of the FMLN that, for the first time in

history, participated as political party in the general elections of 1994. Standing among the

mass of supporters, suddenly there was a shooting and immediately all people were lying on

the ground. As I remember, I was the only one still standing, for being a foreigner not used

to these kinds of situations. As I heard later, it was a provocative act of a political opponent

who was captured immediately afterwards by the ONUSAL United Nations Mission that was

still present in post-war El Salvador. In this particular case, I experienced for the first time to

what extent Salvadoran people are used to live with violence, since none of them seemed

shocked about this violent incident, and the manifestation continued apparently

uninterrupted.

In the same period of post-conflict, the first expressions of youth gangs so- called

maras started to manifest in public space. I remember a bus that suddenly stopped in the

middle of the street in San Salvador, and youth getting off the bus to start throwing stones

at each other. This is the type of scenes that Ricardo, a leader of the Mara Salvatrucha, is

referring to almost twenty years later when he is telling me his life history as a young gang

member during an interview for my current research in San José del Pino. This time, I had

decided to go back to El Salvador to focus on another peace agreement, the gang truce that

had been brokered two years ago in 2012 between the two main gangs of the country. Due

to gang violence, El Salvador had returned to a climate of war not even a decade after the

civil war had ended, causing despair, fear, limited mobility, and daily life experiences

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determined by violence. Whereas during the civil war the country was divided between army

controlled areas and so-called liberated territories under control of the FMLN, nowadays the

country is divided in territories controlled by los números or las letras, the former

corresponding with the Barrio 18 gang and the latter with the Mara Salvatrucha gang. As in a

war zone, opponents are limited to cross or enter the territory of the others, risking their

lives when doing so.

However, due to a paradigm shift from repressive to preventive public security

policies, a gang truce was brokered in March 2012 facilitated by the national government of

Mauricio Funes, elected president for the FMLN in 2009. Initially, the gang truce was lauded,

above all internationally, and considered an exemplary strategy to end gang violence.

However, in a polemic debate that followed and that continues to date, the non-violence

agreement between the gangs has been declared to have failed, despite the promising

perspectives, such as a significant reduction of the homicide rate, shortly after the truce had

been brokered.

Scaling the role of the state and active citizenship

I have been following this debate since the beginning, and noticed that the effectiveness of

the gang truce is mainly assessed at the national level, based on homicide rates as the main

indicator of violence, on political debates and public opinion in a country with one of the

highest homicide rates in the world. However, if the gang truce has been drafted as a

strategy to end gang violence and enhance citizen security, then its effectiveness,

consequently, should be assessed at the local and the community level as well. Hence, a

review of citizen security policies has shown that the most effective interventions of crime

and violence prevention and reduction have surfaced mostly at the local level. Therefore, I

believe that the element of scale could add a new dimension to the debate about the gang

truce in El Salvador. When defining scale as a relevant element to the debate, I refer to the

following aspects.

First, when referring to the role of the state in enhancing citizen security, and in the

case of the gang truce as a particular strategy to this respect, I believe it is crucial to

distinguish between the role of the state at the national and at the local level. As example,

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an important element in the debate about the gang truce is the fact that the national

government, despite its facilitating role, never openly supported the gang truce, reason for

critics of the process to blame the national government a lack of transparency and a lack of

ownership. In the same debate, however, no clear connection is made with the policies of

local governments who, in the case of the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy, committed

themselves to the implementation of the second phase of the gang truce.

Second, another important topic of discussion about the gang truce is the question

whether gang members should be included in the political and public dialogue of a

pacification process. At the national level, there is a strong tendency to exclude gang

members, due to the legal sensitiveness at the political level, and as a result of strong public

opinion that opposes any dialogue with criminals. At the local level however, in the case of

Santa Tecla as a ‘violent-free municipality’ and at the community level of San José del Pino,

gang members are included in the political and public dialogue of the pacification process.

Third, the issue of scale is also relevant in the public debate on the gang truce and

the role of citizens in enhancing citizen security. Public opinion in general rejects the gang

truce and any efforts to support the rights of gang members to be included in initiatives to

enhance citizen security. In the case of San José del Pino, however, community members,

gang members, the local government and the local police base in the community jointly

implement programs and activities to promote security and coexistence at the frontline. For

this reason, I believe it is of relevant importance to include the results of violence reduction

and improvement of the social and economic dimensions of citizen security at the

community level in the national debate about the effectiveness of the gang truce.

Hence, with my thesis I aim to show the relevance of scale to the debate on the gang

truce as a strategy to enhance citizen security. The following central research question has

guided my research:

How has the gang truce affected citizen security in the community of San José del Pino, and

how is this related to the debate about the gang truce and to public security policies at the

local and national level in El Salvador?

My research was divided into three parts that correspond with the three levels of my

research question: community, municipality, and national level. The first part is an

assessment of the effects of the gang truce on citizen security on the frontline and the

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constraints the local agents of change are confronted with. The second part is focused on

the municipal level related to the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy as second phase of

the gang truce. The third part corresponds with the national level focused on the more

general aspects of the gang truce and the corresponding debate at the national level.

Methods

I conducted my research among two different research populations. The first part of my

fieldwork, in the capital of San Salvador for a period of five weeks starting in May 2014, was

qualitative research based on open interviews and analysis of secondary sources. Aim of this

first part was to interview key persons about the gang truce in general and the related

debate at the national level. To this end, I conducted 13 interviews with academics,

politicians, media professionals, representatives from NGOs, and churches. The second part,

from June to late August, is an explorative qualitative case study based on multi methods

research including open interviews, participatory observation, informal conversations, and

analysis of secondary sources. To this end, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in San José

del Pino, a suburb of Santa Tecla. Santa Tecla is one of the municipalities participating in the

‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy as a second phase of the gang truce. As indicated

before, the gang truce is mainly debated at the national level, but little is known about the

effects of the gang truce at the community level. In order to assess the possible effects of

the gang truce on the social and economic dimensions of citizen security at the community

level, I decided to elaborate a case study on San José del Pino. To this end, I conducted 7

interviews in Santa Tecla with a focus on the municipal level, and 25 interviews in San José

del Pino or directly related to San José del Pino. Almost all interviews were recorded for

later analysis.

With respect to my methods, some specific remarks have to be made. San José del

Pino is one of the most stigmatized neighborhoods of Santa Tecla, due to its strong gang

presence, and can be considered an extraordinary community for three reasons. First, it is

the place of origin of the Mara Salvatrucha, one of the two main gangs of El Salvador, as

some of the main national leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha do originate from this

neighborhood and their families still live here. Second, entrance to the neighborhood was

impossible for the authorities for many years, however, the municipality of Santa Tecla has

succeeded to gain renewed entrance as a result of a change of public security policies which

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included, most significantly, the establishment of a provisional police base in San José del

Pino in 2012 operating within the policy of community policing. Third, San José del Pino was

the official stage where the act of declaration of Santa Tecla ‘Municipality Free of Violence’

was signed in January 2013. Since then, the community was further unclosed for the

authorities, and several development projects were started with active involvement of

residents and gang members, and with support from the municipality, the local police base,

and various international organizations. As a result, a pacification process has started to

enhance security and coexistence at the community level.

Due to the fragility of the pacification process, however, it was decided that for

safety reasons I could only implement my research in San José del Pino if in close

coordination with the local police. I could not enter the neighborhood on my own, and I

could only visit the neighborhood on a daily basis, there was no possibility to stay with a

local family for example. As a result, daily transport to San José del Pino was arranged with

the local officials of the Municipal Agents Community Corps (CAMCO) in Santa Tecla, and all

interviews with the residents of San José del Pino were coordinated with the local police

chief of the community police base. Regarding the latter, it is important to stress that all

community members I spoke with, expressed to feel comfortable with the attitude of the

local police chief, as I checked this explicitly during the interviews. In order to guarantee my

independence as much as possible, I identified myself prior to the interview with my

University ID and explained to the interviewee that my research, and thus the interview,

would only serve an academic purpose. Additionally, the fact that I know El Salvador quite

well, encouraged the interviewees to share their experiences with me. This includes all kind

of representatives of the community, women, elderly people, representatives of the church,

victims of gang violence, school directors, gang members and gang leaders, and police

officials. There is only one exception, of a total amount of 25 interviews, of a gang member

that finally did not show up, despite having been invited three times to an interview.

All interviews took place at the local police station, except for two specific cases, one

interview with a representative of a group of women took place at her home, and two

interviews with directors of the school took place at the local school. In most cases, the

interviews took place in a separate room in the police station. In the specific case of

interviewing victims of gang violence, I previously asked the interviewee if he or she felt

‘comfortable’ doing the interview at the police station. They all answered positively. In all

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cases, I applied the format of open interviews, although specific topics guided me through

the, sometimes emotional, conversations. It was not possible, although originally planned,

to organize a focus group. I believe people still feel afraid to speak out, and prefer to do so

on an individual basis, and not as a group. I have to mention that at the end of my research

period, I felt confidence with a group of women and I believe, if more time would have been

available, a focus group finally might have been possible. Due to safety reasons, participant

observation was rather difficult since I could not enter the neighborhood on my own, or walk

around without police vigilance. Nevertheless, during the last weeks of my stay, I could

attend various meetings of the new neighborhood committee, and participate in different

activities in the community organized by the committee, in some cases in coordination with

representatives of the municipality. Furthermore, I attended a range of different meetings

that provided me with additional information and contacts relevant for my research. Finally,

I collected a lot of additional information such as police statistics and reports, policy

documents of the municipality and the National Civil Police, media footage etcetera.

Chapters

I will present my research findings in the following chapters. In Chapter 2 I will explain the

main theoretical concepts that are the framework for analysis of my research results:

framing of violence and fear, social capital, and citizen security. First, I will generally describe

the phenomenon of violence, including gang violence, with a specific focus on homicides.

Then I will briefly focus on insecurity and fear, coping strategies to confront violence, and

the impact of violence on social capital. Second, I will briefly touch upon the former iron fist

policies, and then explain the concept of citizen security as a strategy of public security

policies. To this respect I will particularly focus on the role of the state and active citizenship

as core pillars of citizen security. Finally I will briefly describe the concept of community

policing. In Chapter 3, 4 and 5 I will describe my empirical findings of the debate,

implementation and constraints of the gang truce at the local level of Santa Tecla, the

community level of San José del Pino, and the national level of El Salvador.

In Chapter 3 I will show the example of Santa Tecla as a ‘violence-free municipality’,

visualizing the gang truce as a local pact of coexistence. I will relate the role of the

municipality in the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy to the role model of Santa Tecla

based on its track record on prevention policies. Furthermore, I will show the obstacles,

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related to the national level, that the municipality is confronted with in its implementation

of the second phase of the gang truce. In Chapter 4 I will focus on San José del Pino as a case

study of addressing citizen insecurity on the frontline. I will describe the history of violence

within the community, and focus on the effects of the gang truce on violence and

victimization, access to public goods and (economic) livelihood strategies, and on social

values and social networks. Finally I will describe the constraints the community is

confronted with in the implementation of the gang truce on the frontline. In Chapter 5, I will

focus on the role of the national state in enhancing citizen security, in this case related to the

gang truce as a particular strategy to this end. I will describe the gang truce, and the related

debate, as an ambivalent process within the context of a contested playing field.

In Chapter 6 I will describe the final conclusions of my research, and I will provide

some recommendations for policy development and further research. To this respect, it is

important to stress that regarding government policies, my research is focused on the period

of the Funes administration which ended in June 2014. In the epilogue of my thesis I will

briefly touch upon some - political - developments that occurred after my fieldwork, and

that are directly related to my research topic and research population. These developments

correspond to the new FMLN administration of President Sanchez Cerén and Vice-President

Oscar Ortíz who took office in June 2014.

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Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework

My research is based on three analytical concepts: framing of violence and fear, social

capital, and citizen security. In the first part of this chapter, I will provide a general definition

of violence, an indication of different categories of violence, including gang violence, with a

specific focus on homicides as a type of violence that distinguishes Central America on the

global average as a sub-region with the highest homicide rates on record.1 Lowering the

homicide rate in El Salvador has been the main objective for the Funes administration to

facilitate the gang truce in 2012. Furthermore I will briefly describe coping strategies to

confront violence, and touch upon insecurity and fear. In the second part of this chapter I

will focus briefly on violence related to social capital. Part of the theory about social capital,

additionally, is included in Chapter 4. Finally I will focus on various concepts of security

policies, starting with the iron fist policies, the concept of citizen security that is relevant

with respect to the issue of scale and state-citizen relations, and to conclude, I will briefly

touch upon the concept of community policing.

Violence and Fear

Today, crime and violence is the number one concern for Latin American citizens, and one of

the region’s top priorities in the public policy agenda.2 Many countries in the region are not

only experiencing a sharp increase in violence, as Bobea argues, but also changes in patterns

and structures of crime, and the addition of new sectors as victims and perpetrators.3

Regarding the latter, youth gangs are a predominant feature in El Salvador, and are referred

to by Brenneman as ‘any durable, street oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal

activity is part of its group identity’.4 Violence, according to Concha-Eastman, is an

intentional use of force or power with a predetermined end by which one or more persons

produce physical, mental (psychological), or sexual injury, injure the freedom of movement,

or cause the death of another person or persons - including him or herself.5 Moser argues

that different categories of violence can be identified, although they frequently overlap:

political violence, driven by the will to hold or retain political power, economic violence,

motivated by material gain, social violence -much of it gender-based - and institutional

violence -including community vigilantism.6 Gang violence, according to this categorization,

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is a type of economic and social violence that is manifested in different ways such as

territorial or identity-based “turf” violence, homicide, (armed)robbery, theft, kidnapping,

extortion, rape, crime and drug-trafficking.7 Gang-related and youth violence in El Salvador,

according to Moser, must be understood as a feature of the country’s legacy of deep socio-

economic inequalities, pervasive violence, and weak democratic and legal institutions.8

The percentages of violence in El Salvador that correspond to gangs, as I will show in

my thesis, vary a lot and are a constantly disputed variable in the public debate about gang

violence and public security policies. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and

Crime (UNODC), organized crime or gang-related homicide accounts for 30 per cent of

homicides in the Americas.9 Moreover, levels of organized crime or gang-related homicide

can fluctuate dramatically, even in the short term, to the extent that they actually drive

changes in homicide rates in some countries in Central America and the Caribbean.10 The

latter is certainly the case in El Salvador for example with respect to the relation between

electoral processes and homicide rates. Denny and Walter argue that the increase in

homicide rates in Latin America is related to so-called gang-on-gang violence that has a

specific dynamic that makes the violence self-perpetuating, as a culture of payback creates a

world where one murder builds on another.11 In El Salvador this is related for example to the

dispute of territories of los números, referring to the Barrio 18 gang, and las letras that

refers to the Mara Salvatrucha gang. Yet, the most serious offence a gang can commit, as

Savenije and Van der Borgh indicate, is to enter a rival’s territory, wipe out their symbols and

graffiti, and kill or harm one of the members.12As a result of iron fist policies, gangs

paradoxically have been strengthened, they have become institutionalized and show more

and more the characteristics of organized crime.13 Hence, when the Funes administration

took office in 2009, the government opted for a paradigm shift from repressive to preventive

security policies that paved the way for the development of an alternative strategy to

confront gang violence, resulting in the gang truce in March 2012.

Contemporary gang violence has changed community life in El Salvador dramatically.

The social fabric of the communities is being damaged through the fear and violence these

gangs bring to their neighborhoods in their rivalry with hostile gangs. The insecurity

generated by violence is expressed in fear, which has been defined as ‘the institutional,

cultural and psychological repercussion of violence’.14 Growing activities of extortion, drug

trafficking and contract killing have distinguished the gangs further from the traditional

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street gangs as they could be identified originally. Inhabitants of communities simply have to

accept the ruling of their neighborhoods by gangs as parallel powers and heavily armed

actors. Hence, urban residents have become citizens of fear, as Balán argues, as a result of

unconsolidated democratic regimes, despite the fact that the transition to democracy

initially fostered hopes for a decline in violence, repression, and generalized fears.15 This is

also certainly the case in El Salvador, as I described in my introduction, where the first years

of post-conflict were characterized by hope, relief, renewed mobility, and daily life that no

longer was determined by violence. As an example, daily life in the communities of San José

del Pino and San Rafael changed dramatically in the course of post-conflict years, due to

gang violence, in this case practiced by the Mara Salvatrucha. As fear rises, as Cárdia argues,

people develop survival strategies that restrict interpersonal contact.16 Moser and McIlwaine

refer to four distinct strategies for coping with violence, namely avoidance, confrontation,

conciliation and other strategies.17 I will use these examples when analyzing the coping

strategies of the inhabitants of San José del Pino and San Rafael to confront gang violence in

their neighborhood. One of the best known survival practices related to gang violence, is the

use of silence, expressed in the saying ‘ver, oir y callar’ that corresponds to the ‘law of

silence’ or ignoring the situation. According to Hume, this is a survival practice that is still

present and useful today.18

Social Capital

According to Concha-Eastman, violence generates changes in social behavior, producing an

erosion of social capital, which is understood as the combination of social organizational

relationships that make possible collaboration and cooperation among distinct levels of

society in order to improve its level of development and harmony.19 The more fear and

mistrust there is between people, the lower the potential for collective organization.20 The

latter is an important element of the definition of social capital according to Putnam. Social

capital, as Putnam argues, refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms,

and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.21 This is also

referred to as cognitive social capital. In Chapter 4, I will describe how the communities of

San José del Pino and San Rafael were confronted for many years with an erosion of social

capital due to enduring gang violence and gang dominance in the neighborhood.

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Furthermore I will show how the social values and social networks have been

reactivated since the pacification process started at the community level as a result of the

‘violence-free municipality’ strategy. The recently established neighborhood committee is an

illustrating example of ‘bridging social capital’. According to Putnam, an organization, or in

this case a process, that builds bridging social capital, is first, inclusive – as it tries to

incorporate all sectors of community, second, it is outward looking – its objective serves the

community as a whole, and third, it is coalescing – it unites people across diverse social

cleavages.22

Citizen Security

In July 2003, the ‘mano dura’ (iron fist) policy was adopted in El Salvador as a repressive

approach to gang control.23 This approach advocated the immediate imprisonment, for up to

five years, of youth as young as 12 who displayed gang-related tattoos or flashed gang signs

in public.24 As a result, in the following year, roughly 20,000 gang members were arrested,

although approximately 95 percent of them were eventually released without charge after

the law was declared unconstitutional.25 A new law, the ‘mano super dura’ required proof of

active delinquent behavior in order to arrest an individual, however, the prison population

doubled in just five years, of which 40 percent were allegedly gang members.26 In Chapter 5,

one of my informants will briefly touch upon the topic of the overcrowded penitentiary

system in El Salvador. Although supported by the public, most evidence of these iron fist

policies indicated that the effects were contra productive. Hence, due to the failure of iron

fist policies, there has been a shift in public security policies across Latin America from iron

fist policies to softer approaches focused on prevention. This is the context in which the

concept of citizen security emerged. As indicated in the case of El Salvador, the paradigm

shift from repressive to preventive policies that was promoted by the Funes administration

since 2009, created the conditions to facilitate the gang truce.

Citizen security is understood as the right of all citizens to move freely and without

fear, to know that their objects and belongings will not be taken from them, that they will

not be fraudulently stripped of their goods, that they will not be intimidated, and that they

can trust other human beings as they trust persons close to them.27 At its most basic, citizen

security features two fundamental ideas – the responsible state and active citizenship.28 The

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state, formerly, received most of the blame for the high levels of violence in most Latin

American countries, of which some refers to as state failure or even state collapse.29 As a

direct result of state failure, Koonings and Kruijt refer to the so-called ‘governance voids’

meaning spaces or domains in which the legitimate state is effectively absent in the face of

armed actors that abide by the rule of force.30 I will use this concept in Chapter 4 to describe

the structural absence of the state in the communities of San José del Pino and San Rafael

due to gang dominance. With respect to state failure, interestingly, Arias points to the role

of the state to empower groups in society that can effectively criticize state actions

undermining democratic practice and contributing to the power of armed groups.31 Arias, in

this sense, emphasizes the need to change the types of relationships that exist between

state and society.32 To this respect, it could be interesting to explore to what extent the

‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy could be a successful example of the type of state-

society relationships Arias is referring to. Within the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy, a

variety of local state- and non-state actors actively cooperate to enhance citizen security at

the community level, in coordination with the national state through various ministries.

Interestingly, in the case of San José del Pino and San Rafael, non-state armed actors actively

participate as well in this state-society relationship, meaning gang members that participate

in reintegration programs as so-called Youth Peace Builders.

Additionally, citizen security recognizes the fundamental role citizens play in ensuring

their own safety. On the one hand, citizens hold state officials to account for their failures to

adequately guarantee security, and on the other hand, the success of many public safety

policies is predicated on positive engagement between police and the population.33 By

focusing on the responsible state and active citizenship, citizen security as a result reinforces

the mutual rights and obligations of states and citizens. Regarding the latter, citizen rights

are not only activated at the formal level of citizenship, but at the substantive - related to

social and political rights - and subjective level - related to loyalty and belonging - as well,

due to the fact that citizens become active stakeholders in promoting their own safety.

Interestingly, Moser and McIlwaine compare the integrated approach of citizen security with

two other different approaches to prevent and reduce violence.34 This comparison stems

from their criticism on citizen security based on its objective to better provide security for

citizens rather than tackling the underlying causes of violence themselves.35 An alternative

integrated approach that Moser and McIlwaine refer to, is that of infrastructure and

22

environmental renewal, a top-down municipal level approach to improve communities’

physical infrastructure.36 Additionally they refer to the community-driven social capital

approach that focuses most directly on rebuilding social cohesion in informal and formal

institutions such as families, gangs and community organizations.37 Finally, Moser and

McIlwaine stress the importance of an integrated framework of different policy approaches

if policymakers are to recognize the multiplicity of violence as well as the agency and

identities of different social actors.38

Interestingly, the policies on violence prevention and promotion of co-existence,

implemented by the municipality of Santa Tecla, are a good example of the integrated

framework Moser and McIlwaine refer to. Important aspect related to this integrated

framework, is the fact that at the level of San José del Pino and San Rafael, the municipality

indeed focuses on the agency and identities of different social actors, including the gang

members that form part of the community. As I will show in Chapter 4, infrastructure,

environmental renewal, and rebuilding social cohesion are all elements integrated in the

policies and programs that are being implemented by the municipality in these two

communities. Regarding the integrated framework that Moser and McIlwaine refer to, it is

important, finally, to briefly touch upon the concept of community policing.

Community Policing

The spike in youth violence, as Ungar argues, has been a chief catalyst for

community-oriented policing, one of the biggest and most promising waves of security

reform in Latin America and other regions.39 The preventive strategies that define

community-oriented policing, focus on addressing and resolving the conditions that cause

crime by empowering citizens, building police-community partnerships, improving social

services, and better using crime statistics.40 Yet, the case of San José del Pino and San Rafael

is an interesting example of community policing in a neighborhood with strong gang

presence. As I will show in Chapter 4, police presence in the communities has been restored

after decades of state absence due to gang violence that had turned the communities into

closed shelters into which only repressive police incursions could be implemented. Due to a

shift in public security policies at the municipal level and the commitment of local actors to

the ‘violence-free municipality strategy’, as second phase of the gang truce, a community

police base could be established in San José del Pino.

23

Ungar shows that community policing policies can be placed into three main

approaches focused on youth. The first approach is better coordination among agencies that

deal with youth.41 The second approach is to provide opportunities for youth in the basic

needs of education, recreation, and employment.42 As I will show, various programs and

activities focused on these elements have been implemented in San José del Pino and San

Rafael. The third and most difficult category, according Ungar, is changing police structure so

that officers have the time, training, and incentives to learn about communities, their

conditions, and their youth.43 Only by patrolling an area and knowing its residents, as Ungar

argues, can police determine the balance between benefits for gang members – such as

recognition, socialization, protection, belonging, and excitement – and costs – such as

physical danger and community discrimination – necessary for effective anti-gang policy.44

Regarding the latter, in the case of San José del Pino and San Rafael, there is a strong focus

on prevention and reintegration efforts to support youth in changing their life patterns and

perspectives from illegal activities to formal integration in society. To this respect, the

community policing strategy is of paramount importance in the current pacification process

that has started in the communities as a result of the gang truce. Various obstacles,

however, that are related to the approaches as described by Ungar, are causing serious

setbacks in the current pacification process and development of the communities of San

José del Pino and San Rafael.

25

Chapter 3 Santa Tecla ‘Violence-Free Municipality’

Citizen security and the gang truce as a local pact of coexistence

Latin America displays a growing number of networks involving state-governors, city

mayors, local police chiefs, and others seeking to cooperate across international borders to

promote citizen security.1 These new forms of partnership offer an exciting avenue for

addressing the citizen insecurity on the front-line.2 A review of citizen security policies and

programs highlights a number of important trends related to the scale of interventions and

the levels at which they are pursued.3 With respect to the quantity of interventions, the

majority (42%) of documented activities are pursued at the national level, whereas a wide

distribution of interventions are also pursued at the city level (32%), the sub-state level

(19%) and regionally (7%).4 Interestingly, with respect to the quality of interventions,

successful examples of crime and violence prevention reduction in the region have surfaced

mostly from experiences of local governments and municipal level efforts, rather than from

national policies.5 These interventions are most effective due to the fact that they are

adapted to local circumstances and respond to citizen insecurity problems, identified and

defined jointly with the involved communities.6 The UNDP stresses that active citizen

participation in formulating and setting up these interventions is of paramount importance,

whereas at the same time it is essential to be able to rely on the sustained commitment of

decision-makers, beyond electoral changes and partisan divisions.7 One of the examples of

effective interventions that occur at the city level, is the experience of Santa Tecla, El

Salvador.8

When studying the gang truce as a strategy to enhance citizen security, I learned that

most of the debate about the gang truce is concentrated at the national level. This is due to

the fact that the role of the national state in the process of the gang truce, as I will explain

further in Chapter 5, has been intransparant and, as it seems, influenced by many different

variables mainly related to politics. However, implementation of the gang truce at the local

level started in 2013 when several municipalities were declared ‘violence-free municipality’.

Since then, various initiatives have been developed at the municipal and community level

where local governments and a variety of local non-state actors, including gang members,

play a crucial role. Hence, if the quality of interventions of citizen security policies and

26

programs has surfaced mostly from experiences of local governments and municipal level

efforts, I believe these experiences should be leading in the debate about the gang truce.

Therefore it is crucial to shift the scope from the national to the local level, revealing the

results and constraints of the gang truce on the frontline.

In this chapter I aim to analyze the public security policies of the Municipality of

Santa Tecla. Santa Tecla is one of the eleven municipalities that were declared a ‘violence-

free municipality’ as part of the implementation of the second phase of the gang truce. I will

first briefly touch upon the public security policies that have been implemented since 2002

and that have contributed to the fact that Santa Tecla is considered, both nationally as well

as internationally, as a model of effective citizen security interventions at the city level.

Regarding this typification of Santa Tecla as a ‘role model’, I will analyze two variables that,

to my opinion, mark a particular difference of Santa Tecla when compared with other

municipalities in the country. Main focus of the analysis of this chapter, however, will be on

‘Santa Tecla Violence-Free Municipality’. To this respect, I will first describe the general aim

of the strategy of declaring municipalities ‘free of violence’, as explained by some of the key

actors involved. Then I will explain how the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy is

organized at the local level, who are the actors involved and what is the difference with

projects and policies on citizen security that were implemented previously. Furthermore, I

will indicate how different factors related to financial, technical, political, and legal

conditions seriously hampered the implementation of the ‘ violence-free municipalities’

strategy. Then I will show how the participation of Santa Tecla is interpreted differently in

the debate about the second phase of the gang truce, and subsequently relate this to the

debate at the national level. Finally, by way of conclusion, I will analyze how the ‘violence-

free municipalities’ strategy should be best assessed if we want to determine its

effectiveness on citizen security at the local level.

Role model for citizen security

The local police chief of San José del Pino, a suburb of Santa Tecla, invites me to attend a

meeting in Santa Tecla organized by the National Civil Police (PNC). ‘We will have our half-

yearly accountability meeting, and I kindly invite you to be present as well. Residents of the

communities will present their findings on security and police performance in their

27

neighborhood to the maximum authorities of the PNC’, as explained by the local police chief.

So on June 15, Sunday morning half past eight, residents of various communities of Santa

Tecla gather at a local community centre and are grouped with the local police officers that

are based in the respective communities. ‘Since July 2012, we work according to the principle

of community policing with the aim to restore public confidence, reduce crime and violence,

and enhance citizen security’, as explained in a presentation by the leadership of the PNC in

Santa Tecla. We learn that community policing at the municipal level is organized through

specific patrols and four police bases, including in San José del Pino, and the first results of

2014 are being presented with statistics, graphics and pictures. Most interesting part of the

meeting, in which I participate with the representatives of San José del Pino, is the direct

exchange of experiences at the neighborhood level. Risk factors and security problems are

discussed between the residents and the local police officers, and each community is invited

to present its findings in the plenary session. ‘Our community is extremely difficult, we need

more police patrols and urge the municipality to increase its presence in our neighborhood.

At the same time, we are satisfied with the role of the police base in our community for their

attitude being inclusive towards local leaderships’, as explained by the sub-director of the

public school in San José del Pino to the maximum national authorities of the PNC. The need

for more police patrols is stressed by the other communities as well, to confront increasing

problems with the selling of drugs and the growing presence of gang members that do not

originate from the neighborhood.9

In this meeting, on a Sunday morning in Santa Tecla in the second week of my research at

the municipal level, citizen insecurity problems at the neighborhood level are jointly

identified and defined between the National Civil Police and representatives of local

communities. This is a clear example of interventions adapted to local circumstances, as

referred to in the introduction of this chapter. In the following paragraph, I will further focus

on citizen security policies and practices at the municipal level of Santa Tecla to sketch the

context in which this example of interventions takes place.

Santa Tecla is the departmental capital of La Libertad, and is part of the metropolitan

area of the country’s capital San Salvador. According to the 2007 census, the population of

Santa Tecla is 131,000 inhabitants.10 In 2009, Santa Tecla ranked the second municipality of

the country with the highest human development index.11 On 13 January 2001, a 7.6-

magnitude earthquake hit Central America off the coast of El Salvador causing a massive

landslide in Santa Tecla where hundreds of houses were swallowed up, leaving 60 percent of

28

the city devastated. This natural disaster is an important landmark in the history and

development of the city. In 2003, the local government of Mayor Oscar Ortíz developed a

participatory strategic environmental plan aiming for long term sustainable development.

Nowadays, the municipality counts with a department of risk reduction and adaptation to

climate change. Furthermore, Santa Tecla is a ‘role model city’ of the Making Cities Resilient

Campaign of the United Nations Office for Distaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) that started in

2010.12 The objectives of the campaign are to support sustainable urbanization by promoting

resilience activities, increasing local level understanding of disaster risk, and encouraging

commitments by local and national governments to make disaster risk reduction and climate

change a policy priority.13 This example of policy development, with a strong emphasis on

decentralization, typifies the pivotal role of Ortiz as Mayor of Santa Tecla that is now

considered a model city at the national and international level.14 The latter not only refers to

the exemplary case of Santa Tecla with respect to environmental policy development, but

with respect to its public security policy development as well. This is attributed in part to the

catalytic potential of legitimate local leadership, measures associated with situational

prevention, the promotion of policing and social prevention activities, efforts to enhance

citizen participation, and investments in information systems to improve priority setting and

progress.15As Isabel Calderon, Director of the Coexistence and Citizen Security Department

of the Municipality of Santa Tecla explains, ‘Mayor Ortiz contextualized the earthquakes as

an opportunity for long term development integrating different themes, including security.

As a result of this long term vision, a ten-year strategic plan was developed defining

municipal security policies from 2002 to 2012’.16

In 2005, Santa Tecla was ranked the eighth most violent municipality out of a total of

262 municipalities of El Salvador, with a total amount of 81 homicides that is reflected in a

homicide rate of 66.44 homicides per 100.000 inhabitants.17 According to the standard of

the World Health Organization (WHO), thus, Santa Tecla at that time was facing an epidemic

of violence.18 As Eduardo de la O, coordinator of the Municipal Observatory for Violence

Prevention argues, ‘Santa Tecla was facing serious problems at that time, so with the FMLN

Mayor Ortiz the municipality modified its strategic plan which resulted in 2005 in the

approval of the Municipal Coexistence and Citizen Security Policy based on violence

prevention’.19 The municipal government built on the policy with several measures. First, a

local Observatory for Violence Prevention was established that gathers data on crime and

29

violence including homicides, robberies, traffic accidents, and intra-family violence.20 By

gathering the data, the Observatory enables real-time monitoring, mapping, and analysis of

crime patterns.21 This information is made available to the National Civil Police, Municipal

Agents Community Corps (CAMCO) and local government authorities.22 Based on research

and monitoring, the Observatory also develops policy recommendations for the Interagency

Council for the Prevention of Violence (IPPC).23 The second measure of the municipal

government is the establishment of the Municipal Agents Community Corps (CAMCO) that

works with a community policing approach where an effective relationship with the

population is generated, promoting active community involvement in the identification,

prioritization, prevention and resolution of problems affecting them, helping to improve

their quality of life, social harmony and preventive security.24 The CAMCO agents work in

close coordination with the National Civil Police. The third measure is the establishment of

the Department of Coexistence that implements projects and programs aimed at preventing

violence with participation of citizens in coordination with other government, non-

governmental institutions, civil society and donors.25

With the approval in 2005 of the Municipal Coexistence and Citizen Security Policy,

various projects are being implemented with a focus on violence prevention. The

municipality invested strongly in situational prevention through the recovering of public

spaces.26 Video vigilance through the Observatory for Violence Prevention is an important

technical tool to this respect. Furthermore, the municipality increased its role in actively

fostering citizens’ participation both institutionally, by establishing a Citizen Council, as well

as occasionally by organizing activities to improve ‘coexistence’ among citizens.27 Through

the Citizen Council active citizenship is enhanced due to the fact that citizens become active

stakeholders in promoting their own safety. With the establishment of the municipal agents’

community corps (CAMCO), preventive activities by the police are increased for example

through targeted patrolling in hot spots, such as the renovated center of Santa Tecla.28

Finally, the municipality focused on social prevention of crime and violence through the

control of risk factors such as alcohol consumption and carrying of firearms. In general,

interventions within the Municipal Coexistence and Citizen Security Policy strongly focus on

gender and youth. Regarding the latter, violence prevention efforts of the municipality are

mainly designed to keep youth from joining gangs in the first place. Only since mid 2012,

when community policing becomes operational in Santa Tecla, there is a shift from mainly

30

prevention to intervention efforts as well, that focuses on youth who are already in gangs

and encourage them to leave the gang providing them with new skills or opportunities.

These intervention efforts are being strengthened when Santa Tecla joins the ‘violence-free

municipalities’ strategy in 2013, which I will explain later in this chapter.

Interestingly, when we take a closer look at the typification of Santa Tecla as a ‘role

model’ with respect to public security policies, there are two variables that, to my opinion,

should be highlighted. The first variable is related to long term commitment and political

polarization. Regarding long term commitment, it is important to note that Ortiz has been

Mayor of Santa Tecla for the FMLN party for five consecutive periods since 2000.29 This

enabled the municipality to implement prevention policies that could mature over almost 15

years. From 2002, Ortiz emphasized prevention policies at the local level, a novelty

considering the fact that public security policies at the national level in those years were still

based on repression and a zero tolerance approach to gang violence, the so-called iron fist

policies.30 It was only in 2009, with the Funes administration, that the focus of national

security policies shifted from repression to prevention, although critics of the Funes

administration question the remilitarization of public security as a strategy to confront

remaining high levels of violence.31 In Chapter 5 I will take a closer look at the national

security policies of the Funes administration, but for now it is relevant to note, as a report of

the Woodrow Wilson Center shows, that national governments in Latin America have been

slow to adopt prevention policies as a central aspect of their fight against violent crime.32

This is in large part because prevention is an investment that matures over the long term,

whereas the demand is for immediate solutions.33 To this respect, Santa Tecla is an example

of the benefits of long term political commitment and public trust in local policies. This long-

term planning and municipal commitment to citizen security, moreover, has helped Santa

Tecla budget its own resources more effectively, and secure outside resources from

international donors.34

Furthermore, the public security policies of the Ortiz administration, based on the

policies of the FMLN party for almost 15 years, were not interrupted nor negatively affected

by political polarization.35 This has certainly been beneficial for sustained public security

policies of the municipality of Santa Tecla, and has greatly contributed to the fact that Santa

Tecla is considered a ‘role model’. A specific remark, however, has to be made with respect

to the effects of elections on projects implemented at the neighborhood level. As I will show

31

in Chapter 4, there seems to be a general practice of starting projects based on campaigning

purposes, but not complying with its implementation afterwards, making community

development strongly dependent on election cycles. Finally, with respect to upcoming

municipal elections, it is relevant to note that as of March 2015, there will be a change in the

municipal political system. Due to electoral reform, there will be a shift from one-party

municipality councils, conformed by representatives of the mayor political party, to plural

municipality councils conformed by representatives of various political parties according

their number of votes.36 This modification will bring a mayor change to the municipal

political system and, as such, to the drafting and implementation of policies. In the case of

Santa Tecla this will certainly bring a change to the long term policies implemented by the

FMLN administration, no matter what the results of the municipal elections will be.

The second variable that should be emphasized when referring to Santa Tecla as a

‘role model’, as stressed by several of my informants, is the fact that there is an absence of

the opponent gang Barrio 18. This means that Santa Tecla is the territory of the Mara

Salvatrucha that is not being disputed by the Barrio 18 gang, something that can be defined

as a rather peculiar situation in a country where territories are heavily disputed by the two

main gangs. In 2013, contrary to previous estimates of gang homicides, the government

came to understand that gangs were responsible for 80 to 90 percent of all homicides; of

these, some 70 to 80 percent were attributable to the ‘war’ for control of territory between

them.37 Although homicide rates in Santa Tecla have dropped by 69% between 2005 and

2010 turning Santa Tecla into one of the less violent and less insecure municipalities of the

country, critics, however, are reluctant to denominate Santa Tecla a ‘role model’ solely

based on the success of its public security policies.38 Miguel Delgado Juarez, Chief of

Operations of the National Civil Police in Santa Tecla, admits that the lack of presence of the

Barrio 18 is advantageous for the police since the majority of homicides are related to the

rivalry between the two gangs.39 When asked about former presence of the Barrio 18 in

Santa Tecla, local gang leader Ricardo of the Mara Salvatrucha in Santa Tecla states:

Of course, formerly there was gang presence of the Barrio 18 in Santa Tecla, there was a

huge concentration of them in Ciudad Merliot. In fact, they murdered two of our members,

this was the end of 1993, beginning of 1994. One was murdered while playing video games in

a public space in Ciudad Merliot, the other one was stabbed by the Barrio 18, we organized

his vigil in our community centre.40

32

It may be obvious to think that as a result of the rivalry between the two gangs, the Mara

Salvatrucha may have eradicated their opponents of the Barrio 18. However, one particular

well informed source explains what happened, to his opinion, with the Barrio 18 in Santa

Tecla:

XX: Historically Santa Tecla eliminated the Barrio 18 fifteen years ago by death squads, this is

the reason why there is no Barrio 18 in Santa Tecla.

MZ: And how did they eliminate gang members of..

XX: There was a death squad.

MZ: And who was behind this group?

XX: I don’t know.

MZ: But it were not members of the Mara Salvatrucha?

XX: This is what the authorities should tell, I am not a prosecutor, but about ten or fifteen

years ago, reports on human rights of the Archbishop’s Legal Aid Office ‘Tutela Legal’

referred to about 1400 or 1600 extrajudicial killings, many of them were from Santa Tecla

and were gang members of the Barrio 18. In the end, el narco (drugs cartels, MZ.) settled in

Santa Tecla, this is where el narco has more presence and mobility, this is where homicide

rates are lower. So Santa Tecla is a role model, I don’t know of what, but there is no Barrio 18

in Santa Tecla.

MZ: But it is easy to think that this is related to the rivalry between the two gangs.

XX: No, there was no battle. A ten year analysis of the media for example shows that there

was no battle between the two gangs.41

It is beyond the scope of my thesis to further analyze the issue of extrajudicial killings or

social cleansing in El Salvador, however, various reports refer to extrajudicial killings and

social cleansing as a response to gang violence.42 In 2006, lawyers from the Archbishop’s

Legal Aid Office in San Salvador attributed many of El Salvador’s homicides to “social

cleansing” groups.43 According to a report of the Harvard Law School in 2007, there are

strong indications that social cleansing groups that target suspected criminals and gang

members, have become increasingly active in response to increased levels of violence. Yet,

international and domestic human rights organizations have documented a sharp increase in

unexplained homicides since 2003, and attribute this increase to the reactivation of death

squads.44 A well known example is a group calling itself the Sombra Negra (“Black Shadow”)

that appeared in 1994 purportedly to combat crime.45 While the Sombra Negra was

33

principally active in the 1990s, it has resurfaced periodically over the last decade.46 Recently

in May 2014, Insight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime in Latin

America, refers to a possible death squad revival due to the fact that ‘within the last month

alone, Salvadoran media have reported on Sombra Negra graffiti appearing and the opening

of a Sombra Negra anti-gang Facebook account’.47

Violence-Free Municipality

In early 2013, the gang truce moved into the second phase of a newly defined ‘process of

reduction of crime and violence in El Salvador’.48 According to Interpeace, a peace building

organization engaged in the process of the gang truce from August 2012, ‘socializing the

gang pacification process requires shifting the focus from the national to the local level,

enabling those who have suffered most from gang violence to feel the ‘truce dividend’’.49 In

this phase of ‘territorialisation’, months of conversations between the mediators and local

authorities followed, and by July 2013 eleven municipalities highly affected by gang violence

had been declared ‘violence free’ territories by municipal authorities interested in seizing

the opportunity to effectively address the problem.50 As Interpeace argues, the truce by

itself was insufficient to address the gang problem. Stopping the killing would not transform

the social and economic conditions that sustained the cycle of violence, but it created the

political space in which alternatives to the failed securitized approach could be explored

through a concerted effort with the participation of different stakeholders from state and

society, including the gangs themselves.51 Raul Mijango, ex- guerrilla commander and one of

the two main facilitators of the gang truce, stresses the importance to distinguish between

the 262 municipalities in El Salvador according the level of violence they experience:

We designed a strategy to focus on the 96 most violent municipalities in which we wanted to

convert the local actors into the protagonists of their own process, and by doing so, we

would turn the commitment between the two gangs Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, as

agreed in the truce, into a commitment between the gangs and society.52

A technical committee was established, compromised of the two main facilitators of the

gang truce Mijango and Monsignor Colindres, the latter a Catholic Bishop and military

chaplain, two representatives of the Fundación Humanitaria, and a representative of the

34

Organization of American States (OAS), in this case the Secretary of Multidimensional

Security, Adam Blackwell.53 The Committee, that started functioning in 2012, engaged

regularly with all key local stakeholders, including private sector, NGOs, religious groups,

media, and political parties.54 The OAS has placed significant priority on providing a

structured and sustainable institutional response to the gang truce, as well as on

encouraging the government – at both the municipal and national levels – to take greater

ownership of the process.55 As Blackwell explains his involvement:

The clearest sign that I received from the communities came from the women, the

grandmothers, the youth, women who said ‘look, the men are hiding, are imprisoned, or are

dead, we don’t want this anymore’. There was a strong voice of the women who didn’t want

this to continue. I believe this is something positive to underline.56

Blueprint for the design of the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy are the so-called

‘sanctuary municipalities’, a concept successfully applied in various cities of the United

States with respect to the issue of illegal immigrants, and which in the case of El Salvador is

intended to be used as an antidote against violence.57 From the eleven municipalities that

thus far have participated, Ilopango was the first, and Santa Tecla the second to join the

initiative. In January 2013, national and local actors involved in the process in Santa Tecla,

officially signed the ‘Santa Tecla Violence Free Municipality’ agreement in the suburb of San

José del Pino.58 Ricardo, gang leader of the Mara Salvatrucha living in San José del Pino,

signed the agreement on behalf of the Mara Salvatrucha in Santa Tecla:

Just a few days before the gang truce, I had accomplished my prison sentence in

Zacatecoluca (maximum security prison, MZ). Our people, the gang members living in San

José del Pino, were in direct contact with the mediators of the gang truce. So they started a

dialogue to declare the municipality ‘violence-free municipality’. And then they asked me, for

being adult, capable to think, and creative, to get involved and to assume this role. I thank

God, honestly, that I can live a semi-normal life now.59

Within the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy, the role of both state- and non-state

actors is clearly defined. By signing the agreement, local gang leaders have agreed to cease

crime and violence, including kidnapping and extortion, and voluntarily surrender weapons

in exchange for free movement throughout the municipality and greater access to

prevention- and re-insertion programs.60 Municipal authorities, participating in the strategy,

35

are compromised to implement local development projects in areas with gang presence, as

well as initiatives that contribute to employment opportunities for local youth, including

gang members that have stopped illegal practices.61

In the case of Santa Tecla, as Calderon explains, participation in the ‘violence-free

municipalities’ strategy gave a financial boost to the projects on violence prevention that

were already being implemented by the municipality. ‘We already had started to work on

prevention projects in San José del Pino, for example, but with the funding available from

the different Ministries and from international cooperation, various initiatives could be

scaled up.’62 According its 2013 annual report, the Municipality invested 298,050 dollar in

different projects in San José del Pino related to infrastructure, prevention- and

rehabilitation and income generating activities for youth and women.63 A clear difference

with former projects implemented at the municipal level, as explained earlier in this chapter,

is a shift from mainly prevention efforts, such as the recovery of public spaces, to

intervention strategies where youth in gangs are encouraged to leave the gang. To this

respect, specific projects are being implemented that focus on providing youth with new

skills, and on income generating activities to decrease their dependence on illegal practices

thus promoting the social and labor reinsertion of gang members. In Chapter 4 I will explain

more in detail what these intervention strategies concretely encompass in the case of San

José del Pino. Calderon explains how representatives of both local and national state

agencies coordinate efforts with local non-state actors including youth related to the gangs:

We established a special municipal commission called Por Santa Tecla Libre de Violencia – To

Santa Tecla Free of Violence- with representatives from the various ministries involved, the

municipality, and the youth and local councils of the suburbs of Santa Tecla participating in

the program. The youth involved in this process are gang members, we call them ‘Jóvenes

Constructores por la Paz’ – Youth Peace Builders. So we met once or twice per month to

coordinate all activities, until the end of 2013 when this phase stopped.64

A key difference between the former projects of the municipality of Santa Tecla and the

projects implemented within the ‘violence-free muncipilaties’ strategy, as Mijango clearly

states, is the fact that gangs are now included as local protagonists.65 According to Ana

Glenda Tager, Regional Director of Interpeace Latin America, the ‘violence-free

municipalities’ agreement helped the municipality of Santa Tecla to increase its access to

36

suburbs such as San José del Pino due to the commitment of the local gang, something that

formerly was much more difficult or even impossible.66 In Chapter 4 I will further elaborate

on this aspect when focusing on the effects of the gang truce at the community level in San

José del Pino. ‘The gang truce not only enabled the government to design and implement

certain programs that could not be implemented before’, as Francisco Valencia, Director of

the newspaper Diario CoLatino argues, ‘it also contributed to the fact that the police could

restore its presence in neighborhoods where it was formerly even impossible to enter’.67

This is, according to Valencia, one of the benefits of the gang truce since the gangs promised

not to attack the police anymore. As we will see in Chapter 4, this is certainly the case in San

José del Pino as well. An important final remark with respect to the difference between

former initiatives and the projects that could be implemented as a result of the gang truce, is

made by Edgardo Amaya, one of the members of the fore mentioned technical committee:

Of course, some of the projects implemented by the local governments existed before, but as

a difference, the national government for the first time showed its interest in promoting and

participating in these initiatives. Formerly, there were no serious efforts on prevention on

behalf of the national government due to a lack of technical capacity and funding (…). This

process has shown that prevention policies have to be implemented bottom-up, based on

local particularities, and in close coordination between the local and national government,

the latter responsible for adequate funding and capacity. This is a modest but crucial finding

of the whole process.68

In the next paragraph I will show that coordination between the local and national

government, as Amaya refers to, not simply implies effective communication regarding

technical and financial aspects, but that this coordination should be analyzed within a

broader political context.

Obstacles

Hence, it could be concluded that the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy succeeded to

encourage the government – at both the municipal and national levels – to take greater

ownership of the process of the gang truce. However, there are various factors related to

financial, technical, political and legal conditions that seriously hampered the

implementation of the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy, and because of which genuine

37

ownership of the State with respect to the pacification process could be seriously

questioned.

First, funding of the projects proved to be complicated at different levels. At the

national level, as Whitfield explains, the government claimed it had secured 74 million dollar

to fund the first phase of peace zones in a mix of loans and grants, however, much of this

money was not available at the short term, so mayors were consequently left largely to their

own devices.69 At the local level, as a result, funding was not always available to guarantee

continuation of the projects. ‘Only municipalities like Santa Tecla who are successful

economically, succeeded to support the projects’, according Valencia.70 At the international

level, as Valencia continues, ‘the Embassy of the United States has withdrawn its financial

support to two municipalities when they learned that active gang members were part of the

beneficiaries’.71

Second, the technical committee faced a technical problem in the implementation of

the projects, mainly due to the fact these were not communicated properly to the public. As

Amaya, former member of the technical committee explains, ‘the project in Ilopango for

example was heavily criticized because it was interpreted by the public as a gift to the gang

members, in the sense that one had to be a gang member to be a beneficiary of the project,

although this was certainly not the case since regular youth were also included in the

project’.72

Third, at the political level, the criteria for municipalities to participate in the

‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy were not transparent and therefore interpreted very

differently by the public. When asked who decided about the selection of the municipalities,

my informants responded heterogeneously. Some said ‘the government and the mediators’,

others declared that the gang leaders were responsible for the selection. One particularly

well informed source was very outspoken declaring that all participating municipalities are of

strategic importance for the narcos. As he states, ‘Ilopango has an airport, Puerto de Triunfo

is a port, so in the end the ‘violence-free municipalities’ are a strategy of drugs business’.73

At the level of Santa Tecla, Calderon explains to have understood that the Ministry of Justice

and Public Security managed a list with the municipalities most affected by violence, and

Santa Tecla was invited to join as a ‘best practice’ of prevention policies.74 Another factor at

the political level that hampered the institutionalization of the process was the presidential

38

elections of 2014.75 Blackwell clearly states that there has been an interaction between the

pacification process and the election process:

Of course there has been an interaction. We were trying to create a political dialogue, a

political agreement between the different parties to maintain certain follow-up and

coherence in this process, but as you know El Salvador, this is not easy.76

With respect to the impact of the election process on the implementation of projects at the

municipal level in Santa Tecla, Calderon argues:

Implementation of the projects, with participation and funding of the national government,

stopped at the end of 2013, and we have to wait for the new President and national

government to be formally installed in June 2014 to see if there will be any follow-up of the

projects on behalf of the national government.77

In general, many of my informants agreed on the negative impact of political polarization on

the pacification process as a result of elections, whether on the municipal or national level.

Fourth, and finally, the lack of a proper legal framework has seriously hampered the

role of local state and non-state actors in the implementation of projects within the

framework of the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy. The 2010 Gang Prohibition Law, for

instance, declares both gang membership and engagement with gangs illegal, making it

extremely difficult for the mayors to set up a system of dialogue without breaking the law.78

The mayor of the municipality of Ilopango, for example, called for the anti-gang legislation to

be modified so that his actions, consistent with government-backed effort to reduce

violence, were not in violation of the law.79 Additionally, regarding legal conditions

hampering the process, Attorney General Luis Martinez, opposed to the truce from the

beginning, has called the attempt to set up violence-free municipalities ‘pandillalandia’,

gangland, where gang members ‘continue committing crimes with total freedom’.80 Finally,

the gang truce apparently did not lead to any specific instructions with respect to law

enforcement at the local level in Santa Tecla, as a conversation I had with Miguel Delgado

Juarez, Chief of Operations of the National Civil Police in Santa Tecla, shows:

MDJ: First, as police we have no clear idea what the gang truce implies or what have been

agreed, nothing, we are simply asked to continue our work as always, meaning prevention

and repression.

39

MZ: But you have no information?

MDJ: We have no clear guidelines about what to do as police, when or where.

MZ: Within the framework of a violence-free municipality?

MDJ: I have no instruction what so ever from our authorities, so I cannot tell you ‘this has

been beneficiary, or this has not been beneficiary’, because before or after that process,

Santa Tecla has remained the same, so I cannot really evaluate this since I did not receive

clear instructions from our authorities about our role, maybe this was managed at another

institute or at the level of the municipality, I don’t know.81

To this respect, it is relevant to note that the paradigm shift from merely repressive to

preventive security policies, of which community policing in this case is a core pillar,

sometimes generates conflicting situations in law enforcement practice at the local level. As I

will show in Chapter 4, repressive police operations in some cases negatively influence local

efforts focused on reintegration of gang members, causing at the same time a negative

impact on community policing dividend at the community level.

Political Ownership

In addition to the above mentioned obstacles, it is interesting to analyze the participation of

Santa Tecla in the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy within the context of political

ownership. According to some of my informants, the fore mentioned ‘role model’ has been

the main motive for Santa Tecla to participate. Stanley Rodriguez and Oscar Ibarra, both

related to the Department of Coexistence and Citizen Security of the Municipality of Santa

Tecla, explicitly define the experience of Santa Tecla with prevention policies as the added

value to the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy and the main reason for its participation.

As Ibarra explains:

Santa Tecla only plays a facilitating role in the second phase of the gang truce, as we differ

from the other municipalities for having a low homicide rate.82

Yet, what does this say about the political commitment of the municipality with the gang

truce? In the official ceremony celebrated in San José del Pino to declare Santa Tecla

‘violence-free municipality’, Mayor Ortiz lauds ‘the historic process’ and calls on everyone to

‘lend a hand’.83 Now how should these qualifications of the process as stated by Ortiz be

40

interpreted when taking into account that municipal officials define the role of the

municipality in the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy as mainly facilitating, and thus

instrumental? Interestingly, there are three factors that clearly show that the security

policies of the municipality of Santa Tecla implemented in 2013 do relate directly to the

‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy and go beyond, to my opinion, a merely facilitating

role. These factors are related to the inclusion of gang members as program beneficiaries,

the technical implementation, and the funding of the programs. In the implementation of

these policies, moreover, there is direct involvement of the national government through

various ministries, although this is denied at the national government level as we will see in

Chapter 5.

First, gang members were formerly not included in the public security programs of

the municipality, but since Santa Tecla has been declared ‘violence-free municipality’, gang

members play an active role in the coordination and implementation of projects. Hence,

when analyzing the shift in 2013 in municipal programs in Santa Tecla from solely prevention

initiatives to intervention programs focusing on the reinsertion of gang members, the

municipality herewith seems to compromise, as the ‘violent-free municipality’strategy

indicates, ‘to implement local development projects in areas with gang presence, as well as

initiatives that contribute to employment opportunities for local youth, including gang

members that have stopped illegal practices’.84

Second, the intervention programs implemented by the municipality of Santa Tecla in

2013 were coordinated with the fore mentioned technical committee that was established

within the framework of the second phase of the gang truce, including different ministries as

Calderon explained. As an example, the Ministry of Public Works contracted gang members

in San José del Pino, as we will see in Chapter 4, to work in the renovation of the main

entrance road to the community.

Finally, the municipality received funding of 800,000 dollar that is labeled as

‘municipality free of violence’ according to its annual report of 2013.85Although not explicitly

labeled as such, the programs that were implemented in San José del Pino in 2013, for

example, are likely to have been financed according this budget, taking into account that its

practical implementation corresponded with the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy.

41

Hence, based on these three factors, I believe that in practical terms the local

government clearly shows its commitment with the gang truce, at least with what is called

the second phase of the gang truce, when implementing projects that clearly fit into the

‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy. In political terms, however, the municipality seems to

be reluctant to admit its commitment to the gang truce when ‘downsizing’ its role to simply

facilitating a best practice of public security policies. Moreover, if Mayor Ortiz, through his

qualifications of the process, actually did support the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy

politically, and thus the second phase of the gang truce, then it may be concluded that this is

in contradiction with the strictly ‘facilitating role’ as qualified by officials of the same

municipality.

This dichotomy shows that political ownership of the gang truce is still extremely

precarious. On the one hand, this is influenced by political processes such as elections and

by the legal constraints, and on the other hand by public opinion. Regarding the latter,

extortion, as the gang leadership knew, ‘has to end for this process to advance’, but they

could not yet offer concrete proposals as to how this was to be achieved, as Whitfield

argues.86 As a result, there was no public receptivity to accept non-state violent actors as

protagonists in the pacification process. As Mauricio Guzman Navas, general pastor of the

Iglesia del Camino who later became involved in the pacification process, questions, ‘was the

public prepared to open its doors to the youth who claimed they wanted this pacification? I

don’t think so’.87 Additionally, as Jeannette Aguilar, director of the Instituto Universitario de

Opinión Pública (IUDOP), indicates, ‘we all agree that the harm of homicides is very grave,

but in public terms, the robbery of a cell phone for example has a bigger impact on the

perception of security and fear of the public, since this happens every day in public transport

of this country’.88 This means that socializing the gang pacification process, despite shifting

the focus from the national to the local level, still not enabled those, who have suffered

most from gang violence, to feel the ‘truce dividend’.

Hence, the question is how to interpret the main causes of this conclusion. Are the

gangs exclusively to blame for this lack of ‘truce dividend’ or a lack of local coexistence, or

should politics be considered an important factor as well? An analysis of the fore mentioned

factors related to financial, technical, political and legal conditions that are hampering the

process, shows that many of these factors are related to the inclusionary policy that is at the

core of the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy turning non-state violent actors into

42

protagonists of the process. It is exactly this inclusionary policy that is in conflict with public

opinion, causing serious complications to the political ownership of the gang truce at the

local government level, and at the national government level as well, as I will show in

Chapter 5.

Conclusion

To conclude, we should ask how the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy should be best

assessed if we want to determine its effectiveness on citizen security at the local level, in this

case in Santa Tecla.

First, the lack of political ownership and diffuse institutional response from the

national government to the gang truce, seems to have negatively influenced transparency

about the role of the local government of Santa Tecla in the ‘violence-free municipalities’

strategy. This means that despite the practical commitment with the strategy through the

implementation of prevention and reintegration projects, the municipality, however, seems

to be reluctant to define its role as a political commitment too. The inclusion of gangs as

non-state violent actors in the implementation of the strategy at the local level, is at the core

of this dichotomy. Due to a lack of proper legislation, local state- and non-state actors are

facing legal obstacles when implementing prevention- and reintegration efforts within the

framework of the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy. Moreover, these legal obstacles are

fueled by public opinion that is merely based on an exclusionary vision regarding gangs due

to continuing violence, despite a decrease of homicides as a result of the gang truce.

Second, when assessing the effectiveness of the ‘violent-free municipalities’strategy

on citizen security , it is crucial to note that this should be based on an assessment on the

mid- or long term. As indicated in the introduction of this chapter, prevention is an

investment that matures over the long term. Since prevention is at the base of the ‘violence-

free municipalities’ strategy, its assessment should not be based on a demand for immediate

solutions. At the same time, for reintegration efforts to be successful, it is crucial that public

support is generated gradually for gang members to reinsert both at the social and labor

level. Hence, local and national authorities play a crucial role, as stressed before, in

enhancing public support to this respect, emphasizing that small results at the short term

may generate a real change at the mid- and long term. To this respect, the ‘truce dividend’

43

that is successfully generated at the community level of San José del Pino, as I will show in

Chapter 4, could be used as a best practice.

Finally, and in relation to the previous conclusion, I believe it is crucial to focus on the

effects of the gang truce at the neighborhood level in order to be able to determine the real

impact at the local level. In the case of Santa Tecla ‘violence-free municipality’ I was able to

do my field research in the suburb of San José del Pino, known as the place of origin of the

Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador. In the next chapter I will describe my findings of examining

the effects of the gang truce on the economic and social dimensions of citizen security at the

community level in San José del Pino as an example of addressing citizen insecurity on the

frontline.

45

Chapter 4 San José del Pino

A case study of addressing citizen insecurity on the frontline

The non-violence agreement between the two largest gangs in El Salvador – Mara

Salvatrucha 13 (MS13) and Barrio 18 – made known in early March 2012 and forged by

members of the church and local society, with logistical support from the Ministry of Justice

and Security, has launched a wide range of alternatives for social reinsertion and integration,

and has made it possible to tackle other underlying factors related to violence. The gangs’

agreement, although controversial, opened space for debate on the possibility of adopting

alternative measures to tackle the difficult security problems associated with gangs.1

When reading the Regional Human Development Report 2013-2014, published by the United

Nations Development Program (UNDP) in November 2013, my attention was particularly

attracted to the above mentioned description of the gang truce in El Salvador. As explained,

iron fist policies had caused a deadlock to the state of affairs of citizen security in El

Salvador, yet the ‘space for debate’ as indicated by the UNDP seems a pertinent qualification

of the paradigm shift generated by the gang truce. Interestingly, ten months before the

publication of the UNDP report, residents of San José del Pino already had embarked upon

the second phase of the gang truce in the framework of the Santa Tecla ‘violence-free

municipality’ agreement signed in January 2013. Since then, as explained in Chapter 3, the

implementation of programs to enhance citizen security at the local level had started, based

on prevention and reintegration strategies. As the UNDP stresses, programs implemented in

communities to enhance citizen security, must stem from the needs and concerns of the

local population in order to generate safe environments and a sound social fabric.2 Hence, if

we consider the gang truce an ‘alternative measure to tackle the difficult security problems

associated with gangs’, as the UNDP argues, I believe the case of San José del Pino offers a

highly valuable opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the gang truce. Therefore I focused

my ethnographic research on local livelihood strategies and daily life experiences with

violence in San José del Pino before and since the gang truce. Core analytical concepts of this

case study are the framing of violence and fear, and social capital focusing on two features

of social organization, namely social values and social networks.

In this chapter I aim to analyze the implementation and effects of the gang truce at

the community level with a particular focus on the economic and social dimensions of citizen

46

security. First, I will provide background information on San José del Pino focusing on its

history, inhabitants, and the role of violence in the community. Then I will describe the

security policies that have been implemented in the neighborhood, with specific attention to

community policing that is currently being implemented in San José del Pino, and relate

these to the role of the state with respect to community development in general and the

provision of citizen security in particular. Regarding the latter, I will describe how current

development projects are being implemented within the framework of the ‘violence-free

municipalities’ strategy with support from international (donor) organizations. Then I will

analyze the effects of the gang truce at three different levels: at the level of violence and

victimization, access to public goods and (economic) livelihood strategies, and social values

and social networks. Finally, I will conclude examining the results of the gang truce at the

frontline, with specific attention for the different agents of change that play a crucial role in

this process, and the constraints they are confronted with.

A History of Violence in a Governance Void

When I came to this neighborhood in 1993, there were other gangs, there were about five

other gangs, and every day young adolescents were stabbed, lapidated, beaten up, or shot

down, not only youth but adults too, because there were gang members who consumed

hallucinatory drugs and they violated people, women, stabbing and all those kind of things.

This happened every day, they were aggressors against ordinary people, it was what we

called ‘the law of the knife’ that ruled the neighborhood since all of them carried a knife. The

neighborhood then was divided in different zones, each zone was dominated by a different

gang, who called themselves Los Black Sabbath, Los Killers or Los Bad Boys. So we, the Mara

Salvatrucha, were not the first gang in San José del Pino.3

Ricardo, local gang leader of the Mara Salvatrucha in Santa Tecla, pictures daily violence in

San José del Pino in the beginning of the 1990s, when he came to live there as a fourteen

year old boy who just joined the recently established Mara Salvatrucha. As explained by

most of my informants, residents from different backgrounds, San José del Pino is a

neighborhood marked by violence. It was founded in 1970 on lands donated to the Catholic

Church by the owner of a coffee farm so that 520 dwellings could be built by the inhabitants

themselves.4 During the civil war between 1980 and 1992, many internally displaced

Salvadorans settled in San José del Pino, causing a significant expansion of the neighborhood

47

and the neighboring community of San Rafael. The peace accords in 1992 brought a very real

hope of replacing violence with meaningful peace for Salvadoran citizens.5 However, as

Pearce argues, the armed conflict may have been resolved at the formal level between

armies and insurgents, but not at the real level of people’s everyday lives, which remain

marked by exclusion, poverty and violence.6 The same holds true for the inhabitants of San

José del Pino and San Rafael where the end of the war did not translate into a significant

improvement in the socio-economic and infrastructural conditions.7 Nowadays, the total

population of both communities is about 3000 people, with two to three generations of

families living in the same house, thus conforming a dense populated area of a total of 4

square kilometers.8 The inhabitants of the community of San Rafael, as an example of

infrastructural conditions that fall short, do not have title to the lands upon which their

houses are built, as opposed to those of San José del Pino.9 ‘To date, this remains one of the

main problems inhabitants of San Rafael are facing’, according to one of my informants,

member of the Adesco of San Rafael.10

When referring to post-war living conditions marked by exclusion, poverty and

violence, as described by Pearce, a police officer who formerly lived in San José del Pino,

explains how the neighborhood changed when the civil war came to an end:

There were many military people, who were demobilized as a result of the Peace Accords,

living in San José del Pino. There were ex-members of all kind of security forces, the guardia

nacional, the policia nacional and special battalions. Many of the ex-soldiers were young

adolescents who lacked education and working experience since a lot of them had been

recruited from the age of fourteen, so they started to hang around using drugs. This is when

the murdering in San José del Pino first started, related to territorial drugs control. Due to a

lack of work, they also started to steal and assault, and some of the ex-soldiers started a gang

called Los Killers. This was the situation in the neighborhood after the civil war ended.11

The emergence of gangs was not only a result of local post-conflict circumstances, but was

strongly influenced by changing immigrant patterns at the international level as well. Yet,

after the signing of the peace accords, many Salvadoran male immigrants who joined gangs

while living in the United States, were deported to their home country where they started

local gang structures. Ricardo remembers when the Mara Salvatrucha was formally

48

established in Santa Tecla, and started to dispute the territory of local gangs that, ironically,

had been established according to the format of the Latino gangs in the United States:

The gang originates from the centre of Santa Tecla, where all the vague youth of the

neighborhoods of Santa Tecla gathered in the park of San Martin. This is how the Mara

Salvatrucha was born, and as some of the youth originated from San José del Pino, we

started to move over there. They slept in their houses and we slept in the streets nearby, we

were about fifty, thirty, forty kids sleeping together in the streets, and from there we started

to expand. Some members of the other local gangs decided to join ours, but their oldest

members started a rivalry, so our veterans responded by eradicating them. Some of the

opponent gang members decided to leave the neighborhood, abandoning their families in

San José del Pino. Those who at that time did no harm to our gang, nowadays return to San

José del Pino as Christians, to reunite with their families.12

After establishing local gang structures in their country of origin, Salvadoran gang members

began travelling to Honduras and Guatemala to organize gang cells there, and by the late

1990s, two major gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 had obtained a clear

position as the dominant gang rivals in the region.13 At the local level in San José del Pino,

the Mara Salvatrucha obtained complete dominance including in the neighboring

community of San Rafael. Ricardo remembers daily life as a gang member at that time:

MZ: So how was life here in the neighborhood in 1993?

R: To be honest, at that moment, for being a kid, life was fun, living on the street as every kid

would like, hanging around all the time. I lived on the street, slept on the street, and ate on

the street, our clothes were disposable, every day we bought other cheap second hand

clothing, and the clothes that I really liked, I had them washed by local people who do this

professionally.

MZ: And the Mara Salvatrucha was the only gang that remained in San José del Pino?

R: The Mara Salvatrucha remained, and there were not so many dead anymore, only people

wounded by knives or machetes (..) sometimes we had fights between our own members,

leaving people without fingers or hands, that kind of disorder.

MZ: But did you practice a lot of violence against ordinary people in the neighborhood?

R: No, because to be honest, we came to act differently, we punished people who committed

robberies for example. The gangs that already existed were real violators, every weekend

49

when they organized a party, there were people killed. We were not violating people in the

neighborhood, but outside the neighborhood we went bothering people to survive.

MZ: And the phenomenon of extortions, did you also implement this in the neighborhood, or

only outside?

R: No, at that time when we were kids, this phenomenon did not yet exist.

MZ: It did not exist?

R: No, and to be honest, I was imprisoned when this phenomenon came into fashion.14

The emergence of the phenomenon of extortions, as referred to by Ricardo, is directly

related to the iron fist policies that were implemented between 1999 and 2009 with the

ARENA government. As research has shown, iron fist policies accelerated both the spiral of

retaliatory violence against rival gangs and the gangs’ involvement in extortion and other

criminal activities such as drug distribution and kidnapping.15 Yet, gang violence

implemented by the Mara Salvatrucha in San José del Pino and San Rafael gradually evolved,

affecting citizen security and daily life in the communities. As a result of the dominance of

the Mara Salvatrucha in San José del Pino and San Rafael, the communities became isolated

from the rest of society due to daily violence implemented and coordinated by the gang

members and its leadership, and due to the stigma for being considered the centre of

operations of the Mara Salvatrucha.

As Savenije and Van der Borgh argue, there has been a post-war transformation of

violence in El Salvador from political violence to other forms of violence manifestated

differently in the public sphere.16 As an explanation they refer to the failure of state agencies

to curtail violence and provide citizens’ security, due to a weak new National Civil Police,

that was established in 1994 but that still had to be built up, and that was confronted with a

sharp rise in criminal activity.17 Additionally, as Savenije and Van der Borgh state, sustained

social exclusion has a negative impact on the presence of police in marginalized

neighborhoods – they are often absent - and complicates the relationship with its

residents.18 This was certainly the case in the neighborhood of San José del Pino and the

community of San Rafael that were turned into closed shelters into which only repressive

police incursions represented the State’s presence.19 Under the rule of law, the State must

effectively prevent crime and violence of every sort, however, in extreme situations if legal

rules are not enforced, violence might become the norm.20 San José del Pino and San Rafael

50

are clear examples to this respect. The local chief of the community police base of the

National Civil Police in San José del Pino, which was established in 2012, recalls that the

neighborhood was characterized as a high risk zone:

It was an insecure place where nobody wanted to visit its family members, or to provide

products to local shops, because it was considered the centre of planification of the Mara

Salvatrucha, where the orders for the execution of many killings in our area of operations as

National Civil Police originated from (…) This place was the stage of many violent acts where

one of our colleagues lost its life and others were wounded while complying their job.21

Several of the inhabitants that I interviewed in San José del Pino indicated that there was an

urgent need for police presence in the neighborhood, however, this need could not openly

be expressed towards the authorities due to pressure or direct violence from the gang

members. As one informant clearly states:

In these years, if you did not look at them correctly, or if you would call the police, you would

be categorized automatically as their enemy, so they would make you disappear.22

A former member of the neighborhood governing council was even murdered when it

became clear that he had asked the authorities to establish police presence in the

neighborhood. As a result, there was no collaboration of the inhabitants in case of any

police investigation or incursion. A police officer who formerly lived in San José del Pino,

refers to a murder that had to be investigated:

I remember a homicide in San José del Pino, one of the gang members was murdered by the

gang itself. So I had to do the inspection of this murder, and as inspectors we always have to

ask the public if they probably have witnessed anything, but of course many people did not

want to talk even if they would have witnessed the crime. It was really difficult for me to be

living and working in the same neighborhood.23

As explained in Chapter 3, the gang truce and the declaration of Santa Tecla as ‘violence-free

municipality’ contributed to open up those areas which, like San José del Pino and San

Rafael, had been abandoned for decades and had come under the control in their entirety of

the gangs.24

51

Restoring State Presence

After many years of structural police absence, the National Civil Police regained control of

San José del Pino and San Rafael in 2012 through a special police operation that was

implemented in concordance with the prevention policies of the Ortiz administration of

Santa Tecla. Direct motivation for the police operation was the murder of a police officer

who entered San José del Pino related to an undercover operation, but was mistaken for a

member of the Barrio 18 rival gang, and got murdered.25 The local chief of the community

base of the National Civil Police in San José del Pino recalls the police operation that

followed:

The police entered with about hundred police officers, to find the ones responsible for this

murder. It was a kind of cleaning operation that took three days, because there was strong

gang resistance. Then the police took the casa comunal to establish the police base. First, the

gang leadership did not want to hand over the keys of the casa comunal since they had been

using it for many years for their own purposes. But finally the police base could be

established in the casa comunal with direct support from the municipality. The murder of our

colleague was the last homicide that occurred in San José del Pino. 26

One resident, current member of the Adesco of San José del Pino, clearly relates the

establishment of the police base in San José del Pino to the gang truce:

Due to the high levels of violence not only committed in our own neighborhood, but

expanding to other communities in Santa Tecla as well, the municipality promoted the

establishment of a police base in our community. In the beginning the gang members clearly

stated that they were against any communication between the community and the police.

They even said to me, ‘hey bro, send them a letter that we do not want police here’ (..) But as

a result of the peace agreement, the gang members promised to stop committing crimes,

and nowadays I can even denounce a violent act to the gang leadership, so I thank God this

confidence has been built.27

Crucial condition for the regained police control in San José del Pino and San Rafael,

additionally, has been the paradigm shift from mainly repressive to preventive policing. The

current police base in San José del Pino is one of the pilots of community policing in El

Salvador.28 When asked in my interviews, all informants, including gang members and the

52

gang leadership, expressed to feel very positive about the community police base. ‘Formerly,

they only came to beat us up, but this is no longer the case’, as a gang member expresses.

Ricardo, the gang leader in San José del Pino, clearly states the difference with former police

policies:

Honestly, I think that if this police base would not be under the command of the current

police chief but another police chief working from a different ideology, this would have been

a problem, because the current police chief is looking for understanding and rapprochement

and shows that it is possible to do something, so I think his role is perfect when compared

with other police officials that are only focused on repression towards us.29

Community policing, as defined by Ungar, is a preventive approach based on making society

the first line of defense against crime and insecurity.30 This means that gaining the trust of

inhabitants of the community is of paramount importance for the community police to be

effective. As the above citations show, police officials of the community base under

command of the current police chief, have succeeded in gaining trust even of the gang

members and its leadership.31 The local police chief pictures how trust of the residents of

San José del Pino and San Rafael was built:

As you can see, the problem of violence and insecurity can be solved, but only with the

support and willingness of all members of the community, including the perpetrators. So first

I identified the gang leadership to explain our policy, and to stress the importance of their

active involvement, which they received positively. To this end, I organized various football

tournaments between the gang members and the police, to gain their trust and support, and

later I started to work with them, cleaning parks and that kind of things. Regarding the

residents of the community, initially it was rather difficult to gain their confidence. We visited

all the houses, but people did not want to receive us because they were afraid that this might

be noticed by the gang members. But later they dropped little notes at the police base with

information they wanted to share with us, or they sent children or elderly people to

denounce, because they lacked the courage to come by themselves.32

Important element within preventive policing, as indicated in Chapter 3, is situational

prevention through the recovering of public spaces. Complementary to the establishment of

the community police base in San José del Pino, hence, the municipality invested in

infrastructural projects such as the restoration of small parks, and reconstruction of the

53

main entrance to the neighborhood, with support from international agencies such as

USAID.33 Additional to these infrastructural projects, other projects were started in 2013

focused on socio-economic development of the communities, including primary health care

and activities to promote coexistence. Formerly, during decades, no such projects were

started, as a pastor who lives for nineteen years in San José del Pino, explains:

Well, in those nineteen years, organizations and even political parties came to our

neighborhood, yes, but it was only in words, nothing concrete was achieved in contrast to

what we are experimenting at this moment, to see the entrance road reconstructed, parks

renovated, involving the youth in these developments, they [the authorities, MZ] are more

focused on helping these people. The gang members are being involved actively to work for

the benefits of the community, and as a result, the rate of delinquency has lowered in this

area.34

Regarding the latter, a comparison of delinquency rates between the period of January -May

2012 and January - May 2013, based on statistics of the National Civil Police community base

in San José del Pino, shows, that there has been a significant drop from a total of 16 to 3

cases of delinquency.35 Within the framework of social prevention of violence, additionally,

a series of employment reinsertion and rehabilitation initiatives were started in support of

young gang members such as a bicycle rental service, a pepper nursery, and a project to

breed tilapia.36 The UNDP is an important player in these reintegration initiatives, in close

coordination with representatives of local and national government, and private agencies

such as Catholic Relief Services.37

The implementation, in 2013, of these infrastructural – and socio-economic projects

stands out for two reasons. First, gang members called ‘youth peace builders’, as referred to

by Calderon in Chapter 3, played an active role in these projects since they were contracted

by the municipality to implement construction work, for example, in close coordination with

the Ministry of Public Works. Interestingly, as explained by the local police chief, gang

members and police officers worked hand in hand to recover the public spaces of the

neighborhood, including six small community parks. This involvement of the gang members,

as expressed by all actors involved, is considered a direct result of the gangs’committment to

the ‘violence-free municipality agreement’ that was signed by the gang leadership of the

Mara Salvatrucha in San José del Pino.

54

Second, the municipality, in close coordination with different Ministries and

(international) donors, developed and invested in these projects, thus resuming local

governance at the neighborhood level. This is a clear policy shift when compared with

previous decades of local state neglect of the neighborhood of San José del Pino and the

community of San Rafael. To this respect, it is relevant to refer to the concept of

‘governance voids’ that Koonings and Kruijt describe as ‘spaces or domains in which the

legitimate state is effectively absent in the face of armed actors that abide by the rule of

force’.38 According to members of the neighborhood governing council, some of them

residents of San José del Pino since its origins, the first presence by the State involved

installing cobblestones and streetlights on the main road leading into the neighborhood,

approximately fifteen years after its establishment.39 Due to post-war gang violence,

however, San José del Pino and San Rafael turned into so-called ‘governance voids’ in which

the legitimate state was effectively absent. There was no infrastructural development, as

indicated with respect to housing for example, and no public services such as health care

were provided at the neighborhood level. Regarding the latter, there is one exception, which

is related to education as since the beginning of the neighborhood, a public school has been

functioning in San José del Pino. Interestingly, as the sub-director of the school explains, the

Mara Salvatrucha gang always showed respect to the institute and its officials:

There are many other schools where teachers are victims of extortion, but we never faced

this problem, something that people from outside do not understand, they frequently ask

how it is possible that we are not victimized in such a neighborhood as San José del Pino. But

you have to understand that the maximum leadership of the Mara Salvatrucha originates

from this neighborhood, I even taught several of them. Nowadays they call me from prison to

ask how their own kids are doing at school. One day I received a phone call from someone

who asked ‘Do you know who I am?’, and I responded ‘Of course I know who you are, you

were one of my pupils’, and then he said,‘Well, I just would like to know how my little

daughter is doing’.40

Despite the positive results of the resumed governance of the State, both at the local and

national level, various actors involved in the different projects implemented at the

neighborhood level in San José del Pino and San Rafael, however, have expressed serious

concerns related to the implementation and follow-up of the projects. I will get back to this

later in this chapter, but first I will focus on the effects of the gang truce on the economic

55

and social conditions of the community at three different levels: at the level of violence and

victimization, access to public goods and (economic) livelihood strategies, and social values

and social networks.

Effects of the Gang Truce

As explained, local public security policies that were backed by the national State through

direct involvement of various Ministries, and with support from international

(donor)organizations, have generated concrete results at the community level of San José

del Pino and San Rafael. In summary, these results include regained police control, lower

delinquency rates, a reactivated role of the local state, and the development of the

communities at the level of infrastructure, income generating, health care, and coexistence.

As stressed by the various actors involved, these results would not have been possible

without the commitment of the leadership and members of the Mara Salvatrucha present in

the communities of San José del Pino and San Rafael. Yet, an important interrogative to this

respect, is to what extent these results and direct involvement of the gang have affected the

economic and social conditions of the community. Hence, are there any noticeable effects

of the gang truce at the level of violence and victimization, access to public goods and

(economic) livelihood strategies, and social values and social networks?

These questions have been the framework of my ethnographic research in San José

del Pino and San Rafael. As explained in Chapter 1, the methodology of my research was

determined to a certain extent by the security conditions of doing research in a

neighborhood with strong gang presence and a fragile, still virgin field of coexistence and

cooperation between residents, local state actors including police, and non-state armed

actors, in this case gang members and their leadership committed to a non-violence

agreement. Nevertheless, I have been able to conduct interviews on the spot with residents

from different backgrounds of both communities, that provide a valuable insight of local

livelihood strategies and daily life experiences with gang violence before and since the gang

truce. Additionally, I was invited to various events and meetings at the neighborhood level

that provided me with insights about community development and the role of different

agents in the process of change that has started since the gang truce.

56

Violence and Victimization

When my grandson returned home, he was murdered by local gang members. There were

two of them, they killed him at the entrance of our house. I witnessed everything, they shot

him down and were shooting even at me. Look, these are the scars of the bullets that hit me.

They thought that I was killed too, because they left me lying there. Later I was brought to

the hospital of San Rafael by a military vehicle. I believe my grandson was killed because he

refused to join the gang. I could not attend the funeral because I was hospitalized. My

neighbors did not attend either out of fear for the gang. I am not afraid of them, because I

know God will protect me and will do justice. I never decided to move to another

neighborhood, because there are gangs everywhere. But now it is different here, before

there were many gang members, now there is more respect, so I feel a bit more relaxed. I do

not cry anymore, I cannot cry anymore because I already cried so much. But I know God is

helping me, he even brings me café listo, made by my neighbors.41

The story of Sofia of the murder of her grandson ten years ago reflects the violence

committed by the local gang as well as aspects of coping strategies at the community level. A

few weeks later I interviewed the mother of the murdered boy who is still in a process of

mourning and who lives in isolation due to fear. Further details of the murder, including its

motive, were provided by another source that cannot be mentioned here, but the facts

correspond with the story of both mother and grandmother.42

Based on the various stories that I heard about gang violence in San José del Pino and

San Rafael, although investigated at a limited scale due to the restricted time available

within this study, I could register different forms of violence committed by the local gang.

This refers to homicide, disappearances, physical and mental threats, forced recruitment,

sexual intimidation and rape, and extortion. Regarding the latter, various informants

recalled the contribution residents had to pay to the gang for making use of the casa

comunal , meant as a public space, in case of a celebration or a vigil of a family member.

Important variables however, compared to other communities with gang presence, are the

lack of presence of the rival gang Barrio 18, and the numerous direct family linkages

between gang members and residents of the communities. This means that I did not

encounter stories of a turf war, as usually the case in many communities in El Salvador, and,

regarding the second variable, there seems to be a difference in experiences with violence of

57

gang family members when compared with non-family members, as far as I could distinguish

in my interviews, the latter being most victimized.

Furthermore, regarding victimization as a result of gang violence, in many cases there

is a direct link with violence and fear experienced during the civil war, as many of my

informants already lived in San José del Pino or San Rafael during the armed conflict or came

to live there as a result of the conflict. To this respect, it is important to mention that gang

violence in El Salvador started only a few years after the armed conflict had ended. As Moser

and McIlwaine argue, the memory of previous, politically motivated violence, coupled with

contemporary everyday violence, means that fear continues to permeate urban societies.43

This is certainly the case, for example, with the mother of the murdered boy, who

mentioned a direct linkage between fear she experienced during the war and fear as a result

of the murder of her son twelve years after the armed conflict had ended. Other informants

expressed experiencing gang violence even as worse than the war.The case of the mother of

the murdered boy, finally, also relates to the so-called ‘vicarious fear’ as mentioned by

Dammert as an indirect effect of victimization on the feeling of insecurity.44 Vicarious fear is

the fear that someone may feel based on the experience or perceived risk of victimization of

somebody who is close to him or her, which may be particular relevant in the case of adults

with children who might be victimized.45

Another type of violence that was mentioned by various informants, and that is

relevant to highlight in this research, are disappearances. As one informant clearly

expressed:

We lived in permanent anxiety, if you would leave, you would not know if you would return,

the same with our children, we brought them to school with fear, we returned with fear, so

we lived in anxiety. It was worse than the war in the sense that if they just disliked someone,

this person would be captured and not show up anymore. In this sense it was worse than the

war, so we did not even look at them out of fear not to exist anymore.46

The fear of disappearance not only affected daily life within the communities, but also

contributed to the stigma that for many years was related to San José del Pino and San

Rafael. One informant told me a story about three men selling brooms, who entered the

neighborhood and never returned. Two informants remembered the fact that San José del

Pino was indicated as a punto rojo at a national map indicating levels of violence, pointing to

58

San José del Pino as the most dangerous neighborhood of the department of La Libertad. As

all informants confirmed, San José del Pino and San Rafael were under complete control of

the gang. This means that all entrances, a total of seven of which only the main entrance is

accessible for motorized transport, were permanently monitored by the gangs, controlling

everyone who entered or left the neighborhood. This total control implied that residents, as

told by various informants, were obliged to cooperate in providing or hiding certain

information. In the case of police incursions, for example, people were forced to hide gang

members, in other cases people were obliged to hide drugs or weapons. As one of my

informants remembers:

In case of police operations, the gang members came into your house and you could not

refuse them. Once there were like three or four of them, in my room, one of them in the

entrance to check if the police would be leaving. How could I refuse them, when I had to

protect my own kids? They only said ‘silencio’ adding that if someone would dare to open its

mouth, he or she would die, so it was better to stay silent, according the saying ‘ver, oir y

callar’.47

One extreme example of the violation of law, as explained by an informant, was the case of a

resident who witnessed a murder in the neighborhood and who was obliged to commit

perjury in court due to gang pressure. Many people opted to cooperate out of fear to

become victim of disappearance. The latter refers directly to the so-called ‘symbolic aspects

of gang violence’, as referred to by Savenije and Van der Borgh, indicating that such violence

not only ‘punishes’ but also serves as a reminder to other residents of what may happen to

them if they do not respect the order imposed by the gang.48

When asked about coping strategies, most of my informants responded that the ‘law

of silence’ or ignoring the situation was the most practiced mechanism to cope with

insecurity and violence. This mechanism is one of the four categories to cope with violence

according to Moser and McIlwaine, who refer to avoidance, confrontation, conciliation and

other strategies.49 Various of the examples of avoidance strategies, as mentioned by Moser

and McIlwaine, are also frequently put in practice in San José del Pino and San Rafael, such

as ‘keep your mouth shut about everything that you see’, in El Salvador known as ‘ver, oir y

callar’, ‘trust in God and know how to forgive’, and ‘close yourself in your house and lock

up’.50 Other avoidance strategies, mentioned by Moser and McIwaine, and put in daily

59

practice in San José del Pino and San Rafael, are changing mobility patterns, avoiding people

involved in crime and violence-related activities, and flee from violent situations, whether

you are witness or victim.51 Various informants, additionally, named ‘showing respect’ as a

coping strategy as well, meaning treating the perpetrators as human beings and respect

them as fellow citizens. This coping strategy was used, for example, by representatives of

the public school in San José del Pino, but also by religious people. The latter are also related

to the conciliation strategy, as described by Moser and McIlwaine, that involves religion and

where people pray both for those involved in crime and for their victims and, as a way of

protecting the community and individuals from harm.52 As indicated before, people who

opted for a confrontation strategy in the sense of reporting conflicts or violent events to the

authorities, as described by Moser and McIlwaine, or simply contacting the authorities, were

threatened or even murdered by the gang, as happened with the former member of the

neighborhood governing council who asked for police presence in the neighborhood. Finally,

various informants indicated that people also opted to move to another neighborhood,

sometimes simply abandoning their houses which, according to the police, were

consequently used by the gangs as meeting place or storage of illicit goods.

Since the gang truce, as explained by most of my informants, the situation of violence

and insecurity has changed significantly. As indicated before, delinquency rates dropped

according to the National Civil Police based in San José del Pino. Nowadays there is police

presence, based on preventive patrolling in the different zones of the communities, so

possible risk factors can be detected, and the fore mentioned confrontation strategy can be

applied more easily. Moreover, all informants, when asked, indicated to feel positive about

police presence in the neighborhood, and in some cases even cooperate directly with the

police in sharing information related to security issues or matters related to coexistence, as

one informant clearly describes:

The police that is based here since 2012 is different, it’s a police that knows how to live

together with the people, because I can confirm that if this would not be the case, this police

base could not have been established here. Now they call them policia comunitaria, and in

fact I believe that’s what it is, because formerly for many people in the neighborhood, the

police only came to be repressive (..) but now this is different, now the police is playing a

positive role. I think most importantly, they know how to dialogue (..) we all work together,

the school, the communities, the police and the ex-gang members.53

60

One of the most significant changes is related to extortion. According to Ricardo, the local

gang leader, it was agreed internally within the gang to stop the extortion practices in San

José del Pino and San Rafael. As a result, public transport and the provision of local retailers

were reestablished, as I will describe further in the following paragraph on access to public

goods. Because of this considerable change to daily livelihood, the relationship between the

residents and the gang members has improved as well, the latter being described by one of

my informants as follows:

Since we are in this reinsertion program, they [gang members, MZ.] come to my house now, I

never imagined the gang leaders entering my house, in the beginning we organized our

meetings in the casa comunal, but since the beginning of this year we started to meet in my

house (..) this change in the neighborhood is primarily because of their willingness, the way

of thinking of their leaders, the fact that they are willing and accomplishing. Formerly I

always kept my distance, I never imagined talking to them, because except a short greeting in

passing, we never talked, but now, now I even share a meal with them.54

Forced recruitment, finally, has also diminished as a result of the gang truce, partly as a

result of police patrolling at the local school, and partly due to a change of ‘policies’ at the

gang level, as clearly indicated by one of my informants:

The gang members, nowadays they are more organized, están calmaditos, they have calmed

down (..) because formerly they hit the people for some reason, always when they used

drugs, they even grabbed children from the age of twelve, they hit them, but now, thank God

this has changed since we have police over here, they have calmed down significantly, and

thanks to God, now the situation of delinquency has improved a lot.55

Some informants, however, stated that gangs, even unintentionally, always maintain an

attractive power to youth. Regarding the latter, gang members nowadays are actively

involved in awareness raising activities organized at schools in order to prevent youth joining

the gangs.

Access to Public Goods and (Economic) Livelihood Strategies

For many years, providers did not enter the neighborhood to deliver supplies to local shops

or to residents, because they had to pay a fee to the gang members. Gang members also

asked goods for their own kids, for their family, so this was donated by the providers. As a

61

result, the providers decided not to enter anymore due to the economic loss that they had to

compensate individually with the company, making their business unsustainable. So we as

residents had to go shopping outside the neighborhood.56

This practice, also referred to as ‘war tax’ where gang members ask for a contribution from

owners of small retail outlets in the community or from providers visiting the community,

negatively influenced the access to public and economic goods. As Savenije and Van der

Borgh argue, refusing would certainly have serious consequences for the shop owner, and

no one can complain openly about the problems and nuisance caused by the gang without

coming into serious conflict with them.57 Many informants expressed that this situation has

been the case in San José del Pino and San Rafael for many years, there was no delivery of

bottled water, foods and other supplies to local shops or residents. As a result, residents had

to leave the neighborhood to meet their daily needs.

Public transport was limited since taxi drivers did not enter the neighborhood out of

fear, and although public bus services continued, as expressed by informants, drivers had to

pay ‘war tax’ to enter. One informant even remembered the case of a bus driver being killed.

Furthermore, access to public space was also limited due to gang violence. As part of the

fore mentioned ‘avoidance strategies’, people changed their mobility patterns staying at

home at night or not using public spaces such as parks where gang members often gathered.

Even making use of the casa comunal, a public space particularly meant for public use at the

community level, was complicated since it was controlled by the gang and residents had to

pay an entrance fee. Finally, public health services were not provided at the neighborhood

level either, however, as explained before, public primary education was the only exception

of public services that continued during the years of complete gang dominance of San José

del Pino and San Rafael.

Hence, when examining the access to public goods and the (economic) livelihood

strategies in San José del Pino and San Rafael, it can be concluded that due to gang violence

the social citizenship rights have been violated for many years. Sanjuán refers to social

citizenship rights as ‘the right to well-being, education, health, minimum salary, and social

services in general’.58 Furthermore, as expressed by various informants, the stigma of the

neighborhood caused by the gang violence, known as ‘area stigma’, also complicated the

economic livelihood strategies of the local residents.59 As explained by one informant:

62

Formerly we could not apply for a credit in commercial shops or financial agencies once we

explained that we were living in San José del Pino, as they would respond, ‘well no, we

cannot trust you, because you are delinquents’.60

As a result, some informants confessed having used another address in order to be able to

apply for a loan or credit. The same holds true when applying for a job outside the

community. ‘As soon as they hear that you are residing in San José del Pino, you immediately

can forget about the job’, as some informants explained. To this respect, as Moser and

McIlwaine state, it is clear that both the levels and types of endemic daily violence in poor

urban communities, impact dramatically on people’s well-being in terms of their livelihood

security, and the functioning of local social institutions.61 Regarding the latter, it is relevant

as well to refer to the role of the local state in supporting inhabitants of San José del Pino

and San Rafael to secure their economic livelihood. Due to the for mentioned ‘governance

void’, the local state did not play any role, for example, in providing residents with the

necessary formal assets to start a small commerce outside the neighborhood. This relates

directly, to conclude, to Berkman who argues that ‘the anti-social actions of a minority finally

affect the majority of residents in excluded areas with a practical absence of the state.’62

Interestingly, with the gang truce, as all informants declared, this situation has

changed significantly in a positive sense. The sub-director of the public school clearly

remembers the change that was generated with the gang truce at the local level:

The gang leadership here in San José del Pino started to change its vision, having another

scheme, and suddenly one day we saw a truck with agua cristal entering the neighborhood

to sell water, and everyone said ‘wow, they have come’, and suddenly a truck of Coca Cola

entered. This was only the small beginning of a change, because one could say ‘okay, now

there is water and Coca Cola’, but for almost fourteen years we did not have water or Coca

Cola here. And then the providers entered, so people did not have to leave the neighborhood

anymore to do their shopping, people who sell bread entered, and this is how the change

started. To the world it may seem a small change, but for us it was a big change, because for

many years we had lived a retracted life.63

Additional to the restart of the provision of local retailers, public transport was also

reestablished. Interestingly, as one informant declared, the police and the gang members

jointly encouraged taxi drivers and other companies to enter the neighborhood:

63

Formerly, taxi drivers stopped at the entrance of the neighborhood out of fear, but today

they enter the neighborhood because the ex-gang members who are now called ‘Youth

Peace Builders’ engaged in writing letters, with support from the local police chief, to taxi

companies and commercial companies to inform them about the changes in the

neighborhood.64

Additionally, as a result of the recovery of public spaces, people feel more secure, and parks

are no longer used as meeting points of gang members with the purpose to commit crimes

or illicit activities, but are now used by the public for recreation purposes. One of my

informants described how the use of public space changed as a result of the gang truce:

I think the aspect that has changed most in the neighborhood, is security. Now we can leave,

even at night, every night a leave to pick up my son returning from work, I even leave the

neighborhood, without any problem.65

Another important aspect that has contributed to the improvement of economic livelihood,

are the income generating projects implemented by the municipality with additional private

funding of international (donor) organizations. Small entrepreneur projects have started that

benefit more than thirty families who additionally organize food festivals in joint effort with

different groups of the community. Importantly, a first female entrepreneur obtained a

municipal license to sell products outside the neighborhood, in Santa Tecla. Due to the

absence of the local state, this was impossible to obtain in previous years, as one female

entrepreneur explained. Additionally, ‘youth peace builders’ participate in life skills projects

to prepare to enter the labor market within the context of rehabilitation efforts. Small

income generating projects, that are being implemented locally, benefit various families of

gang members as well.

Social Values and Social Networks

There was no confidence because no one could be trusted, and if someone said something,

then the other would already know, so, it was better to remain silent, just like the others who

only observed, or closed their doors and restraining themselves. There was only a necessary

coexistence, but no trust, because trust could be fatal. Of course we met for a party or a

funeral, but we never trusted one another, we only talked the necessary, if was a superficial

coexistence.66

64

This example of the fore mentioned avoidance strategy to remain silent, as expressed by one

of my informants, clearly shows how violence generates changes in social behavior,

producing an erosion of social capital.67 When referring to social capital, in this case, it is

pertinent to define more precisely, that violence erodes cognitive social capital in terms of

undermining prevailing levels of trust, while also generating widespread fear.68 Cognitive

social capital refers to the quality of social relationships, such as the norms of trust and

reciprocity, and sharing and support.69 The quality of social relationships in San José del Pino

and San Rafael, as a result of enduring gang violence, thus, has been reduced to a superficial

coexistence resulting in a lack of trust and a shift toward individualism.70 This superficial

coexistence is expressed by my informant when referring to ‘only observed’ and ‘talked the

necessary’. As a result, silence may afford a degree of protection on an individual level, but it

also contributes, as Hume argues, to wider structures of impunity and the disarticulation of

community politics.71 With respect to structures of impunity, it can certainly be concluded

that due to widespread fear, crime and violence could be committed without any legal

repercussion. By explaining, additionally, that ‘if someone said something, then the other

would already know’, my informant refers to gossip, that further contributes to the erosion

of cognitive social capital.72 Finally, the widespread reduction in people’s mobility decreases

social interaction in public and further erodes social cohesion, as illustrated by one of my

informants:

It was a strong suffering, as we and our children had to live a kind of separated from many

other people, from many things, in those times it was a kind of prohibited to leave from 9pm

onwards, unless there would be an urgent necessity related to work.73

Hence, as a result of living separated, trust building is negatively affected since relationships

within interpersonal networks cannot be forged. Additionally, norms of reciprocity, another

core pillar of social capital, cannot be followed due to a lack of cooperation and of the

mechanism of ‘future pay-back for present-day favors’.74 Another spatial dimension of the

erosion of cognitive social capital is the dislocation, in this case of San José del Pino and San

Rafael, from the wider urban areas caused by the fore mentioned ‘area stigma’, when

communities are invariably associated with crime, organized violence and drug

consumption.75

65

The erosion of social capital as a result of violence not only leads to the undermining

of social values, but also causes a disarticulation of community networks. As indicated

before, the neighborhood governing council faced severe complications due to gang

violence, for instance, when representing the neighborhood to the local authorities.

Concrete example is the murder of the president of the council after a formal request for

police presence in the neighborhood was presented to the authorities. As a result, the

willingness of residents to participate in the council was negatively affected, as stressed by

some of my informants. This relates directly to Cárdia who argues that the more fear and

distrust there is between people, the lower the potential for collective organization.76 As

public space could not be used openly without fear of violence, and due to the fact that the

casa comunal was also controlled by the gang, physically there were no spaces for people to

meet or organize. Yet, the capacity for informal community-level organizations to function,

depends not only on levels of cohesion, as Moser and McIlwaine argue, but also on the

ability to meet locally – which hinges on levels of insecurity and personal safety.77

Additionally, due to the ‘area stigma’, it was not possible either to build networks with

people or organizations from outside the community since visitors hardly entered the

neighborhood out of fear for gang violence. As a conclusion, life was organized at all levels

on an individual basis, as a female entrepreneur clearly indicates:

There are several female entrepreneurs in the neighborhood who all continued those years

with their business on an individual basis, we never shared anything, we never went to sell

together, there was no interest in helping each other, no, everyone just minded its own

business.78

Interestingly, since the gang truce and the signing of the ‘violence-free municipality’

agreement in January 2013, notably in San José del Pino, social values and the organizational

level of the communities have changed significantly. With respect to social values, one

informant clearly described what happened at the moment the gang truce, and

consequently the ‘violence-free municipality’ agreement, were made public:

When the gang truce became mentioned, I watched it on television, and when it became

clear that the truce would come to our neighborhood, I never imagined it to become real (..)

It was like a bomb, the gang truce here, the news that the leader, who just had accomplished

a sentence of ten years, had left prison with different ideas. He had been a leader before, so

66

when he entered the neighborhood, people first reacted ‘oops, everything will be like

before’, fear returned, but then when they started to explain that their mindset had changed,

that they came to bring change, stability and trust, and additionally, the fact that the police

base had been established here, something we never imagined to happen, then it became

clear that a real change had started.79

The sub-director of the school in San José del Pino remembers when the first prevention and

rehabilitation projects started and how coexistence was strengthened:

We all came together, the police, the community, the school, the entrepreneurs, we all came

together in our school (..) including the gang members, the police invited them to cut some

trees, and we as teachers prepared the lunch, and we sat down together, we all had lunch

together, the police over here, the gang members over here, we all mixed and had lunch

together, and we started not to marginalize them but including them like human beings,

look, it was such a nice and particular Saturday (..) so our community is experiencing such a

nice change, so nice, for me it has been a complete change, because they come, to talk to us,

and they are part of the community now (..) the gang truce for us has been positive, if people

say the truce did not work out, I say yes, it worked out.80

When doing research, I was also once invited to share a meal with representatives of the

community. Some women had prepared diner at home of one of them. When I entered the

house, together with two police officials, everything was decorated and there was a huge

table with fruit, candles and candies. When all guests had arrived, representatives of a local

church asked us to pray. One guy was playing guitar while the pastor was recalling the

pacification process, remembering participation of all different groups. I looked around and

was aware of the special mixture of this group that had come together: female

entrepreneurs, police officials, gang members with their spouses, representatives of Adesco,

representatives of the church, and me as a Dutch academic. At the end of the prayer, many

people were crying and the pastor asked all guests to hug each other. As I learned later, it

was one of the first times such a diner was organized in a private home of a member of the

community.

These examples all show that a process of social capital building has started in the

communities, and more in particular a process that builds ‘bridging social capital’. According

to Putnam, an organization, or in this case a process, that builds bridging social capital, is

first, inclusive – as it tries to incorporate all sectors of community, second, it is outward

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looking – its objective serves the community as a whole, and third, it is coalescing – it unites

people across diverse social cleavages.81 Additional to the examples of specific meetings in

San José del Pino where social values at the community level are strengthened, social capital

is also being reinforced through social network building. As already mentioned, new

neighborhood councils were established, the so-called Adesco. One informant recalls

becoming a member of the Adesco in het neighborhood:

When the gang members entered the meeting, I felt a lot of trust knowing that they were

participating too, yes, I felt a kind of confidence that they were joining, because before there

was always this anxiety, ‘no, we cannot organize, they will not allow us’, so when I noticed

that they were joining too, I said to myself, ‘well, now that they are joining, there is no

problem, no one will threaten me, no one will tell me ‘this is wrong’, so I felt comfortable

because we are going to work transparently, and since then they never manipulated us, and

we always take decisions together. And since the police is present as well, this has generated

even more trust. I really think that if the gang members would not have joined, things would

not have worked out, we would have continued to face the same problems as always.82

Finally, another process of social capital building started as a result of the gang truce, that

refers to the building of ‘bonding social capital’. According to Putnam, an organization, or in

this case a process, that builds bonding social capital, is first, exclusive – it does not try to

include sectors of the community, second, it is inward looking – its purpose seeks to benefit

its membership’s needs over the community as a whole, and third, it is homogeneous – its

membership does not unite people across diverse social cleavages.83 A clear example of

bonding social capital is the group of entrepreneurs, mainly female, that has started to work

together promoting entrepreneurship in San José del Pino and San Rafael aimed to enhance

local livelihood security. Moser and McIlwaine refer to local community based women’s’

organizations that may have the potential for reconstituting productive social capital in

communities.84 One female entrepreneur explains how business has changed positively:

All those years I had my own small business of selling pupusas, from home, I never went to

sell in public, maybe this was never possible due to a lack of organization, because if

someone starts selling on the street, I think you need authorization of the Municipality, but

no one ever had this formal status. And now we do, and do you know what I like the most,

apart from the money we earn? It is the coexistence, to work with other people, we already

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have a rather big group of female entrepreneurs here in the neighborhood, so this

coexistence is a big change at the community level.85

As a conclusion, the gang truce, and more in particular the signing of the ‘violence-free

municipality’ agreement at the level of Santa Tecla, clearly set the stage for the

strengthening of social values, such as trust and reciprocity, and social networks in San José

del Pino and San Rafael. The commitment of the gang members on the one hand, and the

inclusionary attitude of residents towards the gang members on the other hand, contribute

strongly to social capital building within the communities. Interestingly, as mentioned in

various examples, the local base of the National Civil Police plays a pivotal role in enhancing

social capital in the communities. Moreover, I believe that the local police could even be

considered part of the social capital of the communities of San José del Pino and San Rafael.

Hence, as a state agent that is contributing to citizen security at the frontline, they have

become part of meaningful networks in the community. A neighborhood festival, which was

organized during my stay in San José del Pino, is an exemplary experience showing the value

of these meaningful networks for the communities.

On the first of August, the newly established neighborhood committee Cupad organized a

Carnaval Gastronómico in San José del Pino. For weeks I had been participating in their

preparative meetings where representatives of the Adesco, the church, female

entrepreneurs, gang leadership, and police carefully planned all practical steps to organize

the event. It was decided collectively that, for the first time in history of the communities, a

festival to promote coexistence would be organized entirely by community members

themselves to show society at large that things really have changed in San José del Pino and

San Rafael. By way of an experiment, it was decided too that the festival would continue

during the evening and that alcoholic drinks would be allowed. Soon I realized that this was a

mayor test case for the communities and the process of change that had started since the

gang truce. In the morning of the first of August, during the last preparations, various

members of Cupad nervously admitted that they had been praying a lot for the event to be

blessed. The local police chief prepared its additional security measures, and the gang

members helped to build stages, a trampoline and swimming pool for the children in the

neighborhood. The female entrepreneurs presented their culinary products on tables placed

on the main entrance road. And so I witnessed that day how the unbelievable came true in

San José del Pino. The festival became a big success, not only for the community members

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who enjoyed a festive day, but especially for the organizing committee. Security had been

under control, there were no casualties despite the alcohol and nightly dance event, and the

next morning the gang leadership handed the income of the festivities to the local police. All

agents of change of the organizing committee agreed that this would be considered seed

money for the next event to be organized in the community.86

Despite this achievement of the neighborhood committee, public opinion is rather skeptic

towards the process of change in San José del Pino and San Rafael, expressing serious doubts

about concrete results and the feasibility of change in these stigmatized communities. Public

opinion is one of the obstacles the pacification process is confronted with , as I will show in

the next paragraph.

Constraints

The pacification process in San José del Pino and San Rafael is still very fragile, despite all the

progress that has been made enhancing citizen security, as I have shown in this chapter. Part

of the community members still live in fear and distrust, and feel afraid to speak out after so

many years of having applied the coping strategy of ‘ver, oir y callar’.87 Gang members and

gang leaders, for their part, also face a period of transition in which it still remains to be seen

if their maximum leaders stick to the pacification process, if local authorities will keep

including them in their security policies, if the community members will keep opening up

their community structures to include them, and if the police will continue to operate

according the community policing policy with a focus on prevention instead of repression to

reduce violence. Within these circumstances it also remains to be seen if the gang members

and gang leaders at the individual level will succeed to change their lives. And, of additional

importance, is the public opinion of Salvadoran society more in general, as well as the

influence of political processes on the current pacification process, such as the upcoming

elections in March 2015. Finally, it is important to mention that the current pacification

process is facing serious threats of certain groups in society who oppose any peace process

that includes gang members, such as criminal groups and death squads that I mentioned in

the previous chapter. This vulnerability of the pacification process is, when referring to the

role of the state, related to legal obstacles, funding and politics, and, more in general, to

public opinion, as already mentioned.

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First, with respect to legal obstacles, conflicting policing policies have a negative

impact on reintegration efforts and the enhancement of coexistence at the local level. Based

on information of different informants, I noticed a disbalance between repressive and

preventive policing causing serious repercussions for the process of change. Concrete

examples, as told by representatives of donor agencies involved in reintegration projects,

are repressive police operations towards the ‘youth peace builders’. One informant

experienced a strong negative impact on the implementation of a reintegration project

when participating ‘youth peace builders’, gang members from San José del Pino, were

beaten up by a special police force after a project meeting in Santa Tecla. According to the

Chief of Operations of the National Civil Police in Santa Tecla, as we have seen in Chapter 3,

there are no specific instructions from the security authorities with respect to law

enforcement at the local level in Santa Tecla related to the ‘violence-free municipality’

agreement. This means that at the operational level, the general instruction is ‘to continue

work as always’, as declared by the Chief of Operations, meaning prevention and repression.

The local police chief of the community police base in San José del Pino, however, indicated

to have received specific instructions based on the concept of community policing with a

strong focus on interaction with the community.88 This means that building trust is crucial in

making the community the first line of defense against crime and insecurity. Hence, this

difference in policy instructions leads to conflicting situations at the operational level where

repressive actions have a negative impact on preventive policing practices. The question is

whether building trust with the gang members is part of community policing as well. Yet, as

the results in San José del Pino and San Rafael show, the inclusionary model of enhancing

citizen security in direct coordination with gang members and their leadership can be very

effective.

Second, another legal obstacle is related to the fact that the community police base

in San José del Pino, two years after its establishment, still has a provisional status. On the

one hand, this generates uncertainty for the police officials stationed at the community

base, complicating their working circumstances due to a lack of an adequate infrastructure.

On the other hand, and of direct relevancy for the enhancement of citizen security at the

community level, is the fact that this uncertainty has a negative impact on the local

residents. Several informants indicated to feel insecure in cooperating with the police to

enhance citizen security, because they fear possible repercussions in case of a withdrawal of

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the police permanency in San José del Pino. This fear is based on the previous practice of the

gang to punish community members for having contact with security authorities.

Third, with respect to funding, many informants including gang members, mentioned

the negative impact of the fact that municipal funding for several projects apparently had

stopped at the end of 2013, despite the positive contribution of the projects to security and

coexistence in the communities. As shown in Chapter 3, municipal funding had stopped at

the end of 2013, including financial support from the national government. As a result, youth

peace builders do no longer receive any compensation for their involvement in the income-

generating projects such as the pepper nursery or the project to breed tilapia, despite the

fact that they continue working on these. Due to the fact that this funding is related to the

‘violence-free municipality’ strategy, as explained in Chapter 3, it seems pertinent to further

investigate the reasons for this lack of funding. Hence, this may be related to politics when

taking into account the presidential elections of March 2014, and considering the public- and

political sensitiveness of the gang truce. If funding of prevention and reintegration projects is

subordinate to conjuncture political processes, this may affect the long-term incentives that

are needed for prevention efforts to succeed, as shown in Chapter 3. Some informants, to

this respect, already stressed their concern about the possible negative effect of the

municipal elections of March 2015 on the sustainability of the process of change.

Finally, public opinion towards the process of change in the communities and

towards the communities as such, plays an important role in the probability of the process

to succeed. The ‘area stigma’, as explained by various informants, still has a negative impact

on the communities of San José del Pino and San Rafael. Residents are still facing problems

when trying to acquire financing or applying for a job. The improvement of the public image

has been one of the motives of Cupad to organize the Carnaval Gastronómico. As a result of

the community activities, growing media attention was created resulting in media features

that were broadcasted at the national level. Regarding the latter, specific attention was paid

to the results of community policing in San José del Pino and San Rafael which were

showcased in a television spot of the national government to promote the concept of

community policing as part of the national security policy. Nevertheless, opponent forces to

the gang truce still play an important role in the public debate and, apparently, in the

process of change in San José del Pino and San Rafael as well. Yet, a worrisome example is

the fact that extortions are growingly affecting the communities. In this case, as stressed by

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various residents and confirmed by both the gang leadership and the local police, these

extortions seem not to be related to the Mara Salvatrucha, but to unknown forces opponent

to the pacification process. The latter is also related to death squads, such as the Sombra

Negra mentioned in Chapter 3, who pose a serious threat to reintegration efforts in general

and to the lives of gang members and other agents of change in particular.

Conclusion

Based on my analysis of the effects of the gang truce on the economic and social dimensions

of citizen security at the community level of San José del Pino and San Rafael, it can be

concluded that the ‘truce dividend’ is felt by those who suffered most from gang violence.

Due to gang violence, that started shortly after the civil war had ended in 1992, both

communities had turned into closed shelters into which only repressive police incursions

represented the State’s presence. Daily life was reduced to the individual level as a result of

violence and fear the residents were confronted with. Access to public goods was seriously

restricted, except primary education, and economic livelihood strategies were hampered

due to extortion practices of the gangs. Moreover, an area stigma limited access to labor and

financial resources for the community members.

The municipality of Santa Tecla, however, succeeded to gain renewed entrance to

San José del Pino and San Rafael as a result of a change of public security policies which

included, most significantly, the establishment of a provisional police base in San José del

Pino in 2012 operating according the community policing policy. Additionally, through the

implementation of the ‘Santa Tecla Violence-Free Municipality Agreement’, a pacification

process has started in 2013 in which residents, police, and the municipality join efforts to

enhance security and improve local livelihood. The willingness of the gang leaders of the

Mara Salvatrucha, expressed by their commitment to the ‘Santa Tecla Violence Free

Municipality Agreement’, is of paramount importance for the process of change. As a result,

delinquency rates have dropped, fear has diminished, economic livelihood is improved, and

social values and networks are restored.

Despite the promising results of the pacification process, in which the role of the

state and active citizenship are enforced, there are various obstacles that have a negative

impact on the reintegration efforts and enhancement of coexistence. A disbalance between

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repressive and preventive police policing, and a lack of sustainable funding for reintegration

and economic livelihood strategies are causing serious setbacks to the process and the

building of trust. Furthermore, political processes such as elections, in 2014 and in 2015,

have a mainly negative impact on the sustainability of the pacification process, making

projects subordinate to political interests. Finally, public opinion is reluctant to any

inclusionary process regarding reintegration of gang members in society. Opponent (armed)

forces to the gang truce play an important role in the public debate, and pose a serious

threat to the pacification process in San José del Pino and San Rafael and all local

stakeholders actively involved.

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75

Chapter 5 Gang Violence and the Gang Truce as an

Ambivalent Process The role of the state in enhancing citizen security

Within the paradigm of citizen security, there is a strong focus on responsibilizing state

institutions and promoting more responsive, inclusive and legitimate public policies that

promote citizen safety and wellbeing. This is justified on the grounds that states have the

ultimate obligation to protect their citizens.1 Through the paradigm shift in public security

policies from short-term repressive policies to long-term preventive strategies, states are

seeking to bridge democratic deficits and restore and repair the state-citizen relationship.2

The gang truce in El Salvador has been received, at least at the international level by

organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), as ‘one of the

examples of interventions that have responded effectively, in the sense that it may promote

citizen security, to contexts of high violence and concentration of crime’.3 Hence, if we

consider the gang truce an effective strategy to enhance citizen security, it seems relevant to

ask what role could be expected from the government in order to comply with its role of a

‘responsible state’. What does ‘the responsible state’ as a core pillar of citizen security

exactly refer to, and, to what extent did the Salvadoran state, by facilitating the gang truce,

promote a more responsive, inclusive and legitimate public policy to enhance citizen

security?

In Chapter 3, I have described the role of the state at the municipal level with respect

to the gang truce, and I have shown how a process to enhance citizen security at the local

level has been put into practice within the framework of the ‘violence-free municipalities’

strategy. The results of this process, described in Chapter 4, show how the ‘truce dividend’ is

being experienced at the neighborhood level by those who have suffered most from gang

violence. Yet, how does this ‘territorialisation’ of the gang truce relate to public security

policies at the national level? What was the role of the national government with respect to

the gang truce? How did the gang truce, as a strategy to enhance citizen security, relate to

national politics and how was it communicated to the general public? Hence, in this chapter I

aim to further explore the role of the state at the national level with regard to the gang

truce. First I will briefly describe what exactly has been the role of the state in the design and

76

implementation of the gang truce. How could the role of the national government be

defined, who were the actors involved and what was the aim of the government to facilitate

the gang truce? Then I will describe the process at the national level when the gang truce

was put into practice. How was it communicated to the public? What role did the national

government play in this process, and how did it reflect upon its own role? Subsequently I will

show how the gang truce was developed in a contested playing field. What were the main

aspects related to this contested playing field and how did the national government respond

to these? Finally I will assess to what extent the Salvadoran state, by facilitating the gang

truce, did promote a more responsive, inclusive and legitimate public policy to enhance

citizen security.

Role of the State

When President Funes took office in 2009, violence in El Salvador had escalated to epidemic

proportions.4 Iron fist policies of previous governments based on repressive measures had

failed to stop the violence, and even worse, had been compounding it.5 Although Funes

promised a comprehensive anti-crime approach, giving greater prominence to violence

prevention and community initiatives, homicide rates however remained high.6 In 2011, El

Salvador had the world’s highest homicide rate after Honduras with 66 homicides per

100,000 inhabitants. Within this context, the Organization of American States (OAS) had

proposed the Funes administration in 2010 to conduct a diagnostic evaluation of the security

system.7 Adam Blackwell, Secretary of Multidimensional Security of the OAS, remembers

how the idea of a pacification process originated as a result of this evaluation:

When we concluded the evaluation, we realized that a pacification process or a process to

regain confidence of the people should have a particular focus on the phenomenon of the

maras (..) so we spoke with the new Minister of Justice and Security Munguia Payés, with

Catholic Bishop and military chaplain Monsignor Colindres, and I was introduced by the

Minister to Raúl Mijango. So we spoke about alternatives, and one of the alternatives was a

traditional cease fire process, a temporary cease fire to find processes and alliances, and

develop programs at the mid- and long term. So in June 2011, at a general assembly of the

OAS in El Salvador about citizen security, we discussed an alternative to the iron fist policies.8

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Interestingly, when I asked Blackwell if it was an initiative of the government to discuss with

the OAS an alternative to the security policies, he answers:

Well, look, this has always been part of the problem, the government eventually signed an

agreement with the OAS, but first they formally asked us to develop a diagnosis (..) but

because of everything that happened, I believe we reached an agreement with the

government, not explicitly but tacitly, to get involved, and it was the gang leadership that

insisted the OAS to be the guarantor of the process.9

The agreement between the government and the OAS that Blackwell refers to, was signed

after the gang truce had been brokered in March 2012. Although Blackwell qualifies the

agreement as ‘not explicit but tacit’, in the formal document that was signed by the Minister

of Justice Munguía Payés and the General Secretary of the OAS José Miguel Insulza, the

government and the OAS formally agree that the OAS will ‘support the government with the

development and implementation of immediate and structural proposals of solution,

derived from its security strategies and plans linked to the process of social pacification as a

consequence of the gang truce’.10 The support refers to technical and financial assistance, as

agreed by both authorities, to create sustainability to a process of social pacification aimed

to reduce violence.11 The role of the national government itself with respect to the gang

truce, has always been formulated officially as ‘facilitating’.

As we saw, in March 2012, the authorities in El Salvador facilitated a truce between

the country’s two largest gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18, and as a result

homicide rates began to drop quickly.12 The gangs agreed to cease hostilities and pledged to

reduce criminal activity, particularly murder, although there was no commitment to stop

extortion.13 Although officially not communicated as such by the government at that very

moment, the truce was an agreement between the gangs, not between the government and

the gangs. However, despite the fact that the government could not be considered one of

the formal parties of the agreement, the gangs clearly involved the government in the

agreement by asking a kind of compensation in return. In exchange for agreeing the truce,

the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 demanded respect for the basic rights of gang

members and improvement in their conditions of imprisonment as well as an end to the

harassment of visiting relatives.14 Hence, this could be defined as a ‘role to play’ by the

government as a condition put to the gang truce. So although the government publicly

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always denied having a role in the gang truce that goes beyond a facilitating role, as I will

discuss further in this chapter, the government certainly compromised itself politically

towards the gangs based on the demands that the gangs asked in return for having

established the gang truce.

As a result of the agreement between the government and the OAS, a technical

coordination committee was established, conformed of five members, including the Minister

of Justice and Public Security on behalf of the government.15 According to the Terms of

Reference of the Committee, the role of the Minister of Justice and Public Security was to

promote the institutionalization of the process, to mobilize and coordinate efforts with other

governmental entities, and to generate synergy between governmental programs and the

objectives, plans and actions derived from the gang truce.16 Additionally, the Minister would

have to promote necessary modifications to the national legal framework to enable the

implementation of various initiatives that contribute to the objectives of the Committee.17

Finally, the Minister would have to contribute to prevent politicization of the process, and to

establish mechanisms of direct links between the Committee and the national authorities

with respect to the management of information that is directly related to the process of

crime and violence reduction.18

Important factor, however, with respect to the supposed role of the Minister of

Justice and Public Security as member of the Technical Committee, and more in general with

respect to the gang truce, has been the fact that for three times during the Funes

administration there has been a change of the Minister of Justice. The first change, as

referred to by Insight Crime as ‘a polemical change’, in November 2011, ‘came about when –

after months of pressure from the United States – Funes accepted the resignation of his first

security minister, former guerrilla Manuel Melgar, whom Washington accused of having

participated in the killing of former marines in an upscale neighborhood in San Salvador in

1984’.19 As a result, a second Minister of Justice, ex-general David Munguía Payés, was

appointed, who suggested to Funes that General Francisco Salinas be named head of the

police.20 However, in May 2013, the constitutional chamber of El Salvador’s Supreme Court

ruled that the appointment of two former army generals in top security posts was

unconstitutional.21 This unconstitutionality was based on the 1992 Peace Accords which

determined that public security should be ‘independent’ from the armed forces.22 The third

Minister, Ricardo Perdomo, ex-Minister of Economy and former director of the State

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Intelligence Agency, took office in May 2013 to remain until the end of the Funes

administration in June 2014.23

Yet, the fact that the Minister of Justice and Security was changed three times during

the Funes administration, at least may have influenced the continuation of the role of the

Minister in the Technical Committee, and thus the various responsibilities that were

assigned to the Minister. As I will show below, some of these responsibilities were related to

aspects that negatively influenced the process of the gang truce, such as the

institutionalization of the process, modifications to the national legal framework,

politicization of the process, and the management of information. Moreover, each Minister

appeared to have had its own political agenda with respect to the gang truce, in particular

Minister Perdomo who launched another pacification process, not related to the original

gang truce nor the original mediators Mijango and Colindres. Blackwell criticizes this change

of politics of Perdomo, and the consecutive reactions of both the mediators and the gangs,

as ‘one cannot change the rules of the game in such a complicated process’.24 Munguía

Payés, the predecessor of Perdomo, was even believed to have used the gang truce for

personal electoral aspirations, as I will show further in this chapter.

To conclude, the role of the government with respect to the gang truce was defined

differently towards the public and towards the various actors involved. Publicly its role was

defined as strictly facilitating, however, the government compromised itself politically

towards the gangs for the compensation that was part of the agreement, and technically

towards the OAS and the mediators based on its direct participation in the Technical

Committee. Regarding the latter, in the next sections I will show that the role of the

government in the Technical Committee goes beyond a strictly technical or facilitating role,

but should be interpreted instead as related to politics that severely affected the

implementation and decisiveness of the gang truce as a strategy to enhance citizen security.

First, I will show how this ambiguity regarding the role of the government with respect to

the gang truce provoked a strong public and political debate.

Non-transparent Process

On the 10th of March 2012, public attention was provoked, both at the national and

international level, by a sudden drop of the homicide rate in El Salvador. As of that date, the

homicide rates began to drop from 14 murders a day to about five. As turned out later, the

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leaders of the two main gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, had reached a cease-fire

agreement, however, they decided not to make it public until after the March 11th elections,

in order to have time to communicate with and educate all members of both gangs on the

outside as to the new situation.25 Additionally, no official announcement was made by the

authorities either, that a truce had been brokered between the two main gangs, despite the

fact that the government had been involved at least instrumentally in this pacification

strategy. As a result, one of the main criticisms about the gang truce, is the lack of

transparency. When analyzing the gang truce more in detail, it turns out, firstly, to be

unclear and controversial how the process precisely could be defined, and secondly, what

exactly had been agreed, and what role the government played.

First, to explain this further, there is a broad consensus in the public debate about

the gang truce, which I also saw reflected in my interviews, that the definition of a ‘truce’

has been inaccurate. Blackwell, as Secretary of Multidimensional Security of the

Organization of American States (OAS) directly involved in the process, emphasizes he never

used the word ‘truce’, but instead a ‘cease-fire agreement’. As Blackwell states:

We always insisted that this would be a long term process, because we are talking about a

conflict here, and I do insist that this has been a conflict that, due to the high homicide rates,

to my opinion should be considered a traditional conflict instead of a criminal conflict.26

The latter, interestingly, marks a sharp contrast with the point of view of the government as

expressed by Franzi Hato Hasbún, current Presidential Secretary for Governance and

Communication, and former coordinator of the Security Cabinet of the Funes administration.

Although Blackwell and Hasbún both agree that the definition of a ‘truce’ was inaccurate,

they differ in the definition of the problem of gang violence. As Hasbún argues:

We do not share the concept of a gang truce, because a truce is an agreement between

belligerent forces, and gangs are not a belligerent force in juridical and diplomatic sense, it is

crime.27

To explain the difficulty to get the process started, Blackwell makes the comparison with the

conflict in Israel. ‘To get Hamas in the same room with the Government of Israel, is not an

easy task’, as Blackwell argues, explaining why it took several months to get the Mara

Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 around the same table. Raul Mijango, ex- guerrilla commander

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and one of the two main facilitators of the gang truce, stresses the importance, after months

of separate talks with the imprisoned leaders of both gangs, to bring both groups together in

order to possibly reach an agreement:

What I learned from the former peace process between the FMLN and the government, that

brought to an end the civil war in 1992, is that even in the worst conflict, joining a meal

brings people together. So, in this case, what did we do? We organized a lunch in the

maximum security prison of Zacatecoluca, and we brought something that has magic power

in our country which is pollo campero28. So we sat at a long table, Monsignor Colindres, who

was the other facilitator, and I both at the centre of the table, and on the one hand about 18

members of one gang, and on the other hand about 20 members of the other gang. Suddenly

one of the Mara Salvatrucha gang leaders stands up and walks to the gang leader of the

Barrio 18 sitting next to me. ‘I don’t know what you guys think of it’, he says to the other

gang leader, ‘but we think we should grab this opportunity to bring about a change’. And this

is how they started talking.29

‘Unfortunately’, as Mijango continues, ‘we did not draft a communication strategy, since we

started the process as an exploratory experiment’.30 This brings me to the second argument

that due to a lack of transparency, it turns out to be unclear what exactly had been agreed

and what has been the role of each actor involved.

On 14 March 2012, online newspaper El Faro was the first to broke the story that the

government had moved thirty leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 from the

maximum security prison of Zacatecoluca to lower security prisons in apparent exchange for

the gangs’ commitment to reduce the level of homicides.31 As explained in a recent report of

the University Institute of Public Opinion (IUDOP), the news led to a series of particularly

contradictory explanations.32 According to IUDOP, there are two elements that negatively

influenced the gang truce. The first elements are the contradictory declarations of the

Minister of Security and Justice at that time, General Munguía Payés, and the lack of

governmental transparency. In its report, IUDOP provides an overview of press statements

made by Minister Munguía Payés, based on a revision of the main newspapers in El

Salvador.33 When asked about the role of the government, Hasbún states:

The gang truce, which in itself is a misconception, was an initiative started by the Catholic

Church. Our role as government in this process was to facilitate the necessary conditions. As

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a government, we do not negotiate law enforcement. Hence, the transfer of gang leaders to

lower security prisons was part of a process established by law and not a product of

presumed negotiations with the gangs. The problem is that you cannot judge this transfer

without taking into account political conditions. In the light of elections, in this case, ARENA

and the right wing people in the country categorized the transfer as part of the agreement of

the gang truce, whereas the government simply complied with the formal right of these

prisoners to be transferred.34

According to Maria Silvia Guillen, director of the NGO FESPAD, the transfer of prisoners is

not subordinated to any kind of negotiation, but to proper legal compliance.35 ‘However’, as

Guillen argues, ‘each individual case has to be judged by a prison tribunal which is a highly

complicated and time consuming procedure’. For this reason, Guillen wonders if the

government has complied with this procedure in order to organize the transfers. Fact is that

there are several explanations for the transfers, as described by IUDOP, varying from

humanitarian conditions to massive escape plans.36 Additional to these explanations,

Mijango declares that shortly after having reached the agreement between both gangs, that

still had been kept in secret, he received an urgent phone call on behalf of one of the

imprisoned gang leaders who had participated in the process:

They asked me to come to prison urgently because they wanted to share some important

information. So I asked the Minister for permission and went to visit the imprisoned gang

leaders. ’In order to comply with the agreement’, as they said, they urgently needed to

inform their gang structures in the street that an agreement had been reached. ‘We have

heard that they are planning to sabotage the elections by organizing a strike of public

transport’, the gang leaders explained. For this reason, the gang leaders thought it would be

important to reschedule the agreement and to bring it into force before the elections. It is

important to note that for years the gang leadership had been cut off from direct

communication with their structures, as a result of security policies. So Monsignor Colindres

and I believed it was crucial to transfer the gang leaders in order to restore the

communication with their structures. Thus, in order to prevent the sabotage of the elections,

the Minister of Security and Justice ordered the transfer of the gang leaders to lower security

prisons, on March 8 and 9. For me, the biggest surprise of the world was the fact that on

March 10, the homicide rate in the country dropped, we succeeded in something that the

country could not achieve in 18 years, reducing the homicide rate from 14 to 5.37

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To date, the transfer of the gang leadership is still controversial and one of the most debated

aspects of the gang truce. To its critics, according to Teresa Whitfield, the process appeared

to have traded a reduction in homicides for an improvement in prison conditions and thus

allowed criminal and predatory interlocutors to use violence as a means to negotiate with

the government.38 It is still a sensitive topic for the government too. When asked if

transparency would have helped to inform the public about the role of the government in

the process of the gang truce, and in this particular case the transfers, Hasbún clearly states

that security plans intrinsically cannot be transparent.

There are topics related to security that cannot be communicated publicly. People tell us to

be transparent, but how would it be possible to share security plans when precisely for this

reason, to guarantee security, these plans should be kept secret? We cannot share this with

the people! If so, then what would intelligence work mean?39

When comparing, however, the motivation for the transfers as expressed by Hasbún

‘applying the law’ on the one hand, and by Mijango ‘preventing sabotage’ on the other hand,

it becomes clear that the role of the government in the gang truce is still not easy to define.

This is certainly also related to a lack of ownership from the national government with

respect to the gang truce, which I will explain later in this chapter.

Yet, not only the transfer of the gang leaders generated confusion and discussion in

public opinion, but the fact that communication between the gang leaders and their

respective members, as a result of the transfer to lower security prisons, had been

improved, caused public concern as well. This is directly related to the fact that extortions,

the type of gang violence that affects the public most, are managed directly by the

imprisoned leadership. This reflects the second element, according to IUDOP, that negatively

influenced the gang truce, namely, ‘a much deeper distrust that was anchored in the

Salvadoran population that could not change overnight, no matter how spectacular the news

story: gangs are the main enemy of the Salvadoran nation, what is required is heavy-handed

military repression’.40 According to the National Council of Small Enterprises, 79% of micro-

and small enterprises confirm to be victim of extortions, and in 2012 small enterprises paid

18 million dollars in renta, which is the amount of money to be paid to the gangs.41 A taxi

driver who provided me transport to one of my interviews in San Salvador, to give an

example of daily practice, told me that he works for a cooperative of 70 taxi drivers. Each

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month the cooperative holds 10 dollar of the individual salary of the taxi drivers to be paid

as renta to the gangs, which shows that in some cases paying renta is even

institutionalized.42 According to Mauricio Navas Guzman, general pastor of the Iglesia del

Camino who later became involved in the pacification process, the gang truce did not receive

any public support due to the fact that extortions, a type of violence that affects many

people, did not diminish, whereas the decrease of homicides mainly benefits gang members

themselves.43 However, extortions were never included in the main agreements of the gang

truce.44 This was not communicated as such by the mainstream media, nor did the

government, as facilitator of the gang truce, contribute to diminish public concern related to

this aspect. As to illustrate the latter, Guillen argues:

I was completely astonished when the Minister of Security and Justice, Munguía Payés, was

asked in a television interview to explain why the homicide rates had dropped, but extortions

nevertheless continued. ‘Of course’, he said, ‘as long as the muchachos (gang members) lack

a secure source of income, there is no other option left than to continue extorting’. No one

could understand that a Minister of Security would respond like this.45

Thus again, a lack of transparency, in this case about the content of the gang truce,

contributed to an increase of public concern. When I asked Hasbún about the connection

between the transfers and the communication facilities of the gangs, the following dialogue

evolves:

MZ: Did the government, by facilitating the transfers, also facilitate improved communication

between the gangs?

HH: Of course.

MZ: (…) I am asking you, because communication facilities of the gangs have been a topic

too…

HH: I will tell you something. We do have bloqueadores de llamadas (call blocking systems),

talking about communication, but we are interested in hearing them too, well I could not

have said this. But there are topics related to security that one cannot talk about publicly. It’s

a principle of intelligence that you have to hear them, hearing them means that you have to

listen to their conversations.

MZ: So you were facilitating improved communication between them, always within the rule

of law, and you also had your ways to hear..

HH: Could be.

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MZ:.. Those conversations?

HH: I cannot tell so.

MZ: Hmhm.

HH: Could be.

MZ: Hmhm.

HH: But these are all, how do you call it, principals of intelligence operations. 46

When we analyze the way the gang truce has been communicated, we can conclude that a

lack of transparency, in this case from the national government, contributed to public

concern about the gang truce. Due to a lack of any governmental declaration just after the

gang truce had been made public by the media, the gang truce was perceived by the public

as a negotiation between the state and criminal actors. Contradictory explanations, for

example about the transfer of the gang leadership, generated uncertainty about public

security policies. According to the government, transparency in this case however,

contradicts with intelligence policies. Nevertheless, we could conclude, that if we consider

the gang truce as part of a long-term preventive strategy, the state did not succeed to

restore and repair the state-citizen relationship. As a consequence, we could conclude that

the government, in this particular case of the gang truce, failed to build public support for a

change of public security policies from short-term heavy-handed repressive policies to long-

term preventive policies based on the principle of citizen security.

Contested Playing Field

When analyzing the gang truce as a public policy to promote citizen security, there are

various aspects that show how the gang truce was developed in a contested playing field. In

the following paragraph I will describe some of these aspects such as political ownership,

elections, homicides, legislation and the rule of law, and funding that strongly influenced the

process of the gang truce and the role of the national government with respect to this.

A first aspect that strongly influenced the process of the gang truce and the role of

the national government with respect to this is a lack of ownership. The government sought

to avoid admitting that it had entered into negotiations with the gangs, as Whitfield argues,

and different explanations were given for the role played by facilitators Mijango and

Colindres.47 As indicated earlier in this chapter, there is a clear dichotomy with respect to the

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role of the government in starting the initiative of the gang truce. Blackwell clearly indicated

to have been involved in a dialogue with the government to start drafting a pacification

process as a kind of ‘cease fire’, as qualified by Blackwell. Hasbún, however, argues that the

gang truce was an initiative started by the Catholic Church. As Dudley suggests, the

government seemed to have turned to the Church as ‘a way to plug a political and moral gap

when the gangs were ready to sign a truce but the government was not ready to take

ownership of it’.48 The absence of consultation with those with prior experience of working

with gangs or young people at risk, and claims that Mijango and Colindres were acting

independently of the government and in representation of civil society and the Catholic

Church – when neither was true at an institutional level – contributed to the development of

distrust.49 Public opinion polls at that time showed that 83 per cent of the Salvadoran people

distrusted the gang truce.50

Interestingly, in April 2013, a year after the gang truce had been brokered, President

Funes acknowledged to an international public that his government was a protagonist in the

truce.51 At a meeting organized by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development

Bank in Washington DC, Funes stated that the government should respond to gang leaders'

demands to make the truce sustainable, although he maintained this was different from

negotiating with the leaders.52 Funes specifically mentioned the ‘violence-free

municipalities’, a second phase initiative focusing more on violence prevention and

improved local government participation, where local gangs would not only pledge to

reduce murder, but also other forms of violence and crime.53 Furthermore, in an official

press statement, issued by the government on 18 July 2013, Funes declares that his

administration did not negotiate with the gang leadership, but that it facilitated the gang

truce in order to reduce the homicide rates.54 As stated by Funes in the press statement, ‘the

gang truce created conditions that enabled the State to give an institutional response based

on a strategy to prevent violence, because we don’t think that the simple repression of

delinquency, or the simple persecution of delinquents, or the simple arrest of gang members

could resolve the problem’.55 In the same press statement, Funes emphasizes that ‘one thing

is the prevention policy, the ‘violence-free municipalities, and the truce is another thing,

which is responsibility of the gangs, and they have to decide whether they maintain it or

not’, and ‘this is why we put together the strategy of the ‘violence-free municipalities, to

prevent that gangs will dedicate themselves to narcoactividad, drugs business, and to

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prevent that gangs will expand’.56

Regarding the latter, as I have shown in Chapter 3, the political ownership of the

‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy is contested at the municipal level. When I asked

Hasbún, to this respect, if Mayor Oscar Ortiz accepted the gang truce by signing the

‘violence-free municipality agreement’ in Santa Tecla, Hasbún repeatedly redirects the

question stating that I should ask Ortiz himself.57 However, when I asked Hasbún about the

political ownership of the government at that moment with respect to the ‘violence-free

municipalities’ strategy, he clearly states:

Municipalities are autonomous, they can implement their own plans, but violence-free

municipalities do not mean commitment to the truce, at least not for the central

government.58

Hasbún additionally declares that support from the national government to prevention

policies at the local level have to be understood as part of the governmental policies on

prevention that started with the Funes administration in 2009, and have no relationship

whatsoever with the ‘violent-free municipalities’ strategy.59 Interestingly, this seems to be in

conflict with the press statement of Funes of July 2013 where he clearly indicates that the

government put together the strategy of the ‘violence-free municipalities’. This dichotomy

shows that the political ownership of the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy is not only

contested at the local level, but at the national level as well.

A second aspect that strongly influenced the process of the gang truce and the role of

the national government with respect to this, is related to elections. In the fore mentioned

press statement, Funes declares that his administration did not negotiate with the gang

leadership, but that it facilitated the gang truce in order to reduce the homicide rates.60 As

stated by Funes in the press statement, ‘the gang truce created conditions that enabled the

State to give an institutional response based on a strategy to prevent violence’.61 However,

Edgardo Amaya, who worked for the Funes administration as a legal advisor, has an

additional explanation why the gang truce was established:

According to some of us working in the Technical Committee, the truce was established with

a very concrete goal of immediate reduction of the homicide rate that most affected the

public agenda. The Minister of Security and Justice Munguía Payés, to our opinion however,

also had electoral aspirations. So he compromised himself publicly to reduce the homicide

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rate with 30 percent. The gang truce, thus, was an effective mechanism to achieve this

personal goal.62

This example of the Minister of Justice using the gang truce for electoral and thus political

purposes, clearly contradicts with of one of the fore mentioned activities that corresponded

to the role of the Minister within the mandate of the Technical Committee, namely to

prevent politicization of the process. Moreover, as stressed by the UNDP, it is essential in

crime prevention to be able to rely on the sustained commitment of decision-makers,

beyond electoral changes and partisan divisions.63 Given by Amaya, alleged personal political

calculations by the Minister of Justice, however, shows that this is certainly not the case with

respect to the gang truce in El Salvador. As a result, the start of campaigning for the

presidential elections of March 2014 has weakened the truce.64 The main opposition

candidates have condemned the process and promised to renew the fight against gangs if

elected, and at the same time, fear of public opposition to any engagement with the gangs

motivated government denials of any involvement.65 This observation is shared by the

majority of my informants, stating that in El Salvador violence as such is politicized. As

Aguilar, director of IUDOP, argues:

Violence has been instrumentalized in the sense that during elections there is a political use

of violence, not only in the sense of an increase or decrease of homicides, but also in the

sense of political parties making use of the gangs with the purpose to obtain votes.66

Regarding the latter, Mijango refers to the practice of political actors that approach gangs to

negotiate prison benefits in turn for votes of their families.67

A third aspect that strongly influenced the process of the gang truce and the role of

the national government with respect to this, is related to homicides and the use of violence

for purposes related to politics and power. According to Hasbún, homicides and political

trends are interrelated, because there are always forces interested in creating crisis.68

Additionally, when asked more in general about the mechanisms that determine the

homicide rates, Hasbún points in a rather non-transparent way at the role of organized

crime:

MZ: How does the conjuncture of homicides work?

HH: It is irregular, it goes up and down.

MZ: Depending on what?

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HH: It depends on various circumstances.

MZ: Like what?

HH: For example, it depends on the transit eh, ah no, but, it is complicated with these topics

because it depends on the transit of drugs, for example, of these demands, because there is

not always a demand, it depends on various circumstances that one cannot talk about

publicly because you have to guarantee that this is all based on your intelligence work.69

Hence, when analyzing the gang truce, it is important to take notice of the complexity of the

use of violence in El Salvador. With respect to homicides, one of the main indicators to

measure violence, Guillen additionally points to the phenomenon of social cleansing and the

use of killings as an electoral mechanism:

Based on empirical analyzes, we can confirm that in this country there are killings as an

electoral mechanism to reveal alleged incapability of the government, and I don’t like to say

it, but as it is called, this is social cleansing. I cannot confirm who are behind these killings,

but we believe that these are people that completely deny any opportunities for reinsertion,

for constructing communities where all people are involved in its development.70

Ricardo, the gang leader of the Mara Salvatrucha in Santa Tecla, additionally points to the

deliberately use of violence by other groups in society to strengthen their own position. As

he clearly states during my interview in San José del Pino:

There are people with money or positions or levels within the system of our country who are

interested in the continuation of violence, that there are muertos, dead, because when there

are dead, they can sell ammunition, they can sell weapons, even those who sell coffins are

happy when there are dead, because they sell more coffins, so violence means business (..) in

other words, there are people interested in the continuation of violence, because they can

benefit economically from violence. This is why there is this saying ‘the dead are put by the

gangs, but the benefits correspond to others’. And this is how it works, they are interested in

a high homicide rate, this is the problem in our country.71

Navas Guzman, general pastor of the Iglesia del Camino, additionally argues, ‘I believe gangs

nowadays are blamed for every homicide in this country, and of course the gangs are to

blame maybe for a bigger percentage of violence than other groups, but there is also a

percentage of violence created by other branches of society’.72 Hence, the insistence of

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some government officials that gangs are the source of almost all the homicides in the

country, has led to concerns that law enforcement authorities are downplaying the role of

other criminal groups – drug traffickers, contraband smugglers etcetera – in violence and

homicide.73

Another aspect that strongly influenced the process of the gang truce and the role of

the national government with respect to this, is related to legislation and the rule of law. As

indicated previously, the truce has received active and steady support from the Organization

of American States (OAS), who backed the process from the beginning by declaring itself a

guarantor.74 It has pushed the government to create a Technical Committee composed of

government officials, civil society, the United Nations Development Program and its own

representatives in an effort to provide an institutional framework.75 Yet, this institutional

framework, backed by an international organism, is relevant with respect to the rule of law.

As Whitfield argues, Munguía Payés had designed ‘a structure to allow others to do the work

for us’ as it ‘isn’t possible for the government to sit down and talk to criminals’.76 According

to former governmental advisor Amaya, Munguía Payés virtually sent Mijango to the

imprisoned gang leadership to present the initiative. To this respect, Amaya does not refer

to an official mandate, but to conclusions that emerged from the media.77 Mijango himself

furthermore explains:

To us, as mediators, it was clear that the government could not enter in direct dialogue with

the gangs, first, because this would provoke the political opposition to question the

legitimacy of such action, and second, we knew that the gangs distrusted the government

and political actors due to the fact that these had approached the gangs before, to negotiate

small truces, to negotiate prison benefits in turn for votes of their families, promises which

they never fulfilled.78

According to Blackwell, the gang leaders asked the OAS to be the guarantor of the process.79

‘We as OAS wanted to show’, as Blackwell argues, ‘that there are alternatives in other places

that work well and are worthwhile to be replicated elsewhere’.80 Blackwell refers to similar

processes with OAS involvement in Los Angeles, Medellin, and Cuidad Juarez. When I ask

Blackwell in my interview if he maintains direct contact with the gang leadership in El

Salvador, he shows a certain hesitation in answering my question. After a few seconds of

silence, he answers ‘eh…..eh….well I do have contact… (Silence)’.81 The hesitation in the

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answer of Blackwell may be related to legislation in El Salvador, as I explained in Chapter 3,

which declares both gang membership and engagement with gangs illegal. In this case, there

may be a particular relation, although I did not ask Blackwell directly, with the polemic case

of the arrest of Padre Toño in the same period of my interview with Blackwell. Antonio

Rodriguez, Padre Toño, who was a former mediator and coordinator of the pacification

process started by Minister of Justice Perdomo, was arrested on 29 July 2014 by the

Salvadoran authorities accused of smuggling mobile phones to imprisoned gang members,

and of being related directly to one of the maximum imprisoned leaders of the Barrio 18.82

Considering the fact that Blackwell as a guarantor of the gang truce maintained direct

relation with the gang leadership of both gangs, and the fact that I interviewed Blackwell on

7 August, the hesitation in answering my question may have been related to the case of

Padre Toño. Additionally it is relevant to note that in October 2012, the government of the

United States designated the Mara Salvatrucha as a ‘transnational criminal organization’,

and released a travel warning for El Salvador in January 2013, in what many see as attempts

to discredit the truce.83 These examples of legislation and of cases direct related to these

laws show the complicated legal framework in which the process of the gang truce took

place.

Regarding the latter, there is a public debate about the fact that the government in El

Salvador is violating its own laws to facilitate a gang truce, as argued by local media.84 Online

newspaper El Faro points out that under the Gang Prohibition Law, passed in September

2010, being a member of either the Barrio 18 or Mara Salvatrucha is in itself a criminal

offense, as are any dealings with these groups.85 ‘Whereas the Minister of Security and

Justice denies to operate illegally’, as El Faro states, ‘mayors, police officials and the Minister

himself have been part of a process in which gang members have been able to prevent their

arrest that is prescribed by law’.86 El Faro refers to programs and activities that are being

developed in the ‘violence- free municipalities’, where ‘mayors, police officials, and public

administration officials meet on a regular basis with gang members to coordinate pilot

programs of reemployment, or events in which gang members are in dialogue with the

community, or activities such as the removal of graffiti’.87 The Minister of Security and

Justice Munguía Payés, in the same article, argues that ‘the Gang Prohibition Law is a useful

instrument; nevertheless, to us it creates a problem in the strategic sense. We experience

difficulties since we are obliged by law to arrest any gang member, however, if a certain

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gang member is willing to reconvert and to participate in rehabilitation plans, it is not

allowed by law’.88 Interestingly, it could have been the Minister of Justice himself to

promote necessary modifications to the national legal framework to enable the

implementation of various initiatives, according its role as member of the Technical

Committee. As I have shown in Chapter 3, there was even a concrete demand, expressed for

example by the mayor of the municipality of Ilopango, for modification of the anti-gang

legislation so that his actions, consistent with government-backed efforts to reduce violence,

were not in violation of the law. However, the Minister of Justice did not accomplish its role

as defined by the Technical Committee, to promote necessary modifications to the national

legal framework, since no modifications to the law have been proposed related to the

process of the gang truce.

To this respect, finally, it is important to notice that according to the public opinion,

gangs are the main enemy of the Salvadoran nation. What is required, according to the

majority of the population, is heavy-handed military repression instead of a pacification

process that aims for reemployment and an improved quality of life for those who want to

reinsert and are eligible as such. However, with respect to reinsertion, Hasbún clearly

argues:

It is clear to us (the government) that we have to apply the rule of law, but to apply the rule

of law also implies that the reinsertion program functions (…). Society, however, does not

fully understand that you have to reinsert those that can be reinserted. We don’t think that

all are re-insertable, but you have to reinsert, and in this sense you have to apply the rule of

law. So some of the measures that resulted from the gang truce, matched with our

reinsertion plans.89

Hasbún, in this case, refers to the penitentiary system in El Salvador that, according official

numbers from 2011, is operating at 299 percent of its official capacity.90 For this reason, the

government emphasizes the importance of reinsertion policies, although it seems unclear to

what extent these policies would conflict with the Gang Prohibition Law, as earlier indicated

by former Minister of Security and Justice Munguía Payés. Further complication, besides a

negative public opinion towards reinsertion, is the fact that there are certain groups in

society who turn their opposition against reinsertion programs into social cleansing

practices, as earlier indicated.

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A final aspect that strongly influenced the process of the gang truce and the role of

the national government with respect to this is funding. Based on the agreement between

the OAS and the government of El Salvador, as indicated earlier in this chapter, the OAS

compromised itself to facilitate funding to ‘support the government with the development

and implementation of immediate and structural proposals of solution, derived from its

security strategies and plans linked to the process of social pacification as a consequence of

the gang truce’.91 Additionally, a group of businesspeople established the Fundación

Humanitaria to generate opportunities for gainful employment and social reintegration for

youths at risk and for ‘pacified’ gang members.92 This foundation was created to involve the

business community in the pacification process, on the understanding that broader

economic opportunities cannot be created without private sector involvement.93

Additionally, the European Union mobilized additional funding for the pacification process,

and provided technical assistance and transfer of knowledge on mediation and dialogue

through the peace building organization Interpeace, to the main actors involved in the truce

within civil society, including the Humanitarian Foundation, the two facilitators and the

‘violence-free municipalities’.94

However, financial support to projects related to the pacification process as a result

of the gang truce, is divided. According to Insight Crime, the government of the United

States does not support the truce, while the European Union is more open to working within

the context of the truce.95 Regarding the latter, Ana Glenda Tager, Latin American Regional

Director at Interpeace, argues:

There are Embassies that are more in favor of the gang truce, and others more against. The

Embassy of Germany, for example, has been opponent to the process, we have discussed this

openly and respectfully, and I feel that if the government of El Salvador would commit itself

to the process, the Embassy would support them. The Embassy of The Netherlands, as

another example, says that despite the complications, they understand the process and they

are okay with it.96

In some cases, financial support to the gang truce is even contested. Chief among the

skeptics, as Whitfield argues, was the United States, by far the largest donor to El Salvador

and the most influential external donor.97 In early 2013, US officials confirmed that, while

they welcomed the drop in homicides, they had no confidence that the truce would lead to a

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lasting solution, and they were profoundly unhappy that the government appeared to be

negotiating with criminals and alarmed by the implicit admission that the Salvadoran state

had lost control of its national territory’.98 Although the Embassy of the United States initially

supported projects within the ‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy, it has withdrawn its

financial support to two municipalities, as I have shown in Chapter 3, when they learned that

active gang members were part of the beneficiaries.99 As explained in Chapter 3, financial

management of the projects by the national government resulted complicated. The

government claimed it had secured 74 million dollar to fund the first phase of peace zones in

a mix of loans and grants, however, much of this money was not available at the short term,

so mayors were consequently left largely to their own devices.100 The fact that some funding

was contested, as indicated by the example of the Embassy of the United States, certainly

must have complicated the financial management of projects at the government level even

more.

Conclusion

With the Funes administration, a paradigm shift started from short-term repressive public

security policies to long-term preventive policies. Due to the ever-increasing homicide rates,

the government was in search of alternatives to previous iron fist policies. Based on an

assessment of the security system, a pacification strategy was developed to confront gang

violence. As a result of a dialogue with the gang leadership of the two main gangs, the Mara

Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18, a gang truce was brokered almost three years after the Funes

administration had come to power. Although meant as a strategy to concretize the shift

from repressive to preventive security policies, the gang truce failed to endure. As a result of

my analysis of the role of the state to this respect, it can be concluded that this is due to a

lack of strategy of the government. This analysis is based on the following elements.

First, there was no clear communication strategy, not to inform the public about the

content of the gang truce and the role of the government, nor to confront opposition from

public opinion that, due to the high levels of violence, remained in favor of short term heavy

handed policies.

Second, there was no clear funding strategy to sustainably support programs that, as

a result of the gang truce, had started at the local level to promote prevention and

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reintegration activities. The lack of ownership of the government regarding the gang truce

negatively affected the availability of international funding.

Third, there was no strategy to promote legal reform that would have enabled,

particularly, local state- and non-state actors involved in the ‘violence-free municipalities’

strategy, to support interventions meant to enhance the truce dividend at the frontline.

Finally, there was no strategy to prevent politicization of the pacification process that

started as a result of the gang truce. Important element to prevent politicization would have

been to stress the long-term investment needed to sustain the shift from repressive to

preventive policies. Concrete results of the reduction of violence and victimization at the

local level could have been instrumental to this repect.

As indicated, the playing field in which the government was supposed to act

promoting the gang truce as a strategy to enhance citizen security, however, is extremely

complicated and submitted to the political and economic interests of various state- and non-

state actors at the national and international level, including violent actors related to

organized crime. Transparency and political ownership towards the gang truce, nevertheless,

would have strengthened the role of the government in seeking to bridge democratic

deficits and restore and repair the state-citizen relationship, one of the core pillars of citizen

security policies.

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Chapter 6 Conclusion and Recommendations

Due to a paradigm shift from repressive to preventive public security policies, the national

government of El Salvador facilitated a gang truce with the aim to reduce violence and

enhance public security. Initially, due to a drop of homicides, the gang truce was lauded

above all internationally, and considered an exemplary strategy to end gang violence.

However, in a polemic debate that followed and that continues to date, the non-violence

agreement between the gangs has been declared to have failed. In this debate, the

effectiveness of the gang truce is mainly assessed at the national level, based on homicide

rates as the main indicator of violence, on political debates and public opinion. Practical

implementation of the gang truce, however, is taking place at the local level through the

‘violence-free municipalities’ strategy. Therefore I believe it is crucial to add the element of

scale to the debate about the gang truce, shifting the scope from the national to the local

and community level. Yet, this case study of San José del Pino is instrumental to the

problem statement of my research: how has the gang truce affected citizen security in the

community of San José del Pino, and how is this related to the debate about the gang truce

and to public security policies at the local and national level in El Salvador? When analyzing

the gang truce related to public security at the local and national level, I have applied two

core pillars of citizen security, namely the role of the state and active citizenship. In order to

reveal the results of the gang truce at the community level, I have analyzed the gang truce

through the theoretical concepts of violence and fear, the social and economic dimensions

of citizen security, and social capital.

Within the paradigm of citizen security, there is a strong focus on the responsible

state to develop responsive and legitimate public policies and to promote citizen safety and

wellbeing. Yet, when analyzing the role of the state with respect to the gang truce as a

strategy to enhance citizen security, it is crucial to distinguish between the role of the state

at the national and at the local level. In my research I have shown that the national

government never assumed political ownership with respect to the gang truce but instead

emphasized a merely facilitating role. Public security policies, however, cannot be built on

practical governmental commitment, but should be based on political commitment as a

primary condition for policy development. As a result, there was a lack of strategy that

seriously hampered the implementation of the gang truce due to financial, political, legal,

98

and technical constraints. These constraints negatively influenced programs and policies

based on violence prevention at the local and community level. Moreover, this lack of

political ownership of the national state generated a dichotomy at the level of the local state

with respect to ownership towards the ‘violence-free municipality’ strategy. In the case of

Santa Tecla, the municipality emphasizes a practical role based on its ‘best practice of

prevention policies’, although its involvement in prevention and reintegration programs

within the ‘violence-free municipality’ strategy could certainly be typified as political since

this involvement is clearly based on its public security policies. Municipal security policies

and the gangs’ commitment to pacification coalesce at the community level of San José del

Pino. Formerly, there was a governance void in San José del Pino as the state could not enter

due to gang violence. As a result of the gang truce however, the local government was

enabled to implement programs that could not be implemented before, and the police could

restore its presence. Finally, the case of Santa Tecla shows that prevention policies have to

be implemented bottom-up with the national government being responsible for funding and

capacity. In the case of the ‘violence-free municipality’ strategy, however, the latter was not

implemented correspondingly. The inclusion of gang members in the implementation of

local prevention and reintegration programs is at the core of this lack of national state

responsibility.

A second core pillar of citizen security is active citizenship. When analyzing active

citizenship with respect to the gang truce, a clear distinction should be made between public

opinion and active citizenship at the community level. Public in general rejects the gang

truce and the inclusion of gang members in initiatives to enhance citizen security. To this

respect, public opinion and national government policies are interrelated since a public

demand for immediate solutions based on repression hampers long-term preventive security

policies. At the community level however, the case study of San José del Pino shows that

residents, police, local authorities, and gang members join efforts to enhance security and

improve local livelihood. This active citizenship is based on an inclusionary vision regarding

gangs and their reintegration in the community. Hence, when assessing the effects of the

gang truce at the community level, it can be concluded that the case study of San José del

Pino may be used as a best practice to gradually gain public support for reintegration of gang

members at the social and the labor level. Local and national authorities play a crucial role in

public awareness raising regarding reintegration and inclusion of gang members in broader

99

society. Additionally, citizen security recognizes the fundamental role citizens play in

ensuring their own safety. In the case of San José del Pino this is certainly the case, where

residents and the local community police coordinate efforts to enhance security in the

neighborhood. This means that the citizen rights of the residents of San José del Pino are

activated, not only at the formal level, but at the substantive level, related to social and

political rights, and the subjective level , related to loyalty and belonging, as well.

One of the main public discussions at the national level with respect to the gang

truce, is the fact that extortions still continue. For this reason the gang truce required a shift

of focus from the national to the local level creating political space for alternatives. The case

study of San José del Pino clearly shows the effects of the gang truce on the economic and

social dimensions of citizen security at the community level. Formerly, access to public goods

was seriously restricted and economic livelihood strategies were hampered due to extortion

practices of the gang. An area stigma, additionally, limited access to labor and financial

resources. As a result of the gang truce, however, the gang decided to stop extortion

practices, and socio-economic projects could be started, resulting in an improvement of

economic livelihood at the community level. With respect to violence and victimization, the

case study of San José del Pino clearly shows how community members, gang members, the

local government and the local police base in the community jointly implement programs

and activities to promote security and coexistence at the frontline. The concept of

community policing plays an important role to this respect. On the one hand to restore trust

in the security forces, after many years of repressive policing, and on the other hand to

support efforts for reintegration of gang members in the community. Results in San José del

Pino show that the gang truce created space for a new balance in the community, where the

commitment of gang members to pacification and the inclusionary attitude of residents,

restore social values and social networks. Cognitive social capital is restored resulting in

improved social relationships, and an interesting process of ‘bridging social capital’ building

has started with residents, gang members and police participating in meaningful networks.

As a conclusion, framing of the gang truce at three different scales, shows that

despite the polemic debate at the national level, the gang truce positively affected the social

and economic dimensions of citizen security at the community level. The case study of San

José del Pino is a clear example how the divide between the state and society on citizen

security can be bridged. To this extent, it can be concluded that the gang truce at the

100

community level of San José del Pino has succeeded to enhance security and improve local

livelihood. However, there are various obstacles that have a negative impact on the

reintegration efforts and enhancement of coexistence. There is a lack of balance between

repressive and preventive police policing, a lack of sustainable funding for reintegration and

economic livelihood strategies, interference in the pacification process of political processes

such as elections, and a general public opinion that is reluctant to any inclusionary process.

All these obstacles are related to the lack of political ownership of the national government

with respect to the gang truce. However, it is pertinent to mention that the government of

Mauricio Funes, after years of iron fist policies of former administrations, succeeded to

launch an alternative approach to end gang violence. Of additional importance however, is

the fact that the gang truce was established in a contested playing field, submitted to the

political and economic interests of various state- and non-state actors. First, political

ownership is contested at the national and the local level. Second, the gang truce has been

used for electoral and thus political purposes. Third, there is a deliberately use of violence by

certain groups in society to strengthen their position. Forth, the gang truce is in violation

with current national legislation. Fifth, public opinion is still in favor of repressive policies,

and finally, international financial support to the gang truce is contested as well.

However, despite the continuing high levels of violence, there are currently various

specific conditions that could be beneficial for a pacification process to be enforced. First,

the focus of the FMLN government, as a continuation of previous efforts of the Funes

administration, on preventive security policies. Second, the national enrollment of

community policing. Third, the positive results of a pacification process at the community

level in San José del Pino that could be used as best practice. And finally, the commitment

expressed by the gang leadership towards the new government to the initial peace

agreement that was brokered in 2012 and facilitated by the former national government.

Municipal elections in March 2015 could offer an additional opportunity to re-launch,

reactivate or reinforce efforts related to the ‘violent-free municipality’ strategy. As the gang

truce has shown, public security policies cannot be built on practical governmental

commitment, but should be based on political commitment as a primary condition for policy

development. The pacification process in San José del Pino shows how political commitment

of all actors involved can bridge democratic deficits and restore and repair an inclusive state-

citizen relationship.

101

Recommendations

Despite the fact that this research only compasses a limited period of time and resources

available, I would like to use the results of my research to suggest a few policy

recommendations to the local and national authorities of El Salvador.

First, with the paradigm shift from repressive to preventive security policies, results

and effects of these policies should be assessed on the long term. The gang truce, as can be

concluded, has not been assessed properly to this respect. It is the primary responsibility of

the national and local government to inform the public about the results of its policies, but it

is of paramount additional importance to indicate the proper terms on which policies should

be assessed. A call for immediate solutions corresponds with repressive policies, not with

preventive policies, hence public awareness raising to this respect is pivotal for preventive

policies to succeed.

Second, the gang truce that was brokered in March 2012, was facilitated by the

national government in a practical sense, however, no sustainable support was provided due

to the contested playing field in which the gang truce was developed. Nevertheless, the case

study of San José del Pino shows that valuable initiatives have started as a result of the gang

truce at the local level. These initiatives are of important relevancy for the government, both

at the local and the national level, to assess public security policies and to learn the results of

reinforced state-citizen relationships based on an inclusionary model. These examples are

highly relevant to be monitored, systematized and supported.

Third, with respect to current policing models, the case of San José del Pino shows

that in certain specific circumstances a lack of balance between repressive and preventive

policing may have a negative impact on the model of community policing. Interaction plays a

significant role within the principals of community policing, since both police and community

should cooperate to combat violence and strengthen citizen security. Repressive policing

may cause serious harm to carefully built trust between the police and the community. This

may generate negative implications at the individual level of residents causing fear and

distrust, at the community level disturbing the social fabric, as well as negative implications

for the policing activities and strategies at the community level.

102

Forth, in addition to the previous recommendation, it is of paramount importance

that community police bases obtain a permanent status as soon as a sustainable relationship

with the community is established. Incursive police operations, that are not related to the

community police base, have a negative impact on the trust of residents towards the police.

People start to feel afraid expressing themselves due to fear of possible repercussions of

non-state violent actors in the community. Sustained support and permanency of the

community police towards the residents is of paramount importance.

103

Epilogue

In August, the gang leadership of the main gangs in El Salvador submitted a statement

launching a new phase of the gang truce in which they reconfirm their commitment to the

content of the gang truce established in March 2012 and to the ‘violence-free municipalities’

strategy.1 They call the new government to support and facilitate the pacification process,

asking a responsible attitude from the media and political parties towards the topic of

violence, and asking detractors of the process to give peace a chance. With respect to the

police, they ask not to be criminalized for being youth, and they refer explicitly to the

community police base in San José del Pino as an ‘agent of change and support to the

community’ thus gaining trust of the community.

In September, the national government of Sanchez Cerén launched the National Council for

Citizen Security and Coexistence, conformed of the government, business sector, churches,

NGOs, municipalities, political parties, and media outlets.2 Main goal of the National Council

is to develop security policies to fight the high levels of crime, violence and insecurity. The

Attorney General Martínez, former opponent to the gang truce, as well as the UNDP and the

OAS also participate in the National Council. The issue to include the gangs in the dialogue

about security policies is not being supported by members of the Council, although initially

some members, like the UNDP, had expressed a positive stance towards inclusion of the

gangs in this national dialogue on security issues.3 Various informants that contributed to my

research, such as Mauricio Navas and Hato Hasbún, participate in this Council. Raúl Mijango,

former mediator in the gang truce, was not invited.

In October, Ricardo was arrested in a repressive police operation together with another gang

leader and several gang members from San José del Pino on accusation of extortion. The

local police chief and officials of the community police base in San José del Pino were not

involved. Community members believe that there are political motives behind this arrest,

and that unknown forces try to sabotage the pacification process. While the young gang

members were released shortly after the arrest, Ricardo and the other gang leader remain in

custody at least for four months. Both community members and representatives of NGOs

working in the reintegration and pacification programs in San José del Pino support the legal

process of both gang leaders. As a result of the arrests, the pacification process has

104

experienced serious setbacks. Community members explain that anxiety has returned, that

people are negatively affected by the repressive police operation, and that the

organizational level of the community, that was established successfully as a result of the

pacification process, has diminished. Shortly after the arrest, fear for reprisals from the gang

towards the community or police present in San José del Pino, existed, but the local police

chief learned that the local gang leadership would remain faithful to the pacification process.

The municipality of Santa Tecla continues contributing to the pacification process in San José

del Pino and San Rafael. The community police base probably will be formalized at short

term.

105

Summary

Iron fist policies based on repression did not succeed to end gang violence and to improve

citizen security in El Salvador that in 2011 ranked second on the global index of homicide

rates. As a result of a paradigm shift from repressive to preventive public security policies, a

gang truce was brokered in March 2012 facilitated by the national government of Mauricio

Funes, elected president for the FMLN in 2009. Lowering the homicide rate in El Salvador has

been the main purpose for the Funes administration to facilitate the gang truce between

the two main gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. However, in a polemic debate that

followed and that continues to date, the non-violence agreement between the gangs has

been declared to have failed, despite the promising perspectives, such as a significant

reduction of the homicide rate, shortly after the truce had been brokered. In this debate, the

effectiveness of the gang truce is mainly being assessed at the national level, based on

homicide rates as the main indicator of violence, political debates and public opinion.

However, when assessing the gang truce as a strategy to enhance citizen security based on

prevention of violence, its effectiveness should be measured at the long term and at the

local level. For this reason, the element of scale is a relevant dimension that should be

considered in the debate about the gang truce.

First, it is crucial to distinguish between the role of the state at the national and at

the local level. The national government of El Salvador, despite its facilitating role, never

openly supported the gang truce whereas local governments have committed themselves to

the implementation of the second phase of the gang truce through the ’violence-free

municipality’ strategy. Second, the inclusion of gang members in the dialogue about

pacification is heavily debated. At the national level, there is a strong tendency to exclude

gang members due to legal constraints, and to political and public opposition. At the local

level, however, gang members are included in a political and public dialogue about

pacification. Third, the issue of scale is also relevant with respect to the role of citizens in

enhancing citizen security. Public opinion in general rejects the gang truce and the inclusion

of gang members in initiatives to enhance citizen security. At the community level, however,

different stakeholders including gang members jointly implement programs to promote

security and coexistence. These are clear examples of active citizenship, one of the core

pillars of citizen security. Hence, the results of violence reduction and the improvement of

106

the social and economic dimensions of citizen security at the community level should be

included in the national debate about the gang truce.

Results in the community of San José del Pino, a suburb of Santa Tecla, for example,

show that the ‘truce dividend’ is felt by those who suffered most from gang violence. Since

the gang truce, the local authorities succeeded to gain renewed entrance to the community

that had turned into a closed shelter due to gang violence. A community police base was

established in 2012 focused on preventive policing. Moreover, a pacification process started

in 2013 based on the ‘Santa Tecla Violence-Free Municipality’ strategy in which residents,

police, local authorities, and gang members join efforts to enhance security and improve

local livelihood. As a result, delinquency rates have dropped, fear has diminished, access to

public goods is restored, economic livelihood is being improved, and the social fabric of the

community is being strengthened as well.

However, these efforts to enhance citizen security at the community level are

seriously being hampered. Some of the main obstacles are a lack of balance between

repressive and preventive policing, a lack of a proper legal framework, a lack of sustainable

funding, interference in the pacification process of political interests related to elections,

and public opinion that is reluctant to any inclusionary process of pacification. Additionally,

opponent non-state armed actors pose a serious threat to the pacification process at the

community level and to local stakeholders actively involved. These obstacles are a direct

result of a lack of strategy of the national government to concretize the shift from repressive

to preventive security policies with the gang truce as a policy instrument. Concretely, there

was no communication strategy to inform public opinion, there was no funding strategy to

sustainably support local programs that had started as a result of the gang truce, there was

no strategy to promote legal reform to enable local interventions to enhance the truce

dividend on the frontline, and there was no strategy to prevent politicization of the

pacification process.

This lack of strategies is related to the fact that the gang truce was established in a

contested playing field. First, political ownership of the ‘violent-free municipalities’ strategy

is contested at the national and the local level. Second, the gang truce has been used for

electoral and thus political purposes. Third, there is a deliberately use of violence by certain

groups in society to strengthen their position. Forth, the gang truce is in violation with

current national legislation. Fifth, public opinion is still in favor of repressive policies, and

107

finally, international – financial- support to the gang truce is contested as well.

To conclude, the gang truce is being considered to have failed; however, its

effectiveness should be assessed at the community level where joint efforts of local state

and non-state actors, including gang members, show positive results in enhancing the social

and economic dimensions of citizen security. Moreover, the effects of the gang truce should

be assessed at the long term since its local implementation is based on preventive policies.

National and local governments should play an active role in promoting a paradigm shift in

public opinion from a call for immediate solutions based on repressive policies to a longer

term assessment of preventive policies. Positive results of violence reduction and

enhancement of citizen security at the community level can be instrumental in this public

awareness raising. Furthermore, public security policies cannot be built on practical

governmental commitment, as in the case of the gang truce, but should be based on political

commitment as a primary condition for policy development. Finally, transparency and

political ownership play a pivotal role in a process to bridge democratic deficits and restore

and repair the state-citizen relationship.

108

109

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Footnotes

Chapter 2 1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),‘Global Study on Homicide 2013: Trends, Contexts, Data’, Vienna, March 2014,p.12 2 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB),’Citizen Security – Conceptual Framework and Empirical Evidence’, Discussion Paper, September 2012, p.1 3 Bobea, ‘Organized Violence, Disorganized State’, in ‘Violent Democracies in Latin America’, ed. Arias and Goldstein, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2010, p.161 4 Robert Brenneman, ‘Homies and Hermanos, God and Gangs in Central America’, Oxford University Press, New

York, 2012, p.24 5 Concha-Eastman, ‘Urban Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Dimensions, Explanations, Actions’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p.44 6 Moser, ‘Urban Violence and Insecurity: an Introductory Roadmap’, Environment and Urbanization Brief -10, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, October 2004, p.2 7 Ibid. 8 Pedraza, Miller and Cavallaro, ‘No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador’, International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), Human Rights Program Harvard Law School, 2007, p.50 9 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),‘Global Study on Homicide 2013: Trends, Contexts, Data’, Vienna, March 2014,p.15 10 Ibid. 11 http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2012/08/30/explaining-high-murder-rates-in-latin-america-its-not-drugs accessed 1 April 2014 12 Savenije and Van der Borgh, ‘Youth Gangs, Social Exclusion and the Transformation of Violence in El Salvador’, in ‘Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America’, ed. Koonings and Kruijt, London, Zed Books, 2004, p.166 13 Savenije, ‘Maras y Barras: Pandillas y Violencia Juvenil en los Barrios Marginales de Centroamérica, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), San Salvador, 2009, p.158 14 Koonings and Kruijt, ’Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in Latin America’, Zed Books, New York 15 Balán, ‘Introduction’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p.5 16 Cárdia, ‘The Impact of Exposure to Violence in São Paulo: Accepting Violence or Continuing Horror?’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p. 163 17 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.179 18 Mo Hume, ‘The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict and Community in El Salvador’, Society for Latin

American Studies, 2009, p.93 19 Concha-Eastman,’ ‘Urban Violence in Latin America and the Carribean: Dimensions, Explanations, Actions’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p.49 20 Cárdia, ‘The Impact of Exposure to Violence in São Paulo: Accepting Violence or Continuing Horror?’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p. 163 21 Putnam,‘Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community’, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000 22 Ibid 23 Presidents Francisco Flores (1999-2004) and Tony Saca (2004-2009), both from the National Republican Alliance party (ARENA), introduced a zero tolerance approach to gang violence in their mano dura (‘iron fist’) and super mano dura policies.

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24 Jutersonke, Muggah, and Rodgers, ‘Gangs and Violence Reduction in Central America’, Security Dialogue Vol.40, nos 4-5, SAGE Publications, October 2009, p.10 25 Hume, ‘Mano Dura: El Salvador Responds to Gangs’, Development in Practice 17(6): 739-751, in Jutersonke, Muggah, and Rodgers, ‘Gangs and Violence Reduction in Central America’, Security Dialogue Vol.40, nos 4-5, SAGE Publications, October 2009, p.10 26 Ibid. 27 Concha-Eastman, ‘Urban Violence in Latin America and the Carribean: Dimensions, Explanations, Actions’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p.44 28 Igarapé Institute, ‘Changes in the Neighborhood: Reviewing Citizen Security Cooperation in Latin America’, Strategic Paper 7, Rio de Janeiro, March 14, p.6. 29 Silva, ‘Epilogue: violence and the quest for order in contemporary Latin America’, in ‘Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America’, ed. Koonings and Kruijt, London, Zed Books, 2004, p.188 30 ‘Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America’, ed. Koonings and Kruijt, London, Zed Books, 2004, p.2 31 Arias, ‘Violent Democracies in Latin America’, ed. Arias and Goldstein, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2010, p.263 32 Ibid, p. 264 33 UNDP, ‘Citizen Security with a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America’, Nov. 2013, p.14 34 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.186 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ungar, ’Policing youth in Latin America’, in ‘Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective’, ed. Jones and Rodgers, Studies of the Americas, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2009, p.214 40 Ibid, p.215 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.

Chapter 3 1 Igarapé Institute, ‘Changes in the Neighborhood: Reviewing Citizen Security Cooperation in Latin America’, Strategic Paper 7, Rio de Janeiro, March 14, p.47. Examples of new forms of partnership at the city level are the so-called Bogota Manifiesto, the Cities Alliance for Citizen Security, the Latin American Forum for Urban Security and Democracy (FLASUD), and the Global Network on Safer Cities. 2 Ibid. 3 Norwegian Peace building Resource Centre (NOREF), ‘Mapping citizen security interventions in Latin America: reviewing the evidence’, October 2013, p.7. 4 Ibid. 5 Inter-American Development Bank, ‘Citizen Security: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Evidence’, September 2012, p.13. 6 UNDP, ‘Citizen Security with a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America’, Summary Regional Human Development Report 2013-2014, November 2013, p.14 7 Ibid. 8 Norwegian Peace building Resource Centre (NOREF), ‘Mapping citizen security interventions in Latin America: reviewing the evidence’, October 2013, p.7. 9 Foro de Consulta Ciudadana Enero – Mayo de 2014, Policia Nacional Civil, Delegación La Libertad Centro,

Subdelegación Santa Tecla, Santa Tecla, 15 June 2014 10 http://www.santatecladigital.gob.sv, accessed 20 October 2014. 11 ‘Santa Tecla: Experiencias Exitosas en Materia de Convivencia y Seguridad Ciudadana’, Consultores para el Desarrollo Integral S.A. de C.V., 2010, p.5 12 http://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities/cities , accessed 20 October 2014.

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13 Ibid. 14 http://www.santatecladigital.gob.sv, accessed 20 October 2014. Ortíz was Mayor of Santa Tecla from 2000 till October 2013. In March 2014 Ortíz was elected Vice-President of the Republic of El Salvador. 15 Iglesias, Carlos B., ‘What have we accomplished? Public Policies to Address the Increase in Violent Crime in

Latin America’, Executive Summary, Woodrow Wilson Center, Latin American Program, Washington, November 2012, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/QueHemosHecho_ExecSummary_English.pdf, accessed 20 October 2014. 16 Interview with Isabel Calderon, Santa Tecla, 29 May 2014. Santa Tecla suffered two earthquakes, in January and February 2001 respectively. 17 http://www.santatecladigital.gob.sv/body/doc/document/POLITICADESEGURIDADOKbaja.pdf , accessed 20 October 2014. 18 The World Health Organization (WHO) considers a country to be facing an epidemic of violence when the homicide rate exceeds 10 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. 19 Interview with Eduardo de la O, Santa Tecla, 13 May 2014. Oscar Ortiz was Mayor of Santa Tecla for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) party. 20 Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), ‘Tackling Urban Violence in Latin America: Reversing Exclusion through Smart Policing and Social Investment’, Washington, June 2011, p.14. 21 http://www.americasquarterly-digital.org/americasquarterly/winter_2014?pg=115#pg115 , accessed 5 November 2014 22 Ibid. 23 The “Interinstitutional Council for the Prevention of Violence” is comprised of 18 members: the mayor of

Santa Tecla, two citizen council members, the Attorney General (FGR), the National Ombudsman (PGR), the Ombudsman for Human Rights (PDDH), the Institute for Legal Medicine (IML), the National Civil Police (PNC), the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), the Body of Municipal Agents of Santa Tecla (CAM), SIBASI-Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MSPAS), the Ministry of Education (MINED), the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (ISSS), the Vice Minister of Transportation (VMT), the Salvadoran Red Cross, the Association of Tecleños and Tecleñas of Heart and 3 citizens. Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), ‘Tackling Urban Violence in Latin America: Reversing Exclusion through Smart Policing and Social Investment’, Washington, June 2011, p.19. 24 http://www.santatecladigital.gob.sv, accessed 20 October 2014. 25 Ibid. 26 Key objective of situational prevention is reducing opportunities for criminal and violent behavior stemming from environmental factors. ‘Citizen Security: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Evidence’, Inter-American Development Bank, Institutions for Development, Discussion Paper, September 2012, p.2 27 Activities to improve ‘coexistence’ among citizens (convivencia cuidadana) seek to increase voluntary compliance with the law based on cultural and moral motivations. ‘Citizen Security: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Evidence’, Inter-American Development Bank, Institutions for Development, Discussion Paper, September 2012, p.7. 28 Hot spots can be defined as places and situations in which very high volumes of moderately harmful crimes are concentrated. ‘Citizen Security: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Evidence’, Inter-American Development Bank, Institutions for Development, Discussion Paper, September 2012, p.27 29Every three years there are municipal elections. 30 Presidents Francisco Flores (1999-2004) and Tony Saca (2004-2009), both from the National Republican Alliance party (ARENA), introduced a zero tolerance approach to gang violence in their mano dura (‘iron fist’) and super mano dura policies. 31See the report of Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP-UCA), ‘La Situación de la Seguridad y la Justicia 2009-2014: entre expectativas de cambio, mano dura militar y treguas pandilleras’, September 2014 32 Iglesias, Carlos B., ‘What have we accomplished? Public Policies to Address the Increase in Violent Crime in Latin America’, Executive Summary, Woodrow Wilson Center, Latin American Program, Washington, November 2012, p. 17, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/QueHemosHecho_ExecSummary_English.pdf, accessed 20 October 2014. 33 Ibid, p.17 34 Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), ‘Tackling Urban Violence in Latin America: Reversing Exclusion through Smart Policing and Social Investment’, Washington, June 2011, p.15 35 According to the Woodrow Wilson Center, ‘the dynamic of political competition between parties in power and the opposition, above all (but not exclusively) in contexts of deep polarization where consensus is elusive, has become an enormous obstacle to defining consistent policies that can be sustained over time’. Iglesias,

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Carlos B., ‘What have we accomplished? Public Policies to Address the Increase in Violent Crime in Latin America’, Executive Summary, Woodrow Wilson Center, Latin American Program, Washington, November 2012, p. 27, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/QueHemosHecho_ExecSummary_English.pdf, accessed 20 October 2014. 36 See for example http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2014/04/16/detallaran-integracion-de-concejos-plurales-2015 , accessed 5 November 2014, and http://www.contrapunto.com.sv/cpnacionales/nacionales/politica/como-funcionaran-los-concejos-plurales, accessed 5 November 2014. 37 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.10. Percentages of violence that correspond to gangs, vary a lot and are a constantly disputed variable in the public debate about gang violence and public security policies. According to Mijango, at least 70% of the violence in El Salvador can be attributed to gangs, and the remaining 30% can be subdivided to common violence, organized crime, drug trafficking, and state violence. Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.17. 38 ‘Politica Municipal de Convivencia y Seguridad Ciudadana de Santa Tecla’, Municipality of Santa Tecla, 2011, p.8. Homicides dropped from 66.44 homicides per 100.000 inhabitants in 2005 to 20.5 per 100.000 inhabitants in 2010. The national homicide rate in 2010 was 70.0 homicides per 100.000 inhabitants. 39 Interview with Miguel Angel Delgado Juarez, Chief of Operations of the National Civil Police of the La Libertad Center Delegation, Santa Tecla, 29 May 2014. 40 Interview with Mara Salvatrucha gang leader Ricardo from San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 19 June 2014. For safety reasons, all names of residents of San José del Pino, including gang members and gang leaders, who have contributed to my research, have been changed. Real names are known by the author. Ciudad Merliot belongs to the Municipality of Santa Tecla. 41 This information is based on an interview with a source that for safety reasons remains anonymous. 42 I have not been able to verify the extrajudicial killing of Barrio 18 members in Santa Tecla, as referred to by this particular source. The archive of the Human Rights Office of the Archbishop of San Salvador (‘Tutela Legal’) was not accesible due to the fact that its office was abruptly closed on 30 September 2013, see: http://www.wola.org/highlight/contrapunto_article_archbishop_closed_tutela_legal_to_please_the_wealthy, accessed 26 October 2014. Relevant report on extrajudicial killings in El Salvador, is ‘Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales de Jovenes Estigmatizados en Centroamérica: Estudio de Situación de Guatemala, El Salvador y Honduras 2009’, Programa de Seguridad Juvenil, Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales de Guatemala, y Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho, Guatemala, July 2011. See also reports mentioned in footnote 33 and 34. 43 ‘Youth Gangs in Central America: Issues in Human Rights, Effective Policing, and Prevention’, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Washington, November 2006, p.18 44 ‘No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador’, International Human Rights Clinic

(IHRC), Human Rights Program Harvard Law School, 2007, p.16 http://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Citizen%20Security/past/Harvard_Gangs_NoPlaceToHide.pdf 45 Ibid. 46 http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/5566-gang-violence-el-salvador-sparked-death-squad-revival?highlight=WyJzb21icmEiLCJuZWdyYSIsIm5lZ3JhJyIsInNvbWJyYSBuZWdyYSJd , accessed 26 of October 2014 47 Ibid. See also http://www.elsalvador.com/mediacenter/play_video.aspx?idr=15232 , accessed 6 November 2014. 48 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.14 49 Umaña, Arévalo de León, and Táger, ‘El Salvador, Negotiating with Gangs’, ‘Legitimacy and Peace Processes:

from coercion to consent’, Conciliation Resources, 2014, http://www.c-r.org/accord-article/el-salvador-negotiating-gangs, accessed 27 October 2014, p.98 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Interview with Raúl Mijango, San Salvador, 30 July 2014 53 The Fundación Humanitaria was established in January 2013 ‘to seek support for the truce within civil society and encourage the direct involvement of the private sector and international actors in violence prevention projects’. Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.14

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54 ‘Follow-up on the regional strategy to promote hemispheric cooperation in dealing with criminal gangs’, Permanent Council of the Organization of American States, March 2013 https://www.google.nl/search?q=oas+follow+up+on+the+regional+strategy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:nl:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&gfe_rd=cr&ei=t3ZPVL20EdOXhQex2IGoAQ, accessed 27 October 2014. 55 Ibid. 56 Interview through Skype with Adam Blackwell, San Salvador, 7 August 2014 57 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.82. Toronto, Canada, is an example of a sanctuary city, see http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2014/06/10/toronto_forges_ahead_with_sanctuary_city_plan.html, accessed 5 November 2014 58 http://www.lapagina.com.sv/nacionales/76965/2013/01/24/Santa-Tecla-es-declarado-municipio-libre-de-violencia , accessed 28 October 2014. 59 Interview with Mara Salvatrucha gang leader Ricardo from San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 19 June 2014. For safety reasons, all names of residents of San José del Pino, including gang members and gang leaders, who have contributed to my research, have been changed. Real names are known by the author. 60 ‘Follow-up on the regional strategy to promote hemispheric cooperation in dealing with criminal gangs’, Permanent Council of the Organization of American States, March 2013 https://www.google.nl/search?q=oas+follow+up+on+the+regional+strategy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:nl:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&gfe_rd=cr&ei=t3ZPVL20EdOXhQex2IGoAQ, accessed 27 October 2014. 61 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.83 62 Interview with Isabel Calderon, Santa Tecla, 29 May 2014. 63 ‘Memoria de Labores 2013’, Municipality of Santa Tecla, 2014, p.26. The Coexistence and Security Department invested 800,000 dollar within the concept of ‘Violence-Free Municipalities’. It is not specified in the annual report whether these sources originate from the local government, national government and/or international donor organizations. 64 Interview with Isabel Calderon, Santa Tecla, 29 May 2014. 65 Interview with Raúl Mijango, San Salvador, 30 July 2014. 66 Interview with Ana Glenda Tager, San Salvador, 30 July 2014. 67 Interview with Francisco Valencia, San Salvador, 20 May 2014. 68 Interview with Edgardo Amaya (on personal title), San Salvador, 19 May 2014. 69 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.14 70 Interview with Francisco Valencia, San Salvador, 20 May 2014. 71 Ibid. 72 Interview with Edgardo Amaya (on personal title), San Salvador, 19 May 2014. 73 This information is based on an interview with a source that for safety reasons remains anonymous. 74 Interview with Isabel Calderon, Santa Tecla, 29 May 2014. 75 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.5 76 Interview through Skype with Adam Blackwell, San Salvador, 7 August 2014 77 Interview with Isabel Calderon, Santa Tecla, 29 May 2014. 78 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.5 79 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.15 80 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.5. See also http://www.democracyinamericas.org/en-espanol/el-salvador-informe-mensual-julio-del-2013/ accessed 30 October 2014 81 Interview with Miguel Angel Delgado Juarez, Chief of Operations of the National Civil Police of the La Libertad Center Delegation, Santa Tecla, 29 May 2014. 82 Interview with Oscar Ibarra, Santa Tecla, 13 May 2014. 83 Linda Garrett, ‘The First year: A Chronology of the Gang Truce and Peace Process in El Salvador’, Centre for Democracy in the Americas, http://www.democracyinamericas.org/ , accessed 19 October 2014. 84 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.83 85 ‘Memoria de Labores 2013’, Municipality of Santa Tecla, 2014, p.26. The Coexistence and Security Department invested 800,000 dollar within the concept of ‘Violence-Free Municipalities’. It is not specified in

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the annual report whether these sources originate from the local government, national government and/or international donor organizations. 86 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.14 87 Interview with Mauricio Navas Guzman, San Salvador, 16 May 2014 88 Interview with Jeannette Aguilar, San Salvador, 27 June 2014.

Chapter 4 1 UNDP, ‘Citizen Security with a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America’, Summary Regional Human Development Report 2013-2014, November 2013, p.14 2 Ibid, p.16 3 Interview with Mara Salvatrucha gang leader Ricardo from San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 19 June 2014. For safety reasons, all names of residents of San José del Pino, including gang members and gang leaders, who have contributed to my research, have been changed or otherwise remain anonymous. Real names are known by the author. 4 Interpeace, ‘Santa Tecla: a fertile ground to reduce violence’, Guatemala, 2014, p.6. 5 Mo Hume, ‘The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict and Community in El Salvador’, Society for Latin American Studies, 2009, p.5 6 Jenny Pearce, ‘From Civil War to ‘Civil Society’: Has the End of the Cold War Brought Peace to Central America?’, International Affairs 74 (3) p.589. http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/International%20Affairs/Blanket%20File%20Import/inta036.pdf 7 Interpeace, ‘Santa Tecla: a fertile ground to reduce violence’, Guatemala, 2014, p.8. 8 Information based on an interview with the local police chief of the community police base in San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 6 June 2014. 9 Interpeace, ‘Santa Tecla: a fertile ground to reduce violence’, Guatemala, 2014, p.7 10 Interview with a community member of San Rafael. Asociación de Desarrollo Comunitario (Adesco) is a neighborhood governing council. Both in San José del Pino and San Rafael, an Adseco was established in the beginning of 2013, in close coordination with the municipality. Formal representation of the communities was required for the implementation of development projects that started in the same year. 11 Interview with an officer of the National Civil Police who formerly lived in San José del Pino. For safety reasons, he asked to remain anonymous. 12 Interview with Mara Salvatrucha gang leader Ricardo from San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 19 June 2014. 13 Robert Brenneman, ‘Homies and Hermanos, God and Gangs in Central America’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012, p.27. 14 Interview with Mara Salvatrucha gang leader Ricardo from San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 19 June 2014. A machete is a large heavy knife used especially in Latin-American countries in cutting sugarcane and clearing

underbrush, and as a weapon. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/machete 15 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, The Oslo Forum Papers, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.8 16 Savenije and Van der Borgh, ‘Youth Gangs, Social Exclusion and the Transformation of Violence in El Salvador’, in ‘Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America’, ed. Koonings and Kruijt, London, Zed Books, 2004, p.159 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 http://worldjusticeproject.org/factors/order-and-security , accessed 14 November 2014. El Salvador ranks 64 out of 99 countries globally assessed by the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2014. The World Justice Project Rule of Law measures how the rule of law is experienced in everyday life in 99 countries around the globe, based on over 100,000 household and 2,400 expert surveys worldwide. Adherence to the rule of law is assessed using 47 indicators organized around eight themes: constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice.

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21 Official police document ‘Exposición de trabajo comunitario de la colonia San José del Pino’, National Civil Police, San José del Pino, 2013 22 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. For safety reasons, all names of residents of San José del Pino, including gang members and gang leaders, who have contributed to my research, have been changed or otherwise remain anonymous. Real names are known by the author. 23 Interview with an officer of the National Civil Police who formerly lived in San José del Pino. For safety reasons, he asked to remain anonymous. 24 Interpeace, ‘Santa Tecla: a fertile ground to reduce violence’, Guatemala, 2014, p.9. 25 Information based on an interview with the local police chief of the community police base in San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 6 June 2014. Despite structural absence of the Barrio 18 in Santa Tecla, as explained in Chapter 3, I heard various stories, both from ordinary citizens as well as from the gang leadership of the Mara Salvatrucha, of provocative presence or actions supposedly from the Barrio 18 in San José del Pino and San Rafael. 26 Ibid. A casa comunal is a community centre with a public service for the neighborhood. 27 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. 28 The FMLN government of President Sanchez Ceren, that came to power as a result of elections in March 2014 and was sworn on 1 June 2014, promotes community policing as one of its main public security pillars. As of August 2014, community policing was launched nationally. See http://www.presidencia.gob.sv/la-policia-comunitaria-comienza-su-expansion-a-la-zona-sur-de-san-salvador/, accessed 14 November 2014. For an overview of experiences with community policing in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, see the evaluation report published in 2014 by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) http://ciprevica.org/download/documentos_de_interés/ Sistematización_buenas experiencias_PC(8).pdf , accessed 19 November 2014 29 Interview with Mara Salvatrucha gang leader Ricardo from San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 19 June 2014. 30 Mark Ungar, ‘Policing Democracy: Overcoming Obstacles to Citizen Security in Latin America’, Woodrow Wilosn Center Press, Washington D.C, 2011 31 In an informal conversation, the local police chief explains to me how the policy of community policing is being operationalized: after a first repressive action to take control over the territory, an important next step is to convince the citizens of the working policies of the community police; then a situational-, social-, and socio-communitary needs assessment is conducted in close coordination with all sectors of the community, to be translated consequently in programs with different institutions; and finally, evaluations and accountability are important aspects of the community policing policy as well. Regarding the latter, I have shown in Chapter 3 how accountability is being implemented in specific meetings between police officials and representatives of the community. Finally, as the police chief emphasized, ‘this is how community policing works, but you have to know how to apply it’. 32 Interview with the local police chief of the community police base in San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 6 June 2014. 33 United States Agency for International Development (USAID). 34 Interview with a pastor in San José del Pino, 6 June 2014. 35 Official police document: ‘Tabla de Incidencia Delictiva y Acciones Tomadas, Diagnostico Final de la Colonia San José del Pino y Comunidad San Rafael’, Policia Nacional Civil, Subdelegación Santa Tecla, May 2013. 36 Interpeace, ‘Santa Tecla: a fertile ground to reduce violence’, Guatemala, 2014, p.11 37http://www.sv.undp.org/content/el_salvador/es/home/operations/projects/democratic_governance/insercion-socieconomica-de-jovenes/, accessed 16 November 2014. See also

http://crs.org/countries/el-salvador, accessed 16 November 2014. CRS promotes peace building in El

Salvador through its youth violence prevention programs. CRS and their local partners are helping marginalized youth more positively participate in civic and economic life in El Salvador through skill-building workshops and community service programs, which seek to build trust and reconciliation between youth and their communities. 38 ‘Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America’, ed. Koonings and Kruijt, London, Zed Books, 2004, p.2 39 Interpeace, ‘Santa Tecla: a fertile ground to reduce violence’, Guatemala, 2014, p.7. 40 Interview with the sub-director of the public school in San José del Pino, 10 June 2014. According to the National Civil Police in July 2014, four teachers had died in 2014 due to gang violence. See: http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2014/07/27/docentes-sin-proteccion-ante-acoso-de-pandilleros, accessed 21 November 2014.

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41 Interview with Sofia, a victim of gang violence in San José del Pino, June 2014. For safety reasons, all names of residents of San José del Pino, including gang members and gang leaders, who have contributed to my research, have been changed or otherwise remain anonymous. Real names are known by the author. Café listo is instant coffee. 42 The source of this information is known by the author. 43 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.6 44 Lucía Dammert, ‘Fear and Crime in Latin America: Redefining State-Society Relations’, Routledge, New York, 2012, p.36 45 Ibid. 46 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. 47 Ibid. 48 Savenije and Van der Borgh, ‘Youth Gangs, Social Exclusion and the Transformation of Violence in El Salvador’, in ‘Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America’, ed. Koonings and Kruijt, London, Zed Books, 2004, p.169 49 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.179 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. Policia comunitaria is community police. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Savenije and Van der Borgh, ‘Youth Gangs, Social Exclusion and the Transformation of Violence in El Salvador’, in ‘Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America’, ed. Koonings and Kruijt, London, Zed Books, 2004, p.169 58 Ana María Sanjuán, ‘Democracy, Citizenship, and Violence in Venezuela’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p. 89 59 Moser and McIlwaine refer to ‘area stigma’ in the case of communities that are invariably associated with crime, organized violence and drug consumption. Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.163 60 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. 61 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004,p.17 62 Berkman, ‘Social Exclusion and Violence in Latin America and the Carribean’, Working Paper 613, Research Department, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington D.C, 2007 63 Interview with the sub-director of the public school in San José del Pino, 10 June 2014 64 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Concha-Eastman, ‘Urban Violence in Latin America and the Carribean: Dimensions, Explanations, Actions’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p.49 68 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.156 69 Bain, K. and Hicks, N., ‘Building social capital and reaching out to excluded groups: The challenge of partnerships’, Paper presented at CELAM meeting on The Struggle Against Poverty Towards the Turn of the Millenium, Washington D.C, 1998 70 As also referred to by Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.160 71 Mo Hume, ‘The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict and Community in El Salvador’, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, 2009, p.93 72 As also referred to by Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.162 73 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. 74 Micolta, ‘Illicit interest groups, social capital and conflict: a study of the FARC’, in ‘Social Capital and Peace-Building: Creating and resolving conflict with trust and social networks’, ed. Cox, Routledge, Oxon, 2009, p.76

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75 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.163 76 Cárdia, ‘The Impact of Exposure to Violence in São Paulo: Accepting Violence or Continuing Horror?’, in ‘Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America’, ed. Rotker, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2002, p. 163 77 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.19 78 Interview with a community member of San José del Pino. 79 Interview with a community member of San Rafael. There is no direct linkage between the gang truce and the release of the gang leader, he officially had accomplished his prison sentence just before the gang truce was established. 80 Interview with the sub-director of the public school in San José del Pino, 10 June 2014 81 Putnam, ‘Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community’, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000 , p.22 82 Interview with a community member of San Rafael. 83 Putnam, ‘Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community’, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000 , p.22 84 Moser and McIlwaine, ‘Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala’, Routledge, New York, 2004, p.156 85 Interview with a female entrepreneur in San José del Pino. Pupusas are a traditional dish from El Salvador. Pupusas are corn tortillas with a filling - usually cheese (pupusas de queso), beans, and/or Salvadoran-style chicharrón (finely ground pork). http://southamericanfood.about.com/od/snacksstreetfood/r/Pupusas-Stuffed-Corn-Tortillas-How-To-Make-Pupusas.htm , accessed 19 November 2014 86 Fieldwork notes of the author. A Carnaval Gastronómico is a culinary festival, in this case organized by the neighborhood committee Cupad to promote coexistence in the community. 87 ‘ver, oir y callar’: see, hear and keep quiet 88 Information based on an interview with the local police chief of the community police base in San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 6 June 2014.

Chapter 5 1 Igarapé Institute, ‘Changes in the Neighborhood: Reviewing Citizen Security Cooperation in Latin America’, Strategic Paper 7, March 14, p.6 2 Ibid, p.4 3 UNDP, ‘Citizen Security with a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America’, November 2013, p.V 4 The World Health Organization (WHO) considers a country to be facing an epidemic of violence when the homicide rate exceeds 10 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. 5 Umaña, Arévalo de León, and Táger, ‘El Salvador, Negotiating with Gangs’, ‘Legitimacy and Peace Processes:

from coercion to consent’, Conciliation Resources, 2014, http://www.c-r.org/accord-article/el-salvador-negotiating-gangs, accessed 27 October 2014, p.95 6 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.2. 7 Interview through skype with Adam Blackwell, San Salvador, 7 August 2014 8 Ibid. With maras Blackwell refers to pandillas, gangs. 9 Ibid. 10 Formal document provided by Adam Blackwell, ‘Acuerdo entre la Secretaría General de la Organización de Los Estados Americanos y el Gobierno de la República de El Salvador relativo a la cooperación y el establecimiento de la Misión de Asistencia a la Seguridad’: ‘Apoyar al Gobierno en el desarrollo y ejecucion de propuestas de solucion inmediatas y estructurales, derivadas de sus estrategias y planes de seguridad vinculados al proceso de pacificacion social como consecuencia de la tregua entre pandillas. El apoyo de la SG/OEA tendra la forma de asistencia tecnica y financiera, conforme a los acuerdos especificos que suscriban las partes, los que estaran sujetos a lo dispuesto en el presente Acuerdo’. 11 Ibid.

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12 Washington Offcie on Latin America, ‘One Year into the Gang Truce in El Salvador’, 26 April 2013, http://www.wola.org/commentary/one_year_into_the_gang_truce_in_el_salvador, accessed 22 November 2014 13 Umaña, Arévalo de León, and Táger, ‘El Salvador, Negotiating with Gangs’, ‘Legitimacy and Peace Processes:

from coercion to consent’, Conciliation Resources, 2014, http://www.c-r.org/accord-article/el-salvador-negotiating-gangs, accessed 27 October 2014, p.95. According to this article, extortions were not included in the agreement, but according to Raúl Mijango, as mentioned in his publication, extortions were included in the second phase of the gang truce when the ‘violence-free municipalities’ were established. See Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.83 14 Umaña, Arévalo de León, and Táger, ‘El Salvador, Negotiating with Gangs’, ‘Legitimacy and Peace Processes: from coercion to consent’, Conciliation Resources, 2014, http://www.c-r.org/accord-article/el-salvador-negotiating-gangs, accessed 27 October 2014, p.95. 15 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.104. The Committee was conformed of the Minister of Justice Munguia Payés, the mediators of the gang truce Raúl Mijango and Monsignor Colindres, representatives of the Fundación Humanitaria, and a representative of the OAS, Blackwell or a delegate. 16 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.105 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Insight Crime, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/exit-of-el-salvador-security-minister-puts-gang-truce-at-risk, accessed 23 November 2014. InSight Crime is a foundation dedicated to the study of ‘the principal threat to national and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean: organized crime’. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 El Faro, http://www.elfaro.net/es/201305/noticias/12204/Director-del-OIE-pasa-a-conducir-el-Ministerio-

de-Seguridad-y-el-de-Migraci%C3%B3n-a-dirigir-la-PNC.htm 24 El Faro, http://www.elfaro.net/es/201405/noticias/15338/, accessed 24 November 2014 25 Center for Democracy in the Americas, ‘The First Year: a Chronology of the Gang Truce and Peace Process In El Salvador’, June 2013, p.4 26 Interview through skype with Adam Blackwell, San Salvador, 7 August 2014 27 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014 28 Pollo Campero is an original Guatemalan chicken restaurant that, spreading across the continent, turned into ‘Latin pride’ www.campero.com 29 Interview with Raúl Mijango, San Salvador, 30 July 2014 30 Ibid. 31 Oscar Martínez, Carlos Martínez, Sergio Arauz and Efren Lemus, ‘Gobierno negoció con pandillas reducción de homicidios’, El Faro, 14 March, 2012 32 Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP-UCA), ‘La Situación de la Seguridad y la Justicia 2009-2014: entre expectativas de cambio, mano dura militar y treguas pandilleras’, September 2014, p. 157 http://www.uca.edu.sv/iudop/wp-content/uploads/libro_la_situaci%C3%B3n_de_la_seguridad.pdf, accessed 28 October 2014 33Ibid, p. 160 34 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014. ARENA is a right-wing political party in El Salvador. 35 Interview with Maria Silvia Guillen, San Salvador, 22 May 2014. Maria Silvia Guillen is director of the Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho (FESPAD). http://www.fespad.org.sv/ 36 Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP-UCA), ‘La Situación de la Seguridad y la Justicia 2009-2014: entre expectativas de cambio, mano dura militar y treguas pandilleras’, September 2014, p. 157, footnote 12. 37 Interview with Raúl Mijango, San Salvador, 30 July 2014 38 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013 39 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014 40 Ibid, p.159

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41 http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2014/01/31/padece-extorsion-el-79---de-micro-y-pequenas-empresas, accessed 16 October, 2014. The official currency in El Salvador is American dollars. 42 Field notes 43 Interview with Mauricio Navas Guzman, San Salvador, 16 May 2014. Mauricio Navas Guzman is General Pastor of the Iglesia del Camino. 44 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013,

p.22. According to Raúl Mijango, as mentioned in his publication, extortions were included in the second phase of the gang truce when the ‘violence-free municipalities’ were established. See Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013, p.83 45 Interview with Maria Silvia Guillen, San Salvador, 22 May 2014. 46 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014. See also: http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/el-salvador-blocks-cellphones-prisons-attempt-cut-extortion 47 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.9. 48 Steven Dudley, ‘The El Salvador Gang Truce and the Church: What was the Role of the Catholic Church?’, Center for Latina American and Latino Studies, Washington DC, 5 May 2013, p.27 http://www.american.edu/clals/upload/clals_white_paper_series_no-_1_the_el_salvador_gang_truce_and_the_church.pdf, accessed 28 October 2014 49 Ibid. 50 Instituto Universitario de Opinion Pública, ‘Los salvadoreños y salvadoreñas evalúan el cuarto año del gobierno de Mauricio Funes’, Boletín de Prensa, 1, p.4 51 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.3 52 http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/el-salvador-government-responsibility-gang-truce, accessed 16 October, 2014. 53 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.3. 54 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013,p.118 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid, p.119 57 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014. Unfortunately, I have not been able to arrange an interview with Oscar Ortiz, because he was sworn in as Vice-President of the Republic of San Salavador on 1 June 2014. 58 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014 59 Ibid. 60 Raúl Mijango, ‘Tregua entre Pandillas y/o Proceso de Paz en El Salvador’, San Salvador, September 2013,p.118 61 Ibid. 62 Interview with Edgardo Amaya (on personal title), San Salvador, 19 May 2014. 63 UNDP, ‘Citizen Security with a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America’, November 2013, p.14 64 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.3. 65 Ibid. 66 Interview with Jeannette Aguilar, San Salvador, 27 June 2014. 67 Interview with Raúl Mijango, San Salvador, 30 July 2014 68 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014 69 Ibid. 70 Interview with Maria Silvia Guillen, San Salvador, 22 May 2014 71 Interview with Mara Salvatrucha gang leader Ricardo from San José del Pino, San José del Pino, 19 June 2014. For safety reasons, all names of residents of San José del Pino, including gang members and gang leaders, who have contributed to my research, have been changed or otherwise remain anonymous. Real names are known by the author. 72 Interview with Mauricio Navas Guzman, San Salvador, 16 May 2014 73 Washington Office on Latin America, ‘One Year into the Gang Truce in El Salvador’, 26 April 2013, http://www.wola.org/commentary/one_year_into_the_gang_truce_in_el_salvador, accessed 22 November 2014 74 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.5.

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75 Ibid. However, as the same report states, the political disagreements and the upcoming elections have hampered the institutionalization of the process and limited the role of the Technical Committee so far. 76 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.10. 77 Interview with Edgardo Amaya (on personal title), San Salvador, 19 May 2014. 78 Ibid. 79 Interview through skype with Adam Blackwell, 7 August, 2014 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Rodríguez, also known as Padre Toño, is former Director of the Servicio Social Pasionista (SSP), a religious organization that works on violence prevention and rehabilitation of gang members. In May 2014, ex-minister of Security and Justice Perdomo appointed Rodríguez as mediator and coordinator of a new pacification process Perdomo started one month before the end of the Funes administration on 1 June 2014. However, Rodríguez was arrested on 29 July 2014 by the Salvadoran authorities accused of smuggling mobile phones to imprisoned gang members, and of being related directly to one of the maximum imprisoned leaders of the Barrio 18. In the beginning of September 2014, Rodríguez returned to his country of origin Spain, after a confession of the formal accusations of the Salvadoran authorities. http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/07/30/actualidad/1406748913_025708.html , accessed 26 October 2014, http://www.contrapunto.com.sv/sociedad/violencia/padre-tono-detenido-por-introduccion-de-ilicitos-a-penales, accessed 26 October 2014, http://es.insightcrime.org/analisis/gobierno-desmantela-tregua-y-homicidios-alcanzan-30-en-un-dia , accessed 26 October 2014, http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2014/09/08/padre-too-regreso-a-espaa-tras-condena, accessed 26 October 2014. 83 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.5. 84 Insight Crime, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/el-salvador-gang-truce-illegal, accessed 16 October, 2014. 85 El Faro, http://www.elfaro.net/es/201303/noticias/11225/, accessed 17 October 2014 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Interview with Hato Hasbún, San Salvador, 12 August 2014 90 This percentage is from 2011, according Insight Crime. Insight Crime, ‘El Salvador’s Gang truce: Positives and Negatives’, 2013, p.15. According Gino Costa, in 2008, El Salvador had the worst overcrowding in Latin America of 132 percent. Gino Costa, ‘Citizen Security in Latin America’, Latin America Working Group, Inter-American Dialogue, Washington DC, February 2012, p.8. 91 Formal document provided by Adam Blackwell, ‘Acuerdo entre la Secretaría General de la Organización de Los Estados Americanos y el Gobierno de la República de El Salvador relativo a la cooperación y el establecimiento de la Misión de Asistencia a la Seguridad’. 92 Umaña, Arévalo de León, and Táger, ‘El Salvador, Negotiating with Gangs’, ‘Legitimacy and Peace Processes: from coercion to consent’, Conciliation Resources, 2014, http://www.c-r.org/accord-article/el-salvador-negotiating-gangs, accessed 27 October 2014, p.98. The Fundación Humanitaria is the Humanitarian Foundation. 93 Peeters, Schulting and Briscoe, Clingendael Institute, CRU Policy Brief No. 27, November 2013, p.3. 94 Ibid, p.6. According Clingendael, ‘as a first measure € 1 million was granted in 2012 from the EU Peace building Partnership to finance several projects in the field of prevention and reintegration. Secondly, for 2013 another € 750.000 was set aside for proposals aimed at reducing gender-based violence’. 95 Insight Crime, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/2-divergent-views-on-el-salvador-gang-truce-1-sad-conclusion , accessed 24 November 2014 96 Interview with Ana Glenda Tager, San Salvador, 30 July 2014, p.13 97 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.13 98 Ibid. 99 Interview with Francisco Valencia, Director of the newspaper Diario CoLatino, San Salvador, 20 May 2014. 100 Teresa Whitfield, ‘Mediating Criminal Violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva, June 2013, p.14

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Epilogue 1 Comunicado Pandillas 28 de Agosto 2014 2 http://www.contrapunto.com.sv/reportajes/nuevo-consejo-de-seguridad-entre-la-esperanza-y-el-escepticismo 3 http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2014/11/04/dialogo-con-pandillas-sin-eco-en-consejo, and

http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2014/10/06/hay-que-analizar-el-dialogo-con-victimarios