By: Staff Writer
December 12, 2023
An Insight Crime investigative report details how El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has “crippled” the notorious gang culture in that country despite critics of his tactics.
In late March 2022, the government of El Salvador launched one of the most ferocious security crackdowns ever seen in Central America, shifting hard-line security measures into overdrive in an attempt to wipe out the country’s main street gangs — the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and the two factions of the 18th Street, or Barrio 18. Dubbed a “war on gangs” by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele,1 the crackdown was the latest in a string of government campaigns aimed at mitigating gang-related crime and violence, a goal that had eluded Salvadoran administrations for decades.
Notwithstanding the human rights “abuses,” the report noted of Bukele’s hard line and harsh crackdown, “the controversial crackdown appears to have at least temporarily crippled the gangs. It has also helped drive violence to historic lows and given breathing space to communities previously overrun by the gangs, something no past crackdown has achieved.”
It added: “The gangs have been neutralized, for now. The speed and scale of arrests made during the state of emergency have decimated gang ranks and sent scores of members fleeing abroad or into hiding in El Salvador. The gangs no longer possess a street-level structure capable of holding territory. By extension, they can no longer extort locals or sell drugs on a mass scale.”
The gangs were caught off guard and could not mount an offensive against Bukele’s policies unlike in he past, due to the fact of Bukele’s swift action and resoluteness to root them out. The remainder are now lying low, forced into hiding as thousands of them fill El Salvador’s prisons
“Imprisoned gang members are in survival mode. Reports from inside El Salvador’s prisons suggest government forces exercise near total control behind bars. Prison officials have reportedly subjected detainees to physical and psychological abuse. Gangs have almost no contact with the outside world and struggle to communicate between cells. The extreme subjugation has so far prevented the gangs from capitalizing on severe overcrowding to consolidate and recruit new members behind bars or reorganize their structures and modus operandi, as they have done in the past.”
The report cautioned, however: “The gangs have been weakened, but they are not defeated. At least a third of gang membership remains at large, and some 53 gang cells are still active in El Salvador, according to police estimates. This suggests MS13 and Barrio 18 structures, though dormant, still exist in some form. Remnants of the gangs may also still be engaging in extortion or drug peddling in some areas, albeit on a much smaller scale.
“The gangs, as they existed before the state of emergency, may never return. Barring a radical shift in government security policy, the chance of a swift comeback seems remote, given the legal tools at the government’s disposal for arresting gang members and keeping them behind bars. But social and economic hardship, which fuelled the gang’s rise and persists in neighbourhoods once overrun by the MS13 and Barrio 18, could drive remnants of these groups back into criminal activity or spawn new criminal groups. The government does not seem to have any plan to address the root causes of gang violence.