The state of emergency allows Bukele’s government to carry out a major incursion into the country that is raising suspicions among civilian organizations and overcrowding prisons
The major raid that the government of Nayib Bukele has been conducting in El Salvador for four months has led to the arrest of 49,000 suspected gang members. An extraordinary figure for a country of only 6.5 million inhabitants, but which does not seem so high compared to the number of acts of violence – about a hundred murders a month – and of criminals associated with the gangs: more than 100,000, the majority of whom belongs to the Mara Salvatruchas and another high percentage to Barrio 18, the two major criminal groups born in the 1980s in the heat of the Civil War and the exodus of thousands of refugees to the United States.
The number of detainees has been offered by the Minister of Justice and Security, Gustavo Villatoro. The presumption of guilt in a large number of arrests seems more than justified if one considers the statements of the Ombudsman for the Defense of Human Rights and civil society organisations. They affirm that the cloak of darkness being thrown over this crusade against violence hides arbitrary arrests, abuses of power and the obvious suspicion that some prisoners did not commit the crimes they are accused of. There are more than 3,000 complaints of torture and arbitrary arrests and 56 deceased prisoners about whom the government has kept complete secret. Amnesty International revealed in June that it had discovered “serious violations” of human rights that could merit “international criminal responsibility”.
That does not seem to bother President Bukele.
At the end of March, the Legislative Assembly approved the application of the state of emergency and the suspension of constitutional guarantees for one month and is now in force for four. The minister assures that all those arrested are “members of terrorist gangs” and that the executive is planning to send a list of new reforms to parliament so that “this country is safe in the communities, in tourist and cultural places, but also safe in the roads”.
Apart from those who found their bones in a dungeon, the government campaign has removed from the streets thousands of former gang members, individuals who joined a gang in their adolescence and youth, and migrants who did so after clandestinely entered the United States. and they were later deported back to El Salvador. The vast majority still have tattoos with the initials M S-13 (Mara Salvatruchas), the word “mara” or other signs of their iconography. It’s relatively easy to join the gangs, but it’s harder to leave them, and while some members have been estranged for years and now have families and jobs, those inkblots are enough to get arrested. The NGOs assure that the police go door to door and order the men to show their torso. Police also say the hardest part is catching the gang members who were never flagged.
Godoy Monterrosa was known as ‘Satan’. He lived clandestinely in Louisiana, working on masonry and away from MS-13. In his time with the Salvatruchas and by his nickname he must have been one of those guys better not to argue with.
The US Immigration Service put him on a plane back to El Salvador on April 8. As he descended from the ladder, security forces blocked his way, gave him a cell phone and told him to call his family so they wouldn’t pick him up from the airport. I was stopped. Since then, Monterrosa’s relatives have heard nothing from him, but they are aware that he will be locked up in a penitentiary and sentenced to 30 years in prison for membership of a terrorist organization. Many Salvadorans living illegally in the US are afraid of becoming ‘Satan’.
The government assumes that 1% of arrests could be wrong. Not everyone carries the marks of the maras on their skin. Among the gang members are those who lead routine lives, but with an extraordinarily abnormal cost train; one of the common mistakes of the members of these clans engaged in extortion: they stand out like a light in the night. However, the National Police Workers’ Movement also denounces the existence of quotas imposed by some security forces commanders to get days off or avoid reprimands: if they demand six arrested gang members from a police station and only four are imprisoned, they become They add two arrestees for another crime, whether it is an assault or a robbery.
A state of emergency was declared in late March after a massacre over the weekend. Between Friday the 25th and Saturday, the gang members killed 87 people. To this day, the exact mobile is still unknown. Police ruled out settlement between rival gangs and found no links between the victims either. They were of all genders and ages. They were apparently chosen at random by the gunmen or got in the way of their revolvers and semi-automatic rifles.
Everything points to it being a show of force against President Bukele, an autocrat to some and a populist savior of the country, but at least the architect of the decline in street violence, drug trafficking and extortion since coming to power in 2019. The murder rate is still very high, 20 per 100,000 inhabitants, but it is far from 2015 when El Salvador was the most violent country in the world: 103 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Now preceded by, for example, Honduras and Mexico. The most persistent rumor is that Bukele, like his official predecessors, has managed to reduce violence through pacts with the gangs.
A week before the massacre, on the night of March 19, two assassins also murdered one of the main promoters of MS-13. Ibex. A bloodthirsty person who, paradoxically, decided to agree to the prosecution and offer to testify against his former gang. Bad solution in a country where judges recognize that a protected witness can testify at 10 a.m. and be dead before lunchtime.
Capricorn was married, expecting a child and visiting a drug bar in the capital. At about 11:30 p.m., he was in his car parked in front of the joint. Two gunmen approached the sides of the vehicle and fired 20 rounds at it. He did not die on the spot. His corpulence allowed him to survive for a few minutes. But with his death, the prosecution and government understood that the gang is not forgiving or considering lengthy ceasefires. So the Public Prosecution Service lost one of the most important informants, shot dead at the door of a bar; the man who could have informed them not only about the ins and outs of the mafia organization, but also its connections to politicians, corrupt police officers and businessmen.
Bukele has decided to give chase. The state of emergency allows the police to extend detentions beyond 72 hours, place them even in an insecure environment with no expiration date, monitor private communications and suspend the right to legal aid from the state. With the approval of parliament, the president has also tightened the criminal code. An adult gang member can be jailed for 45 years. When the perpetrator is twelve years old and convicted, he usually spends ten years in a hell that not even all adults can tolerate. Until March, El Salvador already had a serious overcrowding problem with 36,000 inmates in its prisons, and now their numbers have doubled. Overpopulation is stifling. And the logistics are starting to fall apart. The consequences are becoming so severe that the college has drawn up a plan for sustainable gardens in the prisons to feed the inmates.
Source: La Verdad
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