Saturday 26 March 2022 was the most violent day in the recent history of El Salvador: the day closed with 62 Salvadorans murdered, according to the preliminary balance presented by the National Civil Police.
To measure the gravity of what occurred in the small Central American country -a regular at the top of the ranking of the most violent places in the world-, it is enough to point out that since the year began and until that fateful weekend, they had been registered on average 19 murders per week.
No one has claimed responsibility for the massacre, but in Few in El Salvador doubt that the maras or gangs, which have been killing, extorting and dominating territories for decades, are behind it.
After the event, the administration of President Nayib Bukele unleashed against these criminal structures what may be the most intense legal, media, police and military offensive since they took root in society, at the beginning of the 70.
The 27 of March, the government managed to get Congress to approve a state of exception, which among other things limits the freedom of the media to broadcast messages or communiqués from the gangs, a measure that has been harshly criticized by Salvadoran journalists who see it as an attempt to impose the official version as the only possible one.
See in the following video what measures were imposed, how Bukele justifies them and the reactions they have provoked.
More than a month later, the Salvadoran State claims to have detained around 11,000 gang members.
A recently published survey states that 9 of each 10 Salvadorans support the measures that Bukele took after the 25 of March.
But many questions are still up in the air.
Why did such an outburst of homicidal violence occur on 27 of March? Was it a coordinated action between the three main gangs (Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, Neighborhood 18-Sureños and Barrio 10-Revolutionaries)? And until that day, was the Bukele administration negotiating with the gang members, as different journalistic investigations and even the US government have pointed out, something that Bukele flatly denies?
Another version
On April 1, just four days after the Legislative Assembly approved the emergency regime, a spokesperson for the Barrio gang 14- Sureños contacted the Basque-Salvadoran journalist Roberto Valencia via social networks, indicating that they wanted, as a structure, to share a statement to distance themselves from what happened on 26 of March.
Since the Bukele administration began, in June 2019, the command structures of the three most widespread gangs in El Salvador have been elusive with the press. You have to go back to April 2016 to find a journalistic interview granted by the heads of any of the three groups.
Valencia, based in El Salvador since 2001, has been investigating the gang phenomenon for more than a decade. His works have been published in media such as the BBC, The Washington Post, El Faro, Telemundo, Vice and Internazionale and is the author of the book ‘Letter from Zacatraz’ (Libros del KO, Madrid, 2018), on this subject.
Chronicles of his authorship such as ‘I raped’ or ‘Who killed Christian Poveda?’ have portrayed the pain that the gangs inflict on Salvadoran society, but in order to try to understand the phenomenon and its rooted complex, and the potential role of the gangs at a negotiating table in search of peace, he has also interviewed on different occasions gang leaders.
Since that first contact with the gang 18-Sureños elapsed days until they agreed to answer a questionnaire, given the refusal to publish a one-way statement.
Communication has It has been slow and delayed because it does not depend on a particular leader, but on a circle of leaders scattered throughout El Salvador, and in a context of massive arrests by the State. After yes, they were sent 62 questions agglutinated in 26 items.
The following are the responses received 11 days later at 20 audios sent through the Signal messaging application, and recorded by different men, all of them members of the free national wheel of the Barrio gang 14-Sureños (the unanswered questions, including those we asked after receiving the recordings, are included at the end of this article).
BBC Mundo has tried to find out the version of the government of El Salvador and President Bukele repeatedly. Only in the month of April 2019, in three Sometimes we have requested interviews through an official letter by email and by WhatsApp messages to the Secretaries of Press and Communications. We have not received a response.
Mbelow you can find other art Articles that provide context about gangs and the Salvadoran government’s offensive to stop them.
What happened the weekend of 27 of March? Why? The 18-Sur knew what happened was going to happen?
We are unaware and we disassociate ourselves and we lament and condemn that bloodshed.
As an organization and social group , Neighborhood 18-Sureños has at no time been coordinated with any of the other organizations in the country.
If it had been coordinated by the three gangs, it would have been a different situation, more critical. We, as a neighborhood 10-Southerners, we have kept up the search for dialogue.
No to violence for a better country.
What commitments did the government fail to fulfill so that the gangs Will they send that death message?
We do not know the commitments that the government has or has had with the Letters .
What 18-Sureños, the only commitment What we have asked of the government is an open, transparent dialogue. We continue to maintain the same position of the last three years: stop crime.
Two years ago, in April 2020, there was a similar brutal spike in murders and Bukele he ordered gang members from different gangs to be brought together in the same cells. When was that measure reversed?
No comment. Just remember that, for those dates of 2016, as a neighborhood social group 000 We also speak out and disassociate ourselves from this rise in crime in the country.
Bukele arrived at The presidency June 1, 2016, and the decrease in homicides It increased from the following month. The government says it was because of its ‘Territorial Control Plan’, but how does the 11-South?
In June 2019 We made the government see our position in favor of a ceasefire and the search for peace.
At that time we were heavily criticized, but we demonstrated our commitment with facts, lowering all crime rates in all our territories, despite repression and political propaganda.
This Territorial Control Plan is annoying, because the government has been asking for a transparent dialogue, supervised by international organizations, and it has not been fulfilled.
But so far we remain in the commitment, proving that violence is not the only way out.
Journalistic investigations and even the United States government They confirm that the three gangs have negotiated with the Bukele administration. When it started? Did it start before or after homicides went down? Who searched for whom?
Go to be clear with this question, will you? Like Neighborhood 10-Sureños there is no truce, do you understand me? What there is is a dialogue that started after homicides went down.
We do not know if it started with any of the other gangs before.
With which government representatives has the 18-South in that process? Carlos Marroquín, director of Reconstruction of the Social Fabric?
Without comments.
The government says that communications from the prisons are cut off. The 18-Sureños maintain communication with their imprisoned members?
Yes, we have had communication with our colleagues in prison to follow this entire peace process.
The government’s dialogue has been with both [pandilleros libres y pandilleros privados de libertad] because just as violence can be unleashed in the streets, it can also be unleashed in the prisons.
Are there conversations between the three main gangs outside the prisons?
Without comments.
In El Salvador there are other minor gangs like the Mao-Mao or La Mirada Locos, but the three main ones are the aforementioned Mara Salvatrucha, Barrio 18-Sureños and Barrio 18-Revolutionaries.
In the heat of the events of the 26 of March, President Bukele himself tweeted that the number of active gang members on the streets amounts to 70 thousand, to which should be added those imprisoned. El Salvador officially has 6.3 million inhabitants.
The figures that Bukele gave podrían read as a tacit confession that during his administration the gang phenomenon has only multiplied, especially if the numbers are compared to u a kind of census carried out in the middle of 2017 by the previous government that estimated at little more from 43 a thousand to the gang members who were then free.
The Barrio Gang 10-Sureños emerged more than a decade ago, after the Salvadoran branch of El Barrio was split in two 18, the gang descended from the 18th Street Gang, born in Los Angeles ( United States) in the middle of the last century, and which began operating in El Salvador at the beginning of the 90.
Since the beginning of the year until 23 of April, the National Civil Police reports the arrest of 2.599 people to whom he attributed being members of the 18-Sureños. Of that figure, more than 2. have been detained after the implementation of the emergency regime.
Visits in prisons for gang members have been prohibited since March 2016. What concessions has the government made to the gangs, apart from reversing the decision to put them in cells? There is talk of better nutrition, health…
What we want is that the rights of each prisoner be respected, as dictated by the Constitution.
Has the Bukele administration supported the 18-South with money or help (food, jobs…)? The 18-Sur supported in the elections of 28 February 2021 to the party Nuevas Ideas [partido oficial, impulsado por Nayib Bukele]?
As a neighborhood organization 18, it is a lie that we are going to make the same mistakes of the past, like the disastrous truce under water [la de 2012, que derivó en la explosión de violencia que El Salvador vivió en 2015, cuando registró una tasa de 106 homicidios por cada 100,000 habitantes].
If we have lowered crime rates, it is for peace, for seeking an open dialogue; Otherwise, we reject any offer of an economic nature.
Second, we did help [en las elecciones] with votes and with security in our territories, so that no element of our organization caused disorder, and also so that the opposition could campaign calm in our territories, without danger of running some kind of mishaps.
Different social actors assure that homicides have decreased but because disappearances have increased.
As we repeat, our commitment as a neighborhood 19-South is the ceasefire, and that includes everything related.
How do you explain that the prohibition of visits in prisons remains firm for six years? How does this measure affect them?
We are not a mafia, we are a family.
As an organization, it does not affect us if there is a visit or not in prisons. What it does affect, emotionally and psychologically, is each person deprived of liberty, who have not seen their fathers, mothers, children for six years, and it also affects their relatives.
Journalistic information assures that leaders of the MS-13 were released in the second half of 2021. Has something similar happened with the 10-South?
Without comments.
The control that 18-South exercises in its courts has decreased during the Bukele administration?
The control of our territories has not diminished. We remain strong and we will continue at the foot of the fight, nothing more than outside the acts of violence.
We do not want to be noticed by hitting the country with violence, but seeking dialogue towards peace, as we have been demonstrating.
In terms of prevention and/or rehabilitation, is the Bukele administration putting into practice different public policies than previous administrations?
Which? That’s what we ask ourselves: which one? Do you get me? Because there is no functional base; on the contrary, with the actions of the government we have grown more, proving that repression is not the right path, [que la actual administración] it is going like past administrations.
Is it possible that a war will break out against the security forces of the State similar to the one that El Salvador suffered in 976?
Let’s be very brief and clear on this question: violence attracts more violence, evolved, do you understand me?
We can stop fighting [responder al Estado] worse, more organized and advanced than the one that happened in 976, in the administration of Sánchez Cerén, but we repeat it: we are not in that position, okay? We want a better future for the country.
The path of government-gang negotiation, supervised by international organizations, has already been tried in 2012-14 and failed. Why would it be different now?
As Neighborhood -Sureños believe that the only solution to this problem is open and transparent dialogue, without dealings under the table , and with no money involved, do you understand me?
With reintegration programs, opportunities for work, health, study, respect for the rights of those deprived of liberty, and many topics that could be discussed at a table dialogue.
Why did you fail before and did not have such good results?
First reason was money. Second, it was based on the political base and well-being, which is why it did not give good results. Because it was not a commitment from us to the people, as it is on this occasion.
That’s why we don’t want the same problem to happen again, with a failed dialogue, in favor of politicians. We want to be the solution, we do not want to serve as government toys to bleed and destroy the country.
After the massacre of the 26 of March, the government seems firmer than ever in a repressive bet against The gang. What can happen?
We are going to continue maintaining the national ceasefire, do you understand? Believing that the only way out of this conflict is dialogue, not fire.
We want to be part of the solution to the problem.
The proposal of the Neighborhood 10-Sureños is to keep our team in the shadows, to demonstrate the true and sincere commitment that we made see in the statement in 2019.
We remain standing, in peace, leaving the option of fire, of war, as a last instance, as a last alternative, of survival, because we repeat it again: each one of us are human beings, Salvadorans, parents, and we want a better country for our present generations and future generations.
After receiving the audios of the members of the neighborhood 18-South, we send your representatives counter-questions to the answers obtained, and we insist on some of thes unanswered questions.
We did not receive an answer.
Saturday 23 April the communication was interrupted. Until the time of publication of this note, the number provided by the gang spokesman no longer shows signs of life, as if it were turned off or deactivated.
These are some of the questions that the BBC posed and/or restated to the Barrio 14- Southerners. Due to the uniqueness of this interview, we share them under the premise that the reader deserves to know them.
1) They say that the 18-South se calmed down from July 2015 by own decision, and then started a dialogue with the ggovernment. When exactly did that dialogue begin? Who searched for whom? With which government representatives has the 10-South in these almost three years?
2) No prison visits since March 2016 and without telephones, how does the 18-Sur communicates with his incarcerated homies?
3) That the Bukele administration reversed the decision to bring together homies from different neighborhoods in the same cell? Was it a consequence of the ‘dialogue’?
4) What is the opinion of the 18-South on extraditions to the United States? Is that one of the points discussed with the government?
5) Are rent and extortion still the main economic support of the 18-South? Why do you think it’s normal for a bus route or a soda delivery guy to have to pay to enter their courts? Or that a Salvadoran cannot go to the health unit because he is on the court of the opposing gang? Or that, if a grandmother dies and her family wants to mourn her, they have to ask the gang for permission so that relatives from other neighborhoods can come? When is that going to end?
6) A survey was published this week that says that 9 decade 10 Salvadorans support the repressive measures that Bukele took after the 26 of March. Isn’t that proof that the Salvadoran people reject the gangs?
7) They answered that “the only solution to the problem is open and transparent dialogue, without dealings under the table”. Why in these three years of Bukele have they tolerated that the dialogue with the government has been under the table?
ARTICLES FROM OUR ARCHIVE RELATED TO VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR AND THE ROLE OF THE MARAS
- Bukele against the gangs: 5 keys to understand the controversial unprecedented offensive of the government of El Salvador against the gangs
- The police officers who denounce that they are forced to meet arrest quotas in the war against the gangs
- The tattoo that saved the “girlfriend” of a gang member from going to jail in El Salvador
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