Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Officials in El Salvador have reported gang members are attempting to infiltrate the country's security forces, indicating a growing level of sophistication that potentially supports the idea they have used the ongoing truce to bolster their power.
Twenty-six gang members have been caught trying to infiltrate the armed forces so far this year, according to Security Minister Ricardo Perdomo. The minister suggested gangs sought to enter the police and military in order to steal weapons and uniforms, obtain military intelligence and receive training, reported La Prensa Grafica.
In one recent case, a cadet from El Salvadors military academy was arrested on May 2 for suspected gang ties and for his alleged involvement in a murder committed in December 2013.
Another suspected gang member and former soldier was arrested on April 21 after he attacked police officers. He had served in El Salvadors Special Forces for three years, during which time he was allegedly assigned to the presidents security detail.
Gangs have also apparently used information about military and police operations to imitate these organizations while committing crimes. In one recent attack, gang members allegedly dressed as police officers to carry out a triple homicide.
Rather, to the bodies of women and girls pulled from clandestine graves, raped, battered and sometimes cut to pieces. They attest to the abuse committed by members of street gangs who take girlfriends, discard them and then deliver them to group rape and murder. Those who gather statistics say there are no reliable numbers on sexual violence in El Salvador. Threats prevent many from reporting attacks. Others who have grown up amid abuse might not recognize rape as a crime. Still others flee to other nations.
US immigration lawyers say there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women and girls from Central America seeking asylum in the US after having been kidnapped and raped. “We are seeing an exponential increase,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, a lawyer with Catholic Charities in Los Angeles. “It’s the evolution of gang warfare ... It’s what we see in other war situations around the world where rape is used as a weapon.”
El Salvador’s 6 million residents live with the second-highest per capita homicide rate in the world, after neighboring Honduras. In a land of lakes and volcanoes, clandestine graves appear like wild mushrooms after a rainstorm. In the evening, the cacophony of San Salvador traffic gives way to the squeals of wild parrots and, sometimes, to wails of grief. Most of the violence is suspected to be the handiwork of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and 18th Street gangs, which were formed by immigrants in the US, then returned home and grew into warring forces of tens of thousands.
The official numbers show just 239 women and girls among the murdered so far this year, about a tenth of the number of men, with 201 others reported missing. Through August, 361 rapes were reported. However, worldwide, women generally report only 20 percent of rapes, the WHO said, and that percentage is likely lower in El Salvador. The missing and dead also might be under-reported. Criminologist Israel Ticas, who digs up clandestine graves for El Salvador’s Attorney General’s Office, says that more than half of the 90 sites he has excavated in the past 12 years contained the remains of women and girls. “For sure, there are hundreds of these cases and maybe thousands out there,” Ticas said.
MORE
Zelada, who runs a small school in Planes de Mariona in the capital's northern suburbs, says that in the past two years he has received several death threats from gang members, some sent by text message, others a menacing voice on his mobile phone. "The last death threat I received in March said: 'We'll shoot you while you're driving your car'. We're afraid. Some schools and the areas around them are totally controlled by gangs," Zelada told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview in the capital, San Salvador. "We fear reprisals from the gangs. Any decision you take and they don't like, like disciplinary action against a pupil, can bring a threat," said Zelada, who also heads a teacher's union, SIMEDUCO.
Extortion by gangs is another serious problem for children in schools, an official from the charity World Vision said. There has been a surge of murders in El Salvador, one of the world's most violent countries, since the breakdown a year ago of a 2012 gang truce between the Barrio 18 criminal group and their rivals, the Mara Salvatrucha. In August alone 907 murders were recorded across the country - the highest toll in any month since the 1980-1992 civil war.
Suspected members of the 18th Street gang are presented to the media after they were arrested in a raid in San Salvador, El Salvador
Some 60,000 gang members are wreaking havoc in a nation of 6.4 million people. Entire city neighborhoods are controlled by powerful street gangs known as maras, who use extortion, sexual violence, threats, killings and forced recruitment of children to rule their territory.
At Zelada's small school, pupils as well as teachers are caught up in the gang warfare. In late May, gang members killed a 16-year-old pupil. "He didn't want to join the gang. So they shot him against a wall just behind the school," Zelada said.
More 'War Zone'
