The phenomenon of organized crime is one of the plagues that most affects both the economy and the quality of life of citizens, since the cost of violence and insecurity has serious consequences on the GDP with the attendant result of the emptying of entire villages and thousands of Salvadorans asking for asylum in foreign countries to escape the violence.

A crucial role is played by criminal gangs, better known as maras or pandilla, that with their 65,000 affiliates that correspond to about 9% of the population, have a social and capillary control of the territory: they are groups that express their identity through symbols and signals, that share certain rules and relationships, more or less hierarchical, and that extend nationally and internationally.
Maras are often involved in illegal activities and claim control of some businesses, territories or economic markets.

It should be noted that despite trying to combine the two terms mara and pandilla, the differences remain clear: the maras are a phenomenon with transnational roots, linked to migratory contexts (Los Angeles above all), while the pandillas are organizations linked to an autochthonous territory, or district, heirs of a generation of youth groups rooted in Central American history. Born, in fact, in the suburbs of the United States among communities of Hispanic and Mexican emigrants from Washington, Los Angeles and Southern California between the 50s and 60s of the last century, the maras followed the pattern of US youth gangs despite having the same needs as ethnic mafias. This latter is a factor that was accentuated very gradually as, thanks to emigration, they expanded to other countries. It was the era of gangs in the American suburbs, and the Central Americans, despised by the more integrated Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, organized themselves as a form of self-defense and preservation of their own identity. Over time, the gangs turned into local mafias, dedicated to petty crime through extortion and small-scale drug trafficking.

The names of the two major organizations, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13 or simply MS) and the Dieciocho (or Barrio 18), refer to the neighborhoods of Los Angeles that had indeed been established as the breeding grounds for these organizations.
In the early 1990s, the ‘Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act’ came into force, a reform implemented by the United States that involved the deportation of all illegal immigrants to their country of origin. This reform favoured the acceleration of the expansion process of both criminal groups, since most of the deportees who were affected exported the gang culture to Central America and in particular to the Northern Triangle area, which includes the states of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Within the Northern Triangle the maras became particularly active and well-established and began to recruit among the boys of the local population, reinvigorating the fringes of both groups. This created the right conditions to proceed to an adequate structuring and ramification that allowed the organization to extend its range of action throughout Central America, Mexico, the United States and even Italy. However, the UNODC (United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime) is keen to point out that it is not appropriate to talk about ‘transnational gangs’ when referring to the maras, as their activities, mainly racketeering and drug trafficking, are concentrated above all on the local territory, despite their members operating outside national borders. In the same years, in El Salvador, members of the White Fence 13 gang also arrived, famous for being one of the first established in California and being affiliated with Eme, a powerful Mexican criminal organization.

The Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 were once close, or at least not in perennial war with each other, but subsequently they re-embarked on war generating innumerable episodes of violence aimed at controlling new marketplaces and new channels for arms traffic. This conflict was appeased in May 2012 when the two organizations began a real peace process that led to the signing of a truce with the then Salvadoran President Mauricio Fuentes. The government, with the aim of reducing the number of homicides in the country offered, in return, the reintegration of its members into everyday life, immunity, a job and the transfer of their leaders from the maximum security prisons to other prisons where they could receive visits. This agreement worked the first year – the murders went down by 42 percent – but the people’s confidence in the government and the rule of law collapsed. A year later, under pressure from the United States, El Salvador decided to put an end to the truce and this saw the record rate of murders ever carried out reached in 2015. At that point the Government reacted with a heavy hand and launched a tremendous repression. (F.R.)

El Salvador is one of the smallest countries in size of Central America, given that its area is 21.041Km².

Despite its small size, the country has a high population density concentrated in urban areas. It borders Guatemala and Honduras and is the only one of the Mesoamerican states to face the Pacific Ocean. It has a predominantly mountainous territory that includes numerous volcanoes, six of which are still active, and is located in an area of contact between tectonic plates that cause frequent eruptions and earthquakes which, as if this were not enough, are extremely influential on the already precarious economic and humanitarian conditions of the country. In this regard, just think of the earthquakes that occurred in January and February of 2001 that, in addition to causing 1,200 deaths and over 8,500 wounded, left extensive damage to the infrastructure and to the houses, destroying over 50,000 homes. These natural phenomena facilitated the growing migratory phenomenon towards the United States, already favored by the civil war that for years had brought the country to its knees. In fact, more than 1.5 million Salvadorans live in the US, a number that equates to almost 20% of the entire population resident in El Salvador which has about 6.378 million inhabitants.

From an administrative point of view the country is divided into 14 departments and the one that includes the capital, San Salvador, has a population of about 2 million inhabitants. The demographic composition of the population is very young and from the ethnic point of view 88% is composed of mestizos; 9% is European and Creole; the Amerindian minority corresponds to 2%, and the rest is made up of populations of other types. The degree of literacy of the population is very low and this, together with the high level of corruption, diminishes the effectiveness of public administration and political institutions. The most serious problem affecting Salvador, however, remains the high crime rate which makes it one of the most violent countries in the world.

Since 2015 there has been an incredible surge in the homicide rate, at least 9 per day; corruption is now a widespread phenomenon and many areas of the country are in the hands of local gangs against which the police and the government have launched a campaign of harsh repression.There is no doubt that the situation facing the country today is a direct consequence of both the historical condition and the implications deriving from the geographical position. The latter, in particular, in addition to locating it on tectonic faults, places the country in an area of great geostrategic value, as Central America is, always at the center of the great disputes that have affected the American continent since the sixteenth century, when colonization by the major European powers began. Above all the region is dominated by the proximity and the economic-strategic interests of the major world power – the United States – and those of the various oligarchies that have never allowed the definition of territories for institutional comparison. This has contributed to the transformation of these countries into instruments of control and domination by external actors.

In particular, the United States, on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine (‘America to the Americans’) and of the so-called ‘Rooseveltian-Corollary’, considered it their right and duty to intervene in the internal affairs of the Central and South American countries, for reasons of national security. This situation has also strongly influenced historical processes. Proof of this is the fact that for much of the 1900s, from the 30s to the 80s, the army kept its power firmly in place, preventing any form of organization by the other subordinate classes. The repressive policies of strict control have been a constant throughout the central phase of the twentieth century, to the point of generating a radical response in the 70s that led to the development of armed struggle movements of different aspirations (communist, christian-social and revolutionary socialist), who then united later under the name of Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberacìon Nacional (FMLN).

The peak of instability was reached in the 1980s with the murder of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who had always been at the forefront in denouncing military violence, which took place during Mass in the chapel of the Divine Providence hospital.
The civil war saw the open involvement of the United States, both military and economic, in favor of the governments in charge, in a period of the Cold War in which Washington took a firm position against all the guerrillas in their own hemisphere.
In the 90s, also due to the new balances that were being defined on a global scale, the tense situation in the country began to subside and the two camps dreew up an effective process of national reconciliation that led them to the peace of 1992 which sanctioned the end of civil war. The FMLN agreed to disarm and the army accepted the role of playing subordinate actor to the civil government.
Following the national reconciliation between the two forces in Salvador, a bipartisan system developed, with the conservative and liberalist ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista) on the right, and the FMLN on the left. The latter, after the conflict, abandoned Marxist positions to convert into a progressive force. The two parties have since led the country, alternating in the holding of power. However, despite having guaranteed peace and political stability, they failed to provide effective and long-term answers, useful for responding to the real needs of the country. This led, in the last presidential consultations, to Nayb Bukele’s victory, declaring himself an anti-system candidate. These situations, in fact, together with the rampant clientelism, the negative economic growth rate and the uncontrolled crime, generated discontent and a widespread climate of mistrust towards the political class, and transformed into both a protest vote and a very high abstention rate. (F.R.)

In the general elections last February, Nayb Bukele established himself as the new President of El Salvador, thus marking the historic victory of a third candidate, to the detriment of the two political groups that emerged from the civil war, ARENA and FMLN, which during the last three decades have operated in a monopoly regime.

Bukele presented himself as an anti-system candidate, even though he came from the ranks of the FMLN, and he staked everything on the fight against corruption since it was this area that had distinguished his previous experience as mayor of San Salvador, from 2015 to 2018. The neo-elected, whose government program is not yet clear, based his victory on the use of social media.
This confirms that even in Central America these instruments are becoming the key factor for mobilizing public opinion, winning elections and breaking established political structures.

However, he has to deal with a country that during these years has suffered greatly from the political and social instability and survives thanks to foreign aid and remittances, which represent about 21% of the GDP. According to official figures, one third of the population earns less than $5.50 a day, 31% of the inhabitants live in poverty and 10% in extreme poverty. There are over 400,000 six year-olds suffering from chronic malnutrition and 15% of children under five have severe or moderate malnutrition problems.The country suffers, in fact, from a very low economic growth, among the lowest in Central America, and this makes it difficult to reduce the state of poverty in which a large part of the population exist, that has gone from 39% in 2007 to the current 31%, while in the same period extreme poverty has been reduced from 15% to 10%. The country’s public debt is notably high and corresponds to around 70% of the 2018 GDP.

The country’s economy is mainly focused on trade, on the agricultural sector, which is in the hands of a very small elite, and on the industrial one. However, despite being a country with a purely agricultural vocation, El Salvador is forced to import a large part of food products due to the disproportionate land distribution effected in the past, which favoured the large companies that practice extensive cultivation of monocultures, to the detriment of small farmers. Maize is the most widespread crop while coffee is the most profitable and provides in value, just under 60% of the country’s exports. Other important crops are sugar cane, cotton, sesame, soy, tobacco and tropical fruit plantations, the latter present in the coastal area. Among other activities there are also breeding, fishing, tourism, catering and the timber market. The latter, together with the fertility of the soil, is causing an intensive deforestation of the mountain sides that makes El Salvador the country with the greatest problems of deforestation (about 90% of the vegetation has been eliminated), of the region.

This phenomenon, together with the intensive agricultural exploitation practiced, generates serious problems of soil erosion, accentuated by the contamination of the rivers into which the sewage systems and chemical residues of the cities flow.
The major cities have a small number of industries, mainly food, textiles, chemicals and cement, while mining and energy production are negligible. El Salvador, in fact, unlike many other countries in South and Central America, is a country poor in raw materials. However, it developed a project in the Lampa River area, north-east of San Salvador, which allows it to develop large quantities of hydroelectric power.
In August 2018, El Salvador, together with Guatemala and Honduras, opened its borders to the free transit of people and goods to boost its own economies. However, the terrible state of poverty and violence faced by the country leads to the migration of its inhabitants outside the region and in particular to the United States which, last March, blocked aid – aimed at preventing violence, reducing extreme poverty and hunger and strengthening the judicial system – which they provided to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, accused of doing nothing to stop the caravans of immigrants.

According to some unofficial estimates, about 300 people leave the country every day, but not all of them arrive at their destination, since many are deceived during the journey, others are kidnapped by criminal gangs, ending up victims of human trafficking, and others die along the road or across the desert in American territory. Migrants, in order to escape the threats of Mexican organized crime, move in groups forming real caravans that have recently attracted the attention of the international media.
Today the situation of these people has become even more complex since Mexico has had to militarize its southern border, of Tapachula, in Chiapas, to prevent the passage of thousands of migrants (most of them are families with children) from Central America. The Mexican government, which at first had reached its hand out towards this problem, thanks also to the work of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was forced to reverse the route under the threat of the application of heavy duties by Washington on imports of Mexican products, which would have put the country’s economy at risk. After intense negotiations, Mexico and the United States signed an agreement that aims to prevent migration to the United States and provides for the adoption of measures such as the militarization of the southern border and the participation of the National Guard to prevent the passage of migrant caravans. A US program is also being expanded to allow migrants awaiting answers from the US justice system on their asylum request to be returned to Mexico.
In addition, in the agreement, continuous negotiations are to be held for 90 days to consider greater bilateral cooperation. If the interventions are not effective, further steps are possible.

This agreement was criticized by the government of El Salvador according to which Mexico, in adopting a migration agreement with the United States, should have involved the Central American countries. The new executive, however, does not yet have a well-defined foreign policy line even if the President praised the doctrine of neutrality. This puts it in sharp disruption with the previous governments that had supported Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution, both because of the ideological affinity of the Salvadoran FMLN with the ‘socialism of the 21st century’ and, above all, for the generous economic support that Venezuela offered during these years through monetary donations and the sale of oil at discounted prices. Given that today Venezuelan influence is failing in the region, the Chinese option remains to Salvador as a card to play as leverage at the negotiating table with the United States.

Filippo Romeo