Violent Legacies: How Gang Violence in El Salvador Grew (Helped by the U.S.)

Violent Legacies: How Gang Violence in El Salvador Grew (Helped by the U.S.)
April 20, 2015
Michael Busch

This past March, the murder rate in El Salvador soared to levels not seen in a decade. In just one month, some 481 people were murdered across the country at an average rate of roughly sixteen a day. It isn’t an aberration. Levels of violence have been increasing steadily in the country over the past year, jumping an alarming 56 percent since 2013. All indications suggest the trend will continue beyond the first quarter of 2015.

The immediate cause of this spike in violence appears to be El Salvador’s failed gang truce. Between the spring of 2012 and early 2014, the country enjoyed relative peace following a negotiated agreement between El Salvador’s two main gangs to scale back their bloody war for domestic supremacy. Though not without its critics, the pact between MS-13 and MS-18 did have the virtue of bringing El Salvador a measure of security the state could not otherwise provide.

The truce began to unravel last spring, however, during the country’s presidential elections. Candidates, including Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the incumbent FMLN party, distanced themselves from the truce—likely due to popular unease with revelations that the government had brokered the pact—in favor of other approaches to dealing with the gangs. Since then, battles between MS-13 and MS-18, and between the gangs and state security forces, have increased in both frequency and cost to human life.

Far from a home-grown phenomenon, El Salvador’s gangs—and their counterparts across the region—represent one of the most devastating long-term consequences of American foreign policy in Central America. The story of US involvement in Central America during the Reagan era and beyond is well known. American support of the Contras in Nicaragua and conservative regimes across the region contributed to over a decade of conflict and genocide throughout Central America, the reverberations of which are still powerfully felt today.

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