Caribbean & Central America - May 2014 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The justice and public security minister, Ricardo Perdomo, has sent out a series of mixed signals to El Salvador’s mara gangs in recent weeks. In late April Perdomo announced that mara gang members who attacked the police, military or public officials would face trial under the 2006 anti-terrorism law, which includes prison sentences of up to 60 years. Days later he called on mara leaders to join a “pacification process” he had set up with representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical church and at least 15 NGOs working to prevent violence. Then, in early May, Perdomo denounced “a strategy of institutional penetration” by mara gangs to infiltrate the armed forces (FAES) and the national police force (PNC) in order to frustrate security plans, obtain training and steal weapons.

Perdomo’s decision to threaten the maras with the anti-terrorism law came after the PNC reported that up until 22 April this year there had been 65 attacks on police officers, up by more than one-third on the same period last year, with three policemen killed and 11 injured. Perdomo claimed that an ‘ambush’ of a police car and an attack on a police station on 5 April in the ‘peace zone’ of Quezaltepeque, a municipality in the department of La Libertad, in which a police officer was killed, was ordered by imprisoned mara leaders. On 30 April his ministry and the attorney general’s office coordinated eight simultaneous operations by the PNC in different parts of the country, which led to the capture of 90 maras accused of various crimes. In Quezaltepeque alone, 14 mara members were captured, 12 of whom were identified as responsible for the 5 April attack.

At the same time, however, Perdomo tabled a peace proposal with the maras which he said was eight months in the making and would supersede the 2012 gang truce. Perdomo said the objective was a national accord with the gangs with government supervision but not direct involvement: gang members wanting to take part would have to talk to representatives of the churches and NGOs participating in the process. Perdomo said the “transparent” plan provided a stark contrast to the truce talks carried out by “just two people” - former deputy for the ruling Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) Raúl Mijango and Roman Catholic Bishop Fabio Colindres.

And then, in the latest instance of his flip-flopping approach to the maras, Perdomo revealed in early May that the government was investigating infiltration of the FAES and the PNC by mara gang members. His announcement followed the arrest of an army cadet identified as an active member of a mara gang investigated by the attorney general’s office for murdering another gang member late last year. Perdomo’s claim that mara gangs were pursuing a “strategy of institutional penetration” naturally grabbed media headlines but he has not supplied evidence for this (see sidebar).

Mijango, while he accepted that mara members probably had tried to enrol in the security forces, cast doubt on a definite strategy to penetrate them. Mijango suggests that Perdomo’s repressive mano dura policies, punctuated by peaceful overtures, has left the maras uncertain and lacking confidence in the authorities.

It was noteworthy that spokesmen for the mara gangs rejected Perdomo’s proposed ‘pacification process’ in a statement released in early May but welcomed a new proposal for peace talks, dubbed Iniciativa Pastoral por la Vida y por la Paz, presented to the incoming FMLN government of Vice President Salvador Sánchez Cerén on 22 April by Mijango and the leaders of nine ecclesiastical denominations, including Colindres and Lutheran and Anglican bishops Medardo Gómez and Martín Barahona respectively. The proposal advocates three levels of dialogue: inter-gang talks; talks between gangs and civil society; and talks between civil society and the State.

• Mara infiltration

The national public security academy (ANSP) revealed to the local press that 120 mara gang members had been identified having enrolled in military college or the national police force (PNC) over the course of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) government of President Mauricio Funes (2009-2014).