El Salvador is on pace to become the

hemispheres most deadly nation

As gang violence surges, the tiny Central American country is on pace to have the
highest homicide rate in the hemisphere.

By Joshua Partlow-May 17
SAN SALVADOR Most nights now, men in black masks are sweeping through this
city, house to house, rousting shirtless boys from their mattresses, shining flashlights
across their torsos, looking for tattoos.
The police officers rummage for drugs and guns but will settle for Nike Cortez
sneakers a gang favorite or any symbol of affiliation, like a little grim reaper
scribbled on a bedroom wall. Then its into zip-cuffs and down to the station, with
maybe a shove or a twist of the cuffs on the way. Because for the 500 members of El
Salvadors anti-gang police force, this has become personal.
In El Salvador, the homicide rate has spiked to its highest level in a decade, putting
the tiny Central American nation on pace to become the most deadly country in the

hemisphere. Since a 2012 truce between the two most powerful street gangs
crumbled last year, violence has surged. More than 1,800 people have been killed this
year, including two dozen police officers, most slain while off-duty.
Amid a public outcry and mounting government pressure, El Salvadors anti-gang
police have ratcheted up their operations, killing suspected gang members and
arresting more than 4,400 others this year. New laws have made it harder to
investigate police violence. The countrys vice president, Oscar Ortiz, has said that
police must use weapons and should do so without fearing consequences for their
actions.
Within police ranks, there is both fear and law-and-order bravado, an edgy,
confrontational climate that human rights groups say evokes memories of the brutal
1980s civil war.
Anti-gang police receive instructions for an operation in a dangerous
neighborhood in San Salvador. (Fred Ramos/For The Washington Post)

On Thursday, after a ceremony to distribute new bulletproof vests to the force, police
chief Mauricio Ramrez Landaverde vowed: We cannot permit this situation; we will
control it.
Over the years, El Salvador has tried various iron-fisted security plans, but the gangs
have become so pervasive that some consider them akin to a shadow government. So
far, there is no sign the latest police crackdown is changing that.
Gangs vs. police
On his laptop inside the fortresslike headquarters known as the Castle, police subdirector Pedro Gonzalez, the leader of the anti-gang force, scrolls through maps and
aerial photos illustrating the ever-shifting gang territory. Nearly the entire country is
divvied up between the two main rivals, Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street gang.
Both descended from Salvadoran immigrant gangs started decades ago in Los
Angeles. Police say there are now more than 30,000 gang members inside and
outside prison; other estimatesput the number at twice that, or about half the size of
the nations police force.
The gangs have diverse criminal interests the drug trade, migrant trafficking, gun-

running. A police study found that just in the few blocks of San Salvadors historic
center, gangs earned $100,000 a day extorting businesses, a vast sum in this poor
country. The wealth attracts a flow of new recruits.
In 2012, the gangs negotiated a truce, blessed by the government and facilitated by
the Catholic Church, that included transferring imprisoned leaders to less-restrictive
jails, with access to family and phones, where they could keep contact with members
outside and still run their operations. The murder rate plummeted.
After a little more than a year, the truce fell apart. The new president, Salvador
Snchez Cern, a former leftist guerrilla commander during the civil war, opposes
negotiations with the gangs. His government has transferred more inmates back to the
maximum-security prison. Some see the surging death toll as a gang tactic to pressure
the government; others contend that aggressive policing has provoked the gangs to
lash out at officers, government officials and civilians. Police say a quarter of those
killed this year were gang members, many slain by rivals but others by police. (Figures
on police killings are not broken out.)
The gangs issued a statement last month saying that police are the most dangerous
criminals and what their actions are feeding is war.
A house-by-house search for gang members in San Salvador. (Fred
Ramos/For The Washington Post)

Gonzalez, who didnt support the truce, believes that the gangs used that time to
rearm and consolidate power, and that they have been the aggressors.
They gave the order to attack authorities of the system, the prisons, the prosecutors,
police. To protest their decisions. This is why we have this quantity of deaths, he said.
The gangs began to attack, and police have to defend themselves.
Gonzalez, 50, has served the state since the civil war, when he was an army captain
trained at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. After two decades rising
through the police ranks, as well as tutorials from the FBI and the Baton Rouge police,
he knows crime-fighting theory. At his desk he flips through a 2002 study he wrote,
explaining the virtues of a holistic strategy based on prevention, rehabilitation, finding
a path for vulnerable youth back into the societal fold. Hes an affable man with varied

interests, an amateur oil painter and evangelical pastor: He believes in second

chances.
But his cellphone has other priorities. Juggling calls while steering his black sedan to
an unmarked intelligence base, Gonzalez learned that gang members were holding a
mans four children hostage. A few days before, during the years most violent
weekend, a text message informed him that gangs were plotting attacks in the capital
to avenge three comrades slain by his cops. Each day, an e-mail appears with the
years cumulative body count.
With 22 deaths a day, you cant think about the long term. People are demanding
answers, he said. If you have both cancer and a headache, youll deal with the
headache now and worry about the cancer tomorrow. You have to treat the pain.
You are nothing
A couple hundred of Gonzalezs foot soldiers stood in formation in a parking lot one
afternoon last week. They pulled on their masks and turned off their phones. The
mission, known as Safe House, was to sweep a slum for suspected gang members.
Be very careful to respect the rights of the people, the commander told the men. A
policeman has to be professional. But he also has to be strict with the criminals.
The force arrived in a warren of alleys known as Tutunichapa and started knocking on
doors. A little girl shouted, Get out, police! In the cinder-block shanties, the officers
dug through cupboards and looked under beds. When they pulled out suspects
some with small quantities of marijuana, others with tattoos residents gathered to
watch. A grandmother was crying. One handcuffed suspect tried to comfort his
relatives: Im a minor. Its okay, he said. Three days, max.
By the end of the operation, police had sat 14 people on the ground facing a concrete
wall alongside a gas station parking lot, before taking them to the station for
processing and to check for prior crimes. One officer, before leaving, punched a man
in the back. His forehead smacked the wall. A shirtless, handcuffed man lying in an oil
stain yelled at the officers: This is my country. You are nothing.
For some police officers, frustration is mounting. They get paid about $500 a month
and want raises. Some dont have proper uniforms. Citizens withhold information. Now
that the police killings have increased, many live in fear. The last officer to die was a
woman named Wendy Alfaro, who was shot while buying tortillas with her daughter.
We dont have the freedom to go outside with our families, said Freddy Rodriguez, a
38-year-old agent. Theyll kill you. They know you and theyll kill you.
That night, the anti-gang police raided an apartment complex by moonlight, shooing
away barking dogs and roosters. They interrogated an 18-year-old boy in his boxers
who had been sleeping on a mattress with no sheets.
Youre a gang member.
No.

A Mara?
Neither.
An officer picked up a framed drawing. It depicted a swirl of demons, a jokers face, a
marijuana leaf, the phrase Life is a dream. The police said it was 18th Street gang
iconography. An officer took the drawing outside and stomped it with his boot.
My dad gave me that, the kid said.
Concern about abuses
The aggressive posture of police and soldiers worries human rights groups in El
Salvador. Jeanne Rikkers, who has worked on police and human rights issues for
years in San Salvador, said that as she takes testimony from citizens about
disappeared relatives or other abuses, people are reporting things to you that sound
like the 80s.
It is a police force that is riddled with corruption and has a very strong tendency to
abuse authority under the pretext of security, Rikkers said. The general impression is
the police can do whatever they want.
In his office, Gonzalez, the anti-gang chief, mentioned that his father was a cacao and
coffee farmer. When you work with your hands, he said, you get callouses, but police
work can callous your heart. When he reads the daily death toll, he thinks about the
mothers. Families of gang members come to his church services, he said, and he tries
to show them a different path.
But the political climate has changed.
If these killings of gang members had happened five years ago, these police would
be in prison; if they happened two years ago, theyd be jailed, for violation of human
rights, he said. The population supports these types of procedures. They are seeing
that the aggressive behavior of the police keeps the gangs from growing.
You cant let the gangs take over the state, he said.
Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.
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