El Salvador: 60% drop in Homicide rates since 2019
After being one of the most violent countries in the world, El Salvador has proven different this year with 697 killings this year compared to 1697 same time last year. Surely a significant decrease.
To what or whom do Salvadorans owe this positive result? There are two protagonists in this battle against homicides and both have played equally important roles even though the local government would not agree as they want to take all the credit.
On the one hand there is the crime fighting plan of President Bukele and on the other we have El Salvador street gangs(MS13, Barrio 18 Revolutionaries and Barrio 18 Surenos) who decided not to fight against soldiers from the government for two particular reasons: they don’t see the fight against the government as viable anymore and the individual cliques that are now much more powerful on the streets have a clear notion of not confronting the governments forces as they know they will be defeated.
The imminent decrease in homicides may also be the result of a possible agreement between the government and the 3 street gangs mentioned before.
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Previous gang leaders that are now in prison have been restricted from visitors and mobiles and regular phone calls, and this has created new gang leaders who are not interested in confronting the government forces nor with street killings.
So we could say there’s still hope for other central and Latin American countries with really high homicide rates: Honduras, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, among others.
Each government has its own black dogs to confront. In Colombia homicide rates are high because of an increase in organized crime and the lack of effective strategies from the government to negotiate with them. Also, the gradual resurrection of guerrilla groups (Farc, ELN) as the conditions of the peace treaty have not been accomplished as promised. In Mexico are the mafia groups and infinite number of organized crime groups that work for this mafia…war is in the streets and the government faces several black dogs.
But let’s stick to the positive side of things. El Salvador has been if not the most one of the most violent countries in The Americas, so having been able to reach a 60% drop in homicide is a really BIG deal and something that other governments from the region should take as an example and examine with detail because even though each country has different circumstances, some strategies can be applied in different scenarios.
