Aerial cocaine interdictions have fallen sharply in Central America in the last three years, suggesting that drug traffickers are shifting their modus operandi, potentially in response to increased attention on aerial routes.

Just two clandestine airstrips were discovered in Honduras in the first four months of 2024, according to data provided by the Honduran Defense Department in response to a freedom of information request. Meanwhile, in neighboring Guatemala, authorities destroyed just one airstrip and are yet to intercept a drug flight, according to data from the Guatemalan anti-narcotics police.

The numbers represent an increasingly sharp drop in interdictions along Central America’s aerial smuggling routes, which primarily run through Honduras and Guatemala. Large areas of remote forests far from the grasp of law enforcement, in addition to proximity to the Mexican border, make both countries attractive for traffickers looking to land drug planes. 

SEE ALSO: Drug Flights Climb Again in Honduras and Guatemala

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the Honduran armed forces regularly destroyed over 30 clandestine airstrips a year. But those numbers have plummeted in the last few years, dropping to 25 in 2021, nine in 2022, and eight in 2023. 

The number of drug runways destroyed by Guatemalan security forces also fell steadily from 22 in 2021, to 15 in 2022, to just 12 last year, before dropping to 1 in the first four months of 2024. Anti-narcotics agencies also have not seized any cocaine moved via aerial trafficking routes into Guatemala this year, after seizing 938 kilograms in 2023 and 3.8 tons in 2022.  

Authorities in both countries have continued to make bumper cocaine seizures, primarily at sea. Honduran security forces seized almost 7 tons of cocaine in the first four months of 2024, mostly stemming from two multi-ton seizures intercepted off the country’s northern coast. Their Guatemalan counterparts confiscated 6 tons of cocaine in the same timeframe — mostly in Pacific waters, but also on land — surpassing last year’s annual haul of 5 tons.

“Drug trafficking organizations are primarily using maritime routes, particularly along the Pacific seaboard,” a US State Department official, not authorized to speak on the record, told InSight Crime. “The maritime domain remains a critical vulnerability to the counternarcotics effort in Honduras.”

InSight Crime Analysis

While the efforts of authorities seem to have pushed traffickers away from air routes, the reason behind the shift in methods remains unclear and the capacity of trafficking groups to ship cocaine in bulk remains unchallenged. 

The Guatemalan military pointed to heightened aerial defenses as a reason behind the decline in cocaine arriving by aerial routes. In recent years, the armed forces, with US support, have invested in aircraft and radar technology to deter drug flights. The US also resumed sharing radar intelligence with Honduras in 2023, nine years after suspending cooperation in response to the Honduran air force shooting down multiple suspected drug planes. 

But increased military capability likely has a limited effect. Traffickers never displayed any particular fear of authorities discovering their airstrips, often building new airstrips adjacent to ones decommissioned by security forces. Because of the large profits available, traffickers were often willing to dispose of drug planes and runways after a single flight, and the authorities were rarely able to get to new airstrips before drugs landed. 

Alan Ajiatas, a former Guatemalan prosecutor and expert in drug dynamics, told InSight Crime that aerial interdiction was “one of the most difficult domains we’ve come across,” citing the difficulty of accessing isolated areas where drug planes land. “It’s normal and even logical to always be behind the curve,” Ajiatas added.

Recent prosecutions of key individuals that facilitated the Central America air bridge have likely played a larger part in the traffickers’ move away from drug flights.

For example, in 2021 — the year before aerial cocaine interdictions began to drop — Guatemalan prosecutors arrested three military officials suspected of sharing army intelligence to help traffickers bring drugs into the country by plane. 

The United States also began in the late 2010s to dismantle a state-embedded drug trafficking network spearheaded by former Honduran president and convicted drug trafficker, Juan Orlando Hernández, at a time when aerial cocaine activity was peaking in Honduras.

SEE ALSO: Juan Orlando Hernández Declared Guilty on Drug Trafficking Charges

US prosecutors accused Hernández’s brother, Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former congressman, of selling sensitive information regarding Honduras’ radar system directly to drug trafficking organizations. Tony was convicted of drug trafficking in US federal court in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison two years later.

The US Justice Department has also prosecuted US citizens supplying illegal aircraft to drug networks in Guatemala, Honduras, and other Latin American countries, part of efforts to disrupt air bridges between South America and the United States.

Traffickers may also be changing their methods for logistical and economic reasons. With cocaine production at a record high, moving shipments at sea or on land may simply be a more viable method for traffickers to ship cocaine in bulk. 

At the beginning of 2024, authorities in Ecuador seized 22 tons of cocaine in a single operation, underscoring the rise of Ecuador as a key launching point for cocaine destined for international markets. 

Traffickers mostly use maritime methods to ship cocaine from Ecuador, using a mixture of semi-submersibles, go-fast boats in addition to contaminating shipping containers to get large quantities of cocaine out of the country. 

“It’s challenging for authorities to detect maritime shipments, especially in countries like Honduras that lack resources,” Emilia Ziosi, a researcher of illicit drug flows at the University of Oxford, told InSight Crime, “But for traffickers, [maritime shipments] can work really well. With planes, you have to burn them, for example, but with containers … the infrastructure is already there.”

“Air trafficking faces stricter international controls,” Ajiatas told InSight Crime. “The less effective [the air routes], the more traffickers start to use other routes.” 

Featured image: Security forces guard a burned drug plane in Colón, Honduras. Credit: /La Prensa

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The extradition of an alleged Guatemalan drug trafficker linked to the Sinaloa Cartel is a blow to one of the country’s most infamous drug clans. But the group is well-positioned to weather US pressure.

Juan José Morales Cifuentes, an alleged leader of the Pochos drug clan, was extradited to the United States on May 17, along with five other alleged traffickers. Guatemalan authorities arrested Cifuentes in December last year. The US Justice Department accuses him of distributing and transporting cocaine in association with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

Cifuentes received taxes from Mexican traffickers “to store their narcotics in the Guatemalan border towns of Tecun Uman and San Marcos,” US prosecutors allege. 

The US Treasury sanctioned Cifuentes in February over his alleged role in drug trafficking, describing him as a “leader of the Pochos drug trafficking organization (DTO) since 2019.” 

SEE ALSO: Los Pochos, Guatemala’s New Generation of Drug Runners for Sinaloa Cartel

Cifuentes is the son-in-law of notorious Guatemala trafficker, Erick Salvador Súñiga Rodríguez, the alleged former leader of the Pochos who died in US custody in 2020. Súñiga spent over a decade as mayor of the group’s stronghold of Ayutla, a border town in the western San Marcos department, before surrendering to US authorities in late 2019. He was simultaneously sanctioned under the US Kingpin Act and accused of supplying cocaine to the Sinaloa Cartel.

In February this year, the US Treasury sanctioned Cifuentes’ wife — Súñiga’s daughter— Isel Aneli Súñiga Morfin. As the current mayor of Ayutla, Súñiga Morfin “reportedly uses her political connections to further the Los Pochos DTO,” according to a statement released by the US Treasury.

The sanctions against the Pochos also targeted one of Cifuentes’ lieutenants, who was arrested by Guatemalan authorities last December. The measures imposed an assets freeze on bank accounts and companies linked to the group.  

The Pochos are thought to be the heirs to the renowned Guatemalan drug lord, Juan Chamalé, a convicted trafficker who once controlled the land routes connecting the San Marcos department to Mexico.

InSight Crime Analysis

Sustained US pressure on the Pochos may have depleted the group’s ranks and disrupted its logistical and financial operations, but it is unlikely to have dealt a fatal blow to a network that retains several lines of defense.

The group has long leveraged its political clout in Ayutla to protect its operations. As mayor, Súñiga senior relied on “corrupt local law enforcement officials to assist him with illicit activities,” according to US authorities. 

By controlling the security forces, mayors can also divert attention from drug shipments,  an indispensable tool in towns like Ayutla, which houses a strategic and heavily traversed border checkpoint connecting Guatemala with territories controlled by major Mexican DTOs.

The political immunity afforded to all Guatemalan mayors grants additional protection. Súñiga’s daughter and Ayutla mayor, Súñiga Morfin, has yet to face any criminal charges in Guatemala despite the US sanctions. 

SEE ALSO: A Mayor and a Wave of Narco Violence on Guatemala’s Pacific

The Pochos’ purported relationship with the Sinaloa Cartel may also help the group recover from operational and financial setbacks. The Mexican group’s thirst for cocaine provides lucrative revenue streams for networks like the Pochos, which purchases hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine annually for delivery to Mexican drug trafficking leaders, among other recipients, according to US prosecutors.

The Pochos also enjoy a strong local support base. Former mayor Suñiga was a popular leader who leveraged political power to oust other criminal groups, improving local security perceptions, according to an investigation by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística – CLIP). He also built churches and cultural centers to shore up local support. Such efforts to foster local legitimacy are geared at ensuring long-term political survival and, by extension, enduring protection from external pressures.

Featured image: Alleged leader of the Los Pochos drug trafficking group, Juan José Morales Cifuentes, is detained and escorted by Guatemalan authorities. Credit: La Hora / PNC

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Bernardo Arévalo rode a wave of discontent over corruption to become Guatemala’s president. But 100 days into his government, the new president’s anti-graft drive is being outpaced by an energetic campaign against extortion and drug trafficking.

Arévalo, who took office in January, has said his government “will not tolerate corruption.” But his administration has yet to announce a comprehensive plan for dealing with graft. Some campaign promises – such as the creation of new anti-corruption bodies, an anti-bribery police, and legislation to bar corrupt officials from office – were conspicuously absent from the president’s 100-day plan. 

Instead, the new government has begun by focusing its energies on exposing corrupt schemes mounted during the administration of Arévalo’s predecessor, former president Alejandro Giammattei (2020-2024). The president has also taken aim at Guatemala’s controversial Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, whose office made repeated attempts to block an orderly transition of power.

Though still finding his feet on corruption, Arévalo has gone full-throttle on security. Authorities have launched an aggressive clampdown on extortion, while a series of bumper cocaine seizures have eclipsed the previous government’s anti-narcotics operations. 

Below, InSight Crime recaps Arévalo’s first months in government and his initial strategies for dealing with corruption and organized crime.  

Digging Up Past Corruption 

Arévalo faces an uphill battle when it comes to tackling corruption. The president inherited a weak judicial system. His party, the Seed Movement (Movimiento Semilla), has a minority bloc in congress and may struggle to pass anti-corruption reforms. 

With limited tools, Arévalo’s initial anti-corruption maneuvers have relied on executive powers. 

In February, his government launched the National Commission Against Corruption (Comisión Nacional contra la Corrupción – CNC), a rebranded version of a presidential commission created by Giammattei. By early March, the CNC had started working with ministries to expose potential acts of corruption – particularly in the public works, health, and education sectors – linked to Giammattei-era officials. 

SEE ALSO: Anti-Corruption Commission Confronts Guatemala’s ‘Continuum of Impunity’

Officials quickly began a review of over 1,400 potentially onerous public works contracts awarded during the Giammattei administration. Communications Minister Jazmín de la Vega then filed a series of legal complaints against former public works officials over construction projects that left highways and schools incomplete.

Arévalo officials also accused former health minister, Amelia Flores, of corruption. Flores became embroiled in a major scandal in 2021 after signing a shambolic contract to secure COVID-19 vaccines from Russia via a dubious intermediary. Flores resigned during the pandemic but escaped legal troubles over the vaccine contract.  

As of early April, the Arévalo government had filed 17 accusations of government corruption with the Attorney General’s Office. 

“The government has done well in presenting these accusations,” said Stephen McFarland, a retired US diplomat and former ambassador to Guatemala. “The facts are on their side.” 

But whether these accusations prosper remains to be seen. Arévalo does not have an ally in Attorney General Porras, whose office has a monopoly on state prosecution. Under Porras – a close ally of Giammattei – prosecutors have shelved major corruption cases implicating former officials. 

“The Attorney General’s Office is defending them tooth and nail,” said McFarland, referring to the former Giammattei officials. 

Sparring with Attorney General Porras 

Before taking office, Arévalo promised supporters he would demand Attorney General Porras’ resignation. The pledge came after weeks of nationwide protests against Porras, whose office looked set to derail the transition of power by launching spurious investigations into Arévalo and his party. 

Porras has also spearheaded a systematic campaign aimed at weakening the Attorney General’s Office from within. Most high-profile corruption investigations have stalled under her tenure.

Arévalo’s attempts to oust Porras have fallen short of formally demanding her resignation;  under Guatemalan law, a president cannot force the attorney general to resign. Instead, his government filed a legal complaint against her, citing a technicality, in the hope of lifting her political immunity.

The new administration has also gone after Porras’ general secretary and right-hand-man, Ángel Pineda, accusing him of using public funds to harass exiled prosecutors with politically motivated lawsuits. Pineda denies the allegations. 

Arévalo’s head-on strategy grabbed headlines, but its chances of success are slim: Porras has allies in the courts, who have so far stalled the vote on her immunity.

SEE ALSO: Democracy on the Line as Guatemalan Prosecutors Take Aim at President-Elect

Losing the showdown with Porras would both limit the scope of Arévalo’s anti-corruption ambitions and potentially exacerbate the existential threat to his government posed by Porras’ ranks of loyal prosecutors. 

“Porras and Arévalo are on a collision course,” said Jo-Marie Burt, an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and President of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

“If he is unable to replace her, it is quite possible that he will be steamrolled by her,” she added. 

Getting Tougher on Crime

While Arévalo is still finding a rhythm on corruption, his government wasted no time on security.

Guatemalan authorities announced a major crackdown on extortion just days after Arévalo’s inauguration. Police have staged multiple raids on notorious prison gangs and arrested over 500 people suspected of extortion in the first months of government.

The anti-extortion campaign bears some similarities with a hardline anti-gang crackdown in neighboring El Salvador. Authorities in both countries have posted a stream of bombastic videos promoting police operations, some set to dramatic music. Other clips flaunt police power in regimented parades. Government social media accounts have also plastered photos of suspected gang members on Twitter, now X. 

Drug trafficking is also high on the security agenda. Guatemalan authorities seized over 5 tons of cocaine in the 59 days since Arévalo took power – more than double the amount seized in 2023.

Featured image: President-elect Bernardo Arévalo gives a press conference in Guatemala City, December 2023. Credit: AP/Moises Castillo

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Santiago Palomo was minutes away from boarding a flight to New York when he got a call from Guatemala’s newly-inaugurated president, Bernardo Arévalo. 

Palomo, a Guatemalan lawyer and Harvard University graduate, was heading home from a January break in Madrid with every intention of returning to his job at a top New York law firm. Instead, Arévalo offered him a new role – heading the government’s flagship anti-corruption commission as Guatemala looks to reignite its decades-long fight against graft and impunity.

Both humbled and tantalized by the proposition, Palomo jumped on the first plane to Guatemala after arriving in New York, met with the president, and accepted his offer. 

By February, Palomo had moved to Guatemala and launched the National Commission Against Corruption (Comisión Nacional contra la Corrupción – CNC), a rebranded version of the executive body created by Arévalo’s predecessor, former president Alejandro Giammattei (2020-2024). 

SEE ALSO: Can Guatemala’s New President Reignite Fight Against Corruption and Crime?

Palomo takes charge following years of backsliding on corruption that has seen state-embedded corruption networks cynically dismantle the country’s justice system and plunder state coffers, targeting ministries dealing with infrastructure, public health, and education. Prosecutors linked to corruption networks have transformed the Attorney General’s Office into a weapon for persecuting political rivals. That includes President Arévalo, who traversed a minefield of legal attacks laid by Attorney General Consuelo Porras before taking office in early January.

Against this ominous backdrop, InSight Crime met with Palomo at the CNC’s offices in Guatemala City to discuss what challenges lie ahead.

InSight Crime (IC): Arévalo has said his government will not tolerate corruption. However, he still hasn’t announced a concrete anti-corruption plan. What is the plan, and where does the CNC fit in?

Santiago Palomo (SP): Part of why the commission was launched was to lay out the groundwork of the national anti-corruption agenda. We haven’t been successful against corruption, partly because we haven’t had political will. We have been ruled by kleptocrats and by people that have seen the state as a means of fulfilling their own economic means. Moreover, you haven’t had a full-throated, effective, national anti-corruption strategy that tackles the root causes of corruption. 

We’re not a prosecutorial body because that’s not our constitutional mandate. It’s more of a global view of how to tackle corruption through policy and processes that prior governments have lacked.

President Arévalo’s mission is to tackle problems in the long term. It’s going to take time, but we can lay the groundwork for policy that will result in preventative measures needed to have an effective and impartial government.

IC: Corruption networks have successfully infiltrated most branches of the government. Where will the CNC focus its energy? 

SP: Because it’s such a full-blown issue, we have to prioritize where corruption networks are most deeply entrenched and where they have done most damage. We want to prioritize at least three ministries that have been most exposed to corrupt practices: the Ministry of Communications, Infrastructure, and Housing (Ministerio de Comunicaciones, Infraestructura y Vivienda – CIV); the Ministry for Health and Social Assistance (Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social – MSPAS); and the Ministry of Education (Ministerio de Educación – MINEDUC). 

Procurement in public works has been a synonym of discretionality. There has been no transparency or accountability as to how contractors are contracted. We are working with the CIV to revise about 1,430 contracts, which by preliminary assessment have shown signs of irregularity. A task force, led by the CIV and accompanied by the CNC and the Public Attorney’s Office (Procuraduría General de la Nación – PGN), plans to identify irregular contracts so that action can be taken.

IC: You recently declined an invitation to meet with Attorney General Consuelo Porras. Do you envisage any collaboration with her, given her office’s attempts to prosecute President Arévalo?

SP: We’re willing to work with any institution or stakeholder in Guatemala that’s truly committed to the fight against corruption. That’s an overarching commitment by the president, myself, and members of the cabinet. 

We have not seen that in the Attorney General’s Office. Their actions have shown the opposite. We have seen this continuum of impunity, mostly because there has not been a strong commitment by the Attorney General’s Office.

Obviously, criminal complaints are going to be put where they belong – the Attorney General’s Office. They have a job to do there. But until we see otherwise, I don’t see how we can extend the conversation to a broader national anti-corruption agenda.

IC: What will happen to the 1,430 potentially irregular public works contracts, or reports of corruption denounced by ordinary Guatemalans, if the Attorney General’s Office isn’t willing to investigate them?  

SP: That’s the challenge. We’re going to do everything in our institutional capabilities to expose acts of corruption in the government while being respectful of the broader legal framework. And we’re going to show the Guatemalan people what has been found.

SEE ALSO: Democracy on the Line as Guatemalan Prosecutors Take Aim at President-Elect

They will know the Attorney General’s Office should be accountable for whether cases have been investigated or not. History will tell if they’re going to commit to their constitutional mandate and respond to this kleptocracy that has taken over the Guatemalan state.

IC: The judicial sector has been infiltrated by political mafias who will seek to position allies in top magisterial posts during high court elections later this year. Does the CNC have a plan to promote a clean selection process?

SP: Everything that’s within the mandate of the commission will be done. The greatest institutional battle this country faces is judiciary selection. Without a strong judiciary, we can’t advance a robust anti-corruption agenda. 

We’re going to be closely monitoring the process. When there’s an opportunity to coordinate within the margins of our legal mandate, we’re going to do it. We plan on making communication strategies that lay out the implications of this process and why transparency has to be at the forefront.

IC: The line between politics and drug trafficking is often blurry. What will the CNC do if it receives tip-offs about high-level politicians linked to the drug trade? Is anyone untouchable? 

SP: No. It shouldn’t be a limit of the commission. Part of our job will be mapping out key criminal actors within the broader institutional framework. And obviously once this type of behavior is identified, we’re going to use the executive branch and the judiciary, as well as cooperation with international institutions, so that actions can be taken.

IC: How would you evaluate the health of key government ministries?

SP: I would say it’s critical. I think we have to be honest with the impression we’ve had from the first couple of months in government. 

The CIV was used as the main source of political spoils. We know that public works has been a means of financing corrupt networks. It has been a means of financing the pockets of public officials and local politicians in different parts of Guatemala. The initial diagnosis in the CIV is full-blown corruption. 

The ministry of health is also suffering. Hospitals have no medicine. Doctors have been working in subhuman conditions. The corrupt business around medicines has grown significantly during the last three or four administrations. 

This is the trend in every ministry. The cabinet knows it’s a critical position, but they also know the threshold is so low that there’s significant room for improvement.

IC: What goals does the CNC have for this year? 

SP: It’s going to be challenging to create an anti-corruption dynamic that is effective and produces results. 

We’re going to present a whistleblower protection initiative in the upcoming weeks. One of the goals for this year is to get the law approved by congress as legislation that will help in the anti-corruption fight. Right now, whistleblowers don’t feel comfortable filing claims against public officials for corrupt acts because they feel there’s no physical, labor, or identity protection.

We will also revise the 1,430 CIV contracts to identify onerous ones that affect the interests of the Guatemalan government and that have no public utility. We want to set a precedent that this will not be tolerated. 

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Featured image: Santiago Palomo, head of Guatemala’s National Commission Against Corruption. Credit: Comisión Nacional contra la Corrupción

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Bernardo Arévalo was sworn in as president of Guatemala on January 15, but it was no ordinary inauguration. 

Arévalo, a rank outsider who shocked the political establishment by winning the 2023 elections on a pledge to combat graft, had already survived months of spurious legal attacks that threatened to tank his presidency before it had even begun. Then, when inauguration day came, the ceremony was delayed by ten hours after old-guard lawmakers made last-ditch attempts to thwart him and his party, the Seed Movement (Movimiento Semilla).  

After finally swearing in shortly after midnight, Arévalo used his first speech as president to hammer home his priority of tackling widespread corruption. 

“We will not allow our institutions to be bent by corruption and impunity,” he said during the delayed ceremony in Guatemala City.

Months earlier, he and his party presented an ambitious anti-graft agenda seeking the creation of an “anti-corruption cabinet,” increased scrutiny on public spending, and measures to block officials convicted of corruption from ever retaking office.

SEE ALSO: Guatemala’s President-Elect Still Has 1 More Hurdle to Cross

But Arévalo faces a mammoth task in achieving reform. The president inherits a frail set of institutions that, during the previous administration, were deliberately gutted in an effort to stifle Guatemala’s decades-long battle with impunity.

The new government also has the undesirable task of addressing organized crime and insecurity in a country with a homicide rate well above regional averages, and where institutional decay has left authorities ill-equipped to confront powerful drug trafficking rings and criminal groups extorting locals on a daily basis.

Below, InSight Crime analyzes some of the main challenges awaiting the new government on corruption and organized crime. 

Facing Down the Attorney General’s Office

Arévalo is already at loggerheads with Guatemala’s Attorney General, Consuelo Porras. During the previous administration, Porras spearheaded a cynical crackdown against dozens of anti-impunity prosecutors who once led the fight against impunity. She replaced them with loyal allies who transformed the Attorney General’s Office into a shield for corrupt actors and a tool for persecuting political rivals, including Arévalo and Semilla.

Porras’ office plunged Guatemala into political crisis by calling for Arévalo’s immunity to be stripped when he was still president-elect, citing criminal accusations that appeared to be based on flimsy evidence. The maneuvers did not stop Arévalo from taking office, but the investigations are ongoing.

“There’s a high probability that Arévalo and Semilla could continue facing judicial persecution,” said Pamela Ruiz, Central America Analyst for the International Crisis Group.

SEE ALSO: Democracy on the Line as Guatemalan Prosecutors Take Aim at President-Elect

Pushing forward the president’s anti-graft plans in the short term will depend, in part, on whether he and his party can survive these legal attacks, or find a way to remove Porras. 

“Very limited progress can be made while Porras remains in her post,” said Ruiz.

Arévalo has repeatedly called for Porras’ resignation, but under Guatemalan law an attorney general cannot be removed unless convicted of a crime during his or her tenure. Porras has faced no criminal charges despite being sanctioned for corruption by the US State Department.

Some analysts have suggested the new administration could seek to reform the law, which was designed to protect Porras’ predecessor when leading an anti-corruption drive. But a modification could inadvertently invest future administrations with the power to meddle in prosecutors’ affairs.  

The longer-term success of Arévalo’s anti-graft agenda may rest on whether Porras’ replacement – her term ends in 2026 – can “rebalance the Attorney General’s Office,” according to Ruiz. 

That would require ousting certain prosecutors linked to corruption and “shifting prosecutors with specializations back to designated offices to ensure efficient investigation of crimes,” she told InSight Crime.

Disrupting Organized Crime

Corruption and institutional degradation may also complicate efforts to tackle organized crime in a country where violent drug rings have infiltrated politics and the security forces. 

Guatemala’s border regions have long felt the brunt of bloody disputes between criminal groups vying for control of cocaine-smuggling routes. These networks have also branched out into coca cultivation to generate additional revenue.

SEE ALSO: Guatemala Sees Record Coca, But No Cocaine

The Arévalo administration is yet to announce a concrete anti-narcotics strategy, though Semilla has pledged to fight contraband with the help of customs authorities and anti-narcotics police.

“[Semilla’s anti-contraband plans] could cause some concern for organized crime and drug trafficking groups,” said Marielos Chang, cofounder of Guatemalan pro-democracy group Red Ciudadana.“But there are no specific plans to directly confront the areas controlled by drug trafficking groups.”

Persistent corruption within the security forces and depleted institutions – Porras recently fired the country’s top anti-drug prosecutor – may also complicate efforts to mitigate the drug trafficking threat.  

Efforts to investigate drug traffickers also risk stepping on the toes of influential politicians. Particularly in Congress, drug rings seek to position allies to shield their operations. 

Arévalo has instead placed extortion and reforming the country’s prisons at the forefront of his government’s security agenda. This may be an easier target, as extortion rackets are primarily operated by low-level criminals, many in jail, with minimal clout in politics. 

Navigating Congress

Arévalo’s shock election victory saw Semilla catapulted into power from relative obscurity. The party is now navigating a Congress dominated by establishment parties – many linked to corruption – where Semilla holds just 23 out of 160 seats. Lawmakers opposing Arévalo have refused to recognize his party, meaning Semilla representatives cannot sit on the boards influencing the legislative agenda.

The party has no choice but to seek coalitions in Congress when trying to enact the more ambitious parts of its anti-graft plan. This includes the creation of two new anti-corruption bodies charged with increasing scrutiny of public spending and bribery. It is tricky territory, as companies linked to congressional officials are among the most common recipients of dubiously-awarded state contracts or other government bounty.

SEE ALSO: Guatemala Election Upset Sparks Establishment Meltdown

Congress also determines the composition of the country’s high courts, a selection process heavily infiltrated by corruption networks seeking to position allies in top judicial posts. In recent years, the high courts have shielded hundreds of lawmakers from investigation and overturned dozens of landmark corruption convictions. Increasing the number of qualified magistrates in the court system could go some way to reversing this trend.

Semilla has already cobbled together a majority coalition in Congress, seen by many as a crucial step to avoiding government gridlock. But forging alliances with establishment parties could smear Semilla’s reputation as an alternative to corruption; the party’s newly formed legislative bloc includes politicians from a party previously investigated for illicit campaign financing, in addition to Congress officials linked to drug trafficking. Navigating Congress could also risk watering down anti-corruption initiatives.

Some of Semilla’s more eye-catching campaign promises have been left out of the government’s plan for its first 100 days in office.  

“I’ve not seen any [proposed] anti-corruption law dramatic enough to generate backlash in Congress,” Chang told InSight Crime. “It would be radical if they created a system with enough bite to stop the executive and government jobs from being a source of corruption.”

So far, “there’s nothing to stop us from falling back into the levels of corruption we had in previous governments,” she said.

Feature image: President Bernardo Arévalo at a press conference regarding Attorney General Consuelo Porras. Source: Associated Press

The post Can Guatemala’s New President Reignite Fight Against Corruption and Crime? appeared first on InSight Crime.

Guatemala’s political establishment was shaken to its core this year when an unwelcome outsider, Bernardo Arévalo, defied the odds to win the 2023 presidential elections. The upset sparked hope for change in a country plagued by graft, but it also set Arévalo and his progressive platform on a collision course with a corrupt pact unafraid of tanking democracy in pursuit of self-preservation.

Stunned by the elections, the pact has mounted increasingly brazen and often baseless legal attacks on President-elect Arévalo and his party, the Seed Movement (Movimiento Semilla). The controversial maneuvers have enraged Guatemalans, sparking mass protests and institutional chaos, while also drawing a flurry of sanctions from the United States. A timely intervention by the country’s highest court could grant Arévalo safe passage to his inauguration on January 14, but will do little to deter further legal attacks. 

Amid the turbulence, Guatemala finds itself at a crossroads. If Arévalo takes office, it would see political mafias forfeit control of executive powers that have anchored yearslong efforts to perpetuate corruption. But if his adversaries stop him, it would effectively end democracy in Guatemala, surrendering the state to white-collar criminals.  

An Unwelcome Upset

The panorama looked bleak for Guatemala as parties hit the campaign trail in early 2023. 

All of the leading candidates came from a deeply conservative political class that has dominated Guatemalan politics since the country transitioned from military rule to democracy in 1985. Many were linked to corruption — specifically, to an alignment between the main branches of government in favor of graft and impunity, orbiting around the administration of departing president Alejandro Giammattei. 

Known colloquially as the Pacto de Corruptos, or “corrupt pact,” this alliance came into the elections on a high. In just a few years, it had succeeded in kneecapping practically any state body capable of holding corrupt actors to account. Particular attention was paid to gutting the Attorney General’s Office and the judiciary, which had taken on high-impact corruption cases in the 2010s with the help of a now-defunct United Nations-backed commission.

With impunity rife, the pact turned its gaze to the elections, leveraging its clout in the courts to disqualify a series of unwanted candidates on dubious grounds. This included an eccentric businessman who had suddenly topped the polls, a vocal anti-corruption crusader who previously headed the country’s top human rights office, and a rogue elite who had publicly criticized Giammattei. Their rivals sidelined, the stage was set for an establishment pick to prevail. 

“The only thing that was missing in order to consolidate the complete capture of the institutions was to win the election,” Marielos Chang, cofounder of Guatemalan pro-democracy group Red Ciudadana, told InSight Crime.

But one candidate flew under the radar. Little attention was paid to Bernardo Arévalo, the son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president. Running on a progressive, anti-corruption platform with the center-left minority party, Semilla, Arévalo was lagging in the polls coming into the first round of votes on June 25. Posing minimal threat, the pact saw no need to eliminate him from the race. 

It proved a seismic miscalculation, as conservative candidates flopped on election night. 

“Several candidates of the dominant political bloc were competing,” Chang said. “Because of that internal dispersion, they ended up losing.”

Instead, to the surprise of almost everyone, Arévalo snuck into the August run-off. 

SEE ALSO: Power, Impunity, and the 2023 Guatemala Elections

The Pact Strikes Back

Arévalo’s rise was not part of the plan. And to make matters worse, he looked set for a comfortable victory in the presidential run-off against a candidate who had lost the previous two elections by a wide margin.

The stakes were high. For Giammattei and his allies, controlling the presidency had brought with it command of billions of dollars via the national budget and key ministries. These funds grease the system undermining Guatemalan institutions, as lucrative state bounty — from government contracts to ministerial appointments — can be traded for kickbacks in congress or distributed to loyal networks of prosecutors and judges. Giammattei’s tenure had been marred by corruption scandals. His closest ally, Miguel Martínez, was recently sanctioned by the Treasury Department for dishing out state contracts to favored bidders.

Arévalo and his party were not part of this world. His ascendancy threatened to deal a financial gut punch to a system that had aggressively tried to keep the presidency within its fold. 

Arévalo’s anti-corruption platform was also a problem. After years spent fostering a climate of impunity, the pact now faced the prospect of an anti-graft drive that would leave a host of crooked politicians, prosecutors, and judicial officials exposed to arrest. Among those most exposed was Attorney General Consuelo Porras and her number two, Rafael Currichiche, who had both faced US sanctions for obstructing justice and shielding political allies. 

The pact wasted little time. Days after Arévalo’s first-round upset, in early July, Guatemala’s highest legal authority – the Constitutional Court (Corte de Constitucionalidad – CC) – suspended the election results after a group of defeated conservative parties complained of irregularities, despite not presenting evidence. It led to a partial recount that did not alter the results.

Soon after, the Attorney General’s Office tried to revoke Semilla’s status as a party and later raided its offices. Prosecutors launched an investigation into the alleged falsification of signatures during Semilla’s registration, again without evidence. The raids also hit the electoral tribunal that had certified the first-round results.

The legal attacks, seen by many as a brazen plot to prevent the August run-off from taking place, sparked international outcry and institutional chaos that reached the country’s Constitutional Court. In a twist, the court, which had previously suspended the first-round results on dubious grounds, opted to shield Semilla from investigation until the end of the electoral cycle.  

It proved a crucial intervention, as Arévalo won the August 20 presidential run-off by a landslide. Guatemalans flocked to the streets in rare scenes of jubilation to celebrate his victory. But despite his resounding win, the dust did not settle.

The Point of No Return?

Arévalo’s triumph sparked a new wave of legal challenges aimed at overturning the elections. With the stakes higher than ever, the Attorney General’s Office led the charge.

In early September, prosecutors opened dozens of ballot boxes during more raids on the electoral tribunal, prompting Arévalo to suspend the presidential transition and call for the resignation of Attorney General Porras. 

“They’ve strayed from their constitutional mandate to investigate and prosecute, and are clearly moving towards an attempted coup,” Arévalo said in a September 12 press conference in response to the raids.

In October, discontent with the Attorney General’s Office boiled over. Thousands of protestors packed the main squares of Guatemala City, while others blocked roads around the country. Protesters chanted and held banners calling for an end to impunity and Porras’ resignation. But she refused to step down, even as protesters spent weeks camped outside her office.

“Porras and her judicial operators view this as a winner take all,” said Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “If Arévalo comes in, they think they are probably going to end up in jail.”

True to form, the Attorney General’s Office weathered the protests and doubled down. Prosecutors launched another challenge to Arévalo in late November, announcing plans to strip the president-elect of his political immunity over his alleged involvement in student protests. Again, prosecutors provided few details on the accusations, but pointed to Arévalo’s posts on social media as possible evidence of wrongdoing.

Then came another request to lift Arévalo’s immunity. At a press conference on December 8, prosecutors unveiled their investigation into Semilla’s registration, accusing Arévalo of fraud and money laundering while presenting incoherent evidence to back their case.

They followed the presentation by calling to annul the elections as a whole, despite having no authority to do so, a move immediately rejected by the electoral tribunal and foreign actors.

The Organization of American States called prosecutors’ actions an “attempted coup d’etat,” while US officials announced visa restrictions targeting over 100 Guatemalan legislators for “undermining democracy and the rule of law.” The European Union also condemned “attempts to nullify the elections…based on spurious accusations of fraud.”  

But despite international outcry, the flagrant attacks have left Arévalo, and the elections as a whole, in a precarious state just weeks before his inauguration.

SEE ALSO: Democracy on the Line as Guatemalan Prosecutors Take Aim at President-Elect

What Now for Guatemala?

At first, Arévalo’s victory – a glitch in the systematic corruption that dominates Guatemala politics – looked set to steer the country toward greener pastures. He defeated corrupt political networks with the ability to alter election results, ban candidates, and extract millions in state resources, a power that even the region’s most powerful criminal groups would envy.

Yet the 2023 election has also proven to be the catalyst of institutional meltdown, exposing the deep criminality at the heart of the country’s political system. This will be difficult to overcome even if Arévalo takes office on January 14.

“With the number of people in the state connected to crime…it is a very high stakes situation,” Freeman said.

But despite the relentless legal attacks, democracy is holding its ground, at least for now. On December 14, the Constitutional Court issued a ruling ordering congress to ensure that all elected officials take office in January. Though the resolution should  guarantee that Arévalo takes power, the court emphasized that it will not stop the Attorney General’s Office from continuing its investigations, exposing Arévalo and his party to continuing legal challenges upon taking office.

To make matters worse, the president-elect has already been hamstrung by the departing government. Semilla has lost its legal status as a party following the end of the electoral cycle. As a result, its minority bloc in congress may be unable to influence congressional commissions that administer state funds and are hotbeds for corruption.

The turbulent elections have also exposed the limitations of international support. In a sign of its waning influence in Central America, the United States’ warnings against electoral interference have largely fallen on deaf ears, despite sanctions targeting hundreds of state actors allegedly conspiring to undermine the democratic process. 

This has left Arévalo and his allies up against corrupt political blocs which have, this year, proven themselves capable of surviving at all costs, even at the expense of a democratic political system.

The post GameChangers 2023: Guatemala Election Upset Sparks Establishment Meltdown appeared first on InSight Crime.

A top leader of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges filed by US federal prosecutors, marking the beginning of a case that may blow the lid off the El Salvador government’s secret negotiations with the gang.

Élmer Canales Rivera, alias “Crook,” entered the plea during his December 8 arraignment at a courthouse for the Eastern District of New York in Central Islip, a Long Island town home to US-based members of the gang.

Mexican authorities arrested Crook on November 9, almost two years after the government of El Salvador secretly released him from prison, housed him in a luxury apartment, and facilitated his escape to Guatemala. Following his capture in Mexico, he was flown to Houston, Texas, where he made his first court appearance.

SEE ALSO: Capture of MS13 Leader Exposes US-El Salvador Rift

His release came amid the unraveling of clandestine negotiations between Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and the MS13, in which the gang provided political support in exchange for securing lower levels of violence. Crook was a central figure in those talks, which fell apart after a spate of murders prompted the El Salvador government to enact a state of emergency, suspending certain constitutional rights to facilitate mass arrests of gang members.

US prosecutors indicted Crook and 13 other MS13 leaders in December 2020 on charges ranging from narco-terrorism to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Crook was one of 12 members of the so-called ranfla histórica, the gang’s “historic leadership board,” to be charged.

However, the Salvadoran government refused to extradite Crook and 11 of his indicted gang associates, including Borromeo Enrique Henriquez, alias “Diablito de Hollywood,” the MS13’s highest-ranking leader.

InSight Crime Analysis

As the MS13 reels from the Salvadoran government’s gang crackdown, the case against Crook may shift the balance of power and provide explosive new details about the relationship between the gang and the government of El Salvador.

US officials have already made some damning allegations.

For example, prosecutors claim Crook was “escorted” from prison by “high-level Salvadoran government officials” days after a gang-led killing spree. Then, prosecutors allege, the government officials gave him transportation, a firearm, and a human smuggler to flee the country after the US government had already requested his extradition.

SEE ALSO: Political Connections in El Salvador Help MS13 Leaders Escape Abroad

Crook’s prosecution has already undermined Bukele’s claims that his administration did not negotiate with the gang. US prosecutors say Crook allegedly “played one of the most prominent roles in the MS13’s negotiations and agreements” with the Salvadoran government.

To extract benefits and concessions from the government, officials said Crook and other MS13 leaders ordered the rank-and-file to engage in “public displays of violence to threaten and intimidate civilian populations.” They also “targeted law enforcement and military officials, and manipulated the electoral process.”

As the only top MS13 leader in US custody facing the possibility of life in prison, it is plausible that Crook may cooperate with US prosecutors in exchange for a shorter sentence, a common strategy used by high-profile defendants facing lengthy prison terms.

“Crook may reveal specific details of how people inside Bukele’s administration helped him escape and the MS13’s negotiations with the administration,” Ricardo Valencia, former head of the communication section at the Embassy of El Salvador to the United States, told InSight Crime.

“A lot of information might come out that Bukele doesn’t want to come out, that he is an accomplice in all of this,” he added.

Beyond Crook’s potential negotiations with US authorities, Valencia said the fact that Crook is in US custody at all proves that Bukele has only been cracking down on low-level MS13 members while protecting the gang’s hierarchy. Crook was supposed to be serving a 40-year prison sentence in El Salvador.

The case in New York may also further complicate US-El Salvador relations.

“The US Justice Department and State Department are not always following the same strategy,” said Valencia. “I think it will be difficult for the State Department to provide more resources to a president who conspired with what the Justice Department calls a terrorist organization.”

The post US Terrorism Trial of MS13 Leader Could Expose El Salvador Gang Talks appeared first on InSight Crime.

Diego* was thrown into prison just days after El Salvador’s state of emergency began.

A 22-year-old university student, he had gone to buy some tortillas next to his house when police officers intercepted him and took him to a holding cell for a background check.  

*This article is part of a six-part investigation, “El Salvador’s (Perpetual) State of Emergency: How Bukele’s Government Overpowered Gangs.” InSight Crime spent nine months analyzing how a ruthless state crackdown has debilitated the country’s notorious street gangs, the MS13 and two factions of Barrio 18. Download the full report or read the other chapters in the investigation here.

Diego had no criminal record. Nor did he have any established links to criminal groups. It did not matter: he became one of thousands of civilians thrown into El Salvador’s notoriously overcrowded penitentiary system in early 2022.

It was the start of El Salvador’s historic crackdown on its most prominent street gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and Barrio 18. Dubbed the régimen de excepción, the crackdown began in late March 2022 at the behest of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. 

Bukele’s government had once made a pact with the gangs. Now he was making war. In the first two months of the state of emergency, authorities arrested over 33,000 people, nearly doubling the prison population. Amidst that frenzy, Diego was swept into jail.

Like thousands of others, Diego and others soon found themselves sharing space with the gangs. The gangs had long been the most fearsome occupants of the country’s jails, leveraging strength in numbers to impose strict rules behind bars.

But with the state of emergency, they were not Diego’s main concern.

“The [gangs] weren’t so bad,” Diego said. “They asked us to follow some rules while in the cell, and that was it.”

It was, rather, the prison guards, who Diego most feared. 

“They would hit you for anything and everything. All day and night you’d hear the cries of people being hit by the guards,” Diego said. They had everyone “perfectly under control.”

Diego’s account mirrored those of several other people jailed and later released during the state of emergency, who in interviews with InSight Crime described the tight control and excessive use of force by security forces in El Salvador’s jails. 

In fact, the state has turned the tables on imprisoned gang members, a process that began before the crackdown but that now appears to be hindering them from mounting a collective response to the crackdown from behind bars.

Just how long the government can keep a lid on these gangs is a major question going forward. Past efforts to quell the gangs in El Salvador have suffered precisely because gang leaders were able to reestablish command and control from their jail cells. 

This time, however, the government is trying to reset the table, in part by employing the extreme measures Diego described. 

Prisons: A Muted Response

El Salvador’s gangs once took advantage of severe overcrowding and weak security in the country’s penitentiary system to operate jails as centers of operation, including coordinating extortion rackets, recruiting new members, and exerting discipline over their membership. The addition of over 77,000 new detainees during the state of emergency has further crowded the prisons, though at least 7,000 people had been released from jail as of mid-August, according to government officials. 

SEE ALSO: Why Mega-Prisons Holding Tens of Thousands Won’t Make a Difference

The total prison population now stands at over 105,000 prisoners, around 1.7% of the country’s population. At the end of 2020, the total capacity of El Salvador’s penitentiary system was estimated at just over 27,000. Capacity has increased following the construction of a jail housing 5,000 inmates in 2021 and the completion of a mega-jail in 2022 with room for 40,000 prisoners, according to government estimates. Press reports suggest the mega-prison’s capacity may be closer to 20,000.

Despite these new spaces, Salvadoran prisons are still severely overcrowded, possibly operating at double their capacity. This has raised concerns about whether the gangs could regroup in overcrowded jails or seek recruits from civilians swept up in the arrests.

So far, this does not appear to be happening, in part because of the extreme measures taken to control prisoners. Accounts like Diego’s — in addition to many others heard by InSight Crime over the course of this study — suggest prison authorities maintain near-complete control behind bars and routinely subject prisoners to beatings and psychological torment. To restrict their ability to communicate with other inmates and the outside world, prisoners are often confined to their cells around the clock.

Through April 2023, the human rights organization, Cristosal, documented 153 deaths in the penitentiary system. In a report published in May, the organization said none of these people had been convicted of a crime and that many of those who died were buried in “mass graves.”

Yet, there are some cases of gang members using their clout to secure benefits and impose rules on other inmates. Diego told InSight Crime that jailed members of the MS13 and Barrio 18 designated two cell leaders, one from each gang, to resolve day-to-day issues and set rules for their cellmates. This includes granting permission to use the toilet or shower, and controlling the distribution of drinking water and food. Breaking these rules resulted in a beating, a common gang reprisal. 

He also said that gang members could secure privileges such as sleeping on a bunk bed or showering before others. This dynamic does not appear to be uniform; others detained during the state of emergency said they did not encounter gang members in their cells. 

InSight Crime did not find any evidence of a coordinated or violent gang response to state authority behind bars. Communication between jailed gang members and the streets had largely been cut off even before the state of emergency began. Members of both gangs are now mixed in the same cells, according to three people interviewed by InSight Crime who were detained, then released. Communication between cells appears to be severely limited, hampering any efforts to coordinate gang activity. 

There have been multiple reports of prisoner abuse — including electrocutions — malnourishment, and deaths behind bars as a result of overcrowding and state aggression during the state of emergency. The extreme methods of subjugation appear to have forced the gangs into survival mode and may have hindered their capacity to communicate between cells, access weapons, and devise possible strategies to regroup or retaliate.

Gang Communication and Hierarchy

The state of emergency appears to have limited the gangs’ ability to communicate and transmit orders between ranks.

Prior to the state of emergency, top MS13 and Barrio 18 leaders had engaged in secret negotiations with the Bukele administration held behind bars. Gang leaders showed they could influence the rank-and-file by ordering subordinates to cease murders. They also did the opposite, instructing street-level members to unleash a spree of murders as a sort of bargaining chip in the negotiations or to murder members who did not adhere to their leaders’ instructions. 

SEE ALSO: Gang Murder Rampage Sends Shockwaves Through El Salvador Government

But the gangs’ near-complete collapse after the onset of the state of emergency may signal a rupture in communication between imprisoned gang leaders and lower-ranking members or street-level leaders. One active gang member, for example, who went into hiding when the state of emergency began, said he lost communication with other cells and then threw away his phone to avoid being tapped by authorities. 

During previous crackdowns, the same source added, the gang would lie low before gradually reestablishing contact. But, he said, the speed of the state of emergency arrests left the gangs with too little time to establish new communication networks.

Existing restrictions on communication and visits for imprisoned gang members have also been tightened during the state of emergency. Cristosal’s rule of law and security director, Zaira Navas, told InSight Crime that even defense lawyers for gang members cannot visit their clients. 

Gang members outside of jail also told InSight Crime they had lost contact with imprisoned members.

“Communication in [El Salvador’s] prisons is undoubtedly cut off,” one semi-retired MS13 member who fled to Mexico told InSight Crime.

International communications also appear to have been severed. Before the state of emergency, there was a direct line of communication between gang members in US prisons and the MS13 in El Salvador. But a US prison official told InSight Crime that imprisoned MS13 members no longer received communication from gang leaders in El Salvador. Without its leadership in El Salvador, the source added, the gang lacks direction. 

*Diego’s name has been altered on request to preserve his anonymity 

*With additional reporting by Steven Dudley, Carlos Garcia, César Fagoaga, Bryan Avelar, Roberto Valencia, and Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson

The post Keeping a Lid on Prisons appeared first on InSight Crime.

Before the administration of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, no government had succeeded in breaking up the country’s vaunted and dangerous street gangs.

Dating back to the early 2000s, security forces arrested their members in droves. Politicians sent waves of police officers and soldiers to the streets to dislodge the gangs from poor urban communities where the government had lost control. They coined the heavy-handed policies mano dura, or iron fist.

*This article is part of a six-part investigation, “El Salvador’s (Perpetual) State of Emergency: How Bukele’s Government Overpowered Gangs.” InSight Crime spent nine months analyzing how a ruthless state crackdown has debilitated the country’s notorious street gangs, the MS13 and two factions of Barrio 18. Download the full report or read the other chapters in the investigation here.

But little lasting progress was made. The gangs — the bulk of whom were part of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) or one of two factions of the Barrio 18 — always found a way to regroup, retaliate, or reorganize their structures to operate under increased pressure. 

That has changed. 

In March 2022, the Bukele administration launched a historic crackdown, implementing a state of emergency (régimen de excepción) that has, for the past 20 months, given his government almost free rein in its war against the gangs.

The crackdown has succeeded in arresting a sizable chunk of the gangs’ street-level membership and collaborators. It has cut off their communications. It has impeded their ability to manage extortion or drug peddling businesses, their main sources of revenue. It has disabled their command structure and upended their hierarchies. It has temporarily inhibited their ability to mount a collective, organized response. It has, in other words, left them reeling.

Its efficiency has left many analysts pondering why mano dura security policies have suddenly worked after years of failure. Below, InSight Crime looks at how Bukele’s hard-line crackdown managed to overpower El Salvador gangs and the impact his government’s campaign has had on gang structures that once dominated the country’s criminal landscape.

Extreme Legal Measures and Political Power

The key to Bukele’s relative success in debilitating gang structures rests on three fundamental pillars: the use of extreme legal measures; a looser interpretation of gang affiliation; and the concentration of political power around the Bukele administration. 

The crackdown began with the enactment of a state of emergency, a legal measure designed for temporary use in response to catastrophic events, such as earthquakes and pandemics. No Salvadoran government had ever taken this route to deal with the gangs. But following a series of brutal gang massacres in late March 2022 that left 87 people dead, legislators aligned with Bukele approved the president’s request to enact a one-month state of emergency. As of November 2023, the measures had been extended for 20 consecutive months. They are expected to be renewed in December.

The emergency laws deprive Salvadorans of basic constitutional rights, including the right to legal defense and the freedom of movement, while loosening rules on making arrests and allowing the state to intercept civilian communications. 

These emergency powers have permitted security forces to execute a blitzkrieg on the gangs, rounding up gang members and suspected collaborators without a warrant or based on anonymous tips and, by extension, at a much faster rate and with far less discretion when compared with previous crackdowns. In all, security forces arrested over 33,000 people in the first two months of the state of emergency, according to police intelligence data accessed by InSight Crime.

“There were too many soldiers everywhere all at once,” one active gang member told InSight Crime.

SEE ALSO: El Salvador Escalates Gang Crackdown With New Measures 

The state of emergency has also suspended constitutional rights to defense, meaning detainees can be held indefinitely on vague charges, without the need for an arrest warrant or evidence to back up criminal allegations. Under the emergency laws, detainees also lose the right to a court hearing within 72 hours of arrest, and lawyers and civil society organizations have said they cannot speak to those detained. Uncorroborated raw intelligence, rumors, and information sourced from social media profiles have formed the basis of arrests. 

This is paradoxically the most troubling and the most effective aspect of this crackdown.

The Bukele administration has also implemented new laws designed to keep gang members behind bars. In March 2022, the legislative assembly passed legal reforms increasing jail sentences for gang membership and eliminating the possibility of house arrest for detainees belonging to “terrorist groups.” Gangs are considered terrorist organizations under Salvadoran law. The reforms also lowered the age to 12 for which people can be tried for gang-related crimes.

At the same time, the administration has reformed existing anti-gang laws so they can apply them to a broader range of targets. Most notably, on March 30, 2022, the legislative assembly modified the law regarding agrupaciones ilícitas (unlawful association), expanding its purview to include anyone who “promotes, helps, facilitates or favors” the activities of a criminal organization. In effect, the law, which was already broad in scope, now gives authorities the power to arrest not just suspected members, or homeboys, but also aspiring members (chequeos) and suspected “collaborators.”

The government provides no clear definition of any of these positions nor the methodology about how it arrives at these conclusions regarding who is a member, who is an aspiring member, and who is a collaborator. Nonetheless, it is a major pretext for arrests in the current state of emergency. In January 2023, for example, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, citing a leaked government database, said that 39,000 of the then-61,000 people who had been incarcerated under the state of emergency had been arrested for unlawful association.

Previous attempts to employ this law ran into legal snags in the courts, and police were worried they might be prosecuted if they arbitrarily arrested suspects en masse. One police official in San Miguel, for instance, said he and his colleagues spoke to two judges to check whether they could face future legal backlash for signing arrest warrants based on vague charges that may violate human rights. After receiving assurances from the judges, this official said their unit proceeded to arrest hundreds of suspects.

Central to the administration’s efforts is the near total control of various parts of the government. Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), used its supermajority in the legislative assembly to enact the state of emergency and has continued to prolong it. Legislators loyal to Bukele passed the legal reforms related to the crackdown. The legislative assembly also purged the judiciary in late 2021, firing dozens of judges and appointing over 150 replacements, many with links to the Bukele administration, according to an investigation by the Salvadoran media outlet Revista Factum. 

The courts have stood silent amid widespread allegations of state abuses, especially as it relates to due process. The Attorney General’s Office, which is also heavily aligned with the Bukele administration, has worked in tandem with the security forces to facilitate mass arrests based on flimsy, little, or no evidence.

How Has the State of Emergency Outdone Previous Mano Dura Crackdowns? 

But while the crackdown’s impact has been transformative, the gangs are not finished in El Salvador. In fact, the government’s own data contradicts the Bukele administration’s narrative that the gangs have been completely defeated.

The government claims to have arrested 52,541 members of the MS13, 13,682 members of the Barrio 18 Sureños, and 10,741 members of the Barrio 18 Revolucionarios, according to a police intelligence report dated October 1 obtained by InSight Crime.  These figures refer to homeboys, chequeos, and collaborators. Among those arrested were 1,232 gang leaders, including 945 from the MS13.

The report also says the number of “armed groups of gangs” (grupos armados de pandillas) is 53, down from 97 in 2022, and 107 in 2020. Of these cells, 43 correspond to the MS13 (80%), while six belong to the Barrio 18 Sureños (11%), and four to the Barrio 18 Revolucionarios (9%). 

But the same police intelligence reports say that 36% of gang members and collaborators — over 42,000 — remained at large as of the end of September 2023. 

The data also reveals that more than half of reported state of emergency detainees are not fully-fledged gang members. Homeboys accounted for 32,331 arrests (42%) as of September 30, 2023, compared to 41,733 for suspected collaborators (54%) and 3,435 for chequeos (4%).

Territorial Wipeout

The clearest indicator of decreased gang presence in El Salvador is the absence of the MS13 and Barrio 18 in neighborhoods once dominated by the gangs. For decades prior to the state of emergency, the gangs exerted significant territorial control in urban hubs throughout El Salvador. 

In many areas, they relied on an extensive network of low-level members and collaborators, including lookouts and informants, to prevent unwanted intrusions and to establish rules for those living in communities under their control. The rules ranged from placing restrictions on movement to prohibiting common delinquency and forbidding grave crimes, such as rape. 

The gangs dished out hard punishments to rule-breakers, despite often breaking their own rules. Gang members also settled disputes between residents in lieu of the police or other government authorities. Residents could face reprisals for interacting with authorities. In extreme cases, the police did not enter territory where the MS13 and the two factions of Barrio 18 had significant influence. 

The situation has changed radically following the enactment of the state of emergency. InSight Crime visited 15 former gang strongholds in the municipalities of San Salvador, Apopa, Soyapango, Ilopango, Mejicanos, Ciudad Delgado, San Julián, Tonacatepeque, and San Miguel, where gang structures have ceased to operate almost entirely. 

Before the state of emergency, gang permission was frequently required when transiting through disputed territories, whether for routine commutes or medical emergencies. In many areas, the gangs also had a grip on the local economy, dictating who could sell what and where. 

Now, residents say they no longer face near-constant surveillance from gangs or strict rules on moving between different communities. They have reclaimed recreational and community spaces previously used by the gangs and have initiated new community projects with no gang resistance for the first time in years. The revival of inter-community soccer tournaments in San Miguel and San Salvador, previously hamstrung by territorial boundaries set by rival gangs, is just one example of how gang restrictions on civilian movement have evaporated since the state of emergency began. 

Few residents reported seeing remnants of the gangs in their neighborhoods. Some mentioned the return of active gang members who were released from jail, but they said these actors held far less power than before the state of emergency. Those who reported gang members to the police during the state of emergency said they fear possible retribution from gang members released from prison, though there have been no reports of revenge attacks against civilians. 

A police officer stationed in San Salvador’s Historic Center, where expansive informal markets were once a hive of gang activity, said gang members disappeared just two weeks into the state of emergency. 

Another security official told InSight Crime that schools are now housing minors linked to the gangs and may provide the only public space where remnants of these groups can still operate. Mario Vega, a prominent evangelical pastor who has spent decades working in gang communities, also flagged the possible presence of gang structures in schools. But residents interviewed by InSight Crime in Apopa and San Miguel did not consider this a pressing issue.

The situation may be different in rural areas that initially provided refuge for gang members after security forces began raiding gang-controlled neighborhoods in major cities.  Sporadic reports of continuing extortion in rural zones point to some prevailing gang structures, albeit in a reduced form. 

Extortion Grinds to a Halt

With the extensive loss of manpower and territory, it is clear that the gangs can no longer operate the criminal economies that have long kept them afloat.

Extortion previously represented the main source of income for many gang cells in El Salvador. Extortion rackets targeting informal markets in major urban hubs such as San Salvador’s Historic Center once provided the gangs with tens of thousands of dollars of daily revenue. A study conducted by InSight Crime in 2021 in San Miguel’s municipal markets — housing over 5,000 vending spots — concluded that the MS13 was generating monthly extortion revenues of $100,000 or more. 

SEE ALSO: Gang Presence in San Salvador

Operating these rackets relied on an extensive network of gang members and collaborators to patrol gang territories and collect payments. Previous crackdowns focused on gang members, but Bukele’s has focused on the gangs’ broader networks, according to police data. This means the gangs can no longer rely on proxies to continue operating criminal economies while weathering state crackdowns. 

Prior to the state of emergency, the gangs primarily extorted people working for small- and medium-sized businesses, including street vendors, shop owners, bus operators, and taxi drivers, in communities under their control.

The gangs based their extortion fees on perceived wealth, ranging from a few dollars per day for street vendors to weekly or monthly payments reaching into the thousands of dollars for larger businesses. And in past years, the gangs have brutally killed civilians for failing to pay up. 

However, residents of the same former gang strongholds visited by InSight Crime said they no longer received extortion threats from the gangs. And some residents said they had not witnessed any gang retaliation for not paying extortion fees during the state of emergency.

Extortion in the transport sector also appears to have come to a standstill. Bus company representatives working in San Salvador told InSight Crime the gangs had quickly stopped charging extortion in the days and weeks following the onset of the state of emergency. 

One bus company owner who previously paid around $6,000 in monthly extortion fees to the three main gang factions said he stopped paying rent to the MS13 immediately after the crackdown began. His payments to the Barrio 18 fizzled out in the following days and weeks.

The inability to maintain extortion rackets, which primarily targeted the informal economy, represents a seismic financial blow to the gangs. 

El Salvador police reported a 54% reduction in extortion complaints between the start of the year and September 11, compared to the same period in 2022. As of September 11, the police had processed 572 reports of extortion; in 299 of those cases, the plaintiff identified the perpetrators as members of the MS13 and Barrio 18. 

The widely reported decrease in gang extortion appears to have come as a direct result of the state of emergency, which has so depleted street-level gang membership that they cannot muster the physical presence needed to demand and collect extortion payments. The gangs often relied on collaborators or relatives for this task, but these allies have also been arrested in droves or are lying low to avoid arrest.

Still, multiple sources — including police officials, politicians, and gang members — told InSight Crime that extortion persists in some areas, albeit on a smaller scale. 

Police and municipal employees in San Miguel, for example, told InSight Crime that some individuals are still extorting vendors in the city’s main markets, despite a near-complete disappearance of gang presence in these establishments. They said these people may belong to remnants of the gangs or may be individuals acting on their own. 

The city’s longtime mayor, Will Salgaldo, told InSight Crime extortion has not been eradicated entirely, and that some gang members are now asking for “collaboration” from households as an alternative, small-scale revenue stream.

El Salvador security forces have also arrested alleged extortionists with no apparent links to the gangs during the state of emergency.

*With additional reporting by Steven Dudley, Carlos Garcia, César Fagoaga, Bryan Avelar, Roberto Valencia, and Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson

The post ‘Too Many Soldiers’: How Bukele’s Crackdown Succeeded Where Others Failed appeared first on InSight Crime.

The road to El Salvador’s state of emergency has been long and bloody.   

The small Central American nation spent decades engulfed in some of the most intense spates of violence in the Western Hemisphere, as the country’s three main gangs — the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and the two factions of the 18th Street, or Barrio 18 — waged bitter wars amongst themselves and security forces. In response, numerous governments employed so-called mano dura (iron fist) crackdowns that included widespread arrests and increasingly draconian laws.

*This article is part of a six-part investigation, “El Salvador’s (Perpetual) State of Emergency: How Bukele’s Government Overpowered Gangs.” InSight Crime spent nine months analyzing how a ruthless state crackdown has debilitated the country’s notorious street gangs, the MS13 and two factions of Barrio 18. Download the full report or read the other chapters in the investigation here.

The gangs were also invasive and predatory, occupying entire communities throughout the country and subjecting urban dwellers to extortion, murder, beatings, and sexual violence. In short, the gang problem presented a seemingly unsolvable puzzle for politicians, whose efforts to disrupt gang activity with force or to cool violence via backdoor negotiations failed to yield long-term results.      

The latest attempt to deal with the gangs — dubbed a “war on gangs” by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele — has come in the form of yet another ferocious security crackdown. Following an egregious gang massacre in March 2022, his government enacted a state of emergency that gave the security forces free license to come down on the gangs with fire and fury. 

Although parts of his strategies mirrored the hardline campaigns of his predecessors, the results are different: The gangs have all but vanished from the streets of El Salvador. In fact, the crackdown appears to have broken a cycle of death and violence that began as a US migration conundrum. 

The gangs originated in California, formed by Central American émigrés, many of whom were fleeing violence and civil war during the 1980s. In the 1990s, as El Salvador was emerging from a brutal civil war, the US government shifted its policies to deport thousands of ex-convicts, many of whom were affiliated with the MS13 and Barrio 18. Once back in El Salvador, the deportees began establishing new criminal cells that mirrored the gang culture they had learned in the United States. 

Over the following years, the gangs spread quickly, forming loose networks of cells operating under the banners of the MS13 and Barrio 18. Controlling certain territory opened the door to lucrative criminal economies such as extortion and drug peddling. It also led to bloody turf wars between these rival gangs, which increasingly targeted civilians and engaged in battles with security forces and other criminal organizations. 

To combat the gangs, governments in the 2000s devised a program of heavy-handed security measures. Coined mano dura by the administration of former president Francisco Flores Pérez (1999-2004), and later super mano dura by his successor, Antonio Saca (2004-2009), these measures broadly relied on beefing up police presence and jailing gang members en masse. 

SEE ALSO: Mano Dura Redux: The Price of Mass Gang Arrests in El Salvador

Despite some short-term reductions in violence, the campaigns failed to prevent the spread of street gangs or disrupt their main criminal activities. What’s more, the hordes of captured gang members began taking advantage of weak security and overcrowding in prisons to strengthen their ranks, create a more hierarchical and disciplined structure, and develop more organized criminal rackets from behind bars. 

The gangs continued to wreak havoc into the 2010s, leading the El Salvador government to plot a different course. In early 2012, the administration of then-president Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) brokered a ceasefire with the MS13 and the two Barrio 18 factions, known as the Revolucionarios (18R) and the Sureños (18S). The government promised to transfer gang leaders away from maximum security prisons in exchange for cooling violence. 

The so-called tregua (truce) quickly cut murders in half, but the gains did not last. Rather, the ceasefire unraveled in spectacular fashion, sparking brutal clashes between rival gangs and the security forces. 

The violence peaked in 2015, when El Salvador’s annual homicide rate of 103 per 100,000 inhabitants made it the most violent country in the Western Hemisphere. 

Since peaking in 2015, the country’s murder rate has been declining. This started during the administration of former president Salvador Sánchez Cerén (2014-2019), whose government launched a new offensive against the gangs and enacted strict measures to disrupt criminal rackets coordinated from behind bars. 

The decline in homicides was substantial, falling by 50% between 2015 and 2018, though the murder rate stayed well above regional averages. Increased pressure from authorities also failed to disrupt the gangs’ widespread territorial control and extortion operations.

President Bukele took office in June 2019 following a landslide victory earlier that year. The start of his tenure saw a radical drop in murders, accelerating the trend that Sánchez Cerén started. 

The Bukele government attributed the rapid decline in murders to the president’s flagship security plan. Dubbed the Plan Control Territorial (Territorial Control Plan), the strategy was poorly defined and mostly hidden from public view. Critics were quick to point out that key elements of the plan, including increased police patrols and more security forces on the street, mirrored those of previous mano dura campaigns.

SEE ALSO: Homicide Drop in El Salvador: Presidential Triumph or Gang Trend?

What’s more, just over a year into Bukele’s tenure, it emerged that some of his administration’s top officials had, in fact, sought negotiations with jailed leaders from the three main gang factions, trading prison benefits in exchange for their help lowering the murder rate. 

The Bukele government repeatedly denied these accusations, instead leveraging the drop in homicides to boost the president’s popularity, help his party win a supermajority in the legislative assembly, and assist him in reforming the judicial system in his favor. But subsequent sanctions by the United States Treasury Department on two of Bukele’s interlocutors privy to the arrangement seemed to confirm the backroom deals. 

Although by 2020 homicides had dropped considerably, the gangs still controlled territory and various criminal economies. And they were still able to rattle Bukele, using sporadic outbursts of violence to signal discontent with the negotiations or squeeze the government for further concessions. 

One of those outbursts came during the final weekend of March 2022, when the gangs allegedly murdered 87 people across the country in just 72 hours. The bloody weekend sparked nationwide horror and marked a turning point. 

On March 27, the country’s legislative assembly, acting on Bukele’s instructions, declared a month-long state of emergency, suspending constitutional rights and loosening rules on making arrests in an attempt to retaliate against the gangs.

The heavy-handed measures shared some similarities with previous government efforts, albeit with a crucial exception: The use of emergency legal measures, combined with Bukele’s influence over the three main branches of government, removed several checks and balances that had, during previous crackdowns, prevented state authorities from shifting mano dura into overdrive.

Dubbed the régimen de excepción (state of emergency), as of November 2023, the measures have been extended for 20 consecutive months. In that time, El Salvador authorities have launched a ruthless campaign of raids in areas with gang presence, arresting between 72,000 people and 77,000 people — over 1% of the country’s 6.3 million population. 

The government claims most of those arrested belong to street gangs, but civil-society groups, religious organizations, and academics have flagged widespread arbitrary detentions amid more than 5,800 alleged human rights violations during the crackdown’s first year. 

The indiscriminate nature of arrests makes it difficult to estimate exactly how many gang members have been detained. But information from El Salvador police intelligence reports obtained by InSight Crime suggests the majority of people arrested during the state of emergency are not fully-fledged gang members. Most are aspiring members and “collaborators.” In addition, by the government’s own estimations, there were over 21,000 fully-fledged gang members at large as of the end of September 2023, according to confidential intelligence reports accessed by InSight Crime.

Regardless, the controversial crackdown appears to have at least temporarily crippled the gangs, driving violence to record lows and leading Bukele to declare victory. 

The crackdown has made Bukele immensely popular in El Salvador, and political leaders throughout the region appear increasingly keen to appropriate his strategies to deal with their gang issues. 

But questions remain about the long-term feasibility of sustaining the aggressive crackdown, and whether failing to address the socioeconomic conditions that facilitated the gang’s rise in the first place could create space for these structures to regroup or mutate. Critics, and even some supporters of the state of emergency, also point to mass human rights abuses and arbitrary arrests, in addition to deplorable conditions in the country’s overcrowded jails, as possible detonators of future criminality. 

The gangs, though battered and bruised, have not been fully defeated. And in the wake of past crackdowns, they have proved remarkably adept at adjusting to new realities at home and abroad. 

*With additional reporting by Steven Dudley, Carlos Garcia, César Fagoaga, Bryan Avelar, Roberto Valencia, and Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson

The post The Road to El Salvador’s State of Emergency appeared first on InSight Crime.

On a scorching July afternoon at an urban park in El Salvador’s Apopa municipality, just north of capital city San Salvador, InSight Crime sat down with a woman and her mother. It was one of dozens of group interviews held throughout the country to discuss how life has changed in former gang strongholds since the start of President Nayib Bukele’s historic crackdown on the criminal groups.

*This article is part of a six-part investigation, “El Salvador’s (Perpetual) State of Emergency: How Bukele’s Government Overpowered Gangs.” InSight Crime spent nine months analyzing how a ruthless state crackdown has debilitated the country’s notorious street gangs, the MS13 and two factions of Barrio 18. Download the full report or read the other chapters in the investigation here.

With the beating sun cooking the gritty asphalt of a weathered basketball court and the sizzling, rusty metal frames of a jungle gym, the woman told us this type of interview would have been impossible just a few short months ago.  

“We might have been shot, or maybe kidnapped,” she said. “They would have been watching us. There’s no way you could just come to the park.”

Over our nine-month investigation into what the government terms the régimen de excepción (state of emergency), we heard dozens of similar stories in former gang strongholds throughout the country. Residents spoke freely in community centers and soccer pitches previously off limits — a testament to how the gangs’ rapid decline has radically changed life for people who weathered years of terror. 

On this day, just meters away, a group of neighbors chatted next to a thick concrete wall. The wall, according to the residents, once represented an impassable line between territories controlled by rival gang factions. Street gangs like the MS13 and Barrio 18, the residents told us, occupied public spaces and imposed strict rules forbidding outsiders — most journalists included — from entering their space.

“That was an ugly time,” the woman said. “You couldn’t go out at night.”

The gangs’ demise has also radically altered the country’s criminal landscape, liberating swathes of territory from criminal control. The nation’s homicide rate, which had already sunk to historic lows before the state of emergency began, is now at its lowest level since the end of the country’s civil war in 1992.

But critics and some supporters of the Bukele’s measures, interviewed during InSight Crime’s visits to El Salvador in 2023, have questioned the long-term sustainability of such aggressive security policies, which have relied on the suspension of constitutional rights for over a year and a half and opaque management of the budget. 

What’s more, in Apopa and elsewhere, hopes for a future without rampant murder and extortion were tempered by concerns that the gangs could one day return, mutate, or be replaced by other criminal actors. Below, we consider this and other possible outcomes of the historic crackdown.

Can Gangs Regroup in El Salvador?

A key question going forward is whether the MS13 and the two factions of Barrio 18 in El Salvador can regroup, reclaim territory, and resume violence and crime, as has occurred after previous crackdowns. 

This is not a likely scenario in the short- or medium-term, given the legal tools at the government’s disposal for keeping people in jail and the imminent threat of detention for any gang member. President Bukele also plans to seek re-election in 2024 and has a commanding lead in the polls, meaning his administration could remain in government for at least another five years.

Rattled, gang members appear to be in survival mode. Deprived of territory and revenue, regrouping is not an immediate option. They have also suffered from an apparent collapse in communication between cells following the onset of the state of emergency. Gang members that have stayed out of jail have largely been left on their own, according to gang sources interviewed by InSight Crime. 

SEE ALSO: MS13 & Co.

Still, MS13 and Barrio 18 have a history of evolving and adapting to continue operating in the face of state aggression, and some of their members could return to criminal activity. Former gang cells, for example, could mutate into new structures and revive criminal economies such as extortion or drug peddling. Police, military, and gang sources told InSight Crime that remnants of the MS13 and Barrio 18 are still committing extortion and petty crimes in some areas.

Over 21,000 fully-fledged gang members remained at large as of the end of September 2023, according to police estimates. The government also estimates that 53 armed groups remain in El Salvador, suggesting at least some gang structures remain, even if dormant. 

But barring a radical shift in government security policy, it seems unlikely these groups will be able to establish the kind of territorial control that once allowed the gangs to operate criminal rackets nationwide.

Still, the seed remains. 

The MS13 and Barrio 18 emerged in urban or rural areas with precarious socioeconomic conditions, including widespread poverty, high unemployment, limited education, fractured families, and high levels of domestic violence and abuse. Mass arrests may have exacerbated social issues by breaking up families, reducing household incomes, and further marginalizing thousands of at-risk youths by linking them to the gangs, often without evidence. 

The government does not appear to have a comprehensive plan for addressing these root causes of gangs. This places a disproportionate burden on community, and civil-society and religious organizations to fill these social and economic needs, something they have not been able to do in the past.“The government chopped down the tree, but left the roots,” said Estuado Escobar, a Salvadoran lawyer and outspoken critic of the state of emergency.

The scale of future gang-related crime in El Salvador may also depend on the government’s security plan. Maintaining this level of force is costly. Political priorities could change even within a Bukele presidency. 

But the state does have a powerful, if controversial, tool for containing the gangs and other delinquent groups going forward. Anonymous tip-offs formed the basis of many arrests, including of innocent people, according to civil-society sources. Residents of gang-controlled communities in the San Salvador area told InSight Crime that locals had used an anonymous hotline to inform the police of gang whereabouts. In other words, the gangs were partly undone, and could continue to be undone, by the communities they once controlled.

The Possibility of Prison Gangs

As of the end of September 2023, Salvadoran authorities had arrested over 77,000 people during the state of emergency. The country’s prisons now house over 105,000 detainees and may be operating at double their capacity. 

The mass incarceration has raised questions about whether the gangs could capitalize on severe prison overcrowding to consolidate their presence behind bars and begin operating as prison gangs do in places like Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States.

There is some historical precedent to back up this assertion. Mass arrests made during El an earlier mano dura (iron fist) campaign in the mid-2000s led to a reorganization of El Salvador’s gangs. Within a few years, the gangs had converted the jails into their epicenter of operations inside and outside the prisons, as well as centers for recruitment and discipline of their rank and file.

Successive governments have since tightened security in the prisons, which, although controversial and possibly in violation of international law, has proven more effective in controlling gang activity. 

Multiple accounts from people detained during the state of emergency suggest security forces have established near-total control in jails, often subjecting gang members to physical and psychological abuse. Authorities have also cut off communications with the outside world, including family members and legal representatives.

SEE ALSO: GameChangers 2022: El Salvador’s Gang Crackdown Has Steep Human Rights Cost

For the moment, these extreme measures appear to have achieved their goal of isolating the gangs and impeding a collective response, both inside and outside of prisons. Repression behind bars has also restricted communications between gang members in jail, with no signs that members of the MS13 and Barrio 18 can plan criminal activities or impose rules outside individual cells, according to multiple accounts from people detained in jails housing gang members. 

But this bleak outlook for the gangs could change. Prison gangs require a steady turnover of recruits to give them leverage over members on the outside and provide access to key criminal economies. And the flow of gang members in and out of prisons may increase with the gradual release of state-of-emergency detainees and future arrests. Regaining that leverage and re-establishing communications with street-level gang members could provide a stepping stone to the reactivation of some dormant cells and, by extension, a foundation for the masses of imprisoned gang members to reassert their influence as a criminal force behind bars.

A more likely scenario is that the gangs draw from a large pool of imprisoned youths, resentful of the government, to create new gangs or facsimiles of the old ones.

The costs associated with maintaining around 1.7% of the country’s population in prison are very high. Any drop-off in resources allocated to prisons could weaken state control behind bars, potentially playing into the hands of the gangs.

The current regime also depends on the systematic violation of due process and other fundamental rights, and it requires a steady diet of physical and psychological repression inside the penitentiaries. This combination of factors is what led to the emergence of the now-dominant criminal structures in places like Brazil. 

Gang Members in Exile

With waves of Salvadoran gang members fleeing to nearby countries following the onset of the state of emergency, there have also been questions as to whether these exiles could regroup in countries where the gangs already have a presence — namely Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. 

There is now little evidence that Salvadoran gang members are seeking to re-enter criminal life abroad. Instead, signs suggest they are lying low in the hope of evading arrest and deportation. But this situation could also change if fleeing gang members with minimal employment prospects gradually seek revenue streams and support systems abroad, or if foreign governments decrease deportations of Salvadoran gang members. 

The scenarios would likely differ between countries. 

In Mexico, the MS13 has a limited presence, mainly channeled through its so-called Mexico Program. The Mexico Program, formed by expatriate and fugitive Salvadoran MS13 members between 2014 and 2015, is involved in drug trafficking and human smuggling. Several Salvadoran gang leaders are now operating from Mexico, according to a US indictment against top MS13 leaders unsealed in March 2023.  

One of those leaders, Élmer Canales Rivera, alias “Crook,” was arrested in Mexico in November 2023 and subsequently extradited to the United States. Many consider Crook the second highest-ranking member of the MS13. His capture confirmed the presence of MS13 gang leaders in Mexico, also noted in Salvadoran police reports. The Mexico Program now appears the most likely vehicle for Salvadoran MS13 leaders to organize gang cells outside of El Salvador.

But while Salvadoran gang members could boost the Mexico Program’s ranks, it is unlikely to alter the gangs’ position in a criminal landscape dominated by sophisticated drug trafficking organizations (DTOs).

Reported ties between the MS13 Mexico Program and Mexican drug groups could provide financial opportunities for Salvadoran experienced gang members. But the dominance of Mexican drug groups will likely restrict gang members to a supporting role.

In Guatemala and Honduras, the gangs will also struggle. The MS13 and the Barrio 18 both have a presence in urban areas and jails, though the gang’s clout has never been as strong as in pre-state of emergency El Salvador. So far, there is little to suggest that the influx of Salvadoran gang members has altered the complexion of gang life. 

Filling the Void

The collapse of El Salvador’s gangs has raised the question whether other criminal networks could fill the void. Delinquent groups formed by remnants of the gangs or affiliates could attempt to revive street-level criminal economies once monopolized by the gangs. But the government’s success in neutralizing the MS13 and Barrio 18 could also pave the way for state-embedded criminal networks to monopolize the criminal landscape.

The gangs’ downfall has gone hand-in-hand with the Bukele administration’s consolidation and centralization of power. The state of emergency’s success stems, in part, from leveraging control of all branches of government to repress criminal actors while simultaneously removing checks on government actions.

The Bukele administration has already faced allegations of corruption. The government’s health minister and finance minister both came under investigation for allegedly misspending public funds following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Prosecutors also launched preliminary investigations into prisons director Osiris Luna for allegedly diverting $1.6 million in food aid during the pandemic. 

These investigations stalled when legislators aligned with Bukele ousted the attorney general who was leading the corruption probes. None of the officials have faced formal corruption charges. They replaced him with an attorney general with questionable ties to criminal operators, including one with close ties to the MS13.

Bukele’s party also leveraged its supermajority in parliament to reshuffle the composition of the country’s highest court — a controversial move slammed by critics as unconstitutional. These legal maneuvers have virtually eliminated scrutiny on government spending. The high courts have also made controversial decisions, such as overturning a money laundering case against an alleged criminal figure and refusing to extradite gang leaders wanted on terrorism charges in the United States.

Likewise, state security forces and prison authorities have faced minimal scrutiny on their actions during the state of emergency, despite widespread allegations of arbitrary arrests and other human rights abuses.

Unprecedented power in the hands of security forces with a questionable past — factions of the El Salvador police have been linked to death squads and corruption — could create the conditions for officials to engage in crime or even usurp criminal rackets left behind by the gangs. In August 2023, for example, one police investigator was arrested on suspicion of extortion; prosecutors say the official demanded $10,000 from an individual in exchange for not arresting them under state of emergency powers. Prosecutors have also arrested police officials on suspicion of setting up unauthorized roadblocks to shake down civilians.

There may also be some scope for crossover between state-embedded criminal networks and remnants of the gangs. Top gang leaders have spent years cultivating strategic ties with successive El Salvador governments, at times negotiating payments in exchange for political support. The connections include some of Bukele’s closest political allies, such as prison director Luna, blacklisted by the US government for his alleged role in facilitating secret gang negotiations before the state of emergency. 

The Bukele administration also released a series of MS13 leaders from jail, including Crook, prior to the state of emergency and has failed to extradite gang leaders wanted by the United States. 

A criminal landscape dominated by a powerful state could take different forms. At its most vertical, power would rest on a strong criminal enterprise run from the top of the government that leverages its monolithic control of the state to eliminate all political and criminal opposition. This profile is in line with the centralization of power surrounding the Bukele government and mimics other criminal governments in the region, most notably Nicaragua. 

In a more horizontal model, various state-embedded mafias could hold control over some major criminal economies, namely high-level corruption schemes, forming several criminal blocs who exert control over their fiefdom. But competition among these blocs, as well as competition for less glamorous criminal rackets, could still generate violence and crime. This scenario, which resembles Venezuela and, in some respects, Guatemala, requires strong control over key parts of the government, in particular its security forces and judicial powers.

*With additional reporting by Steven Dudley, Carlos Garcia, César Fagoaga, Bryan Avelar, Roberto Valencia, and Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson

The post The Future Looks Bleak for El Salvador’s Gangs appeared first on InSight Crime.