The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukelebegan the eighth month of a “war” against the remnants of the gangs, protected by an exceptional regime that has more than 55,600 detainees, an approach that generates praise and criticism.
The offensive changed its strategy in recent weeks, moving from mass arrests to the search for the last “homeboys”, as gang members are known, especially from the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18.
The authorities target the network of gang collaborators to attack their finances. They have already seized a little more than 2,000 transport units, including microbuses, taxis and motorcycles.
Identifying gang collaborators can only happen “with the information obtained from the detainees themselves,” Carlos Carcach, a researcher at the Higher School of Economics and Business (ESEN), explained to AFP.
But “it is not easy to determine (who to arrest) because these groups of collaborators, rather than doing it voluntarily, are doing it under some type of coercion,” said Laura Andrade, director of the Institute of Public Opinion of the Central American University ( UCA).
Bukele, with the support of the Congress dominated by the ruling party, has just extended the exceptional regime established on March 27 after an escalation of 87 murders in the country, which allows arrests without a court order.
“What remains of the gangs is increasingly difficult to catch, we can no longer make a thousand arrests a day, we make 80,” the president admitted in his last meeting with the security cabinet on Saturday the 15th.
For Bukele, it is “important” to make new penal reforms to “prosecute them as an organization.”
Born in the United States, on the streets of Los Angeles, the maras, according to Bukele, still have weapons and “are financing themselves from the sale of drugs.”
