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GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

THE POLITICS OF VIOLENCE STATE DISCOURSE ON VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR, 20032009

DISSERTATION Submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the Master in Development Studies (MDev)

by Matthias Nowak (Switzerland)

Geneva 2010

To Paulina

Acknowledgments
This Master's Thesis would never have been possible without the caring, patient and supportive help of professors, assistants, colleagues, and family. For their patience, interest, and trust, I would like to thank Professor Riccardo Bocco, my Thesis supervisor, and Dennis Rodgers, my secondary reader, for their critical, insightful, and constructive comments on my research. For his kind remarks and interest in the field and method researched here, I would like to thank Professor Keith Krause. For their help with information, data, and kind availability to my questions and petitions, I would like to thank Dr. Fabio Molina at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in El Salvador, as well as his team for their patience and cooperation. A very special recognition is addressed to Peter Peetz and more broadly the team of the GIGA in Hamburg. The newspaper articles and interviews presented in this research would not have been possible without the material collected in Peter's field research in El Salvador and his kindness to share these with me. A special greeting to Isabel Aguilar Umaa, Toms Andino, and Antonio Rodrguez Lpez-Tercero, of POLJUVE in Central America, for their kind reception of my inquiries, and their help with information, data, and resources. Additionally, financial help received over the period of the fulfillment of this Thesis from the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation in Geneva was truly helpful to finish some difficult months. I would like to express my special gratitude and infinite respect to Paulina Arellano, my wife, for her incredible patience and sacrifices during the completion of this work. Finally, friends, colleagues, and family, all who have been exceptionally supportive for my ideas, forced me to take time out, think about my thesis from different angles, cooked for me, made me have a drink or simply remembered me despite my absence.

Acronyms
AML ARENA CEPAL DDR FESPAD FGR FMLN IHRC GDP GIGA GTC IML IUDOP MS-13 M-18 OCAVI ORDEN PAHO PCN PDDH PNC POLJUVE SAS UN UNDP UNODC USAID Anti-Mara Law Alianza Republicana Nacionalista Comisin Econmica para Amrica Latina y El Caribe Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Fundacin de Estudios para la Aplicacin del Derecho Fiscala General de la Repblica Frente Farabundo Mart de Liberacion Nacional The International Human Rights Clinic Gross Domestic Product German Institute of Global and Area Studies Grupo de Tarea Conjunto Instituto Mdico Legal, San Salvador Instituto Universitario de Opinion Publica Mara Salvatrucha (La Trece) Mara Dieciocho (18th Street Gang) Observatorio Centroamericano sobre la Violencia Organizacin Democrtica Nacionalista Panamerican Health Organization Partido de la Concliliacin Nacional Procuradora para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos Polica Nacional Civil Polticas Pblicas para Prevenir la Violencia Juvenil The Small Arms Survey United Nations United Nations Development Program United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime United States Agency for International Development

Violence was a fire which swept over the fields of El Salvador; it burst into villages, cut off roads and destroyed highways and bridges, energy sources and transmission lines; it reached the cities and entered families, sacred areas and educational centers; it struck at justice and filled the public administration with victims; and it singled out as an enemy anyone who was not on the list of friends (UN Security Council, 1993, p.3).

Abstract

Positioning itself critical toward the analysis of contemporary violence as non- or post-political, this Thesis finds that violence is a highly political issue in all its manifestations. Post-war El Salvador reveals a complex contemporary panorama of violence, where organized crime, common delinquency, gangviolence and death squads all contribute to the country's high levels of violence. A discourse analysis based on the method of discursive practices has been applied to state discourses on violence. This analysis has revealed the capacity of the state to elaborate a hegemonic truth, based on the culpability of gangs as the main cause of violence in El Salvador. This hegemonic truth only allows for particular responses: cracking down on gangs to restore law and order. However, this policy has failed to recognize the complex nature and structural factors contributing to continuing high levels of violence, especially in terms of homicides.

Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................................................................................... 4 ACRONYMS.............................................................................................................................................................. 5 ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................................................ 7 INDEX....................................................................................................................................................................... 8 POLITICAL MAP OF EL SALVADOR ............................................................................................................................. 9 INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................................... 10 CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: STATE DISCOURSE AND SECURITY POLICY......................................14 DEFINING VIOLENCE AND POLITICS...........................................................................................................................................14 DISCOURSES ON VIOLENCE AND THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF REALITY......................................................................................................15 Discourse Does Things..............................................................................................................................................16 Discourse is Embedded ............................................................................................................................................16 The Process of Making Meaning .............................................................................................................................17 SECURITY POLICIES AND STATE DISCOURSE......................................................................................................................................18 Ideology and Politics in Anti-Gang Policies...............................................................................................................19 Approaching State Discourse on Mano Dura............................................................................................................19 OPERATIONALIZATION AND METHODOLOGY......................................................................................................................................20 Sources for State Discourse on Violence ..................................................................................................................21 Discursive Practices and Juxtaposition.....................................................................................................................23 VIOLENCE AND THE STATE IN EL SALVADOR: CHANGE, CONTINUITY, AND STATE-RESPONSES TO VIOLENCE...............24 CHANGE AND CONTINUITY OF VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR ...................................................................................................................24 Violence in the Past...................................................................................................................................................25 Contemporary Violence: Changes and Continuities.................................................................................................27 THE POLITICS OF MANO DURA IN EL SALVADOR .............................................................................................................................30 Political and Ideological Security Policies.................................................................................................................31 The Contents of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura.................................................................................................34 THE POLITICS OF VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR........................................................................................................... 38 CONTEXTS, DISCOURSE, AND THE POLITICS OF VIOLENCE ....................................................................................................................39 STATE DISCOURSE AND EL SALVADOR'S WAR ON GANGS.....................................................................................................................40 Textual Mechanisms in State Discourse ...................................................................................................................41 The Workings of Hegemonic Discourse.................................................................................................................45 Disjuncture of Discourse and Empirical Data ...........................................................................................................50 GANGS AND THE POLITICS OF VIOLENCE.........................................................................................................................................56 CONCLUSIONS: POLITICS AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF VIOLENCE...............................................................60 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................................................... 62 ANNEXES................................................................................................................................................................ 71

Political Map of El Salvador

Source: http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/elsalvad.pdf

Introduction
In Mejicanos, a medium sized city in the department of San Salvador, two successive attacks targeting public buses left seventeen people dead this past 20 th of June1. In one case, the passengers were locked-in and burnt alive, and those trying to escape shot. In the second case the bus-driver was able to escape after three of his passengers and his assistant were killed. The news of the massacre spread rapidly throughout a country afflicted by one of the worlds highest homicide rates. Speculations as regards to the identity and motives of the perpetrators multiplied. Some voices blamed gangs, while other voices accused organized crime. A few mentioned that political destabilization could be a motive for this act. State representatives, among these the police, swiftly incriminated gangs as the most probable authors of the crime 2. Up to this date, nearly a dozen gang-members have been arrested in relation to this crime. The exact motives for this display of violence remain, however, mysterious. This violent episode, one of many in El Salvador, illustrates the complexity of contemporary violence, and the difficulty to address its particular nature and specific motives. Almost two decades after the Esquipulas II peace accords, the benefits of peace remain elusive in El Salvador. The country has one of the world's highest homicide rates, reaching as high as 55.3 deaths per 100'000 people in 2006 (OCAVI 2009)3. Other serious crimes are equally frequent in El Salvador. In 2005, more than 1'000 rapes and more than 4'000 lesions have been reported by the police (OCAVI 2007). It is not surprising that post-war violence has become a serious issue in El Salvador. Persisting high levels of violence throughout the entire region have been labeled one of Latin America's most pressing security issues (Hume 2007; Koonings & Kruijt 2007, Moser & Rodgers 2005). Researchers as well as policy makers have since discussed the causes of violence, and the methods for containing the spread of what has now reached the levels of an epidemic (Manwaring 2006). In the post-cold war period, violence has increasingly been addressed under criminalized4, post-political5 and social6 labels (Koonings & Kruijt 1999,
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See Contra Punto. 2nd of July. 2010. See La Prensa Grfica, 21st of June. 2010. In comparison, The Central American region has a murder rate of 24.5, South America scores 19.4, while homicide rates in Western Europe average 1.1. Only Southern Africa scores higher with a murder rate of 27.7 (see Annex 9). Criminalization here is understood as social constructs, part of the conformation of society itself, and refers to the process by which states, media, and fearful citizens define particular groups and practices as criminal, evoking a threatening criminal imaginery, while state-illegality relationships selectively ignore or sponsor some illegal activities while vigorously prosecuting others that many consider licit or juts (Schneider & Schneider 2005: 352). It is noteworthy thus to consider that crime is both, more and less than acts prohibited by criminal law (Hume 2009:27). The assumption implicit in post-political violence is that there is a shift from class- and ideological structured or structuring violence during the cold war era toward new, economically and criminally motivated, unstructured violence in the post-cold war era. For this argument, see Wieviorka (2005), pp. 23-33. Though Koonings & Kruijt (1999) use the term social violence to classify contemporary violence, no clear

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2007; Moser & Winton 2002). Despite their interesting contributions to our knowledge on violence, these labels tends to promote a depoliticized vision of violence in contemporary Latin America. With this Thesis, I wish to further the interrogations arising with depoliticized understandings of violence. The central argument in the following research is that violence in all its manifestations is a very political issue. As I will try to demonstrate, the classification of violence as non-political in accordance to motives of perpetrators or the nature of the act itself hide deeper political processes underpinning and resulting from high levels of violence. Several elements indicate the political processes involved when facing high levels of violence. It can be argued that violence of non-state actors may challenge a state's monopoly of (il)legitimate violence. Furthermore, the political and economical elite may use violence to spread fear and terror among their opponents. Finally, and most interestingly, violence can be instrumentalized for electoral goals. It is with these considerations in mind that I wish to explore how state discourses designate violence as criminalized and post-political. More precisely, I wish to discuss how the blame for the overall incidence of violence in El Salvador is geared toward Maras or Pandillas (gangs)7. Before entering the presentation of this Thesis' argument, I will briefly discuss the different elements which led to my particular interrogations. The severity of the incidence of violence in post-conflict El Salvador can hardly be questioned. The number of homicide victims reported by the Instituto Mdico Legal (Institute for
definition of social (as opposed to political) is given. On the other hand, Moser & Winton (2002) establish cases of rape and vandalism, petty-theft, collective turf-violence, physical and psychological abuse, road rage, bar fights and street confrontations as acts of social violence, defined as the commission of acts motivated by a desire, conscious or unconscious, for social gain or to obtain social power (Moser & Shrader 1999:4). Gangs is used in a rather generic fashion for youth groups which are enduring over time, display street-oriented life-styles, with a specific identity. They may resort on criminal and illegal activities and are mostly comprised of youths in their teens and early twenties (Klein & Maxson 2006). In the Central American context, however, Pandillas and Gangs should not be treated as identical manifestations of gangs. Pandillas consist of a variably seized group of generally male youth who engage in illicit and violent behaviour () and have a particular territorial dynamic (Rodgers 2006:319). These groups have a long history of presence in Central America, principally linked to local responses to conflict between groups living in different neighbourhoods, and volatile postconflict settings (Jtersonke et al. 2009; Strocka 2006). Facing economic and social uncertainty, vigilante-like groups initially geared toward protection developed different activities some illicit and/or violent as well as semi-ritualized forms of gang-warfare (Rodgers 2009:954). Maras, on the other hand, have transnational roots related to migration patterns during and after the civil war and U.S. deportation policies of criminal and illegal migrants (Rodgers 2009). The major Maras of Central America are the Dieciocho (18) and the Salvatrucha (MS13). The first group is linked to the 18 th Street-Gang in Los Angeles, which is usually traced back to the 1960s (Jtersonke et al. 2009). With a second immigration wave during the 1970s and 1980s, the 18 grew rapidly yet a new, possible splinter-group started a rapid development: the MS-13 (Rodgers 2009). Both group rapidly became bitter enemies and violent confrontations became a common feature of the streets of Los Angeles. Massive deportation of convicts (46'000 from 1998-2005), as well as severe economic difficulties, urban growth and poverty are all elements that contribute to the spread of Maras throughout the Isthmus (UNODC 2007; Rodgers 2009). Though it is not entirely clear where the term Mara comes from, some argue it is related to the Marabunta fire-ant, a species which moves in massive formations and has a fierce reputation for its bite, other argue that the word was used to indicate a group of friends hanging out (Rodgers 2009; and Interview with Toms Andino). In this Thesis, I will use both, the terms Maras and gangs as interchangeable throughout the following argument, while Pandilla will refer to the small-scale and locally rooted youth-gangs in Central America.

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Legal Medicine IML) increased from 2'544 per year in 1999 to a soaring 3'928 in 2006 8. However, El Salvador's response to continuing and high incidence of violence is somehow paradoxical: data on crime and violence, especially on homicides, is easily accessible. Reports of the Polica Nacional Civil (National Civilian Police - PNC), as well as the statistical yearbooks published by the IML attribute between a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 14 percent of all homicides to Maras or Pandillas. Some cautions are needed in the treatment of levels, rates, and the analysis of homicide cases in this Thesis. Most importantly, issues of under- and over-reporting of homicides need to be considered carefully, while the method used for attributing the share of gang-violence has a critical influence on the levels of violence observed. Nevertheless, state discourses and policy responses under the governments of Francisco Flores (1999-2004) and Antonio Saca (2004-2009), under whom the Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura9 Plans have been carried out, reveal that gangs are perceived and targeted as the main cause of violence; responsible allegedly for more than 60 percent of homicides in El Salvador 10. What is problematic with this fixation on gangs is the occlusion of other violent acts and actors, such as the reappearance of death-squads11, extra-judicial killings, and the involvement of police, military and political officials in organized crime. Furthermore, alternative explanations and more political and structural causes of violence are systematically excluded from official discourse. Arising from these interrogations, the research question of this Thesis is two-fold. First, I wish to discuss (1) how Maras have been constituted as the main cause, and responsible for most violence in post-war El Salvador, despite the existence of contradicting data. Second, I will show (2) how this understanding of violence makes certain practices possible. The hypothesis addressed in this Master's Thesis are three-fold. First, the idea is that current policy-responses in El Salvador socially construct Maras as the main cause for
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Note that on the one hand, levels and rates of homicides in El Salvador stem from several sources, and given differing legal definitions of homicide, in some cases death as cause of a car accident may be included in the statistics (this is the case for data of the Fiscala General de la Repblica FGR). The data of the Instituto Mdico Legal IML only considers violent deaths due to human interaction, whereas in some cases these can correspond to manslaughter, and not intentional homicide. On the other hand, the 1998 Health in the Americas report of the Panamerican Health Organization (PAHO), estimates an underreporting of all deaths of 21 percent for the year 1995 (PAHO 1998:259). However, reporting rates are thought of having improved with the establishment of the Homicide Commission (Comisin de Homicidios) in 2005, unifying the reporting and registry mechanisms between the General Attorney, the National Civilian Police (PNC), and the IML. The attribution of causes to killings by the IML is linked to the information available upon arrival on the crime scene, and the the registry of gang-violence is based on a motive-approach (a member-approach has will usually reveal higher homicide rates see the Small Arms Survey 2010, pp. 129159. See Section three for further discussion of these elements. Note that throughout this Thesis I will use Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura as interchangeable. Though both Plans have different constitutive elements, the repressive practices of interest for this Thesis remain the same. An interview published by El Faro.Net on May 30th 2005 shows that Antonio Tony Saca blames Maras for 60% of all violence in El Salvador, yet no substantial poof fro this reality is provided. On the other hand, c ritical voices can be found in much research on gang-violence in central America, such as Reisman (2006), Ribando (2008), Rodgers (2007), Strocka (2008), Thale (2006), and USAID (2006). Death squads can be defined as clandestine and usually irregular organizations, often paramilitary in nature, which carry out extrajudicial executions and other violent acts () against clearly defined individuals or groups of people (Campbell 2000:1).

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violence. Second, this constructed reality tends to selectively insist on gang-violence, while actively excluding other forms of violence and crime from the public debate. Finally, the focus on gangs contributes to the depoliticization of a wide array of policy-relevant manifestations of contemporary violence. The core of this Thesis lies within the construction and the subsequent effects of a hegemonic truth on violence in El Salvador. For this end, I will interrogate how a certain discourse constitutes a specific truth articulated by particular agents and representatives of the state. In turn, this specific truth on violence legitimizes the policy-response of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura and makes possible and acceptable a series of broader political/societal practices discussed in Section three. To sustain my argument, I will organize this Thesis as follows. The first section will present the conceptual and theoretical outlook for a discursive analysis of security policies in El Salvador. This framework reveals that the contents, contexts and effects of a specific policy are three important dimensions to address for a thorough discussion. The next section will make the case of El Salvador's specificity in terms of violence, both in the past and today. Exploring violence in El Salvador will lead the discussion towards state-responses to violence, and the particular political and ideological context of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura will be examined. The final section will apply the discursive analysis to Mano Dura policies. The analysis of textual mechanisms reveals the workings of a hegemonic truth in El Salvador. Through this analysis, the highly political aspects of designating the enemy to fight are revealed. Empirical data provided by the IML will finally be examined in order to explore demographical and political aspects of contemporary violence. Confronting the discursive practices of the Salvadoran state with several alternative explanations will finally be used to explain the politics of violence in El Salvador.

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Conceptual and Theoretical Framework: State Discourse and Security Policy


The following conceptual and theoretical discussion provides this Thesis with the analytical and empirical tools to critically engage the politics of violence in El Salvador. Discourse plays a central role, both analytically and methodologically, for revealing the political implications of gangviolence (and other forms of violence) in El Salvador. A theoretical approach to security policies and the discourse setting the frame of their implementation are both crucial elements to understand how violence has been socially constructed as gang-violence in El Salvador, despite contesting voices and empirical evidence provided by the National Civilian Police (PNC) and Supreme Court. The concepts and theories presented hereafter will thus start with a brief definition of violence and outline the concept of the politics of violence. Furthermore, I will address how discourses are conceptualized for this Thesis, and which discourses are important for the social construction of gang-violence. The theoretical frame should allow to sustain the argument of how discourse on violence, anti-gang policies, and political processes are linked in El Salvador.

Defining Violence and Politics


Since this Thesis will focus on the politics of one form of violence in particular, namely the violent act defined as Intentional Homicide12, I will start with an operational definition of violence as a behavior by persons against persons that intentionally threatens, attempts, or actually inflicts physical harm (Reiss 1993:35, cited in Jackman 2002, p. 389). A similar definition, with physical infliction of harm at its core, refers to violence as the use of physical force, which causes hurt to others in order to impose ones wishes (Moser & Winton 2002:6). While the first definition highlights intentionality and the physical dimension of violence, the second definition highlights the motives of violence: exercising power over other individuals or groups. Thus, the definition of physical harm as political, criminal, or social is characterized by the underlying motives of violent acts or actors. No matter how difficult these underlying motives are to define, it is important to overtake this simplistic three-dimensional definition of violence. The boundaries between the criminal or political nature of violence are blurry and hard to define, since criminal acts may have political implications, and political motives may involve criminal operations 13.
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Given these

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Intentional homicide may be understood as death deliberately inflicted on a person by another person, including infanticide (UNODC 2009), Tenth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems 2005-2006). See http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/CTS10%20homicide.pdf See Brzoska (2007) for a discussion on the limits of assigning motives to violent acts in standard definitions of armed violence. As he notes well, [d]ebates on recent cases of collective violence have highlighted the difficulty of

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overlaps it is important for research to engage with the politics of criminal, inter-personal or collective acts, such as homicides, gender-based violence, gang-violence, corruption and organized crime. The mere intent to define violence already shows how a political an issue violence is. On the one hand, the act of defining and setting typologies of violence is highly political, because the question of legitimacy of violent acts (and actors) arises in this very process. On the other hand, this same defining act shapes the nature and contents of policies considered as legitimate. Defining, naming, and talking crime14 is deeply political, as it entails a contest over the state's monopoly of (il)legitimate violence. Just remember Max Weber's explanation of the political: 'politics' for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state. If we consider that the state is the sole source of the 'right' use of violence, we understand then how political an issue contemporary violence is (Weber 1946:13).

Discourses on Violence and the Social Production of Reality


Exploring the politics of violence through discourses is interesting in both analytical and empirical terms. On the one hand, discourses are relevant to the politics of violence. They reveal the political contest of naming violence in El Salvador through the content(s) of policy responses (Mano Dura or Iron Fist), their socio-political embeddedness, and their productivity in terms of the practices they make (im)possible15. On the other hand, discourse itself, treated as empirical data, can be traced, observed, and subsequently interpreted. By choosing a discursive approach, this Thesis embraces a logic of interpretation that acknowledges the improbability of cataloging, calculating, and specifying 'real causes', accepting the social construction of reality (Milliken 1999:225-26). I will use the definition of discourse as a set of signs which are part of a system for generating subjects, objects and worlds (Doty 1993:302). Therefore, I include talk and conversations the speech acts and written communication into the discourse analysis in this Thesis (Benford and Snow 2000:623). Discourse goes beyond speech, as writing, thought and even action conform a discourse's specificity. Discourse, finally, is regulated by rules of exclusion, capable of defining acceptable or false statements (and even thoughts) through principles of classification, ordering and distribution (Foucault 1972, cited in Lewellen 2002:73).

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disentangling political, economic and ideological objectives. Warring parties will not necessarily reveal their intentions, and what look like economic motives to one observer may seem political to another (Brzoska 2007:97). In reference to Caldeira's work on the talk of crime. In reference to Doty's (1993) approach to foreign policy, where her analysis is meant to denaturalize the concept of hierarchy in International Relations. In order to do so, she argues that [w]e need to examine the content(s) of hierarchy, or, more accurately, of specific hierarchies, the practices that produced them, and the practices they make possible (Doty 1993:304).

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Discourse Does Things The concern of this Thesis is not merely with internal dynamics and rules of exclusions of discourse. Discourse analysis should rather be seen as a method to capture what discourses can do, because language does things and is inherently powerful (Doty 1993:304). What matters in discourse is its capacity to get people to accept (...) representations as natural and accurate (Milliken 1999:239). The fact of separating between good and bad violence or private and public domains of violence, reveals an ordering facet of discourse that tends to legitimize, explain, or ignore various types of violence (Hume 2009:111). In El Salvador, police violence, death squads, and more broadly unequal social structures and the marginalization of the poor are systematically excluded from official discourse. Symbolic violence, understood as a means of naturalizing unequal power structures to the point of rendering them inevitable and unquestioned is thus relevant to the problematic of this Thesis (Hume 2008a:63). It engages the processes that normalize some aspects of violence while excluding others. Questioning what is unquestioned in El Salvador's truth on violence will thus lead to interrogate what is normal, natural, to the point of being inevitable (Bourdieu, 2001: 8). As discourses do not exist in a political and social vacuum, the natural and unquestioned are closely linked to its embeddedness. On the one hand, individual discourses or texts are interwined with other texts forming a complex web of intertextuality, meaning that the ordering capacity of discourse is closely related to existent, past and present discourses 16 (Doty 1993:303). On the other hand, a discourse cannot have an impact on social relations without a situation that constitutes them as significant (Stritzel 2007:367). Political actors rely on their position as much as they are influenced by the particular configurations of power-relations at a given time. Neither the discourse nor the expressions of symbolic violence are accidental, as [p]olitical agents attempt to monopolize the legitimate means of manipulating the social world (...) in the struggle for the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence (Kauppi 2003:779). Discourse is Embedded Holger Stritzel underlines the embedded nature of a speech-act, which he approaches through the lens of a structurationist theory of securitization 17. Three layers/sequences composed
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Intertextuality is understood in the sense that the signifier of one text or speech only refer to other signifier in other texts (Doty 1993:302). In other words, intertextuality refers to the complex web of relations between categorizations, names, and classifications with the capacity to resonate or being meaningful to the audience. Securitization theory emerges as a clearly distinctive European school of thought, and can be rooted in the general contribution accredited to the Copenhagen School of security theory. Though the debate in European security studies has continuously reinterpreted and complemented the notion of securitization, understood as the process of constructing shared understanding of what is to be considered a and collectively responded to as threat (Waever

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by agents, structures, and texts form the core of this process, through which the power of discourse can be approached: i) the performative force of articulated threat texts, ii) their embeddedness in existing discourses, and iii) the positional power of actors who influence the process of giving meaning (Stritzel 2007:370). In order to approach the discourse on gang-violence, it is central to consider its specific socio-political contexts. These refer to the often more sedimented social and political structures that put actors in positions of power to influence the process of constructing meaning (Stritzel 2007:369-70). The processual element in this framework lies within the concept of the threat text, distinct from the mere speech act. The threat text is characterized by a processual generation of meaning: meaning is not given () but generated often as a result of a dynamic social process (Stritzel 2007:371). Whilst engaging Mano Dura policy-responses in El Salvador, it is important to remember that statements, speeches and texts setting the frames of policy situations are received as meaningful depending on how well they fit into the general system of representation in a given society (Doty 1993:303). The discourse of Mano Dura is not autonomous, relating to past and present experiences of violence and social othering on the one hand, and affecting future discourses related to violence and the options to reduce and control its incidence on the other hand. The Process of Making Meaning Discourses will not resonate if they fail to produce meaning. In social sciences, the process of construction meaning can be conceptualized through frame-theory, defined as an active, processual phenomenon that implies agency and contention at the level of reality construction (Benford and Snow 2000:614). Frames, in this approach, are defined as capable to render events and occurrences meaningful, and thereby function to organize, experience and guide action () by simplifying and condensing aspects of the world out there (Benford & Snow 2000:614). Taking the rather abstract idea of a discourse's embeddedness and productivity to a more practical level, frames are considered as action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings carrying out functions of inspiration and legitimation for different actors (Benford & Snow 2000:614). Framing is a process of social construction of meaning which can be linked to discourse on gang-violence in El Salvador. The process of framing results in both a grid for the interpretation of reality according to identified causes or culpability and a textual source for the right vocabulary confirming this particular reality. Most importantly, core framing tasks imply the sub-tasks of diagnostic and motivational framing.
2004:9).

The first refers to the identification of a problem, more precisely the

designation of sources of causality, blame, and/or culpable agents with the capacity thus to

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delineate boundaries between 'good' and 'evil' (Benford & Snow 2000:615-16). Motivational framing, on the other hand, is linked to the construction of appropriate vocabularies of narrative, including terms such as emergency, urgency, and severity (Benford & Snow 2000:617). Moreover, the notion of resonance is relevant to the issue of effectiveness or mobilizing potency of proffered framings (Benford & Snow 2000:619). For a frame to resonate, it needs to be consistent (thus showing congruency between beliefs, claims, and actions); empirically credible (events in the world must fit the frame); and its articulators credible actors (according to status and perceived expertise) (Benford & Snow 2000). These actors may rely on frame amplification, a process that emphasizes specific issues, while others are being dismissed as less important and less salient (Benford & Snow 2000:623). Resonance and amplification thus are important processes in the social construction of a meaningful truth on gang-violence in El Salvador. Discourses are therefore politically and socially embedded. They are productive in terms of practices, most notably the production of a specific truth. Furthermore, the interactions between the agent and its audience rely on particular conditions for the discourse to be effective. A meaningful discourse is capable of producing (discursive) practices, while the socio-political conditions of its production can not be ignored.

Security Policies and State Discourse


Public policies are not mere instruments to solve a problem, but represent interpretative frames of our world and serve the purpose of constructing social order (Muller 2000:189, emphasis added). As Hajer (1995) notes, the definition of a problem in need of a policy response is a subtle process in which some definitions are organized into politics while other definitions are organized out (Hajer 1995:43). Applying a discourse analysis to public policies hence allows us to grasp how particular understandings of a problem gain dominance and [are] seen as authoritative, while other understandings are discredited (Hajer 1995:44). One way of identifying political responses to violence put into practice are security policies 18. Policies responding to violence, and more specifically to gang-violence, are designed to enforce public and citizen's security, and increasingly tend toward a national security definition of their referent object and their understanding of the threat gangs pose19.
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See Kincaid for a typology of security policies according to national security, public security and citizens security, where the first refers to the safeguarding of the state's sovereignty over the territory and population within its borders, and implies policies to confront any threat to that sovereignty, the second is understood as the maintenance of civil order necessary for the execution of basic societal functions (), along with upholding the rule of law, and the third concept refers to the capacity of individuals and groups to enjoy or exercise the political, economic, and civil rights that correspond to the status of citizen in a society (Kincaid 2000:40). See Manwaring (2005, 2006); Boraz and Bruneau (2006); and Bruneau (2005) for the exploration of, and arguments

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Ideology and Politics in Anti-Gang Policies Klein & Maxson (2006) propose an interesting typology of anti-gang policies. Ideological policies are linked to the beliefs and value systems of law enforcement and correctional institutions. These particular perspectives on gangs, according to the authors, have led to a simplistic conception of what a gang is and does without taking into consideration social or communitarian aspects. Ideological policies are driven by a conservative ideology, a conventional wisdom that suppressive crackdowns, punishment, and 'sending the message' will reduce crime (Klein & Maxson 2006:95). A strong critique to conventional wisdom is present in their writings, since untested assumptions and unchallenged facts are taken as normally true (Klein & Maxson 2006:90). Moreover, these programs are linked to the political contest, such as elections may represent, and are used to send a message that might increase the voter's sympathy for a specific political party or a particular political personality. Political anti-gang programs or policies are characterized by easy-to-swallow arguments, destined more to save the face than actually proposing substance (Klein & Maxson 2006:89). The problem with politically motivated interventions and programs is that there is a strong need for success. When one or several aspects of the program fail to achieve their goals, they might be replaced by goals more readily amenable to a measurement of success, while [t]he number of clients served becomes the goal rather than the numbers positively affected (Klein & Maxson 2006:105). In El Salvador's case, Holland (2007) links Mano Dura responses to political contention and electoral situations, while Hume (2007) explores the links between past and present security-ideologies and their impact on policyresponses to violence in El Salvador. Both elements are highly relevant for examining heavy handed anti-gang initiatives in the wake of the contemporary epidemic of violence in El Salvador.

Approaching State Discourse on Mano Dura


In the sense of discourse analysis and framing theory, a policy-response implies a specific way of framing a public problem. Causal links are established, while those to blame are identified. The discourse surrounding the designed policy-response will reveal socially constructed vocabularies, which participate in the process of framing violence as a specific kind of violence. It is at this particular stage that state discourses are relevant. Discourses of different state representatives, including the security sector, are a means to understanding [sic] (...) how they [the state actors and agencies] interpret and frame events (Bonner 2009:231). The state however, as a producer of security policies and its surrounding discourse, will not be defined as a unitary actor or
toward, considering gangs as an essential national security threats.

19

black box. Discourses do not stem from a sole source of state discourse, it is thus important to consider different actors and institutions which participate in the talk of crime in El Salvador. The state, however, is more than the aggregate of its administrations and bureaucracies. The state is not just about government. A multiplicity of agents, individuals or groups, are striving for power, either power as a means to attain other goals (which may be ideal or selfish), or power 'for its own sake' (Lassman & Speirs 1994:311). hence, the state is not an autonomous entity. It should rather be thought as an organization similar to an enterprise (Betrieb), composed by a set of practices which perpetuate some aspects of a society, while renovating other elements over time (Turner 2000:85). Limiting the analysis of state discourses by bounding (...) analyses of the state to its bureaucratic function ignores the ways in which the state works in and through social relations (Hume 2009:59). In my analysis I take into consideration the multiplicity of power, which participates in the production of a regime of truth on gang-violence in El Salvador. State discourses on gangs reveal how reality is the result of socially constructed truths and facts, from which violence does not escape. In other terms, just as the state can be considered a pervasive social field constructed in and through discursive practices, so are the interpretations and frames of violence, and the resulting policy-responses in contemporary El Salvador (Clark 2001:243).

Operationalization and Methodology


The analysis of this Thesis implies turning my attention toward the political contexts of contemporary violence, the political practices geared toward violence, and the political discourse(s) on violence. Therefore, violence will be approached through the concept of the politics of violence that I define as the societal, political and institutional practices (discourses and actions) which constitute (and are constituted by) the contexts of as well as the responses to violence. What is at stake, therefore, is to analyze the content(s) of the security policies known as Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura, the practices that made them possible, and the practices they make possible. Policy-responses are not merely situated within a context of discursive practices enabling and reinforcing a given response; policy-responses facilitate and make possible a set of specific practices. Therefore, the focus here is not the process participating in the production of a particular policy, but the discourses setting the frame of Mano Dura policies, and their regular effects on their targets of interventions (Milliken 1999:240). By questioning the Mara-argument in El Salvador's security policies, this Master's Thesis explores how a dominant discourse () produces the social reality it defines through the play of practices (Milliken 1999:242). The time-span explored in this Thesis lies between 2003, year of the opening salvo of the war on gangs, and 20

the end of the Antonio Saca presidential term, in June 2009. The period covered here will thus include the promulgation of Mano Dura, its subsequent revocation as unconstitutional, and the promulgation and implementation of Super Mano Dura and complementary Mano Extendida (extended hand) and Mano Amiga (friendly hand). Though heavy-handed interventions and repressive practices in the implementation of security policies did not end at this point in time, the change in government with the victory of Mauricio Funes changes the socio-political background against which Mano Dura policies are examined. Sources for State Discourse on Violence The most accessible sources for state discourses is found in the media, legal texts, decrees, and official reports surrounding the identification and subsequent policy-responses of gangs as the main cause of violence in El Salvador. It shall be noted though that these sources are extremely variable in terms of their status and potential impact. First, the Anti-Mara Law (AML), revoked shortly after its pronunciation for its unconstitutional elements, is not a law which passed through the normal legislative process20. While the first Mano Dura package was imposed in a state of exception through a presidential decree21, the upgraded Super Mano Dura Plan was unanimously accepted by El Salvador's Congress in 2004 (Ribando 2008:12). Plans and laws need to be distinguished. The Mano Dura and its continuation under Super Mano Dura are security Plans, which include laws and decrees (or legal texts) as law and order instruments of contemporary El Salvador to fulfill the Plans' central functions (Peetz 2008a:7). Legal texts reveal and influence discourses as they can be read as the discourse of the legislative majority, while legal texts equally exert important influence on the perception of the public as regards to certain groups or problems (Peetz 2008a:7). Furthermore, the repressive practices against a specific social group are justified and legitimized through different discursive mechanisms underlining the nature of the problem and the right response to it. Public declarations and speeches will thus be considered as part of the corpus of texts conforming the discursive setting of Mano Dura. It is important to remember that in the case of public discourses, a textual analysis reveals whose version of reality circulated in the public domain (Wolf 2008:107). The emphasis on the nature of Maras, their role in contemporary violence, and the right response to tackle this particular problem will be systematically classified and analyzed. Despite the existence of alternative discourses on the responsibilities of gangs in overall levels of violence in academia and the press, state discourses and practices seem
20

21

Given the situation of exception in which the first Mano Dura was inserted, no legislative procedure was followed for the AML. Not even the judiciary sector was consulted, to the regrets of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), who blamed the Flores administration for the lack of effectiveness of the AML since the Law was not even discussed with members of the CSJ (La Prensa Grfica, 27th of July, p.6). The Decree 158 of 9th of October 2003 is also known as the Anti-Maras Act

21

comfortable with the notion of gangs as being the main cause of violence in post-war El Salvador22. Media reports play an important role in reproducing the official discourse on the causes of violence and what the right responses to violence should be. Media reports on gangs have contributed to a sense of insecurity in the region, while [e]xaggerated media reports may have also contributed to the popular perception () that youth gangs are responsible for the majority of violent crime (Ribando 2008:8). According to Sonja Wolf, three key features in El Salvador's media are important to consider. First, the economic control of the country's main media remains in control of three families with close ties to conservative politics and government representatives. Second, publicity and advertizing, the central resource for media financing, can fulfill punishing functions in the case of dissent, while rewarding opinions which go along with the general interests of those holding economic and political power. Advertizing in El Salvador is recognized to be allocated according to a media's editorial line (Wolf 2009:441). The media in El Salvador is no longer victim of governmental censorship. Rather, political-economical interests and the synergic relationship between the business elite, the Alianza Nacionalista Republicana (Nationalist Republican Alliance ARENA) in power, and press interests shape media behavior without any need of government censorship. Finally, unregulated access of political parties to media coverage during electoral campaigns reveal El Salvador's oligarchic and elitist political competition, where alternative voices, effective critique, and constructive reports are difficult to access. The media in El Salvadorunderwent serious concentration during the 1990s, as the market today is composed of four main publications: La Prensa Grfica (LPG), El Diario de Hoy (EDH), El Mundo (EM), and DiarioCoLatino (DCL)23. They are complemented by a major digital media, El Faro.Net (EFN), a moderate and more progressive media, which benefits of UNDP funds and where a new generation of reporters works24. The two most circulating newspapers in El Salvador, LPG and EDH, are influential in society at large as well as in political terms. Community leaders often use reports of LPG and EDH to inform their communities and debate about the news25. Most reports on violence and crime either clearly accuse, or speculate about, gang implication in the publicized cases of homicides and extortions 26. Coupled with the low distribution of dissident
22

23

24

25 26

For critical comments, see media reports of El Faro.Net and DiarioCoLatino treated in this Thesis, and see research published by Hume (2007), Peetz (2008b), Rodgers (2007), USAID (2006), and POLJUVE (2009). Note that this list is by no means exhaustive. The daily and weekly newspapers used for this research include: La Prensa Grfica (www.laprensagrafica.com) 110'000 exemplars distributed daily; El DiarioCoLatino weekly (www.diariocolatino.com); El Diario de Hoy (www.elsalvador.com) 95'000 exemplars distributed daily; and El Faro.Net (www.elfaro.net) weekly digital. Overall, 280'000 newspapers are distributed in El Salvador every day (Huhn et al. 2009:247). Interview of Peter Peetz with Roxana Martel, Director of the Central American Coalition for the Prevention of Youth Violence, on November 2008. Idem. (Peetz) Ibid. (Peetz)

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voices among El Salvador's media, newspapers influence the construction and segregation of groups among the audience. As Sonja Wolf has noted, the media in El Salvador constituted an important strategic resource in the ideological struggle over Mano Dura (2008:105). Discursive Practices and Juxtaposition If reality is understood as being socially constructed, an appropriate method has to be outlined in order to deconstruct the truth on violence in El Salvador. This Thesis will draw upon discursive practices presented by Doty (1993), and juxtaposition presented by Milliken (1999). The first method relies on the analysis of textual mechanisms which will be applied to state discourse on violence in El Salvador. Discourse in the form of texts, speeches and even policies can be treated in an empiricist manner through the analysis of textual mechanisms. First, presuppositions are defined as creating background knowledge and in doing so construct a particular kind of world in which certain things are recognized as true (Doty 1993:306). Second, predications enable to perceive the linking of certain qualities to particular subjects through the use of predicates and the adverbs and adjectives that modify them. Therefore, a predicate affirms a quality, attribute, or property of a person or thing (Idem). Finally, texts create realities through subject positioning, which places subjects and objects in particular relationships toward one another (Idem). The second method on the other hand, will draw upon the juxtaposition of a specific truth constructed within a particular discourse with other events and issues that this 'truth' fails to acknowledge or address (Milliken 1999:243). The particular discourse on gang-violence in El Salvador will therefore be deconstructed through the application of a the discursive practices method so to identify the embeddedness, productivity, and the particular frame of violence as the realm of gangs in El Salvador. On the other hand, the reality of gang-violence in discourse will be confronted with a more nuanced and telling empirical exploration of data on violence in contemporary El Salvador. Combining both, discourse analysis and empirical evidence on violent crime, the truly political nature of contemporary violence will be argued in this Thesis.

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Violence and the State in El Salvador: Change, Continuity, and State-Responses to Violence
In this section I will draw the broad contours of contemporary violence in El Salvador. Furthermore, I will shed light on these manifestations through the discussion of historical continuities and the morphing of violence from political to criminal or social violence in post-war El Salvador. Historical roots and contemporary explanations of violence will present El Salvador as an interesting case in terms of post- or non-conflict violence. The discussion of past and present forms of violence, and the interrogation of continuity and change between conflict and post-conflict violence will show how complex and varied violence in its different manifestations has been and still remains. The core of this section lies within the definition of the setting that favored heavy handed crack-downs on gangs. Explored through their ideological and political backgrounds, Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura polices show that discourses and practices as regards to violence are indeed very embedded in the Salvadoran case. The critical discussion of the nature and specificity of violence during and especially after war unveils the need to problematize further the hegemonic discourse on violence as the realm of Maras and Pandillas.

Change and Continuity of Violence in El Salvador


It is indisputable that the political economy of violence in Central America has evolved over the past decades. Research on contemporary violence has explored the impact of narrow peace processes and structural continuities in terms of inequality and social exclusion (Hume 2008b; Paris 2004; Savenije & Van Der Borgh 2004); the failure of the state in providing security that led to governance voids, which filled by parallel and illegal structures (Koonings & Kruijt 1999); the reflexivity of daily violence during and after civil war (Bourgois 2001; Hume 2007). With the challenge of increasing urban violence in Latin and Central America, the argument of past peasant wars evolving into contemporary slum wars has to be taken seriously (Rodgers 2009) 27. While violence in Latin America has become a serious security concern, it has been argued that its manifestation has undergone its own democratization process, where its exercise is increasingly viewed as a normal option for citizens with which to pursue interests, attain power, or resolve conflicts (Koonings & Kruijt 1999:11). One of the questions underlying the growing psychosis
27

Data published by the Instituto de Medicina Legal (IML) shows that the majority of homicides take place in urban environments, with 53% of violence occurring in urban areas, and 47% in rural areas, reflecting the predominance of the urban factor in violent crime (IML 2007b). Nevertheless, the rural minority is not to be underestimated and the transformation of the urban landscapes into the battlefields of a new urban insurgency can at least be questioned in El Salvador's case (Manwaring 2007).

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of violence however is whether its manifestations have transformed over time, and if so, how. Violence in the Past In the past, violence has been institutionalized by the state as a means to prevent land reform, political change, and to suppress rebellion and to guarantee a constant supply of cheap labor by a small oligarchy (Savenije & Van Der Borgh 2004:157). Historically, huge economic wealth and political power were held by a small agrarian elite, who depended upon a brutally repressive regime to remain in power (Gould & Lauria-Santiago 2008:240). This feature is revealed in the aftermath of the Salvadoran civil war, as the UN-sponsored Commission on the Truth for El Salvador found that 85 percent of cases of violence against Salvadorans were attributable to agents of the State, paramilitary groups allied to them, and the death squads (Arnson 2000:88). Commonly, the roots of the Salvadoran conflict are depicted as lying within the absence of democratic political space and the lack of economic hopes in a country characterized by exclusion and authoritarianism (Call 2002:384). However, the combination of violence, repression and politics is not new in El Salvador. In 1932, the event known as La Matanza (The Massacre) resulted in the killing of 30'000 to 40'000 Salvadorans in the wake of a peasant rebellion led by Augustn Farabundo Mart, who later inspired the name of the rebel formation incorporating various left-wing groups from 1980 onward under the homonym Farabundo Mart National Liberation Front (Skidmore & Smith 2001:342). The 1932 Matanza is a cornerstone in El Salvador's contemporary political and social history for several reasons. The event paved the way for a long series of military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, which lasted until the late 1980s (Hume 2004, Kay 2001). Harsh repression performed by the state cowed people into submission and neutralized further rebellions for the next four decades (Wolf 2008:36). Politically, the Salvadoran left wing links the massacre to its foundational moments, while ARENA leaders traditionally initiate their electoral campaigns in Izalco, one of the places of the Matanza, since it is here that [they] buried communism; however, both political poles define the event as a sacrifice of lives for a national cause (Peterson & Peterson 2008:516-18). In either case, the Matanza initiated a longlasting militarization of governments, while some comment that El Salvador is () the creation of that barbarism (Gould & Lauria-Santiago 2008:240). The particular partnership between politics and the military based on wide-spread violence and fear was institutionalized this way and remained a central feature of Salvadoran politics until the peace accords of 1992. Many organizations executed state-sponsored violence before and during the conflict, such as the Organizacion Nacionalista Democrtica (Nationalist Democratic 25

Organization ORDEN), the Unin Guerrera Blanca (White Warrior's Union UGB), and a series of more or less loosely organized death-squads stemming from the National Guard, the National Police, the feared Treasury Police and of course the Armed Forces (Arnson 2000; Hume 2009). Violence of the state in El Salvador can not possibly be considered as a the product of the Salvadoran state alone, given the networked characteristics of different groups exercising violence with and for the state, intertwined with personal and local motives and conflicts: [v]iolence has worked through local networks, co-opting individuals and communities to blur the distinction between violence carried out by public officials and by civilians (Hume 2004:5)28. The starting point of Salvadoran conflict, which pitted the FMLN against the civil-military alliance in power, has to be situated in the context of the Cold War. Leftist organizations, after a failed reformist coup in October 1979, called for a massive demonstration in January 1980, where an estimated two hundred people were injured, and twenty unarmed demonstrators were killed. Violent repression in the aftermath of this uprising initiated one of the most violent episode in Salvadoran history (Gould & Lauria-Santiago 2008). Encouraged by a tough anti-communist rhetoric of their most generous ally, the Salvadoran government proceeded to the military suppression of revolutionary peasants (Bourgois 2001:9)29. Jeffrey Gould and Aldo LauriaSantiago 2008:268-69) link the 1932 Matanza to political violence in the 1980s, as the killings during civil war found their justification in 1932. Public killing and torture, as well as publicly displayed (and often mutilated) corpses were used as a strategy to contain leftist radicalization while reviving the trauma of past violence within the elderly in rural communities of El Salvador (Gould & Lauria-Santiago 2008; Hume 2009). The harsh repression upon leftist sympathizers and activists reveals a disturbing continuity of the dehumanization of the enemy within. In the past, the civilizing process during the colonial era depicted the indigenous population as barbarian and savage, a problem which needed to be controlled with the exercise of a legitimate violence. During the times of repression and war, the new reproducer of fear was found in the leftist groups opposing the dictatorial governments from the 1970s onward (Martel 2006a:962). The unfolding of the conflict and the killing of leftist politicians, sympathizers, and suspected rebels peaked with an estimated 10'000 civilian casualties for the year 1980 alone (Arnson 2000:88). The Salvadoran civil war finally took the lives of an estimated 75'000 persons, mostly civilians, over a little more than a decade of overt conflict (Skidmore & Smith 2001).

28

29

An estimated 300'000 members spied on their communities, provided information, and participated in the identification and suppression of suspected leftist activists or sympathisers (Hume 2004:8) U.S. military support in the context of the ideological confrontation between the West and the East reached an estimated US$ 4 Billion for the 1980s (Bourgois 2001:9).

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Contemporary Violence: Changes and Continuities In contrast, the contemporary panorama of violence reveals itself as far more complex. Violence is not subject to the (il)legitimate monopoly of the state in El Salvador anymore, which does not mean that the state does not continue to exert violence. After the 1992 peace accord ended the civil war, the benefits of peace remained elusive: ongoing violence and crime both undermine the experience and existence of peace, calling into question its very meaning (Hume 2008a:59). In many cases, post-war violence is understood as a new form of violence, different to past political and ideological conflicts, and rather individual in nature and motivated by economic gain or social disaggregation. These views are abundant in many interpretations of post-war violence not only in El Salvador, but in the broader post-Cold War panorama of contemporary violence (Koonings & Kruijt 1999; Moser & Shrader 1999; Wieviorka 2005). The question of the changes and continuities of violence in contemporary Central America should not be underestimated, as a predominant focus on new violence would blind the reader of important political, social, and economic continuities, which facilitate or enable structures for the perpetuation of violence over time. The nature of contemporary violence, such as every-day crime, social cleansing, street violence and riots, is often considered in contrast to past ideological conflicts (Koonings & Kruijt 2003:375). Nonetheless, it is difficult to ignore that state-led violence and repression in El Furthermore, it has been noted that political Salvador relied on the complicity, if not active collusion, of non-elite groups (e.g. death squads) throughout the entire conflict (Hume 2009:52). violence during the civil war overshadowed other forms of violence existing alongside with the civil war, indicating that up to some point other forms of violence could have been adjudicated to the conflict (Hume 2009:70). However, the argument of novel forms of violence is tempered by social, political, and economic factors. On the one hand, economic factors should not be disregarded, especially as El Salvador's road toward civil war was paved by economic hardship, lack of opportunities, and extreme inequality (Call 2002). During the 1990s, tough economic liberalization and privatization programs deeply transformed the country's economic structure. El Salvador's production has been reoriented toward non-traditional exports, services, and industrial production in Maquiladoras30 (Wolf 2008:56). The latter led to increased migration toward medium-sized urban centers, such as Soyapango, Apopa and San Martin; areas that are recognized as those suffering from a higher
30

Maquiladoras stands for Assembly Plants, a product of U.S. production policy of the 1960s and 1970s which gained momentum during the 1990s under regional free-trade and liberalization policies. Maquiladoras in Central America are foreign assembly facilities, commonly responsible for one or several specific parts of the production process of the final good. See CEPAL (2005).

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incidence of violence and elevated gang-membership (Peterson & Peterson 2008; USAID 2006)31. Over the past three decades, the country's GDP per Person more than doubled (from US$ 2'000 to US$ 5'500)32, and poverty rates have been significantly reduced (from 68 percent in 1980 to 47.5 percent in 2004) (Kurtenbach 2007; CEPAL 2008)33. Income distribution as measured through the Gini coefficient has however barely evolved over the past two decades, and remains very high with 0.493 in 200434 (CEPAL 2008). Growth had a positive incidence on poverty rates, yet the distribution of increasing economic gains remains highly unequal. While considering poverty and its links to violence, it must be noted that in El Salvador the two poorest departments are also those showing the lowest incidence of homicide (Hume 2009:62). On the other hand, political factors are relevant to understand and contextualize past and present violence. As the peace-process in El Salvador arose from a military stalemate between the the FMLN and the state, the negotiated peace settlement of 1992 has been criticized as the talks were conducted within the logic of the war and almost exclusively between the two parties to the ongoing conflict (Whitfield 1999:264-65). Most importantly, political polarization in El Salvador has been advanced as one of the central features of the political consequences of the civil war. While other political formations win around 5 percent of all votes, the FMLN and ARENA formations share the majority of vote between the two of them (Holland 2007:68). Past and present patterns of migration during and after the civil war can not be disregarded, especially in the light of the spread of Central American gangs (UNODC 2007; Ribando 2008; Rodgers 2009). Central American migrants and refugees seeking better opportunities and fleeing their war-shattered homes integrated and/or formed gangs in the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s, of which the Dieciocho and the Mara Salvatrucha are the most notorious35. Returnees, often deported by U.S. immigration offices for illegal stay or criminal activities, are linked to the spread of gang-culture across the sub-continent (Rodgers 2009). Between 1998 and 2004, Central America received some 46'000 convicted deportees from the U.S., whereas the countries of the Northern Triangle Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador represent for 90 percent of these deportations (Rodgers et al 2009:7). The U.S. deportation policy revealed itself as complex for the region because background information of deportees was not and is still not systematically shared between
31 32 33

34 35

See the Paper of M. Vasquez, pp. 4 5. This paper is not dated, but can be downloaded at http://www.livedtheology.org/pdfs/m_vasquez.pdf See Kurtenbach (2007) for a study of structural continuities between war and peace in Central America. Note however that poverty reduction can also be attributed to out-migration and the inflow of remittances (Wolf 2009a:430). In 1993, the Gini Coefficient was 0.51 (Kurtenbach 2007). This relates to the children of war hypothesis of gangs, which argues how contemporary street-gangs known as Maras in Central America are related to population movements during and after the civil wars that affected the region. See the homonym film by Fuchs (2007) for an interesting review of the links between Maras and the civil conflicts in Central America.

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U.S. agencies and Central American governments (USAID 2006:18). Many of these returnees allegedly contributed to the rise of gang-cultures and the expansion of gang-memberships throughout the isthmus (Rodgers 2009; Ribando 2008). Although the emergence and activities of gangs retain much attention, other violent acts and actors are relevant in contemporary El Salvador36. Death squads such as Sombra Negra (Black Shadow) and Mano Blanca (White Hand) have (re-)emerged in response to the proliferation of youth gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha and the Dieciocho37. Organized crime and drugtrafficking have profound impacts on the country and the entire region. Recent data on cocaine smuggling shows that more than 70 percent of South America's cocaine production destined to the United States transited through Central America in 2003 (UNODC 2007:46). Gangs themselves should by no means be underestimated for their participation in violent actions, as reports increasingly link gang-violence to a wide array of crimes including assaults, extortion of protection money, turf violence, and homicides (Ribando 2008:5). Gangs have also been recognized as responsible for carrying out racketeering operations and fulfilling functions as sicarios hired assassins (Demoscopa 2007:5760). Increasingly, gangs have been equated with organized crime in the Central American region, not only by national discourse but also in international policy. The U.S. Pentagon for example uses the shady term of anti-social combination for organized crime, drug-trafficking and gangs in its definition of regional security threats (Hume 2007:743). Despite overlaps to a certain extent, Maras and organized crime should not be considered the same38. Organized crime can be distinguished from Maras by its special division of labor and hierarchical structure, its mixture of legal and illegal activities, and its capacity to neutralize the efforts of law enforcement through corruption and intimidation39. Moreover, gangs should be distinguished from organized crime because they typically lack the hierarchical leadership structure, capital, and manpower required to run a sophisticated criminal enterprise (Ribando 2009:2). Violent crime in general is an important feature of El Salvador's contemporary panorama of violence, but its expressions can not be summarized into gang-activities alone. Numerous manifestations of violence shape the broader panorama of violence today, as noted by Jeanette Aguilar, Director of the IUDOP (Instituto Universitario de Opinion Pblica). She recognizes the
36

37

38

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Note that homicide has been a pervasivee feature in El Salvador. According to PAHO figures cited in Hume (2007:740), murder rates in El Salvador throughout the 1960s and 1970s have been persistently higher than Colombia or Nicaragua; with 30 per 100'000 in El Salvador, compared to 22 and 25 per 100'000 in Colombia and Nicaragua respectively. See for example Aguilar (2006) on the presence of groups perpetrating social cleansing (limpieza social) in a general climate of impunity in El Salvador under the impulse of Mano Dura policies. See the series of articles published by Jaime Martnez in DiarioCoLatino (http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/) on January the 6th, the14th, and the 28th, and February the 10th and the 21st, 2010. DiarioCoLatino, January the 6th.

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complexity of contemporary violence in El Salvador, product of intersecting criminal dynamics such as international organized crime, mafias, local criminal structures, gangs, and common delinquency, complemented by the actions of illegal armed groups such as death-squads and sicarios (hired assassins)40. Facing these numerous security challenges, El Salvador's government was looking for an adequate policy-response. However, the political and ideological nature of Mano Dura responses limited their positive impact.

The Politics of Mano Dura in El Salvador


The opening salvo of the Salvadoran fight against violence and insecurity in El Salvador took place in a generalized climate of fear41. Fear of crime, the prevalence of threat perceptions, and high victimization rates among El Salvador's society gave the ruling ARENA party a context (and motive) in which authoritarian policies could be justified (Aguilar 2004:2). Violent crime and the widespread experience of very real fear are both highly political and very sensitive issues, as they are subject to political exploitation (Bateson 2009; Holland 2007; Hume 2009) 42. In 2002, an opinion poll in El Salvador evidenced the situation by stating that almost half of El Salvador's population (48 percent) declared to feel very unsafe, and that more than one third declared delinquency as the major problem the country was facing 43. The politics of fear were also echoed in the press, and some declared to be in favor of the war on gangs, the only possible solution to El Salvador's widespread violence (Segura 2003). Popular perceptions and victimization of crime, as well as the political arena of the country seemed ready for the repressive response of Mano Dura. The opening salvo of El Salvador's war on gangs was seductive by its simplicity, aiming to temporarily immobilize gang members and remove them from marginal communities before they unleash further violence44. However, there was nothing new with this type of policies, as the security reforms introduced under the Plan Mano Dura were neither unique nor novel - Crime control and gang-suppression policies had been implemented with debated success in the U.S., Brazil, and Venezuela earlier (Holland 2007:24). In El Salvador, Mano Dura was a continuation of
40 41

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Diario Avanzada, 18th of June 2010. The announcement of Mano Dura is only one of many responses to gangs perceived as a regional threat in Central America. Honduras implemented as Zero Tolerance policy under President Maduro, who continued the tendency of his predecessor Flores to act with repression against Maras. Though Maduro's successor promised a more nuanced approach to reducing violence and crime, in practice, little has changed in the coercive approach to violence reduction and prevention. In Guatemala, the Plan Broomsweep, or Plan Escoba, did not go as far as the Salvadoran and Honduran counterparts, were law rendered gang-membership illegal. However, similar practices by security forces and the government, as seen in El Salvador and Honduras, have been characteristic for successive governments. See Rodgers (2009), Zinecker (2008), Dowdney (2005). The role of the media in generating a general climate of fear is highlighted by several commentators and research on the politics of Mano Dura (USAID 2006; Thale 2006; Aguilar 2004). El Diario de Hoy, 14th of February 2002. Ministerio de Gobernacin de El Salvador, cited in Holland (2007), p. 32.

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different repressive responses designed by the Salvadoran state to control violent crime and gangs. As far back as 1953, Interior Minister Jos Mara Lemus initiated a law of Maleantes y Vagos, the law of Thugs and Bums, which allowed the incarceration of persons remaining in the streets for no reason45. In 1996, the Congress passed a law that increased to the level of one third the sentences for crimes and submitted to debate a Law of Social Defense for the adoption of security measures against conducts bordering on the commission of an offense (emphasis added)46. It is not surprising therefore that Mano Dura is considered as part of a culture of punishment in El Salvador47. In post-war El Salvador, fear and crime transformed into a societal feature subject to political and ideological manipulation, strategically used by the ruling ARENA party. Before analytically treating the discourses of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura as well as the practices that they made possible, the political-ideological setting of El Salvador's war on violence as well as the specific contents of Mano Dura policies will be discussed. Political and Ideological Security Policies The politics and ideology of El Salvador's crack-down on crime are deeply rooted in the country's political system and linked to the security sector's ideological traits and structure. The political responses to violence from 2003 onward can be viewed as the product of an entrenched political institution, the Alianza Nacionalista Republicana (Nationalist Republican Alliance ARENA) (Holland 2007:63). ARENA can be traced back to the Frente Amplio Nacional (Broad National Front FAN), a semi-clandestine political organization with funding from right-wing exiles living abroad (Arnson 2000:95). FAN was founded by Roberto d'Aubuisson during his 1980 exile after being jailed for plotting a coup against El Salvador's reformist government 48. In 1981, FAN was reorganized into ARENA as a political party, under the motto of Peace, Progress, and Liberty49, as the insurgent offensive of the FMLN threatened to erode the elite's accumulated privileges (Wolf 2009a:429). Between the 1970s and 1980s, a shift of capital investments from the undiversified agrarian sector toward the more diversified industrial and service sector implied the emergence of an ARENA faction which was more business-oriented and less reliant on repressive labor relations (Wolf 2009a:348). Political shifts in the ARENA formation led to internal tensions,
45 46 47

48

49

La Prensa Grfica, 24th of July 2003. Latin American Newsletters, Weekly Report, April 4th 1996, Tough Emergency Law in El Salvador. Presentation by Antonio Rodrguez, Local Voices: Understanding the Youth gang Phenomenon in central America, Geneva, 18th of June. The CIA described D'Aubuisson as the principal henchman for wealthy landowners and as a coordinator of the right-wing death squads that murdered several thousands suspected leftists (Arnson 2000:94). His character was of such peculiarity that former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White once called him a pathological killer (Skidmore & Smith 2001:346). Latin American Newsletters. Regional Report. Caribbean & Central America. March 2008.

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which remained delicate for the party. However, it did not change the fact that ARENA remained in power until 2009, when the election of Mauricio Funes brought the FMLN into presidency for the first time since its institutionalization as a political party in 1992. In the wake of the highly polarized political contest between ARENA and the FMLN after the implementation of peace, violence and especially youth gangs have become and ideological conductor of citizen's fears (Hume 2007:746). The political use of fear, or crime scares, reveal an effort of the elite to gain the allegiance of the populace so that they will forget () the extent of inequality and government mismanagement (Chevigny 2003:91). As noted by USAID in 2006, [g]ang activity may also influence policy decisions (). It is much easier to crack down on gang members than to deal with more complicated social issues that support gang activity, such as income inequality and poverty (USAID 2006:49). Critical voices in the press indeed underline the timing of the announcement of Mano Dura measures, just eight months before presidential elections50. ARENA chose to turn toward Mano Dura policies facing electoral pressures stemming from several sources. The Nationalist Alliance is composed by two complementary yet competing wings. One is constituted by conservative elites, especially land-owners, while the other one is composed by the economic, or business, elite, who has neoliberal tendencies regarding to the organization and administration of the state (Holland 2007:65-66). Tensions between traditional defenders of the status quo and a more progressive, business-oriented faction of ARENA were frequent. Taking advantage of the internal divisions of ARENA, the Partido de la Conciliacin Nacional (National Conciliation Party PCN) successfully attracted new members from ARENA's conservative wing, exacerbating the disputes between conservative and business elites within ARENA. Furthermore, ARENA found its rule eroded as the FMLN increased its votes, until overtaking the Legislative Assembly in 2003 (Wolf 2008:75). As popular discontent with neoliberal economic policies increased in the early 2000s, the loss of political power seemed very real to ARENA toward the upcoming 2004 presidential elections. Mano Dura thus can be understood as the product of political pressures in terms of party-division, citizen's demands, and the possibility of electoral loss. In august 2003, ARENA indeed understood the political potential of Mano Dura for the 2004 elections. A document sent by the ARENA leadership urged its representatives and mayor members to join the electoral campaign with a winning theme, and to use the opportunity to present ARENA as the political party with the hardest position against crime 51. The strategy
50

51

ARENA has a history of shady electoral tactics. During the first presidential elections of 1994, and the legislative ans municipal election of 1997, ARENA has implemented last minute electoral reforms and attacked electoral laws repeatedly up to one month before the holding of elections. These reforms were mostly used to enhance the possibility that ARENA might maintain parliamentary control by improving the chances of those minority parties within the ARENA sphere of interests (Caas & Dada 1999:79). ARENA document filtrated in the press, published in La Prensa Grfica, 13th of August 2003.

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proved itself as very efficient. In March 2004, ARENA candidate Antonio Saca was elected with 58 percent of the vote, mainly basing his campaign on fear and insecurity (Huhn et al. 2006). The prevalent role of the military in El Salvador's political history, and the focus on internal, rather than external threats, are important for the ideological foundations of Mano Dura. Charles T. Call notes that security in El Salvador has entirely been militarized in its past up to the end of the civil war. Principally committed to internal security throughout decades, the entire security apparatus was under constitutional responsibility of the Defense Ministry up to 1992 (Call 2003:831)52. With the 1992 Peace Accords, a sweeping police and military reform was established, laying new foundations for the National Civilian Police and reforming the military's role after war. A clear line between external and internal defense was established, while the military and police forces were to be purged of perpetrators of human rights violations (Caas & Dada 1999:72-73). The size of the entire security forces had to be reduced, the National Intelligence Directorate to be dissolved, and the educational system of the security forces to be reformed (Vickers 1999:395). The reforms pushed toward the constitution of a professional, apolitical, and rights-based police force, the National Civilian Police Force (PNC) under direct executive control, composed by 20 percent of former Military Police Officers, 20 percent former FMLN combatants, and 60 percent new civilian recruits (Caas & Dada 1999) However, the success of El Salvador's security sector reform is mitigated the irregular inclusion of former military personnel with a questionable past, and the wholesale transfer of entire units to the PNC after the war (Vickers 1999:402). Reluctance to reforms was evident in El Salvador. Irregular special forces formed by the public security minister himself, and the private crime-combating units established by the business elites are examples of resistance to reforms (Vickers 1999:401-3). Since the 1992 peace accords, the PNC has been dominated by ex-military officers who () have converted the police into a vertical authoritarian force (Wolf 2008:62). After the war, the PNC General Director's post remained highly politicized and revealed disturbing continuities between war and peace. The post has been occupied by individuals with close ties to ARENA and a history of responsibilities in the intelligence and the military prior to 1992. Rodrigo Avila (1994-1999 and 2006-2008) was a previous ARENA congressman, while Mauricio Sandoval (1999-2003) was a former director of the state intelligence apparatus, and was named in a confidential Truth Commission report in connection with death squad activities (Wolf 2008:62). Finally, Ricardo Menesses (2003-2005) was a former member of the infamous Treasury Police, a police force linked to human rights violations before and during the war 53. A public declaration of
52

53

The security appratus before and suring war was composed by the urban National Police, the rural National Guard, the Treasury Police, and the Military branches (Call 2003:831). The Treasury Police was mentioned as one of the most brutal police forces, besides the National Guard, during the

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the Fundacin de Estudios para la Aplicacin del Derecho (Federation of the Study of the Application of Law FESPAD) on June 30 th alludes to PNC officials (without citing names) who have a past in the Salvadoran military and seem to favor force, violence, and repression to resolve the crime situation in El Salvador (FESPAD 2010). Furthermore, growing levels of fear and insecurity eased the return of the military into internal affairs under the 2002 National Defense Law, backed by popular perceptions calling upon a strongman to solve the country's crime issues (Wilkerson 2008:39). Political particularities of, and electoral pressures on ARENA toward the end of the 19992004 presidential term, coupled with ideological and political continuities in the functioning of the PNC, contributed to a political and ideological response to violence in line with past institutional practices and the official discourses available: calling upon the security forces to suppress the groups responsible for the growing epidemic of violence. The success in terms of crime control of this strategy is highly disputed, as over the period of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura, the number of homicides actually increased 22.8 percent between 2003 and 2004; and 29 percent between 2004 and 2005 see Annex 2). Politically speaking, however, the initiative has proven to be efficient. After a period of political losses in favor of the FMLN, ARENA increased its support from 23.9 percent to 41.1 percent, and after its announcement, the Plan enjoyed 88 percent approval, according to an opinion poll (Hume 2009:141). Furthermore, the Plan was effective as common perceptions regarding which party was best equipped to fight crime, put ARENA into a leading position with 60 percent of approval in 2003 (Holland 2007). Between 2003 and 2004, he number of votes for ARENA almost triplicated, reaching the historical high of 1'314'000 voters in 2004 (the FMLN merely doubled its votes over the same period)54. In the light of these political and ideological factors, the processes that contribute to the emergence and acceptance of Mano Dura as a meaningful policy-response to crime and violence in El Salvador will be studied. Before entering the analysis of state discourses setting the frame of these policies, and exploring the practices made possible in their aftermath, the actual policies of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura will briefly be discussed.

The Contents of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


In practice, the Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura Plans are a continuum of security measures and responses to crime, geared toward the suppression of gangs and tackling the crime wave affecting the country since the 1990s. The term Mano Dura is somewhat amorphous, since
years of civil war in El Salvador, and its activities have been linked to death-squad activities. See Arnson (2000) for an overview of the war-time armed forces. See Artiga-Gonzlez (2004) for the evolution of the votes between ARENA and the FMLN

54

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it alludes to a wide array of repressive policy-practices targeting criminal violence and delinquency (Holland 2007:25). Despite the somewhat shady term, Mano Dura policies probably represent the most consistent and enduring security-policy against crime. In a country where state responses to growing criminality have been consistently inconsistent, Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura are indeed the longest coherent, yet questionable measure against crime. Mano Dura articulates itself around two focal points: measures of crime control and containment based on repressive actions, and a specific Anti-Mara Law to enforce the Plan's containment strategy. The common interpretation of these policy-responses is an open war on gangs in Central America 55. The warmetaphor is under no circumstances an overstatement. A special division, the heavily armed Grupo de Tarea Conjunto (Common Task Force GTC) patrolled the streets of El Salvador's capital city and half a dozen other municipalities, while the deployment of military personnel, heavily armed police forces, and the declaration of a state of exception echoed past experiences of state- and parastate operations against ongoing insurgencies during the 1970s and 1980s 56. The packages presented by President Flores and President Saca included a series of measures ranging from lengthening prison sentences, suspending due process guarantees, () and aggressively arresting youths suspected of gang membership (Bateson 2009:7)57. Under President Flores, the Mano Dura package was intended to recover the territories controlled by Maras and more broadly to dismantle these organizations by putting their members and leaders behind bars. For this purpose, the military and the police were called upon to collaborate in a vast nation-wide operative, and a Anti-Mara Law (AML) was established in October 2003, three months after the launch of the Plan. The main feature of the AML consisted in the criminalization of gang-membership, based on behavior and exterior signs such as tattoos, symbols, and body-markings of other types, establishing moreover a class of minor offenses to allow for mass arrests (Holland 2007:28)58. The tough legislation implemented thereafter included measures such as targeting gang members through illicit association laws, mandatory minimum sentencing for young offenders, () [and] the prosecution of juveniles as adults for gang-related crimes (Reisman 2006:148).

55 56

57

58

See Rodgers (2009), Hume (2007), and Ribando (2009). According to La Prensa Grfica, the day Mano Dura was initiated, 700 military personnel and 225 police officers were deployed to crack-down on gangs in the Salvadoran capital on July 23rd (La Prensa Grfica, 24th of July 2004). Mano Dura entailed the arrest, between July 2003 and August 2004, of 19'275 gang-members. However, 17'540 were released shortly after, for lack of proof for further detention (Thale 2006:57). Ley Antimara, Government of El Salvador, October 2003. [Online]. See the entire law (Spanish) online via the link: http://www.elsalvador.org/Embajadas/eeuu/Leyes.nsf/0c5ee6bc7ccdc91f8525696800486c14/2b79363884967b81852 56dc7005940cb?OpenDocument

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Table 1: Oversight of Anti-Gang Strategies and Sentences


Plan Mano Dura El Salvador, 2003-2004 Discretionar y Crimes Yes Primary Crime Gang Targeted Affiliation Plan Sper Mano Dura El Salvador 2004 - ? Yes Illicit Association Operacin Libertad Honduras, 2002-2006 Yes Illicit Association Plan Mano Plan Escoba Dura Guatemala, Panama, 2003-2004 2004-2005 Yes Drug Possession, Loitering Yes

Sentences

6-8 Years

Gang Affiliation 3-5 Years for 3-5 Years for 3-5 Years in 2-10 Years for membership, membership, 2002, 9-12 Drug up to 10 6-12 Years for Years in Possession, Years for leading a 2003, 20-30 up to a year leading a Gang Years in 2005 for Loitering Gang

Source: Holland (2007)

President Flores pushed the Plan as a measure of exception of six months, a petition the legislative and judiciary received with cautions shortly after the announcement of Plan Mano Dura, given the difficulties linked to criminalizing gang-membership 59. Under Antonio Saca, the measures were upgraded to Super Mano Dura, which included the Puo de Hierro (Iron Fist), Mano Amiga (Friendly Hand) and Mano Extendida (Extended Hand). A new Law of illicit association was established, targeting a group or organization whose purpose is to commit a crime (Wolf 2008:77). Though harsh repression was to be complemented by measures of crime prevention and reinsertion, in practice little change occurred regarding the crack-down on gangs (see Table 1). With Mano Dura against gangs in El Salvador, the cause for many of the society's torments finally had a recognizable face. Visibility has been recognized as a key aspect to heavyhanded policy-responses. Press coverage and political campaigning have an impact on the visibility of certain types of violence [which] affects popular perceptions () and associated levels of fear and insecurity (Howard et al. 2007:719). Youth violence is indeed considered as one of the most visible forms of violence, as gang-members are easily recognizable and by the showing of their tattoos, clothing styles, hair cuts and other external features (Rodgers 2009; USAID 2006). The implementation of Mano Dura has been highly publicized with television, radio, and press coverage, which facilitated the mobilization of public support (Rodgers & Muggah 2009). Surprisingly, the Mano Dura Plan and the Super Mano Dura upgrade do not overtly address the question of homicides and violent crimes. Rather, crimes such as destructing public and private property, insulting and throwing objects at by-passers, and the public displaying of private parts are the type of felonies understood as in need of a special legal regime 60. Of course, serious crimes such as murder, rape and drug trafficking do not necessarily need the establishment of special laws, since these crimes are already included in national legal codes and punitive instruments have been
59 60

La Prensa Grfica, 25th of July 2003. See FESPAD (2004), pp. 2527.

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implemented. Yet despite the systematic association of Maras with violence, no special provisions for serious crimes committed by Maras have been established in El Salvador. Many critical voices arose as the Plan and its contested Law proved to violate the principles of democratic security and the promotion of human rights, allowing the police to arrest suspected criminals on weak and often subjective evidentiary standards (Holland 2007:25). The first Anti Mara Law was declared unconstitutional shortly after its announcement for violating both, the nation's Political Constitution and the International Convention of the Rights of the Child (Cruz 2005:43). The supreme Court of El Salvador concluded that [o]nly external actions, that produce harmful effects and demonstrate the guilt of a person and not their appearance, attitude, or anthropological characteristics () are verifiable before a judge61. The failure of the Anti Mara Law did not mean, however, the end of the Mano Dura Plan. As presidential elections approached, ARENA candidate Antonio Saca started campaigning with tough anti-gang rhetoric, claiming that the party was over for delinquents 62. The Super Mano Dura of President Saca was meant to introduce measures of rehabilitation, reinsertion and prevention, while continuing the crack-down on criminal organizations. In fact, little has changed between the two Plans, as the preventive measures announced by Saca suffered from a lack of resources and political will in general63 (Aguilar 2004). Notwithstanding the continuing difficulties, by the end of 2006 about 40 per cent of the population agreed with the policy, though 32.6 per cent affirmed that it had not reduced gang violence and another 31 per cent of respondents considered it had only reduced violence a little (IUDOP, 2006: 3). Popular support remained despite the many cracks and increasing criticism against the policy-responses to violence in El Salvador. The next section will further the interrogations arising from these critical elements through a discursive analysis of state discourse on gang-violence and Mano Dura policies.

61 62

63

El Salvador's Supreme Court Decision, April 2004, cited in Holland (2007), p. 33. See http://www.uca.edu.sv/publica/idhuca/ar_editoriales04.html#02092004, and http://www.lib.utexas.edu/benson/lagovdocs/elsalvador/federal/presidente/Plan%20Pais%20Seguro.pdf for the Plan Safe Country proposed by President Saca. While preventive programs were subject to international aid and benefited of small budget allocations (the Paz Social program received US$ 27 Millions), Mano Dura policies received far more monetary allocation (with US 431 Millions, the budget for repression was nearly twenty times higher). See Aguilar (2004).

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The Politics of Violence in El Salvador


This section will establish the argument of the politics of violence in El Salvador. To do so, I will first outline the role of discourse in the case of violence. Second, I will present the analysis of textual mechanisms of the state discourse on violence, and explore the effects of a particular hegemonic truth on gang-violence. The third section will further the discussion by performing the juxtaposition of the hegemonic truth on gang-violence with a detailed analysis of empirical data on homicides between 1999 and 2008. Most importantly, a disjuncture between the dominant perception of gangs as the main cause of violence and the empirical evidence gathered will sustain the critical discussion of contemporary violence as a highly political issue. First, the content analysis proposed hereafter lays bare a series of textual mechanisms which indicate how the frame of gang-violence works by establishing a grid of interpretation of reality, and how this particular frame reveals itself as a powerful source for the right vocabulary to identify the problem, its causes, and the possible solutions. A series of articles, interviews, speeches and policy documents conforming the corpus of sources defined in the methodological discussion above have been subjected to the textual analysis. Special attention was given to the discourse of the state, notably the ARENA party, the former Presidents Francisco Flores (1999-2004) and Antonio Saca (2004-2009), and personalities with responsibilities in the security sector, namely PNC officials and Security Ministers. A combination of these primary sources with numerous secondary sources conforms the body of materials explored for the discourse analysis in this Thesis 64. Second, the data explored below reveals how complex and politically sensitive the elaboration of data on homicides can be, while sources can be contradictory. Defining violence is a difficult enterprise, yet measuring violence is an equally complex and disputed exercise65. The data discussed in this section has to be treated with caution for several reasons, further explained below. However, the demography and political economy, as well as the Mara-dimension of homicidal violence in El Salvador between 1999 and 2008, reveal important features considering the textual mechanisms and
64

65

El Salvador's principal Media have been contacted in the context of this research. However, no positive response to the requests of digitalized archives has been obtained. The selection of articles, opinion columns, surveys, speeches, and interviews presented in the next section are thus the result of an intensive search of violence- and gang-related topics in the country's newspapers and digital forums available via the internet, as well as secondary sources presenting extracts of articles and interviews. It must be noted that it is not possible, at distance, to access the entire archive of the daily and weekly newspapers and digital media consulted in this Thesis. The following discussion therefore does not claim to address the entire universe of textual sources, be it the press, public statements, policy documents, interviews, or visual documents covering gang-violence and Mano Dura as well as Super Mano Dura in El Salvador. This weakness has been countered to some point through the elaboration of an analytical frame organizing the selected sources into six content-categories, discussed in the section below in more detail. For a discussion on the complexity of measuring violence, see Krause (2009) for measuring armed violence, and Brzoska (2007) for the limitations of the standard definitions of armed conflicts and violence.

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hegemonic truths on gang-violence discussed in this section. Exploring homicidal violence in more detail mirrors the complexity of contemporary violence in El Salvador, and opens the space for further problematization of state discourses and dominant policy-responses to gang-violence under Mano Dura. Finally, the discussion explores through the notion of the politics of violence how such a disjuncture between available knowledge and political discourses and practices can be possible. Contexts, Discourse, and the Politics of Violence Contemporary violence in El Salvador reveals a multiplicity of violent acts and actors, impossible to apprehend by considering exclusively political forms and motives of violence. The following analysis shifts the focus toward the political contexts of contemporary violence, the political practices geared toward violence, and the political discourse(s) on violence. Political violence and the politics of violence are different, yet connected concepts. Both relate to violence, though the former is related to the nature of the act, while the latter relates to the socio-political and institutional contexts in which this act is situated. The politics of violence however are not merely situated in a structural context, characterized by dynamics of exclusion, inequality and oppression (Hume 2009; Kurtenbach 2007). Rather, I argue that violence can be political given its object, the perpetrator's status and discourse of justification, and its (political) effects (Crettiez 2008: 11). Violent acts not purely political by definition, such as the killing of a political actor in crimerelated violence blurs the categorization. Indeed, the act can be non-political (e.g. reprisal for noncooperation with a criminal organization), yet the effects are political (e.g. subsequent nomination of a more cooperative replacement)66. Most importantly, violence and crime have political effects, even if the violent act is not clearly defined as political. A word of caution is needed though, as political violence, as well as the politics of violence, both are blurry, complex and contested notions, which are difficult to define. However, the argument of this Thesis emphasizes that violence in all its manifestations is a very political issue. The politics of violence shift the analytical focus away from the meaning, purpose, and scope of violent acts toward deeper socio-political contexts and processes. Discourses are important indicators and empirical evidence revealing particular contexts and specific understandings of social occurrences, facilitating therefore the analytical exploration of the politics of violence (Doty 1993:304). Michael Bhatia's work on the contested notion of naming objects is closely related to the political dimension of discourses on violence. Naming an object involves
66

On the one hand, the disappearance of one political actor may involve a new power shift or competition; on the other hand, the very act of eliminating a political actor could be orchestrated by political competitors using criminal groups to execute disappearances and intimidations.

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assigning a set of characteristics, motives, values, and behaviours (Bhatia 2005:8).

Most

importantly, in the case of (criminal) violence, the struggle over representations is political in its capacity to define who the victim is, and who the perpetrator is, revealing a contest over the very legitimacy (or not) of violent acts (Bhatia 2005:14). Public perceptions on crime and violence are equally relevant, since the definition of violent acts as the result of individual's pathological traits will favor very different responses than the presentation of violent acts as the result of social, economical and political inequalities and exclusion (Wolf 2008). These short excursion conforms the theoretical and methodological outlook for the interrogation of discourses and practices in security policies.

State Discourse and El Salvador's War on Gangs


In his radio broadcast to the nation, on July 23rd 2003, President Francisco Flores announced the tone of his war on gangs, leaving no doubt as to why gangs had become the target of the governments security policy: These groups have descended to dangerous levels of moral degradation and barbarism... We are convinced that the combination of means proposed will give Salvadoran society the necessary instruments to fight this battle against these criminals and their terrorism67. Positioning the entire Salvadoran society against the Maras, President Flores recalls how each society has the necessity to construct radical otherness, denying them, and manifesting the need to purify itself from these elements (Cohen 2003, cited in Martel 2006a). Maras are defined as the segment of society responsible for the epidemics violence, and are presented as a national and regional security threat. President Flores announced that these groups kill an average of one hundred persons per month (), took our communities hostage, and therefore the time has come to free society of this afflicting problem 68. The cartoon below reminds how responses to violence are strongly influenced by the actor's perception of the phenomenon, the 'reality' an actor believes in regarding a phenomenon (Peetz 2008b:7). While responding to gang-violence, the state discourse and Mano Dura policies calls upon a bipolar configuration of society distinguishing between los buenos (the good) and los malos (the bad), historically used by the state as a discursive tool for spreading fear and legitimizing repression during years of authoritarianism, civil war, and state-violence (Hume 2008a:69). Engaging the facts of violence through discourse in El Salvador has to be approached with cautions, as political discourse and popular perceptions force us to consider how violence is more than a measurable fact, it is indeed the manifestation of
67 68

Diario de Hoy, 24th of July 2003. Appendix E. Discurso Presidencial. Launching discourse of the Mano Dura Plan, President Flores, El Diario de Hoy, 24th of July 2003.

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a socially constructed fact69.

Cartoon published in La Prensa Grfica on August the 4th 2005

Textual Mechanisms in State Discourse


The procedure of the following discourse analysis engages discourse through an empiricist method. As the material examined for this Thesis does not cover the entire universe of available sources, the analysis below performs a systematic observation of recurrent patterns discovered in the sample of state discourses on violence in El Salvador. The first step in this analysis was to search the available sources for statements, comments, and discourses of state-representatives on gang-violence, and a total of 219 sources have been selected on this basis. The next step was to scrutinize these sources for textual mechanisms revealing discursive practices linked to the gangviolence frame of El Salvador. Though many more were available, the scope of this Thesis did not allow for the inclusion of all statements and sources 70. A total of 164 statements were chosen, stemming from 43 primary as well as a dozen secondary sources. These have been organized into two organizing elements. The first element reveals the textual mechanisms of the framing of violence as a gang-phenomenon which relies on the radical othering and dehumanization of gangs, while pitting the Salvadoran society in a war against these groups. The second element reveals how Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura are the only possible responses to this identified situation, as the narrative construction of Maras as the new enemy within works as a hegemonic truth,
69

70

I wish to thank Dennis Rodgers for these interesting remarks on how violence is more than a measurable, quantifiable, and clearly defined fact. See also Hume (2009), and her discussion against the idea of pure facts when engaging violence (Hume 2009:28-29).. The following analysis is still thought of as representative. Though the entire universe of possible texts was not available for analysis, the patterns outlined below repeat themselves consistently throughout the sources used. Further analysis of all available sources would be needed so to confirm these findings or to isolate further textual mechanisms.

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systematically excluding other forms of violence and more structural and political explanations of gang-violence, and drawing upon an elaborate meaningful vocabulary to legitimate and advance the success of these policies, despite its failure in terms of the most pressing security problem in El Salvador, the soaring homicide rates. Tables 2 and 3 on the following pages synthesize the organization of state discourse according to processes involved in framing gangs as main cause of violence in El Salvador, and the works of this hegemonic truth through Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura as only possible policy-response respectively71.
Table 2: Textual Mechanisms for Gang-Violence
Radical Othering of Maras and Pandillas Dehumanizing Maras and Pandillas Organic Metaphor War Metaphor Gangresponsibility in violent crime 40% of all homicides (1); 60% of all homicides (2); 70% of all homicides (1); Out of 1000, Maras commit 660 homicides (1); All are delinquents (2); Contemporary violence is because of Maras (3); Kill an average of 100 persons per month (1); Related to organized crime (3); Linked to international terrorism (1)

Textual Mechanisms of State Discourse on Gangs

Horrific crimes (7); Need to reduce Open Warfare (2); Crazy (1); gang-members War-zones (1); Demonic; perform threatening Scourge (1); Gangs as enemy satanic rituals (5) society (2); menace spreading N 1 (1); Barbarism (8); The general (1); War on Maras (3); Decapitate (6); interest must Replicate (1); War on Kill children, prevail (2); Sickness, Cancer delinquency (4); women, and Salvadoran (1); Final Solution elderly (8); society is Need of Cleansing needed (1); Kill without threatened (8); (1); Counterreason (2); Line to be drawn Eradicate Maras insurgency (1); Bad looks (1); between Maras (1); Our own Al Qaida Irrational (1); and Salvadoran Society is sick, (1); Moral society (3); and needs a Entire country degradation (1); Party is over (1); chemo-therapy against these Terrorists (2) tattooed criminals (1); people (1); Sweep streets (3); Sickness must be Need to fight clean (2); All are violent (1); cured (1); Maras to protect Animals We should publish Need to get rid of Society (11); Caught in their the faces of this affliction (1) Need social Lair or cave (4); dangerous cleansing groups Mara Salvatrucha offenders, even if (1) named after firethey are minor (1) ant (1) Source: Author's Elaboration based on Various Sources

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The entire selection of statements is available to the reader in the Annex 10. Note that some statements contain several elements to be attributed by the organizing concepts used in these tables. The count of the elements observed does therefore not coincide with the total number of statements selected.

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a) Radical Othering and the Organic Metaphor The discourse of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura reveals its capacity to define Maras as a radical other, from which society has to be be protected. The differentiation between good and evil is very strong and a recurrent feature in sources used for this Thesis. At the very start of Mano Dura, President Flores established a clear line between those who defend these groups (gangs), and those committed to the safety and security of El Salvador's citizens 72. State discourse indeed does not shy away of establishing the responsibility of gangs in the country's most afflicting security issues, notably the high levels of homicides. Somewhere between 40 and 70 percent of homicidal violence is attributed to Maras by different actors, including Francisco Flores, Antonio Saca, and high-profile figures of the security apparatus 73. Maras are the threat, which the entire Salvadoran society is facing, and people have to take sides in this confrontation. This dichotomy is reinforced by the othering of the enemy through its physical aspect. The Anti Mara Law establishes indeed that a person can be prosecuted for showing external features such as tattoos, scars and other bodily marks, and displaying particular symbols and/or signs publicly74. Looks are thus punishable by law, and not the actual act of breaking the law (Aguilar 2004). As a result from this definition of Maras, youth is criminalized by its looks, and not its acts. As noted by a PNC officer, When three or more youth gather in a corner, we can arrest them as they are suspicious of an illicit association75. The necessity to put a face on the threat is furthered as Saca explains that minor gang members who are understood as extremely dangerous should have their portraits published everywhere, in an attempt to make it easier to identify and arrest these persons 76. Good citizens had to be defended against a (now) very visible enemy. As Salvadoran society needs to be defended against the threat of violent gangs, the binary opposition established between society and its threat draws on the metaphor of a living organism confronting a serious sickness. Gangs are compared to a cancer, eating away at the healthy cells of society. They spread like a virus and have the capacity to replicate themselves wherever they head to 77. The cancer metaphor has strong implications, since its medical treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, imply the destruction of some healthy cells for the sake of the organisms health. Implicit to this rhetoric thus, is that the gravity of the problem requires radical treatments, while collateral damage is entirely justified and considered as legitimate. In general terms, the society's
72 73

74 75 76 77

Launching discourse of the Mano Dura Plan, President Flores, El Diario de Hoy, 24th of July 2003. See for example the articles in La Prensa Grfica of 26th of July 2003; 24th of July, 2004; the Statement by Pedro Gnzalez, Commissioner, cited in Martel (2006a); the Statement by Ricardo Menesses, Director of the PNC in La Prensa Grfica of the 24th of July 2004; and the Interview with President Saca in El Faro.Net, May 30th 2005. Ley Anti Mara. Government of El Salvador. October 2003. PNC officer cited in Martel (2006a), p. 969. AFP, 20th of July 2004 The New York Times, 19th of August 2007; Martel (2006a:969)

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interests and benefits must prevail against those bums who extortionate and threaten good citizens78. b) The War Metaphor In being productive in terms of generating a us them dichotomy, state discourse on gangviolence actively constitutes a situation similar to a state of war. State discourse successfully draws on a bellicose vocabulary and positions the subjects to be defended (Society) and the objects (Maras) to be fought against each other. National and international media reports indeed refer to gang-violence as open warfare, and compare the neighborhoods most affected by the phenomenon to war-zones and battle-fields 79. The war rhetoric is equally strong in the national discourse, as the media reproduced the official discourse of Mano Dura on its publicized launch, declaring the beginning of a war against Pandillas80. Gangs are reported to have replaced the guerrillas as enemy number one in this new civil war, pitting El Salvador into a fight against gangs taking thousands of lives and spreading fear and terror throughout the region 81. This war on delinquency pretends to be a frontal battle against crime, during which all means legitimate, even exceptional measures provided by the Constitution, will be implemented if necessary82. One year later, Saca reinforced this bellicose rhetoric, by declaring that there is no way we can lose this battle. We cannot let these criminals win, and we will not let them win, because we are an entire country against these criminals83. The logic of war contributes to the justification of battle-field practices and initiatives. Large combined military and police operatives of knocking down doors, sweeping entire barrios, and arrest all those suspect of membership and actual members of gangs are highly publicized and benefit from special media-coverage. By this, the fundamental battle between good and evil is revealed in detailed and graphic images, reinforcing the public discourse's resonance among the country's population. c) Dehumanizing the Enemy Cracking down on gangs can be justified through the elaboration of a savage enemy who has no mercy, and who deserves the full weight of the repressive measures foreseen in Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura. Francisco Flores leaves no doubts regarding the savagery of the actions of
78 79 80 81 82 83

Speech by Antonio Saca cited in Holland (2007), p. 98. The New York Times, 12th of September 2004, see Annex 5 El Diario de Hoy, 12th of September 2002. The Yukon Post, 18th of September Launching discourse of the Mano Dura Plan, President Flores, El Diario de Hoy, 24th of July 2003. Speech by Antonio Saca cited in Holland (2007), p. 98.

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these groups: we all have known the cases of mutilations, decapitations and satanic rites as well as dismembering of bodies84. Antonio Saca, on the other hand, warns the population as to the nature of the groups he wishes to confront with a firm hand: they [Maras] do not fool around (), they walk around with their mother's heads in their backpacks85. The savagery and barbarity of Maras is further documented in the media and by official statements, insisting in the nature of the victims of Maras. One day after the launch of the Mano Dura Plan, a media report noted the principal victims of gangs the following way: elderly women and men, women, children, and only at the last place, men of every age86. Below we will see that the overwhelming majority of homicide victims in El Salvador are young men. Yet, this way of ordering victims in discourse leaves some doubts as to who are those most affected by violence. Reading through the statement, one could believe that victims are mostly the elderly, women, children, and to a lesser extent men of every age, reinforcing thereby the image of savages bringing havoc to innocent victims in the country 87. As the Table 3 shows, Maras are associated with extreme barbarism, savage killings of innocent children and elderly people. Worse, demonic personalities and satanic rituals are associated with Maras, an important step in portraying gangs as definitively inhuman 88. Animal metaphors aggravate this tendency, as the places were they assemble and prepare their criminal deeds are described as lairs, while the origin of the name Salvatrucha is linked to fire ants, spreading and invading the entire region89. The Workings of Hegemonic Discourse With the identification of textual mechanisms which reveal the process of framing violence as the realm of gangs in El Salvador, the next step will be to engage with the resulting discursive and political practices in the wake of El Salvador's war on violence. The following discussion reveals how discourses can do things, by establishing a hegemonic truth which naturalizes gangs as the cause of violence as a an accurate representation in contemporary El Salvador. The government appeals therefore upon Mano Dura against gangs as the only possible solution to violence in El Salvador, an inevitable and unquestionable strategy given the nature of the problem. By ruling out more structural and political factors related to violence, containment and repression are the only possible solution to a group of such barbarity and with such a high responsibility in the
84 85 86 87

88 89

Launching discourse of the Mano Dura Plan, President Flores, El Diario de Hoy, 24th of July 2003. Television interview with Antonio Saca during the 2004 election campaign, cited in Martel (2006a), p. 963. La Prensa Grfica, 24th of July 2003. By no means this observation underestimates the gravity of the crimes committed against the inhabitants of El Salvador's most affected neighbourhoods. Rather, the idea is to establish clearly who these victims are, and then question how Mano Dura policies will be an efficient instrument to tackle this type of violence. La Prensa Grfica, 14th of August 2003. La Prensa Grfica, 10th of February 2003 and The New York Times, 11th of February 2006.

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country's epidemic of violence. In the given ideological and political context of El Salvador's antigang policies, a meaningful vocabulary been elaborated, dehumanizing and othering gangs as the enemy to fight. Similarly, the very rules of discourse on violence and Mano Dura policies establish how the measures are successful, why, and how to measure it. While occluding other forms of politically relevant violence such as organized crime, police violence and the re-emergence of death squads, state discourse on gangs and Mano Dura does not recognize its failure in terms of increasing homicide levels (though these are the primary target in this very discourse), and establishes clear definitions of how the policy in fact is understood as a success.
Table 3: The Workings of Hegemonic Discourse in El Salvador
The Need for Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura Laws protect more criminals than victims (4); Need to punish gang-membership by Laws (1); Need to tackle violence (1); Plan allows for the arrest of rapists and killers (1); Efficiency in Tackling crime is needed (1); Urgency to establish special laws to tackle gang-violence (2); Maras and Pandillas as illicit associations need to be targeted (3); The homicidal profile is Marero (1); Gang members in the streets always plan crimes (1); Plan Super Mano Dura will solve the problem in 180 days (1) Measuring Success Treatment of Other Forms of Violence Incapacity to Ignorance of for Violence Recognize Failure Structural Causes

The Works of the Hegemonic Truth on GangViolence: Discursive and Policy Practices

Popular backings of the Initiative mirror success (2); Arrest does with tattoos and hanging around in streets (4); Crimes have been avoided with Mano Dura (2); Reduce gangmembers in El Salvador (5); Inmates increase (4); Higher prison sentences work (1); Reduction of homicides (3);

Need social cleansing (1); Gang-members killed by Police and Social Cleansing Groups (3); Organized crime ignored in Security Plans (1); Organized crime the most pressing problem... therefore gangs have to be dismantled (1); Gangs responsible for most violence (11)

Maras kill those who want to leave gangs, therefore homicide rates increase (2); Homicides are due to gangs: killing each other, killing citizens, and citizens killing them (1); The Plan was successful in terms of homicide reduction (2)

Security policies will reduce violence in the country (2); Alcohol and drugs are cause of violence (1); TV foments a violent culture (1); Put gangs behind bars will solve the problem (1);

Source: Author's Elaboration based on Various Sources

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a) The Necessity of Mano Dura Responses Maras as homicidal savages wreaking down on El Salvador's society have been constituted as a reality by both, the discourse on violence, and the policy-response to violence. The Mano Dura policy was launched in order to introduce a punitive instrument against the groups responsible for the contemporary levels of violence in El Salvador 90. With a specific focus on homicides, the political rhetoric on Mano Dura identified that gangs are responsible for 50, 60, or up to 70 percent of all homicides in the country, as discussed above. For the official discourse, there is no doubt regarding who the killers in El Salvador are, as PNC sub-director Gonzlez resumes the profile of society's homicidal element as being a Marero (Martel 2006:969a). Drawing upon a vocabulary of urgency given the situation, state discourse similarly emphasizes the efficiency of the announced security Plans for reducing levels of violence. Given the complex contemporary panorama of violence, the difficulty in establishing a more or less clear profile of those responsible for violent crimes is not surprising. Indeed, PNC officers limit themselves in reducing the homicidal profile to being Marero (Sub-Director of PNC, cited in Martel 2006a). While advancing the very legitimate need to tackle criminal violence in El Salvador, gangs represent all the evils afflicting El Salvador, to the point that it would justify random arrests of their members, since among them there will be rapists and killers arrested (Idem). Therefore, antigang laws are needed to incarcerate gang-members who are by definition always planning a crime91. A further recurrent element can be found in the perceived softness of the legislation and the judicial system. Swiss laws that protect delinquents rather than victims are thus presented as a justification for creating a special law-regime against gangs. Indeed the judiciary sector has been criticized for its incapacity to prosecute efficiently criminals, as conviction rates for homicides are estimated between 7 and 10 percent in El Salvador (IHRC 2007:65). Both, the country's overwhelming impunity and the discursive construction of gangs as sole responsible sector for most violence in El Salvador, are fundamental in sustaining the governments push toward tough measures to reverse the ongoing situation. b) Normalizing Gangs as Guilty A second effect of the state discourse surrounding gang-violence and cracking down on gangs can be found in the process of normalizing gangs as guilty in relation to the causes for violence and in terms of expected and measured effects of Mano Dura policies. It is important to
90

91

Government of El Salvador (2003), Ley Antimara. Decreto No. 154. October 1st. [Online] http://www.elsalvador.org/Embajadas/eeuu/Leyes.nsf/0c5ee6bc7ccdc91f8525696800486c14/2b79363884967b81852 56dc7005940cb?OpenDocument La Prensa Grfica, 24th of July, 2004.

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note that the political debate on violence mainly focuses on homicides. Presidential candidates and Security Ministers advance reduction in homicide as an important goal in terms of increasing security in El Salvador. Ren Figueroa of the Ministry for Public Security and Justice, for example, promised to lower homicide rates between 2006 and 2007, backing the ongoing strategy of tough policing against gangs92. Before, Antonio Saca had promised to solve the country's problems in 180 days, a very bold statement given the gravity of the situation. However, it became clear rapidly that the measure of success would be the number of gang-members incarcerated. After 12 days only of the Super Mano Dura for example, President Saca proclaimed it a categorical success, as 779 gang-members were arrested in that short time-span while claiming that crime has fallen by 40%93. When confronted with rising homicide rates under the implementation of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura, the governmental response is somewhat shaky: At the beginning of the Plan, we had 10'800 inmates (). Now we have 14'800 inmates. Therefore the Plan has proven its utility94. Antonio Saca, in an interview at the end of his first year as Head of the State, confirmed his satisfaction with the Plan: I feel successful with the Super Mano Dura. We have a large number of Mareros in jail, who otherwise would cause destruction in the streets. The question of homicides is not a new one. A post-conflict country will reduce its homicides little by little... The Maras are the main problem we have95. While emphasizing success in terms of numbers of arrests, the policy-response to gangs as guilty has the peculiar capacity to exclude other forms of violence from the political debate. Death squads activities have been reported in several regions, and some even declared themselves active again96. Some reports have warned that death-squads, such as Mano Blanca, have reappeared, and carry out the murder of todo aquel tatuado (everyone tattooed)97. The creation of Mano Blanca in San Miguel was even officially announced in the local radio station (Hume 2007:746). The department of San Miguel had already witnessed the emergence of Black Shadow (La Sombra Nergra), a death-squad who's stated objective was to kill gang members in the region (Hume 2007:745). The very gangs themselves complained about the increase in execution-style killings on death squads or social cleansing groups, linked to the (PNC) and private security firms98.
92 93 94 95

96 97

98

El Faro.Net. January the 1st, 2007. Latin American Newsletters. Weekly Report. 21st of September 2004 Interview with the Security Minister, Ren Figueroa. El Faro.Net. 12th of December 2009. Interview with President Antonio Tony Saca, at the end of his first year in El Salvador's presidency, debating the controversial Plan Mano Dura and Plan Super Mano Dura with the press. El Faro.Net, May 30th 2005. [online] http://archivo.elfaro.net/secciones/Especiales/2005/saca-1er-anio/08.asp See The Guardian (London), 29th of May 2003; The Times Picayune, 12th of July 1995; Castaldi (2008) Death squads are linked to El Salvador's long history of military governments, and were constituted under names such as Unin Guerrera Blanca (White Warrior's Union UGB) and FALANGE, killing or threatening those considered subversive, and aiming, through terror, to neutralize and suppress opposition to the status quo (Arnson 2000:87). Latin American Newsletters. Weekly Reports. 21st of February 2006.

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Numerous reports of young men and gang members found with their hands tied and shot in the back of their head indicate that extra-judicial killings are occurring since the mid-1990s (Castaldi 2008:6). However, gang-driven killings may use similar methods, for which these accounts have to be taken with some degree of wariness. Death squads are not the only figure worthy addressing politically in El Salvador's responses to violence. The Procuradura para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights - PDDH), over the year 2007, received 59 complaints of excessive use of force, 19 cases of torture and 9 cases of extra-judicial killings 99. Only one month after implementing the first Mano Dura, 23 members of the PNC were accused of Human Trafficking 100. Organized crime, finally, is almost entirely silenced in the discourse surrounding Mano Dura in El Salvador. By silence I do not mean that state-representatives do not mention the issue at all. Rather, the tendency is toward the recognition of the severity of the issue, yet public statements usually treat Maras and organized crime as the same problem101. President Saca's statement in front of the UN reveals how both issues are linked: while organized crime is the most pressing problem in matters of security, this problem is best seen with Maras () which have transformed into a regional threat102. El Salvador's serious threats are thus emanating essentially from Maras, and if other crimes are affecting the country, these are linked to their presence and activities. Normalizing gangs as guilty, therefore, implies that their culpability is unquestionable, and appears as natural. The next point below will underline how this process works in excluding and silencing both, alternative knowledge and increasing criticism regarding the efficiency of cracking down on gangs as solution to violence in El Salvador. c) Dissenting Voices Ignored Insisting on the workings of a hegemonic discourse on violence in El Salvador does by no means imply that there are no dissenting voices. FESPAD criticized the measure for being unconstitutional, while the return of the military forces for internal affairs directly contravenes the 1992 peace accords (FESPAD 2010). The absence of a coherent set of preventive measures, mostly funded by International Donors, has equally been noted (Aguilar 2004). Problems arose rapidly as the level of violence in terms of homicide did not diminish during the implementation of Mano Dura. Worse, homicide rates rocketed between 2003 and 2006 increasing 51 percent according to
99 100 101

102

See http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/wha/119159.htm LPG 9th of August 2003 See the series of articles published by Jaime Martnez in DiarioCoLatino (http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/) on January the 6th, the14th, and the 28th, and February the 10th and the 21st, 2010. Antonio Saca speaking in front of the UN General Assembly, 2008.

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IML data (see Annex 2). Serious doubts arose regarding the gang-implication in overall homicide rates. Confronted by journalists regarding these developments, PNC Commissioner Pedro Gonzlez responded that this number has to be understood as follows: gang-members kill each other, gang-members kill other citizens and police officers, citizens kill gang-members, and bystanders are killed in violent confrontations between gang-members or between gangs and the police thus, 60% of homicides are due to gangs103. Furthermore, the numbers of 60 percent responsibility of Maras in the overall homicide rates is defended by Saca, arguing that after the capture of a gang-member, there is a dispute as to the leadership over the group, they kill each other and this causes the rise in the figures 104. Worse, some officials explain that the rise in homicide rates is due to the positive incentives of Mano Extendida and Mano Amiga: many gang-members leave their Clica under these plans (), after these desertions, the leaders decided to kill those who abandoned the gangs105. In sum, the government's position toward Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura reveals the incapacity (and unwillingness) of its defenders to incorporate new and/or alternative knowledge about the role of gang-violence in El Salvador. Criticisms of the political opposition, mainly represented by the FMLN, were swiftly disregarded as ARENA accused the opposition of incorporating Mareros among their members, and using these groups for political ends106. Social efficiency of anti-crime measures has efficiently been displaced by institutional efficiency: rather than reinforcing democratic values and the social tissue, the press and PNC are are more preoccupied with their images, funds, and political influence. Media-reports and Police work therefore combine in a dynamic of disjunction toward society as a whole in this dynamic (Martel 2006b:1025).

Disjuncture of Discourse and Empirical Data


The textual mechanisms explored in the discourse analysis above are telling regarding the workings of the gang-frame as a hegemonic truth. However, further interrogations arise regarding the politics of violence in face of the discursive practices outlined above. Discourse analysis has been successful in revealing the complex mechanisms constituting gangs as the main source of violence and target of policy-responses to reduce its spread and incidence in contemporary El Salvador. While this analysis is extremely helpful to understand the workings of hegemonic discourses and to some point of a regime of truth, a disjuncture between empirical evidence and the constitution of gangs as the main cause of violence is interesting to underline.
103 104 105 106

Cited in Martel (2006a), p. 977. Ibid. PNC declarations in La Prensa Grfica, 22nd of January 2005, cited in Martel (2006a), p.966. Ren Figueroa, Minister of Interior, statement published in El Faro.Net, 26th of February, 2006.

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Above all, alternative explanations and possible clues for improved policy-responses arise from the discussion below, yet little to no reference to alternative knowledge, possible explanations and especially social and political conditions favoring violence are made in state discourse. Understanding the peculiar political economy of violence in El Salvador enables a critical discussion of the causes of violence established in state discourse, and the more complex picture of the reality of violence in El Salvador. The empirical data discussed therefore is used as an interesting entry point for questioning the hegemonic discourse on violence and more broadly critically engaging the politics of violence in post- and non-conflict settings.

a) Exploring Data on Homicide in El Salvador, 1999 2008107 The most common proxy for violence used in research is intentional homicide, generally considered the most reliable indicator of the violent crime situation in a country as these acts are most likely to be reported to the competent authorities (UNODC 2007:15). Two problems need to be considered however, which can not be resolved beyond their discussion in this Thesis. Underreporting is a possibility as cases of intentional killings may escape statistical recording. This can be linked to issues of legal definitions and procedures108. Under-reporting can also be linked to to poor police performance and coverage throughout the territory, and lack of trust in national institutions109. Rodrigo Soares finds for example that crime reporting rates are sensitive to policing capacity, democratic stability, and the perceived levels of corruption. Most interestingly, the author finds that perceived corruption has a stronger impact on reporting crime than democratic stability and police presence itself (Soares 2004:865). Over-reporting can be problematic as well. The inclusion of road accidents is important when reviewing homicide levels and rates in the long-term. Indeed, the Fiscala General de la Repblica (the Attorney's General Office FGR) is a common source for homicide data for the 1990s. However, recent reports published by the Instituto Mdico Legal (Institute for Legal Medicine IML) warn about the use of these numbers, as these include for example road accidents and unintentional killings (IML 2005a). Graph 1 presents long-term trends of homicide rates for El Salvador. This graph includes a number of sources publishing data on homicides in El Salvador, including the PNC, the IML, and the FGR as government sources, and
107

108

109

The disaggregation of the available data on homicides, as well as its discussion here and in the Annex XY, is based on previous research presented in June 2010 during the course Political Violence held at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. An agreement with the prosecutor may reduce the gravity of the condemnation, while manslaughter may not be included in homicide statistics, with the obvious problem that the act of beating a person (e.g. an intimate partner) to death during a dispute may not be counted as a homicide The 1998 Health in the Americas report published by the Panamerican Health Organization (PAHO) estimates underreporting of all cases of mortality in El Salvador at 21 percent for the year 1995 (PAHO 1998:259).

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OCAVI as a regional Non-Governmental source on violent crime data. The rates reported by these sources hardly coincide prior to the creation of the Comisin de Homicidios (Homicide Commission) in 2005, which established among other reforms a single reporting sheet and a unified coding and registering system for the FGR, the IML, and the PNC (IML 2007a:6). Graph 1: Trends in Homicide Rates in El Salvador 1990-2008
160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1990 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 IML FGR OCAVI

Source: IML Yearbooks 1999 - 2008, FGR-Data reported in IML (2005a), and OCAVI (2009) Despite these limitations, homicide data in El Salvador's case is publicly accessible and trends, patterns as well as detailed investigations of causes, places, and victims of violent deaths can be outlined through the systematic analysis of these reports. After a steep rise in the early 1990s, homicide rates have stabilized in the late 2000s at a level which is still considered a war time level (Savenije & Van Der Borgh 2004:156) 110. Since 2002, the homicide rate in El Salvador has been on a steady increase, with the exception of 2007, where homicide rates fell below the 50 per 100'000 according to OCAVI (2009). Nevertheless, the IML data does not record this decrease in the rate for the year 2007 (see Annex 2)111. Though other aspects have to be considered, such as the amelioration of the quality of data-registry and the creation of the Commission, the growing number of homicide victims coincides, paradoxically, with the implementation of the Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura policies. Worse, the period before the crack-down on gangs (20002003) reveals actually a timid, yet constant regression in terms of levels and numbers of homicides112.

110

111

112

Cautions are especially needed for the FGR data since these numbers tend to include accidental deaths due to caraccidents. The harmonizing efforts of the Commission on Homicides however render the data beyond 2005 quite homogeneous and seemingly more trustworthy. This is surprising given that the number of homicide victims in fact decreases between 2006 and 2007, while the homicide rate increases over the same period. Changes in the methodology or data-set for calculating homicide rates are the only plausible explanation for this anomaly. In comparison, the the world average homicide rate for the UNODC (2010) database is 8.6 per 100'000. The Central American region has the highest average rate with 24.5 homicides for each 100'000. El Salvador in this data-set reveals a soaring 47.4 homicide rate (see Annex XY)

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c) Maras and Homicide in El Salvador The detailed analysis of the data available for the period between 1999 and 2008 confirms the criticisms of academic researchers, journalists, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) regarding the real responsibility of Maras in overall levels of homicides in El Salvador. The IML data presented in Graph 2 reveals a surprisingly low attribution of homicides to Maras. The rate of gang-related homicides fluctuates between a minimum share of of 3.42 percent in 1999, and a maximum share of 13.84 percent in 2008 (see Annex 2)113. In absolute numbers, homicide cases linked to Maras range from a minimum of 87 cases in 1999 and a maximum of 512 cases in 2005 (idem)114. Some cautions are needed though, as the IML labels uses a motive-based approach to determining the nature of the violent act, and as it labels unknown the motive of the killing when upon arrival to the crime scene no suspect or motive has been established neither by witnesses, neither by the police forces (IML 2005a) 115. However, these findings do not indicate that gangs are not a cause for violence, nor do they suggest that gangs are not a very real threat in El Salvador. What results from this data is a more nuanced image of the full picture of violence in El Salvador, where gangs are one of many violent actors contributing to the overall levels of violence.
Graph 2: Motives of Homicides Reported by the IML 1999-2008
3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Delinquency Resisting Vengeance Domestic Violence Unknow n Maras Enemity Fights 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Source: IML Statistical Yearbooks 1999-2008

Youth, on the other hand, is extremely important to consider as a risk-factor for being both, subject and object of violence. Young men between 15 and 29 years pay the major toll to homicidal
113

114

115

Note that Jeanette Aguilar (2007), without indicating the source, reveals that homicides attributed to Maras in 2004 and 2005 were higher, representing 432 and 964 cases respectively. The jump between 2004 and 2005 is impressive, yet without the source it is difficult to discuss these numbers further. If the number of cases is restricted to those for which the IML states that the motives are known, this share fluctuates between a minimum of 8.42 percent in 1999, and a maximum of 38.66 percent in 2008. The Small Arms Survey finds that he attribution of violent acts to gangs represents an ongoing debate. Two possibilities exist, either a member-based approach, or a motive-based approach to gang-violence. The first approach determines gang-violence based on whether the perpetrator or victim is a gang-member. The second approach relies on whether the motive is related to the general objectives of the gang (economic gain, territory, etc.). It has been shown that the member-based approach doubles the number of gang-related homicides in the United States, a finding that should be kept in mind for the numbers discussed here (Small Arms Survey 2010:131).

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violence, with a stable cumulative share establishing around 60 percent of all homicide victims, representing 17'127 victims out of close to 30'000 victims over the period. The overwhelming majority of victims are (young) men, representing a stable proportion of around 90 percent of all homicides. Female victimization, on the other hand, shows a proportionally higher increase in the overall homicides over the period observed, shifting from a little less than 8 percent in 1999 to a little more than 11 percent in 2006 (see Annex 6). Additionally, research on convicted perpetrators of homicides finds that for 60 percent of these are male between 26 and 40 years old, while a further 25 percent is between 7 and 25 years old (Cruz 2005:104). Violent crime in El Salvador is thus not accidentally labeled a typical male enterprise (GD Forthcoming:13). Youth is relevant in the region since 52 percent of the its population is less than 18 years old, a proportion reaching 71 percent for the population under 30 (Goubaud 2009:5)116. Considering youth politically implies more than cracking-down on gang-violence, as there are strong demographical and political dimensions to the creation of opportunities for youths to integrate a society, with the most formidable challenge lying in the political willingness within the state and society to provide for mechanisms of integration and participation (Kurtenbach 2008:23). Marginalizing youth as guilty for their potential of violence means to marginalize more than twothirds of the region's inhabitants. The risk-factors in need of consideration for youth-violence are multiple and complex. Violence-prevention models stemming from ecological approaches consider risk-factors and preventive measures at the individual (e.g. community policing), and societal level (e.g. drug abuse), communal (e.g. deconcentrating poverty) at different stages of

individual development (WHO 2002:41-43). Clearly, such an approach goes beyond the systematic incarceration of gang-members, yet El Salvador's government seems more fixated on cracking down on gangs rather than approaching violence in its integral manifestations.

b) Alternative Explanations for Homicide Levels Intentional homicide is a spatially and demographically bounded manifestation of violence. Indeed, data provided by the IML reveals that the distribution of violent crime is spatially and demographically unequal, as homicides affect the population in different ways according to gender, age, and location of the victims. In El Salvador, the urban-rural divide is surprisingly low considering the strong argument of the new urban insurgency (Manwaring 2005). Though the political economy of violence is marked by an urbanization of the phenomenon, we need to
116

Cincotta (2008) explores the relationship of youth bulges and armed violence. Countries with a relatively large proportion of population aged between 15 and 29 (60 percent or more), according to the author, face higher riskfactors in terms of the outbreak of violence and conflicts. See GD (2008) and Cincotta (2008) for this argument.

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consider that rural settings continue to be important spaces of violence. The findings presented in Annex 6 indicate a strong increase of homicides in urban areas, while rural homicides remain more or less stable over the period. The increase in urban homicides is partly due to better registry and reporting, and partly to a real increase of overall homicide victims 117. The urbanity of violence is certainly important, however, a not so small minority of homicidal violence takes place in rural settings. The gang-argument in contemporary violence can at least be questioned here. The close link of gangs with their territory in urban environments is quite strong, as a critical mass of youth is needed to form gangs (Rodgers 2007). Depending on the definition of rural and urban, a critical mass of youth still can be found in rural areas for increased gang-activity, unfortunately this information has not been available for this Thesis. Further explanations for the patterns of violence can be found in the political economy of violence in El Salvador. Past and present cleavages combined with a high availability of firearms as well as the presence of organized crime and drug-trafficking routes all contribute to the violent landscapes of El Salvador. Non-urban violence can be traced back to severe inequalities which are exacerbated in rural Latin America, a factor thought of as contributing to the spread of violence. Kay (2001) finds that following the implementation of a narrow peace, land reforms in El Salvador remained partial in nature, as only one fifth of the land had been expropriated and distributed to landless rural workers in 1980. A second phase of the land-reform was never implemented, and the vast majority of workers did not perceive any benefits at all. The peace agreement, though meant to address socio-economic grievances, was finally more about disarmament, demobilization and reinsertion (DDR) of former combatants than solving the tensions inherent to the conflict's root causes (Kay 2001:763-64). Urban violence, on the other hand, should be considered in the light of the economic and political relations that exist within a city, partly inherited from past violence and population movements, and partly due to contemporary urban fractures (Rodgers 2007:9). An alternative explanation resides in the availability of firearms, closely linked to the remnants of war. Firearms are heavily represented in the epidemics of violence in El Salvador, with close to 80 percent of violent death caused by these weapons (see Annex 7). Godnick et al (2003) found that out of the more than half a million legally registered firearms accounted for in Central America, El Salvador has the largest share with 170'000 weapons reported, representing 33 percent of the entire region (Godnick et al 2003:4). However, conservative estimates situate the overall small arms possession in El Salvador around 400'000 (Godnick & Vzquez 2003:16).
117

The IML reports between 1999 and 2002 reveal high discrepancies between the total number of homicides and the respective rural and urban count of victims. The situation has improved though after 2002, when the error of counting comes close to zero.

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Interestingly, the highest homicide rate per department is observed where the legal registry of weapons is lowest (Godnick et al. 2003:12). Furthermore, drug-trafficking routes are noted as a possible explanation for high levels of violence in rural areas. The departments of Sonsonate and La Libertad have the highest murder rates in the country, with 79 and 76 homicides per 100'000 people respectively (UNODC 2007:54). Their connection with the Panamerican Highway as well as their role as major ports of the country are highlighted regarding important passing points of drugs for the estimated 80 percent of the U.S. cocaine supply with provenance in the Andean states passing through Central America (Jtersonke et al. 2009:376). What is worrying about the fixation on Maras in El Salvador, is that other violent acts are selectively downplayed while structural conditions favoring the emergence of violence are ignored. An example can be found in the 93 extrajudicial killings reported in 2006 whose bodies are found with their hands tied, revealing signs of torture, and abandoned in isolated areas (Aguilera 2008:134). Many reports in the IML data list victims found with their hands tied and shot in the back of their head. However, no systematic analysis is possible regarding the type of crime extrajudicial killing, vengeance, sentimental or other. Other elements of importance for El Salvador's panorama of violence lie within the availability of firearms, and the impact of drug-trafficking routes and organized crime on overall levels of violence. Given these findings, it is prudent to follow the idea that gang members are simply the most violent sector (...) of very violent societies. Cracking down on this demographic will not address the root causes of violence in these countries (), the roots of Central Americas murder rates run deeper than the tattooed kids on the corner (UNODC 2007:65). Gangs and the Politics of Violence Violence in all its manifestations is a very political issue. The stakes of violence and fear are high subject to political exploitation if the conditions allow for it. The analytical shift towards sociopolitical contexts and processes in El Salvador's war on gangs reveal the intense political struggle over the identification of gangs as main source of violence. The contents of Mano Dura policies and the practices they made possible deserve some closer examination. The discourse setting the frame of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura policy-responses is the core of this Thesis' analysis of the politics of violence. The initial question was to interrogate the contexts and processes leading the Salvadoran state to identify gangs as the main source for post-war violence. I argue that through the lens of the politics of violence defined above, these processes can be revealed. Three elements have been explored to consider the politics of violence in El Salvador: the socio-political context of 56

Mano Dura, the contents of Mano Dura, and the discursive practices setting the frame for Mano Dura. First, this three-fold analysis has revealed the political and ideological roots of El Salvador's crack-down on crime. A history of violence and an incomplete police reforms underpin the ideological dimensions of the war on gangs. Electoral tensions and historical political features of ARENA confirm the electoral instrumentality of Mano Dura. The strategic use off citizen's fear, highly publicized initiatives and tough rhetoric against gangs have placed AERNA as the leading party in terms of popular perceptions. Most importantly, opinion polls have shown that ARENA is perceived as the most capable political formation for tackling the crime problem in El Salvador. ARENA has managed to consolidate its position through a response to crime that can be considered as punitive populism (Wolf 2009). El Salvador's response to violence is punitive in the sense that violent acts are deterred by stronger policing, sterner legal controls, better security precautions and similar draconian measures (Mitchell 1979:186). Moreover, Mano Dura policies respond to populist practices for the potency of their rhetoric and their underpinning electoral rationale (Hume 2007:745). Contextualizing the manifestations of violence and the subsequent policy-responses meant to control the phenomenon is critical for the second part of the rest of the analysis. Discursive and political practices in terms of the content of Mano Dura and the discourse legitimizing their need, efficiency, and legitimacy can not possibly be separated from this very particular sociopolitical contexts. The second element of this three-fold analysis has allowed for the articulation of the more structural socio-political contexts with the analysis of textual mechanisms in state discourse on violence. The contents of the security policies responding to gang-violence in El Salvador have been explored briefly. Most importantly, the visibility of gang-members as discussed above is key to understand this bridge. The Anti-Mara Laws of Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura have been extremely productive in making visible the enemy within. By criminalizing physical attributes such as tattoos, symbols and clothing styles, the state was able to establish a clear definition of what the enemy is and looks like. Furthermore, the contents of these security policies show that little or no preventive measures are foreseen. Re-insertion and prevention programs such as Mano Amiga and Mano Extendida have been more rhetorical than real, and only little to no national funding was allocated to these measures. Through Mano Dura, gang-members in El Salvador have been legally constituted as guilty. Constituting gangs as guilty can not be disconnected from the discursive practices of Mano Dura in El Salvador. The final step in this three-fold analysis lies within the resulting practices of Mano Dura 57

policies in El Salvador. This has been approached through the examination of textual mechanisms of state discourse on gang-violence and Mano Dura. The effects of the discursive construction of Maras as guilty go beyond the cracking-down on gangs. The fixation of state discourse on gangs has established a false dichotomy between good and evil, (Hume 2007:746). Indeed, a unitary Salvadoran society (as the good) is pitted in a state of war against Maras (as the evil). The framing of violence as gang-violence has in fact established a grid for interpreting reality and has been a productive textual resource for explaining, naming and intervening upon this reality. Discursive mechanisms setting the frame of Mano Dura gave violence a highly visible face, easily recognizable and easy to target. In order to legitimize the violent crack-down on crime, this source of all evil has been othered and dehumanized. The savagery and irrationality of gangs and the pathological traits of their members do not allow for any different response than targeting and eliminating gangs definitely. Extra-judicial killings, death squads, and police violence have been persistently excluded from the production of knowledge on violence. Other violent groups, such as organized crime and drug-traffickers have not been targeted with highly publicized policies. Social cleansing and organized crime remain marginal in official discourse on violence, or are linked to gangs and their activities. Additionally, this three-fold analysis has been confronted with empirical evidence on homicidal violence in El Salvador for the period between 1999 and 2008. The disjuncture between the state discourse on gang-violence and the analysis of the available data on homicides only underlines the constructed nature of gangs as guilty. With a how possible research question as starting point for this Thesis, the different elements discussed gear the argument back to its starting point: the importance to consider how political an issue violence in all its manifestations is. Through the examination of contexts, contents, and practices of Mano Dura, the process of making this particular policy-response as meaningful has been unveiled. The gang-violence frame is a powerful grid for interpreting the nature and causes of a problem. The proffered frame of gangs as guilty established clear textual sources and meaningful vocabularies leaving no doubt as to the necessity of Mano Dura against gangs. Graphic press reports, repeated links of gangs with organized crime, terrorism and savage acts afflicting women, children and the elderly have rendered the gang frame as credible and consistent interpretation of violence in El Salvador. In sum, the exploration of discourses on, and practices responding to contemporary violence in El Salvador through the notion of the politics of violence reveals the constructed nature of violence. Considering facts of violence is a very delicate enterprise. As noted by Hume (2009:29), there are no pure facts in the study of violence, rather, we are dealing with competing interpretations

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of facts. Data-production of violence is thus highly sensitive to hegemonic truths, socio-political meanings, and general beliefs and values regarding the importance of a violent act. Discourse on violence is both, politically embedded and productive in terms of constructing meaning.

59

Conclusions: Politics and the Social Construction of Violence


When I began to research post- and non-conflict violence in El Salvador, my initial approach was to examine carefully the data provided by the Instituto Mdico Legal (IML). Exploring the epidemiology of homicide rates between 1999 and 2008 has proven an important step for the elaboration of my interrogations. The soaring levels of homicide rates in El Salvador retained all my attention, as the country has been labeled a successful example in matters of peace-processes. Furthering the analysis, I researched the policy-responses and political debates on violence in contemporary El Salvador. What struck me at this point was the insistence of the official discourse on the role of gangs in overall levels of violence, and especially in terms of homicides. As the IML data had already been explored, the disjuncture between discourse and empirical evidence was surprising to me. It is obvious that the data examined in this research is far from perfect. The motive-based approach used by the IML has been proven to reduce the numbers of gang-related in 50 percent (SAS 2010). Under- and over-reporting are to be taken seriously, especially for the data prior to the creation of the Commission on Homicides in 2005. Despite these weaknesses, the discrepancies between state discourse on gangs and the empirical evidence provided by this very same state's Supreme Court seemed enough important for further examination. One way to approach this disjuncture between one truth and another is to deconstruct both, the discourses on the phenomena, as well as the contradicting data. Hence, I began to turn away from the empirical data and applied a more interpretative examination of the case. A discursive approach seemed the most suited at this stage, as such an approach allows for a systematical treatment of discourses while allowing for a more interpretative examination of its contexts, rules and effects. Finally, the combination of both, the discourse analysis and the empirical evidence on contemporary violence, have proven incredibly rich for a more political analysis of violent manifestations commonly labeled as criminal or social. In the light of this short excursion, I hope the method applied throughout this analysis becomes clear. The core of the research undertaken in this Thesis lies within the discourses setting the frame of a policy-response. Most importantly, the regular effects of discourses on their targets of intervention have been problematized through discursive practices revealing the workings of a hegemonic truth on gangs in El Salvador. As discourse does not occur in a vacuum, social and political contexts have been explored and revealed the complexity of past and present expressions of violence. Naming the violent actor, just as naming the right response, have proven to be very political processes. By pitting the entire Salvadoran society against gangs, state discourse in El 60

Salvador has been able to draw a clear line between perpetrators and victims of violence. This process has to be considered in its political dimension, since it entails a contest over the legitimacy of violent actions of the state against the victimizer. By naming violence as the realm of gangs, the Salvadoran state has not only pronounced gangs as guilty. The discursive practices on gangs reveal that these have been associated with the most brutal, irrational and senseless acts of violence in the country. The construction of gangs as the main cause for violence in the country has however been able to completely push away questions of structural and political conditions favoring and enabling violence, nor only committed by gangs, but the more broader manifestations of violence in El Salvador. The approach of El Salvador's response to gang-violence through the alternative framework of the politics of violence finally leads the analysis towards the complexity of violence. Neither empirical evidence, nor the discursive practices of Mano Dura policies have been able to define what the violent fact is. Data on homicides my include car accidents while excluding the battering to death of a person. Discourses on violence have unveiled themselves as particularly productive in terms of finding the segment of a society to blame for all its evils. However, these very same discourses do not cover varied manifestations of violent acts such as extra-judicial killings, the re-emergence of death squads, or the complex networks of corruption and organized crime deeply intertwined with the political elite and the security sector. What becomes evident with all these elements is how difficult it is to approach the violent fact. These difficulties are closely linked with the socially constructed nature of violence. As Mo Hume finds, the analysis of violence can not be separated of how meaning is connected to both political discourse and popular memory (2009:29). What remains open for a more thorough analysis of the socially constructed nature of violence in El Salvador, is how both, the political discourse and popular memory are related to the experience of war. This Thesis has briefly addressed the disturbing continuity between war and peace in public administrations in the case of the PNC and regarding the links between ORDEN and ARENA. For a thorough analysis of the politics of violence in El Salvador, it would be of great interest to study in detail the continuities and changes in public administrations between war and peace. While governments change with the rhythm of regular elections, bureaucracies and civil servants remain. What perpetuates state discourses and practices can thus be found in the continuity of administrations and their high-ranking officials. The impact of civil war on public administrations and the complex transition to peace would shed new lights on the politics of violence in El Salvador, and allow for a further examination of the socially constructed reality of violence.

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Annexes

71

1. IML Data Disaggregated, 1999-2008


1999 2000 Number of Deaths 2544 2696 % Variation to past Year N/A 105.97 Homicide Rate 41.3 43 Male Victims 2349 2489 Female Victims 195 206 Male Rate 77.8 80.8 Female Rate 6.2 6.5 Firearms (%) 74.70% 71.80% San Salvador 713 840 La Libertad 306 285 Santa Ana 280 333 Sonsonate 239 246 San Miguel 158 N/A 146 N/A sulutn La Paz 126 186 Ahuachapan 118 N/A Cuscatlan 112 N/A La Union 101 N/A <1 N/A N/A 1-4 N/A N/A 5-9 N/A N/A 10-14 N/A N/A 15-19 384 338 20-24 589 652 25-29 407 438 30-34 298 338 35-39 N/A 221 40-44 N/A N/A 45-49 N/A N/A 50-54 N/A N/A 55-59 N/A N/A 60-64 N/A N/A >65 N/A N/A Age Unknown N/A N/A Share Minors (<15) N/A N/A Rate 15-19 Male 108.3 N/A Rate 20-24 Male 166.7 N/A Rate 25-29 Male 143.4 N/A Rate 30-34 Male 141.5 N/A Rate 15-19 Female 6.1 N/A Rate 20-24 Female 9 N/A Rate 25-29 Female 8.6 N/A Rate 30-34 Female 9.9 N/A Share 15-19 15.09 12.54 Share 20-24 23.15 24.18 Share 25-29 16 16.25 Share 30-34 11.71 12.54 Cumul. 15-29 54.25 52.97 Urban Male 670 1235 Urban Female 75 Rural Male 901 1000 Rural Female 64 Unknown Male 778 461 56 Unknown Female N/A N/A Crimescene Street N/A N/A Crimescene Ow n House N/A N/A Crimescene Highway N/A N/A Crimescene Farm 1514 1418 Mobile Unknown Mobile Delinquency 745 800 Mobile Maras 87 196 Mobile Confronting Authority and Abuse 8 Power 8 of Mobile Enemity 73 87 Mobile Vengeance 29 38 Mobile Fights 44 61 Mobile Domestic Violence 47 81 Delinquents Killed by Police and Vigilants N/A 59 PNC agents killed N/A 26 Share Maras (%) 3.42 7.27 Motive Know n 1033 1271 Share Maras of Motive Known 8.42 15.42 Share Unknown 59.51 52.6 2001 2374 88.06 44.2 2163 211 68.9 6.5 70.90% 774 239 232 220 222 96 141 91 59 101 14 10 4 32 310 582 380 274 210 138 113 81 53 53 106 15 3.2 83.2 158.2 125.2 112.3 10.5 12.5 3.7 10.7 13.06 24.52 16.01 11.54 53.58 1178 986 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 931 90 N/A N/A N/A N/A 31 N/A N/A 3.79 1052 8.56 N/A 2002 2346 98.82 36 2119 227 66.2 6.8 70.20% 758 233 313 233 177 93 127 77 63 95 19 8 8 41 278 559 449 261 178 138 114 75 50 44 88 36 2.09 74.9 154.5 135.2 101.6 9 10.8 11 9.5 11.85 23.83 19.14 11.13 54.82 1253 135 835 89 31 3 654 180 63 N/A 783 1302 102 5 46 24 30 54 N/A N/A 4.35 1563 6.53 33.38 2003 2388 101.79 36 2156 232 6.1 6.9 71.10% 849 309 269 257 140 78 128 98 59 62 8 7 5 29 338 534 459 266 197 121 83 78 52 56 93 62 2.43 88.1 148.3 132.7 100.9 13.2 12.2 11.3 6.5 14.15 22.36 19.22 11.14 55.74 1315 142 799 86 42 4 626 91 53 90 688 1370 192 5 48 25 32 23 N/A N/A 8.04 1695 11.33 28.81 2004 2933 122.82 43.3 2673 260 80.5 7.6 73.90% 1143 413 306 348 151 83 113 104 68 55 8 13 4 33 424 743 631 356 227 118 94 79 54 51 61 39 2.66 108.8 211.6 181.3 127.9 17 14.9 11.3 8 14.46 25.33 21.51 12.14 61.3 1756 149 908 109 9 2 995 178 89 90 1420 987 289 9 72 28 72 38 N/A N/A 9.85 1495 19.33 48.41 2005 3812 129.97 55.4 3422 390 101.2 11.2 78.50% 1511 585 335 393 227 76 190 101 80 66 13 9 8 48 578 924 829 448 288 202 139 79 56 42 96 53 2.15 146.5 264.8 229.7 152 22.8 20.1 20 11.3 15.16 24.24 21.75 11.75 61.15 2105 216 1314 172 3 2 1681 174 180 152 2249 887 512 8 47 19 49 35 N/A N/A 13.43 1557 32.88 59 2006 3928 103.04 56.2 3484 437 101.3 12.3 79.30% 1536 640 415 311 276 126 162 97 113 77 14 4 11 53 598 924 867 465 304 188 135 89 64 48 84 80 1.35 148.1 261.2 241.5 147.5 24.5 24.5 18.7 14.3 15.22 23.52 22.07 11.84 60.82 1895 211 1545 221 43 5 1789 187 220 157 2630 715 465 7 33 22 22 23 N/A N/A 11.84 1287 36.13 66.96 2007 3497 89.03 60.9 3150 347 115.8 11.5 73.52% 1331 585 388 282 255 117 122 111 110 82 7 7 39 576 709 789 474 307 166 116 90 54 39 72 52 2.17 170.6 292.1 355.1 242.7 22.2 16.6 21.5 18.3 16.47 20.27 22.56 13.55 59.31 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 1633 184 180 165 2384 574 384 14 25 17 52 36 3 N/A 12.84 1102 34.85 68.17 2008 3179 90.91 55.3 2831 348 104.1 11.5 71.09% 1041 505 364 343 225 100 117 88 116 71 11 3 3 59 496 671 671 404 285 181 120 78 61 58 77 68 16.73 147.8 269.7 267.2 207.4 18.2 21.7 20.3 15.2 15.6 21.11 21.11 12.71 57.82 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 1399 165 171 172 2149 517 392 17 17 14 28 29 3 N/A 13.84 1014 38.66 67.6

Source: IML Statistical Yearbooks 1999-2006; IML Data Provided by Dr. Fabio Molina 2007-2008

72

2. Age Groups Homicide Victims El Salvador, 1999-2008


1000 900 <1 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 1-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 >65 Age Unknow n

Source: IML Statistical Yearbooks

3. Homicide Rates for the Most Affected Age Groups El Salvador 1999-2008
400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 Rate 20-24 Male Rate 30-34 Male Rate 20-24 Female Rate 30-34 Female Rate 15-19 Male Rate 25-29 Male Rate 15-19 Female Rate 25-29 Female

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Source: IML Statistical Yearbooks

73

4. Serious Crimes in El Salvador, 1999-2006


12'000

10'000

8'000 Lesions 6'000 Rape Kidnapping Extortion 4'000 Robbery

2'000

0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Source: OCAVI (2007) and FESPAD (2005)

5. Rural Urban and Gender Dicide of Homicide in El Salvador, 1999-2006


100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 % Urban % Rural % Male %Female 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Source: IML Statistical Yearbooks, 1999-2006

74

6. Homicide Rates and the use of Firearms


100 80 60 40 20 0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Homicide Rate Firearms (%)

Source: IML Statistical Yearbooks, 1999-2006

7. Highest Hmicide Rates for Ten Departments, El Salvador 1999-2006


1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 La Libertad Sonsonate sulutn Ahuachapan La Union San Salvador Santa Ana San Miguel La Paz Cuscatlan 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Source: IML Statistical Yearbooks, 1999-2006 8. Average of Homicide Rates per Region Gloabl Comparison
Sub-Region
Aus tralia and New Zealand Caribbean Central Am erica Central As ia Eas tern Africa Eas tern As ia Eas tern Europe Melanes ia Micrones ia Middle Africa Northern Africa

Average 1.3 21.73 24.46 7.23 8.95 4.12 5.74 4.02 4.08 15.69 2.18

Sub-Region
Northern Europe Polynes ia South Am erica South-Eas tern As ia Southern Africa Southern As ia Southern Europe Wes tern Africa Wes tern As ia Wes tern Europe

Average 3.06 1.05 19.42 5.42 27.66 4.12 1.83 8.64 2.46 1.09 47.4

El Salvador

Source: Author's Elaboration based on UNODC (2010)

75

Source: Author's Elaboration According to UNODC (2010)

9. Firearms in Central America

Country Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Panam TOTAL

Regional Share % Legally Registered 8.48 43'241 33.34 170'000 28.95 147'581 N/A N/A 10.28 52'390 18.95 96'614 100 509'826

Licences for Firearms 53'857 143'126 125'982 27'500 44'089 N/A 394'554

Source: Godnick et al. (2003)

76

Annex 10: Textual Mechanisms in Discourse on Violence, 2003 - 20091

Violent Crime
International Media Poverty and exclusion as main causal factors for violence

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


Dirty War against youth Unconstitutional law Responds to high insecurity caused by Maras Virulent crackdown has left thousands dead (NYT) Revival of old counterinsurgency strategies (NYT) Tattoos are the most important poof for arrests to be made (NYT)

Organized Crime
Countries are crippled by official corruption and impunity, weakening the rule of law (NYT). Maras linked to drug trafficking, money laundry, human trafficking, arms trafficking, and with dangerous elements of organized crime, even terrorists

Police Violence
Alarming reports of people being killed by vigilantes and police Many gang members arrested by the police never make it to the prison, their battered bodies litter streets and fields (NYT)

Maras
Open warfare ongoing between gangs, killing thousands Groups are no angelitos, but they are demonized Gangs have spread like a scourge over the past decade (NYT 12.09.2004) Gangs have replaced Guerrillas as Public Enemy N1 (NYT) Some of their crimes most shocking are hacking of limbs and stabbing pregnant women (in Washington

Society
Catastrophic crime wave has turned neighborhoods into warzones (NYT) Honduras and El Salvador say Gangs as big a threat to national security as terrorism for the USA (cited in NYT) No one denies that gangs require a tough response (NYT) Ricardo Maduro treats Maras as Honduras own Al Qaida MS-13 has the unique, unfortunate

1
EDH is for El Diario de Hoy ; NYT stands for The New York Times ; and LPG stands for La Prensa Grfica.

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
DC) (NYT) A menace that is spreading all over the continent A really scary image of an illegal immigrant Mara Salvatrucha one of the most violent street gangs in the country (NYT 7.11.2004) Gang infighting had led to brutal spasms of violence (NYT 2005) Mara Salvatrucha named after fire ants (NYT Possess guns and grenades they use against children Kill those who do not want to join Crazy gangsters Women, Children, Elderly and men of varied ages have been

Society
ability to replicate themselves in similar ways across the United States, exactly like a virus (NYT 19.08.2007) They keep coming back The innocents have to be protected by any means (NYT 2005)

Favorable Media Reports

Laws protect more the Human Rights of Criminals than the victims of crime Horrible crimes committed by Maras in total impunity

Headline of LPG on 24th of July : War on Maras: the Executive will propose a law which punishes gangmembership, among other measures. Mechanism to

Maras are linked to organized crime

The police will sweep the streets clean of gang members The Salvadoran military is involved in a new battle For me, it is ok to sweep the

Gangs as a sickness, a cancer eating away at society Human Rights only protect the bad guys, I would like to enter a social cleansing group if I could (PNC Official

Violent Crime
Out of 1100 crimes form January to July, 660 homicides were committed by Mareros. (LPG 24th July 2004). 70% of all violence is attributed to Maras in the department of La Paz, this is valid for the rest of the country also (Opinion column of Jaime Ulises Marinero in LPG 26th of July 2003)

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


tackle crime and violence Efficacy of Plans reflected in Public Opinion polls (56% popular backing May 19th 2005) War on delinquency allows for arrests of rapists and killers People feel safer now Nor criminal profile of El Salvadors perpetrators has ever been elaborated Many people get killed as they abandon the Maras and join the Mano Amiga programs (LPG 22.01.2005) Mano Dura will help to contain the barbarism of the past weeks of mutilations and decapitations of

Organized Crime

Police Violence
streets once and for all of them (Mareros), they dont work, we cant get out at night because of them, they need to give them Mano Dura, because they all are delinquents (Elvira Rivas, cited in LPG of 25th of July, 2003).

Maras
killed with abundant barbarism by Mareros using from stones to grenades (LPG 24.07.2003). Men and women have been decapitated and dismembered in the worst cases by gang-members Decapitate, dismember and rape female victims Kill without any reason young people War between gangs or We live in a state of war (Martel 2006:696). Gangs are caught in their lair (animal metaphor) There is no way we can accept such acts of barbarism, cruelty, and

Society
after 20J massacre, LPG 22.06.2010).

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


women, children, and elderly persons (LPG 24th of July 2004). Mano Dura consists of a plan of cleansing of the areas controlled by the Maras (Opinion published in LPG 25th of July 2003).

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
savagery (LPG 27.06.2010 related to 20J massacre of 15 people allegedly by gangs). Gang-members with demonic eyes (El Mundo 25th of June 2010). They do not care to kill innocent children (headline LPG 25th of July Jos Zometa). Mareros are brotherhoods of youths who are bums, exert extreme cruelty and have no respect whatsoever for the legal norms of the country. They commit horrendous crimes including decapitations and merciless killings of minors (Opinion published in LPG

Society

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
on 25th of July 2003). Police amd military personnel are patrolling the city so to find them in their caves (LPG 9th of August 2003 The gangmember not only has a severe look, his hair is a mess and he has two tears tattooed below his left eye () each of which is standing for a kill (Opinion of Jacinte Escudos, LPG, 10th of August 2003). Not the only violent actor but too visible Government treats them as animals to lock up in the zoo

Society

Critically Oriented Media Reports

Population needs a relief from the reigning insecurity There is a need to be efficient in applying law and order, not reform law and order

smoke-screen for serious offenses of corruption and organized crime fishing with dynamite Victimizing innocents

No Mano Dura has been announced for these serious offenses, they are ignored and confused with Maras

Mano Dura opens road to death-squads and lynching Police officer and 7 gang-members arrested for shooting a young male (LPG 20th of

Violent Crime
towards authoritarianism Poverty is criminalized, instead of developing programs to alleviate exclusion and marginalization Given the contemporary levels of violence associated to the groups known as Maras and Pandillas, it is urgent to establish a law of temporary duration and special character, which will serve as punitive instrument against these groups. (Introduction).

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


No reinsertion possible Final solution! Demagogic populism Punishes for what one appears to be, not for what one is Gangmembership a felony Special tribunals for treating gangrelated cases Minors treated as adults in gangrelated cases Those recognized as Mara members will be sentenced between two and five years of prison (Art.6).

Organized Crime

Police Violence
July 2003)

Maras

Society

Ley Mano Dura of July 2003

NONE

NONE

Those who unite regularly, claim possession over a territory, who display signs and symbols, and use tattoos as well as scars to mark their bodies (Art.1) Groups or individuals who act to alter the public peace, or attempt against good habits (Art.1) Those identifies via their tattoos and signs as members of Maras, will be sanctioned with

Him who integrates a Mara and threatens persons, barrios, and colonies, will be sanctioned with prison terms of between two and five years (Art.6). The common good has to be protected, and the Salvadoran state is obliged to defend the safety of its citizens (Intro).

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
60 day of fines (Art.18)

Society

Plan Super Mano Dura August 2004

Protect Salvadorans from crime and violence, and transform El Salvador into a safe country in 180 days.

Targets illicit associations and delinquent activities of groups and illicit associations known as Maras (Art.1) Punishes those recognized of being members of a Mara with prison sentences between three and six years

NONE

NONE

Maras are defined as a group of persons which through their actions affect the peaceful social coexistence, the public order, good manners or citizens security (Art.3.) Two or more of the following conditions need to be filled to be designed as a member of a Mara: group together or having regular reunions; claim ownership over a territory; show signs or symbols as means of

Fight delinquency and especially groups known as Maras and Pandillas in order to protect Salvadoran society.

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
identification with a Mara or Pandilla, and mark their bodies with tattoos and/or scars (Art.3). This Law will be applied to all persons of 12 years age and more, who commit a felony or a crime in the national territory (Art. 2) (LPG 25th of July 2003). When three or more youth gather in a corner, we can arrest them as they are suspicious of an illicit association (PNC) 60% of homicides are due to Maras, meaning that gang-members kill each other, gang-members

Society

Governmental (ARENA) and Security Actors (PNC) comments on Mano Dura various actors

Opposed to Swiss laws that protect delinquents TV programs foment a culture of violence Alcohol and drugs are an important contributor to violent acts Security policies are understood as contributing to de reduction of the levels of

Among those arrested we suspect there are killers and rapists Eradicate once and for all the Maras Avoid the criminal acts Control these [Gangs] sectors more efficiently (PNC) Put behind bars Mara-members will solve the problem (PNC)

Society as an organism, which is sick and needs a chemotherapy, where some good cells have to die (Martel 2006:969) There will be less gang-members to intimidate Salvadoran society (with Mano Dura) LPG 25th of July 2003 citing

Violent Crime
insecurity and delinquency in the country, by applying reforms, programs, and actions geared towards the prevention and the control of crime through enhanced law enforcement capacities and the advancement of a new zero tolerance policy (REDLAMYC 2004) Success measured in terms of increased prison population over the period, reaching over 1400 inmates in 2009 (Interview with Ren Figueroa, El Faro. Net, 12th December 2009) 60% of all crimes are committed by gang-members,

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


70 homicides were avoided with Super Mano Dura so far. Mareros will be charged with offences such as illicit association, public diosorder, robbery, threats, and distribution of drugs. (PNC Director Ricardo Meneses, cited in LPG 25th of July 2003)

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
kill citizens, citizens kill gangmembers and citizens die as innocent bystanders (PNC Pedro Gnzalez, Commissioner). Sub-director of PNC affirms that the profile of the homicidal element in El Salvador is resumed by being Marero. Most homicides, robberies, lesions and rapes are committed by gangs (PNC) 40% of all crime is due to Maras Maras kill those who abandon their group in order to join the Mano Extendida plan; this explains the increase in homicides (LPG cited in Martel

Society
Ricardo Meneses, Director of the PNC. Regarding the capacity of the AML to criminalize gangmembership, even if no crime was committed, Francisco Bertrand Galindo (Judicary Secretary of President Flores), declares that when there is a clash of values, the general interest must prevail () If you tell me that not all gangmembers are criminal it is like telling me that the one taking care of the kidnapped victim is not a kidnapper. Him who joins a violent group is violent

Violent Crime
thus, Mano Dura will benefit to the entire country (Ricardo Meneses, Director of PNC, LPG 24th of July 2003).

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
Trigueros 2006:966) A sickness which must be cured, eradicated, killed (Martel 2006:696) Savage and irrational acts perpetrated by these criminals (PNC Website) We have information that these youths performed satanic rituals in their house, but they used to turn up the volume of the music so no one could hear their victims scream (PNC Spokesman Faustino Snchez, cited in LPG 14th of August 2003). They (Mareros) are no angelitos (little angles), they are delinquents and

Society
(Interview published in LPG 26th of July 2003). We will see which political parties want to combat delinquency, and which wont (Representative of ARENA, en LPG 30th of July 2003)

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
do not shy from committing any type of crime Furthermore, gang-members unite in street corners to plan crimes and to extortionate .025 or 1$ from persons passing by PNC Director Menesses, cited in LPG 13th of August 2003. The FMLN incorporated gang-members to sustain ist antisystemic claims and create chaos (Ren Figueroa, Ministro de Gobernacin Minitry of Interior ElFaro.Net 26th of February 2006).

Society

Violent Crime
President Flores (ARENA)

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


Success as homicide levels dropped 22.5% and 5000 youths have been arrested The PNC and military together will save the territories from Maras Disarticulation of gangs and incarceration of their members The passive attitude , protecting delinquents more than citizens, has to end In this frontal battle against crime, we will use all means legitimate, including the exceptional means provided by the Constitution We do not have yet the adequate legal frame to

Organized Crime
Criminal groups finance themselves with drug-trafficking, therefore we will make sure that possession of illegal drugs alone will be enough to charge someone with drug-trafficking

Police Violence

Maras
Commit numerous and terrible crimes More Mareros than police and military members together These criminal groups have lowered themselves to dangerous levels of barbarism and moral degradation; we all have known the cases of mutilations, decapitations and satanic rites as well as dismembering of bodies The time has come to free ourselves from this flagellant problem These gangs kill an average of 100 persons pr month The organizations

Society
Threatened by a national problem, the Maras Salvadoran society is threatened We need to draw a line between between thos of us who believe in the citizens security, and those who defend with their arguments all kinds of delinquents Horrendous acts committed against innocent elderly, women and children

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


eradicate this problem It will be forbidden to belong to criminal organizations such as Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 The mere fact of membership to these organizations will be punishable by law There are criminals which are minors, they need to be punished as criminals We are convinced that the necessary means will be at El Salvadors disposal to fight the battle against these criminals and their delinquent terrorism

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
keep hostage entire communities

Society

Violent Crime
President Saca (ARENA) We are conscious of the problem and propose integral measures, we believe not only in open confrontation, but equally in preventive initiatives, such as rehabilitation and reinsertion; a collective action is central to tackle the problem We are in a postwar society and bringing down levels of homicides will take time

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


El Salvador will be the safest country in Latin America Integral security plan, will strengthen prison sentences for minors and gangmembers The Plan Super Mano Dura will solve El Salvadors problems in 180 days Its a Super Mano Dura against trafficking, its Super Mano Dura against common and organized crime, it is an integral plan (LPG 12.12.2004). We are realizing important transformations, we are changing the country The party is over (Martel 2006:696)

Organized Crime
Organized crime is the most pressing problem in matters of security on the regional and international arena; In El Salvador, this is most seen with the complexification of the activities of Maras, which are no longer operating on the national arena, but have transformed into a regional threat;

Police Violence

Maras
Maras responsible for 60% of homicides We need to get rid of this afflicting problem Maras commit individual and collective murder, dedicate themselves to extortion and acts of terrorist character; they are linked with transnational crime and drug trafficking, they traffic persons and participate in money laundry Mara members walk around with the heads of their mothers in their backpacks (Martel 2006:963) The countrys most pressing problem (LN WR 27.04.2004).

Society
Victim of Maras and their violence El Salvador fights against gangs, and the country does it with a firm hand The country will be one of the safest countries in the region We live in a safe country now (ElFaro.Net 30th of May 2005) There is no way we can lose this battle. We cannot let the criminals win, and we will not let them win because we are an entire country against these type of people. (Holland 2007:98) Our government has declared a merciless fight to these delinquents, and

Violent Crime

Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura


Success is defiend by the number of arrests: 779 members arrested in 12 days, and crime has fallen 40% (Latin America Newsletters, Weekly Report, 21st of September 2004). The Plan already led to over 500 arrests (Latin America Newsletters. Weekly Report. 14th of September 2004). We are successful as many members of the Maras are behind bars and cant commit any crimes

Organized Crime

Police Violence

Maras
I have no doubt at all that there are mara gang members in the FMLN; this party has had mara members for a long time (Latin America Newsletters, Regional reports, Central America & The Caribbean, 15th of January 2009). Gangs are related to organized crime, hiredassassins, and it would not surprise me and we can not ignore it, that they are related to international terrorism (BBC Mundo, citing Antonio Saca, 24th of February 2005).

Society
we will not rest until we can reestablish the tranquility of the good citizens they merit. We are decent persons, we are persons who want peace (Antonio Saca, Presidential Message on June 18th 2006).

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