Military and police chase gang members in a populous neighborhood of El Salvador

This Monday, more than 2,000 soldiers and 500 police surrounded a populous neighborhood on the southern outskirts of the Salvadoran capital to pursue and capture remnants of the gangs that are trying to establish themselves in the area, reported President Nayib Bukele.

“Police intelligence has determined that in the 10 de Octubre neighborhood, in San Marcos, San Salvador Sur, there is a group of hidden gang members. “We have established a security fence throughout the neighborhood… to extract every last gang member found in the area,” the president said on his official account on the social network X, formerly Twitter.

The deployment is headed by the Minister of National Defense, Vice Admiral René Francis Merino Monroy. The Minister of Public Security, Gustavo Villatoro, is in the area supervising operations.

“We are after these criminals. We have indications that they want to establish themselves in this sector and for that reason the president has decided to order the establishment of this fence,” said the Minister of National Defense when explaining the joint operation to journalists.

Merino Monroy added that elements of the police traffic unit have established checkpoints in the vicinity to prevent possible escapes of gang members from the area and stated that they already have “the files, their profiles and that they are the ones that can be found in these sectors.”

This is the third military security fence installed so far this year to locate and capture small gang groups that continue to operate in the country.

In March of this year, Bukele ordered the fencing of three populous communities in the northern department of Chalatenango in order to dismantle a group of the Barrio 18 Sureños gang linked to two homicides.

For more than three decades, the maras or gangs, with a presence in populous communities and neighborhoods in the country, extorted bus operators and the population in general and murdered those who did not pay. They also became involved in drug trafficking.

In 2015, El Salvador was considered one of the most violent countries in the world with 5,656 homicides, a rate of 106 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

But the panorama changed after the country recorded 62 homicides in a single day and Congress approved in March 2022 Bukele’s request to establish an emergency regime that suspends constitutional guarantees such as the right of association and allows the authorities to intercept communications of suspicious.

In addition, the period of administrative detention – without going to court – was extended from 72 hours to 15 days. Detainees lose the right to be duly informed of the reasons for their arrest and to access a lawyer for their defense.

Congress also approved reforms to the Penal Code last year to make gang membership a crime, which carries penalties of 20 to 40 years in prison. Ringleaders can receive sentences of up to 60 years.

The measure, temporary in nature, has been in force for more than two and a half years and has been questioned repeatedly by human rights organizations and activists, who have registered more than 6,000 complaints filed by the victims and say they have documented the death of 329 people deprived of liberty.

The country closed 2023 with 214 homicides, including 38 deaths of alleged gang members in alleged confrontations with the authorities. So far this year the police have recorded 125 murders.

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