SAN SALVADOR – In 2012, the Salvadoran gangs announced a non-aggression pact among their members, an agreement that was publicized by the government of former leftist president Mauricio Funes as a “peace process,” but after investigations by the Salvadoran Prosecutor’s Office it was learned that The agreement, which gave benefits to the gangs, was not only between the gangs but between the government and the gangs in exchange for reducing homicides.
Former President Funes was sentenced on Monday to 14 years in prison, and his former Security Minister, David Munguía Payés, accused of Illegal Groups and Breach of Duties and Arbitrary Acts for the case known by the media as “truce”, to 18 years.
The Prosecutor’s Office requested 16 years in prison for Funes and 20 years for Payés.
The investigations began in 2017 against several officials of the Funes administration, who obtained Nicaraguan citizenship in 2019. The pact, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, made the gangs expand control over the territories, obtain more money from illegal actions and benefit from the entry of illicit to prisons.
In addition, Payés was accused of being the mastermind of a truce that in 2015 made El Salvador the most violent country in the world, after the pact was broken. De Funes maintains that he approved that agreement and that he also provided public money for the process.
How did the supposed truce between the government and gangs begin?
Funes was the first left-wing candidate to win the Salvadoran presidential seat after two decades in which El Salvador, a country of 7 million people, was ruled by the right-wing ARENA party.
The homicide rate, once Funes assumed the presidency in 2009, was 71 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, but after the truce, in 2012, that rate dropped to 40.
The gangs had already lived through the “Mano Dura” and “Super Mano Dura” security plans in the right-wing governments, but these only allowed mass arrests of gang members and the grouping of a gang for criminal charges, in exchange for avoiding riots. Therefore, a pacification process between both structures would be the “non-governmental” strategy that would mean less violence in the Central American country.
Thus, on March 8, 2012, the ranfleros or founders of the main gangs, including the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, agreed to a ceasefire and handed over several of their weapons, in front of religious representatives and representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS). Likewise, they promised not to expand their territories of operation or attack state agents.
“We are convinced that there is no other way out of the serious situation of violence that affects the entire nation,” read one of the statements published by the gangs at the time.
But, in exchange for reducing the homicidal violence, the gangs asked for better prison conditions, for the State to put an end to the harassment and persecution of their relatives and other members, and also to seek their reinsertion.
That peace process, as some facilitators called it, caused a great uproar in the country. The former Minister of Security, Payés, recognized then that his role was that of facilitator. Funes, who stayed away from the process until 2013, later assumed the support of his government, stressing that it was a process between gangs and not in alliance with the government.
The end of the truce and the wave of violence
In 2014, after two years of truce, the apparent security began to crumble in El Salvador after a rise in homicides that led former President Funes to assure that the 18 gang had broken the process, and that since it was an agreement signed by gangs, It was not without a certain fragility “to the extent that it depends on the will of the gangs.”
But behind that wave of violence was the dismissal of the former Minister of Security, Munguía Payés, who by order of the Supreme Court of Justice had to leave his position because he was a soldier in a civilian position. The new Minister of Security, Ricardo Perdomo, who was always averse to the process, decided not to follow the line of his predecessor and imposed various restrictions on prisons and announced that he would not give privileges to gangs.
After the agreement was broken, the gangs responded by raising the homicide rate to 103 per 100,000 inhabitants. A number that made 2015 the most violent year in the democratic history of El Salvador. There were days when the Police registered up to 50 homicides in 24 hours, when during the truce the daily homicide rate was around 6.
The investigation
Soon several videos began to circulate about alleged benefits received by inmates during the years that the truce lasted, the Prosecutor’s Office began investigations against several former Funes officials to demonstrate that the process was actually a pact between the Salvadoran government and the gangs.
That pact, according to the first fiscal investigations, allowed the transfer of gang leaders from the maximum security prison to lesser regime prisons; the entry of televisions, telephones, food and services for dancers into prisons, the expansion of the gang in the territories and the provision of government funds for the process.
Payés was the intellectual author of the truce, assured the Prosecutor’s Office, and he had the permission of Funes. The former minister was captured in 2020, when the process against both officials was announced. While Funes has been a Nicaraguan citizen since 2019, a fact that makes his extradition unfeasible if he is found guilty.
The Prosecutor’s Office said, after the end of the allegations on May 5, that it had managed to demonstrate that the “truce” was between the Funes government and the gangs, and that this allowed the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 to expand their power in The Savior.
Payés’ defense lawyer, Manuel Chacón, told the media that day that the witnesses presented by the Prosecutor’s Office even made “conjectures” in their allegations. Chacón also requested probation for the defendant, since he alleges that he suffers from chronic kidney failure, diabetes and hypertension.
While former President Funes, declared “defendant in absentia” for not naming a defense attorney or obtaining communication with a public defender, assured, through the platform Raul Palacios Presentson May 15, that the process is unconstitutional because an absent prisoner cannot be tried despite the fact that a 2022 reform already authorizes it.
“The judge has set up an illegal and unconstitutional hearing and could have applied the principle of the inapplicability of a law or reform. (…) I should be tried with the laws in force at the time the crime was committed, that is, 2012 and 2013. I don’t have a defense attorney and now I just have to wait for a sentence. That sentence will not be valid in my case,” he said.
Even if Funes is found guilty, the fact that he is a Nicaraguan citizen makes it impossible for him to answer for crimes in El Salvador, attorney Eli Villalta said.
“Bringing him to El Salvador is not possible even if the judge finds him guilty, since Funes is a Nicaraguan citizen and the Constitution of that country prohibits the extradition of its citizens,” he told the voice of america.
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