There has been some commentary of the gang truce in El Salvador (which has been in place for five months) in mainstream Western media, including most recently a leading article in the New York Times. The articles focus on the significant drop in murder and kidnap rate in the country (from around 18 murders per day to around 5) and apparent scepticism that exists around how long the truce is likely to last.
What I haven't read in any of this coverage is anything approaching the vast majority of opinion I encountered when talking to ordinary people in El Salvador: the gang truce is not generally considered a good thing. Firstly this is because a lot of Salvadoreans - free from Western sensibilities over the death sentence - actually would like to see all gang members (or at least the leaders/most violent) dead and gone. Sympathy for their actions and situations is very low. Secondly this is due to a perception that the gangs have stopped killing each other, but continue to kill innocent people not involved in gangs. There is also huge concern about the increasing numbers of disappeareds: are the gangs simply covering up their murders better? For an act cannot legally be classified as a murder in El Salvador unless a body is found - regardless of the other evidence that may exist. This, many argue, is skewing the official figures.
The sight of the government, church leaders, military leaders, and gang leaders all having a cosy chat frankly seems to send chills up the spines of many: these are all people considered to be waging a war not against each other but against the rest of the Salvadorean people in both the sense of actual murder and violence and in the economic sense. Unless this war comes to an end El Salvador will not see true peace.
What I haven't read in any of this coverage is anything approaching the vast majority of opinion I encountered when talking to ordinary people in El Salvador: the gang truce is not generally considered a good thing. Firstly this is because a lot of Salvadoreans - free from Western sensibilities over the death sentence - actually would like to see all gang members (or at least the leaders/most violent) dead and gone. Sympathy for their actions and situations is very low. Secondly this is due to a perception that the gangs have stopped killing each other, but continue to kill innocent people not involved in gangs. There is also huge concern about the increasing numbers of disappeareds: are the gangs simply covering up their murders better? For an act cannot legally be classified as a murder in El Salvador unless a body is found - regardless of the other evidence that may exist. This, many argue, is skewing the official figures.
The sight of the government, church leaders, military leaders, and gang leaders all having a cosy chat frankly seems to send chills up the spines of many: these are all people considered to be waging a war not against each other but against the rest of the Salvadorean people in both the sense of actual murder and violence and in the economic sense. Unless this war comes to an end El Salvador will not see true peace.
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