'A truce means they stop killing each other. It doesn't mean they stop killing us.'

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.

A Salvadorean Summer

It's been almost three months since I've posted anything on this blog but I've had a good excuse. I've been in El Salvador teaching English for social justice through an organisation called the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS). I've been teaching adults who are involved in the social justice movement in El Salvador, are keen to learn English, but are unable to afford the astronomically high costs of English schools in the country. The experience was eye-opening to say the least and I learned far more from my students about the Salvadorean reality than I could ever teach them about English grammar.

The country is an interesting one: highly linked to the USA, it uses the US dollar as its currency and 20% of its economy is based on remittances from the Salvadorean diaspora - largely in the US. The country is the destination for most migrants - some legal, many illegal - and held up as a dream destination for those struggling to keep up a way of life in a country with a low minimum wage and ongoing political disillusionment.

The two main political parties in El Salvador - the right-wing ARENA and left-wing FMLN - are the same two sides who fought a bloody civil war in the country during the 1980s. Those who committed atrocities have been granted amnesty and no justice has been sought for those innocent people who were slaughtered or 'disappeared' during that time. In order for the country to move on politically these things must be addressed just as they must be in all other countries with recent civil wars.

I learned a lot with this experience: I now speak functional Spanish for one thing. But mostly I learned what a broad range of views and insights there are out there waiting to be heard if only someone would listen.

The changing nature of war

I was reading an article today from 1998 about international theory. The contemporary consensus was that globalisation meant that social and economic forces were superseding traditional great power politics. This is undoubtedly the case today. As shown by the ongoing economic crisis, the power of the 'markets' as controlled by global capitalists is devastating and seemingly immovable in the face of governments worldwide.

What some scholars concluded to the scepticism of the article's author was that this would lead to fewer wars between nations. Looking around these scholars were correct that there would be fewer traditional wars fought between states. Where they were wrong was in their optimism: groups and actors are fighting and oppressing each other as much as always but in new (and in some cases old) ways. States worldwide are murdering and torturing those whose interests they are supposed to represent while so-called liberal democracies such as the US and the UK are complicit in barbaric torture practices. Traditional rules of war and humanitarian principles are abandoned in the pursuit of the war on terrorism, a word so vague it can be used to a apply to any actor or group a state deems as behaving or believing contrary to its interests. Thus Syria's forces describe those they oppress as terrorists.

History teaches us to be optimistic about the end of current struggles but not to expect whatever comes next to be any better.