Gangs of El Salvador seek truce
Video offers to stop killings if government calls off its latest anti-gang offensive
SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR— A video purportedly made by El Salvador’s main street gangs is offering an end to killings in the country and asks the government not to continue an antigang offensive.
El Salvador suffered growing gang violence since a 2012 gang truce fell apart.
In the video broadcast by local media Saturday, a masked man claimed to make the offer on behalf of the Mara Salvatrucha gang and two factions of the Barrio 18 gang.
The video said killings were ordered stopped as of Saturday to show the government it didn’t have to implement get-tough policies. The government has been considering a kind of limited state of emergency in some areas and is planning to release some non-gang inmates to free up prison space and liberate police to fight the gangs.
“We have ordered all of our people . . . to halt all types of homicides nationwide,” said the man who appears in the video, “to demonstrate to the public, the government and international agencies in our country that there is no need to implement measures that only violate our constitution.”
There was no immediate confirmation of the authenticity of the video, but former guerrilla Raul Mijango said, “I had received information that (the gangs) were going to release some kind of message, that they had that idea.” Mijango has served as a truce negotiator in the past.
The gangs may be trying to pressure the government into negotiating a truce like one in 2012, during which homicide rates fell notably. That truce has since fallen apart.
According to official statistics, at least 6,657 people were killed last year in El Salvador. The country had an overall annual homicide rate of around 103 per 100,000 inhabitants, El Salvador’s highest ever.
Officials said they would not negotiate with the gangs.
Eugenio Chicas, the spokesman for President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, wrote on Twitter that “this administration will not grant any truce in the fight against criminals.”
The video included veiled warnings, claiming the gangs “have the tools to destroy the politics of this country” and said “we want to make the government aware that it cannot eliminate the gangs, because we are part of the community in this country.”