A country on fire

13/09/2010

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a little girl named Marleny Alejandra Galdámez who was decapitated in Ciudad Arce, El Salvador. Her death, while exemplifying the wanton gang violence that’s marginalized all of the country’s other manifold concerns, was nonetheless an aberration; it happened outside the urban chaos of San Salvador; the victim was unequivocally innocent, and Salvadorians who have grown far too accustomed to violence were still taken aback.

In North America we’re loath to admit our apathy towards violence that doesn’t affect us. The 2005 Boxing Day shooting of Jane Creba in Toronto only garnered the attention it did because it forced Torontonians to acknowledge their potential vulnerability. Like in El Salvador, though obviously to a lesser degree, the perception that there is no longer a safe zone gives rise to tremendous anxiety.

But the anxiety Torontonians faced was short lived. Not to say it disappeared—it was just replaced by other more pressing issues, like the Maple Leafs’ playoff hopes. Never, even at their most anxious moments, did people seriously worry about taking the bus.

Salvadorians don’t have that luxury.

As part of my post about Marleny, I included inevitable commentary on the extortion carried about by the maras, making specific reference to public transportation. In the weeks since, and like Marleny’s murder, this once isolated problem has become one of national significance.

In what’s become known as the ‘gang rebellion’, well-known gangs such as Mara 18 and Marasalvatrucha have stopped extorting and started burning buses and businesses.

It wasn’t without provocation: the catalyst was the approval of a piece of legislation that outlaws their existence and penalizes those with whom they collaborate.

It’s easy enough for the government to be tough on crime with their mano dura policies; their lives aren’t the ones being put on hold. And the solution, as it always seems to be, is to add manpower. Defence Minister David Munguía Payés has already announced additional forces—the kneejerk reaction everyone expected. But whether people are comforted by the presence of the military on buses is another question. For many small business owners, the risk isn’t worth the reward.

Because they don’t know when it it’ll end.

For the gangs, the answer to that question is straightforward.

Not unaware of the power of public relations, they’ve used the church as an intermediary to both apologize and state their demands.

Last week a parish priest named Antonio Rodríguez read a message on behalf of the gangs on a local television station. It clarified that “they’re apologizing to the general population for the bus stoppage and for the situation that has arisen” and that “it’s a pressure measure so that the government takes two positions: One that makes room for dialogue between the gangs and the government with some entity or intermediary to solve the violence problem. And two, that the President veto the Gang Outlawing Law, which is a law that falls within the mano dura ideology, and which has caused an increase in the levels of violence.”

The FLMN government has flatly rejected the possibility of negotiating, which means the situation is likely to get a lot worse quickly.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record—draconian responses to violence don’t have good success rates. Mexico has tried and President Calderón’s recent musings about the possibility of legalization attest to how ineffective strong-arm tactics have been there.

The maras already represent the majority of the prison population. Adding to their numbers won’t help.

The fires are burning. The time has come to start thinking logically about how to put them out.

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