The Truce

BBC Mundo reports that Salvadoran gangs have committed themselves to refraining from "delinquency" in four municipalities in El Salvador, as a kind of "phase two" of the truce that began in March of last year.

The article quotes José Tiberio Valladares, a leader of MS-13, "we reiterate our commitment to involve our structures [followers, gangs] in the processes being carried forward in each of these municipalities, assuming that this gives way to a process that aims to end all criminal activity."

The truce between Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, brokered (as it later turned out) in part by the Salvadoran government in March 2012, resulted in a nearly 60 percent drop in homicides (some place the drop closer to 54 percent), almost overnight. In what was the second most violent country in the world in 2011 (66 homicides per 100,000 individuals), this was a welcome development and led to plenty of talk in neighboring Guatemala about pursuing a similar course with its gang franchises.

The problem is, it isn't clear that MS-13 and Barrio 18 franchises in Guatemala and Honduras are quite as centralized or as hierarchical as their Salvadoran counterparts. And, in both countries--both larger and more geographically dispersed--gang activity accounts for a smaller proportion of the overall violence. This becomes particularly evident when you look at Guatemala, where Pacific coast, rural, and border departments are the most violent in the country. The same is true for Honduras, where coastal Atlantida, Colon, and Cortes also happen to be the departments receiving the greatest amount of drug traffic--especially since the 2009 coup--pointing to the influence of more sophisticated organized criminal networks on that country's crime spree.

So, while a truce in either country may provide a kind of respite, I'd caution against the dangers of a kind of "Balkanization" of the gangs there, whereby factions resist attempts by gang leadership to enforce a truce and could turn on each other. This possibility (which remains a real threat in El Salvador) could be all the more real, and all the more dangerous given the huge quantities of cash, weapons, and drugs that pass through Guatemala and Honduras: gang cohesion, even in the viciously loyal Maras, may or may not stand up to the potential power and riches offered by drug trafficking.

We might compare this kind of scenario to what happened to the powerful Colombian cartels following the fall of Cali and Medellin, or, arguably, to the fractionalization of Mexican cartels (and the aftermath there) in the past decade.