Honduras imports gang truce from El Salvador

Last month leaders of the two biggest gangs in Honduras, the most violent country in the world, announced a truce in hopes of reducing violence across the country. Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and the 18th Street Gang (M18) signed on to a similar truce in El Salvador a little over a year ago, and the murder rate quickly dropped by around 50 percent.

I agree that this is probably a good step towards addressing the terrible wave of violence that has
been killing around 7,000 individuals a year for the past few years, but there are a few differences between crime in the two countries that casts some doubt on the prospects for success in Honduras.

One reason is that the two gangs, which exist in both countries, are less centralized in Honduras than they are in El Salvador. And, they are responsible for a smaller share of violent crime in Honduras than they are in El Salvador. Mike Allison, writing on Al Jazeera English, has some good data the reflects a little bit of this difference (I'd recommend reading the whole article):

In El Salvador, it was believed that gangs were responsible for between 30 percent (the Institute for Legal Medicine [SP]) and 90 percent (President Mauricio Funes [SP]) of murders prior to the truce. In effect, no one really had a handle on the number of murders and other crimes committed by gangs. However, El Salvador's single year 40-50 percent reduction from 2011 to 2012 was quite dramatic. While the murder rate has inched up ever so slightly in 2013, the truce has proven quite resilient...[In Honduras] motive was determined in only 40 percent of the 7,172 murders committed in 2012. Authorities determined that slightly more than 1 percent (93) of all murders was gang-related. On the other hand, a 2010 United Nations study found that 30 percent of all murders were gang-related. A higher percentage of murders are thought to be related to drug trafficking, organised crime, personal revenge, and union organisation and land conflict. Reducing murders by one-third would be a tremendous achievement, but there is little reason to expect a Honduran gang truce to achieve the same immediate impact as the gang truce did in El Salvador.

A big part of the violent crime in Honduras is likely committed by groups associated with drug trafficking or organized crime. And, while gangs in Honduras are also thought to commit a smaller percentage of murders in that country than their peers in El Salvador, the gangs are also less organized, with a less coherent leadership structure. Part of this stems from the different geographies of the countries--El Salvador is a much smaller and more densely urbanized country than Honduras. But the response to crime in El Salvador over the past decade may have had more to do with the degree of unification of gangs in that country: the so-called mano dura policies enacted in El Salvador criminalized gang association and threw a vast number of youths into prison together, which had the effect of strengthening the cohesion of both the MS13 and the M18 within that country.

There does seem to be a lot of optimism around this truce, whereas the truce in El Salvador was kept hidden for months and government figures denied any role. Here, the president has embraced the truce and its prospects for a reprieve from violence--even the OAS has lent its support to the truce. Further, representatives of the two gangs have been very public about their hopes, promising "zero crime, zero violence." Zero crime is a tall order: even in El Salvador, as the murder rate has plummeted, non-violent crime such as theft and extortion has increased.

The two biggest challenges, I think, will be the degree to which the leadership of the two gangs can actually deliver on a truce. This was a concern among observers of the truce in El Salvador this time last year, though the gangs have apparently delivered. Will there be breakaway "cliques" in Honduras that undermine these efforts? And what will happen if the public doesn't perceive any drop in violence, or if the decrease doesn't live up to expectations? If the murder rate continues to sore at the hands of organized crime and drug traffickers, will the public lash out?

While no one expects this to be a panacea, and I doubt this truce will live up to expectations, any respite from violence in Honduras is a good thing. As Boz points out, even "a 10% decline in murders would be hundreds of fewer deaths, particularly in San Pedro Sula," the so-called murder capital of the world. And to be sure, things can hardly get worse.

Salvadoran Maras tighten links with Mexican Zetas

A new report issued by the International Assessment and Strategy Center is making the claim that the MS-13 gang based in El Salvador has tightened its links to the hyper-violent Zetas of Mexico.

While the presence of Mexican cartels in Central America is not necessarily a new phenomenon, this new kind of collaboration is unprecedented. Whereas the maras, specifically the MS-13, traditionally provided a kind of fee for service protection racket that benefited transportistas associated with, but not members of the cartels, it seems they are now taking over some of the enterprises themselves, on behalf of the Zetas. These include, but are not limited to drug trafficking, local drug sales, and human trafficking.

Doug Farah, the report's author, argues that the MS-13 have taken advantage of a nearly year old truce between them and the M-18 gang to reorganize and insert themselves into the political arena (by delivering blocs of votes to pliable politicians in return for favors) and more directly into the international narcotics trade that has shifted dramatically to Central America and Mexico in the past decade.

This development is particularly worrying considering the fact that the Zetas themselves once served as the "enforcers" for another group, the Gulf Cartel, before branching off on their own. Once affiliates of military special forces in Mexico and Guatemala, the Zetas are now recruiting the most "talented" gun-slingers in the Salvadoran maras.

So far, we haven't seen the same level of cooperation between gangs and cartels in Guatemala or Honduras. This is largely due to the fact that in those much larger countries, cartels have an easier time moving their product themselves and don't need to cooperate with gangsters who are often regarded by the cartels as amateurish and undisciplined. In El Salvador though, the MS-13 is much more organized and hierarchical and controls a larger portion of the highly urbanized country, compared with the large swaths of rural Guatemala and Honduras in which the gangs have no presence.

Some Central Americans are taking things into their own hands. In the face of largely overwhelmed and incompetent (not to mention corrupt) security forces and some of the highest homicide rates on earth for much of the past 15 years, observers are seeing a rise in vigilante style justice in the region. For example, in 2011, Guatemalan mobs and self-defense groups lynched at least 44 suspected criminals--and these are just the cases reported and investigated by the police, which constitute a small minority of the total murders committed. The actual number of extra-judicial killings either by individuals, mobs, or private security guards, is likely much higher in Guatemala and neighboring countries.

A Gallup poll released last month shows that Central Americans widely hold youth gangs (including maras) responsible for crime in the region. In El Salvador, 67 percent blame gangs for crime, whereas in Guatemala and Honduras, 43 percent and 34 percent, respectively, blame the gangs. In the latter two countries, where narcotraffickers and organized crime seem to operate more independently of the gangs, respondents are the most likely to blame narcotraffickers in addition to gangs. Worryingly, many also see the police as one of the biggest problems with regards to crime. Eighteen percent of Hondurans blame the police themselves for crime! While other Central Americans are less likely to blame the police directly, almost no one (with the notable exception of Nicaragua) trusts the police: 84 percent of Hondurans, 76 percent of Guatemalans, and 69 percent of Salvadorans said they do not trust the police in their country.