SOCIAL CONFLICTS NEVER SOOTHED: El Salvador falls into a new wave of violence

Martina Bossi
10/07/2022
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Latin America

Saturday, March 26, 2022 will remain in the memories of Salvadorans as the most violent day in the last twenty years. In just a few hours, 62 homicides were reported nationwide in El Salvador.

To deal with the serious emergency, on March 27 the Legislative Assembly approved the Regime of Exception, at the initiative of President Nayib Bukele expressed in the Council of Ministers. This Regime was to last for a period of thirty days but was renewed month by month and is still in effect.

Through this Decree, constitutional guarantees typical of a truly democratic society were suspended, such as: freedom of association and assembly (Article 7 of the Constitution of the Republic, p. 2-3); the right to information (Article 7 of the Constitution of the Republic, p. 2-3); the right to information on the grounds for detention and defense (Art. 12 inc. 2 Cn, p. 3); the 72-hour limit on administrative detention (Art. 13 inc. 2 Cn, p. 3-4); and the inviolability of correspondence and telecommunications (Art. 24 Cn, p. 5).

To try to understand how this rapid escalation of events came about, it is necessary to give an overview of the actors involved.

THE SALVADORAN MARAS

The origins of these organized criminal groups date back to the end of the civil conflict that culminated with the signing of the Peace Treaties in 1992. Within a few years of abandoning violence as a political means, the U.S. government, which had taken a central role in the Salvadoran conflict, initiated a policy of deporting criminals to their countries of origin.

The members of the California gangs who thus returned to El Salvador brought with them the organizational patterns typical of U.S. crime, and these inevitably ended up influencing the criminal groups here, transforming them into a more organized, complex and violent phenomenon. The new gangs, known as “maras” or “pandillas,” grew rapidly, deeply marking the postwar period in El Salvador.

The violence associated with the Salvadoran mara phenomenon flows in four directions: war between rival gangs, gang violence against communities, state violence toward maras, and violent responses of maras toward the state.

Living in a given territory defines membership in one pandilla rather than another, even if it is only a few blocks away. These spaces are out of state control and this is where Salvadoran criminal life develops. Access to the areas is controlled and limited to certain times of the day, punctuated by a strict curfew. The people who live in these areas are forced to pay the constant extortion that fuels the maras phenomenon economically. This coercive power that has gone unchallenged, combined with violence and constant threats, forces thousands of people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities or their countries.

The undeniable impact that pandillas have on daily life in El Salvador has meant, over the years, periodic attempts at negotiation conducted by the government with the aim of countering the phenomenon.

PREVIOUS GOVERNMENTS’ APPROACH

Public institutions address the problem on a daily basis, but have so far failed to solve it definitively.

In 2003, when the ARENA Party – of nationalist, conservative and neoliberal orientation – was in government, repression was first introduced as a strategy to eliminate maras. Thus, for the next five years, leading members of the criminal groups were imprisoned. The political reaction caused, in addition to the overcrowding of prisons, a forced redistribution of power within the criminal gangs, which, right from inside the prisons, reformed their internal system, even to the point of strengthening it.

In 2011, the first government of the FMLN – the current leftist political party inspired by revolutionary Augustin Farabundo Martí, a former guerrilla in the conflict that ended in 1992 – experimented with a new approach to dealing with the problem of the maras: a kind of détente that included, among other interventions, the transfer of leaders to less secure prisons in exchange for their commitment that the murder rate perpetrated by their affiliates would decrease. Although this truce promoted by the then ruling party did indeed lead to an exponential and unprecedented reduction in the number of murders in El Salvador, it was never accepted by the public and the political establishment-including some officials and leaders of the FMLN itself. Distrust also justified by the fact that the politicians who had promoted this strategy never fully clarified the government’s actual role in this arrangement with the maras, thus dispelling once and for all doubts about the total transparency and bonhomie of the operation.

In 2014, another change of government returned the pandillas to maximum security prisons, giving them the status of terrorist organizations. The response of these criminal groups was not long in coming. Indeed, 2015 was marked by major violence and killings, especially of Salvadoran police and military personnel.

In turn, the police and military began to adopt strategies increasingly typical of a country at war, going so far as to perpetrate territorial control procedures that were not entirely legal.

NAYIB BUKELE AND THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

The 2019 presidential elections saw the victory of Nayib Bukele, an independent candidate of the Nuevas Ideas party – promoter of a social conservatism diametrically opposed to the political system that had been established so far among the previously mentioned parties. The overwhelming victory, also won thanks to his promise to fight hard against the violence of the maras, allowed Bukele to change Salvadoran politics from within, implementing economic reforms – very famous, also and especially for the criticism he drew on his presidency, is the one related to Bitcoins – but also judicial and pertaining to the national security sector.

Last 2021, on the occasion of the debut of the new Legislative Assembly, Bukele ordered the dismissal of five magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber and the Attorney General’s Office through what has been dubbed a “Self-Coup.” In their place were inserted trusted officials from Nuevas Ideas.

In general, the political strategies undertaken so far by Bukele have proven to be imprudent, reckless, and characterized by a strong authoritarian bias – which is being exacerbated even more every day due to the non-existence of an opposition capable of countering government choices. Two concrete facts that perfectly explicate the current authoritarian political situation are that:

– in just two years, military spending has doubled

– last September 2021, El Salvador’s highest court ruled that the president can serve two consecutive terms, paving the way for Bukele’s possible reelection in the 2024 elections

STATE OF EXCEPTION IN EL SALVADOR…

Although publicly the President categorically condemns the Salvadoran maras, he negotiated with them in great secrecy and then made sure that, with the connivance of the Prison Authorities, everything was covered up.

Returning to the events of last March 26 – when some 87 members of the criminal gangs were murdered in two days – in order to give an immediate government response, Bukele convened the Legislative Assembly, thus having it approved the state of exception for 30 days (later extended and currently in effect) consisting of:

– the suspension of the freedom of meeting;

– the possibility of intercepting the communications and correspondence of the population without the need to obtain the Court’s authorization in advance;

– the possibility for the Authorities – military and police – to detain for 15 days anyone deemed to be a suspect.

Since the signing of the 1992 Peace Treaties, it does not appear that such a restrictive measure of the population’s individual freedoms has ever been adopted. In fact, the only “similar precedent” that can be discerned in Salvadoran policies is the Special Decree issued during the pandemic to restrict, among other things, the right to free transit.

Further inflaming the climate, which is increasingly taking on the appearance of a civil war, are the findings of a landmark journalistic investigation. The pool revealed that the unprecedented wave of murders that bloodied the streets of El Salvador for two days was triggered by an alleged violation of a pact between the government and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) gang. On the point, however, President Bukele’s government has yet to clarify the situation. In the meantime, national and international organizations report that a number of human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests by the security forces, are being committed during the period of the exception regime: in fact, to date, more than 43,000 people are in detention as a result of the application of this regime.

As if that were not enough, the president declared that the exception regime will be extended as long as necessary, calling it the “chemotherapy to eliminate the cancer of maras from the country.“

Three aspects are frightening in this tense situation:

1) the large number of mass arrests and conducted entirely arbitrarily and, often, using force by the police and military. Estimates speak of some 3,000 cases of arbitrary arrests which, following the abolition introduced by the exception regime of the 72-hour limit on administrative detention, can force innocent people into detention for days, perhaps months;

2) the uncertain duration of the exception regime. The President recently stated that “clearly the exception regime is exception, it will not last forever” and “we do not expect it to last a decade, but neither do we expect it to be removed in two, three months before the war against the gangs is over.” Seeing the first concrete results in terms of social dissent and human rights violations directly related to the same in fact, the longer this regime is in place the more we risk moving toward civil revolt of a population already greatly tested by the social and economic effects of the pandemic

3) the resilience of the Salvadoran social fabric in the immediate future. Prison, in fact, has proven to be a place of radicalization for Salvadoran criminal organizations, so it may not be the most suitable solution to counter the spread of violence in the country, in addition to involving the detention of innocent people given the arbitrariness of the strategy. What is more, it is shaping up to be necessary to find alternative sources to sustain the massive increase in funds for the armed forces and defense realized following the adoption of the exception regime. This threatens even more the social and economic resilience of El Salvador’s interior.

… AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE POPULATION

A very strict censorship mechanism was also adopted with the exception regime, which makes it impossible to draw up accurate estimates of the concrete impact on the Salvadoran population of the extraordinary measures adopted by the government.

The NGO Cristosal in its Information Report on the Status of Respect for Human Rights mentions, among other violations: arbitrary arrests, inhumane conditions inside prisons that resulted in at least 40 deaths (some of which showed typical signs of extra-legal executions), torture and mistreatment by the armed forces. The NGO also sends a message to the international community that El Salvador is creating a scenario conducive to the perpetration of crimes against humanity, in accordance with the standards set by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

A direct consequence of this new climate that we might call “dictatorial-like” is the exponential increase in migration, both internal and extra-frontier. Despite the lack of records monitoring the flows, Cristosal herself, has collected the following figure, which must, however, be read as a downward estimate: at least 85 people were forced to migrate internally between March 26 and June 15, 2022.

Also on the rise are young people dropping out of school, especially those living in areas controlled by the pandillas, for fear of looming in raids by the armed forces.

Significantly, extortion, the main economy of the criminal gangs, has not stopped under the exception regime, a sign that the pandillas continue to be active.

However, a large segment of the population supports the president, who immediately prior to the March events enjoyed 85 percent of citizen support. Nayib Bukele’s communication strategy is based on a strong dialectic whose key to success is leveraging what he calls the war on terrorists, the “chemotherapy against El Salvador’s cancer.” This choice is key in pushing young people to enlist in the military and police forces-which is also why, as seen above, funding for them has been doubled in the past two years.

The climate of civil war hovers strongly in Salvadoran society since the constitutional guarantees that have been suspended by the regime allow: strong control over telephone lines; home invasion even without a warrant; and invasion of citizens’ privacy and freedom. The population – devastated by the various activities of criminal gangs, many years of past conflict and the pandemic – has reached the limit of endurance.

Today, the state of exception poses a serious threat to the democratic process that El Salvador initiated after the signing of the 1992 Peace Treaties and that has been the model for years for other South American states to emerge from the civil wars that characterized many of these territories in the 1980s.

Indeed, with this new regime and the resulting repression and restriction of many of the people’s democratic freedoms, there is a risk of plunging El Salvador once again into a full-blown civil war.

The current events in El Salvador-which are also occurring in other countries-are a direct emanation of an internecine war that survives latent changes of government but is ready to resurface when the balance of power shifts. The failure to reintegrate criminal gangs has caused a situation of inherent violence that is self-perpetuating and leaves the population exhausted, desperate, and without hope of a dignified life.

This situation goes to aggravate the already complicated situation in the region. The total lack of security and stability, in fact, is a problem that has always affected the entire Central American Region, which is largely controlled by criminal groups and run by corrupt governments.

This, moreover, has always been one of the main causes of migration of tens of thousands of people who decide to flee this area in order to seek a better and more stable future. Over the past century, Salvadorans, in fact, have moved all over the world to escape violence, although today most live in the United States.

The Migration Policy Institute estimates that ¼ of Salvadorans (about 2 million people) are outside their country – many of them in Italy – which gives us the idea that in the face of a tragic socio-historical past, the present is no less and continues to plague the Salvadoran exile community who, although safely out of the country, are in constant contact with their family members still in El Salvador and are greatly concerned about their current living conditions.

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(Anti) American caravan: a jealous love

Rainer Maria Baratti 18 January 2021

The Migrant Caravan is knocking on the doors of the United States to warn them: “it’s your fault we were forced to leave”. The sun is rising, and we must continue our journey through history. It is the story of a sick love between the United States and Latin America. It is a story more than a century long. It is a story that begins in the early 1900s with the intent of the United States to establish itself as a regional and world power and to transform the Caribbean into a coveted “American Lake.” It is a story that saw Latin America’s dependence increase between the two world wars. It is a story of multinationals, investors, U.S. administrations, international organizations, doctrines, revolutions, coups and the myth of Pan-Americanism. It is also the history of the Cold War, drug trafficking, development projects, the CIA and terrorism. Our Caravan can now set off on a historical journey to discover a history where anti-Americanism has been transformed into hope. With the end of World War II, the United States found themselves in position of dominance with respect to Latin America. The conflict had made commercial transactions between Latin Americans and the rest of the world virtually impossible, and the war had destroyed, or severely weakened, the power of nations that might have posed a timid threat to American supremacy in the region. Roosevelt wanted to translate this strong dominance into an international organization, and this theme flowed into the discussions of the Pan American Conference in Chapultepec, Mexico, in February 1945. Here it was declared that any attack on any American state represented an attack on all states in the region. The final act marked the first step in the direction of a post-war military alliance in the Western Hemisphere. All states at the Chapultepec Conference took part in the establishment of the United Nations Organization (UN). The United States believed that, prior to the conference, a historic conflict had to be healed: that between the Monroe Doctrine – according to which the United States did not tolerate intervention by European powers in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere – and what was supposed to represent the internationalism of the UN. Originally, in fact, the UN should have had strong powers on regional issues and the problem was that any intervention of the United States in Latin America could have been prevented by the veto of Great Britain or the Soviet Union. In the end, four articles, from 51 to 54, were inserted in the UN statute, which in effect safeguarded the ability of the United States to exercise its influence in the western hemisphere without breaking the rules of the new organization. The articles protected the right of regional collective organizations to resolve disputes and opt for individual or collective self-defense. In this regard, in 1947, with the United States at the height of its power, the American Republics signed the Treaty of Rio: a collective defense pact that became a model for many other military alliances formed by the United States in the first decade of the Cold War. The Rio Treaty thus legitimized American intervention and gave a new internationalist emphasis to the Monroe Doctrine. So in 1951 the Organization of American States was formally constituted to promote coordinated economic, political and military action and to resolve inter-American disputes. However, there was a strong problem for the United States: nationalism and anti-Americanism were growing in Latin American countries. For many, the logic of dependence and the dominance in the commercial sphere of American multinationals were considered the main culprits of the serious levels of inequality. For example, in 1950 the GDP of all of Latin America was one-seventh that of the United States which had the same population. In the same year, Latin America accounted for 28% of total exports and 35% of U.S. imports. It should also be noted that the American share of exports from Cuba, Nicaragua and Guatemala was between 70 and 80% of the total. In practice, the “South” depended on the “North” and this trend was destined to increase during the Cold War, even though the US gaze was focused on Asia and Europe to keep the Soviet Union at bay. Another important issue was the Soviet Union itself. The policy adopted by the United States was one of containment. This policy was coined by George Kennan towards communism as a whole and the main concept was to contain the USSR (i.e. to keep it within its current borders) in the hope that internal divisions, failure or evolution of the political context could put an end to what was perceived as the threat of a persistently expansionist force. In this perspective, it is worth mentioning the case, in 1951, of the new president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, who tried to introduce a progressive taxation system, a new welfare system and to increase workers’ wages. To this was added the expropriation of 400,000 uncultivated agricultural lands of the United Fruit Company, an American company with interests throughout Latin America which became Chiquita Brands in 1984. The reaction of the company was to put pressure on the U.S. government with the result that the Eisenhower administration approved a CIA plan to overthrow the regime with the help of Guatemalan exiles trained by the U.S. in bases located in Nicaragua and Honduras. In the same vein, between 1953 and 1954, the United States sponsored a resolution of the Organization of American States which declared that the communist control of any country in the Western Hemisphere was a threat to the security of all members. The resolution was passed by 17 votes to one-the vote of Guatemala. As a last desperate move, Arbenz turned to the Soviet bloc in search of weapons. In May 1954, Czechoslovakian-made weapons arrived, but the following month a small contingent led by Castillo Armas attacked from Honduras. Meanwhile, American planes bombed Guatemala City. Conseqeuntly, lands were returned to the United Fruit

The (anti)American caravan: the beginning of a sick love

Rainer Maria Baratti 18 January 2021

The Migrant Caravan is knocking at the doors of the United States to warn them “it’s your fault we were forced to leave.” This is yet another chapter in a difficult relationship between the United States and Latin America. A story more than a century long. It is a story that began in the early 1900s with the United States’ intent to establish itself as a regional and world power and to transform the Caribbean into the desired “American Lake.” It is a story that saw Latin America’s dependence increase between the two world wars. It is a story of multinationals, investors, U.S. administrations, international organizations, doctrines, revolutions, coups, and the myth of Pan-Americanism. It is also the history of the Cold War, drug trafficking, development projects, the CIA and terrorism. Our Caravan can now set off on a historical journey to discover a history where anti-Americanism has been transformed into hope. 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Roosevelt was a firm believer of the doctrines of Mahan and of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is a theory according to which the history of human societies responded to the logic of survival of the fittest. This theory provided the foundation for numerous theories of racial supremacy and for advocates of the “white man’s burden”, that is the role of the “white man” as a civilizer. The ideas of Mahan, a U.S. admiral, on the other hand, focused on the position of the naval power and on the assumption that the development of trade is essential in terms of power increase. He also believed that, because the sea is the fastest and cheapest means of transporting goods it is in the interest of a state to develop a commercial fleet and to ensure its security through an adequate navy that can prevent the routes from being destroyed by any external threat. These two theories have been translated, on the one hand, into the desire to export “progress” through investments and capital, and, on the other, to ensure that these investments were made in countries which were important from the point of view of trade routes. With these objectives in mind, the administration of the time, obtained the independence of Panama from Colombia with a treaty that authorized the United States to build and control what would later become the Panama Canal in 1913; fundamental to reduce the timing of trade routes. Moreover, to further consolidate the American dominance over the Caribbean, the Platt Amendment was included in the Cuban constitution. This amendment established the criteria for intervention in Cuban affairs and allowed the United States to maintain a naval base in Cuba (Guantanamo). The United States used this amendment by intervening in some Cuban affairs in 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1920. 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The same fate occurred to Mexico, which saw the presence of armed troops from 1914 until 1917, the year in which new elections were held and a new constitution was ratified in which a strong anti-American sentiment was easily discernible. It should be noted that in the 1920’s the economic influence of the United States was relevant in Latin America. The United Fruit Company and the Standard Fruit Company (today Dole Fruit Company) in fact, controlled most of the profits in the region. These two companies competed for dominance in the region and held strong control in countries that came to be known as the “banana republics”, namely: Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Time and again, Latin American journalists have accused the companies of bribing national governments for preferential treatment or to consolidate their monopoly. 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The status of women within the peace transition process in Colombia

Elena Di Dio 18 January 2021

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Recent studies have shown how, in the context of post-conflict reconstruction, women’s participation is significant in achieving a more stable and lasting peace. The economic and social recovery of the community also benefits from the integration of women and their political participation. To support this, tools such as the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index, which measures and ranks the well-being of women in each country, are being created. Even the United Nations Security Council, in 2000, has recognized the centrality of the role of women in the reconstruction of post-conflict societies. With the establishment and approval of seven resolutions on women (dealing with peace and security) and the drafting of the recommendations of the CEDAW Committee, it creates the framework that countries must consult and adopt to achieve a sustainable and inclusive peace. Women’s participation not only ensures that the rights violated during conflict are returned to women, but also contributes to the structural transformation of society towards participatory democracy and security for all citizens. The gender approach in the Colombia peace agreement: the role of women During the decades-long conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrilla group, women have been protagonists in various ways. They have fought in the ranks of the revolutionary group (just think about the guerrilla “Negra Karina”, considered one of the fiercest fighters and now actively participating in the peace process). But above all, Colombian women have suffered the conflict on their skin, through sexual violence, or seeing themselves forced to flee their homes with their children. The gender issue in the conflict was not an isolated event. In fact, it is estimated that between 1958 and 2016, 54% of victims and more than half of those displaced by the conflict were women, while between 25 and 26 thousand suffered sexual violence. In line with the recommendations of the CEDAW Committee, the end of the conflict in Colombia has become an opportunity for women victims to become peacemakers. Thus, in 2014, during the negotiations, the first gender subcommittee in a peace process was inaugurated. This specific branch of the commission is responsible for integrating specific measures to improve women’s lives into all agenda items. Formed by representatives from the national government and FARC, the subcommittee inserts women’s perspectives within the agreement itself, through the effort of 18 organizations specializing in women’s rights and in rights of the LGBT+ community, as well as 10 former guerrilla women of various nationalities and 10 sexual violence experts. As a result, since 2014, 60% of the victims who presented testimony to the commission in Havana, where the negotiations took place, have been women. The gender approach, therefore, is implemented in all parts of the peace agreement, through more than one hundred specific measures and outlining eight thematic axes. Equal access to rural property between men and women and guarantee of the rights of agricultural workers with different sexual orientation and/or gender identity are included in the Integral Rural Reform. The political and representative participation of women is guaranteed through measures to prevent the specific risks they may encounter in their work within the decision-making bodies created by the agreements. Access to truth, justice and reparation for the crimes committed during the conflict is also and especially allowed to women, who most of all have appealed to the Truth Commission. Gender victimization has been publicly acknowledged in all its modalities through the strengthening of women’s organizations and their effort towards political and social participation. Thus, the peace agreement, in its gender approach, seeks equality and universality as characteristics of the transition to peace and post-conflict Colombian society. The subcommittee acts concretely in the peace process through the allocation of resources and the regulation of the principle of alternation within autonomous parties and organs. With regards to gender-based violence, various forms of prevention and protection of women are established, as well as measures against impunity for war crimes. Through these interventions, the agreement and the commission aim at the development of a sustainable, stable, and lasting peace. The Colombian woman today Despite these remarkable steps forward against gender discrimination, women in Colombia are still not considered equal to men. 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Jaramillo Piedrahita argues that: “here a man is more likely to be tried for stealing a

Petare, Venezuela: the most violent slum in the world

Elena Di Dio 18 January 2021

Dulce Nombre de Jesús de Petare is the full name of the suburb east of Caracas in Venezuela, known as one of the most populated slums in the world. Precisely, with its 369 000 inhabitants, Petare occupies the seventh place in the world ranking, second only to Neza-Chalco-Itza, (Mexico) in all of Latin America. Petare, like many other slums in the world, is composed of an informal and precarious housing conglomerate, located on the fringes of a metropolis (in this case Caracas, capital of Venezuela, with its 6 million inhabitants), which very rarely benefits from local and national public policies. Here, criminal gangs have therefore occupied the political vacuum by taking over local economies for illicit business. The city looks like a cluster of red brick buildings exposed or covered with colored plaster, held up by concrete structures to even out the difference in height caused by the slopes of the mountains surrounding the Venezuelan capital, on which the slum rises. 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However, the slum has retained its commercial core. It is also home to two universities: Universidad Santa María and Universidad Metropolitana. Venezuela’s most recent political history has seen millions of disenfranchised citizens recognize Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution as the chance for social, economic, and racial inclusion in a deeply unbalanced society. But now, with their lives disrupted by the economic and social disaster resulting from the implementation of Maduro’s policies, many of these citizens are turning against the president. Indeed, Venezuela’s economic decline has caused an exponential increase in the number of inhabitants of informal urban sectors (slums) such as Petare, due to the collapse below the poverty line of a large segment of the population. The most violent slum Petare is to be considered a city within the suburbs of Caracas, Venezuela, as it is itself divided into hundreds of neighborhoods. The narrow, nameless streets leave no room for visitors, making it an impregnable stronghold. Since the city is located at an altitude of almost one thousand meters, one of the few ways to access it is by Metrocable: a cable car that departs from the center of Caracas, located in the lowest part of the valley, and takes pedestrians to the highest points of the mountain. This type of transportation is integrated into the public transportation system of the municipality of Caracas, and is very common in the large mountain metropolises of Latin America. Survival is the daily challenge of the slum inhabitants: they live in extreme poverty in a country that can no longer provide a reliable source of water or electricity. Some sectors of the Petare slum remain without water for periods of days on end, and blackouts rage nationwide, leaving the whole of Venezuela without electricity. Its unique urban conformation allows organized crime to proliferate. The Petare slum is one of the poorest areas of Venezuela, and the rate of armed robberies, murders and kidnappings reaches a very high figure here, making this area the most corrupt in Caracas. According to Business Insider’s report, the Venezuelan capital earned the title of the world’s most violent city in 2015. Although this number has been debated, the homicide rate stands at 119.87 per 100,000 inhabitants. The country’s shocking level of violence is directly related to its social, economic and political dysfunction, and also by the political-economic crisis Venezuela has lived since 2013. Petare is the “home” of organized criminal gangs and constantly fighting each other, it is where the reign of crime is accentuated without restraint. The real sectors that make up the slum are the subject of territorial dispute for the control of illicit activities. Wilexis’ mega gang Wilexis Alexander Acevedo Monasterios, a.k.a. “the Wilexis,” has begun to be frequently mentioned, since 2014, among Petare residents for his illicit activities, climbing the lists of the most wanted by the municipal and state police, the national police, and the Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas Penales y Criminalísticas (CICPC). The young fugitive quickly distinguished himself from the other criminal gangs in Petare for his actions to control the territory. By establishing, unofficially, various sectors of the slum as “Zonas de Paz” in fact, he established himself in the criminal world, becoming the undisputed leader of the largest gang in the slum. As stated by an anonymous informant, the Peace Zones have enshrined the power of Wilexis, who has begun to equip more and more people with weapons and then affiliate them with his gang and poses “as if he were king of them all.” These areas are characterized by the absence of controls: the access to the inside of the slum is informally forbidden to the police and, in the rare occasions in which they try to enter inside the control zone of Wilexis, they are punctually forced to engage in violent clashes with the members of his gang. More than 200 criminals are part of the “Wilexis” gang. Its members range from 13 to 28 years of age and the crimes they are most frequently guilty of are: murder for hire, drug trafficking

The conflict in Colombia: story of the soldier who fights for the truth

Elena Di Dio 18 January 2021

Today is the beginning of December, but the heat shows no sign of letting up. I am in Colombia, where I’ve come to write my master’s thesis and, by chance or fate, I’ve met M.: a soldier in the national army who has discharged himself after six years of service. At that unforeseen meeting at the swimming pool, he was immediately intrigued by my obvious European background. Since then, he has often come to the apartment I share with other students to let us taste typical dishes cooked to perfection, to teach us how to dance salsa and cumbia in the living room, to share with sincere pride the traditions of his country. Sharing is a trait that distinguishes Colombians, and M. seems to want to share as much as possible with us, especially his troubled past, the history of his country that he loves so much. When I explained to him that I am analyzing the contents of the peace agreement between the government and the FARC guerrillas, his eyes lit up and he confessed to me that he was a soldier in the army in that very conflict that has torn Colombia apart for more than 50 years and that in 2016 seems to have reached a truce. Today he is here to tell me about it. He sits down next to me and pours me a glass of freshly made aguapanela. Let us begin. LM: “Why have you decided to become a soldier in the National Army of Colombia?” M: “When I was 17, I graduated from high school and found myself at a crossroads. The idea of being able to choose a military career was given to me by my aunt when she told me about her partner, who was an NCO in the army. She explained to me that those who are part of the institution enjoy several benefits: a fixed salary, the possibility to study, health insurance, retirement after 25 years of work. In addition, I always liked physical activity, in fact I initially enrolled in the university, in the faculty of physical education. The day they were recruiting to join the army I had to make the first decision: go for the military test or go for an exam at the university. Actually, the choice wasn’t even there: if I had gone to university, I wouldn’t have been able to be financially stable because I didn’t have the support of my parents since my mother didn’t have a job at that time, so I decided to enlist. I joined the army and I had medical, psychological, physical exams and they went very well. I was first in line of all those who took them in my area. I was also one of the youngest.” The first time I arrived at the military academy the feeling I had was that I wanted to go home. We traveled in two large buses full of kids. After more than 2 hours of travel, it was 4:30 a.m., we arrived and as we got off the buses a soldier ordered us pick up all the dry leaves from the ground. I did not go home then, I had a lot of eyes on me: my friends in the neighborhood, my family saying around, “M. is gone”… I was testing myself, but if those expectations had not been there, I think I would have gone straight home. That is when one of the adventures I think I’ll never be able to forget in life, which was the National Army, began.” The military academy: how to become a soldier in the National Army of Colombia M: “I was in the military school for 18 months. The period is divided into three semesters: first you are a recruit, then a brigadier and finally a dragoon. In the last semester you take a counterguerrilla course and there are tests that are exceedingly difficult; they are challenges. There you perceive them as challenges, but when you get out and see the reality of the situation, you realize that they are real abuse. They put a lot of psychological, physical and nutrition pressure on you, they hit you with the bed slats if you make any mistakes; they use violence to teach. At one point in my second semester, I fought back against a captain who had just arrived at the school. We slept only 3-4 hours a day when we could sleep. At night we had to clean, and that day we were cleaning the bathrooms as fast as we could so that we could go to sleep. The captain came into the room and ordered us to do exercises on the floor while he walked between us and kicked us. He was approaching me when I told him that if he touched me, I would forget that he was the captain, and I was a student. He still put his foot on me, so I got up, pushed him away and left. I reported to the school commander. At that time news was coming out from all over Colombia that in the army superiors were taking advantage of their power to mistreat us, no soldier was spared from the abuse. It wasn’t just happening at our place, but in all the battalions it was something quite common.” “The first time I heard the story of the conflict against the guerrillas, I was told about it there, but since I’ve always liked to inquire things on my own, I looked into the reality of the country.” “The impression I got was that the guerrilla rebels had armed themselves to claim their rights to be heard by the state, and that they had a different way of thinking. But in the academy what they teach you is that you must hate them, you have to kill them, and blood has to flow. There are military songs that say, “I want to swim in a pool full of blood, guerrilla blood. Blood! Blood!

The events of 2019 and their impact on the war in Colombia

Elena Di Dio 18 January 2021

In Colombia, the transitional phase that sees the incessant civil war acquiesce towards peace knows an abrupt halt during 2019, just three years after the signing of the bilateral agreement. What are the new obstacles standing in the way of the peace agreement between the government and the revolutionary armed group FARC – EP? To answer this question, we need to take a step back. Colombia entered the new millennium in a situation of great instability. The guerrilla groups that rebelled against the state, which was considered non-existent in large rural areas of the country, had reached the height of their power. Chief among these armed groups were the FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo). With the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez (not coincidentally nicknamed “the warlord”), the situation was quickly reversed. His controversial counteroffensive strategies, over the course of his two terms in office, brought remarkable results including the beginning of the FARC’s decline. Since his election to the presidency in 2010, Juan Manuel Santos has begun to depart from his predecessor’s political ideas by promoting dialogue with revolutionary forces until a peace agreement is reached. The bilateral treaty addresses numerous issues considered the fundamental causes of more than 50 years of internal conflict. The document lists the various measures that, by mutual agreement, must be taken by both parties to establish peace between the government and the FARC group. However, a few months later, the end of Santos’ term of office calls into question all the efforts made until then. The election of Iván Duque Márquez, a close ally of Uribe, and his manifest intention to modify the agreement, puts former FARC combatants on notice. In addition, the events that have been making the situation in Colombia even more tense since 2019 hint at a concrete threat of a return to war. The FARC: from armed struggle to political struggle and back again First of all, the disarmament of the guerrillas, supervised by a UN commission created ad hoc, is completed by the majority of FARC members, but not by all of them. Some thousands of fighters, in fact, have refused to come to terms with the government. These never came out of the jungle and never abandoned the armed struggle. Their actions have scaled down, in parallel with the number of their members, but their existence endures the peace process. The most recent information on this subject, claims that these groups have sought refuge in Venezuela, while some speculate that they may be affiliated with other guerrilla groups such as the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN). What is certain is that, due to the current circumstances of Colombian politics, the group of demobilized is growing stronger thanks also to the affiliation of those who, after embracing civilian life, have decided to return to live in the jungle as clandestine fighters. Critical issues in the peace process If implemented, the treaty could meet the demands of revolutionary groups and avoid further casualties. However, its implementation is encountering numerous obstacles, as has happened in the past in the history of the Colombian conflict. First of all, the political participation of the ex-members of the FARC has not been assured in the last elections. The new political party has had little prominence, perhaps due to the bad reputation the group has earned through the decades. More importantly, since embracing civilian life, many repentants have seen death at the hands of hit men. Now a widespread practice in Colombia; systematic assassinations of political opposition have claimed the lives of some 200 FARC members and more than 600 social leaders, indigenous tribesmen, and human rights activists since the signing of the treaty. Land cultivation and property management was the main issue that caused the outbreak and prolongation of the conflict over the decades. The Integral Rural Reform and the reconversion of lands previously used for cocaine cultivation are therefore at the core of the peace treaty. Nonetheless, implementation and financing are slow, and peasants are not benefiting at all from the new conditions. The shortcomings of the Truth Courts The issue of victims of the conflict is not being satisfactorily addressed. The frightening figures remain far-fetched, and there is speculation that the actual numbers are much higher. The Truth Commission, not being imperative with its sanctions, struggles to carry out its duties. And so, the victims remain without justice, the perpetrators unpunished and the corpses unnamed. But not only that; the greatest defect of the Integral System of Justice that has been established since the signing of the agreement is that it does not guarantee any kind of protection to those who want to testify for the truth, and the sad tradition of murders in Colombia makes this system seem like a trap for those who want to contribute to peace and justice. The circumstances listed so far make the period of dialogue and mutual concessions that characterized former President Santos’ two terms in office seem like a rip-off of Colombia’s violent rule. Instead of strengthening the foundations of peace, his successor and current president Duque directly undermines them, directing his political propaganda against the agreement with the FARC and financing it with the Fund for Peace, thus making use of international funds for electoral and personal purposes. The threat of a return to civil war in Colombia is therefore becoming more and more concrete as we move into 2019. Some encouraging signs Nevertheless, the support of the international sphere that the peace agreement with the FARC has received cannot be ignored. In addition to the UN and its Security Council, individual states have also been advocating for peace in Colombia, committing to the bilateral ceasefire and as members of the Truth Commission. In addition, there are the citizens who are showing that they have grown tired of the violence and of the systematic murder of the political opposition, which inevitably leads to the death of democracy. This part of the population, with a strong and fresh

SOCIAL CONFLICTS NEVER SOOTHED: El Salvador falls into a new wave of violence

Martina Bossi

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The status of women within the peace transition process in Colombia

Petare, Venezuela: the most violent slum in the world

The conflict in Colombia: story of the soldier who fights for the truth

The events of 2019 and their impact on the war in Colombia

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