El Salvador

April 19, 2017 By Fausta

AG Sessions: MS-13 could be designated as terrorist organization

*“Mata, roba, viola, controla” [“Kill, steal, rape, control”]*

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the MS-13 gang could be designated as a terrorist organization:

Speaking to a meeting of the Organized Crime Council on Tuesday, Sessions blamed open borders and lax immigration enforcement for the growth of the crime gang, which was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by Central American immigrants mostly from El Salvador.

He said his Justice Department would have “zero tolerance” for the gang violence.
. . .
Members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, are known for their violent methods and fierce gang loyalty. According to the National Gang Intelligence Center, MS-13 has more than 10,000 members in the United States, and more than 30,000 worldwide.

Here’s Sessions on the Tucker Carlson show,

Elena Toledo writes,

Donald Trump signed an executive order shortly after taking office in which he asked the Justice Department to convene a working group to go after transnational criminal organizations like MS-13, whose formal name is Mara Salvatrucha. They have been based mainly in El Salvador since 1990 when there was a wave of deportations from the United States, and many in the criminal hierarchy set up shop in the troubled Central American nation.

The Center for Immigration Studies posts on how Yet Another Brutal MS-13 Attack Shows Need for Crackdown on UACs [unaccompanied children (UACs)].
Other media reports allege that Mexican cartels use underage MS-13 members as hit men.

El Salvador has already designated the gang a terrorist group, and The U.S. Treasury Department declared the group a transnational criminal organization in October 2012,

While declaring the group a TCO, the department linked MS-13 to drug trafficking, kidnapping, human smuggling, sex trafficking, murder, assassinations, racketeering, blackmail, extortion and immigration offenses.

Related:
InSight Crime reports on Salvadoran organized crime: MS-13, Texis Cartel, MS-18 Barrio 18, and the Perrones.

I have been blogging about MS-13 for at least ten years.

April 11, 2017 By Fausta

El Salvador: Drug kingpin Chepe Diablo linked to vice-president

Not to be confused with Mexico’s El Chapo, El Salvador Arrests ‘Chepe Diablo,’ Investigates Ties with Vice President

El Salvador’s Attorney General’s Office arrested José Adán Salazar Umaña, alias “Chepe Diablo,” the alleged leader of the Texis Cartel, the most important drug trafficking and money laundering organization in the country. The arrest raises new questions about the links between Salazar Umaña and powerful politicians in El Salvador, including current Vice President Óscar Ortiz.

Salazar Umaña was arrested at noon on April 4 during a police operation that involved raids on some 50 properties, including hotels, gas stations and shops that either belong to Chepe Diablo or his associates. According to the authorities, the companies were used by the Texis Cartel to evade taxes or launder money that came from illegal activities.

According to InSight Crime’s report, Óscar Ortiz was allegedly laundering money through real estate transactions going back to 2000. Read the full article here.

March 10, 2017 By Fausta

Trump does Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador a favor

Monica Showalter explains how (emphasis added),

But the bigger favor is the one he’s done for Central America, particularly the “northern triangle” states of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Those nations, plus Mexico, in varying degrees, are in a demographic death spiral, losing too many people in prime working years they cannot afford to lose. Their window of development is getting narrow, a UCLA professor of economics explained to me. The statistics here show that by 2025, the fertility rate will be just 2.08% for the region as a whole, which is at or below replacement rate. The years following will be below replacement rate. Immigration, which primarily involves young people in their prime working years, has been a disaster for those countries, as has been their government’s dependence on remittances. There is not just a negative effect of dollars coming in to displace local productivity; there is also a social cost as families are broken up by migration. In fact, the IMF has pointed out that remittances tend to keep a country artificially underdeveloped. The money itself tends to benefit government cronies and make corruption less costly.

So let’s not kid ourselves as to what has happened. Trump’s statements and tweets have spared Americans billions in costs associated with illegal immigrants. But they have spared Central Americans the near fatal cost of unchecked emigration.

Just the other day I posted on how Mexico is spending US$50million on legal aid for immigrants to fight deportation in the U.S., since the country makes more money from Mexicans who leave the country than from those who stay.

Plus immigration is a useful pressure valve for the discontent.

March 3, 2017 By Fausta

Central American gangs recruiting children in NY

This has been going on for a while – you may recall reports from ten years ago – but here’s the latest:
MS-13 gang is recruiting newly arrived migrant kids in New York, police say

Besides MS-13, police in Long Island say that they also have to contend with a number of other street gangs, including the Latin Kings, Netas and Sureños, that are all actively recruiting new members in suburban areas like Riverhead, Central Islip, Huntington Station and other neighborhoods with established Central American communities.

MS-13, however, seems to be the most worrisome to both law enforcement and Central American immigrants who dealt with the gang’s brutal tactics in their home nations.

The gang was founded more than two decades ago in southern California by immigrants fleeing El Salvador’s civil war. Its founders took lessons learned from the bloody conflict to the streets of Los Angeles, all the while building a reputation as one of the most ruthless and sophisticated street gangs in the country.
. . .
The gang now has a large presence in New York, Southern California, Washington D.C. and many rural areas on the East coast with substantial Salvadoran populations.

Over 10,000 members in 46 states.

Over in El Salvador,

Authorities in El Salvador dismantled a MS13 network allegedly dedicated to forcing women into marriages before assassinating the husband to collect insurance money, a scheme that speaks to the gang’s growing business sophistication.

Much more on MS-13 at InSight Crime.

February 1, 2017 By Fausta

El Salvador: MS13 and Barrio 18 responsible for most forced displacements

At InSight Crime:
El Salvador Gangs Responsible for 84% of Forced Displacement: Report

According to the report by the Civil Society Roundtable Against Forced Displacement by Violence and Organized Crime in El Salvador (Observatorio de la Mesa de Sociedad Civil contra el Desplazamiento Forzado por Violencia y Crimen Organizado en El Salvador) — which is comprised of ten non-governmental organizations — the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) was responsible for about a third of the forced displacements caused by the gangs, while their rivals in the Barrio 18 accounted for another third.

In many cases, however, it appears that researchers were unable to determine the gang responsible or the victims were unwilling to provide that information.

The police accounted for six percent of the displacements, followed by the military with two percent.

In what has become Latin America’s most violent country, InSight crime states, the MS13 and Barrio 18 have engaged on turf wars for several years, and

In recent years, the police and the army have joined in that fight. And increasingly vigilante groups are becoming important actors in this multifaceted conflict.

Read the full article here.

December 23, 2016 By Fausta

Immigration: Central American border surge from the Northern Triangle

From the WSJ:
Central Americans Surge at Border Before Trump Takes Over. Migrants from violence-plagued El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala push north in anticipation of new administration’s tougher border measures

The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 47,214 migrants along the southwest U.S. border in November, an increase of 44% compared with November 2015. It was the Border Patrol’s busiest month since June of 2014, when illegal entries from Central America were cresting.

Over the past six months, Border Patrol agents have caught nearly 240,000 migrants, an average of more than 1,300 a day—30% more than the same period a year earlier.

Click on the graph to read the article:

More at InSight Crime:
Honduras news

Report Says El Salvador Gangs Have Created a Parallel State

Cargo Robberies in Northern Triangle Hamper Regional Commerce

October 31, 2016 By Fausta

El Salvador: Videos of ruling party FMLM pledging to provide millions of dollars to 3 main gangs

InSight Crime’s Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson and Carlos Martínez found Videos Show FMLN Leaders Offering El Salvador Gangs $10 Mn in Micro-credit, apparently violating an anti-gang law that the FMLN promoted and helped pass six years ago.

The two Barrio 18 factions involved are Barrio 18 Revolucionarios and Barrio 18 Sureños, (emphasis added)

The two videos — obtained by Factum, El Faro and InSight Crime — show members of the ruling Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional – FMLN) party — which has controlled El Salvador’s government since 2009 — meeting with leaders of the MS13 and the two factions of the Barrio 18 gang, and pledging to provide millions of dollars in aid to the gang members.

The videos, which were taken surreptitiously, clearly show the faces of current Interior Minister Aristides Valencia and former Congressman Benito Lara, who was later security minister between June 2014 and January 2016, and has since become a presidential adviser on security- and gang-related matters.

The emergence of the videos comes just months after El Faro revealed an audio recording in which Valencia discussed with gangs a secret electoral pact for the second round of the 2014 presidential elections. The former FMLN guerrilla commander turned politician Salvador Sánchez Cerén won that election by a narrow margin.

Video,

At one point in the video, a gang leader reads a document, which appears to be outlining the plan Valencia refers to. The document states that the micro-credit fund would be used by the gangs to create companies, and that the responsible body to decide who would lend money would be a “credit committee.”

Valencia then explains that the gang members would be the actual committee

Read the full report here.

Parting question,
Now that the FARC is seeking to position itself as a political institution, will other criminal groups use that as a template in their respective countries?

October 17, 2016 By Fausta

The endless election season Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

With weeks to go before U.S. election day . . .Bloomberg Businessweek: Univision Needs Clinton Win For FCC Relief

ARGENTINA
Pope Francis makes Argentina’s “gaucho priest” and 6 others saints

BRAZIL
One picture says it all,

Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva at a recent event. AFP

Brazil’s Lula faces third set of corruption charges. Court cases could spell the end for former president’s hope of political comeback. One can hope.

COLOMBIA
Spain’s El País cries salty tears over evangelicals: How Colombia’s Evangelists undermined the peace referendum. Government underestimated power of group in run-up to vote on peace accords with FARC. I don’t think the translator realized that the word evangelists usually refers to itinerant preachers or the four writers of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

CUBA
Journalists Arrested in Cuba for “Illegal” Reporting of Hurricane Matthew

EL SALVADOR
MS13 Pooled Resources to Fund ‘Elite’ Unit: Report

HAITI
Under Hillary Clinton, US Officials Asked Haitians, Do You Like Bill?

The State Department would not say how much the agency paid for the polling in Haiti. The polling firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, was paid nearly $4 million for political polling in the 2014 campaign cycle, almost entirely by Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Stan Greenberg, the research firm’s chairman and CEO, served as Clinton’s pollster during his 1992 run for president.

MEXICO
Mexico’s Zapatista rebels to field a presidential candidate

Mexico Expects to Extradite ‘El Chapo’ to US in 2017; if he’s still alive, that is.

PANAMA
Offshore secrets of Brexit backer Arron Banks revealed in Panama Papers. Financier who spent £7.5m funding Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign linked to tax haven companies in British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar

VENEZUELA
Trickle-Down Effects Of Rapidly Deteriorating Venezuela