Marchers write slogans in the walls in San Salvador, May 2013. Rene Figueroa/Demotix. Some rights reserved.
Between January and September 2015, a total of 5,015 homicides were recorded in El Salvador. With a 71% increase compared to the same period last year, 2015 is on track to becoming the deadliest year in the country’s already violent recent history. In August, the monthly homicide count surpassed the 900 mark, a sobering figure reminiscent of the bloodshed that tore through the country during its brutal civil war of the 1980s. And with increased lethal clashes between gangs and security forces and a surge of criminal activity aimed at intimidating citizens, the dynamics of violence in El Salvador are starting to look less like a mere law enforcement concern and more like a crisis that resembles an armed conflict.
Violence in El Salvador is, of course, nothing new. Since the end of civil war in 1992, levels of insecurity have remained high as rival gangs spread through neighbourhoods and battle each other for the control of drug sales and lucrative extortion rackets. But while gang-related crime has been an ever-present fixture in Salvadoran life for the past two decades, this latest outburst of violence reflects a worrisome escalation of the problem that has begun to uncover the true scope of a social and political crisis blocking the path towards a more promising future.
