What motivates gang participation in El Salvador? A discussion of power and gender.
El Salvador faces deeply impactful issues in relation to gangs, such as increased homicide rates, overcrowding in prisons, social exclusion and economic decline. These factors highlight the significant presence and impact which criminal operations have in the country, where some gangs are estimated to incorporate tens of thousands of members. So, one must then consider, what motivates an individual to join a gang in a country that is so deeply affected by them?
Firstly, lets cast a brief look on the historical aspects. Many of the factors which feed gang participation stem from the country’s civil war, which occurred from 1980 until 1992. During the conflict, over 75,000 people were killed and more than one million Salvadorans were displaced, many of whom were forced to flee to the U.S illegally to escape the violence and destabilisation that the country was facing. However, whilst in the U.S these groups formed communities due to shared identities and experiences, particularly in a country where many did not speak the language or hold legal residency and as a result, they often did not have access to jobs or higher education. Therefore, these groups largely fell into gangs due to the sense of community they provided, as well as the economic support it presented in the face of limited alternative prospects. Throughout the 1980s many U.S states with high concentrations of these newly formed populations began to experience a significant rise in crime. In response, the U.S government implemented a deportation policy for all criminal offenders not of U.S citizenship to be deported after their prison sentence to their country of origin. This policy also included the deportation of illegal immigrants, many of whom had spent most of their life in the U.S but did not hold legal residency there. This subsequently meant there was a large influx of criminals and young people returning to El Salvador immediately after the end of its civil war, when the country did not have the necessary infrastructure to support unskilled, poorly educated and/or violent individuals. This caused a significant spike in crime and has subsequently made El Salvador one of Latin America’s most violent countries since the 1990s.
The motivating financial factors for gang participation are most broadly understood as widespread poverty, the lack of high-quality education and limited employment opportunities, all of which affect a large percentage of the Salvadoran population. These systemic issues are then fed by pervasive governmental inaction, corruption and a zero-tolerance policy approach to gang activity or affiliation. This has particularly manifested in a policy known as ‘mano dura’ (meaning hard hand), wherein any individual above the age of twelve can be convicted if found to have any visible gang affiliation – even through certain fashions, tattoos or haircuts. However, as lower-income Salvadoran youths are faced with incredibly limited job prospects, great instability in home and community life, and little incentive to remain in a crumbling public education system, gang participation remains an enticing and often only viable option. This necessity is also contributed to by the general wealth and stability which gangs are able to offer, as many operate successful multi-million-dollar business enterprises such as hotels, brothels, taxi companies and restaurants to support their operations and influence.
Some gangs even fully supplant the role of the state in communities by offering education to members, judicial hearings to resolve local disputes, employment in their business structures and security to neighbourhoods from other criminals in exchange for payment and cooperation. The economic capacity of gangs to create successful business structures not only highlights a profound inability of the state to create viable alternatives for its population, but also contradicts the common narrative which the Salvadoran government has perpetuated of gang members as being ‘los malos’ (meaning ‘the bad ones’), as gangs are able to provide employment, services and access to key resources which the government cannot. Faced with a plethora of obstacles to pursuing a path outside of gang membership, the reality facing many young Salvadorans is centred around the stagnation of social mobility. These failures of the state highlight the government’s preference for suppression rather than treatment, wherein the state has failed to ‘break the cycle’ of issues which centre gang participation as a necessity rather than a preference for young people.
As previously discussed, the pervasiveness of violence in Salvadoran society feeds the necessity for youths to seek security in gangs, however, the general perceptions of gender in El Salvador – in both the ‘machismo’ of men and the passiveness of women – play a key role in fuelling the desire to seek the power which is associated with gang membership. ‘Machismo’ is the belief that women should be subservient to men’s needs and desires, by caring for them, providing sexual pleasure and bearing children. Such attitudes strip women of their agency and objectify them, rather than recognising them as active members of society. However, such gendered hierarchies also feed the necessity for impoverished male youths to pursue gang participation in order to meet certain societal expectations of masculinity. This is explained by the fact that men are expected to be the breadwinners of the household, however, young men from low-income backgrounds with little academic experience are largely excluded from the job market. Thus, they seek other forms of income through gang participation to both embrace the masculinity associated with gangs and to maintain what is expected of them as the head of the household.
These images of male dominance and power, which dominate El Salvador’s views on gender, are also equated by Salvadoran men as symbolic of their right to women and their freedom to act upon them, often violently and sexually, without fear of reprisal. This normalisation of violence against women is exemplified by how the large majority of instances of sexual abuse and gender-based violence in El Salvador go unreported due to both the widespread acceptance of violence against women and the lack of trust in the police forces to pursue and successfully prosecute the perpetrator. Furthermore, the sexualised and passive expectation of women is further highlighted by the fact that the few women who join – or more commonly are forced to join – gangs, are often made to be sex slaves for members. The normalisation of such societal attitudes perpetuates the silencing which women experience under the gendered expectations of Salvadoran life, whilst also maintaining the masculinised image of gang members and their agency over women. Whilst such an issue lies in the wider social practices of Salvadoran society, they once more highlight a key failure of the state to intervene in areas where motives for gang participation emerge. The unreliability of police forces to successfully prosecute perpetrators of violence against women and the lack of state infrastructures to provide abused women a place of counselling or shelter exacerbates this issue and perpetuates access to and dominance over women as an enticing aspect of gang participation to young Salvadoran men.
Altogether, these factors demonstrate the myriad of issues underlying the ‘gang issue’ in El Salvador, particularly in relation to the cyclical patterns which exist between the levels of gang violence and participation and the failures of the state to intervene in various areas of youths’ lives, instead adopting an offensive and oppressive approach to gang affiliation. Such issues highlight the inability and weakness of the state to manage the impact, power and dominance of criminal actors through effective state systems of control and authority, such as the police force. Looking forward, without the provision of effective alternatives to supplant the influence and necessity of gang participation – such as a high-quality education, a stable labour market and the expansion of state services like counselling or relocation to communities less affected by gang violence – youths will continue to be motivated to seek the security and stability associated with gang participation as their only alternative.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
