The “maras”, the gangs that are reigning terror in northern Central America, have resumed their criminal activities in Honduras and Guatemala, put on hold at the start of the coronavirus epidemic.
With the gradual lifting of sanitary confinement measures which had put a brake on delinquency, the corpses of victims of the “maras” have reappeared in the streets of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
In the night of Sunday August 16 alone, coordinated attacks by criminal gangs left five people dead in Tegucigalpa. Three days earlier, five bodies had already been collected after shootings in various parts of the city.
Victims of the war between gangs for the control of their territories, according to the authorities, who see in particular the hand of the dreaded Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).
This criminal gang, one of the main ones in the country with the Mara Barrio 18, engages like other gangs in pawnbroking, drug trafficking, racketeering and theft.
Gangs of this kind are the main culprits of the violence that places Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador among the most dangerous countries in the world – outside zones of armed conflict.
Endemic violence further accentuates the misery of the people of these countries, and is one of the main reasons that push them to take the path of exile to try to find a better life, mainly in the United States.
However, by mid-March, gang violence had decelerated significantly thanks to health protection measures against the pandemic, accompanied by curfews and a greater presence of security forces on the streets.
– Brief lull –
The lull lasted only a few weeks in Honduras and Guatemala, where violence broke out again with the timid resumption of economic activity.
Since the beginning of the year, have been recorded in Honduras “24 multiple assassinations (with a record) of more than 80 people who lost their lives”, specifies Migdonia Ayestas, the director of the Observatory of violence of the National University.
From January to August 2019, the total death toll stood at 2,322 assassinations, and this year it is 1,934 dead, for a population of 9.3 million inhabitants, according to police statistics from Honduras.
If the violence seems contained in El Salvador thanks to measures taken by the government of President Nayib Bukele, according to experts, in Guatemala the assassinations have resumed an upward curve similar to that noted in Honduras.
According to Guatemalan police, the resumption of criminal gang activity coincided with the reduction of curfew hours and the reopening of businesses on July 26.
The death toll in Guatemala (17 million inhabitants) stands for the first seven months of the year at 1,909 assassinations, against 2,805 in 2019.
– El Salvador remains calm –
In El Salvador (6.6 million inhabitants), on the other hand, the authorities report the continuing lull, with a death toll of 692 from January to August, against 1,729 for the same period in 2019.
The pandemic is not the only cause: the drop in violence had already started last year with the implementation of a new security policy. At the beginning of June 2019, the Salavdorian Ministry of Justice and Public Security recorded 9 to 10 murders per day, against 4.7 per day at the end of the year.
El Salvador “has become a benchmark in the region in terms of security,” trumpeted Minister Rogelio Rivas on Twitter, who attributes the decline to the “Territorial Control Plan” implemented by the government.
These measures include increased control of prisons to cut off communications with the outside of incarcerated gang leaders, improved police efficiency in cooperation with the military, and the fight against racketeering, one of the main sources of income for criminal gangs.
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