http://www.salanegra.elfaro.net/themes/publication_4/theme_1/img/credito.

pngReturn to start
http://www.salanegra.elfaro.net/themes/publication_4/theme_1/img/facebook_dark_bg.png
El Salvador

The alleged miracle of Acajutla

Roberto Valencia

Posted on December 8, 2014 | Comments (0)

Between 2011 and 2013 the killings in Acajutla fell 95%, and the murder rate stood below
those of Uruguay and Costa Rica. The explanation for these miraculous data is in a peace
process promoted by the municipality that began even before the famous Truce, but also
has at base the direct dialogue with the gangs. On the issue of security, acajutlens live
better today than five years ago, but there are substantial concerns that the lifesaving
process is naturalizing crimes such as extortion.
In the limit of neighborhoods and La Coquera Atarraya in Acajutla, ALS click the Mara
Salvatrucha own a bakery in which no work gang, but have two bakers employees. Photo
Roberto Valencia.
In the limit of neighborhoods La Coquera and La Atarraya in Acajutla, ALS a gang of the Mara Salvatrucha
owns a bakery in which no gang member work, but have two baker employees. Photo Roberto Valencia.

I expected a bunch of mareros, hands in the dough, but here I see only two bakers,
submission in their eyes, and bewildered to find that an outsider enters the bakery. The
smell of freshly baked bread agrees with the place; also the remains of flour on the floor, the
instruments, aprons. But at this bakery, owned by the Mara Salvatrucha, are missing the
homies.

-Good morning. I am looking for Cristian, he is named El Tremendo.

Bakers raise their gaze shyly, observe one to the other, and return to their own. They seem
more afraid than I am. I explain them what is that brought me to the neighborhood La
Coquera of Acajutla, besides the motorcycle taxi.

In Acajutla a miracle is happening. Since the starting of the millennium the town stands out
as one of the most violent in El Salvador: 52 murders in 2005 among a population of around
55,000, 59 corpses in 2008, 75 in 2011 ... But in 2012 the figure dropped to 20; and in 2013,
to 4. It is true that deaths declined nationwide due to negotiations between gangs and the
government, but while the national decline was 43%, here homicides plummeted 95%. The
rate per 100,000 population fall from 140 to 7, it was below that of Costa Rica and Uruguay.
Something like if the grotesque place that is now Selecta would happen to rub shoulders with
Germany in two years, or as if the minimum wage quadrupled. The miracle of Acajutla
deserved to be explained, and earlier this week I arrived in the city to listen those that
worked it out: municipal employees, victims, church pastors, policemen, entrepreneurs ...
Mara Salvatrucha knows something, and to talk to them I was told to come on Friday to the
bakery in La Coquera, and ask for El Tremendo, mediator of the gang Acajutlas Locos.

-The boys are over there -it breaks the silence, at last, one of the bakers, and points to a
path at the side of the bakery.

After thirty meters of sidewalk and fifty of dusty road, finally showed up a homie, which halts
just seeing me, he has the look and the attitude of a gamecock.

-Moiss Bonilla, of the town-hall, told me to arrive at 9 and ask for El Tremendo.

In the background, under the shadow of some trees, there is a group of eight or ten of them.
After a sign from the vigilant three approach. I repeat the reason for my visit, with emphasis
in my interest to know from pandilleros their version of the miracle.

-Here no one is named El Tremendo -says defiant a fat, head tattooed, pandillero.

***

If you have faith, the miracle of Acajutla is easy to understand.

"In September 2011, God told us: pray - says Mario Alas, pastor of the church Sea of
Galilee-. And every Sunday, at 5 in the morning, we began to pray in the park to cease
crime."

And Reyes Sermeo, also a priest, said: "We came to pray for the boundaries of Acajutla,
rebuking demons who wanted to get into the city. With prayer we tied down demons of
promiscuity, murder, violence ... God has supported us, but I know it's difficult to humanly
understand this".

If you do not have faith, it costs a little more, but it is worth a try.

Acajutla was a port before a city. The verbs embarking-disembarking anchored in these
lands since it was ruled for the glory of foreign kings. The Salvadoran State rewarded in
1961 the secular maritime vocation with the opening of one of the most modern port
complex in Central America. As the small settlement reached thousands of strangers in
search of work and future, in 1967 the Legislature recognized the strength with the title of
city. The hasty urbanization became a network of streets, neighborhoods and roads, so
messy that the city does not even have a park or a central square; and is a human
conglomerate in which is difficult to find some elder born in here.

The port generated prosperity, yes, but also prostitution, drugs, crime. Uprooting and poverty
encouraged migration to the United States in the eighties, and with the deportations in the
nineties gangs proliferated. As in the rest of the country, two gangs ended up monopolizing
the phenomenon: the 18 became strong in La Playa, a chain of brothels and taverns coveted
by sailors; and Mara Salvatrucha took the old, traditional, part of the city.

Prostitution, alcohol, drugs, maras, drug trafficking, money ... The stars so clustered that no
matter what did happen: Acajutla ended up as a national benchmark of violence.
The years 2009, 2010 and 2011 were the most violent ever remembered -68, 63 and 75
corpses; to match that rate, in London would have to have 1000 people killed every
month- but a chorus of heterogeneous voices coincide in pointing that these are the three
years in which the seed of the miracle was sown.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has allocated substantial resources to
analyze the phenomenon of violence, Barrio 18 was annihilated, evangelical churches began
praying in the park, the entrepreneur Daro Guadrn won the municipality for the Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), mediators emerged as social actors when the Mayor
opened them the doors, and nationally the Mara Salvatrucha and 18 signed the agreement
which became known as the Truce.

-Whit the noise from the Truce, the Mayor established a code: what about is ours is different
and well handle it with discretion - said Moiss Bonilla, a key element of the miracle.

Acajutlas event would be called therefore the Process. Its promoters strive to take distance
from the Truce, and reject viscerally the word, although at the basis of both initiatives is the
same basic ingredient: the dialogue with the gangs. The main difference is that the Process
did manage to involve a sector of the private companies and, another important difference is
that the municipal government assumed the paternity of the initiative and tried to build social
inclusion projects for the members of the gangs, such as the bakery in La Coquera.

***

-Here no one is named El Tremendo -says cuttingly a fat, head-tattooed marero-, but I know
that old man of the city-hall. What do you want?

It is an aka invented, but from now on will be Stocky. He is 34 years old and the father of a
16 years youth studying ninth grade and which Stocky is responsible to keep away from the
Mara. Stocky was imprisoned in Apanteos and Chalatenango, and now is leader in Acajutlas
Locos of La Coquera. He is not very high and has fattened in prison, but remains being one
of those profiles with which one wouldnt like to come to blows with. Now dressing long
shorts, dark football camisole with numbers on the back, and expensive and shiny tennis that
look very new as if he had just wear them for the first time this morning.

He listens carefully. At once replies that they cannot speak with reporters, the gang has
traced the line, but clearly he wants to talk, and without much prodding brings me to the rest
of the group.

-This journalist wants to know -he tells them- why homicides have dropped in Acajutla, and if
the Mayor is helping us.

It is as if dam-gates were opened. "No help has arrived," exaggerates one at the beginning.
"We've spent years asking them to bring artificial grass for the school playing-ground" they
say. "The clerks of the town-hall are too loud mouthed". "We have been trained, but why
nobody gives us work?" "The haughty old men filled up themselves with the money of the
Truce, but down here nothing reaches." "The town-hall supported buying a boat." "The old
shit (the Mayor Guadrn) has given us only a single oven." "That's nothing in pay for all we
we have labored to lower the crime rate!" "And now we are strictly forbidden to ask neighbors
for money or rob tourists". "In La Coquera would help us to have a project to sell turtle eggs".

The latter is no outburst. Stocky seems to have toyed with the idea. He knows that in other
beaches some n.g.o.s pay neighbors per dozen eggs delivered for hatching in the hatchery,
but here the extraction is illegal, although people still do it out of necessity, exposed to
seizures and fines. Stocky is convinced that...

-Guard! Guard! shouts one of the homies in surveillance.

The group vanishes. The bulk of pandilleros runs into the schoolhouse, and I behind. In the
small playing ground, without artificial grass, three boys and four girls play football, some
barefooted. They just flinch as the stampede of homies is like routine in La Coquera.

***

-The National Civil Police has absolutely nothing to do with the Truce of Acajutla.

The sub-inspector Gustavo de Len is one of the Salvadorean at odds with the word Truce.
He is assigned to the police sub-delegation of Acajutla since April 2013, as second in
command, and in its first six months only one murder occurred. He knows that the miracle is
related to the Process but prudence or real ignorance he opts to keep distance from it.

-Yes, I have heard they have a bakery in La Coquera and that fishing boats were given to
them, -he says-, but, how did they obtain that? I dont know. I dont know how other
institutions are handling the issue. Here, to gangsters we apply the law,

http://www.salanegra.elfaro.net/get_img?ImageWidth=640&ImageHeight=440&ImageId=207
41
"They do not want us here," said the sub-inspector Gustavo De Len, the second in command in the police
sub-delegation in Acajutla. From the town-hall is believed that with his attitude, the police are hindering the
Process launched in this city. Photo Roberto Valencia.

This morning there was a police operation taking place in San Julin, one of the colonies that
have the largest gang presence, next to Alvarado, Acaxual I and II, The Citadel, La Coquera
and Death Valley. These are the most affected, but in Acajutla there is no colony unaffected
by the phenomenon. The marero is a resident who lives in the next passage or two passages
beyond; he is not a character which is known to exist only through the news, as it happen in
broad sectors of the capital. The gang is here very close. The Mayor Guadrn's house, a
prominent business-man who owns the restaurant chain Acajutla, is near the Valley of
Death.

-And the problem -the sub-inspector De Leon says- is that they develop a sense of
ownership. They believe that the colony is their territory, and thats it. If a young man enters
to visit, at once they intercept him, put his shirt down to see if have tattoos and question him.
If he is from Nahuizalco or Izalco, because in those cities everybody is dieciocho ... lets say
... there is a risk for him.

-What about the neighbors who are not gang-members?

-When we do an operative, there come out dads, moms, friends ... just to hinder our work.

-But ... what about the rest? Those which are not gang-members?

-The problem is that 90% of the population of Acajutla or belongs to the Mara or have a
relative there or is kindred to it. That's why they do not want us here.

-90% of acajutlens do not want the police-, says the sub-inspector De Len. Assuming that
the figure is exaggerated, still that perception is devastating.

***

On the morning of August 20, 2014, a group of M.S.s in police uniform arrived at the Lue
colony, they simulated the arrest of Doroteo Marroqun (a) Tello, they took him handcuffed to
a vacant lot they call La Planada, and burst his head with bullets. With him, it is said these
days in Acajutla, died the last dieciochero.

Due to its symbolism, the assassination of Tello may remain engraved in the inside history of
the city, but Barrio 18 ceased to have any saying by late 2011. That year -not by coincidence
the one of the 75 corpses-, Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 measured forces as never
before, and the pulse ended with the exile not only of the few dieciocheros survivors, also the
exiled of their families, their supporters and those who, without being one or the other,
thought they had little future due to the fact that they have been raised in La Playa, former
epicenter of the tumultuous nightlife fueled by prostitutes, sailors, killers and drug dealers,
and stronghold of the 18.

The neighborhood La Playa stands on both sides of the road between the Municipality
Building and the Port Authority, about 500 linear meters by the sea with an infinite tourism
potential. But even today, three years after the exodus dieciochero, La Playa seems a zone
devastated by a tsunami. Countless houses are abandoned, dismantled, crumbling. Empty of
life, are testimony that here a war was fought, with winners and losers.

-It took years to drive the feighteen away -says Stocky- and the blood of many homeboys.
And that is the reason why to us the changes arrived here less from the Truce, than from the
jail. From the jail come the word that we had to calm down, but we are never going to be in
good terms with feighteen.

The miracle of Acajutla is a consequence of the Process, and in order for the Process to
work, it had to take place the hard work of softening from the UNDP, the prayers of the
pastors, the electoral victory of Mayor Guadrn and the guidelines which have emerged from
the Truce. But that would not have worked, or its effects would have been much more
limited, without the prior annihilation of Barrio 18, which left all the rest of the town in the
hands of the Acajutlas Locos.

***

As if it were a routine in La Coquera, the gang vanishes before approaches the guards
Nissan Frontier. I look at him pass by while sitting on the side of the playground, close to the
pair children of the fourth and sixth grade with whom I start chatting. Minutes later, one by
one the homies reappear and swirl under the same trees.

-Can you show me the bakery? -I ask, without hope.

The bakery consists of two rooms with badly plastered walls on which the white paint fell
short. The back room, the small one, is bleak and houses three bikes with baskets, though
one homie tells me that the distribution network consists of five. In the large room there are
also, besides the bakers with submissive looks, two sacks of flour, metal shelves with full
trays, a scale, a rolling dough, a table, multicolored plastic containers and three ovens: two
were donated by a priest of the canton Metalo, and the third given by the town-hall as part of
the Process. "It is the one which delivers the nicest bread," said a marero.

-The best of this business -says Stocky- is that anytime of the day, one can send ones wife
and knows with certainty that is going to fetch warm bread.

Mara Salvatrucha sells $ 200 daily of French bread and pastries. From there you have to
subtract production costs, including salaries for the two bakers who work for the Acajutlas
Locos. You dont need to get a Master in business administration to conclude that, although
they really wanted to stop extorting, this project is no a real alternative, for the 25 families or
more from the neighborhoods La Coquera and La Atarraya that are linked to the gang.

-Let's talk at the beach -tells me Stocky.

***

-Acajutla didnt accept being a sanctuary town; the Mayor refused it.

Moiss Bonilla said so. He has been working for 14 years in positions of trust in the
municipality, and the fact that he has survived four Mayors in this country speaks well of his
abilities. He is now manager of Social Projection, although to this story is relevant his role as
CEO of the Process.

-Mijango came to Acajutla to introduce its own ideas, but did not find support. Why? We felt
that he wanted too much prominence.
The mediator Raul Mijango and the pandillero Stocky confirm the meeting, which took place
in the first weeks of 2013, when promoters of the Truce tried to seduce Mayors of violent
cities to join what was first known as "Sanctuary Towns", and after facing the barrage of
criticism, they were renamed as " Municipalities free of violence."

Mijangos version is a little bit difference: "The town-hall asked that the Process not to be
made public, but there is an agreement, and that is what is important: our promoters give
attention to Acajutla. Why was asked to go private? Because they saw that the media, rather
than support, what they did was criticize the Mayors which joined it".

Acajutla has been out of the showcase that is the Truce, away from the focus of a press
which is lazy to investigate what ever happens away from the capital. But that has not
stopped from arising loud local criticism.

-There are people who distorted the approach of the Mayor with the guys - says Moiss
Bonilla.

-I was told that he receives them in his office.

-It's true. Sometimes they come looking for work, or because they have to eat. And because
he receives and attends them, there are people who call the Mayor friend of mareros.

-How to justify to the public that proximity?

-With the UNDP project was made an study and it came out that there are over 600 mareros
that regardless of whether being or not criminals, they are human beings, Salvadorean
citizens. Nor should we forget that everybody knows everybody else here. I live in the
Acaxual I and I know all the guys of the colony.

-Would that also explain why private enterprise supports the Process?

-We as town-hall members met with representatives of private enterprise, we exposed them
the situation, and some said: if we are going to get away from the problem, I put an oven or
whatever it takes, but supervised by the town-hall. And this is being done. The great
advantage of private enterprise is that it gives the money and thats it, it wont be any
problem with the Court of Auditors.

- Why did plummet the killings?

-Because here we saw the problem of violence regardless of what was happening in the rest
of the country. That is the value that has been Acajutla. If you go right now to the San
Julins colony school, you see outside the lot of guys, just talking about every Fridays
football match or how the Mayor has taken them into account. At the end ... there is no other
way. Pandilleros are citizens, it is just that up to now no one wanted to talk to them.
 ***

Just as there are people who still believe that man never set foot on the moon, or that Elvis
Presley is alive, there are many that deny the miracle of Acajutla. They say that the corpses
which disappeared from the streets are buried in unmarked graves, or those who let them
dying are pure mareros and for the honest people nothing has changed.

But something did change. In El Salvador homicide figures of 2014 will resemble those
before the Truce, while in Acajutla the year will close with just a score of murders, far from
the pre-Process numbers. Then there are the details: in the students bathroom of the
National Institute there is not a single painted allusion to the Mara Salvatrucha, and deputy
director, Victor Manuel Alfaro, confirms the enrollment increased from 450 to 560 youth.

All this does not mean that when talking -without tape recorder- with mototaxistas, vendors,
employees, officers, teachers or policemen, is easy to detect a concern about the
empowerment of the Acajutlas Locos and its growing presence in public life.

Several complained that when the patronal festivities Mayor Guadrn authorized mareros to
sell beer on the streets, or of giving excessive facilities for their families to open sales stands.
It has also spread the rumor that some port area companies have hired homies with
generous salaries, or even have them on the payroll without working. Criticisms of this kind
are heard often, but, in general, can be argued that acajutlens know that with respect to the
issue of security they live better than five years ago.

There is, however, a crime judged excessive almost unanimously: extortion. Payment to
gang-members under threat of death is common since the middle of the last decade, but it
seems that the Process made it sound natural. Maybe that's why the official figures just
recorded the problem: in the first ten months of 2014 the PNC processed only eight
complaints.

-We have heard rumors of people being extorted - admits sub-inspector De Leon -, but are
afraid and do not report.

Unless someone has the connections to shake it off, in Acajutla was paid and continue to
pay rent to the Mara Salvatrucha, the motorcycle taxis, buses, minibuses, shops, market
stalls, the beach huts ... even the migrants when returned from the United States to visit a
relative, or the embarked, which is how are known those who, hired by a shipping company,
climb into a boat and spend months sailing from port to port, embarking and disembarking
until the ship returns to El Salvador.

***

-Let's talk in the beach -Stocky tells me.

We walk alone the hundreds of meters between the bakery and the beach that opens south
side of the mouth of the river Sensunapn. The initial hostility of Stocky disappeared while
ago.

-I'm from the ninety-eight he says.

It means that in 1998 was recruited. Stocky says "I'm in" as the native of Buenos Aires that
says "I'm from Boca club, or the conservative white guy who says "I am a Republican", only
that the sense of belonging is to a criminal structure as Mara Salvatrucha.

Stocky looks at the ocean, calm and bright, and says his brother is now at sea, with a boat
that the family acquired from a bank loan. His brother is not a gang member, but should be
part of almost half a million Salvadorean - official figures- which constitute the social
mattress of the gangs. He left early with two teenagers who do not hesitate to be with the
Mara. Goldfish pays well these days, at $ 1.40 a pound, and if you are lucky in one outing
you can stole from the sea up to a thousand pounds.

-Why the Mara continues to claim rent? -I ask.

- ...

-I have heard that they charge to the embarked.

An embarked who embarks first time earns about $ 700 a month. If you have experience,
salary rises to $ 1,000 or $ 1.200. The embarked spends five, six or ten months at sea, with
little expenditure, and a fat check awaits him when he arrives to the port of Acajutla.

-What's the problem in giving 100 bucks to the neighborhood? -Stocky says-. It's nothing for
them, and helps us a lot.

-Would you like someone to remove 50 pounds of the fish your brother brings?

Stocky remains silent few seconds, as if searching for the answer that would settle the issue.

-Rent is charged in El Salvador for years, -he says-, we didnt invented it. During the war
there was extortion. We do the same that once did the FMLN.

***

It's 11 and a half in the morning, the hour when a lot of movement in the sub-delegation of
the National Civil Police takes place. In a few plastic chairs near the entrance are sitting two
young guys that look very skinny, one is 23 years old, he wears flip-flops and claims to be a
baker; the other is 19, wears Nike shoes a cap, he says that is a corral-worker at Hacienda
Kilo 5.

An agent that looks fresh out of the academy makes them obvious questions -name, parents,
address, tattoos yes or no, height ... - and the answers fill several cards. But every so often
Fredy, from research, comes, and questions with more elaborate questions. Fredy dresses
so sloppy that does not seem to be a policeman; now wears beige pants a couple of sizes
too big and a white t-shirt with a painted doll that says "Mom, I Love U".

The puny couple was in a motorcycle by the Boulevard 25 de febrero, when they were
stopped at a police roadblock near the obelisk and submitted as undocumented immigrants.
Agents have asked them the cell-phones. Fredy analyzes them in a room inside. Every so
often comes out and asks something with a serious tone. No problems with the assumed
baker, he says, but in the phone of the assumed corral-worker he has found "mareros
music" and among the contacts there are two numbers that the system assigns to active
gang-members.

- Is the chip yours? -Fredy asks in another of his entries.

-Yup.

-We have to seize it. You can go, but you must sign leaving this phone here for us to
investigate it. Only that now I'm busy with other paperwork. If you are in a hurry, I give you a
blank paper, you sign it, and then Ill fill it down later on.

-Thats good-, says the assumed corral-worker, with a natural calm that invites to think that
it's not his first time.

After a while they bring his cell-phone open. He immediately checks it and found that, in
addition to the chip, lacks the memory card.

-Lacks the memory card! I saw that the roadblock agents have taken it away! -he dares
claim Fredy.

-Are you sure that it had a memory?

-Yes ... if I have been listening music on the bike!

Fredy shouts that should be identified the agents that were in the roadblock, he wants their
names to ask them by radio if they know anything. The five or six agents that are at that
moment nearby, realized about the situation. "These bugs lie continuously," says one. "If it is
a shit worth two dollars, why the fuss?" summons another to the assumed corral-worker.

-All right ... No problem ... I can buy another memory he says, aware of his situation.

Soon they bring the blank page, he stamped his solitary firm, and he and his friend come out
of the sub-delegation crestfallen. In four hours, the head of all these cops tells me, surprised,
that 90% of acajutlens do not like cops.
 ***

It is few minutes before noon when I say bye to Stocky. I walk down the beach to La
Atarraya barrio, where he has told me that I can photograph recent graffitis of the Acajutlas
Locos. Some are bright and colorful, others old; many are claws, tombstones, skulls, MS-13
is omnipresent. But most repeated threats are like "Death to the snitch" and See, hear, and
dont talk.

Homicides dropped in Acajutla (Sonsonate) 95% between 2011 and 2013, but the structures
of terror gangs remain. 'Death to the spies' and 'See and not heard' threats are still in force
in the town. Photo Roberto Valencia.
Homicides dropped in Acajutla (Sonsonate) 95% between 2011 and 2013, but the structure of terror gangs
remain. 'Death to the spies' and 'See, hear, dont talk' threats are still in force in the town. Photo Roberto
Valencia.

I go camera in hand and stop often. Turning a corner, a boy about 12 years, a surveillance,
looks at me surprised. He calms down when I say that I come to speak with the guys. In El
Salvador few places are as safe as the territory of a gang when you have the backing of the
boss.

Next to Port Authority I hail a motortaxi , it is close to lunch time and I ask him to approach
the market. Right here begins the neighborhood La Playa, 500 linear meters by the sea with
its countless abandoned houses, dismantled, crumbling, following the annihilation of Barrio
18.

- Three years ago we could not pass through this street says the mototaxista when
convinced that I am a reporter-. Here was the other gang.

- Is it now better?

-Yes, dear -responds.

-Dont you pay rent?

-Not, because the motorcycle taxi is not mine, but the owner himself does. And that's good
because now I work until 7pm, and can move safe even by the cantons. I know I dont have
to worry even if I an taking two tattooed, it is not like before.

In my notebook I write one more example of the naturalization of violence that I've heard this
week. Given the weak presence of the Salvadoran State, even a sector of the oppressed
thanks their condition to their oppressor, as a lesser evil. Process in Acajutla has saved
dozens of lives, but also seems to be creating the perfect dictatorship.