Salvadorans have grown used to murder, rape, extortion and humiliation at the hands of the gangs. And they have no more faith in the government’s ability to fight back with violence. The truce, however, had the advantage of being something new. It was an attempt to do things differently, to enter gang-controlled territory without resorting to gunfire and then, from the inside, attempt to change things. It was a chance to implement public policies — like aid for gang neighborhoods and programs to help kids and teenagers discover that they had options other than joining gangs — that could reduce the power of the gangs in the long run. The problem is that we need time and peace to do these things, and for that we need the truce.Basically, Oscar and I are on the same page. You can look back at what I've written in the past, but El Salvador was at a really bad point with a murder rate over seventy per 100,000. The country did not have the resources to make a significant dent in the country's murder rate and negotiating a truce between the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs gave the Salvadoran government a fighting chance.
No one is saying that the truce would solve the problems that contributed to the gang violence. However, what some of us have said is that the truce would give the Salvadoran people and government an opportunity to put in place short-, medium-, and long-term social,economic, political, and security policies to tackle the root causes of gang violence and other societal ills.
Now, the truce was going to be difficult to sustain under the best of circumstances and intentions. However, the truce has been undermined by the lack of support from civil society, the media, the business sector and the US government. Some of those might have criticized the truce anyway on political or ideological grounds, but Mauricio Funes's attacks against those who uncovered the secret truce (El Faro) and their insistence that they played no role in facilitating it have been counterproductive. Why should anyone support a government-facilitated truce if the government itself doesn't support it publicly?
Not wanting to admit to playing a role in facilitating a truce with violent individuals who did so much harm to the country is understandable. The truce is still unpopular according to public opinion polls. However, the truce has held for over a year, close to eighteen months now, and reduced the murder rate from approximately 70 per 100,000 to around 40 per 100,000 today. That is an important success and not one that a government should run away from.
Oscar seems to believe that President Funes won't publicly support the truce because he fears that it will damage his public approval ratings.
Everything seems to suggest that President Funes will leave office without ever admitting that he has saved an astounding number of lives, probably because the numbers that really matter to him are those of a different sort — the kind that reflect his popularity in the polls.That's hard for me to accept but it is possible, I really don't know. Once the president dug in his heals denying his administration's involvement, he might have though that his credibility would have been more seriously affected by doing a 180 and saying that he was behind the truce all the time. I also wonder whether his relationship with the US would have become more much difficult had he said that it was his decision to put the resources of his office behind the truce. We know that the US thinks that the truce stinks and Funes' public position in support of the truce might have eroded his relationship with the ambassador and Washington.
If that's the case, it hasn't worked. I'd say that Funes and Washington are both looking to turn the page with next year's elections. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that relations are going to get that much better following February's elections.
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