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 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 enters an outsider. The smell of freshly baked bread

1
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 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 something
knows, and to talk them I was said 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 with 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. After a
waving of 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 cuttingly a fat, head tattooed, pandillero.

***
2
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, pastor also, 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 port before city. The verbs embarking-disembarking anchored in these lands
since 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.
At the small settlement reached thousands of strangers in search of work and future, and 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 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 be kill 1000 people 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
3
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.

-When the noise of the Truce, the Mayor established a code: what 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 differences are that the Process
did manage to involve a sector of the private companies and, especially, 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 come to blows with. Now dresses long shorts, dark football
camisole with numbers on the back, and tennis expensive and shiny 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 it, 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 if nobody
4
gives us work?" "The haughty old men filled up themselves with the money of the Truce, but
down 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 to how we have labored to lower
the crime rate!" "And now we are strictly forbidden ask neighbors or rob tourists". "In La
Coquera would help a project for us 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 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,

5
 "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 something 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 enters a young man which comes
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, as there there are just dieciochos ... lets say ... there is a risk
for him.

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

6
-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 exiled their
families, their supporters and those who, without being a thing nor 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 what to us comes here less from the Truce, that from the jail was said word that we had
to calm down, but we are never going to be good with feighteen.

7
The miracle of Acajutla is a consequence of the Process, and to the Process curdle, 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 routine in La Coquera, the gang vanishes before it reaches the Nissan Frontier of
the guard. I look with the corner of an eye him pass by while sitting on the side of the
playground, at the pair of two children of the fourth and sixth grade with which I invent a talk.
Minutes later, one by one the homies reappear and swirl under the same trees.

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

The bakery consists of two rooms with badly plastered walls of which the white paint fell short.
The back room, the small, 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: of which two were
donated by a cure 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
deduce production costs, including salaries for the two bakers who work for the Acajutlas
Locos. You shouldnt have studied a Master in business administration to conclude that,
although they really wanted to stop extorting, this project is no real alternative, for no less than
25 families from the neighborhoods La Coquera and La Atarraya 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.
8
Moiss Bonilla said so. He works since 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, 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 then facing the barrage of criticism, they
were renamed as " Municipalities free of violence."

Mijangos version differs little bit: "The town-hall asked it 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
feels laziness in investigate what happen away from the capital. But that has not stopped loud
local criticism arising.

-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 a study and it came out that there 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.

9
-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 it is to get away from it, 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 the 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 attend them.

***

Just as there are people who still believe that man never set foot on the moon, or that Elvis
Presley is alive, no lack of those who 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 that for the honest people nothing 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 bathroom of students 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 easily detected concern because the
empowerment of the Acajutlas Locos, by 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. 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

10
often, but, in general, can be argued that acajutlens know that respect 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 luck accompanies in one outing can be stolen from
the sea up to a thousand pounds.
11
-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 since years, -he says-, we even 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
sickly, one is 23 years old, shoes flip-flops and claims to be a baker; the other is 19, shoes
Nike, wears cap and says be 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 shirt with a painted doll that says "Mom, I Love U".

The puny couple was in a motorcycle by the Boulevard February 25, 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

12
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 naturalness 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 says me, surprised,
that 90% of acajutlens do not want cops.

13
 ***

It is missing few minutes to noon when I bid Stocky bye. I walk down the beach to La Atarraya,
where he has told me that I can photograph recent graffitis of the Acajutlas Locos. Some are
bright and colorful, others old; abound 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 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, in surveillance,
looks at me as 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.

14
Next to Port Authority I hail a rickshaw and, as is lunch time, 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 it wont be
anything amiss even if carrying two tattooed, it is not like before.

In my notebook I write yet another 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.

15