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The following lists events that happened in 2015 in El Salvador .
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The following lists events that happened in 2015 in El Salvador .
The national murder rate was the worst in 10 years, with 481 people murdered following the collapse of a truce between rival gangs. [1] Lauren Carasik, clinical professor of law and the director of the international human rights clinic at the Western New England University School of Law, warned that a pending US government aid proposal could increase the gang-related violence in the country. [2]
The Central American Junior and Youth Championships in Athletics was held in San Salvador, at the Estadio Jorge "Mágico" González.[ citation needed ]
El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is San Salvador. The country's population in 2023 was estimated to be 6.5 million.
The Armed Forces of El Salvador are the official governmental military forces of El Salvador. The Forces have three branches: the Salvadoran Army, the Salvadoran Air Force and the Navy of El Salvador.
The history of El Salvador begins with several distinct groups of Mesoamerican people, especially the Pipil, the Lenca and the Maya. In the early 16th century, the Spanish Empire conquered the territory, incorporating it into the Viceroyalty of New Spain ruled from Mexico City. In 1821, El Salvador achieved independence from Spain as part of the First Mexican Empire, only to further secede as part of the Federal Republic of Central America two years later. Upon the republic's independence in 1841, El Salvador became a sovereign state until forming a short-lived union with Honduras and Nicaragua called the Greater Republic of Central America, which lasted from 1895 to 1898.
The 18th Street Gang, also known as Calle 18, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic transnational criminal organization that started as a street gang in Los Angeles. It is one of the largest transnational criminal gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000-50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America and is also allied with the Mexican Mafia, another US-based crime organization. A United States Department of Justice report featured the following statement regarding 18th Street and rival gang MS-13, "These two gangs have turned the Central American northern triangle into the area with the highest homicide rate in the world."
The Sombra Negra, also known as El Clan de Planta, are death squad groups based in El Salvador, allegedly composed mostly of police and military personnel, that target criminals and gang members for vigilante justice. The name first appeared around December 1989 in the Department of San Miguel. By April 1995, the group had stated that it had killed seventeen persons, claiming that those killed were criminals or members of gangs. These vigilante groups are based in El Salvador. The government of El Salvador insists the groups are not under its control.
A mara is a form of gang originating in the United States, which spread to Central American countries such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
The Salvadoran Civil War was a twelve-year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or "umbrella organization" of left-wing groups backed by the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro as well as the Soviet Union. A coup on 15 October 1979 followed by government killings of anti-coup protesters is widely seen as the start of civil war. The war did not formally end until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when, on 16 January 1992 the Chapultepec Peace Accords were signed in Mexico City.
The National Civil Police of El Salvador, also known as PNC, is the national civilian police of El Salvador. Although the National Civil Police is not part of the Armed Forces of El Salvador, it constitutes along with them the "Civilian Force". It was created after the Peace Accords were signed at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City on January 16, 1992, and began the operations on February 1, 1993, in order to guarantee the order, safety, and the public tranquility for every single corner of El Salvador. The PNC is a replacement of the National Police of El Salvador.
Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena is a Salvadoran politician and former journalist who served as the 41st President of El Salvador from 2009 to 2014. Funes won the 2009 presidential election as the candidate of the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party and took office on 1 June 2009. Since 2016, Funes and his immediate family have been living in exile in Nicaragua due to allegations of criminality during his tenure. In July 2023, he was placed under sanctions by the U.S. State Department due to his conviction in absentia for negotiations related to the gang truces he made while in office, illicit enrichment, and tax evasion.
Crime and violence affect the lives of millions of people in Latin America. Some consider social inequality to be a major contributing factor to levels of violence in Latin America, where the state fails to prevent crime and organized crime takes over State control in areas where the State is unable to assist the society such as in impoverished communities. In the years following the transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, crime and violence have become major problems in Latin America. The region experienced more than 2.5 million murders between 2000 and 2017. Several studies indicated the existence of an epidemic in the region; the Pan American Health Organization called violence in Latin America "the social pandemic of the 20th century." Apart from the direct human cost, the rise in crime and violence has imposed significant social costs and has made much more difficult the processes of economic and social development, democratic consolidation and regional integration in the Americas.
Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area. Over time, the gang grew into a more traditional criminal organization. MS-13 has a longtime rivalry with the 18th Street gang.
Crime in Honduras has become a growing matter of concern for the Honduran population in recent years. Honduras has experienced alarmingly high levels of violence and criminal activity, with homicide rates reaching a peak in 2012, averaging 20 homicides per day. Corruption, extortion, coercion, and drug smuggling also run rampant throughout Honduran society, preventing the nation from building trustworthy authorities like police, and severely limiting economic, social, or political progress. The situation has prompted international organizations and governments to offer assistance in combating crime in Honduras.
Illegal drug trade in El Salvador has included, according to some sources, trans-shipping of cocaine by the Nicaraguan Contras.
Rates of crime in Guatemala are very high. An average of 101 murders per week were reported in 2018. The countries with the highest crime and violence rates in Central America are El Salvador and Honduras. In the 1990s Guatemala had four cities feature in Latin America's top ten cities by murder rate: Escuintla, Izabal (127), Santa Rosa Cuilapa (111) and Guatemala City (101). According to New Yorker magazine, in 2009, "fewer civilians were reported killed in the war zone of Iraq than were shot, stabbed, or beaten to death in Guatemala," and 97% of homicides "remain unsolved." Much of the violent nature of Guatemalan society stems back to a 36-year-long civil war However, not only has violence maintained its presence in the post-war context of the country following the Guatemalan Civil War, but it has extended to broader social and economic forms of violence.
Crime in El Salvador has been historically extremely high due to the presence of various gangs. As of 2011, there were an estimated 25000 gang members at large in El Salvador; with another 43500 in prison. The best-known gangs, called maras in colloquial Salvadoran Spanish, are Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and their rivals 18th Street; maras are hunted by death squads, including Sombra Negra. Newer rivals include the rising mara, The Rebels 13. El Salvador is one of the three countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America, along with neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, which are all afflicted with high levels of violence.
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran politician and businessman currently serving as the 46th president of El Salvador since 1 June 2019. He is the first Salvadoran president since 1989 who was not elected as a candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), of which Bukele was formerly a member. He is also the first Salvadoran president to be re-elected since 1944.
La Mano Dura is a set of tough-on-crime policies put in place by the Salvadoran government in response to the problem of gang violence. These policies were put in place in response to popular calls for the government to do something about the problem of rampant crime. La Mano Dura policies have come under criticism due to human rights concerns.
The Salvadoran gang crackdown, referred to in El Salvador as the régimen de excepción and the guerra contra las pandillas, began in March 2022 in response to a crime spike between 25 and 27 March 2022, when 87 people were killed in El Salvador. The Salvadoran government blamed the spike in murders on criminal gangs in the country, resulting in the country's legislature approving a state of emergency that suspended the rights of association and legal counsel, and increased the time spent in detention without charge, among other measures that expanded the powers of law enforcement in the country.
From March 2012 to May 2014, the Salvadoran government, the Catholic Church, and the country's two largest criminal gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the 18th Street gang, came to a truce, known in El Salvador simply as the Gang Truce, to lower the country's rate of homicides and extortions in exchange for improved prison conditions and certain visitation privileges. The truce's principal negotiators were Minister of Public Security David Munguía Payés, former deputy Raúl Mijango, and Bishop Fabio Colindres, and the negotiations were overseen by President Mauricio Funes.
The Territorial Control Plan is an ongoing Salvadoran security and anti-gang program. The program consists of six phases and a potential seventh phase if phases one through six are unsuccessful. In 2019, the Salvadoran government estimated that the Territorial Control Plan would cost US$575.2 million in total.
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