Black Shadow | |
---|---|
Sombra Negra | |
Dates of operation | 1989–1995, 2014–present |
Country | El Salvador |
Motives | To “socially cleanse” El Salvador of criminals and gang members |
Major actions | Murder, torture, kidnapping |
Size | Unknown |
Allies | Far-right paramilitaries |
Opponents | El Salvador Mara Salvatrucha 18th Street Gang FMLN |
Battles and wars | Salvadoran Civil War |
The Sombra Negra (Spanish for "Black Shadow"), also known as El Clan de Planta ("The Plant Clan"), are (as of 2014) [1] death squad groups based in El Salvador, allegedly composed mostly of police and military personnel, that target criminals and gang members for vigilante justice. [2] 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. [3] These vigilante groups are based in El Salvador. The government of El Salvador insists the groups are not under its control.
Sombra Negra members typically blindfolded and tied the hands and/or thumbs of their victims behind their backs. [3] Several hours of torture would follow, often including the removal of the genitalia, hands, tongue, rectum and teeth.[ citation needed ] Finally, the victims were given tiros de gracia, or shots of grace, meaning they were shot in the base of their skulls with assault rifles and machine guns at close range. Messages were written on the victim's body such as "El idiota sufrió una muerte lenta" ("this idiot suffered a slow death") and other insults or gang-related slang. The Sombra Negra operatives would conceal their face and body with bandanas, anthropomorphic costumes, and use unlicensed vehicles with darkened windows when they carried out their missions in order to avoid full detection. Sombra Negra stated that it killed people because the group believed that the police could not enforce laws of El Salvador and that it is waging a campaign of “social cleansing” against gangs. [1] [3]
Sombra Negra is well known for its specialty in pursuing and executing members of notorious El Salvador-based criminal organizations referred to as Maras or "gangs"—even if they move and do their business in the United States, particularly Los Angeles. [3] Similarly, Fernando Ramirez, a convicted felon serving 60 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release, asked in an interview for his tattoos to be removed before serving his sentence in San Salvador. [4] Sombra Negra targets both MS-13 and its rival 18th Street Gang. [5] Members of MS-13 are, in some cases, asking American judges to grant them asylum in fear of being murdered by Sombra Negra in El Salvador.[ citation needed ]
As of 2014, an increase in gang violence following the collapse of a gang truce has sparked a revival of activity for these death squads. [1] The Salvadoran attorney general for human rights, David Morales, says this activity may be related to police activity. In an interview with Morales, the attorney general explained that the sombra negra has caused a rash of sexual assaults among gang members: "Gang members believe they [Sombra Negra] are infiltrating their ranks. Leadership and members [have] responded by raping suspected infiltrators." [6]
Only 19 days into January 2019, El Salvador had already seen 200 murders across the country. Sombra Negra claimed that all the murders were caused by gang activity. They claim that the common people are tired of the constant murders and mourning and label the gangs as terrorists. [7]
The death squad has expanded its area of operation to El Salvador’s neighboring countries of Honduras and Guatemala to rid the three countries of the Northern Triangle. [8]
In 2014, the year Sombra Negra reemerged, members of the death squad dressed in all black clothing armed with M16 assault rifles raided a house of seven people, four of whom being members of MS-13. The four members were captured and tortured by Sombra Negra. All four were then killed with a single bullet to the back of the head. A few days following the attack, leaflets were posted in El Salvador demanding members of MS-13 to “leave within five days or face certain death.” [8]
In March 2016, Sombra Negra members rounded up four MS-13 gang members and put them in the back of a pickup truck in the town of San Antonio Silva. They were taken to a soccer field, where they were shot in the back of the head and their bodies were left on the field. [8] [9]
On 25 January 2019, Sombra Negra murdered two members of MS-13. The first was in Paraíso de Osorio, La Paz, where police found the gang member's corpse in a creek with his hands tied behind his back, legs tied together, gagged, and a bullet in his head. Next to the body was a sign which read "La Sombra Negra ha llegado a Paraíso de Osorio. Ratas de la MS llegó su fin." (The Sombra Negra has arrived to Paraíso de Osorio. MS rats your time has come). [10] [11] The second was in San Jorge, San Miguel, with the body found in similar conditions. [10]
In the 2015 AMC American post-apocalyptic horror drama television series Fear the Walking Dead , the character of Daniel Salazar played by Panamanian actor & salsa musician Rubén Blades, is a former member of Sombra Negra who had been coerced into joining one of the Salvadoran Junta death squads and was personally responsible for killing nearly 100 Salvadorans. [12]
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.
Vigilantism is the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority.
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago de María, and finally as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. As archbishop, Romero spoke out against social injustice and violence amid the escalating conflict between the military government and left-wing insurgents that led to the Salvadoran Civil War. In 1980, Romero was shot by an assassin while celebrating Mass. Though no one was ever convicted for the crime, investigations by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, a death squad leader and later founder of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party, had ordered the killing.
A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are formed by an insurgency, domestic or foreign governments actively participate in, support, or ignore the death squad's activities. Death squads are distinct from assassination from their permanent organization and the larger number of victims who may not be prominent individuals. Other violence, such as rape, torture, arson, or bombings may be carried out alongside murders. They may comprise a secret police force, paramilitary militia groups, government soldiers, policemen, or combinations thereof. They may also be organized as vigilantes, bounty hunters, mercenaries, or contract killers. When death squads are not controlled by the state, they may consist of insurgent forces or organized crime, such as the ones used by cartels.
18th Street, also known as Calle 18, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply La 18 in Central 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 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 Chapultepec Peace Accords were a set of peace agreements signed on January 16, 1992, the day in which the Salvadoran Civil War ended. The treaty established peace between the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). It was signed in Chapultepec Castle, Mexico.
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 16 January 1992 with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City.
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 long time rivalry with the 18th Street gang.
As of 2011, there are an estimated 25,000 gang members at large in El Salvador; another 43,500 are 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. Criminal youth gangs dominate life in El Salvador; an estimation of at least 60,000 young people belong to gangs. It 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 who is the 43rd president of El Salvador, serving since 1 June 2019. He is the first president since José Napoleón Duarte (1984–1989) not to have been elected as the candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).
Death squads in El Salvador were far-right paramilitary groups acting in opposition to Marxist–Leninist guerrilla forces, most notably of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), and their allies among the civilian population before, during, and after the Salvadoran Civil War. The death squads committed the vast majority of the murders and massacres during the civil war from 1979 to 1992 and were heavily aligned with the United States-backed government.
The Santa Rita massacre occurred near the town of Santa Rita in Chalatenango, El Salvador, on 17 March 1982. During the massacre, soldiers from the Atonal Battalion attacked and killed four Dutch journalists and a disputed number of guerrillas from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
Events in the year 2021 in El Salvador.
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.
The Honduran gang crackdown, referred to in Honduras as the Régimen de Excepción, began in December 2022 after parts of the constitution were suspended to fight criminal gangs in the country.
The siege of Soyapango was a Salvadoran government operation to arrest criminal gang members of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street gang in the city of Soyapango. The operation began on 3 December 2022 when Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced that 10,000 members of the country's security forces surrounded the city. As of January 2023 the active phase of the siege has been completed ,however security forces are still engaged in removing gang related symbols and the security setup in the area has been enhanced.
The Terrorism Confinement Center is a maximum security prison located in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. The prison was built from July 2022 to January 2023 amidst a large-scale gang crackdown; it was opened in January 2023 by President Nayib Bukele and received its first 2,000 prisoners in February 2023.
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.