Nayib Bukele participates with the High Command of the Armed Forces in an act of incorporation of new soldiers in San Salvador on July 19, 2021.Miguel Lemus (EFE)
The deadliest weekend so far this century in El Salvador, which ended in March with the killing of 87 people, was due to the end of a pact between the Nayib Bukele government and the gangs;
the response to a "betrayal" by the authorities that left dozens of civilians dead.
This has been confirmed by spokespersons for the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) to the digital medium
El Faro
, which has also had exclusive access to audios of a negotiator from the president's team who, according to what he says, was in talks with the gangs for "almost two years and a half".
In these recordings, the official, the director of the Government's Social Fabric, Carlos Marroquín, blames the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Gustavo Villatoro, for the breach of the agreement.
“They did things they didn't have to do,” says one of the three gang members with whom
El Faro spoke,
a leader of the Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) who is outside the country.
“From there it is for what those 80 deaths that happened on those dates arose, do I explain myself?
They did not comply, they made captures that they did not have to do, where they said: 'Get to such a place, we are going to talk' and instead of talking, they captured”, added the spokesman for the organization that claims responsibility for the massacre.
The crime scene at a market in San Salvador, on a weekend in March 2022 that saw more than 80 homicides. SOPA Images (SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett)
According to the exclusive of
El Faro
, in the recordings to which he has had access —and which he verified independently with the gang members and through a technical voice report— official Marroquín, a Bukele collaborator since 2014, is heard confessing to members of the MS- 13 with whom he negotiated his efforts to keep the agreement in force during the spike in homicides and how he would have prevented the capture of the gang members protected by the agreement, the fact that supposedly led to the rupture between the parties.
In addition, he refers to the massacre of the weekend of March as pressure on the Government and blames Minister Villatoro for the end of the agreement, whom he describes as "crazy."
In the audios, the government negotiator also claims to be transferring messages from the gangs to President Bukele —whom they call Batman.
"I already shot Batman
that there are 72 hours to give an answer.
He did not take it well, he took it badly, like: 'Don't let them threaten me,' reads one of the messages published by the Salvadoran newspaper.
The arrest of protected gang members, the turning point
These murders marked the end of the honeymoon that Salvadorans have lived since Bukele came to power in June 2019, in which the country went from being one of the most violent in the world, with an average of 20 corpses a day in 2015, to an average of three at the beginning of this year, with days in which not a single homicide was recorded.
Until the appearance of dozens of dead between March 25 and 27 put an end to that illusion of security that boosted the president's popularity ratings.
The pulse of the maras, which included a corpse lying on a road that leads to Surf City, an emblematic tourism project with which the president intends to attract investment, was then answered with a heavy hand: the president promised that the imprisoned gang members would not return to see the sun, deployed thousands of soldiers throughout the country,
he toughened the Penal Code and arrested thousands of people whom he identified as gang members, many of them without evidence: more than 27,000 in a month and a half.
In addition, he promoted an exceptional regime that reduces freedoms to citizens.
A soldier at a checkpoint inspects a motorcyclist before entering a community controlled by the Mara Salvatrucha MS-13, on March 30, 2022.SOPA Images (SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett)
Among the measures approved by the Legislative Assembly —controlled by the ruling party— within the framework of the exceptional regime established after this wave of homicides, a reform to the Penal Code was approved that, among other things, contemplates up to 15 years in prison for those who disseminate of messages from gang members in the Salvadoran press.
The reporter who signs the text of
El Faro
, Carlos Martínez, does so from outside the country, where he interviewed two leaders of MS-13 and another of the Barrio 18 gang, with whom he independently verified the veracity and authenticity of the audios.
Despite the fact that Bukele had attributed the success in the pacification of the country that was seen in the first years of his mandate to his security plan Territorial control, investigations by
El Faro
revealed in the past that the decrease in the number of homicides was due to a negotiation between Bukele and the gangs MS-13, Barrio 18 Sureños and Barrio 18 Revolucionarios.
The United States later confirmed those talks by sanctioning some of the participants.
These new revelations reaffirm the existence of these covert negotiations.
According to the testimonies of the gang members to whom
El Faro has now had access
, the turning point for the rupture of the pact was the arrest of a group of MS-13 gang members who were traveling in a vehicle and with a driver provided by the Government, confident that this guaranteed them protection.
After that capture, the leaders of that gang gave the government an ultimatum of 72 hours to release them, a request that Bukele was aware of, as Marroquín confesses in the audios.
In the recordings, the official also claims to have taken a gang member whom he identifies as 'El Viejo' out of the country to demonstrate his "loyalty and trust" to the gang.
According to the Salvadoran newspaper, he is Crook from Hollywood, one of the national leaders of MS-13, with ongoing legal proceedings in El Salvador and an extradition request from the United States.
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