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Dynamics of Violence in El Salvador

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Dynamics of Violence in El Salvador DYNAMICS OF VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR by Viveca Pav´onTercero APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Jennifer S. Holmes, Chair Clint Peinhardt Patrick T. Brandt Dohyeong Kim Copyright c 2018 Viveca Pav´onTercero All rights reserved This dissertation is dedicated to the Two that convinced me I could. DYNAMICS OF VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR by VIVECA PAVON´ TERCERO, BS, MBA DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PUBLIC POLICY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS August 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research would not have been possible without those organizations that believed in my work and contributed financially for its completion. A special thanks to CUSLAI for their support during my studies and their help with my research. Without their travel grant this dissertation would have been quite difficult to complete. Dr. Monica Rankin and Dr. Jennifer Holmes were outstanding during our field work, I learned a lot from their interviewing skills. I would also like to thank Phi Kappa Phi Cyrus D. Cantrell III Academic Travel Grant for helping fund my research in El Salvador. To my committee, thank you for your insight, I have learned so much from each of you. Dr. Holmes, thank you for continuously working with me and helping me expand my view on the `dark side'. I would also like to thank Dr. Brandt for his direction in conducting research; Your training has been invaluable. Dr. Peinhardt, I truly appreciate your guidance and how you have encouraged me to think beyond the theoretical norms. Lastly, Dr. Kim, thank you for helping me link crime policy to GIS. I am grateful to my family and friends for the support and encouragement throughout the years. Thank you Asli, for not dropping the subject until I did something about it. Now I know how difficult it truly is to earn that two letter introduction. I would like to thank Alisha for being unapologetically you. Meeting you that first day of class is something I will forever be thankful for. Le quiero agradecer a mi mami por su apoyo incondicional aun cuando no sabia que lo necesitaba. Gracias por recordarme que hay que luchar por las cosas buenas de la vida. I would like to thank dad and my brothers, for the endless conversations on how we could fix things. Thanks for listening and never thinking (out loud at least) that I was too young or naive to participate. Thank you guys for being a constant source of inspiration. A special thanks to my blue blood moon, for being everything. v Jeremy, I am grateful for you every day. Your love and support has meant the world, this is our accomplishment. Know that I am forever changed because of who you are. You and the pups make it all worth it. June 2018 vi DYNAMICS OF VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR Viveca Pav´onTercero, PhD The University of Texas at Dallas, 2018 Supervising Professor: Jennifer S. Holmes, Chair Central America is the deadliest region in the world. The UNODC reports that the level of violence in this region is higher than in any single nation, including those at war. El Salvador's 2015 homicide rate was listed as the highest for any country in nearly 20 years. This research seeks to better explain policies within El Salvador and how they continue to affect gang activities and crime. The research also seeks to fill in the gap on gang network dynamics and their level of power in affecting policies. I begin by exploring the policies implemented in the early 2000s and explaining how they have had a significant effect in gang development but also in political gain for acting parties. In an attempt to maintain control over a territory state leaders may chose policies that favor a public appearance of control. This study seeks to address if a country is willing to implement 'punitive populism' in exchange for votes by analyzing the case of El Salvador. I argue that despite numerous failed attempts at controlling violence through punitive policies the country continues to enforce these actions and use them as platforms for future elections. Chapter three in this research uses social network analysis (SNA) to identify the temporal relationship between paired municipalities according to homicide. This method looks at the interconnectivity of homicide counts from one year and the next between municipalities, meaning that it is evaluating how two seemingly distinct regions can be responding to each other when it comes to homicide rates. The idea is to identify which municipalities are vii responding to crime in other municipalities around the country. This becomes a critical aspect of violence in the country because gangs can react to a specific event by attacking regions where rival gangs operate, not necessarily adjacent areas. In this study I conducted a single datum correlation coefficient (SDCC) to create this network connection. Using SNA we can better identify what regions of the country are of interest during a specific point in time and can help policy makers establish areas needing additional backing. This novel method introduces a new way of observing criminal behavior and helps identify hubs of criminal activity as well as vulnerable relationships among municipalities which could be indicative of gang retaliation areas. The 2012 Peace agreement in El Salvador between Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 was an unprecedented truce between two of the deadliest rival gangs in Latin America. This agreement serves as an indication of cooperation with a greater purpose between groups that had been deemed unorganized. This raises concerns of what circumstances will facilitate cooperation between rival groups and what can be expected of this collaboration. Following the truce there was a genuine fear that gangs in El Salvador could become political actors by using Violent Lobbying and/or Violent Corruption. Even though the gangs have not proven to have political power there is still a fear that they can continue to influence politicians behind closed doors. This paper seeks to identify the tactics the gangs could use if they did attempt to lobby the state. These specific violent acts help us understand what pressures the government of El Salvador could have been facing that led to the truce being agreed upon. It also distinguishes what changes in violence the country experienced during and after the agreement. In order to identify these specific patterns I use event data analysis on newspaper stories from El Diario de Hoy to help identify is any coercive methods where used by las maras. These three chapters evaluate different aspects of violence in El Salvador originating from gang activity. I begin with a historical approach of policy implementation help introduce viii how the gangs developed and how they gained power to be able to influence violence beyond the reach of direct contiguity. I conclude by presenting past uses of violence with a direct purpose in order to understand the level of political power the gangs could obtain for future gain. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . v ABSTRACT . vii LIST OF FIGURES . xi LIST OF TABLES . xiii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: AN OVERVIEW OF GANGS IN EL SALVADOR 1 CHAPTER 2 PUNITIVE GANG POLICIES FOR POLITICAL GAIN . 19 CHAPTER 3 THE IMPACT OF GANG NETWORKS ON HOMICIDES IN EL SAL- VADOR . 44 CHAPTER 4 ESMED - EVENT DATA OF MARAS IN EL SALVADOR . 66 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION . 92 APPENDIX A BIC & RSS . 97 APPENDIX B NEWSPAPER QUERY . 98 APPENDIX C EVENT DATA ON CONVERTED HTML FILES . 99 REFERENCES . 102 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . 110 CURRICULUM VITAE x LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 Prison Population . 28 2.2 Incarcerated Gang Population . 29 2.3 Monthly Homicide 2002-2017 with significant structural breaks . 32 3.1 Homicide in Mexico and Central America . 48 3.2 Homicide in El Salvador 2005-2013 . 49 3.3 2013 Homicide Rate by Department . 50 3.4 2013 Homicide Rate by Municipality . 51 3.5 SDCC Network Graphs . 56 3.6 Geo-referenced Homicides 2006 . 58 3.7 Global Moran's I 2006 . 59 3.8 Hot Spot Analysis 2006 . 60 3.9 Cluster and Outlier Analysis 2006 . 61 3.10 SDCC for 2007 . 62 4.1 Homicide and Homicide by Gangs . 70 4.2 Police Officers Murdered . 71 4.3 Eventus ID Coding Process . 74 4.4 El Diario de Hoy newspaper sheet sample . 76 4.5 web2eventus Output . 77 4.6 Example of Actor Coding . 79 4.7 Example of Verb Coding . 81 4.8 Example of Location Dictionary . 82 4.9 Example of Raw Output . 83 4.10 STATA Geocoded Output . 83 4.11 Main Source of the Events . 85 4.12 Main Action of the Events . 86 4.13 Main Target of the Events . 86 4.14 Main Location of the Events - State Level . 87 4.15 Validation - GSR v EVENTUS ID . 88 xi 4.16 ESMED v OCVED News Sources . 90 4.17 Homicide Distribution . 91 A.1 BIC & RSS (2002-2017) . 97 B.1 Newspaper Queries . 98 C.1 Main Source of the Events . 99 C.2 Main Action of the Events . 100 C.3 Main Target of the Events . 100 C.4 Main Location of the Events - State Level . 101 xii LIST OF TABLES 1.1 Elements associated with Central American gangs . .7 1.2 Gang Role Classification . 11 1.3 Features of the Maras in El Salvador . 12 2.1 Elections in El Salvador . 33 2.2 Mano Dura policies . 42 3.1 Data Comparison . 54 3.2 Sum of Correlated Municipalities . 57 4.1 Actor Dictionary Categories . 78 4.2 Verb Categories .
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