UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Media representation and Youth Crime in El Salvador
Bachelor Thesis Human Geography
Johannes Chinchilla 10179690 18-6-2014
This research focusses on the ways in which Salvadoran media have traditionally reported about youth-crime. Attention is paid to the Salvadoran context, which seems to have been violent for over several decades. Possible consequences the media may have on the public interpretation of youth crime will be discussed, as the public interpretation of youth crime might contribute to possible solutions
Inhoud Introduction ...... 2 Framework ...... 2 Research Methods ...... 8 Chapter Layout ...... 9 Chapter 1: The Salvadoran Context ...... 10 Historical and Political Context ...... 10 Precedents of Civil War ...... 10 The Legacy of the Civil War ...... 14 Socio-economic Context ...... 15 Poverty, Inequality and Social Exclusion ...... 16 Geography of inequalities ...... 19 Chapter 2: Youth Crime ...... 21 Crime in General and Social Conflict ...... 21 Culture of Violence ...... 24 Youth Crime in General and the Gang Phenomenon ...... 25 Chapter 3: Salvadoran Media ...... 29 Media and Democracy ...... 29 Salvadoran Media: it’s just Business ...... 30 Print Media and Online Newspapers ...... 32 Legislation, Diversity and Ownership ...... 33 Chapter 4: Media Discourse ...... 35 Salvadoran Media Discourse ...... 35 Discourse Analysis ...... 40 Representation of reality ...... 40 Stereotypes ...... 41 Representativeness ...... 44 The message ...... 45 Chapter 5: Public Interpretation of Youth Crime ...... 48 Creating the ‘Other’ ...... 48 Construction of Discourse and Public Interpretation of Youth Crime ...... 50 Consequences negative media-representation ...... 52 Conclusion ...... 54
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Introduction Although the amount of reported homicides decreased in 2013, El Salvador is still listed number four in the list of countries with the highest murder rates (Marroquín, 2014). In 2013 a total of 2,492 murders was registered, of which the majority of victims were males between 15 and 39 years old (Lohmuller, 2014). A common explanation for the high murder rate and the insecurity in the country is the presence of gangs or pandillas in Spanish. After the civil war, that lasted from 1980 until 1992, the problems associated with these gangs increased, or at least they were given more attention. Even now, 22 years after the civil war, not one day passes by without the media reporting something about these gangs. The majority of these media have showed to be influenced by politics and the private sector (Aguilar, 2006). Aguilar, for example, argues that although the gangs were perceived as a severe problem by society, it has not always been perceived as the biggest or most important problem for the people. However, when in October 2003 the right-wing government launched its new (aggressive) plan called ‘Mano Dura’ to fight the gangs, far more people indicated to perceive the gangs as the major national problem. Although the gang phenomenon is probably one of the most studied issues in Central America, there seems to be a gap in the literature –especially in English literature– about the way in which the media present information about these gangs. As not all homicides are related to gang violence, but most of them are related to violence from and among youngsters, the focus of this investigation will be on (the media coverage on) issues related to youth- violence and crime in general. The central research question of this investigation is as follows:
How is youth crime and violence currently being pictured in the Salvadoran media and in what way may this influence the public opinion about youth crime?
Framework In order to answer the research question it is useful to revise the literature existing literature on the topic, as various interesting ideas and concepts can be used. Xavier Giró (2006) shows us that the media do almost to improve the situation in the country when it comes to youth violence and gangs. Instead, they often present a one-sided story that is often stigmatizing. Amparro Marroquín Parducci (2006) writes about a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the media are even aggravating the problems surrounding youth violence. The article explains how certain images of stereotypes and certain stigmas can contribute to a vicious circle of violence and the author recommends that the media alter their way of reporting certain facts, if they want to be part of the solution. Aguilar and
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Carranza (2011) describe the emergence of youth-gangs and focuses especially on the (social) opportunities of these youngsters. They plead for a wider and more structural approach to integrate these often excluded actors into society. This article is useful to understand the underlying causes of youth crime and gang culture, both in the past as in the present. Martel (2006) queries the ‘official discourse’ on gangs. Although the author recognizes the presence of these gangs and the negative consequences of many of their deeds, she points out that the commotion around those gangs is often a form of propaganda, used to justify policy changes that are mainly benefiting the people that are involved in decision making processes. From the ideas and concepts provided by these and some additional articles, it is possible to extract the necessary guidance for the investigation. Hence, the conceptual model builds on the information collected from the existing literature.
Research Design The research will basically exist out of three main topics, which will form the guidelines for this research. The three topics are divided in different chapters and will focus on:
• The most important causes behind youth crime and the main characteristics of youth crime • The approach of the different Salvadoran media to cover youth crime • The way in which the public interpretation and opinion about youth crime can be influenced by the media
The first part focusses on social structures and conditions that give way to the most important causes of youth crime (and violence). This is critical to understand, as these phenomena have been in the media attention for over a decade and are present in the everyday life of many. The second part will help create an understanding about the ways in which different media present information about youth crime and violence. Finally this paper will examine the way in which the media can possibly influence the public interpretation of youth crime. They may for example be contributing to a solution of the problems that are related to youth crime or they may be aggravating the situation. For this investigation a discourse analysis will be used (see Research Methods). As the article from FLASCO (2007) shows, that the greater inequalities in society today have various causes. In the article processes such as democratization (political), liberalization (economic) and globalization as part of the process of modernization are mentioned as possible factor that contribute to growing inequalities. The authors also point out that the
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military conflicts in Central America, that took place at the end of the last century, have marked the way in which political reforms have constructed new legal systems and institutions (socio-political), and have given way to new mechanics, behaviours, discourses and new struggles within the democratic system (FLASCO, 2007). In the conceptual framework, the concepts of historical context and social, political and economic context will be used to explain why social inequalities exist and are being reproduced (see figure 1).
Figure 1: Conceptual Model
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As these concepts are considerably large, this investigation will not focus on those concepts. It will, however, be necessary to provide basic historical and contextual information of the Salvadoran, society in order to create a better understanding of the context in which the research is focused. The third concept to be explained is the concept of social inequalities. In January 2012 Secretary-General Bank Ki-moon called on El Salvador to “address its socio-economic inequalities to consolidate its peace process” –that was initiated over 20 years ago (UN news centre, 2012). Socio-economic inequality is one aspect of social inequalities, however other inequalities such as inequalities in political power and the access to resources (such as health and education) are also important to keep in mind when we think of social inequality (Greig et al. 2007). Rodrígues et al. (2009) argue that social conflict can be a result of these inequalities, which often results in violent manifestations. Although they admit that the violence that is caused by youth gangs cannot be considered as a social conflict in itself, they argue that it is the manifestation of a social conflict that is inherent to society. The children, adolescents and youth are not violent by nature, but their violent acts are generally considered as a reaction to an environment that 'pushes' them in that direction (Rodrígues et al., 2009). As the lack of opportunities can be both a result as a cause of social inequalities, it is placed in the same box of the conceptual model. It can, for example, be a result of social inequality when a young individual is not able to attend school or see a medical because of the socio-economic situation of its parents. As a result of a lack of schooling or poor health, the individual may struggle to find a well-paid job, resulting in a poor socio-economic situation for this individual (Vargas & Chavez, 2011) Although stigmatization and social exclusion are not synonymous, they are often interlinked with each other. According to Kurzban & Leary (2001) certain individuals can be systematically excluded from particular sorts of social interactions as a result of stigmatization. This stigmatization may occur when they are a member of a certain group or because they possess a particular characteristic. Molina et al. (2009) argue that those who are socially excluded or ignored are often victims of social dynamics, structural conditions and the more powerful people in society. This may lead to a disruption of the social cohesion, which can lead to aggression, and personal and social violence.
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As many have argued, youth crime can –to a large extend– be perceived as the outcome of the conditions described before (Rodríguez et al., 2009; Vargas & Chavez, 2011; FLASCO, 2007; Hernandez, 2014; Rude, 2014). However, it is necessary to determine what ‘youth’ is, in order to outline the scope in this investigation. In General, each country specifies the age- range of each of these groups. In El Salvador, those from 0 to 12 year-olds are considered ‘children’ and those from 13 to 18 year-olds as ‘adolescents’. In this case there is no age- range for the category of ‘youth’. However, in neighbouring country Honduras the juvenile period is defined as the period between the age of 18 and 30. In social sciences there is no consensus about the categorization of these different age groups, as the process of human development is influenced by many factors such as demographical, social, psychological and cultural factors that influence each individual in distinct ways. Some authors even reject the whole concept of 'youth' as it may result in ignorance of the heterogeneity of a certain group. So we can conclude that adolescence and youth cannot merely be interpreted as something influenced by biological processes, but also by psychological, social and cultural processes (Rodrígues et al., 2009). In this investigation a broad (and multiple) concept of youth will be used, following the different terminologies provided by the authors of the revised literature. When necessary, some further information on how these terms are constructed by other authors will be provided. In general terms, ‘youth crime’ refers to criminal acts committed by children, adolescents and youngsters. As violence can be seen as a certain form of crime, I will apply this term to the wider concept of crime. The main focus of this investigation is on the approach of the ‘written media’ and their coverage of youth crime. Both printed and online newspaper articles, as existing literature on the topic will be used to find out what the general approach looks like. Both secondary literature as a discourse analysis of newspaper articles will be used to explain how different media have displayed topics related to youth crime. This discourse analysis will be focused on two printed newspapers; El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica, and on two online newspapers; El Faro and Voces.
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The term media representation, in this case, has to do with the way in which media construct meaning about our world and how these ideas are represented. Is has to be noted though, that not all audiences will interpret the same message in the same way. Dyer (1977) suggest four possible factors to be considered when analysing representation:
• A selective re-representation of reality; in which (due to a lack of time and space in newspapers etc.) just a small part of the reality is being reported. • A typical representation of reality: stereotypes can be used to represent certain groups of people in a particular way. • Representativeness: Who is being heard? • The meaning which media messages represent for audiences: How are the messages being interpreted? (Dyer, 1977 in Marris and Thornham, 1999)
In this investigation, the constructive approach, provided by Hall (1997) will be used in order to understand how the media can influence our perception of reality. In the constructive approach it is acknowledged that neither the individual user of language nor objects themselves can fix meaning in language. This approach helps us to separate the material world, where people and things exist, and the symbolic practices and processes; through which representation, meaning and language operate. In this theory the existence of the material world is not denied, but the acknowledgement is made that the social actors are those who make the world meaningful and make it possible to meaningfully communicate about that world to others. This process is on its turn influenced by conceptual systems of different cultures, the linguistic system and other representational systems that construct meaning (Hall, 1997). The constructive approach may be most useful for the discourse analysis, when investigating to what extend the media provide; a selective re-representation of reality, a typical representation of reality and a representation from the perspective of a certain group. For example, if we wanted to find out if a selective re-representation of reality is given, it would be necessary to acknowledge that there may be a discrepancy between the (physical) reality and the story that is been told by the media (representation trough language). In case of the typical representation of reality, we may focus on the use of certain language by the author or speaker, in order to find out if these typical representations are accurate and righteous. It may also be helpful to look for underlying messages in media representation, in
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order to answer questions such as: Whose viewpoint is being represented? Why is the story told (in a certain way)? What does the message project onto the audience? Finally, as I believe that the media have the ability to affect the public opinion in a significant way, it will be useful to find out what kind of images are being broadcasted by these media and what the meaning of those messages represent for audiences (Hall, 1997). Due to limited time and resources, it was not possible to perform a large-scale investigation on the actual public opinion and the effects of certain media on it. I will try, however, to interpret this process by making use of existing literature and some in-depth interviews with key informants.
Research Methods In this research, the central focus will be on the media coverage on youth crime and the possible influences of certain types of media coverage on the public opinion about youth. It can therefore be seen as an exploratory research, as the possible relationships between the different concepts is not certain. To conduct this investigation, existing data –such as journal articles– will be used to perform a secondary research. Newspaper articles can be used in various ways, there may be a focus on its quantitative nature; for example by counting the times a certain topic is given attention to in a certain newspaper. However, mostly qualitative methods will be used to try and interpret the messages that are being broadcasted by the media. For this part, I will make use of a discourse analysis of the two most read newspapers in El Salvador; El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica, as well as two online newspapers; El Faro and Voces. The newspapers will be revised in a systematic way by; counting the articles related to youth crime, paying attention to the language that is being used and by including an interpretive part for each newspaper. For reasons of convenience both El Diario de Hoy as La Prensa Gráfica will be revised on a daily basis for April 2014, while the online newspapers will be revised for both April and May 2014. There will also be made use of existing literature on the topic, and interviews with key informants in order to provide necessary background information and to facilitate the structuring of the research. The key informants have been selected on basis of their (work) experience with youth crime or the prevention of youth crime.
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Chapter Layout • Chapter 1: The Salvadoran Context. In this chapter attention will be given to the historical and political context as well as the socio-economic context. Special attention will be given to on the precedents and the aftermath of the civil war. To describe some of the most important aspects and struggles of the Salvadoran society, this chapter also focuses on the economic situation, the existing inequalities and poverty in El Salvador. • Chapter 2: Youth Crime. In this chapter, an explanation of the high crime rates will be discussed and attention is given to youth crime and violence in particular. • Chapter 3: Salvadoran Media. This chapter will focus on the way in which the Salvadoran media is structured, considering aspects such as ownership, orientation and the role of the media in a (well-functioning) democracy. • Chapter 4: Media Discourse. Based on existing literature and a discourse analysis, this chapter will reflect on existing media discourses en El Salvador. • Chapter 5: Public Interpretation of Youth Crime. With the obtained information from the former chapters and some in-depth interviews, this chapter will explain in what way the media can influence the public interpretation of youth crime and what the possible consequences are.
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Chapter 1: The Salvadoran Context
Historical and Political Context In March 2014 it was declared that the former guerrilla movement and current political party 'el Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional' (FMLN) won the presidential elections. Salvador Sánchez Cerén is the first former rebel commander that has been elected to the presidency of El Salvador. It is the second time after the civil war –and actually in all of Salvadoran history– that the country is governed by a left-wing party. Former president Mauricio Funes, who came to power in 2009 ended the two decades of right-wing rule, in which the ARENA party had ruled without interruption. The outcome of the elections (a victory of 50.11% to 49.39%) shows that the country is still heavily politically divided (Partlow, 2014). For some, the leftish victory is seen as a step to long-expected justice after a decade of war and two decades of right-wing oppression. For others, it is just a socialist threat to the prosperous classes, as redistribution of wealth and power are demanded by the people supporting the FMLN. Tensions are running high, and even 20 years after the war the country remains turbulent, especially in times of elections. The battle between left and right seems to be a never-ending one, and the scars left by the civil war are still clearly visible.
Precedents of Civil War Being the smallest country of Central America, El Salvador had gone almost unnoticed by the international public prior to the civil war. In a bit more than one decade, the armed conflict had claimed the lives of over 75,000 citizens. It were the repugnant acts, such as the killing of the Archbishop Oscar Romero, the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwoman an the 1989 Jesuits Massacre, that draw more attention to the conflict (CJA, 2009). But what had caused the outbreak of a civil war and how could it have lasted for over more than a decade? The answers are multiple and complex, but to create a better understanding of the present political, social and economic struggles in El Salvador it is of the utmost importance to pay attention to these questions. To explain the causes and precedents of the civil war, Mason (1999) points to the theory of the U.S. political scientist Samuel Huntington, who argued that a revolution is most likely (if not inevitable) "to take place in a society where the conditions of land-ownership are inequitable and where the peasant lives in poverty and suffering, unless government takes prompt measures to remedy these conditions." (Mason, 1999; p180).The expansion and commercialization of export agriculture, that took place in the second half of the 19th century, displaced many peasants from their land. Luxury commodities, such as cocoa,
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indigo and coffee made up the largest part of the export products in the 19th century. After the independence (first from Spain, in 1821, and later from the Federal Republic of Central America in 1841), political control only shifted from the Spanish to the Salvadorian elite of European ancestry. These so called ‘fourteen families’ possessed virtually all of the fertile land and were able to exploit it by using cheap (indigenous) labour, while the country was being ruled by a long series of military dictatorships who favoured these families. Even though many peasants remained landless after the expansion and commercialization of export agriculture, it was uncommon for the aggrieved individuals to rise up in armed revolt. When they did, they were often crushed with great brutality (Mason, 1999; CJA, 2009). The historian Héctor Lindo-Fuentes wrote that "to be Salvadoran, means knowing that something terrible happened in late January of 1932". This is probably the most remembered year of Salvadoran history, as an estimated 30,000 civilians were massacred. The reason behind the massacre was the oppression of a peasant revolt against the ruling dictatorship and the fourteen families, led by labour leader Agustin Farabundo Marti. In December 1931 vice president Maximiliano Hernández Martínez staged a coup with the help of a group of young officers and ousted former president Araujo. Within weeks after the coup, communist rebels were already plotting an insurrection against him, believing that a peasant rebellion was the right way to get attention for the problems the rural population had to deal with. On January 22 of 1932 the actual fight broke out and a rebel group, led by Martí, attacked government forces. These rebels existed for the greater part out of Pipil Indians1. Within a couple of days, the rebels had managed to take control over several towns and they were able to disrupt the supply lines to many places and thereby attacking the military garrison. Due to the possession of superior technology and training, the military was able to defeat the rebels easily (Mason, 1999). Even though the rebels killed an estimated 100 people or less, the military responded with non-proportional force, and killed over 30,000 civilians. Most of the victims of the massacre where indigenous and although Martinez initially claimed to be responding to communist rebellion, the terms ‘indio2’ and ‘comunista’ soon became interchangeable. This led to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians –only because of their indigenous appearance– and the battle between classes became a racial one. In the years after the massacre, indigenous people were often afraid to express their ethnical background out of
1 The majority of the indigenous people in El Salvador belong to the Pipils or Cuzcatlecs. In 1998 it was estimated that 10% of the Salvadoran population was from indigenous origin. (Salazar, 2003) 2 The Spanish term ‘indio’ is often used when referring in a disrespectful way to the indigenous people. 11
fear of further oppression. The incidents of January 1932 gave the message to the oppressed rural (indigenous) population that any form of rebellion would be punished heavily (CJA, 2009: Garrard-Brunett, 2004). After the massacre, one military officer after the other followed as president of the country. The fourteen families controlled the economy, while the rural population kept living in poverty as agricultural labourers. Although rebellion was suppressed, discontentedness among the poor grew, as well as the demand for a fairer distribution of wealth and land. It has often been argued that the revolutions in Cuba and Nicaragua, and the leftish parties coming to power in respectively 1959 and 1979, inspired the Salvadorans in their battle for more social equality (Marti, 2004; Winn, 1999). These incidents alone though, are not sufficient to explain the violence used by the opposition movements at the end of the eighteenth century. As Mason argues, opposition movements rarely choose revolutionary violence as their initial strategy, instead they will use far less dangerous strategies of nonviolent collective action initially, in order to pressure the government to make the necessary changes to "alleviate the sources of popular grievances" (Mason, 1999; p181). Mason claims that it is the response of the state that will determine whether the initially nonviolent conflict will evolve in a violent one or not. This state response may either be reform or repression, or –as was the case in El Salvador– a mixture of those two. As the fear of communism was growing under the circumstances of the Cold War, the Salvadoran governments went to the extremes of both methods in order to maintain the status quo as long as possible. Simultaneously the state initiated one of the most extensive agrarian reforms in Latin American history, as it presided over one of the bloodiest waves of repression of the second half of the twentieth century. The land reform program was initiated to retard or even reverse the erosion of popular support for the regime. At the same time, the fourteen families needed a way of suppressing the mobilization of the poorer population, who were attracted to opposition movements that called for redistributive reforms. Therefore, the military was used to protect the elite against any movement that might threaten the economic hegemony of the agro- export elite (Mason, 1999). On February 3, 1997 Oscar Arnulfo Romero Galdámez (Monseñor Romero) was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador (fundacionmonseñor). The ruling elite was content with him being appointed, as he was seen as a quiet man who did not feel much for the revolutionary thoughts of his compatriots. They would soon be proven wrong. Just about a month after the appointment of Monseñor Romero, a great friend and colleague of him (Rutilio Grande) was assassinated. The death of his friend had a great impact on Moseñor
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Romero, who refused to attend any political events3 until the death of his friend would have been profoundly investigated. Subsequently, Monseñor Romero committed his services to justice and reconciliation in the country. He opened an office for the protection of human rights and opened the doors of the church to peasant refugees who were fleeing the countryside in fear of persecution. As his empathy for the suffering population grew, his requests for justice became louder and stronger. On March 23, 1980 he made an urgent call to the Salvadoran army to stop the violence against their own people. He explained that the law of God says not to kill and that no soldier had to obey orders that counteract the law of God –referring to the orders to kill nonviolent revolutionary rebels and innocent people (Mason, 1999). The day after this appeal Moseñor Romero was murdered by ‘death squads’, most likely ordered by Roberto d'Aubuisson; a rightist leader and formal national guard officer who later founded the far-right political party ARENA4 (Severo, 1992). On the day of his funeral, snipers attacked the crowd, killed 42 people and left over a 200 wounded. It was after the assassination of Monseñor Romero that the sporadic political violence, that had dominated the eighteenth century, evolved into a full-scale civil war. In September of that same year, the FMLN was formed out of the five major leftist revolutionary organizations. A guerrilla army was formed to oppose the right-wing paramilitary forces and government. According to Mason, the use of coercive machinery of the state to repress opposition challenges and sympathizers was one of the main causes of the outbreak of the civil war. He argues that "revolutionary organizations do not spring out of nowhere. They arise instead from nonviolent opposition organizations that have become the targets of state-sanctioned repressive violence." (Mason, 1999; 186).
3 Referring to political events associated with the current government of that time, as Monseñor Romero suspected the involvement of or even culpability of the government forces regarding the death of Rutilio Grande. 4 Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, or Nationalist Republican Alliance, founded in on 30 september 1981 by Roberto D'Aubuisson and Mercedes Gloria Salguero Gross.
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The Legacy of the Civil War By the end of 1989 both the rebels and the state concluded that neither one could defeat the other in battle. In this year, the FMLN undertook what they called the ‘final offensive’, as they had called several other operations before. Also this time the offensive did not lead to a victory but it proved that the rebels' combating capacity was still sufficient to preclude military defeat. It also convinced the rebels that it would be necessary to pursue an alternative to military victory. Also the U.S. government5 came to the conclusion that it had become very difficult to keep supporting the Salvadoran military after several acts of terror like the assassination of the Jesuits6. As it became clear to all three parties that a continuation of the conflict no longer offered any possible solutions, a settlement seemed to be the only possible option for the different parties. It took until 1992 before the peace accords were signed (Mason, 1999). The peace agreement forced the FMLN to convert into a (demilitarized) political party. At the same time the internal security forces were replaced by a new national police force. The UN played an important role as mediator and neutral third party in the peace negotiations. However, soon after the peace accords their authority began to decline. Mason argues that after the peace accords, public attention and press scrutiny subsided, resulting in the loss of leverage of international public opinion. This leverage was necessary for the UN in order to compel the parties to comply with the signed agreements. The UN faced major difficulty in compelling the Salvadoran government to comply with the agreements. One of the problems was that several army officers, whose abuses of human rights were egregious, remained in their position. As the FMLN was demilitarized, they too had lost leverage to compel compliance. The ARENA party controlled the majority of the legislature and the presidency and were therefore able to water down investigations that could tarnish their reputation. The United Nations Truth Commission investigated 22,000 denunciations of human rights violations during the war and found that 5 percent were committed by the
5 After the victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and in the 'heat' of the Cold War, the United States were prepared to take serious measures in order to avoid further expansion of socialist or communist powers. When Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981, he was determined to fight communism in the region and took a belligerent attitude. The problem, however, was that military intervention in the region could turn out in a total disaster if public opinion were to turn against it –as had happened in Vietnam. Therefore, Reagan decided to make use of a new strategy called 'low intensity warfare', which existed out of logistic, military, economic and political aid, without sending battalions of soldiers, to avoid further expansion of socialist and communist influences (Marti Puig). During the 1980s, the Salvadoran government received a total of over $4 billion. It is often argued that the civil war would have ended much earlier in a victory of the FMLN without the support for the government from the United States (Bourgois). 6 On 11 November 1989, six Jesuits, a cook and her daughter were murdered near the UCA (Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas) by death squads, associated with the government forces, but the killings were supposed to look as though committed by the guerrilla. 14
FMLN, compared to 85 percent by the army and 10 percent by army-linked death squads (Bourgois, 2001). After the war the ARENA party stayed in power for as long as two decades. If one is to understand the current socio-political situation of El Salvador, one must have an idea of the struggles of the past. Bell (2013) argues that:
"The biggest flaw of the Peace Accords was its failure to comprehend the difficulty in removing corruption from the government. The war may have ended, but the instating of proper justice systems, dismissal of military/treasury police, and installation of reintegration programs were all never fully completed due to the remaining corruption in the Salvadorian government." (Bell, 2013; p36)
Besides the high unemployment and security concerns, the biggest challenge for this new government may be to reduce the polarization in the country, that even 22 years after the war seems to be everyday reality and seems to be one of the underlying reasons of many struggles in the country (Allison, 2012).
Socio-economic Context According to Juan Héctor Vidal, the ex-director of the ANEP7, the primary goal of the new government should be to "establish a national agreement in order to make the economy grow." With a growth percentage of 1.9%, the Salvadoran economy had one of the lowest growth rates of all Latin American countries (LAC) last year (see graph 1). What may be even more alarming is the external debt, which accounts for almost 60% of the country’s GDP. On top of that, the state has an estimated debt of $20,000 million with the private pension administrators (Lezcano, 2014; eluniversal.com, 2014). According to the same analyst, El Salvador is not coming along with the rest of Central America, as the dollarization in 2001 'let down the anchor' to an already slow growing economy. The remittances, that made up 16.6% of the GDP in 2013, have also lost their growth rhythm. These remittances are sent by Salvadorans living abroad, mostly in the United States, and they have become more important for the Salvadoran economy over the last decades after the civil war. The export rate, which grew with 16% and 18% in respectively 2010 and 2011, stagnated in 2012 and grew with a modest 2.8% in 2013. Besides the slowly growing economy, El Salvador has to deal with severe poverty, that has been declining over the last five years, but is still affecting a large part of the population (World Bank, 2014; Bunse & González, 2006).
7 National Association of the Private Enterprise (Asociación Nacional de la Empresa Privada) 15
Graph 1: GDP per capita in us$ in El Salvador and LAC, 2004-2012 10000 9000 8000
7000
6000 LAC 5000 4000 El Salvador 3000 2000 1000 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Source: World Bank (edited by author)
Poverty, Inequality and Social Exclusion The socio-economic inequality is often mentioned as one of the most urgent problems of El Salvador. The UN Secretary-General Bank Ki-moon reminded the Salvadoran government in 2012 that it needed to address these inequalities in order to consolidate the peace processes –that were initiated over 20 years ago (Allison, 2012; UN news centre, 2012). In order to get a clear view on these socio-economic inequalities, it is necessary to clarify some important concepts that are related to the issue, such as; poverty, inequality and social exclusion. After explaining these concepts and the way they interact with each other, it may be useful to pay some attention to the geographical dimension of these concepts. Inequality and poverty may initially appear as words with a common sense meaning, but when explored more deeply, their complexity emerges. Inequality can for example include differences in income levels and wealth, but in a wider perspective it can also include differences in access to health, educational levels, life expectancy, and power relations. Greig et al. (2007) distinguish different types of poverty, including absolute, relative, objective and subjective poverty (Chinchilla, 2013). According to Greig et al. the concept of inequality may often be more useful:
“if the focus […] moves to the concept of poverty, researchers tend to turn to the lack of resources and gaps in service delivery, rather than the unequal social relations that mediate the allocation of resources and the delivery of services.” (Greig et al., 2007; p15).
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In some cases, however, it may be more convenient to use the concept of poverty, in order to give a clear image of the severity of the problem. If we take a look, for example, at a graphic showing the percentage of the population living below the national poverty line8 of El Salvador, we see a decline of that percentage over the last years. Between 2011 and 2012 alone, it dropped from 40.6% to 34.5% (See graph 2). This number alone may not be enough to explain the difficulties the country faces with its socio-economic inequalities, but it does show us that a fairly large part of the population is still living in poverty. An often used method to measure the income (in)equality is the use of the GINI index9. In El Salvador this was last calculated in 2009 and it amounted to 48.33. The GINI ranking puts El Salvador on the 30th place (of countries with the highest level of inequality), out of the 153 countries that were measured over the last years, meaning the country has a relatively uneven distribution of income (UNDP, 2013).
Graph 2: Percentage of Population Below National Poverty Line El Salvador 42%
40%
38%
36%
34%
32%
30% 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Source: World Bank (edited by author)
8 US$ 2.94 per capita per day in urban areas and $1.91 in rural areas (Povertytools, 2011) 9 Index measure of the extent to which the distribution of income (or consumption expenditure) among individuals within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality (World Bank, 2014) 17
The UNDP offers even more indices that may help to clarify some aspects of the social inequalities in El Salvador. One of them is the well-known HDI index, this index measures the long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development. These dimensions include a long and healthy life, a decent standard of living and the access to knowledge. When this score was last calculated for El Salvador in 2012, the HDI value was 0.680. This places El Salvador in the ‘medium human development’ category and at the 107th place of the 187 measured countries and territories. Between 1980 and 2012 life expectancy at birth increased with 15.8 years, while the average years of schooling also increased with 4.5 years (UNDP, 2013). The Gross National Income (GNI) per capita increased by approximately 38% during the same period. However, when the HDI index is adjusted for inequality, it becomes clear that, although the country has made some progress, there is still a need for special attention to certain vulnerable groups. The HDI, discounted for inequality, falls from 0.680 to 0.499, a loss of 26.6 percent. Another type of inequality which may not be as relevant to this research, but is often mentioned, is gender inequality. For the Gender Inequality Index the country has a value of 0.441, ranking it 82 out of the 148 measured countries. Unfortunately the Multidimensional Poverty Index, introduced in 2010 by the Human Development Report, has not been calculated for El Salvador, due to a lack of relevant data (UNDP, 2013). According to Bunse and González (2006) poverty and inequality do not only have repercussions on the marginalized groups, but on the society as a whole. They point out that in most Central American countries a 10% of the population possesses 40% of the wealth, and that in El Salvador this percentage is even growing. They argue that poverty and inequality are likely to form serious political and economic risks; they cultivate public discontent, contribute to high levels of criminality and insecurity and explain a big part of the rise of political populism (Bunse and González, 2006; 67). Furthermore, the public discontent about the high levels of poverty, the increasing inequality, the failing governments and the corruption can provoke instable politics and have major repercussions for the democracies of those regions (Bunse and González, 2006; 67). They show that 65% of the Central American population does not believe that every person has the same opportunity to overcome poverty and that 19% of them point out poverty to be the major reason to be discriminated. The high levels of poverty and inequality are often accompanied with widespread violence. Urban violence and organized crime have increased in El Salvador, as well as in Guatemala and Honduras since the 1990s. This is noticeable in the high murder rates of these countries, especially Honduras and El Salvador, as shown before. As a consequence,
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the public discontent grows even further, because of a lack of security in these countries. However, as Bunse and González point out, the effects are not merely social or political; the insecurity, crime and corruption are important factors that contribute to the decline of sales (7% in El Salvador). Also foreign investment is being held back by these factors, leading to a growing informal economy. The World Bank showed that this may lead to a vicious circle of poverty as for every 10% increase of poverty, economic growth is reduced by 1%. So the high levels of poverty cause less economic growth, while at the same time the slow growth of the economy implies increased poverty. In Central America, the informal market is exceeding the formal market, leading to severe consequences for economic growth and human development. One of the main problems that Bunse and González see is the lack of human capital and an inadequate educational system (Bunse and González, 2006, Portillo, 2014)
Geography of inequalities The demographical changes that took place over the last decades have changed the Salvadoran society into a predominantly urban society. The cities are fragmented and unequal, and currently almost two million people are living in half a million homes that are characterized by their precarious living circumstances. Today, more than half of the poor population of El Salvador lives in cities. The 2010 Mapa de pobreza urbana y exclusión social (Urban Poverty and Social Exclusion Map) shows agglomerates of dwellings that lack in proper construction materials or in access to basics services. According to the report, these precarious settlements in urban areas (PSUA) form the most important centres with a concentration of people that live in conditions of poverty and social exclusion (Briones et al., 2010). The Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (MASS) presents the major concentration of PSUAs. However, the most precarious settlements are found in areas more remote from the metropolitan area. The biggest lack of infrastructure seems to be the access to adequate sanitary facilities, which affect 58% of the PSUAs. The report is principally concerned with social exclusion, which it describes as;
“the process of accumulation and combination of individual, economic, social, cultural and political factors that situate people in places of disadvantage. This process corresponds to situations in which people or residences are incapacitated to practice basic consuming norms (either material or symbolic) as a consequence of improper insertion in the labour market. [..] This process of exclusion is reproduced generation after generation.” (Briones et al., 2010; 13)
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Even though social exclusion is not just an exclusive characteristic of the PSUAs, 70% of these settlements report a certain degree of social exclusion, in comparison with 37% of other types of settlements. The report points out that access to education, health, work and diversion are in a large way determined by the place of dwelling. Not surprisingly, youngsters form one of the most vulnerable sectors. From those between 18 and 24 years of age living in PSUAs, seventy-five percent lacks the minimal accreditation to continue higher education. The principal idea of the report is to explain that the main problem the urban poor face is not the lack of income, but rather the limitations in the access to different resources. One of the limitations is the effective insertion in the labour market, but this is not seen as the root of the problem. It has to be noted that the PSUAs are not homogeneous and that not all the poor live in these areas, nor that everyone living in these areas has an income inferior to the national poverty line; however the PSUAs do present the highest proportions of precarious dwellings in the urban areas (Briones et al., 2010). The focus on PSUAs in urban areas may cause one to overlook the problem of rural poverty. In 2010, for example, 1,114,460.1 was the estimated number or rural poor, while 46.5 percent of the population was living below the rural poverty line (World Bank, 2014). A reason for the focus on urban areas may be the growing population in these areas, as a result of urbanization. Another factor may be the increasing inequalities in cities, which are more visible in the cities than in rural areas. The metropolitan area of San Salvador, and the cities of La Libertad and San Miguel are characterized by luxurious malls, restaurants and pompous buildings, often not so far away from marginalized settlements. In the 2005 mean GDP per capita map it is clearly visible that higher incomes are characteristic to the regions mentioned before (see map 1). Tardanico (2008) argues that although the ongoing urbanization has caused an increase of population and an increase of the share in the national economy in the metropolis, severe deficits in basic infrastructure have marked the area. He also addresses that due to these and other factors, we should be aware of possible class polarization and fragmentation, along with changing urban- spatial mixes of class, gender, and generation.
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Chapter 2: Youth Crime After considering historical, political, social and economic factors it becomes clear that El Salvador is a country with a tumultuous history that has left its marks on society. To understand the phenomenon, the perceptions and the evolution of youth crime, it seems impossible to neglect these factors. This chapter will clarify the importance of the problems associated with youth crime and seek an explanation for these problems.
Crime in General and Social Conflict In her book El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty, and the Transition to Democracy Ellen Moodie (2010) examines stories of Salvadoran citizens, their visions on society and how many urban Salvadorans regard the present ‘peace’ as 'worse than the war'. According to Moodie, this last sentence could often be heard in the immediate years after the war. But even now, over two decades after the peace accords, the intensifying insecurity has turned into an often discussed topic that has seeped into public discourse, and has gotten great attention from the mass media. The author writes that she came to El Salvador in 1993 to learn about peace, but instead encountered something completely different.
"It wasn't war, either. It was something else, something somehow more sinister, less knowable. This mystery, this unpredictable new mode of danger, only amplified anxiety. The most visible reason for this sentiment was the rising crime rate." (Moodie, 2010; p2)
If we look at the official statistics of the national police force (Policía Nacional Civil, or PNC), we see that robbery and theft are the most committed crimes (see graph 3). However, physical abuse and homicide immediately follow with staggering numbers. What are the reasons behind these high crime rates? And who are the ones committing these crimes? These simple questions have multiple and complex answers, but one aspect of the Salvadoran society that is often given priority is the gap between rich and poor. Rodriguez et al. (2009) argue that the social relationships between different actors naturally causes conflict. This conflict may sometimes tried to be solved pacifically, in which case a peaceful situation can be maintained. The term 'conflict' refers to a situation in which at least two or more actors do not agree on a specific topic or may have different interests. One of the most accepted sociological theories is that from Ralf Dahrendorf, who suggest that conflict is inherent to social dynamics and is the driver behind social change. The origins of conflict may be various; class war, inequalities in power relationships, battles for resources, ideological disputes or honour and prestige. In the case of youth crime
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(specifically violence) Rodriguez et al. argue that it cannot be considered as a social conflict in itself, but as a manifestation of a profound social conflict that concerns or should concern a society. Children are not born violently; their acts often reflect certain particularities of their environment. In many cases, youth violence is an expression of discontent an unsatisfied children, adolescents and youth.
Graph 3: Crime Statistics from January - July, El Salvador 6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000 2012 0 2013
Source: Policía Nacional Civil de El Salvador (edited by author)
As the uneven distribution of wealth was one of the most importance factors for the civil war, many claim that the unsatisfactory peace process left the country with scars that are not yet healed (Guitiérrez, 2014). Bunse and González (2006) for example, argue that poverty and inequality stir up public discontent and contribute to high levels of crime and insecurity. They also note that these high levels of crime and public discontent are accompanied by high levels of violence. It seems simple; a large group of poor people has to deal with a rich upper class who can afford luxuries they cannot afford. As the discontent of these poor people grows, it eventually results in crime. However, we should be careful to merely adopt these assumptions.
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Vargas and Chaves (2011) for example, argue that poverty and crime do not hold a causal relationship. Instead, they see phenomena as manifestations of the same process of vulnerability, by increasingly removing a large part of the population from exercising their rights and opportunities. In their analysis they seek to demystify the stigmatization of those who are socially excluded, as the criminalization of poverty has justified the cultural acceptance of the idea that crime is originated directly and exclusively by poverty. As a consequence, the association between the poor and criminal acts is being reinforced, disregarding the role of the state, which is often not able to provide efficiently in basic needs of those poor. Vargas and Chaves argue that the ‘social’ and ‘structural’ violence (ideological, political and economic systems) established sociocultural regimes, characterized by inequality and exclusion. This type of violence alludes to the exercise of oppressive inequality, socially legitimized, which is harmful to society and promotes the establishment of a vicious circle of violence. According to the authors, social stratification can therefore be seen as a mechanism to maintain social order, where one group dominates over the other by using (symbolic) violence. Poverty should therefore rather be seen as a social vulnerability factor that increases the risks of a certain group to find themselves in a situation in which crime may serve as a survival mechanism. Instead of attributing crime to poverty, they conceptualize it as a socio-historical phenomenon, resulting from an exclusive development model (Vargas & Chaves, 2011). Following this holistic approach, we may assume that not only the individual that commits the crime is responsible for his acts, but also the exclusive nature of society. According to Vargas and Chavez the social vulnerability of certain groups is being reinforced by poverty and may lead to a process of stigmatization by the state and the media. By stimulating prejudices and stereotypes, the general image occurs that the crime problem is a problem of poverty, instead of the outcome of structural problems of society. This way, ideas that make society believe that; being young, belonging to a certain social group and live in a certain area is equivalent to being dangerous, is being reinforced. These assumptions may lead to a negative self-image of the marginalized groups and may lead to further social exclusion and segregation. This social exclusion and segregation can have an aggravating effect on the economic situation of the marginalized groups, as they are not part of the regular society. One way of survival may then be to turn to crime. Although the original article from Vargas and Chavez focuses on the Cost Rican society, their understandings of the emergence of crime may be helpful to understand crime as a situation that is stimulated by individual, social, economic, historical and political tendencies (Vargas & Chaves, 2011; Giró, 2006; Rodgers, 2009).
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Culture of Violence In El Salvador, one specific form of crime has been studied more than any other; violence. Although the words ‘crime’ and ‘violence’ differ in their meaning, academic research tends to focus almost exclusively on violence as the most important or most present form of crime in the case of El Salvador. Although this research has a slightly wider approach to crime, it seems unavoidable to give prior attention to violence. Not so much because of the fact that other studies do so as well, but because it is what makes the Salvadoran case more or less unique. It has to be mentioned, though, that Honduras and Guatemala are two other cases with staggering numbers of crime related to violence. Many authors mention a 'culture of violence' as a characteristic feature of those three northern Central American countries with histories of civil war, dictatorships and authority regimes (Savenije, 2009).
“In the case of El Salvador, a sketch of the argument could be that: the high levels of violence are products of a large history of violent acts that facilitated a culture of violence, formed by systems of norms, values and attitudes, that legitimize, approve and stimulate its use. Besides increasing the quantity of fire arms in the country, the civil war intensified this culture by suggesting that the best or only way to solve conflicts is by means of violence. Furthermore, the unstable institutions, that are responsible for application of the law and the justice administration, permitted –especially after the war– an elevated level of impunity and therefore consolidated violent acts in time of peace.” (Cruz, 2003; 1161, 1164 in Savenije, 2009)
Moodie (2012) explains how criminalized individuals and practices of violence are being interpreted in a post-war environment. She argues that the democratic transition led to a new coding of violence. While during the war, most people assumed that just about all the violence came forth out of an ideological conflict and could be considered as political violence. After the war, violence was often assumed to be 'common', with the primary goal of material gain. Ridriguez et al. (2009) argue that the Central American countries all have a history of violence: the colonial times, the establishment of the nation-state and, more recently, the armed conflicts. These periods are characterized by intense conflicts over power, resources, control, inequality, discrimination and ideologies. This context has an accumulated negative effect on youth, especially on those who are marginalized and socially excluded. Now, if we combine the idea of crime –which in the case of El Salvador is just about always linked to violence, whether in reality or subjectivity– to youth, there is one phenomenon that may be the most studied topic in El Salvador; youth gangs. Two gangs;
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the MS13 (Mara Salvatrucha) and the 18th Street (Barrio 18) have captivated the minds of the Salvadoran society and many scholars around the world.
Youth Crime in General and the Gang Phenomenon It is necessary to keep in mind that youth are not only involved in crime as offenders, but that they are often “victimized by crime” (Rude, 2014). The table shows how the number of youth homicide victims dropped dramatically in March 2012. On March 9 of that year, the MS13 and the 18th Street came to a truce, which implied no more killing of rival gang- members and law enforcement officers. After the truce, the murder rates dropped from 14 a day to 5. Now, two years after the truce, many people argue that the truce is ‘dead’, as the murder rates have gone up to 10 a day again. However, Rude (2014) points out, that the truce has had enormous effects on violence in general in the country. Not only the prisons for gang-members (segregated from ‘regular’ prisons) are much more quiet, but also other prisons, free from gang-members, are much more peaceful (Rude, 2014).
Homicides with youth victims, El Salvador
Month 2009 2010 2011 2012 Total
January 247 228 193 196 864 February 174 178 163 206 721 March 212 166 190 120 688 April 194 191 176 80 641 May 223 188 208 79 698 June 216 174 176 83 649 July 170 142 202 81 595 August 187 184 207 74 652 September 229 90 192 82 593 October 236 166 175 83 660 November 184 148 190 84 606 December 172 147 182 72 501 Total 2444 2002 2254 1168 7868
Source: INJUVE, 2013 (edited by author)
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To get an overview of the involvement of youth in crime, we can make use of the homicide statistics from January and February 2013. During this period, 351 homicides were registered, of which 195 (56%) were committed by youth. Within this group, 98% were males and 2% females. The number of youth victims of homicide dropped from 206 in February 2012 to 86 in the same month in 2013, which is a decline of 54% –as a consequence of the truce. Another type of crime that may be committed by youngsters may not be considered a crime in any other country. According to Rude (2014) a lot of people are imprisoned because of traffic accidents, or as the national police force (PCN) calls it 'culpable homicide by traffic accident'. Between January and February 2013, 35% of these 'homicides' were caused by youngsters. According to the Salvadoran Institute for Development of Woman (ISDEMU), 1107 youngsters were victims of sexual offences in the first trimester of 2012, of which basically all were woman. 80% of them had suffered from domestic violence, 14% from sexual aggression, 4% from child abuse and 4% from workplace harassment. Of the 279 denunciations of sexual crimes between January and February 2013, 68% of the victims were between the age of 15 and 16. With regard to the theme of violence, we can use the homicide statistics in order to further elaborate on this topic. In El Salvador, no other type of violence has been registered and researched as much as homicides (INJUVE, 2013). As mentioned before, a large part of the homicides in January and February could be ascribed to youngsters (56%). The statistics from January until December of 2012 show an even higher share of youth in the total number of homicides, as 67% of the registered homicides could be ascribed to youngsters between 15 and 29 years of age. One could argue that this is logical, as the age category used here has fairly wide range. However, the majority of homicides that can be ascribed to youngsters, is committed by 18 to 20 year-olds (see graph 4). A common explanation for the high homicide rate amongst youngsters is the involvement in gangs. These gangs, with an estimated number between 28,000 and 60,000 in El Salvador alone, are characteristic to the northern triangle of Central America (Santos, 2013). With involvement in extortion, robbery, violations, drug and arm trafficking, these gangs have built up a reputation of being extremely violent and dangerous. As said before, this gang phenomenon has been broadly studied, thus it is not necessary to profoundly elaborate the topic. Nevertheless, it is necessary to give a general overview of the causes of involvement in gangs and the way they operate in order to understand why these gangs are so widely discussed and why they have predominantly been present in discourses about crime and violence.
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Graph 4: Youngsters accused of homicide, El Salvador 2012
300
250
200
150 Youngsters 100 accused of homicide 50
0 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Age Source: INJUVE, 2013 (edited by author)
Youth gangs are not an exclusive phenomenon to Central America, they have existed in countries as Ireland, the United States, Brasil and Colombia. However, the Northern triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) has gotten major attention over the last two decades because of the emergence and rapid growth of youth gangs. There is no single exact definition of youth gangs; some describe them as devious or anti-social groups that commit crimes, while others consider them to be groups of individuals that live in poverty and are marginalized and that find the gangs to be a social group that offers them an alternative identity to elevate their self-esteem (Rodríguez et al., 2009; 9). To explain the emergence of these gangs, some argue that it is a consequence of social exclusion and 'structural violence' (Vrigil, 2002 in Rodríguez et al., 2009; Vargas and Chaves, 2006). This structural violence –inherent to society– creates reactive violence, either criminal or political, from those who are being excluded. The conditions of misery, frustration and desperation are a potential reason for the emergence of conflict, violent acts and crimes (Briceño-Leon & Zubillaga, 2002 in Rodríguez et al., 2009). The socio-ecological approach suggests that the gangs are a product of disruption of urban areas. In some cases, the gangs may serve as a replacement of social institution, such as the family. Cultural theories see the gangs as a subculture that arises amongst the urban poor. From an economic perspective, the gangs can be considered as informal 'enterprises' linked to drug trafficking and organized crime. Finally, psychological explanations may consider the integration of youth in gangs as a process of maturation and the formation of one’s identity (Rodríguez et al., 2009).
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Clearly, the ideas about gangs are various and the approach used to understand the phenomenon of gangs influences the conceptualization of gangs. All of the approaches contribute in a certain form, but differently, to the understanding of the gang phenomenon. It may thus be helpful to consider a multidisciplinary approach, which takes all of the earlier mentioned approaches into account. The MS13 originated in Los Angeles shortly after the armed conflicts from the '70s and '80s. As a form of survival amongst a violent gang culture, already present in Los Angeles, Salvadorans started their own gangs to rival the already existing African-American and Mexican ones. Some argue that the extremely violent nature of the MS13 is caused by the initial form in which it appeared; as minorities such as Salvadorans were outnumbered by far by other gangs, they had to be extremely violent in order to survive. The 18th Street already existed before the MS13 and consisted mostly of Mexican immigrants. From 1996 and on, the federal government of the United States decided to fight the gang violence and culture by executing mass deportations of youngsters involved with these gangs. Once deported, these youngsters found themselves in an unfamiliar environment; Central America was in a process of reconstruction after the political violence and was marked by poverty, unemployment and a weak institutional framework (Rodríguez et al., 2009). It is estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 gang members are currently present in the Central American region. The gangs operate in the form of small 'cells' or 'cliques' that operate within certain territories or communities. The size and organizations of these groups varies in each place. With regard to the activities of the gangs, they are known for their involvement in acts of crime and violence such as extortions, robberies, assassinations, drug- trafficking and consuming. There are also assumptions and rumours that the MS13 and the 18th Street are involved in international and organized crime at the US border (USAID 2006 in Rodríguez et al., 2009; Hernández, 2014). However, because of a lack of proper investigation and juridical persecution, there is no certainty about these assumptions. According to Rodríguez et al., 2009, the criminal and violent acts from the gangs are being exacerbated by sensationalistic newspapers and other media that stimulate the perception of insecurity amongst the people. The following parts will elaborate further on this topic.
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Chapter 3: Salvadoran Media The media play an important role in a democratic society, and in the ideal situation they would present a truthful image of reality to its citizens. Some refer to the media, especially to printed media, as the Fourth Estate or Fourth Power; an institution or a societal or political force with no officially recognized influences (Schultz, 1998, Christancho et al., 2013). As suggested in the former chapter, the media are suspected of exacerbating events that involve violence, gangs or (usually) both. This chapter will serve to create a better understanding of the nature existing media in El Salvador.
Media and Democracy There are several characteristic that define a democracy; the constitutional state, the division of powers, popular sovereignty expressed in universal suffrage, political pluralism, general public liberties, and the guarantees of human rights in general (Samour, 1994 in Ayala, 1994). In the case of El Salvador, the peace agreements from 1992 opened an important phase for democratic transition. Four general objectives were proposed by the opposing parties; 1) ending the armed conflict through political practices, 2) guarantee the unconditional respect for human rights, 3) stimulate the process of democratisation and 4) reunify the Salvadoran society. The Peace Accords from Chapultepec authorized the FMLN to establish media and the necessary infrastructure. This was not necessary for the other party (the established government) side, since it already controlled virtually all media. Ayala (1994) argues that during the peace negotiations, no single reform to support the political agreements was suggested that referred to the democratization of communication. Although several forms of control (censorship) were prohibited, the civil rights to express and communicate freely were still absent. The Salvadoran Political Constitution also refers to the liberty of expression and states that:
“Every person may freely express and disseminate his thoughts provided they do not subvert the public order nor injure the moral, honour or private lives of others. The exercise of this right shall not be subject to previous examination, censorship or bond; but those who infringe on the laws [while] making use of this right, shall respond for the offense they commit.” (confinder.com, 2003; p3)
Even though this type of agreement has the ability to favour the process of democratization –as anyone may express his or her thoughts disregarding ideologies, interests or social class– it also carries with it the inherent danger to be interpreted only formally (abstract),
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without being put into practice. Ayala warns us that the rights declared in universal declarations and national constitutions may often be mostly abstract by nature and may pave the way for a misinterpretation of reality –if there is no strict post-examination. The risk, then, is the possibility that what is seen as a universal right may be converted into a privilege for some; only those who are able to effectively broadcast their message. In order to consolidate the process of democratization, there should be democratization of the word; free flow of information, equality of opportunities, the possibility of public participation and unrestricted access to channels and spaces (Ayala, 1994). Ayala argues that during the civil war, the human rights related to communication and expression were violated and became prohibited rights for the majority of the population, Those who cultivated opposing ideas to the official discourse, risked being eliminated as if they were an armed enemy on the battle field. Even though the armed conflict ended, the social divide remained present in Salvadoran society as a source of new conflicts. What has changed over the past two decades? Are the media contributing to the well- functioning democracy? This questions implies the thought that the media should try to contribute to the well-functioning of democracy; a thought that I, amongst others, agree with (Ayala, 2014, com 2013blz nr). Even though the article of Ayala was written twenty years ago, other scholars have recently made similar claims. He referred to the situation at that time as a 'structural censorship' being present; where the majority of the mass communication media belong to a small economic elite, related to political power.
Salvadoran Media: it’s just Business In this research, special attention will be given to the printed and online media. However, in order to get an idea of the main characteristics and the most influential companies it is necessary to pay some attention to radio and television as well. The organisation of both radio and television communication in El Salvador was been and still is being marked by oligopolies. Hence, very few names and companies appear as owners of different media or associates of those media. In the radio spectrum, there are no limits to the quantity of frequencies that one group may own, which results in a saturated and exploited radio spectrum that is controlled by very few companies. The first Salvadorian radio stations emerged in the first half of the last century and, even though they were privately owned, were under constant supervision of the state. In 1949 the Salvadoran Association of Radiobroadcasters (ASDER) was founded, and governed by Ferando Alvayero Sosa among others. The collaboration between the state and privet business allowed the private sector to exploit virtually all frequencies within a couple of
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years. In 1963 the Legislative Assembly approved the foundation of ANTEL (National Administration of Telecommunications); an autonomous institution based on ‘public rights’. In 1975 the ‘Telecommunication Services Law’ was approved which recognized private, official and public media. During this period, the state was primarily concerned with business interests, and was therefore less concerned about the distribution of frequencies between the three sectors mentioned above (Christancho et al., 2013). Relationships between the economic elite, politicians and the media are not uncommon in El Salvador. In 2010 two radio stations with national coverage were sold to Elías Antonio Saca and Andrés Rovira, who together also formed the secretary for the GANA party10. In 1989 the ARENA party won the elections, which reunified the economic and political powers. The ARENA party is known for heaving ties with the ANEP and ASDER11. This became very clear during elections in 2004, when ARENA won the elections and Tony Saca (who would later run for candidacy for the GANA party (2009) and the UNIDAD party12 (2014)) became president, after being president of both ASDER and ANEP. In 1997 Tony Saca, as head of ASDER, refused to include new media other than the established ones in the communication sector. This strategy aimed to avoid political instability and to assure the position of those who were already established in the communication business. Commentary radios were referred to as ‘radios guerrilleras’. Currently, there are about 26 national radio frequencies, 22 regional ones, 68 local ones and 2 that are owned by the state. Two of the most important owners of several of these stations are TELECORPORACIÓN SALVADOREÑA and MEGAVISIÓN, who also own the majority of the television channels. After the 2009 elections, the FMLN has tried to increase the public media, but due to a lack of participation of the private sector this is a complex process. Also the commentary radios are under-represented, as only 21.9% of the Salvadoran territory is covered by these radios (Christancho et al., 2013). The first television channels were launched in 1956 by two entrepreneurs (Boris Eserski and Raúl Trabanino) who also owned various radio stations. The state had little to do with the emergence of the television, the general vision was to let the media industry develop on its own, in the hands of private owners. The 1975 ‘Telecommunication Services Law’ ensured that telecommunications were considered as a public service. In the 1970's the television industry went through the same process of consolidation as the radio had gone through and a small group, that was also prominent in the radio spectrum, dominated the
10 Centrum-right party, led by Tony Saca, that disappeared after the elections in 2009 (Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional) 11 Salvadoran Association of Radio-broadcasters( Asociación Salvadoreña de Radiodifusores). 12 Centrum-right party led by Tony Saca. 31
field. When ANTEL was privatized in 1997, the balance between the different types of communication ( private, official and public) was given less attention and the radio spectrum was being distributed through the use of auctions. This method, of selling channels through auction, is still being used today and has certainly not been fair in its distribution amongst different sectors of society. Because usually only the owners of large capital were able to buy the channels, the civil sector has struggled to have a voice in national media. In 2008 the United Nations declared the use of auctions in the distribution of media as a violation of human rights. In the case of El Salvador, the method has served as a mechanism to serve a small business group who has been able to easily regain their investments in the media through their relationship with the market (Christancho et al., 2013).
Print Media and Online Newspapers Newspapers are less abundant than other media in El Salvador. They are usually owned by families who have directed those newspapers for over several decades, some have already existed for over a century. . In comparison with other media the investment costs for newspapers are high. Therefore the newspapers are owned by even a smaller economic elite that is able to pay such costs. Dutriz and Altamirano are the principal companies that administrate the print media. For this research, two newspapers that belong to these groups will be revised; La Prensa Gráfica (Dutriz) and El Diario de Hoy (Altamirano). La Prensa Gráfica originated as a merger between two newspapers in 1939; La Prensa and El Gráfico. The first edition of El Diario de Hoy was launched in 1936 and evolved out of the former newspaper La Noticia. Two other newspapers worth mentioning are Diario El Mundo (founded in 1966), which is part of the Grupo Mundo Multimedia and the newspaper Diario Co-Latino (founded in 1890), with a clearly leftist orientation (Christancho et al., 2013). Online newspapers generally require lower investments than other media, which allows companies with less economic resources to enter the field. The first exclusive online newspaper of El Salvador, El Faro, was founded in 1998. It started as a site where journalist could post the reports they made in their spare time, while they were generally employed by other media companies. In 2003 the first full time journalists were hired, and today the online newspaper counts about 300,000 readers, of which the majority is living outside El Salvador. El Faro presents a critical attitude towards the government, disregarding the political orientation of that party. They provide elaborated information in themes as migration, violence, corruption and culture, with the emphasis on narrative journalism. Another digital newspaper has become more popular during the last decade is La Pagina. This newspaper is known for its quickness in providing the citizens with the most recent
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news. Rumours are that this newspaper is closely linked to Tony Saca, because it showed a political inclination towards the GANA party. However, until today, this has not been proven. The last online newspaper that will pay attention to is Voces Diario digital. This initiative started in 2010 through three civil media; 1) a weekly journal that was based on investigative journalism, 2) a digital newspaper that followed both national and international junctures and 3) an online radio in both Spanish and Náhuatl13. Some of their initial concepts are: to be a social medium that strengthens democracy; to give platform to those sectors who have traditionally been ignored by the media; to form a counterweight against the mass media; and to support analyses of and solutions for the problems of the people (Christancho et al., 2013).
Legislation, Diversity and Ownership As discussed before, it is clear that in the case of the radio and television, ownership is marked by oligopolies. Despite several juridical reforms that contribute to participative and 'horizontal' media, the existing laws that regulate the telecommunication sector still contain certain norms that form true obstacles to the right to communicate and the diversity of media. One example is the Telecommunication Law (TL) that, despite recognizing the radio- electric spectrum as a common good, ensures that concessions are almost exclusively granted to the private sector. Furthermore, current legislation does not recognize the tree sectors of communication (public, commercial and non-commercial or communitarian) but only the state-owned and commercial radio stations and television channels. This has caused the communitarian radio stations to operate on a very small scale. There is also a lack of regulations regarding the equal distribution of official information and of regulations concerning the digitalized media. Finally, it has to be noted that until now the government has also failed to insert regulations concerning the formation of monopolies or oligopolies in the media, which has caused saturation of the radio-electric spectrum. In the case of newspapers it became clear that several big companies that are prominent in the field, the two biggest ones being El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica. In contrast with countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, El Salvador does not have any legislation to limit media cross-ownership (political digital). Due to the absence of such regulations, prominent Salvadoran business groups have had few problems in concentrating radio frequencies, exploiting different media platforms, and even in participating in business events that are not or should not be linked to the media. It is a well-known fact that in the case of El Salvador, the media oligopolies are part of the groups
13 Original language of the Pipil Indigenous population.
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that also poses economic and political power, and that are closely tied to political parties (Ayala, 2014; Flores, 2014; Gómez, 2014; Christancho et al., 2013). However, ultimately the emergence of online radios and newspapers has started to break down the monologues of ideas of the established media.
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Chapter 4: Media Discourse The preceding parts have shown which media may be considered as the most important ones, how the media are distributed amongst different sectors of society and how the media are connected to business and politics. This part will make use of the obtained knowledge of these matters, as it discusses the existing literature about the media in relationship with either violence, youth crime, gangs, or a combination of those themes.
Salvadoran Media Discourse According to the UNESCO, it is necessary for an environment of free, independent and pluralistic media that media discourses reflect the diversity within society and that citizens are given the opportunity to participate in horizontal processes that favour the quality of democracy. According to the Christancho et al., the concentration in ownership in the media and the political affiliation of various media have created media discourses that serve the interests of small sectors of the population, while vulnerable sectors of society have been excluded. The discourse analysis, carried out by Christancho et al., 2013, shows that the 'traditional media' such as La Prensa Gráfica (LPG) and El Diario de Hoy (EDH), show little inclusion or representation from woman, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersexual movements or actors that are promote a Culture of Peace14 (com, 39). It is also noted that those same newspapers do not give voice to all parts of society, therefor creating "heroes" and "villains", that alter in appearance depending on the context of a certain moment. This emphasises polarization and a contributes to a “confrontational” discourse (Christancho et al., 2013; p40).
“The cultural and symbolic representations constructed by these media have generated a violence prone atmosphere, as they present a myopic and simplistic image of reality that doesn't manure the promotion of a Culture of Peace. This approach limits itself to the expression of direct violence, without considering structural and cultural roots of the violence. This promotes a discourse that favours the elimination of the 'enemy', thereby preserving the conflict and the violation of human rights.” (Christancho et al., 2013; p40)
The report analysed the content of EDH, LPG, El Faro and VOCES and notes that EDH uses messages that contain language that violates the dignity of the people and is discriminative and pejorative. However, according to Christancho et al., only media, such as
14 As defined by the United Nations, the Culture of Peace is a set of values, attitudes, modes of behaviour and ways of life that reject violence and prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiation among individuals, groups and nations (UN, 1997)
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VOCES and El Faro show more diversity in their information and are giving voice to different sectors of society, such as NGO's, youngsters woman, the LGTBI15 community and those who are working for the realisation of the Culture of Peace. They appear to give a more balanced vision of reality by including these different sectors and by offering the possibility for citizens to express their opinion as well. The sameinvestigation also focused on the support of the media for a Culture of Peace. The report notes a remarkable difference between the printed newspapers and the online newspapers. The first ones show little to no tolerance, cultural diversity, pluralism or dialogue between different sectors of society. They maintain one dominant discourse in which different social sectors are excluded and almost no attention is given to those who are working for a Culture of Peace. In their discourses, the gangs are regarded as the root of all violence and as a group that should be eliminated –as there doesn't seem to exist an alternative to reinsert them in society (Christancho et al., 2013). Although this may seem to be a radical point of view, it is shared by other scholars and people who were interviewed on behalf of this investigation (Hernándes, 2014; Rude, 2014; Flores, 2014). However, the online newspapers do appear to give attention the protagonists of a Culture of Peace and those parts of society that are otherwise excluded or not herd in the media. In his article Los medios y la cobertura de la violencia (The Media and the Coverage of Violence) Xavier Giró (2006) tries to explain how the Salvadoran media report on violence and what kind of conflicts are generated by certain media reports. He argues that violence – regardless of the actors involved– is always a novelty for the media. Even though violence occurs every day, the media uses certain techniques (e.g. show statistics of increasing murder rates or making certain names public) to make the new occurring seem unique, worse than the last one or closer to the reader. This causes the audience to feel as if the violence is forming a bigger threat to their personal wellbeing. Regarding the theme of gang-related violence, Giró notes that the information provided by most media is neither complete nor complex and does not take different actors within a conflict in consideration, but rather portray a one-sided simple story. He also argues that the predominant discourse of violence intensifies the exclusion of those who affiliate with gangs and those who commit crimes.
15 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community 36
With regard to the media reports on gang-violence the author makes the following affirmations: • The media generally identify criminals as gang-members without any proof that they are. • The description of gang-members and criminals are marked by: 1) the exaggeration of obscene facts and 2) the fact that most reports are based on information from police sources that is not contradicted and leave out other perspectives on the events. • The terms ‘clanes’ or ‘bandas’ (clan or gang) are used to describe criminals that may operate with as little as 3 ‘members’ or 30, which increases the negative image. • Gang-members or other criminals that have been arrested are almost never given the possibility to comment on their acts. • The suspect is often portrayed as guilty from the moment of its accusation, even if the accusations cannot be proved. • The people and actors that comment on possibilities of reducing the violence are almost always those who are in a position of power (e.g. the government, political parties, businessman, professors, churches etc.) However, Giró tones down this image a little by explaining that the media discourse on violence is neither linear nor homogeneous. Some media, for example, do give attention to social exclusion, the availability of weapons and other possible explanations of violence. Roxana Martel Trigueros (2006) argues that the Salvadoran society has a biased view on the violence in the country, due to misrepresentation in the media and the official discourse, who magnify the victims of gang violence and minimize the institutional violence and white- collar-crime. According to her, the official discourse constructs the identity of youth from a perspective of youth violence. The official discourse regards the youth as the ones that generate violence and are being influenced by the media that provokes them (e.g. hip-hop music). Martel notices an increment in the attention that the media has been giving to the theme of (youth)gangs since the late ‘80s. She argues that the gang-phenomenon is being portrayed as an imported problem. This idea serves two causes. On one hand the gangs are regarded as if they were ‘imported’, instead of them being a consequence of internal social conditions. On the other hand it legitimizes the use of violence from the state to ‘fight’ this public enemy, in order to guarantee the safety of its citizens. Over time, the word ‘marero16’ became a synonym for criminal and murderer. According to Martel, official discourse and the media have contributed to the construction of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ (the ‘barbarian)
16 A gang-member, often a specific gang such as the MS13 or the 18th Street. 37
over the course of time. By dividing the legitimate from the illegal, a group of barbarians can be constructed. The ‘barbarians’ changed over time; first they were the indigenous population, later the communists and now the gangs. The creation of the ‘barbarians’ has served as a modern instrument of the ‘implementation of fear’. However, she argues that the media have generally followed the official discourse and broadcasted the image of the gangs as the cause of violence in the country. Martel follows the idea of Bauman (2004) that the government may promote the creation of a ‘problem subject’–the gangs in the case of El Salvador– when it finds itself incapable of meeting the basic needs of the people. According to Martel, the use of discourses that contain these ideas are aimed at creating fear amongst society. This fear can then be used to legitimize the use of force from the government, in order to ‘fight’ the gangs. Those discourses may also promote the idea or image that the gangs are the roots of most problems –especially violence– in society (Bauman, 2004 in Martel, 2006). Amparo Marroquín Parducci (2006) approaches the relationship between gangs and the media from a historical perspective and argues that after the peace accords, the official discourse about gangs has contributed to a self-fulfilling prophecy. She observes that over the course of history, certain use of language –such as the name ‘maras’ or the reference to them as ‘time bomb’– contributed to the stigmatization of certain groups. She notices a change in media reports on gang related issues after 9/11, when the Salvadoran government requested the assistance of the media to combat delinquency, by keeping the population informed. The information about gangs increased rapidly, and shortly after the Mano Dura and later the Super Mano Dura were implanted17. As Martel, Marroquín points out that in the official discourse first the indigenous population, later the guerrilla and currently the gangs, have been and are presented as ‘the other’; being the responsible ones for the violence and failures of different projects in the country. This has led to the stigmatization of gang-members and those who work with youngsters involved in gangs, and to the creation of an image in which these people are associated with being a ‘communist’, an ‘ex- guerrillero’ or an ‘indian’.
17 Mano Dura latterly means ‘hard hand’ but is oftentimes referred to as Iron Fist. This strategy was implemented by the Salvadoran government in 2003 and subsequently the Super Mando Dura was implemented in 2004. The strategies allowed police forces to arrest gang-members, or suspects of being gang-member on the basis of their looks (e.g. certain clothing or tattoos).
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Marroquín distinguishes four different aspects of discourses that have been present in Salvadoran press from the last decade: 1. The ‘mara’ subject; in which typical images of gangsters are shown, the metaphor ‘war’ is being used to describe the rivalry between different gangs and the metaphors of ‘illness’, ‘garbage’ or ‘animals’ are used to refer to the gangs. 2. The noun of the subject: deported; in which the idea that all of the deported Salvadorans from the United States belong to gangs is being reinforced. This discourse is problematic as it may give the impression that the gang phenomenon is an important one, rather than one that emerges and develops as a consequence of structural problems that are present in the country and region. 3. The action of the subject: violence; the idea that the gangs and the youngsters in gangs are violent is an idea that is found in all written media in El Salvador. News about incompetent police forces and authorities, and images of extremely violent gangs create a frightening image for the Salvadoran society, as it seems that the ones in power are the gangs. 4. The nature of the subject? Guilty; in which being young and violent immediately implies being a gang-member, and in which this group is often automatically found guilty of a crime, unless proven otherwise.
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Discourse Analysis As explained in the methodology, the discourse analysis will make use of the constructive approach to interpret media representation, as provided by Hall (1997). This approach may help us to understand how certain (social) actors contribute to the creation of a certain image of reality. For this investigation the information provided by four of such actors will be revised; the printed newspapers El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica and the online newspapers El Faro and Voces. In order to execute the discourse analysis, the attention will be focused on; 1) selective re-representation of reality, 2) the use of stereotypes, 3) representativeness and 4) the meaning of the messages. It has to be noted though, that this part is almost exclusively based on qualitative research methods, for which it may contain some subjective information. However, the aim is to remain as objective as possible during the discourse analysis by focussing on the four aspects mentioned above. For both El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica all the newspapers form the month April of 2014 have been revised. For El Faro and Voces a different approach was used as these media have a different structure than the printed media; they publish less articles and they do not have a daily edition. Therefore, a thematic selection has been made from the articles from both April and May 2014. In the analysis there is a focus on several topics related to (youth) crime –which include gang-related crimes and sex crimes– and topics related to ‘pacification’, reduction of violence and a ‘Culture of Peace’. For the sake of brevity, I will refer to the first group of topics as ‘violence’ and to the latter one as ‘pacification’. These terms may not be wholly satisfactory as some topics –such as drug-dealing or –consuming– do not necessarily involve violence. However, after revising the sources, these terms seem most appropriate to describe the kind of topics discussed in these media.
Representation of reality As the media have limited time to investigate news and limited space to publish the news, they are forced to make a selection of subjects and topics that will be covered. The consequences of selective re-representation are difficult to measure, as each person has the possibility to make a selection of the media they use to obtain information and the possibility to make a selection of certain topics within those media they use. However, as El Diario de Hoy (EDH) and La Prensa Gráfica (LPG) are the two newspapers with the highest amount of readers in El Salvador, the selection of news could influence the public interpretation on national and international happenings. The selection of news can therefore be seen as a kind of ‘filter’, on which the reader has no influence.
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Both EDH and LPG tend to focus on violence rather than pacification, regarding the topics mentioned above. In the case of EDH 123 articles (4.2 articles per day) were related to violence in April. This number is in contrast with the amount of articles related to pacification; a total of 25 for the same month (an average of 0,8 articles per day). For LPG similar numbers were found as 169 articles (5.6 articles per day) were related to violence in the same month, while only 35 articles (1,3 per day) were related to pacification. Another factor that needs to be considered is the extensiveness in which violence related topics are handled in these media. Both newspapers frequently use two or more full subsequent pages with topics merely related to violence. In the case of LPG, 18 from the 30 editions published in April had two full pages or more dedicated to violence (See figure 2). Both of these newspapers have a descriptive form of reporting the facts. Homicide cases, for example, are often described into detail (e.g. the way a person was killed, where the homicide took place or possible motives). Both newspapers also keep track on the total amount of homicides per year, month and day, and these numbers are shown in almost every edition. The online newspapers Voces and El Faro have a different way of reporting news. Both of them are more selective and they use a less descriptive and explicit way of reporting than the printed newspapers. From the 18 articles selected from Voces between April and May, only five articles described violent happenings, while the other 13 focused on either themes of pacification or more structural problems in the country that may contribute to crime and violence (e.g. social and economic inequality). El Faro does not seem to report in any kind of descriptive way on violent happenings as the media described before do. Between April and May this online newspaper released eight articles related to either violence or pacification, but all were characterised by ‘getting’ to the roots of the problems associated with (youth) violence and crime in general.
Stereotypes Costea (2008) argues that stereotypes do not necessarily need to be negative and agrees with Dyer by stating that "it is not stereotypes, as an aspect of human thought and representation, that are wrong, but who controls and defines them, what interests they serve”, so, the political power involved in their representation (Costea, 2008; 3). Based on the revised newspapers, I will agree with Martel (2006) and Marroquín (2006) in stating that in the revised printed media (EDH and LPG) the 'mara subject' is being portrayed as a collective homogeneous group and considered a ‘social problem’. This assumption is based on the way gangs and gang-members are portrayed in these media: they only get attention in a negative way (e.g. extortion or murder cases); their voices are never
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Figure 2: Selection Articles La Prensa Gráfica (7, 23 and 30 April 2014) Source: La Prensa Gráfica, 2014
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heard. This way it seems like they are only capable of committing crimes; the written information is illustrated with typical pictures, in which (possible) gang-members are shown handcuffed and without shirts, sometimes on the floor, guarded by policemen in uniforms. Bedsides, most crimes that are being reported –especially by EDH– make the assumption or suggestion that the crimes were committed by gang-members. For these written newspapers the idea of Marroquín holds true, that in the cases that involve gang-members, the suspects are always portrayed as guilty (their pictures are being taken and their names are mentioned) even before trial. This creates the image of the idea that every gang-member is necessarily violent, criminal and guilty. Even though Voces also reports on crimes committed by gang-members or ‘regular’ youngsters, the difference with the newspapers mentioned above is the fact that Voces does not show the typical pictures associated with these people, and as mentioned above, this does not occur as often as in the written media. El Faro shows a completely different approach than the other revised media. In the section ‘Sala Negra’, gang-related news issues are being reported from different angles. As they often make use of interviews with gang-members, these people get ‘a face’ for the reader; one that is different from the one usually portrayed in the media mentioned above. By focussing not only on the ‘typical conducts’ of gang- members, but also on the underlying structures and contextual characteristics, the reader is given the opportunity to form his or her opinion about a certain case by comparing different sides of the story. We can thus confirm that in both EDH and LPG the stereotype ‘gang-member’ has a negative connotation. For Voces it cannot be said that the stereotype of ‘gang-member’ has a positive connotation, however, as the frequency of reports on gang-members is much lower than in the written two newspapers, the idea of this stereotype is not repeated time after time, making it less significant than in the other media. For El Faro the same may be stated, but in addition, this newspaper also gives voice to gang-members and therefore leaves the topic open for interpretation of the reader. So far, the use of stereotypes has been investigated for gang-members, but what does this imply for youth in general? There are some general remarks that can be made after revising the four newspapers: 1) youth in general is not necessarily portrayed as ‘dangerous’, ‘deviate’ or ‘violent’; 2) the youth is considered a vulnerable group that needs special attention; 3) the youth does not have its own voice in the media, instead experts give their opinion about the best possible methods to prevent youth crime and violence; and 4) whenever youngsters are reported to be part of some project that aims at reducing violence or promoting peace, these projects are almost always organized by institutions such as schools and churches. It is thus
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not true that either one of these media creates a negative image for youth in general. However, in those cases that youngsters are related with gangs, especially EDH and LPG tend to portray these youngsters as guilty or responsible for the negative consequences. The general idea that the youth is a ‘group at risk’ is being postulated by all the revised media.
Representativeness From the preceding parts it may have become clear that in the ideal situation the media would show a truthful image of reality, that is; an objective representation of the world by giving different parts of society equal chances to express themselves. If we want to know who is being heard, or represented, it is necessary to look at the sources used by the media. Only then it is possible to affirm whether the representation of reality is indeed a truthful or objective one. It has to be noted though, that it is technically impossible for any media to be fully objective, as the mere selection of news is a subjective selection in itself. I will therefore focus on the sources that are being used to obtain information. For both EDH and LPG it seems to be the case that mostly ‘experts’ –such as the PNC (National Police), the FGR (Attorney General's Office), different ministries, international organisations (e.g. United Nations), the Church, professors and political analysts– are being used as sources of information. There is nothing inherently wrong with this practice, as it is supposed that these are the actors with most knowledge on the topics. However, in accordance with Giró (2006), I argue that for a fully representative image of reality the media should give the opportunity to different parts of society to express themselves, including gang-members and other ‘deviate’ youngsters. In the two printed newspapers this is not the case, as the reports on criminal acts are almost always based on police reports and reports on solutions to violence mostly by governmental institutions and the police. Both newspapers provide an ‘opinion’ part in which different experts can express their ideas about different topics, including gangs and violence. However those ‘experts’ (e.g. professors, ecclesiastic leaders and political analysts) are not directly involved with gangs or youth in general. Hernandez (2014) argues that the actors that are directly involved with processes of pacification, such as NGO’s and INJUVE are hardly ever given voice in these ‘mainstream media’. Although I reckon that the printed media show little inclusion for different parts of society, I do not agree with the findings of the (com) report, which suggests that they violate the dignity of the people, nor do I agree with the idea that the content of articles written by the editorial staff is discriminative. Nevertheless, I do think that the ‘typical’ pictures and some sections in the newspapers that show the opinions of readers are used to give a
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negative image of certain groups (e.g. gangs). In EDH, for example, there is a part called ‘El Muro’ in which certain comments on news articles are shown. What is remarkable is that these comments, when they are related to gang, use very discriminative, violent and stereotyping language. Although it could be argued that this practice contributes to the projection of the thoughts of the people, the selection of comments seems rather extreme and almost always carries the same message: the gangs should be exterminated. The online newspaper Voces is known for its inclusive nature; there is a section for ‘voices of citizens’ (Voces Ciudadanas) and a section especially focused on the ‘democratization of communication’. These sections are very different from the ones in the written media, the information is much more elaborated and there is a diverse selection of topics and opinions. However, this online newspaper does not give voice to gang-members or other deviate youngsters. The only newspaper that does so is El Faro, which has a separate section called ‘Sala Negra’ in which interviews with gang-members are used to contradict or complete information provided by other sectors (e.g. the government and police).
The message Understanding or interpreting the message of the different media may be the most subjective and most difficult part of discourse analysis as it requires a general overview of the ideas presented by the media. According to Focault, discourse covers all forms of communication and has the power to shape the world we live in. This happens when we communicate, as we draw from assumptions and generally accepted knowledge to make statements that makes sense to others. By doing so, we either reinforce these assumptions or we challenge them. Either way, we are contributing to a flow of commonly accepted knowledge; known as discourse (Schneider, 2013). Regarding the theme of youth crime and gangs, both EDH and LPG generally provide information that is based on ‘official information’, such as police reports or political statements. This is not to say that these newspapers are never critical towards these institutions, as they do have an ‘opinion’ part in which different experts can comment on political practices or other happenings in the country. However the majority of information regarding the topic of youth crime and gang-related issues is of a very factual and descriptive nature. Murder cases, for example, are often described in detail, and typical pictures of crime scenes often consume a significant part of the newspapers. As argued before, both newspapers mainly focus on the outcome of crime, rather than the possible factors that contribute to the emergence of crimes. Furthermore, very little attention is given to events or opinions that are organized or articulated by those sectors in society that
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are actively involved in processes of pacification. One of the possible consequences of using a limited amount of sources is the possibility that citizens receive an inaccurate image of reality. The fact that EDH makes a selection of the comments that are presented in El Muro, as described before, shows that the redaction does have a certain incline to condemn gang- members and that they do not disapprove with the message that they should be extinguished (see figure 3).
"These pandilleros have to be "They are forcing the police finished. This garbage has to to take the law into its own be eliminated, I hope La hands.. These pandilleros Sombra Negra (the black want to start a war. And shadow) returns and solves who is going to protect us?" all of these problems." Police-officer assassinated in a New Attack from Gang- members "We, "I get really sad watching how Salvadorans, are pandilleros continue to murder police- in a bad situation, officers, while the government doesn't it is time that we do anything. It does not bother them do something that they keep killing the people, about this because they have security. And who is problem." going to protect us"
Figure 2: Selection from 'El Muro' from El Dirario de Hoy
It has to be noted though, that LPG appears to be slightly more modified, as it does not show as much radical comments as EDH. Another difference is that EDH either pays more attention to gang-related crimes ,or is faster in ascribing a certain crime to gangs; as the majority of the crime-related articles suggest that there was involvement of gang-members, even though it might not have been proven. However, I must slightly disagree with the findings of the (com) investigation, which claims that neither EDH nor LPG make any reference to a Culture of Peace. In EDH of 19 April, for example, an article in the opinion sector is explicitly about the construction of a Culture of Peace. Nevertheless, the attention to processes of pacification is far less than the attention paid to crime, which leaves the image of an insecure and violent country where violence seems to be the norm. As argued before, the mere selection of news is a subjective act in itself. Both Voces and El Faro are less focused on reporting the latest crimes. Voces sometimes reports on several crimes when there seems to be a link between them. El Faro shows no interest whatsoever
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in giving a descriptive report on crimes, it is rather characterized by its ‘investigative’ nature and for the diversity of information sources it uses for the articles. Both newspapers tend to use a more holistic approach to the theme of insecurity and crime. Rather than focussing on the outcome of crime (as in EDH and LPG) these newspapers focus on structural problems that are characteristic to Salvadoran society, such as the ‘culture of violence’, structural and symbolic violence, and the social, economic and political inequality18. Between April and May four out of the eighteen articles in Voces paid special attention to the youth with similar messages; the youth is a group at risk that needs special attention from schools, churches, the government and parents if violence is to be reduced in the future. El Faro did not dedicate any specific article to youth, but in an interview with a gang- member it seems to be clear that the youth is at risk. The interviewed gang-member argued that they are prepared to stop getting youngsters involved in gangs, but that if there are no opportunities, these youngsters will come to the gangs eventually. Both of the online newspapers show a less negative or stigmatizing image of gang-members and deviant youngsters than the written newspapers. They also show more interest in structural solutions to the problems related with (youth) crime and violence and display different viewpoints from different actors involved in the processes of pacification.
18 For relevant articles see attachments: articles in Voces from 23-04-2014, 30-4-2014, 7-5-2014 and 20-5-2014 and articles in El Faro from 21-1-2014, 10-4-2014 and 27-5-2014.
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Chapter 5: Public Interpretation of Youth Crime In the preceding parts different aspects of the media and their representation of reality, especially of youth crime and gang-related issues, have been presented. However, why is it important to know what the media are saying and how they are saying it? Following Focault, I agree with the idea that discourses –which involve any type of communication– are related to power and have the ability to alter reality and the ways in which we perceive it. As explained in the preceding chapter, the constructive approach has been the initial concept for using the discourse analysis in this investigation. This approach supposes that social actors –including the media– make the world meaningful. The question that then remains is: how do the media give meaning to the world and how do they influence the people’s perception of the world? Or to be more particular in this case: how do the media construct meaning to youth crime and how can the public interpretation of youth crime be affected by the media?
Creating the ‘Other’ The dependency theory suggests that the role of the media in the processes of constructing meaning varies from issue to issue (Ball-Rokeach, 1976, DeFleur, 1982 in Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). The media-dependency hypothesis suggests that the relative importance of media discourse is determined by the availability of meaning-generating experiences in the everyday lives of the people. Gamson and Modigliani argue that media discourses do not automatically cause the public opinion to change, but that nevertheless media discourses provide 'essential tools', which people may use to give meaning to the world. In her book El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace, Ellen Moodie (2010) examines how “practices of violence, and how criminalized individuals, are imagined and interpreted in a post conflict environment.” She notes that crime stories in the media diverge from crime stories told by personal experiences. One major difference is the fact that in most mass media, crime stories are almost always based on police reports, and focused on suspects’ offences. She continues to say that “the law is the principle prism through which people see crime in the media.” Moodie agrees with the idea of Stuart Hall (1978) that mass mediated crime stories are a key site in which public consent on issues of security are manufactured by the state. Furthermore, these accounts (on crime) are less open to alternative viewpoints than other subjects. When ‘experts’ (e.g. police chiefs, the judiciary, politicians and editors) perceive and project certain threats in the same way, ‘moral panics’ can occur. One of the outcomes of such moral panic could be the creation of ‘folk devils’ –such as the stereotype gang-member in El Salvador. However, despite the recognition of the idea that mass media
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can contribute to moral panic, Moodie argues that most Salvadoran citizens would rather rely on their ‘common sense’ then on mass media, as the latter have proven to be inaccurate and false in the past. Nevertheless, she argues that in Salvadoran society, there is a social obsession with crime in which the gang-member is portrayed as ‘the other’, the criminal, the mugger, the mañoso, the terrorist, the narco, the delinquent. In agreement with Focault, she argues that “the institutional knowledge production about ‘deviance’ normalizes society, as it fabricates the forbidden.” (Moodie, 2010: p170) Moodie argues that in El Salvador there are acts of unknowing; a particular kind of ignorance that converts something largely known into something circumstantially unknown. This conscious act serves to shift attention from one problem onto another.
“In El Salvador what is originally known is that social inequality and structural violence in the late 1970s led to war and today still keep the majority of the population marginalized, impoverished and criminalized. […] What replaces this knowledge, through the process of unknowing reiterated especially through crime postwar stories, is the long-circulated idea of criminality as the result of individual, wilful, and perhaps even congenital, deviance. Thus it follows the thrust of postwar crime stories, which insist that the individual –not the collective not the state– must separately manage the new era’s dangers.” (Moodie, 2010; p173)
This misrecognition or unknowing of social inequality has fuelled the concept of the ‘other’ in society; in case of El Salvador the deviant youth, or more particular the gang-member. The principal idea of Moodie’s elucidation is that the individualization of trauma can depoliticize state actions, such as the mano dura plan for example. When the ‘other’ becomes visible and is blamed for what is ‘wrong’ in society, public action against this ‘other’ will not be easily condemned, even if it impairs human rights. She notes that in El Salvador, public attention is focused obsessively on the ‘problem of youth’ and the (sensationalist) mass media contribute to this practice by displaying ‘other’ bodies (e.g. in crime scenes); creating a symbolic site onto which Salvadorans can display their fears and making the cause of the violence seem visible and knowable. She argues that the discourse of postwar crime in El Salvador served both the state (in its attempt to mobilize diffuse anxiety in order to assert a monopoly of force) as well as the people who sought new ways to cope with the insecurity faced from day to day. She continues by saying that the projection of the ‘other’ occurs through a mass-mediated spectacle which demands the state to control the uncivilized ‘other’.
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Construction of Discourse and Public Interpretation of Youth Crime Many scholars agree upon the idea that crime and violence are socio-historical phenomena that are the outcome of an exclusive society (Martel, 2006; Vargas & Chavez, 2011; Giró, 2006; Moodie, 2010). Also Martel uses the concept of the ‘other’, or ‘barbarian’, to refer to the group that, according to the official discourse, should be oppressed. But how exactly is this public discourse implemented in society? Who is responsible for the creation of the ‘other’? To say that the (mass) media are the ones who construct this image would be a false presumption. However, its impact on the public interpretation on youth crime cannot be denied. Martel argues that the ‘barbarians’ have served as the principle modern instrument of the ‘implementation of fear’. The construction of this negative and criminal subject is realized through three discursive devises: the communicational (media) devise, the political/institutional devise and the academic one. Regarding the first one, the Salvadoran mass media have served as a ‘sound box’ of the official discourse. This discourse, spread by governmental institutions and economic elites, portrays the deviant youth and gang- members as the generators of ‘social fear’. According to Martel, the permanent visibility of this ‘evil’, contributes to the generalization of the sensation of insecurity (Martel, 2006). Martel argues that there exists controversy about the impact from media discourse on public interpretation. However, it is argued that the media do not solely broadcast certain happenings, but also determine the significance of the happenings in a great way. The message that is broadcasted can influence the civilian, while on its term the civilian (when it is the majority) can reinforce the message. For instance, when people have had personal experiences with gang-members or other deviant youth, and they keep being confronted with images and stories about this criminal subject, their feelings of insecurity may increase (Martel, 2006). Giró argues that the media use different techniques to make new criminal and violent acts seem or worse than the ones before. The recipient of information spread by the media may therefore feel as if the danger is becoming bigger or getting closer every time (Giró, 2006). The only way in which the media can alter public interpretation and discourse is when they are accepted as credible sources. Christancho et al show that the media are amongst the institutions that receive most credibility; with the highest level of confidence in the army (67,4%), secondly in the Catholic Church (62,2%) and thirdly in the media (61.9%). As we have seen before, almost all Salvadoran ‘mass’ media are commercial and owned by a few powerful elites. It has been discussed that these elites have their own interest and in the preceding part is has been shown that both EDH and LPG –the two most frequently read newspapers– show the same incline towards over-representation of crime facts and under-
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representation of efforts for pacification. A recent study showed that the television is the most used medium to receive news, as it reached about 88% of the population in 2012. This may be problematic, as most of the programs do not give elaborated contextual information on problems that affect the society, leaving an incomplete image of reality (IUDOP, 2009; Christancho et al., 2013) While online media may offer a more nuanced image of reality, the information they provide only reaches about 2,5% of the population. The 2009 IUDOP research points out that about 95% of the population considers crime as a very important issue. However, ideas about possible solutions are various and it seems to be clear that Salvadoran citizens acknowledge the complexness of the situation of insecurity in the country. For example, 77.2% agreed with the idea that in order to prevent violence, everybody should contribute by taking responsibility. The socio-economic aspect of the causes of crime is also acknowledged, as 96.9% agreed with the idea that more jobs should be created in order to prevent violence. Even though murder rates had dropped in 2012, 44.5% of the respondents indicated to have perceived an increase in crime in comparison with the preceding year (IUDOP, 2009). From the above can be concluded that there exists a feeling of insecurity amongst the Salvadoran society, though this does not imply that the society as a whole blames youngsters or gang-members for the causes of this insecurity. So what exactly can be said about the public interpretation of youth crime? It has been proven difficult to separate the concept of youth crime from the gang phenomenon. Not only the media pay special attention to gangs, so do scholars and other experts. Martel shows that almost half of the interviewed people in a national survey indicated that the ‘gang problem’ should be given prior attention and 91% indicated that it was a serious problem, even though only 5% of the interviewed had been victim of a certain action of these gangs. The same study found that those people who followed the news frequently showed higher feelings of insecurity than those who did not. According to Martel (2006), the official discourse –echoed by the mass media– construct the identity of youth from the perspective of youth violence. It appears as violencia estudiantil (student violence), consumo cultural (cultural practice) and in the form of pandillas (gangs). The first one refers to violence amongst students, often inside schools. The second one refers to the idea that youngster create violence, while it is believed that the media play an important role as they promote violence through aggressive music or movies for example. The third one has extensively been discussed in this paper and needs no further attention. Even though the causes of violence cannot be found within the youth itself, the official
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discourse and mass media have contributed to the idea that the youth is a violent generation. The next part will focus on some of the possible implications this situation might produce.
Consequences negative media-representation What has been discussed so far, shows that the most influential media have been producing over-representing negative images of gang-members and sometimes youth in a more general way. If this hypothesis is true, one might ask two questions regarding the statement: 1) why have those the media been doing this? and 2) what are the consequences of this particular kind of representation? The answers on the first question vary, but there are some general ideas about the motives of the (mass) media to spread a message which over-represents a negative image of a certain group. One assumption is that this type of ‘negative news’ is attractive to the media, as they are able to present it in a way in which it always seems a novelty and something close to the reality of the citizen. Negative or violent news can therefore often be considered as ‘good news’. Another assumption is that this type of news is ‘easy news’, as there is often little research involved and so little time and resources are required (Giró, 2006). Others suppose that the construction of the ‘other’ subject can contribute to the hegemonic powers to maintain their grip on their social and economic project. As Martel argues that by implementing a culture of fear, powers may get more support to take control over certain parts of society, even if the required action may violate some principle rights of the constitution; for example, when the mano dura plan was implemented in 2003 which aloud police forces to arrest any youngster merely on the basis of their appearances (Martel, 2006; Moodie, 2010). Martel argues that at the same time that the victims of gangs are being magnified, institutional violence and white collar crime is being minimized. However, I must note that the last argument seems only partially true. While it is true that crimes that are related to gangs are over-represented, institutional violence does get some attention in both EDH and LPG. Both newspapers have reported in the same kind of way about crimes committed by police officers or soldiers as crimes committed by gang-members, only on a smaller scale. White collar crime, on the other hand, is hardly presented in either of the four revised newspapers, probably due to a lack of information. Some go even further and argue that the interest behind the over-representation of negative images of the ‘other’ is economic and political. Private security enterprises, weapon distributers and politicians may benefit from insecurity, as more weapons may be sold, more private security guards may be hired or a certain politician or political party get more voters and support as they promise to ‘fight’ the insecurity. Arguments for these ideas are that the
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mass media are directly linked to the private sector, and insecurity always seems to increase during times of elections, which may serve a purpose if the forgoing hypothesis is true (Martel, 2006; Hernández, 2014; Rude, 2014). The second question may be even more important, as the youth has the ability to shape the future, it is crucial to understand in which ways negative media representation can affect this group. As I argued before, and as is shown in the conceptual model, I presume that the public opinion can alter the situation of youth crime, as there seems to exist a vicious circle of stigmatization, social exclusion, a lack of opportunities and crime. As an interviewed gang-member and Hernandez (2014) argued, the opportunities of the youth are many times determined by the place they live and socio-economic position in society. Both argue that youngsters often get turned down when they apply for a job if they live in areas where gangs are present. Besides, Moodie (2010) argues that youngsters can often be mistaken for criminals just on the basis of appearances (e.g. certain type of clothing or hairstyle). If this is true, and the opportunities of the youth are being restricted by generalized ideas in public opinion, chances are that some or many of them choose to abandon the formal economy and turn to crime as their form of substitution as they feel not to have another choice. Especially when they feel discriminated or excluded from society, the gangs are often described as a ‘family’ for those who have had trouble inserting themselves in society or for those who grew up without a nuclear family. Another possibility is that the gang discourse contributes to a self-fulfilling prophecy. As youngsters are constantly exposed to stories and pictures of crime, it can become normalized within society. Youngsters who may otherwise not have joined a gang can be made to believe that it is normal, as he or she lives in an area where gangs are present and many youngsters get involved. As discussed before, the culture of violence in El Salvador is often seen as one of the major causes of the reproduction of violence (Savenije, 2009; Gómez, 2014)
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Conclusion This article has explored the ways in which different Salvadoran media report on youth and gang-related crime, and what the possible implications of certain types of selective media representation may be. By having discussed the historic-political and the socio-economic context, I have presented various issues that should be considered in order to understand the phenomenon of youth and gang-related crime, and violence in particular. I argued that El Salvador has a long history of discrimination, state oppression, and various types of inequality which has led to the exclusion of particular groups in the past. After the peace accords of 1992 –which many believe to have been unsatisfactory– violence continued, though in different forms than during the war. What has often been referred to as a culture of violence is something that has characterised the common perception of Salvadoran reality for over several decades. Not only physical violence, but also social and structural violence form part of this society and are affecting a large part of the population. The inequalities that have been discussed have turned out to be a historical phenomenon in Salvadoran society, and they are being reproduced generation after generation. As large parts of society have repeatedly been excluded from the formal economy and political process, a large underclass is left with few tools to successfully take part in society. In this investigation particular attention has been paid to the youth, as it is considered to be one of the most vulnerable groups in current Salvadoran society. Not only are they causes of crime and violence, but they are often victims of such criminal acts as well. I argued that the mass media in particular have over-represented a selective negative image of the reality concerning youth crime. The importance of the media in a well- functioning democracy have been discussed, and I have suggested that ideally these media should present a truthful and objective image of reality. One of the important issues that should be considered regarding the Salvadoran media is the way in which they are structured and by who they are owned. As it has been shown that the Salvadoran media are closely tied to the private sector and have regularly showed clear political affiliations, it becomes clear that different parts of society are not equally represented in these media. I therefore suggested that one of the reasons of the over-representation of negative images of youth and gang-members in certain media may be caused by economic or political interests associated with these media. As other authors have shown, the dominant discourse, that has been adopted by many of the influential media in El Salvador, creates an image of the ‘other’. This practise of ‘othering’ allows the society to define the dominant group as the 'self', while the ‘other’ is represented as deviant, criminal, dangerous and as a threat to society. Even though it is not clear who may be benefitting from this practice, assumptions are that the
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private sector, politicians and even organized crime may have their own interest in the generalized feeling of civil insecurity, that projects it fears onto this deviant group. What may be more important than the underlying reasons for selective media representation, is the variety of possible consequences this practice may have for the youth and even for society as a whole. Although not all media should be considered equally, the majority of the mass media are not contributing significantly to the process of pacification. Even though I acknowledge that the media does not have the obligation to do so, I have reputed the idea that the influence of these media is considerably large, and that the media are therefore actively influencing the public opinion and the public perception of youth and gang-related crime. If it is considered that the misrepresentation of particular groups may lead to stigmatization, discrimination and social exclusion, we may understand how these particular groups have become ‘outcasts’ of society in the first place. The aim of this research was not to ignore the severity of the problems related to youth and gang-related crime nor to argue that the mass media are purposely aggravating the situation –if they are aggravating the situation at all. The principle aim was to explore the possibilities of different media to influence the public interpretation of youth crime. These possibilities may produce new ideas about the way in which media can contribute to processes of democratization and pacification. Online media may provide some alternation in the regular practice of journalism in El Salvador. The two online newspapers that were revised were shown to portray a different image of reality than the ‘mainstream’ printed media. Since these media pay more attention to the underlying causes of particular forms of crime and violence, instead of focussing on the outcomes of crime, they may contribute to structural solutions the problems related with youth an gang-related crime. Although the media will never become fully objective, and they will probably not become active promoters of peace, further studies to explore the possibilities in which different media may contribute to a well-functioning democracy and the reduction of violence, may result in changes in discourse, possibly contributing to an improvement in well-being or acceptance and inclusion of the Salvadoran youth.
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Bibliography
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Attachments
Interviews
Interview penitentiary mental guide; Brian Rude
What is your experience with youth crime?
Through my work, primarily in the prisons; conducting seminars and workshops, focusing on different aspects. In one prison we work on the theme of human rights and penitentiary law. And in another prison with retirados, or gang-members that have left the gang, or have retired. We are working on themes as mental health, psycho-social themes; where they come from, who they are, things like addictions, communication, sexuality, masculinity, escalation of conflict. We have worked a lot around the restore of justice. We work in about 3 prisons at a time, we have worked in basically every of the 19 prisons that exist around the country.
Could you tell me something about your work with Quetzalcoatl? (An NGO that works with youngsters in impoverished areas to prevent them from crime and violence)
Well actually, I’m not with Quetzalcoatl anymore. I co-founded it in 1999, but left two years ago. But now we are working to AEIPES (asociacion de ex-internos penitenciarios de El Salvador) with prison inmates in El Salvador. And their focus human rights and penitentiary law, our background is more on the psycho-social themes, with Jesus, we do those together in the prisons. So we work together with AEIPES, but we work kind of independently.
The reality for youth is that they are victimized by crime and some get involved with crime. And well, in the prisons many of them are there because of crime, but not necessarily, some are innocent. Some are unjustly convicted and sentenced, some have not been to trail, so they are technically innocent, a third of them. Those are the numbers you generally hear.
How do you think the history of the country has influenced the current situation?
Well, my sense is that the war (1980-1992) has never been resolved. I was on an eclectic meeting on Tuesday, and out of the 30 pastors, only one referred to that problem. That we haven’t got over that, so the violence and crime from the war. He was very aliquot about that. That’s my reading of the situation; if we don’t seek healing from the 80s, how do we expect to resolve the 90s and the 2000s. So that is part of it. Business and political corruption is another part of it. And impunity is built in to the system, they can almost always relay on impunity. Yesterday, for the first time in history, the general of the fiscalía, announced that the former president of the republic (Francisco Flores) is on trial. He is hiding right now, he left at the end of January and nobody has heard of him ever since. So that could bring down the whole castle, I mean he is probably not the only one in Salvadoran history. The situation is changing with the impunity, but there is a long way to go. And those millions, they are talking about millions, if those millions would have been invested in the youth, in education and job trading, then maybe the youth wouldn’t have to be involved with gangs and robbery and could have had more normal ways of surviving. It all ties together I think, but people are not so willing to tight the knobs, they isolate the youth crime and usually blame it on the gangs, but they don’t see or sincerely they don’t talk about the bigger picture.
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So there has been invested too little in youth, ever since the war, or even before that?
Yes, absolutely, going back probably centuries. Education budget is minimal and the tax rates for business and the wealthy are low. But even those low rates are not being paid. None of those people are in jail. So if all that money were collected, as it would be in Europe or North America, then the youth wouldn’t be in such tight straits and they wouldn’t been driven to crime. And if they wouldn’t have been excluded from society, they wouldn’t have to build up their own society.
What types of inequality can we distinguish and how do inequalities influence the situation?
Oh I think it is a big factor, more than poverty in itself. I think the gap between rich and poor is probably more of a factor that provokes violence and crime. Just as a comparison; Nucaragua is a much poorer country, but there is much less crime and violence. In Nicaragua you don’t see that big of a gap between the wealthy and the impoverished. And I say impoverished and not poor as they are not poor for no reason, they are made poor. So I think that gap is a major factor leading to violence and crime. Well there are also a lot of people needing want they can’t obtain. Even in the prison they all need brand name shoes and so. Why would they need that? Well it’s for their image and self- esteem. And cell phones too, everybody has to have the latest cell-phone. But I am surprised that everybody has two or three latest cell phones, which just get stolen anyway. People spend a lot of money they don’t have, or could have spent on nutrition and education.
Some people therefore turn to gangs. They see that their family can’t provide for that, and in order to obtain the goods they want they see the gangs as a possible way to do that. And there is belonging, identity, protection and a family. It’s a family for many. But the economic factor is sure an important one.
Are there other types of inequality we can address?
Well, the inequality of access to education, job training, employment opportunities. Well yesterday it was labour day, so a big focus on who has work and who don’t and why not. I see that the inequality of employment; half of the population is working double shifts, two jobs, and another half is unemployed. If we could somehow distribute the number of jobs available over the entire population, everybody would be happy. But you know, bus drivers that are working double shifts, risking everybody’s lives (including their own), or they have to drug themselves to stay awake. The same counts for security guards, where there are two people for a whole weak, working double time. How can they guaranty security for one thing, how can they stay awake, another thing, and why can’t they distribute the workload amongst more people? That could improve the economy and it could improve the security as well. I suppose that job opportunities have a lot to do with your connections, who you know is a big factor.
What can we say about political inequality?
Well, there has been a change since the coming to power of the FMLN in 2009. The arrest of the ex- president is an example that the power of belonging to a certain party is starting to fall. The membership of a certain political party doesn’t assure you impunity anymore. So maybe that type of inequality, political affiliation, is starting to unravel.
Is there a social conflict? And if so, is that the main cause of youth crime?
I would say yes, there is a social conflict, but there are a lot of economic and political factors involved. But maybe that is all social too. But I think the economic aspect is very important. The big companies are always overcharging. If you don’t complain or you don’t have time, you don’t get your
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money back. They will say it was an error. Maybe if you would be more persistent or had a white face (like me) you would get your money back more readily. Sometimes, for a Salvadoran it is not even worth trying. But none of those people (that run the big companies) are in prison.
What are the main causes of youth crime?
Hmm.. Well I think for one; desperation, trying to survive. Economic desperation, the need to survive economically, or to bee ‘in the loop’ (economically). Another factor may be, that many of the gang members are pressured into doing a crime by their gang (initiation rites and so). Which I think also happened during the war, where soldiers had to oblige and there was no refusing, even if their deeds were seen as crimes. I think that is true in business too. Some employees have to wright checks and so, without knowing why and for who. I have met woman in prison that don’t know why they are there. They are made to do de dirty work. Some are even churches and NGOs! Even though they may be doing a good job, they may not know that the person that is doing the administration has some flaws. Even every driver in this country is vulnerable to the justice system. If you hit someone, you immediately go to jail without trial (for just a driving mishap).
I get the impression that is impossible to wright about ‘youth crime’ in general, as it is almost always directly linked to the problem of gangs. Is this true?
It is not only not fair, it is so pervasive here. It is assumed that the gangs, or those or in prison are directing the crime or organize homicides and extortions and so on. Generally, if there is even a suspicion of being involved with gangs you have the risk of being accused for it (for illegal affiliation). Even for having ties or knowing gang-members, so that may implicate the whole population haha. We have a 300% overcrowding in prison. Why? Why are there so many criminals. If we just look at the case of abortion; anybody involved in it is committing a crime. So if that is true, instead of 30.000 inmates we may should have a 100.000 right now. And now in Uruguay and some states are considering marihuana laws. If that were ever to happen here, maybe a third of the people in prison would not be there because of marihuana convictions. I don’t see that happening any time soon here, but it could drastically change the scene.
Currently the prisons are segregated; gang-related and non-gang-related. There are two prisons for gang-members, and in the other 14 prisons or so are ‘regular’ inmates.
Do you ever hear about these other prisons?
Not much no, and they are all lumped together. In the years when there were a lot of problems in gang-prisons, the punishment was sent to all prisons. The military was sent in, visitations were restricted, communications rights were restricted. Everybody suffered the consequences, even though they had nothing to do with the gang activity. Another (positive) aspect is the truce of march 9, 2012. By April 26 many prisons also joined in as a civilian sector. And they no longer massacre and riot if they have problems, they now sign petitions and so. They treat each other with respect. Prior to that, the prisons were always in the news, but now they are never in the news. But nobody notices that. They say: “maybe the truce is dead”.
What happened with the truce?
In the last months the homicide rate has crept up to 10 homicides a day, it was on 14 then it dropped to 5 with the truce and it is slowly rising again now, especially with the elections. A year ago, in May, the two most prominent gang leaders were brought together for an interview. There was a big official reaction for that, that they shouldn’t have been there and that the prisons were stepping on their boundaries. Immediately after that, the media was not allowed to interview or do any reports
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on prisons. The media had changed their tune after the truce and instead of deaminizing inmates, especially gang-members they actually treated gang members as human beings; getting their story and getting their perspective. And so, prison inmates and gang-members got the idea that they were taken into account.
The leaders of the 18th street and the MS13 had a very reconciliatory meeting, and there was a lot of official reaction against that; media was not allowed to interview them anymore. So from last year on, nobody is hearing form gang-members and prison inmates anymore. And I think violence escalates because of that, they want to be heard. It doesn’t seem to logical, you think society would be happy about a truce, rescuing three to five thousand lives, but society still continues to demonize gang members. And I think another thing is that the gangs are postulating something the rest of society is not ready to consider, and that is the possibility of reconciliation. And that hasn’t happened since the war. Even church leaders are not prepared to reconcile amongst themselves. So it’s like going back to the cold war. Some countries were experiencing with socialism and doing something for the poor and marginalized in their countries, what the wealthier more capitalist countries were not prepared to acknowledge. A lot of it was more threatening than violence. It was all blamed on communism, terrorism, subversion and so on, but maybe the positive was even more threatening than the negative. And I think that could be the case here as well. What if the gangs can come together, what could mean that for the rest of the society?
This society is built on violence, there are a lot of people benefit commercially from it, including the security sector. Also the political arena, with the two parties fighting each other. If they could come together, than the country could go forward. The violence is used a political tool; one party blames the other for increasing crime rates or affiliations with gangs and so on. There are often speculations as well that the gangs are in the hand of the drug cartels or that they are being hired to being hitman, or for connecting the drug-trafficking. The problem is that there is no adequate investigation from the police turning accusations into crime. Only 3% of the murders get investigated and processed. So everything is speculation, nobody knows for sure what is behind the murders and the violence. So the speculation is that many people are taking advantage from the gang-members, even extortion is blamed on the gang-members, but perhaps they are being hired to carry out business interests. Who knows? It’s not investigated adequately.
Is youth crime an urban problem?
No, it was, I would say five to ten years ago. But then the government and the police (and their intelligence) decided to bring in the army and increase surveillance. So my immediate reaction was; ‘now they will move to the rural areas’ and that is what they have done. Nobody seemed to anticipate that as a possible consequence. So now a lot of rural areas and small communities are being plagued by gangs coming into their territory and taking their rivalries, resulting in an increase of violence. Part of the peace process (after the truce) helped some of the urban areas to regain their peace. So those areas may be more at peace now, but rural areas and small communities have been more affected. Some communities have been more effective in preventing violence than others.
How do media report about crimes committed by youth?
Well, what I have found is that some significant progress has been made in jails and some communities, but there are no media reports on this. Some community have dealt with violence pretty well and are rather peaceful, but I have to go there to find that out. I will rarely find that reported in the media. Other people I talk to are still feeling the threat and are talking about insecurity in their community, so it’s not an even playing field. But it can’t necessarily be expected from the media to cover that objectively.
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Is there a selective representation or a use of stereotypes?
Oh yeah, stereotypes are definitely being used. Usually male youth, poor (or impoverished male youth) are often blamed for the problems in the country; the violence, the crime. And oftentimes they are just doing their daily business and are targeted, so they can’t really escape from that. They will get stopped by the police, or harassed by the police, so that happens with too much frequency.
La Prensa Gráfica covered very little on the truce, I don’t know why that is. But there may be other (online) news-sources that offer different perspectives from more investigative journalism. I think the channels 2, 4 and 6 get a lot of viewers. Those would mostly in hands of the right-wing. There is some variety across the spectrum, the (left) government also owns a couple of channels. I would say channel 4 is the most dramatic. Channels 2, 4 and 6 are all part of Telecorporación Salvadoreña and they are all kind of right-wing. The government one is channel 10. And then maybe the more progressive Megavisión is 19, 20 and 21 I think. They would give a more centrist of leftist perspective.
What are the effects of all this on the public opinion?
This is hard to say, as we don’t know whether it is the media that influences the public opinion, or the public opinion that influences the media. I think they have quite a lot of influence though. Now, in the age of internet, you can see the reactions on newspaper articles and I find it revealing, I am almost stunned about how anti-youth these reactions are. The people are not just calling for peace and harmony, but they are often calling for the elimination of the gangs. And I am not sure if it’s just a certain section of the population that responds to certain articles, but there seems very little room for reason, rationalized and balanced response to problems of youth, violence and gangs amongst the readership. They are much more violent and more hateful than the articles themselves. I don’t know who sparks these comments, where they come from and if they are representative though.
What kind of consequences does the public opinion have on the development of the problem?
The government has arranged another round-table meeting for peace process with different actors involved. I don’t know why they are doing it now, as the government will only be in power for one more month, so I don’t know whether it’s going to get continuity. They are not talking about the truce anymore, they talk about the ‘peace process’, I don’t know why that is. The media is controlled by big business, who like to steer the public opinion. Originally the big business was controlled by the right-wing, but with the new government and the initiatives of ALBA I think this is changing a bit. But there are business interests on both sides, certainly. I don’t know how much the media is controlling, nor how much the media is controlled, so I don’t know who is in control or who is manipulating who.
Is it possible that organized crime and certain politicians are the real cause the insecurity in the area?
Well I get that sense too, that the gangs are only used as a smoke-screen, to distract the attention from drug-trafficking, which is true, it gets much less attention here than it gets in Honduras or Guatemala. Yes I think people’s attention is being distracted from the larger issues. Well now the attention is focused on ‘organized crime’ as the ex-president is being pursued for corruption. So maybe there is some hope, maybe there is enough pressure the people to make that happen. There is too much focus on gang and youth-crime which I think is distracting from some of the other major players in the scene, the violence.
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Interview former project coordinator INJUVE; Hernan Hernández
How is your experience relating to the topic?
From 2007 and on, I worked with municipals, towns and communities in the area of the prevention of violence. Later, between 2010 and 2012 I worked with the government on a program called INJUVE (The National Institute for Youth). Altogether I worked over six years in zones where gangs were present. We tried to prevent youngsters to join gangs, help those who were in gangs to get out and to create better opportunities for the youngsters.
How do you think that the history of the country has influenced the current situation, when we are talking about youth crime?
Many people are talking about a post-civil war period, but I think we should leave that behind us now. The war ended over 20 years ago, and people are still talking about the post-civil war period. It is true that many issues have not been solved and that the peace-agreements were never fully accomplished, but what has happened after the war is not so much a consequence of only the war itself, but more a consequence of the same patterns of inequality that have lasted for a long time before the war.
The main problems this country has faced and still faces are economic and social ones. There is a lack of opportunities and a lot of (extreme) poverty. After the civil war, the new government did not take these problems into account. Although the war had begun over these factors, the situation afterwards was almost the same. Many people had migrated to the city but there was a lack of jobs and no social security. People concentrated in the city, but there was hardly any work for them, so poverty grew.
The right-wing government, who had to consolidate its power, was not leaving anything behind that could possibly interfere with their hegemony. The youth was therefore seen as a big threat. The youth was often orientated to the left-wing politics and the FMLN and formed a menace for the government. On top of that, democratization processes were started, which were also seen as a danger for the government. For if true democratization would have taken place, social changes could have been made that would have affected the rich. The Salvadoran oligarchy that was still in power faced two mayor threats: the young (left orientated) generation and the democratization processes. The gangs that emerged shortly after the war were therefore seen as useful; by portraying these gangs as an evil that should be controlled and by implementing fear in the people, the oligarchy could easily justify their use of power to oppress these groups. In order to prevent the (democratic) development of the people, any means necessary could be used. The portraying of the youth as a lost generation consolidated their power.
Now, one way to control a country is by invading it and using military power. But as the U.S. had done this before and received too much resistance, they sought other ways. El Salvador is a very strategic place for the U.S. and not surprisingly it’s where we find the biggest embassy of the U.S. in whole Latin America. Not only during the war the U.S. was heavily involved in the country and donated about us$2 million a day, but also after the war their interferences continued. The dollarization in 2001 is an excellent example. One of the main reasons for the dollarization was the facilitation of money laundering. El Salvador is a strategic place for the U.S. from where they are able to control most of Central America.
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Can we speak about a social conflict?
Yes, but it’s not that simple. The gangs and their members are used by leaders of organized crime, who have political connections. A couple of years ago, for example, four deputies were murdered in Guatemala. They belonged to the right-wing ARENA party and the Christian CPN. At first it looked like a ‘normal’ assassination without a clear reason, a couple of weeks later it became clear that the murders were commissioned by drug cartels. When we are talking about the gangs in the streets, it has to be clear that there is a certain hierarchy. The guns and drugs they get are distributed by the organized crime; those who sell it to them drive in 4 by 4’s and have a white collar.
What ALBA is doing, however, is something new. They form a real threat to the oligarchy that has always taken advantage of the poor and used them as cheap labour force. Crisitani, former president and leader of the ARENA party (accused of various severe crimes), no longer has the monopoly in many segments of the economy. ALBA has nutrition, fertilizers, medicines and fuel, and is forming a counterpart to the elite. They have employed over 100.000 people, started scholarship programs and the standard of living has improved. This is where the real social conflict is; as these processes benefit democratization that is feared by the U.S. government and the Salvadoran elite.
What are the main causes for youngsters to get involved in crime?
I feel like we have been talking about gangs instead of youngsters, although your initial question was about youngsters in general. We will come back to that later.
Many of these youngsters live without their parents. Oftentimes they are either dead or living abroad. The youngsters grow up without a tight family and are often raised by their grandparents, who do not have the resources and capacity to raise them. They become disintegrated, they feel alone and like nobody cares for them. Gangs are often a way of having a family again. You have to understand that in the same (violent) way these gangs attack other gangs, in that same way they protect their own members. So these youngsters feel appreciated and part of a family again. Of course there are economic reasons four youngsters to commit crimes, but those are not the crimes we see in the media.
Can we say it (the gang phenomenon) is an urban problem?
Initially it started as an urban phenomenon, but nowadays it has spread to the countryside as well. They are everywhere. At first, around 2001, it had much to do with the distribution of drugs. They claimed their territories and consolidated them. Nowadays they are just protecting their territories, that is why we have seen a wave of high murder rates in the years 2009 and 2010, when the battle for territory was at its worst.
In San Miguel and the rural areas they don’t talk a lot about gangs, but they are present. Let’s make a list of the places where gangs are most present. These places are Soyapango, Ilopango, San Martín, Méxicanos, Ciudad Delgada, Apopa and Coatepeque. The thing these places have in common is the poor housing; the areas where the gangs rule are the most impoverished ones. You don’t find the gangs in the centres, you find them on the borders of these cities in the slums.
How and what does the media report about youth crime?
They often mention the media as fourth power, but I think I have to disagree. I see the media as the first or second power; they have so much control over what people think. If we look at the mainstream media, the majority is in hands of the ANEP. These people have their own interest and make use of the media to legitimize certain decisions that benefit them. When the Mano Dura
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program started, and later the Súper Mano Dura the newspapers wrote things as: ‘Eight gang leaders were captured today!’ making everybody believe the government was actually doing something. What the media didn’t tell us was that those same gang leaders were let free just a couple of days later. It were just lies! The war against the gangs was a way to legitimize their power, because they were in crisis. Even now, with the left wing government, the ANEP still controls the media. It doesn’t matter whether they have power in the parliament or not, they have power true the media.
Another thing is that they give us a one-sided story about the reality. I’m not saying there is no gang problem, but I also see a lot of good things happening; a lot of youngsters working tighter for a brighter future, a lot of successful programs to prevent violence. But they never write about that! It is the media that has caused the gang problem to grow; not only in reality, but also in the public opinion. They have the power to hold back processes of democratization. Fear is one of the most common weapons they use to manipulate the people. They want to create the image of the young generation as a lost generation. That is why successful prevention (of violence) programs are not mentioned in the media.
They also blow things out of proportion. Look, if you take a community of about 4000 people, about 600 of them are youngsters that might be involved in crime. But I say might because many of them aren’t. Maybe about 25 of them are fully dedicated to crime and crime only. But the newspapers make it look as if the whole area is filled with gangsters. And if they capture a gang leader, this person may sometimes only be 16 years old, you understand?
If you read the newspaper, you get the idea that all of the murders that are committed are committed by gang members. What they don’t tell you is that actually a great part of the murders is caused by organized crime. For the media however, organized crime does not exist. Why? Because it’s not convenient for those in power that have ties with organized crime to tell the country about the existence of it!
What are the effects of all this on the public opinion?
If someone lives in an area where gangs are heavily present, people often assume that these youngsters automatically belong to a gang.
-Can we talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Yes, the youngsters that live in these areas will eventually believe they are part of those gangs. If you are applying for a job, many times the place you live is enough to get denied. It is the media that causes this. They portray certain areas as if only gang-members were living there.
To give you another example; a couple of years ago the media were writing for days on about a strike of the public transport as the gangs supposedly had planned something big. When that they came, almost all public transport was out of function. You see the kind of power these media have? They can organize a strike even better than the guerrilla forces or government forces could during the war!
You told me that we have been talking about gangs but not about youth crime in general. Why is that?
It is almost impossible to talk about youth crime in general. Why? Because you don’t hear anything about it. The same stigmatization that has consequences on the youth causes us to focus on a gang problem. Data about other types of youth crime are very hard to find, as the police oftentimes relates any crime to gangs.
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What kind of consequences does the public opinion have on the development of the problem?
By drawing a picture of a gang phenomenon that causes enormous fear amongst the population, the ones that control the media are able to continue their business. During the war there were many death squads operating, everybody knows this. But what you don’t read is that these death squads are still operating, they are paid by the organized crime. Now, not all gangs or gang-members are related to the organized crime, but there is a connection.
Many times you hear about the gangs asking for ‘rent’. They go to small shops and oblige them to pay rent in exchange for protection. Now what I think is quiet intriguing is that they never go to big enterprises such as McDonalds or Burger King. So I asked them why. They (gang members) told me that those were not the orders. I also asked them were the rent money goes to. They told me that they didn’t know, but that they couldn’t keep it. The only money they could keep was a little profit from drug dealing and extortions. So I ask myself: where is all this money going? Why don’t they go to the big companies where they could get a lot more profit? The only thing I can come up with is that there is a hierarchy, which is often denied by the media. A hierarchy where the gangs are just being used to; create fear, slow down the democratization process, create profit from drug and weapon trafficking and legitimize political acts (such as the armament of police and military forces). We can think of many sectors profiting from the type of fear the media create. One of them is the private security sector. On almost every corner you can find a guard. Another sector is the weapon industry. Al those guards, police and military forces need guns. By showing the people the necessity of the armament of these groups, financing them becomes very easy.
Even the police force cannot be trusted. To give you an example; a friend of mine who became head of his department from the police received an envelope on his first day as chief. The envelope contained a cheque worth us $50.000 and just had a little note saying: ‘Welcome chief’. You see how easy it is?
The war was very lucrative for some. But after the war those people had to invent other ways to obtain profits. They also invented Dengue. Those same people are benefitting from the existence of gangs, they made them big, they control the drug trafficking.
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Interview Lutheran Bishop; Medardo Gómez
1. Como es su experiencia con la delincuencia juvenil y el tema de la paz? (su experiencia de su trabajo con la Iglesi)
Obispo Gómez: Debido al papel de la iglesia, este tiene que ser un movimiento para la paz uyn instrumento para construir procesos de paz. Por ello los pastores de la ILS con su Obispo participamos en los procesos de paz, y no basta solamente saber el problema juvenil, la situación se debe a orígenes que han causado la delincuencia juvenil y el origen mayor son las raíces, la pobreza, esa pobreza que enfrentamos históricamente en el país. Podemos decir la historia que hemos sufrido hace 500 años desde el momento de la conquista, que hemos que tenido que sufrir el sometimiento. Desde ahí han surgido los procesos de violencia en la historia y este empobrecimiento del pueblo0 ha dado origen a la emigración, al desmembramiento de las familias, las familias prácticamente han huido. Se han sometido a un éxodo masivo y que ha desmembrado a la familia. Y esto ha contribuido a que los hijos al encontrarse solo buscaran siempre el calor familiar , y como no lo encontraron en su propia gente, ellos mismos lo organizaron y a esta familia ellos le pusieron MARA o Pandilla y hasta han crecido en una forma admirable y sorprendente, digo, por lo grande que se han hecho, y aquí en el País hay varias maras, por lo menos 7 maras, entre ellas las dos más grandes que son la MS13 y La Pandilla 18. Entonces, somos una iglesia que tenemos experiencia porque estamos viviendo el problema de la familia, con los jóvenes.
2. Como cree usted que la historia del país influye la situación de hoy en dia, relacionada al tema de la delincuencia juvenil?
La historia no tiene aislamiento de las cosas que nos han pasado y por supuesto ya en la primera respuesta me refiero a que todo se debe a una historia uqe podemos darle origen desde hace unos 500 años cuando se inició el empobrecimiento. La historia nos dice que este país cuando era constituido solo por las familias indígenas, originarios , habían creado sus propios sistemas de vida, se tenían sistemas en común, se estaba levantando un sistema bien organizado indígena. Pero eso fue interrumpido, y en la confusión se hizo mucho más daño y todos nuestros antepasados cayeron en un empobrecimiento permanente continuado. Un buen signo de todo ese explendor de nuestra época precolombina es la palabra CUSCATLAN que es el nombre que antes tenía El Salvador, que significa lugar de piedras presiosas, lugar de tesoros o de riquezas. Pero cuando vinieron los consquistadores se llevaron todo. Es muy interesante que las riquezas de aquí fueron a parar a Europa, y debería Europa indemnizarnos a nosotros por eso. Con todo lo que España sacó de nuestros territorios pagó las deudas que tenía con otros países europeos, así grandes construcciones que ahora tienen en Alemania se hicieron con las riquezas de aquí. Se pagó a Holanda, y si esto llega a Holanda (esta entrevista) que toque los corazones y las conciencias en ahí, al igual que en Inglaterra, porque ahí quedaron las riquezas de estos lugares que fortaleció el sistema económico allá, y comenzó la pobreza aquí.
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3. Muchas veces se hablan de desigualdaded. Cree usted que las desigualdades son las principales causas para la delincuencia juvenil?
La desigualdad es un efecto y es una causa por las condiciones de injusticia. El origen ha sido la injuticia que fue aplicado en la marginalidad, la marginación de los pobres, y de ahí el sistema económico, el sistema capitalista ha enseñado que cuanto más tienes más vales. Ha sido un sistema que le da valor al dinero, no valor a las personas. Por lo tanto, quien tiene dinero VALE y quien no tiene dinero NO VALE. Y ahí viene el origen de las desigualdades. Por eso, las desigualdades son causas que se mantienen y hasta un resentimiento social que los jóvenes guardan en su corazón. 4. Como reportan los medios de comunicación sobre los delitos cometidos por jovenes? Los medios de comunicación, todos lo sabemos en el mundo que son amarillistas, les gusta que suceda algo tremendo, algo escandaloso. Eso es noticia, pero si no sucede nada impactante no es noticia, no vende. Por lo tanto, los medios si hacen uso de la violencia, e inundan con la comunicación al país, al ambiente lo inundan de violencia que el miedo crece y lo mas preocupante es que en medio de todos los medios de comunicación están llenos de violencia , y los niños desde chiquitos comienzan a ver los casos de violencia que son bien comunes. En los noticieros salen las decapitaciones que se comenten, los crímenes horrendos, sin esconder nada, hasta también la represión donde aparecen los policías abriendo las puertas con violencia, con almáganas y martillos, sometiendo a los delincuentes con violencia. Todo es violencia. Así que los medios de comunicación son medios de violencia , y seria importante que se volvieran medios de paz, creería yo que podrían trabajar por la paz y no solo por la violencia.
Se puede hablar de representación selectivo y el uso de estereotipos? (No es fácil entender que quiere decir con selectivo, trataré de dar una respuesta según yo lo comprendo)
Por supuesto, si hay siempre un sector élite, selectivo y eso es lo que marca la desigualdad en la nación, y al hablar de la comunicación, si, culturalmente no hay un sentido de comprensión para los jóvenes que han caído en la violencia, y entonces se usan términos estereotipados que provoca más la violencia, al respecto pienso que los pandilleros, los jóvenes militantes de maras tienen un liderazgo jerárquico y han aprendido hacer disciplinados y lo han aprendido a base de lealtad hasta la muerte y son organizaciones peligrosas en su forma de organizarse que hasta en su forma de actuar están disciplinados. Si, se puede hablar de grupos selectivos y las formas de comunicación es a base de estereotipos.
A quienes se escuchan? Quienes tienen el poder en los medios de comunicación (de corriente)?
Los medios de comunicación como se conoce, la comunicación es uno de los mayores poderes que dominan en la vida, están en manos del poder económico, los pobres no tienen poder de comunicación, todos los medios están en poder de los pudientes, y por eso los medios de comunicación defienden los intereses de aquellos que les da vida y los sostienen. Gracias a Dios surgen algunas esperanzas que ahora se llaman los medios comunitarios, que ahora ya hay algún apoyo del gobierno para estos medios de comunicación comunitaria, que van a poder ayudar más en las realidades de la comunidades. Poco a poco hay esperanza de cambiar para que sea el pueblo quien tenga el poder de la comunicación, y no este en manos privadas como hasta hoy. Parece que en todo hasta hoy los medios de comunicación están en las manos de los ricos, en manos de quienes deciden, y de los que manipulan al mundo y manipula cada sociedad.
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5. Como influye todo esto a la opinión pública? (O sea; como pueden los medios influir el imagen de la joventud que tiene la sociedad)
Si, yo dijera que en cuanto sean los medios que tu tienes, asi será el pueblo. Los medios hacen cultura, hacen opinión, forman costumbres, dirigen hasta el pensar de la población de acuerdo a sus bombardeos que ellos mantienen, bombardeos de comunicación. Por eso es importante que se conviertan los medios en medios de paz, que las noticias sean evaluadas de tal manera que sean dadas al pueblo no para causar temor, sino que para informar objetivamente, Con el objetivo de iluminar para la tranquilidad, de protección a la vida, y para la paz. En cambio cuando los medios de comunicación quieren provocar problemas para destruir algo positivo como por ejemplo el testimonio de una persona, de una ideología, de algún movimiento, todo depende de los medios de com. Porque son los que dirigen, los que influyen y en hasta cierto punto, lavan el cerebro. Y por eso tienen éxito al vender las opiniones que venden para que el pueblo las haga suyas. Por eso, necesitamos que los medios de comunicación sean llenos de humanidad, que le importe más las personas que el dinero.
6. Que consequencias puede tener la opinión pública en el desarrollo del 'problema' de la delinquencia juvenil?
La opinión pública, toda la comunicación está relacionada. Tiene gran porcentaje en la delincuencia juvenil, y no solo en la problemática juvenil sino en la problemática de toda la nación, por eso la iglesia estamos muy interesados en darle una buena orientación a la luz de la palabra de Dios a la familias, porque en general el país está violento. Todos estamos violentos , y por supuesto los jóvenes además de ser victimarios por los hechos de violencia que ellos cometen, en una forma muy honrada, transparente, honesta, también ellos son víctimas, no solo victimarios, porque han caído ellos en el fenómeno, en el sufrimiento, en el descuido que la sociedad ha hecho y que el sistema ha provocado para que caigan en la delincuencia y en la violencia. Hay una lógica que aquí mismo en los movimientos de lucha, revolucionarios gritan y dicen “solo el pueblo salva al pueblo”, es por eso que los medios de comunicación necesitan estar en manos del pueblo, con la influencia del pueblo. Necesitan liberarse de la posesión privada que solo les interesa el dinero, el comercio. Si estuviera en manos del Estado, del pueblo, de un Estado que dedique las comunicaciones para que el pueblo pueda educarse más, entonces podríamos aplicar esto “solo el pueblo salva al pueblo”. Es decir: los medios de comunicación siendo del pueblo pueden servir, pueden ayudar mucho más a todos en general, no solo a disminuir la delincuencia juvenil, sino a trabajar e influir para la paz.
7. Algunas personas hablan de los escuadrones de la muerte, el crimen organisado y gente de la élite, como instigadores y beneficiarios del crecimiento de la delinquencia juvenil. Cual es su opinión sobre esto?
Los escuadrones de la muerte y el crimen organizado aquí en el país tienen su historia, que han surgido como grupos de represión, criminal pero para aplicar a los líderes de la sociedad civil, a aquellos que claman por cambios a favor de la sociedad, a los mártires, sacerdotes jesuitas, arzobispo como Romero, y otros mártires tanto hombres como mujeres, han sido masacrados por los escuadrones de la muerte. Es similar al crimen organizado, que precisamente se organiza para que las personas que denuncian las injusticas, la maldad sean callados y no sigan provocando y llamando a cambios. Esos movimientos son ahogados por el crimen organizado. Ahora nada menos hay un grupo de exterminio que está ya matando a jóvenes, La Sombra Negra, ellos están siendo dirigidos por gente del poder, pero siguen siendo crímenes de escuadrones de la muerte, crimen organizado que quedan en la impunidad, porque seguramente gente del poder o gente de élite está detrás dirigiendo.
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Ellos son instigadores y por supuesto ellos han contribuido y han beneficiado a que todos los males y problemas de la situación social crezcan aquí en el país. Ellos tienen interés que se mantenga las cosas igual, y permanente, quieren que permanezca el estatus quo. Pero gracias a Dios debido a la realidad que nos está marcando en el país, estamos también entrando a una época de esperanza. Hay atención mejor para los pobres, y las iglesias como movimientos a favor de la vida y de la paz, estamos ahora con buenas oportunidades, porque creemos que el nuevo gobierno que ha llegado va poder apoyar, ayudar, fortalecer para las iniciativas de paz.
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Interview Radio Director; Carlos Ayala Ramírez
1. Como es su experiencia con los medios de comunicación
Actualmente soy director de Radio Universitaria YSUCA (radio de la Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” de El Salvador. Además, soy profesor universitario de las cátedras de Ética de la comunicación, Ética del derecho y Teología de la liberación. Soy graduado en licenciatura en filosofía y maestría en teología. Mi experiencia en medios de comunicación sobrepasa los 20 años, dirigiendo, produciendo e investigando sobre temáticas vinculadas a los medios de comunicación.
2. Como reportan los medios de comunicación de masas sobre los hechos relatados a la delincuencia juvenil?
En El Salvador, más que hablar de “delincuencia juvenil”, se habla de delincuencia pandilleril (la que ejercen las pandillas y maras) que suelen estar vinculadas al crimen organizado (narcotráfico, tráfico de personas y armas). En los últimos años ha predominado una violencia que, aunque no se reduce a estos grupos, tiene predominancia. También hay violencia de grupos directamente vinculados al crimen organizado y grupos de exterminio.
Los medios suelen caer en la tentación de atribuir toda violencia a las pandillas. Pero falta matizar e investigar otras formas de violencia con alta presencia en la sociedad salvadoreña. En las últimas semanas las cifras de homicidios han aumentado (un promedio de 10 homicidios diarios). En la región centroamericana somos considerados junto con Honduras y Guatemala, uno de los países más peligrosos del mundo. El crimen organizado está infiltrado en las pandillas y en las instituciones mismas del Estado (policía, jueces, y ejército). Hay un estudio reciente titulado “Infiltrados” que da cuenta de ese hecho. Puede adquirir el libro en UCA Editores.
Hay que decir también que no todos los medios informan de igual manera sobre estos hechos. Hay medios escritos electrónicos (El Faro, por ejemplo) que han hecho estudios más acuciosos sobre el tema. Sugiero consultar este medio. Aquí se tiende a ser más plural en cuanto a la consulta de fuentes. Se abren espacios para que los miembros de las maras expresen también sus puntos de vista en torno a la problemática de la violencia (sus causas y consecuencias).
En nuestra estación de radio (YSUCA) también tenemos espacios de expresión y participación ciudadana, orientados a buscar la raíz de los problemas, para superar las visiones estereotipadas o superficiales sobre temáticas que tienen orígenes históricos y estructurales.
3. En manos de quiénes estan los medios de comunicación?
Los llamados “grandes medios” (del gran capital) ciertamente están vinculados a la gran empresa. Ellos mismos pertenecen a esa gran empresa porque existe un monopolio de medios que incluye prensa escrita, televisión, radio, Internet. Es la misma dinámica que suele ocurrir en otros países. No obstante, también hay que decir que este hecho tiene sus matices. Es decir, no porque pertenezcan al gran capital son necesariamente totalmente ideológicos. En los últimos años hay una preocupación por tener medios más profesionales y éticos, lo que ha tenido como consecuencia un mejor tratamiento de las noticias.
Por otra parte, en nuestro país – sobre todo después de los acuerdos de paz de 1992 – han surgido medios de comunicación con mayor independencia ideológica y política, lo que ha posibilitado mayor
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pluralismo de ideas, mayor consciencia crítica y mayor acceso de la ciudadanía a los medios. En determinadas circunstancias el problema no es tanto en manos de quiénes están los medios, sino qué función cumplen, cuál es su incidencia.
4. De qué manera influyen los medios de comunicación la opinión pública?
Sobre esta pregunta he escrito varios artículos. Puedes consultar los siguientes artículos más o menos largos: “Responsabilidad ética en el ejercicio del derecho a la información” y “Diez conceptos básicos en torno a los medios de comunicación”. Ambos están en Internet. También puedes consultar “Perfil del comunicador”. Todos están en Internet en la Revista Realidad (Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de la Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA).
5. Cuáles consecuencias puede tener la opinión pública para el desarrollo del fenomeno de la delincuencia juvenil?
Antes de responder a esta pregunta, me gustaría que se precisara sobre el término “violencia juvenil”. En nuestro país no es tanto la violencia juvenil que podría entenderse como violencia ejercida por los jóvenes en general (estudiantes, por ejemplo), sino que es un tipo de violencia ejercida por jóvenes en pandillas, maras o crimen organizado. No es tanto una violencia social, sino más bien una violencia criminal. En todo caso, hay un libro que puede consultar sobre el tema que se titula “Maras y pandillas en Centroamérica”. Es de UCA Editores, 2004.
Con respecto a la pregunta, es claro que la opinión pública puede incidir en el fomento de conductas violentas o en su disminución. Y eso tiene que ver con los niveles de tolerancia o intolerancia que promuevan a través de sus espacios. Se puede satanizar este tipo de violencia o se puede matizar, proyectando la complejidad de la misma y sus raíces estructurales. Hay que saber que no se trata solo de un problema individual (aunque se manifieste en conductas individuales). Tampoco se trata solo de la influencia de los medios de comunicación. Este tipo de violencia está vinculado a problemas sociales tales como la marginación social, la pobreza, la disfunción de la familia, la falta de oportunidades, etc. Los medios de comunicación pueden contribuir a la búsqueda de buenos diagnósticos y eficaces soluciones. O pueden terminar proyectando hechos sin contexto, sin vincularlos al tipo de sociedad y estructuras vigentes. La seriedad profesional de los medios y su responsabilidad ética demandaría más esfuerzo de investigación en lo que comunican a sus audiencias o lectores.
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Interview former Project manager in Ministry of Security ; Santiago Flores
1. Como es su experiencia con la delincuencia juvenil? (es más que todo explicar su experiencia de su trabajo con la Iglesia y el Ministerio de Justicia)
Toda mi vivida he estado trabajando desde la fe y como profesional en diversa disciplinas cientificas por la justicia y la paz en mi pais, de manera particular con aquellas personas que por diferentes cuasas han sido marginadas o excluidas. Duarante el Gobierno del Presidente Funes el primero en la historia republicana del pais de casi 200 año por primera ves llega al Gobierno un partido de Izquierda en alianza con sectores progresistas y me invitaron a formar parte para trabajar la nueva institucionalidad en el MJSP para la prevención de la violencia y la cultura de paz. Por primera ves el MJSP, cuenta con políticas públicas y una serie de estrategias para la prevención, así como la institucionalidad aunque todavia insipiente pero con un rumbo que perimte realizar el trabajo en alianza con todos los sectores estatales y privados en todo el país. Ha sido una lista que en los últimos meses no se haya dado seguimiento y se ha querido volver a los esquemas de Mano dura para soventar los niveles de violencia que viven las comunidades en barrios pobres del país.
2. Como cree usted que la historia del país influye la situación de hoy en dia, relacionada al tema de la delincuencia juvenil?
La historia reciente del país se divide antes y despues de los acuerdos de paz y sin lugar a duda influye por que no fuiemos capaces de realizar procesos de reinsercion de a quellos jovenes y sus familias que estuvieron en los frente de guerra de un lado y del otro y no se nos permitio como pais construir nuestro propio proceso sino que se impuso un sistema economico neo liberal excluyente que lo que hizo fue generar mas pobreza y concentrar la riqueza en pocas manos y expulsar por razones economicas a muchos salvadoreños a otros paises fundamentalmente a los EE,UU. Produciendose una mayor migracion y una desintegracion de la familia queando los niños y niñas sin sus padres lo que sin lugar aduda a influido en los niveles de violencia y resentimiento de muchos jovenes.
3. Muchas veces se hablan de desigualdaded. Cree usted que las desigualdades son las principales causas para la delincuencia juvenil?
La violencia que vivimos es multi-causal son varios factores que intervienen pero sin duda la exclusion y la desigualdad es una de las mas fuertes
4. Existe un conflicto social? (La pregunta parece obvio tal vez, pero mi pregunta es si existe un conflicto social, podemos decir que eso es la causa principal de la delinquencia juvenil?)
Lo que tenemos es una injusta redistribucion de la riqueza que sin duda genera un conflicto social, la mayoria de los jovenes no tienen futuro en el pais y no solo lo que estan en pandillas tambien joveesn que se esfuerzan por asistir a la universidad.
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5. Se puede decir que la delincuencia juvenil es un problema urbano?
Mayoritariamente pero hay zonas rurales que tieneN violencia y tiene que ver con el origen por un lado de los jovenes deportados y por el otro hay zonas rurales que no tienen desarrollo economico y cultural.
Desde aquí empiezan las preguntas más importantes para mi:
6. Como reportan los medios de comunicación sobre los delitos cometidos por jovenes?
Los medios de comunicacion son un poder real y tienen su propia agenda han congtribuido a elevar la percpcion de miedo en la poblacion y ha estigmantizar a los jovenes por el solo hecho del lugar de residencia.
6a. Se puede hablar de representación selectivo y el uso de estereotipos?
Por su puesto se vivio durante el conflicto y ahora en el post- conflictos los jovenes de sectores populares siempre han tenido que vivir con estereotipos.
6b. A quienes se escuchan? Quienes tienen el poder en los medios de comunicación (de corriente)?
Los medios de comunicacion siempre han estado en manos de las elites economicas y politicas su influencia es gende en la clase politica, quitan a Ministros y se abandonana procesos que tienen exitos por que generan opinion adversa.
7. Como influye todo esto a la opinión pública?
Manipulan la realidad objetiva y terminan decidiendo por la gente y los politicos se aprovechan cuando asumen el mismo discurso, hace falta formacion politica y ciudadania en el pueblo.
8. Que consequencias puede tener la opinión pública en el desarrollo del 'problema' de la delinquencia juvenil?
Hasta hora es negativo se apalega al endurecimiento de las leyes, politicas mas represivas, sentimientos nacionalistas, religioso conservador, hay intereses que viven de la violencia y las muertes de los Salvadoreños y de los jovenes en particular.
9* Algunas personas hablan de los escuadrones de la muerte, el crimen organisado y gente de la élite, como instigadores y beneficiarios del crecimiento de la delinquencia juvenil. Cual es su opinión sobre esto?
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Hay mucos intereses en juego por ejemplo : los que venden armas, drogas, seguridad privada, la venta de comida en las carceles, la inestabilidad politica, en fin hay intereses de grupos locales pero tambien internacionales delmercado que vende y el que consueme dorgas mientras nosotros en la region de Centroamerica ponemos los muertos.
10. Como siente usted que los medios han representado los iniciativas que promueven la Cultura de Paz? Se puede notar diferencia entre diferentes medios en la cobertura de este tema?
En general este tema no es parte de la agenda de los principales medios que tienen mayor cobertura, poco a poco las radios comunitarias han hecho algo y es en este año que un canal de telvision habla de la necesidad del tema de la reconciliacion y tiene una campaña. Lo bueno es que la agenda del tema de prevencion ahora es mas digerible por lo s medios y la poblacion, me alegra por que pusimos el tema en la agenda nacional pero las acciones estan lejos todavia pero asi es esto se avnza lento pero tenemos que seguir impulsando de donde tengamos la oportunidad.
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Discourse Analysis (Schemes)
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