Nearly 10,000 soldiers and police surrounded the populous municipality of Soyapango, on the outskirts of San Salvador, early Saturday morning. in the framework of the war against gangs launched in March by the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele. “From now on, the municipality of Soyapango is totally fenced off. 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 agents have surrounded the city ”of 242,000 inhabitants, located on the eastern outskirts of the Salvadoran capital, Bukele announced on his Twitter account.
The president had announced on November 23 that he would surround cities so that the military could search house to house and arrest gang members. Soyapango is the first city in which this measure is applied.
The soldiers and police posted themselves in the early hours of the morning in all the access streets to the municipality, without allowing anyone to enter or leave the place without first being searched. The uniformed officers will be in charge of “removing one by one all the gang members who are still there,” Bukele said.
The war against the “maras”, which Bukele launched on March 27 under a state of emergency, has led to the arrest of more than 58,000 suspected gang members, but has been questioned by humanitarian organizations. Soyapango has been considered an unsafe municipality for years due to gang activity. A few months ago, the authorities began removing graffiti alluding to gangs.
The actions implemented by the Bukele government in Soyapango, by virtue of the state of emergency, have led to “a huge improvement in their security,” its mayor, Nercy Montano, acknowledged earlier this week. The state of emergency, which allows arrests without a warrant, was declared by the president in response to an escalation of violence that claimed the lives of 87 people from March 25-27.
Questioned by humanitarian organizations, the emergency regime was extended by Congress until mid-December. Colonias throughout Soyapango were heavily attended by soldiers and policemen, who, walking slowly and with their assault rifles in hand, were looking for gang members, observed an AFP journalist.
Army artillery cars and police patrols cruised slowly through the streets of the city. The Police also used drones to try to locate gang members from the air.
“It has been a surprise (the operation), they are registering you and they ask us for your identity document to verify where we live, but it’s okay, everything is for our safety,” Guadalupe Pérez, 53, told AFP. who lives in one of the neighborhoods of the municipality. Meanwhile, policemen were boarding public transport buses to search the passengers.
“Ordinary citizens have nothing to fear and can continue to lead their lives as normal. This is an operation against criminals, not against honest citizens,” remarked President Bukele.
The assembly of security fences in cities for the “extraction of gang members” is part, Bukele recently said, of the so-called Territorial Control government security plan that is now “reinforced” with the exception regime.
“The measures that are being taken are giving noticeable results and the population has noticed it, so it is not surprising that the people who have been affected by the gangs, which is the vast majority, agree with what is being done.” said criminologist Ricardo Sosa. A survey by the Central American University (UCA) published in October showed that 75.9% of Salvadorans approve of the emergency regime, and nine out of 10 Salvadorans say that crime “has decreased” with Bukele’s policy.
Before March and before the emergency regime began, there were 16,000 incarcerated gang members in El Salvador’s prisons. Most of those detained are members of the gangs MS-13 and its rival Barrio 18 in its southern and revolutionary factions. Born in the United States, on the streets of Los Angeles, the gangs, as Bukele recently said, still have weapons and “finance themselves from the sale of drugs.”
*With information from AFP.