Gang members treated as scapegoats

INTERVIEW / Isabel Aguilar

Violence prevention programs for youths may perhaps be more costly, and take longer, but they will also bring lasting results. Youth violence prevention programs designed to be comprehensive social initiatives require more dedicated effort on the part of society, but, when the issue is central American gangs, known locally as the maras or pandillas,  these initiatives have also proven much more effective than repressive “mano dura” policies.

Apart from being more efficient, social policies that stress violence prevention also mean more justice. Isabel Aguiar, regional coordinator of the program Políticas Públicas para Prevenir la Violencia Juvenil en Centroamérica, Poljuve believes that it is “inadmissible that we fail to be aware of the fact that if one our children fails, it’s because we adults have failed them first. Mano Dura policies that turn on the weakest among us are irresponsible,” said Aguilar.

In Aguilar’s view by stigmatizing youth, society evades its responsibility. “We are saying youths are responsible for the brunt of the violence, but this stops us from looking at other social actors, who are less vulnerable and more dangerous. Who, after all, will pay for the crimes being committed today? asks the specialist.

Poljuve, a program that belongs to the organization Interpeace, present in Central America to solve what it considers the greatest obstacle to lowering the levels of violence among youths: the fact there are no violence prevention policies that directly address the problem of maras and pandillas. Interpeace is an NGO that works in peace building in societies with internal conflicts, it is associated to the United Nations.

“It is not enough to help only those youths at risk, or those leaving the corrections system, to help them get Jobs. We also need to make sure they have psychological support, help with carrying on their studies, with being accepted into their communities among other things,” said Aguilar.

Work, education, culture, recreation, sports: youth programs that are truly efficient in violence prevention must include these activities in a comprehensive and sustainable manner, said Isabel Aguilar: “From the point of view of the procedures, work with youths must be based on participative methodologies, and they must be the real protagonists of change, take decisions over what they want to do or be.”

Isabel Aguilar gave Comunidad Segura an exclusive interview from Guatemala, discussing maras and pandillas, social responsibility and solutions for youth violence in Central America.

Are the maras and pandillas in Central America still growing?

It is not very clear if these groups have been growing over the past two years. The fact that violent deaths have increased is not in itself an indication that there are more gangs. It is hard to determine if the maras and pandillas have more members, the estimates have never been very clear.

What data is there currently?

It is our estimate that, for all Central America,  in countries with a strong presence of the maras, there are close to 30 thousand youths involved with maras and 50 thousand youths at risk, the so called “simpatizantes”, who may not belong to a group directly, but it is quite likely they will eventually join them.

USAID estimates that, among them the Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) and Mara 18 (M-18) have 14 thousand members just in Guatemala.  Another study released in 2004 by the Reflection and Investigation team ERIC, estimated that there are between 50 and 100 thousand gang members, pandilleros, in Central America.

What of official data from the government of Guatemala?

According to the National Youth Council (Conjuve) between 4 and 7% of Guatemalan youths belong to the so-called youth pandillas, which would correspond to 150 to 250 thousand youths. Regional administrations have stated that, of the total deportees from the US in the year of 2004, 114 thousand people were gang members.

Guatemalan authorities have recently stressed that there are no more than 14 to 15 thousand members. In Honduras, estimates note a growth in the number of gang members, especially because of the stigma placed on young gang members, that has led to harsh social cleansing actions.

It is important to stress that we are looking at a peak in youth groups associated to aggressive behavior, that is, aside from the MS-13 and the M-18. It’s the case, for example, of the BKS in Guatemala, or the barras bravas (much like soccer fan clubs) in Honduras.

The media frequently relate the rise in violence in cities such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, to the growth of the pandillas. Do you agree?

We strongly disagree with this statement. Take just one piece of information: a recently released statement by the Public Opinion University Institute of El Salvador (Instituto Universitario de Opinion Publica) reported that according to official data by the nation’s National Civil Police, of every 100 thousand homicides committed between August and December 2009, only 11 could be attributed to the pandillas.

With a national impunity rate of 98%, what are we telling ourselves? That the youths are going to bear the brunt of levels of violence that should be credited to other social actors that are much less vulnerable and much more powerful?  What is the most convienent stance for society? To continue to stigmatize its youths, after all someone has to pay for the crimes being committed today? We must ask ourselves, in any case, who benefits from the way the media portrays these youths, as invariably guilty for most of the violence that is committed.

How to undo the effects of the stigmatization of Central American youths?

To fight stigmatization means to design strategies that are comprehensive and humanizing. It requires a fresh perspective, a challenge to the conventional mind set that are used to privilege a culture, way of life, that is centered on adults, and to take a step forward toward creating areas where different generations can talk to each other, and interact, collaborate in collective construction. Areas for dialogue, where people can meet and reach various forms of understandings among diverse groups.

What role should the media take in such a proposition?

The media needs to be better informed of the role that they have in creating heroic figures for youths, these figures rest on an imaginary steeped in the culture of violence, end up turning into anti-heroes. This feeds their egos, their delusions of grandeur, and contributes to reproducing the perverse cycle of violence that causes so much damage nowadays.

The communications media need to have greater conscience of the need to publish information that is more accurate about the youth crime. We can not treat news in a way that seems like youths are behind every violent death and other crimes being committed in these countries.

What kinds of public policies do Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have for pandillas and maras?
 
The greatest problem today is that there are no public policies that target the maras and pandillas from the point of view of violence prevention. What we have are punitive actions, repressive actions that have no holistic view of the problem. These policies try to attack the consequences, without trying to get at the causes that are multiple, complex and profoundly rooted in the social history of our nations.

Repressive actions are misguided, simply out of touch with reality and they do not recognize their own failure, nor do they take into account the empirical data or the statistics that clearly indicate that they do not combat violence. All they do is generate more violence because they force the maras and pandillas to go into hiding temporarily, without changing the situation.

What does conflict transformation mean?

Conflict transformation means treating the relationships between groups and individuals in confrontation as top priority. The approach involves not only  the conflicts themselves, but also their consequences, the relations between those subject to the conflicts. It takes more time, requires building trust. On the other hand, conflict transformation allows for building more harmonic relationships in the future, that minimize the damaging effects of future conflicts, or having the parties address them in a more constructive manner. Relationships, once transformed, generate human resources that are more inclined toward peace.

So is your work about settling disputes, resolving conflicts?

We are not looking to resolving conflicts, but to transform them. We open up possibilities of dialogue among the actors involved with maras and pandillas and the generation of violence, with the goal of strengthening these relations so that together, the various actors can create public policy proposals based on violence prevention and youth. We hope that these relationships, once improved, established or reestablished, will be more inclined to resolve conflicts in the future.

What is Interpeace’s work currently?

We are on the verge of presenting our first public policy proposals for youth violence prevention in Guatemala and El Salvador. In Honduras, the 2009 coup stopped us from opening up the necessary dialogue that would have created proposals that were socially legitimate with respect to the different social groups.

We have attained highly satisfactory results because we understood the issues better, which is extremely dynamic. In one way or another, we are contributing to generate the conditions needed to make Central America aware of violence prevention.

What is participative research?

We generate dialogue that in turn produces information for our research and vice-versa. So that all those who take part in the dialogue are bring topics for our agenda, and in turn, use data so that their decisions are based on technical information, apart from being viable and politically legitimate.

How does this dialogue take place?

We open up places for people to meet, and we try to make sure they are open to all, that they represent the various groups present and that encourage active participation. We invited various actors involved in youth violence and their voice is a fundamental part of the search for consensus. Dialogue is public and impartial. Interpeace works merely as a catalyst and as a facilitator.

How does one foster social networks?

It happens pretty naturally in our work. We interact with other strategies that also have as a goal the construction of these networks; to become an intermediate, to socialize the proposals, to do advocacy. We support some youth groups that want to organize themselves, so as to generate social capital supportive of these youths. The second phase of the project is precisely to strengthen the networks and their potential.

With your previous experience in mind, what kind of work is really effective in violence prevention?
Efficient programs are generally ample and social in nature. They are associated to concepts such as comprehensive development and human security. In the short term, it is vital and urgent that plans of actions are adopted. It is important to adopt plans that focus on violence prevention that are comprehensive and that envision an entire process, don’t confine themselves to the goals of a single project.

It is no use, for example, to help a youth at risk or a former detainee to get a job. Individuals need psychological support, help continuing their studies, to be accepted into their communities. If you look at the wider process you start looking for real and sustainable changes.

There are fundamental topics in violence prevention: work, education, art, culture, recreation and sports. To work with youths efficiently, you must take up these topics in an integral manner. They must be based on participative methodologies that allow youths to become the protagonists of change, and more importantly, to decide for themselves what they want to do and to be.

Cover photo: Marco Nicoletti

Photos: Sandra Sebastián

Translation by Lis Horta Moriconi