Central America's powderkeg

Youths make up half the population of Central America, youths who are both the main victims and perpetrators of violence in the region. They are, as a group, excluded and rejected from social, economic and cultural spheres. Seen as a threat by the rest of society, youths are targeted by heavy suppressive crime fighting policies that feed the self-perpetuating cycle of violence and exclusion.

That is one of conclusions drawn and presented in the special report "The face of urban violence in Central America. Guns, violence and youth" issued on August 15th, 2006, and based on research carried out since 2001 with local specialists by the Arias Foundation.

"Central America is an explosive society, it is a post-conflict area with a considerable stockpile and easy to access weaponry; there are close to three million illegal firearms in circulation, 700 thousand registered weapons,” said Ana Yancy Espinoza who coordinated the study for the Arias Foundation, expressing her alarm, adding: “and this is a region where violence is tolerated."

Repression has been the rule in Central America

According to the study, the victims of violence in Central America - and worldwide - are youths aged 13 to 29, who come from economically depressed regions, and pockets of urban poverty. They tend to belong to ethnic or racial minorities, live in densely populated areas marked by unemployment, high birth rates and little access to schooling.

"Many of these youths, both victims and assailants, have been victimized themselves. They have been abused, suffered domestic violence; they have been abandoned, or had little access to education and culture, and are incapable of entering the job market in conditions of equality or security. These characteristics, and the fact they come from environments marked by exclusion impinges on them a negative identity with respect to the society as a whole," said Ana Espinoza.

Taking these factors into account the study approached violence as a phenomenon embedded in the societal structure of multiple causes, the outcome of complex interrelated and reciprocating individual, relational, social, cultural and environmental factors. It is not a phenomenon that will respond to merely repressive crime fighting policies, which have been the rule in Central America, but instead, demands holistic strategies.

An examination of patterns of organization among youths

The study analyzed the "critical route of violence" starting with the family, the education system and the media, studying various types of behavior: physical assault, psychological or emotional abuse, sexual and patrimonial violence (the latter being the deprivation of material goods). All factors expressed in different environments such as the home, school, community and environmental structure.

"However, one of the main contributions of the study has been to contest the simplistic and popular notion of the identity between youth and crime, between youths in groups and gangs, student violence and delinquency, pandillas and maras and to draw precise distinctions of the forms of youth violence,” said Ana Espinoza.

The study analyzed the different social processes that originated politically active student groups in the 1960's, neighborhood gangs in the 1980's, and the "maras" in the last decade. It also distinguishes between student violence -limited to educational centers, the "barra" - limited to neighborhood boundaries, gangs and the "maras" or specialized gangs, and the armed or criminal gangs.

The document also describes the maras, a phenomenon specific to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, with ramifications in the United States and Mexico that resulted from an adaptation of Central American gangs to the streets gang culture of Los Angeles (California), Chicago and New York.

"The phenomenon, although overblown, because it is no more than a part of the visible face of urban violence, explodes out of control when the United States applies a policy of crime prevention and deports the "mareros" (mara gang members) back to their countries of origin," said Ana Espinoza.

The deportation policy had disastrous results, according to the researcher: "Central America is incapable of controlling the new and radical forms of growing violence fueled by the drug trade, arms smuggling, hired killers and organized crime," Ana Espinoza adds.

Antimaras laws fueling violence

The study also questions the adoption of exclusively supressive policies to combat juvenile delinquency such as the so-called 'anti-maras' laws, or the mano dura plans, both from the point of view of human rights, and of their alleged efficiency.

"It has resulted in increased homicides, the collapse of the corrections system, and routine killings among rival gangs inside prisons" said Ana Espinoza.

In its conclusion, the report puts into question the state’s position on juvenile violence, on the one hand as a nefarious form of social control, in which excluded groups are abandoned to their own violent fates as a perverse 'natural selection', and on the other hand to use juvenile violence as a scapegoat for structural security problems of difficult resolution.

Read Further:

The study is available for download at the Arias Foundation website http://www.arias.or.cr (English and Spanish)

Translated by Lis Horta Moriconi