For each week, you will have a choice of which forums to participate in.（Answer one of three questions below. Do not answer all the question） 1 What makes a "prison gang" different from a street gang

Truce “Although government has changed hands, security methods have not altered: Mass detentions and incarceration, as well as militarization of policing, have become standard procedure whether under the rule of right -wing elites or former guerillas. U.S. authorities have recently offered support to this approach, pledg ing to “dismantle ” the MS -13. In private, however, highlevel officials from across the country ’s political divide lament the harmful effects of this crackdown on overstretched courts and front -line police …as violence soared after 2014 following the disinte gration of a truce with the gangs, extreme measures of jail confinement and police raids have once again become the government ’s predominant methods to choke the gangs. Allegations of police brutality and extrajudicial executions have multiplied. ” —Interna tional Crisis Group, December 2017 Carlos knew the names of the men who were coming to kill him. He even knew the name of the gang leader who had given the order. The only thing the informant couldn ’t tell him was when they would come. His colleagues in th e police and army had been getting ambushed around the country or kidnapped while off duty and “disappeared. ” The attacks would come at night when surveillance was limited and false reports could be called 8399_State of War_1P.indd 62 9/17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS in to stretch their forces thin. So Carlos and his comrades had 63 been waiting for them through the long summer nights, behind sandbag fortifications they built as a frontline defense. So much had changed since the truce. Carlos had been tipped off to some of the changes that would come when he was still a rookie. In 2011, assigned to a hospital to guard sick prisoners, he had str uck up a relationship with a MS palabrero , who told him that plans were underway for a gang truce. The gang was going to acquire new weapons and consolidate power, start generating new sources of income and become a political force. At the time, although t he police and gangs might kill each other in a shootout, something like a mutual respect still held. But things were about to get ugly. The palabrero warned Carlos it was time for a career change. The next year, the online newspaper El Faro broke the story that the leadership of both Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 had been transferred to the same minimum -security prison. A gang truce was in the works. Seemingly over one weekend, the gang leaders had brokered a ceasefire that was respected nationwide across the ranks. Over the next month, rival gang members were giving press conferences and issuing joint manifestos together. They had spokesmen and a fancy political discourse, portraying themselves as the people ’s true representatives, the new guerillas. Almos t immediately, the national murder rate was cut in half. But Carlos wasn ’t fooled. Sure, the official murder rate had fallen. But the bodies were just finding their ways into clandestine graves. As a show of good faith, the gangs gave up a trove of weapons. But they looked like antiques from the second world war. By then, he had become an intelligence officer and could see 8399_State of War_1P.indd 63 9/17/19 10:58 AM Chapter Three – Truce 64 STATE OF WAR from his newfound vantage that the gangs had begun to acquire advanced weapons. He could also see evidence they were infiltrating the army and police. One soldier had even confided to him that he was a member of Barrio 18. He talked openly about conducting a robbery in uniform while he was supposed t o be on guard, and taking three days ’ leave, armed with his service weapon, to attend a gang party. The other soldiers in the unit confided to him as well. They warned him their comrade was throwing gang signs, threatening to kill them. Carlos quietly repo rted this up the chain of command and the soldier was removed from his post. The truce was not without its defenders, especially in the international press. But it did not enjoy widespread popularity among Salvadorans, especially amid reports that gang lea ders had been given access to prostitutes and drugs as prison perks. The U.S. vehemently opposed it. And soon others began to see the danger in a negotiation that allowed the gangs to simply kill more people for leverage. As the government began backing aw ay from it, in 2014, the murder rate began to climb once again. In June of that year, Salvador Sanchez Cerén became the first former guerilla to be elected president. He immediately cut off all support for the truce and by year ’s end had packed the gang leadership back off to maximum -security prisons. One of the most violent periods the country had known since the civil war followed. The gangs struck like they were mad as hell and twice as lethal. They were organized now, using military tactics, armed wit h better weapons than the police, including grenades. Carlos had the sense the gangs had asked for some concession that was denied them and, feeling powerful, unleashed their might 8399_State of War_1P.indd 64 9/17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOB AL REPORTS against the state. Things got ugly quickly. His friends were van - 65 ishing one by one. He left for work every day unsure that he would return. When the attack came, it was more brazen than he expected. On June 22, Carlos and his unit were relax ing after a routine daytime patrol, when two vehicles in the flow of traffic running past their checkpoint drifted to a stop. Suddenly, their occupants popped out and unleashed a storm of automatic gunfire, orange streams blazing from the barrels of their AK -47s and American -made M -16 assault rifles. The first shot cracked past just above Carlos ’ head. He saw fear in the eyes of his sergeant, a hardened veteran, as he yelled, “to the ground! ” Carlos dove for cover. Time slowed as his mind raced. Had one of his friends out front already been killed? Were they really being shot at? Or had they only panicked at the sound of a passing truck? He could see clouds of gun smoke hanging in the air, like in a movie, and he smelled cordite. The bullet -riddled sandbags above him were leaking. He knew that they were outgunned, with only one rifle between them. If his enemies pressed their advantage and stormed the outpost he and his men would be killed. Instead, the gang members fled. Carlos and his colleagues eventually gathered themselves and tried to give chase. But their truck was hobbled by a flat tire. Daniel slid his cell phone across the table to show me a photo: a manila envelope with two stacks of cash, totaling $10,000 and $2 5,000. We were seated on the patio of a swanky athletic club in the capital, beside a swimming pool ringed by tropical plants. The intermediary who put us together had warned me that, as a state intelligence agent, Daniel developed more lavish 8399_State o f War_1P.indd 65 9/17/19 10:58 AM Chapter Three – Truce 66 STATE OF WAR tastes than he had when he was a guerilla. ( “It’s a fancy place, ” he said. “He ’s that kind of guy. ”) The stack of cash in the photo didn ’t belong to Daniel, though. It was money from t he Ministry of Defense that Daniel said he was ordered to deliver to two MS gang members —a payment that totaled more than half the president ’s annual salary. Clandestine payments to the gangs ultimately totaled millions of dollars, part of a secret package of concessions to support a truce that would ultimately backfire, transforming the gangs into a military -grade insurgent force and “political extortionists ” on the national stage. “The day I quit, ” Daniel told me, “was when they asked me to deliver this. ” Daniel had fought in the 1980s civil war. When the new civilian police force was established at war ’s end in 1993, he considered it a hopeful sign the country was ready to put its divisions behind it. So he stepped forward to serve. But, like Ticas, he soon confronted the PNC ’s shortcomings, seeing the force as too hastily constructed and serving the whims of politicians. Police had ignored the gangs at their inception, when deporte es began taking over public parks in his neighborhood in 1990. Around this time, Daniel became friendly with two of those who would eventually ascend to Mara Salvatrucha ’s national leadership. But he regarded their rapid rise and the official neglect with alarm; especially when authorities, late to the threat, returned to the old tactics of repression and abuse. This included a tolerance of death squads (like La Sombra Negra), which came creeping back from the corners of recent history, their “social cleans ing ” campaigns targeting gang members now instead of guerillas. Daniel and some colleagues proposed their own gang prevention strategy, with an emphasis on healthcare and education for at -risk youth, which they tried to pitch 8399_State of War_1P.indd 66 9 /17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS to local municipalities. But his superiors weren ’t interested in 67 prevention, he said, only “beatings and bullets. ” Among a generation raised in working class neighborhoods where these repressive ag ents became the only familiar face of the state, a new antipathy was born. The gangs expanded quickest in areas where the state was weakest, and by 2000, with the help of dirty municipal -level politicians in both parties, had already made inroads into the lowest branches of the army, police, and local NGOs. Their influence grew after 2005, when an MS leader named El Camaron began advocating large -scale extortion as a Mano Dura war chest to support the families of the swelling ranks of imprisoned members and fund the purchase of heavier weapons. As the gangs began to administer fiefdoms from within their cages, the government inserted its own state intell igence agents, like Daniel, to monitor them, which is how he became privy to the inner workings of the truce. Daniel couldn ’t tell me all that he knows, nor how he knows what he could tell me. But what he would tell me, he said, he knows from experience so firsthand that, after resigning his post, it pushed him into hiding for a time, armed with a Glock and a shotgun, in a redoubt he described only as “a very tropical environment. ” According to Daniel, the first meetings began in July 2011, in the office of the truce ’s mastermind, Defense Minister David Munguia Payes. Payes had come up with the idea during the 2009 presidential campaign when he was part of the security detail protecting FMLN candidate Maurico Funes. Already the defense minister had his own a mbitions to run for president in 2014 and saw a deal with the gangs that would reduce the country ’s record -breaking murder rate as the kind of success that could pave his way to office. Daniel listed the names of those 8399_State of War_1P.indd 67 9/17/19 10:58 AM Chapter Three – Truce 68 STATE OF WAR present, which included, among others, Payes ’s right -hand man, military intelligence chief Colonel Simon Alberto Molina Montoya, and Raul Mijango, a former guerilla who would serve as an intermediary with the gangs. Only after the initial plans were in place did Payes alert President Funes to what was happening, securing a green light to proceed. Over the next few months they put the pieces into play. From the outside, the preparatio ns looked like bureaucratic infighting. (Payes was appointed the Minister of Security, which would give him control over prisons and the police to control negotiations with the gangs, but this was ruled unconstitutional because the peace accords establishe d a firewall between the military and police; instead Payes shuffled personnel to put his people into place overseeing the various branches of the security forces, including the new Minister of Public Security, Benito Lara.) They reached out to a military chaplain to help broker the truce and to the prison director to facilitate the transfer of both gangs ’ leaders into the same minimum -security wing, where meetings could be arranged. To give the negotiations an air of moral legitimacy, they recruited a few evangelical pastors. Daniel took out a square blue sheet of notepaper from his wallet and unfolded it on the table. It contained the names of active gang members on the outside that he was tasked with tracking down to ensure that the terms the gang leaders in prison agreed to would be implemented on the street. Still, organization was not the gangs ’ strong suit. So Payes directed Mijango to help them restructure so that orders from the top could be relayed throughout an integrated chain of command. Daniel b orrowed my notebook to sketch out how this worked. 8399_State of War_1P.indd 68 9/17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS The leadership structure he drew resembles a pyramid with 69 three levels above its base: first came the de -facto national leaders in prison, the ranfla , who by force of cunning and charisma had established themselves atop the food chain; reporting to them were leaders of the programa , each of whom oversaw the shot -callers at the level of the clica . For the first time, the territory of the entire country would be divided into zones of control, which would be apportioned in accordance with this hierarchy that connected the foot soldiers to the generals. If before the gangs were like a disorganized crime family of distant cousins, now they resembled something like an army. Giving taxpayers ’ money to murderous gangsters was a bridge too far for Daniel. But the money wasn ’t coming from public coffers alone: Salvadoran nar co-traffickers were contributing money to pay the gangs. Like the Salvadoran government, the narco ’s also have an interest in minimizing the body count in the countries where they operate, at times, if only because exceedingly high levels of violence draw the Americans ’ attention and make it harder to do business. A truce would allow them to secure a deal with all warring parties to move their U.S. -bound drugs across El Salvador without interference. Just as importantly, the rollout of a massive stimulus — in the form of long -awaited jobs and development programs in impoverished barrios that the gangs would demand for their soldiers and supporters -- would provide a prime opportunity for money -laundering. To this end, the narco ’s even contributed money —estima ted in the millions of dollars -- to help fund the truce. A Salvadoran army officer was dispatched to a meeting with representatives of the Perones cartel to hash out the details. To maintain some semblance of control, under the 8399_State of War_1P.indd 69 9/17/19 10:58 AM Chapter Three – Truce 70 STATE OF WAR agreement he secured, the gangs would be paid for guarding drug shipments in cash only, not product. (Paying t he gangs in drugs, experience had shown, would only mean a trail of new addicts and, ultimately, more bodies in their owns streets.) Over the course of negotiations, the gangs developed their own agenda. What they demanded of the government was, in part, a n alternative that would allow them to come in from the cold: loans to set up legitimate businesses and send some of their members to college. Once again, they wanted social programs and jobs in public works. But now the gangs had learned the value of infi ltration. Daniel thumbed through his cell phone photos until he landed on one of a young man with a square jaw and short -cropped hair squinting at the camera —the military service record of one of thirty -seven gang members inserted into elite branches of th e army and police to receive training and intelligence in order to protect the gang. As result of the negotiations, the gangs would also be tipped off to impending law enforcement raids and granted control of the “blind spots ” along the border with Guatema la. Finally, military intelligence facilitated the transfer of previously confiscated weapons to them and, through a Sinaloa intermediary, more advanced arms: Daniel scrolled to a photo of automatic assault rifles, plastic explosives, and detonators. Rather than a remedy for the structural rot at the heart of the society that had produced the gangs, the truce was a deeply cynical strategy that aimed to serve the interests of these three groups. The FMLN, having accomplished virtually nothing in power, would get a big political win in the face of public anger over epidemic levels of violence. The cartel would get a new 8399_State of War_1P.indd 70 9/17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS money -laundering haven and safe passage for its drugs —from 71 MS -13, Barrio 18, and the government —along a countrywide stretch of the smuggling corridor to the U.S. And the gangs would get money, weapons, and infilt ration into the security forces charged with their eradication. When Cerén took office in 2014 and restarted a war with the gangs, the homicide rate reached an astonishing 104 per 100,000 people —in the capital San Salvador, it was double that —the country o nce again was the world ’s most murderous place. In March 2016, Cerén struck back again with the fist, announcing a campaign of “extraordinary measures. ” As El Faro reported, between January and August of that year, for every cop killed in shootouts the pol ice killed fifty -three suspected gang members. That has backfired, said Daniel. The abuse of gang members alienated those who might have been redeemed by an actual reintegration program, and united all in a new antagonism against the state. In a country of unresolved class tensions that ’s seen staggering numbers of its people murdered, the fist is deceptively popular, but only perpetuates the conflict. Police lack the capacity to investigate gang violence, and rely instead on a snitch -system that fans paranoia. Civilians get caught in the middle and pay with their lives. The problem has become structural. The government has never had a coherent, long -term strategy for dealing with the gangs, and has done nothing to change th e culture that produces them. Even as they gangs grow stronger. The truce was a crash -course in politics. Ever since, any politician who wants to campaign in gang -controlled areas has had to negotiate with the gangs on their terms. Today the gangs 8399_Sta te of War_1P.indd 71 9/17/19 10:58 AM Chapter Three – Truce 72 STATE OF WAR have relationships with politicians from both parties, said Daniel, and have financed campaigns in 42 of the country ’s 262 municipalities, including all of those along the border. In the last few years, Washington has stepped up its engagement with El Salvador, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the gangs. But the Americans don ’t seem interested in watching where that money goes or probing the ties between its allies and the drug -trafficking organizations that have proliferated in the wake of the region ’s wars. Daniel warned a CIA colleague that one of his superiors, a member of a specialist group comprising CIA, FBI, DEA agents and their Salvadoran counterparts who meet regularly to coordinate the interdiction of drug -smuggling boats, is also the link between the Salvadoran government and the narcos, and is feeding them misinformation to ensure that only the rivals to Payes ’s car tel -affiliates are stopped. But such warnings always seem to fall on deaf ears. Would -be allies among the Salvadoran ranks are now looking to China for more effective leadership in the region. The narcos have been empowered by the sense that the Trump admi nistration couldn ’t care less about drug -trafficking or corruption, which have become endemic. After he quit his job as a state intelligence agent, Daniel took a gig as a chief of staff for a mayoral candidate. One day the candidate received a new BMW as a gift. Daniel showed me one last photo on his cell phone: $1 million in plastic -wrapped U.S. currency that had been stashed inside it. After all the gang leaders were transferred to Ciudad Barrios, a group of businessmen began coming to the prison to meet with them in secret, accompanied by the military archbishop. 8399_State of War_1P.indd 72 9/17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS Only the gang ’s top rankings were privy to the negotiations: El 73 Colocho, El Pava, El Diablito of Hollywood , El Crook, El Rata, and Snyder. “These were the masterminds, ” said Fausto. “They determined what information we received and what they wanted to withhold. ” Fausto picked up my notebook to draw an outline of their structure, just like the one Daniel had dr awn: the national leadership of the ranfla at top, then leaders of the programa , followed by leaders of the clica . Fausto was the leader of a clica , responsible for seven neighborhoods. But he was close with Snyder, the ranflero , who told him things above his pay grade. On the surface, the transaction was morally defensible: The businessmen were helping set the gangs up in legitimate businesses as an alternative t o extortion. “They thought that the ends would justify the means, ” said Fausto. “But among them were always dark thoughts about how to engage in money laundering. ” In the process, the businessmen taught the gangsters to disguise their revenue streams. And the gangsters played along, pretending to be going legit. Fausto helped Snyder prepare one of the investment plans, which they had agreed would be used to launder money from drugs and extortion. But even Snyder was tight -lipped about the identities of the businessmen and some of their FMLN allies, telling him, “if you knew about all the corrupt people in the government who are involved in all this, you would be surprised. ” Fausto had traveled a long, violent road to end up in the prison where we met. In 200 5, only one year after he joined MS -13, he landed a thirty -year prison sentence for aggravated homicide. Following a series of nearly successful escape attempts —one of which involved tunneling out beneath the 8399_State of War_1P.indd 73 9/17/19 10:58 AM Chapter Three – Truce 74 STATE OF WAR walls to escape into the jungle —he bounced around between various penitentiaries until 2009, when he landed in the MS stronghold of Ciudad Barrios. For the first time, he saw the scale of what he was part of. I had last seen Fausto here, in a different prison, a few months before. At the time, his hair was close -cropped and he wore a crisp white shirt with a black scarf d raped over his shoulder. He carried a German grammar book and spoke in long, too deliberate sentences. Fausto struck me as polite, but had the air of a man dressed in his Sunday best. A lawyer was working on getting his sentence commuted, and he expected to soon be released. Because Fausto had deactivated from the gang —“crossed the letters, ” a death sentence if his former associates catch up to him outside —he was planning on leaving the country. But his case had since hit some obstacles, and his release no longer felt like such a sure thing. His hair had grown out and he had put on weight. A shaft of milky sunlight shone through the window behind him, but Fausto remained in the shadows, his hands folded on the small table between us. His aura had changed. Hi s movements appeared more languid, his smile more cynical. He looked more like a criminal. And sadder. His partner had been receiving death threats since he left the gang, Fausto said. And he was stuck in prison. When I asked about Payes, Fausto ’s demeanor grew serious. “Who else could be capable of getting involved in this type of game, ” he asked. It had to be someone with power and a sharp political instinct. In May 2017, El Salvador ’s Attorney General ’s office issued an indictment against twenty -two form er police officers and prison officials —mostly low -level functionaries whose charges were eventually dismissed —who had been 8399_State of War_1P.indd 74 9/17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS associated with the truce. The government ’s lead witness in the 75 case described how he and other gang members were given fried chicken dinners and flat -screen TVs as incentives to reduce the murder rate. Although the indictment named Payes as the truce ’s true architect and alleged he was responsible for granting gang members “perks ”—including visits from their associates outside prison —the Minister of Defense was not charged with any crime. As Fausto put it, “Salvadorans did not have the balls to touch hi m and the authorities did not have the guts to expand the investigation. ” Of course, this was a moot point since officials from within the Ministry of Justice would always tip them off whenever anyone was coming to snoop around anyway. The reality of those perks far exceeded flat -screen TV ’s and chicken dinners in jail. When a representative of the government arrived with an entreaty that the gangs should work to quell the war between them, Fausto said, MS ’s initial demands were limited: They wanted drugs a nd prostitutes; and an end to the invasive strip searches of their female visitors by soldiers deployed as prison guards, which had set off heavy clashes within the prison walls and against the army on the street. The government representative in turn sugg ested the gangs launch a national transport strike as a show of force to create public demand for negotiations. Fausto believes that this was intended to gauge the gangs ’ power and whether the imprisoned leadership had the reach to enforce changes at the n ational level. To facilitate this, the military allowed a large volume of cell phones to be snuck into the prisons —and at times shut down equipment the U.S. had provided to block cell phone signals —so the shot -callers could communicate with their foot soldiers, telling them to take action to put pressure on the government. But this 8399_State of War_1P.indd 75 9/17/19 10:58 AM Chapter Three – Truce 76 STATE OF WAR strategy backfired when Barrio 18 torched the bus and burned the passengers alive, provoking a crackdown. In the meantime, negotiations continued in secret. As they progressed, the gangs ’ sense of their own power grew along with their list of demands. The appointed intermediary, Raul Mijango, seems to have accelerated this process. Fausto said that Mijango started feeding them a political discourse that blamed society for their plight and framed the gangs as the successors to the struggle he had waged as a guerilla. “He said that if the MS stopped being a gang and instead became a guerilla, they would receive greater support, ” says Fausto. “This is what really interested the gangs, the power of the government to work under the table and make certain negotiat ions with weapons. ” Mijango ’s motivation remains unclear. Fausto speculated that the FMLN may have wanted the gangs to become rearguard shock -troops if the party lost power. But a journalist who heard the same thing from his own gang sources told me the mo re likely explanation is that Mijango simply got carried away with his own role and exceeded his mandate, which could explain why he was the only figure involved in the truce to suffer any real consequences —in late 2018, Mi jango was sentenced to thirteen years for bartering with the gangs to lower their extortion rate; he remained indignant, saying this was part of the truce ’s second phase and that “the government knew exactly what was happening. ” Whatever the reality, with Mijango ’s contacts, the gangs arranged for advisors to begin training their troops in paramilitary tactics, including guerilla techniques to attack police stations and destabilize the government. The clicas were asked to start collecting intel on police an d military personnel, 8399_State of War_1P.indd 76 9/17/19 10:58 AM WILLIAM WHEELER COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS creating lists of their home addresses, and asking female visi - 77 tors to memorize the faces of those on guard. Meanwhile, to demonstrate their goo d faith in negotiating peace, the gangs made a public show of turning in weapons —“a farce, ” said Fausto. In his clique they only turned in old guns that no longer worked, even while the gang was acquiring grenade launchers and claymore mines. The gangs dem anded to be set up in legitimate business, which they could use both to launder money and also gain a stake in the larger society. In some cases, MS went so far as to pay for gang members to finish their schooling. “They were able to place some of them in universities so they could become attorneys, ” he said, in the hope they would “fight to find a better path or a better future within the government. ” But their main demand focused on penetrating the elite security units that were persecuting them. The gang members tapped for this job were carefully screened —smart, clean -cut types with an education. As negotiations progressed, their success in lobbying for better conditions in the prisons gave them leverage over the other criminal syndicates based there. As a result, MS and Barrio 18 were able to consolidate control over all drug -dealing and human -smuggling operations in the streets. For example, MS began to tax coyotes one -third of their earnings (a charge that was eventually passed on to the customers trying to escape the gang ’s violence). The gang started to see itself as “a Salvadoran mafia, ” Fausto said. “They began to control every neighborhood, every b usiness, becoming more and more powerful in society. ” The gangs and the narco ’s came to an agreement in which the gangs would protect the shipments traveling through their 8399_State of War_1P.indd 77 9/17/19 10:58 AM STATE OF WAR Chapter Three – Truce ter ritory and the narco ’s would pay them in money and weapons. In this, corruption from the top was facilitated by corruption throughout the ranks. Smaller -scale smugglers already had a network of officials they had worked out arrangements with to facilitate their operations. Fausto startled me by bringing up the former national police chief I had just met. “The support that the United States has provided in terms of technology has been very effective, but who has the knowledge or the power at the top to let, say, a boat full of drugs go by? Who diverts the attention of the maritime units? ” The oligarchies gave rise to the guerillas, said Fausto, and since the war many of those guerillas have become rich. Now the two groups work together, using the country ’s co mmon criminals as their cover. “During the truce, there were thousands of disappearances. Why? ” Because the gangs never stopped murdering people, but only started disappearing them instead. That duplicity is coming to light in the form of corpses being exhumed from clandestine graves. But the biggest criminals are the rich and powerful, he said, who remain free to hold office, exploiting the people whil e colluding with those who are the source of their misery. 8399