Home | Columns | Media Watch | Reports | Links | About/Contact

Column 072015 Brewer

Monday, July 20, 2015

On Guerrillas and Gangs and Sham Truce
Talks in Latin American
By Jerry Brewer
While truces have come and gone so frequently
between Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia (FARC) guerrillas and the Colombian
government in Bogota, as well as the Mara
Salvatrucha (MS-13) criminal gang in Central
America, a no nonsense approach now is most
certainly warranted.
Colombia has failed to end 50 years of conflict
with the guerrillas. Oddly enough Cubans,
known for their decades of revolutionary
violence and intervention in other nations, have
been hosting truce talks between FARC and
Colombian government representatives since
November 2012.
MS-13, a violent transnational organized
criminal gang that operates in Central America,
Mexico, Canada, and the U.S., had its beginnings
in Los Angeles in the 1980s.
During that time Honduras, Nicaragua and El
Salvador were in turmoil and conflict with leftist
guerrillas pushing communism into their
borders. Many Salvadoran families left all
behind to flee from the terror and atrocities.
Many of the youth settled in the greater Los
Angeles area, learned English and turned to
crime and gang wars with African Americans

and Mexicans for control of criminal turf; and

many were incarcerated.
From 2000 to 2004, thousands of convicted
gang members were deported to the Northern
Triangle area of Central America. Many of them
did not speak Spanish, having left El Salvador
when they were quite young. Soon they bonded
within their former criminal elements.
The homicide rate began to escalate rapidly
during this deportation process of MS-13 and
rival gang Barrio 18 members. Some gang
members next moved to Mexico and assimilated
with Mexican gangs, as others reentered the U.S.
again illegally and took up residence in
major U.S. cities where they remain today.
Truces with both the FARC guerrillas and MS13, and the government of El Salvador, have
consistently resulted in betrayal and distrust
with remnants of a charade in cessation of
violence and other hostilities.
In what could be described as a skillfully
exploited situation by the FARC, the Colombian
government continues to negotiate with the
rebels to end a conflict that is believed to have
killed more than 200,000 persons, and
internally displaced some 3 million people. The
battle has been called Latin Americas longestrunning war.
There is no doubt that the FARC has taken
advantage of previous concessions by the
Colombian government, to talk, disarm and seek
peace.
Today FARC leaders are continuing to insist on
no jail time for their atrocities, plus they want
the right to run for political office if they are to
demobilize and peacefully reintegrate. Yet they
continuously and consistently refuse to disarm.
What is not clear is whether or not the truces
represent an overall durable policy option for

the Colombian and Salvadoran governments?

Many of the concerns involve the thoughts that
truces involving violent groups and gangs, and
agreement legitimized gangs, reinforce the
authority of their leaders, deepen cohesion
among their rank and file, and actually increase
crime.
While such agreements sometimes tend to bring
a temporary drop in violence, they have proven
difficult to transform into long-term
arrangements. A noticeable example was in
2010, when civil society groups helped mediate a
truce between rival gangs in Medellin, Colombia,
but the deal fell through after several months,
followed by an escalation in violence.
Central America has sustained some of the
highest homicide rates in the world. Honduras
has been described as the most violent nation in
Central America. Much of the violence is
attributed to fighting between MS-13 and Barrio
18 transnational gangs with their
members throughout Central America, Mexico,
and North America. Within the U.S., these gangs
are deeply involved in organized criminal
activities and they often act as hired muscle for
local and international drug trafficking
organizations. Additionally, the groups
independently engage in a range of criminal
endeavors, including extortion and human
trafficking.
In the 1990s the FARC, via the leftist Patriotic
Union Party, continued to wage war during
peace talks with the Colombian government. The
Colombian government consistently cited the
lack of commitment by the FARC as to the
process of talks, while the latter continued its
criminal acts.
It eventually became clear that the FARC had
much higher political support. At his annual
State of the Nation address in the National
Assembly, on January 11, 2008, then President
of Venezuela Hugo Chavez referred to the FARC
as "a real army that occupies territory in

Colombia. Too, Chavez stated that the FARC

were not terrorists because they had a political
goal.
Further troubling issues with El Salvador arose
in a report in 2013, that indicated Jose Luis
Merino, a leader of El Salvador's Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a
leftwing political party, arranged a drug lords
meeting with the Colombian FARC on a flight
coordinated with Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro. This alleged new evidence revealed
that Venezuelan President Maduro, when
serving as Venezuelas Foreign Minister,
worked to improve the FMLNs access to drug
trafficking."
In April of last year the government of El
Salvador announced that the truces between the
country's main Mara street gangs had not
worked, and that killings and attacks against
police have risen again. (Violence is escalating
again in El Salvador).
Colombia's FARC guerrillas recently announced
a one month unilateral ceasefire for July 20.
Perhaps another spin of the wheel?
\
Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice
International Associates, a global threat
mitigation firm headquartered in northern
Virginia. His website is located at
www.cjiausa.org. TWITTER: CJIAUSA
Jerry Brewer Published Archives