Inside El Salvador's Controversial Mega Prison VEED

Gang violence in El Salvador
Beginning in the 1990s, street gangs began to gain power and influence in El Salvador when their members began to be deported from the United States following the conclusion of the Salvadoran Civil War.[1]: 6 [2]: 64  The two largest street gangs were Mara Salvatrucha (commonly known as MS-13) and the 18th Street gang (Barrio 18);[b] other smaller gangs included La Maquina, Mao Mao, and Mirada Loca.[3] In El Salvador, these gangs recruited young Salvadorans who felt neglected by the Salvadoran government in the aftermath of the civil war.[2]: 64  By 2020, there were an estimated 60,000 gang members and 400,000 collaborators in El Salvador.[1]: 6 

Gangs enforced their influence and made money through murder, extortion, drug trafficking, and operating businesses.[1]: 6 [3] Gangs also influenced national politics by preventing political candidates from campaigning in certain neighborhoods under their control[3] and gang leaders have stated that they could determine the outcomes of elections.[4] Due to gang violence, El Salvador had one of the highest homicide rates in the world,[5]: 2  peaking at a rate of 103 homicides per 100,000 people in 2015 (the highest rate in the world).[1]: 2 

Anti-crime policies
During the 1990s and 2000s, the various Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) governments sought to implement "tough on crime" policies in El Salvador to combat the spread of gangs. In 2003 and 2004, the government implemented the Mano Dura ("iron fist") and Super Mano Dura ("super iron fist") policies that led to the arrests of 30,000 alleged gang members.[2]: 65  In 2012, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) government, the Catholic Church in El Salvador, and the country's gangs agreed to a truce that initially lowered the country's homicide rate, but by 2014, the truce had faltered and homicides rose again.[6]: 61–62  In 2015, the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador designated both MS-13 and Barrio 18 as terrorist organizations.[1]: 7 [2]: 65 

From 2019 to 2020, El Salvador's homicide rate decreased by up to 62 percent.[1]: 19  Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele credited the decrease to his Territorial Control Plan, but a 2020 analysis by the International Crisis Group (ICG) found "no causal relationship" between the decrease and homicides and the Territorial Control Plan.[1]: 20  Instead, the ICG attributed the decrease to "quiet, informal understandings between gangs and the government"; the Salvadoran government denied the claim.[7] In December 2021, the United States Department of the Treasury accused Bukele's government of negotiating with the gangs to reduce homicides; Bukele denied the accusation.[8]

Salvadoran gang crackdown
From 25 to 27 March 2022, gangs in El Salvador killed 87 people, 62 of whom were killed on 26 March alone, the deadliest day in Salvadoran history since the end of the civil war in 1992.[2]: 59 [9] Florida International University research director José Miguel Cruz attributed the murder spike to the breakdown of the alleged truce between gangs and the government.[10]

In response to the violence, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador declared a state of exception that suspended several constitutional rights and made it easier for the country's security forces to conduct mass arrests of suspected gang members.[11][12] In the following seven months, around 55,000 suspected gang members had been arrested.[2]: 60  Due to the large number of arrests, Bukele announced the construction of a new prison — named the Terrorism Confinement Center (abbreviated CECOT) — with a capacity for 40,000 inmates to house those arrested during the gang crackdown.[13] CECOT was built by three companies (OMNI, DISA, and Contratista General de América Latina, S.A. de C.V.)[14] and construction cost US$100 million.[15] By the time CECOT opened in January 2023, the Salvadoran government had arrested over 62,000 suspected gang members.[16]