<p>Gangs kept Salvadorans on their knees for more than two and a half decades. This phenomenon gripped a country reeling from mass deportations from the United States in the 1990s, taking root in the most precarious and forgotten communities of El Salvador.</p>
Gangs kept Salvadorans on their knees for more than 25 years. This phenomenon gripped a country reeling from the mass deportations carried out by the United States in the 1990s, taking root in the most precarious and forgotten communities, where the most dangerous criminals emerged to consolidate “mafias of the poor” that made El Salvador the most violent country in the world starting in 2009, with a rate of 71 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants; and then with a rate of 106 in 2015, the highest level of violence since the civil war.
Gang members arrived in El Salvador in the last century, but in those early postwar years, other armed gangs dominated the country’s criminal ecosystem, until little by little, under the radar, the gangs grew and entered the new century with the capacity to impose themselves on all others. The Mara Salvatrucha-13, which had 40,000 members in the country according to official information, murdered, extorted, displaced, kidnapped, and disappeared people, paralyzed public transportation, forced the military and police to back down through violence, controlled the interior of several prisons, forced Salvadorans to seek refuge en masse in other countries, conquered dozens of neighborhoods on the East Coast of the United States, and made deals with politicians on the Right, Left, and the current government of Nayib Bukele. They unleashed a brutal conflict against 18th Street, which many of them did not even understand, killing viciously in the name of their gangs and leaving thousands of Salvadorans to travel daily between war zones.
Without these criminals, it is impossible to understand the history of the rickety democracy that Bukele destroyed. This compilation from El Faro’s photo archive shows the victims and perpetrators of that seemingly endless violence. This photo essay also shows the accomplices to that horror: officials from Arena, the FMLN, and Nuevas Ideas. After the largest massacre of the century perpetrated by MS-13 in March 2022, which left 62 bodies in a single day, the last pact between the gangs and a Salvadoran president ended, and the state of exception began: a policy that has turned El Salvador into the country with the highest prison rate in the world, where one in every 57 citizens is in prison and hundreds of bodies of people without convictions have been removed from the country’s 22 prisons.
Members of the Western Locos clique of the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners in the mid-1980s in Los Angeles, one of the first photographs of that gang to which this newspaper had access. One of them, Puppet, returned years later to El Salvador and lived in the Amatepec neighborhood of San Salvador, where he was murdered. The gangs were founded in the neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. That is also where the hatred between MS-13 and 18th Street began. In the 1990s, the United States carried out mass deportations of these gang members, many of whom were Salvadorans who returned to their communities, recruited other young people, and imposed on them the hatred that has bled their population dry for more than 25 years. Photo: El FaroOn Sunday, June 20, 2010, one of the most heinous attacks carried out by the gangs took place. That night, 18th Street gang members set fire to a Route 47 minibus with its passengers inside on a deserted street in the Jardín neighborhood of the Mejicanos municipality in San Salvador. Thirteen people died inside, another ten died later in hospitals, and 15 others suffered severe burns. The victims were residents of the Montreal neighborhood, a community under the control of MS-13. The attack was in retaliation for the murder of Crayola, an 18th Street gang member who had been shot dead the night before. Photo: El FaroSoldiers guard a bus carrying passengers in the Historic Center of San Salvador on Monday, July 27, 2015, after the truce between gangs and the FMLN government collapsed. More than 140 buses traveling from Plaza Barrios in San Salvador were guarded by police officers or members of the Armed Forces. Threats from gangs and the murder of seven public transport employees forced business owners to call a general strike to prevent their workers from being killed by gang members who paralyzed the country and brought the then-government of Salvador Sánchez Cerén to its knees. During those years, gang members murdered dozens of police officers and soldiers while they were resting in their homes, and many police officers formed death squads that responded outside the law, murdering alleged gang members and their families. Photo: Fred RamosFormer El Salvador President Antonio Saca and former Police Director Ricardo Meneses shake hands with members of the 18th Street Revolucionarios on November 4, 2004, in the IVU neighborhood of San Salvador, during a ceremony announcing that the neighborhood would be a gang-free zone as part of the “Mano Amiga” reintegration plan. Like most of his anti-gang policy, the plan was part of a publicity strategy by the Saca administration to show another side to its narrative of a “frontal attack” on criminal structures. In the image, Saca greets Charli, 15, then leader of the IVU clique, who rose to prominence in gang life a few years later for his appearance in the BBC documentary “Eighteen With a Bullet.” Photo: AFPCarlos Cartagena, alias Charli, 22 years after the photograph in which he greets former President Antonio Saca, during an interview with El Faro, now 38 years old. He detailed the pacts his gang made with Nayib Bukele and his circle of power so that his party would win the San Salvador mayoral elections in 2015 and the presidential elections in 2019. Charli was captured during the first days of the state of exception that began on March 27, 2022, and was released only a few hours later after police officers from the Antiguo Cuscatlán municipality received an order via telephone call. Charli remains free while many innocent people have died in Salvadoran prisons and suffered under the regime. He was released by the Bukele government, according to his testimony during an interview conducted in early 2025. Photo: Víctor PeñaPhotograph taken from the broadcast of Channel 17 television, under the control of the Tabernáculo Bíblico Amigos de Israel (Friends of Israel Biblical Tabernacle), showing Dionisio Umanzor, alias El Sirra, then leader of MS-13, and Carlos Mojica Lechuga, alias Viejo Lin, leading spokesmen for the 18th Street Sureños, when they were interviewed by Pastor Edgard López Bertrand (Toby Jr.). The two gang members were serving prison sentences in the Ciudad Barrios and Cojutepeque prisons, both of which are exclusively for members of their criminal organizations. They were transferred from there when they began their truce with the government of Mauricio Funes in March 2012. “We brought in two figures who are participating in the so-called truce between gangs, with the desire to attract young people who are making decisions to try to join them to reflect. We thank the authorities who made this possible. It is their right, as the law states in ecclesiastical or cultural events,” said Pastor Edgar López Bertrand when questioned. Photo: El Faro
[rel1]
Police officers arrange William’s remains after they were exhumed by Israel Ticas, the only forensic criminologist at the Attorney General’s Office at the time and the only specialist in exhuming bones from the clandestine graves that gangs used to hide their victims, despite being a civil engineer by profession. William was murdered and buried in 2009 on a farm in the municipality of Colón, in the department of La Libertad. Ticas was very familiar with the atrocities committed by MS-13 and 18th Street, which took the lives of hundreds of Salvadorans, and he was a man with an overloaded schedule, called upon by prosecutors from all over the country to remove bones from wells, cornfields, cane fields, or marginalized communities. Photo: Bernat Camps PareraIsrael Ticas descends into a well where the police confirmed the discovery of at least 20 bodies in December 2010, in the municipality of Turín, in the department of Ahuachapán, when El Salvador had already reached the status of one of the most violent countries in the world. Ticas, the only forensic criminologist in the Attorney General’s Office, was the person beneath that white suit, about to descend 55 meters and then climb back up with some items of clothing and a few tarsal bones that showed that it had been used as a clandestine grave. A few years earlier, in 2007, Ticas had also unearthed more than 20 bodies at the bottom of a well in the Italia District of the municipality of Tonacatepeque, in the department of San Salvador. Photo: El FaroIn this file photo from January 22, 2013, at the Vista al Lago residential school center, “Marvin,” leader of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 gang in the municipality of Ilopango, in the department of San Salvador, signs a declaration of good intentions along with then-Minister of Security David Munguía Payés (behind him, wearing dark glasses), now convicted for having led those pacts. He was also accompanied by then-chaplain of the Armed Forces Fabio Colindres. Photo: El FaroEmilio Méndez, a bus driver on Route 16 in San Salvador, was the seventh bus driver murdered on the third day of the public transport strike in July 2015. In the image, a relative collapses upon seeing Méndez’s body on North Masferrer Avenue, where he was murdered for disobeying the orders of the gang, who prohibited public transportation and threatened to kill those who did so. Over three days, seven public transportation employees were murdered. Photo: Fred RamosFormer President Mauricio Funes was summoned to the Attorney General’s Office to testify in the investigation of the gang truce, which was agreed upon in March 2012 by his government and with his knowledge, something that, despite abundant evidence, he denied until his death in 2025, while he was under the protection of the Nicaraguan dictatorship. The then-minister of defense, David Munguía Payés, former guerrilla commander Raúl Mijango, and Armed Forces chaplain Fabio Colindres were involved in the process. Funes gave his statements on February 3, 2016, for more than five hours, when he was no longer president and shortly before fleeing El Salvador. Photo: Víctor Peña
[newsletter]
In September 2016, 19 families from the village of El Castaño took shelter in a makeshift refuge on a small basketball court in the municipality of Caluco, in the department of Sonsonate. The families were displaced by gang members from the village who threatened them with death and burned down some of their homes. It was the first post-war refuge for displaced persons. In the image, after 19 days without adequate provisions and without any plan from the authorities, those same families returned to the homes from which they had been expelled, after the government of Salvador Sánchez Cerén assured them that they had fought off the criminals. Photo: Víctor PeñaOn May 23, 2014, gang members murdered six people inside a bus on route 302, which was traveling along kilometer 32 of the highway leading from Monsignor Romero Airport to San Salvador, in the municipality of San Luis Talpa, in the department of La Paz. The attack was directed at an employee of the Central Investigation Division (DCI) and some guards at the Zacatecoluca Maximum Security Prison. Photo: Fred RamosThe Arena presidential candidate for 2014, Norman Quijano, shakes hands with “Charly,” representative of 18th Street in Ilopango, during his campaign visit to that municipality on Monday, November 25, 2013. Charly received sports uniforms from the right-wing candidate. This gang member was the representative of his organization at the dialogue tables created by the mayor of Ilopango, Salvador Ruano, in which MS-13 spokespersons also participated. At the same event, Douglas Moreno, former deputy minister of Public Security and one of the organizers of the gang truce, expressed his support for Quijano. Photo: El FaroOn Sunday, June 21, 2015, the murder of two soldiers led to a major police operation in the La Chacra community in San Salvador. The police deployed their personnel in the middle of the community. Minutes before this scene, three gang members dressed as homeless people surrounded and attacked soldiers José Otoniel Ascencio and José Jaime Henríquez with firearms while they were guarding the San Salvador Metropolitan Area Integrated Transportation System (SITRAMSS) station in front of the former Oriente terminal in San Salvador, where their bodies were left lying. Photo: Víctor PeñaCarlos Tiberio Valladares, Snayder, leader of MS-13, talks with Adam Blackwell, Secretary of Multidimensional Security of the Organization of American States (OAS), inside La Esperanza Penitentiary, known as Mariona, on January 19, 2013. This was a conference where leaders of MS-13, 18th Street, Mao-Mao, and Mara Máquina gathered to launch a campaign to reduce crime in El Salvador. Also pictured are Raúl Mijangos, mediator of the truce, with the microphone; Borromeo Henríquez Solórzano, alias Diablito de Hollywood, the most important leader of MS-13; and Carlos Adalberto Barahona, Chino Tres Colas, leader of the 18th Street Sureños (seated on the right). Photo: AFPOn March 3, 2016, gang members from 18th Street Revolucionarios in the municipality of Quezaltepeque invaded the Agua Escondida district of the municipality of San Juan Opico, in La Libertad, territory of the Mara Salvatrucha-13, where they tortured and murdered 11 workers, eight of them from a company dedicated to electrical installations, as well as three farmers who witnessed the killings. The Armed Forces mounted an operation in the area and its surroundings. A few hours later, the government of Salvador Sánchez Cerén announced that dozens of MS-13 gang members had been captured. Later, the Attorney General’s Office clarified that none of those captured were suspected of having participated in the massacre. The evidence of this barbarity was videos in which the gang members recorded themselves committing the murders, perpetrated amid laughter and with machetes, which were then disseminated on social media. Photo: Víctor PeñaFor the forensic scientists at the Institute of Legal Medicine, homicides became routine. Day after day, these doctors specializing in death recognized the darkest side of El Salvador with the imperturbable serenity of those who know that behind one corpse, another awaits. Such was the life of forensic scientists during the most violent times in El Salvador, between 2009 and 2016. The morgues could not cope with the demand, and corpses lay for long hours at the scene of a murder before it was the turn of the last doctor to examine them. Photo: Edu Ponces
[rel2]
From left to right, these are the people sitting at the table in this photograph taken by a police officer who was following them on December 21, 2015, at a Pizza Hut in the Multiplaza shopping mall in Antiguo Cuscatlán: Edwin Ernesto Cedillos Rodríguez, better known as Renuente, national leader of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 and spokesperson for the Abriles Danger Locos Salvatrucha clique; Mario Durán, current mayor of San Salvador and then-councilman of the mayor’s office led by Nayib Bukele; Carlos Marroquín, then head of the Social Fabric Reconstruction Unit of the same mayor’s office and current director of Social Fabric at the national level; and Michael Estiban Hernández Estrada, better known as White of the Iberias Locos Salvatrucha clique. Thanks to audio recordings obtained by El Faro, Renuente was identified as a gang leader who, in those years, was conspiring to assassinate politicians and police officers. At that meeting, they were trying to reach agreements with the mayor’s office to allow them to enter their neighborhoods to carry out projects. In exchange, they asked for $10,000, which the councilors did not give them and tried to make up for with a delivery of construction materials. After the meeting, all of them were detained for identification purposes by the police who were investigating them. Photo: El FaroForensic doctors from the Institute of Legal Medicine remove a body from Arturo Castellanos Boulevard in San Salvador in April 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic. This was one of the most violent episodes during Bukele’s administration, when 23 murders were recorded in a single day, Friday, April 24. As usual, Bukele reacted on his Twitter account and blamed the crimes on gang leaders, accusing them of ordering the attacks from inside prisons. Bukele also ordered the isolation of the gang leaders and the closure of prison stores, all through social media. After that massacre, two more would occur during Bukele’s pact with the gangs: Another occurred in November 2021, when gangs murdered 45 Salvadorans in a couple of days; and the final one, perpetrated by MS-13, when they murdered 87 Salvadorans on the weekend of March 26, 2022, which led to the breakdown of the eight-year pact between Bukele and the gangs and the beginning of the state of exception that ultimately dismantled them. Photo: Víctor PeñaPNC and Armed Forces agents guard the scene of a homicide that occurred at a place known as the Exbiblioteca, in downtown San Salvador. Between March 25 and 27, 2022, 87 homicides were recorded in El Salvador, making Saturday, March 26, the most violent day of the 21st century, with 62 homicides in 24 hours. This is one of the darkest episodes of violence in El Salvador since the signing of the Peace Accords, and also marks the breakdown of the Nayib Bukele government's pact with the gangs. Since those days, El Salvador has remained in a state of siege for more than three years through a regime of exception that dismantled the gangs, but which, today, has destroyed all guarantees and rights for its citizens and imprisoned them under proceedings that have been declared secret and which, when brought to light, present evidence as flimsy as someone showing “nervousness.” Photo: Carlos Barrera
