There is no way to sugarcoat the information that a death squad made up of police officers murdered 97 people in El Salvador. Students, women, businesspeople, alleged gang members... one officer even confessed to the murder of a priest and the attempted murder of a prosecutor. All on orders.
The squad of uniformed contract killers operated in the San Luis Talpa area between 2015 and 2020. At the time, these deaths were attributed to firefights, or gangs, or simply piled up on the mounds of unsolved cases. But it’s now clear: They were all contract killings committed by security forces whose job is to protect us Salvadorans. Ninety-seven homicides.
One of the agents, arrested for the disappearance and murder of two students, added another bit of terrible information: 36 of those deaths were ordered and paid for by the mayor of San Luis Talpa, Salvador Menéndez. He ordered the killing of gang members or young people who looked like gang members. He ordered the killing of a woman who had made too many complaints against him, and even a man who was “causing a lot of trouble” near one of his businesses.
Time to Name Names
There is no way to sugarcoat this information, but other authorities in the Salvadoran regime thought there was a way to hide it. The entire case was declared confidential and hidden from the public. Nearly 100 Salvadorans were murdered by police officers, and it took a leak of official emails for us to find out. Thanks to this leak, we know that four agents from the Halcón 32 group were arrested for the disappearance and murder of two young people and subsequently convicted; we know that the death squad was made up of at least 37 police officers, most of whom remain free and, therefore, their crimes remain unpunished.
We also know that Mayor Salvador Menéndez has not been charged by the Attorney General’s Office, or even summoned to testify. He remains free and continues to be mayor, now of La Paz Oeste, the new municipality that includes San Luis Talpa.
Like everything else that has to do with the state, information related to police officers or former police officers or gangs or violence or justice is confidential in El Salvador. This includes information about mass graves, since dozens of bodies were found in the home of former police officer Hugo Osorio in Chalchuapa. It includes figures on missing persons; it includes investigations into violent deaths; it includes Bukele’s pact with the gangs.
But the National Civil Police (PNC) is a different matter. Extermination squads have existed almost since the inception of the PNC in 1992, on the heels of the Peace Accords, and have almost without exception operated with total impunity. Around the same time that the self-styled Halcón 32 group began operating in San Luis Talpa, El Faro documented a massacre committed by another group of police officers on the San Blas farm in the department of La Libertad. (Five police officers were arrested after the publication, tried, and acquitted three years later.)
It was common for the police to report shootouts with criminals, where the only deaths were those shot by the police. A year earlier, a new law exempted police officers who committed offenses in the line of duty from investigation. In practice, any “clash” with gangs would go unpunished.
Death Squad Agent Accuses Salvadoran Mayor of Paying for Three-Dozen Murders
Everything indicates that several police death squads emerged throughout El Salvador. Halcón 32 coordinated a murder with another group operating in San Vicente. There are journalistic records of groups in San Miguel, Usulután, La Unión, Sonsonate, San Salvador, and now La Paz.
The security forces prior to the signing of the Peace Accords also formed death squads, as well as groups of torturers, extortionists, and kidnappers. Some agents survived the dissolution of these forces and joined the newly formed National Civil Police. Some practices never turned the page into the democratic era.
The highest-level political authorities in El Salvador have long used public security as a fundamental campaign tool. In exchange, they have given the PNC a blank check. Some agents took justice into their own hands. Others, such as Halcón 32, turned impunity and death into a business. Without supervision, true psychopaths operated and continue to operate in uniform. This is thanks to a political consensus that protects them, a negligent Police Inspectorate, and opaque police activities. Protection for police officers has increased under the ongoing state of exception. Impunity is guaranteed from Casa Presidencial.
The rest of us are on notice: A police death squad murdered at least 97 people, and one of the hitmen claims that they killed many of their victims on behalf of a sitting mayor. Almost all of them remain free. Almost all of them have kept their badges.