Podcast: Mass Trial for Collective Gang Crimes Begins in El Salvador

This is the transcript of episode 70 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

PROSECUTOR: We intend to attribute to all of them the entirety of the homicides for which this structure was responsible. They carried out the killings under a “free-for-all” policy, with authorization from leadership…

GRESSIER, HOST: That’s Max Muñoz, El Salvador’s Deputy Prosecutor for Organized Crime. This week, the Sixth Court Against Organized Crime kicked off a trial against 486 alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha, including members of the gang’s leadership known as the “Ranfla Nacional.”

But the key takeaway here isn’t the size of the trial. Prosecutors won’t have to prove what each defendant did. The court will allow crimes to be attributed collectively.

Overhaul of criminal procedure

For the first time in years, official photographs of the trial showed several MS-13 leaders who had been carefully kept out of public view. Among them was the once-powerful gang leader Borromeo Henríquez, who goes by the alias “Diablito” —or Little Devil— “of Hollywood.”

Prosecutors hold the group collectively responsible for more than 47,000 drug, weapons, and violent crimes between 2012 and 2022.

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Mass trials aren’t new to El Salvador. In 2020, over 400 gang members were convicted for an array of financial and violent crimes. The full process took about two years. Hearings were open to the public and lasted weeks, even months.

But the difference is that evidence was still presented against individual defendants. In July 2023, the ruling party approved a slate of changes to the Law Against Organized Crime that toughened penalties for gang leaders and enabled collective prosecution of up to 900 detainees.

New penalties of life in prison are also set to take effect this Sunday, April 26. Criminal defense attorney Elías Ramírez described the start of the trial as a “smokescreen” to divert attention from recent accusations of crimes against humanity committed by Salvadoran authorities.

He also told us the process was reorganized into a single running hearing. New defendants can be added as the case progresses in the coming months — or even years.

Ortega reacts to gold sanctions

Next we head to Nicaragua. Ever since the U.S. invasion of Venezuela in January, co-dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo spent months keeping Trump out of their mouths.

Amid growing paranoia toward an increasingly bellicose United States, they also made multiple concessions: They released political prisoners, accepted deported migrants, and reinstated visa requirements for Cubans.

But this week, in an increasingly rare public appearance, the aging Ortega called Donald Trump “mentally deranged” during an event marking the dictatorship’s so-called “Day of Peace,” a not-subtle reference to the start of the mass uprising in 2018.

Ortega asserted without a lick of irony that the United States under Trump is no longer a democracy.

ORTEGA: This is already, we could say, a case of mental derangement. He’s not in his right mind. And the president of a power like that is going to destroy his own people; he is destroying his own people and undermining global peace and stability.

GRESSIER: Ortega also urged the United States to lift the sanctions imposed on Nicaraguan citizens. Less than a week ago, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned two of his sons for their ties to the gold mining industry, as well as seven mining companies operating in Nicaragua’s gold sector.

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According to the Treasury, income from gold helps the cash-strapped Murillo-Ortega dictatorship maintain political control in Nicaragua.

Several other officials were sanctioned, including the Deputy Minister of Energy and Mines and Deputy Interior Minister Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions on the last official, Cañas Novoa, for his involvement in “gross violations of human rights.”

The statement was released on April 18 — the eighth anniversary of the start of the 2018 protests against the regime. According to the U.N. Group of Experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua, Cañas is one of the 54 Nicaraguan officials identified as responsible for “crimes against humanity” that year.

AG selection in Guatemala

Last, to Guatemala. Despite her attempts to remain in power, for a brief moment this week Attorney General Consuelo Porras did not make it to the final round of nominees for the election of the new attorney general and thus failed to secure a third term.

This final list of six candidates is the one that will be submitted to the president to choose from.

During the nomination process, Porras received more than 30 objections to her candidacy as attorney general — the most of any candidate. She is also embroiled in a scandal for her involvement in illegal adoptions that took place during the armed conflict in 1982.

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Amid this chaos, she managed to secure the highest score from the nominating committee. Others were left out, such as the new Interior Minister Marco Antonio Villeda, whose experience as an anti-mafia appeals judge was not taken into account by the committee, resulting in a lower score.

President Arévalo’s interior minister, Villeda, filed an injunction that’s still pending with the Constitutional Court. He asked that the court require the nominating committee to take into account his years of experience as a judge.

But here’s the subtext of it all. A power struggle between the current attorney general, Consuelo Porras, and President Bernardo Arévalo has shaped the course of politics in Guatemala.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office persecuted members of Arévalo’s party, journalists, judges, human rights defenders, and even the president himself, to the point that they dissolved the party, even while they were already in power.

That’s why Porras has tried to maintain influence. She even ran as a candidate for constitutional magistrate, but was unsuccessful.

Among the six nominees, some candidates are very close to Porras. According to press reports, Beyla Estrada is a former magistrate who has granted impunity in corruption cases involving the Ministry of Defense and Guatemala City Hall.

Another hopeful, Julio Rivera, is close to pro-Consuelo Porras lawyers’ associations and the Foundation Against Terrorism, which has been a key cog of political persecution in Guatemala.

In the next three weeks before she ends her term, Consuelo Porras’s future remains uncertain. The high courts could tip the balance one way or another.

That’s how Porras managed to sneak onto the shortlist last time around, in 2022, and win: she was originally excluded, until the Constitutional Court ordered that she be named a finalist. Then the president at the time, Alejandro Giammattei, read the writing on the wall and chose her for a second term.

As for Arévalo, he reiterated just this week that he will not choose Consuelo Porras. That’s basically been his main promise since the campaign trail in 2023.

But on Thursday afternoon, right before we recorded this episode, the Constitutional Court suspended the list of finalists at the request of the Foundation Against Terrorism, and ordered a do-over for evaluating candidates.

Maybe, just maybe, the writing is on the wall again.

This episode was written by Gabriela Cáceres, Yuliana Ramazzini, and Leyrian Colón Santiago, with editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.