OF GUERRILLAS AND GANGS

The gringos insist that, even speaking several languages, composed of several races and colonized by different colonizers, below the United States, everything is the same. Nothing more contradictory than that. Nothing around here is the same, sometimes not even similar, but certainly very different.

See two countries at the ends of the continent, small and so different. Uruguay, which venerated its former President José Mujica, recently killed and demonstrated that even being Tupamaru, guerrilla, imprisoned for many years, he was able to build a democratic society and left a message of builder of values and modesty in the public service. It transformed Uruguay and deserved respect.

On the other side is El Salvador in Central America. Dollarized many years ago, also coming from a bloody war between left-wing guerrillas and government forces. A war that left Central America, with the involvement of the United States, in a state of difficult recovery and with distinct regimes. El Salvador, with the young president Bokele, of the extreme right, and with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, so dictatorial and leftist that he even broke with Lula. And throughout the region, with an exodus of the population threatening the borders of Mexico and the United States. In fact, one of the arguments for the dollarization of the Salvadoran economy was that the country lives on remittances from emigrants in the United States. So why change dollar remitted to peso, leave everything in dollar.

The armed conflict of the 90s also left sequelae in the new generations. With no perspective, except to emigrate, they organized themselves into gangs, marras, which, from groups of desperate young people, became gangs that dominated the territories, crime and in a way the country. A terror. Bokele, taking over the government, with an iron fist and support from the United States, did not be begging: he established a pattern of fighting against gangs that became a standard. He arrested thousands of gang members in special prisons, without trial, without respect for any law or right. Photos that appear in the press show a frightening model of repression that gained notoriety with the outsourcing of this terror, with the acceptance of emigrants expelled from the US. That is, El Salvador, instead of receiving money from emigrants in the US, receives money from the US to mistreat emigrants from other countries. And now Argentina and Ecuador, among others, want to adopt the same model of prisons. They just need to repeat Operation Condor and restore the memory of Dan Mitrione. The issue of crime requires an effort from the whole society and is not resolved at the end of the prison with Salvadoran brutality.