Literature addressing the issue of violence in El Salvador connects the country's high homicide rate with deportation policies in the USA, starting with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which prioritized the deportation of violent criminals. As a result, violent gangs formed in the USA, such as Barrio 18 and MS-13, had significant portions of their membership transplanted from Los Angeles to San Salvador, a city roughly 1/4 the size of LA, with disastrous effects for the local population.

Due to this sub's rule against current events, it is difficult to give a full overview of this topic, as El Salvador's recent crime spike did not really begin until several years after the allowed time period for discussion. Moreover, previous high homicide rates can be connected to the bloody El Salvadorian Civil War, which only ended in 1992, and thus do not necessarily provide direct insight into more recent crime spikes.

Source:

Zilberg, Elana Fools Banished from the Kingdom: Remapping Geographies of Gang Violence between the Americas (Los Angeles and San Salvador), Johns Hopkins University Press.

One word answer? Cocaine.

Proper answer: While it may be linked to colonialism in a broader sense, the current violence in Latin America has more to do with drug trafficking, weak governance and the legacy of political violence during the Cold War. I'll focus on El Salvador, but many of the factors that contribute to its murder rate can also be applied to Latin American countries such as Honduras and Colombia.

Drug Trafficking

El Salvador's geographic location makes it a "crossroads" of international smuggling and trafficking. It is an essential part of the cocaine corridor; the transnational route that reaches from South America to the United States and the rest of the world. Almost all the cocaine on Earth is grown and processed in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Roughly 90% of this cocaine travels north through Central America. Along with its neighbors, El Salvador has porous borders, a long coastline and a lot of jungle to hide in. A DEA estimate claims that at best 1% of the cocaine travelling through El Salvador is ever intercepted.

Drug trafficking generates an unbelievable amount of money in a very small and poor country. And like the rest of the world, drug trafficking attracts organised crime. Starting in the 1990s, traffickers partnered with gang members from the United States who had been deported. As not-engels goes into detail, these gangs originated in the United States before spreading to Central America. In exchange for providing security, logistics and a recruiting pool, MS-13 and Barrio 18 were paid in cash, cocaine and vehicles. And lots of guns. The porous border that allows for so much cocaine smuggling is also used to smuggle weapons. Gangs in El Salvador have an unlimited supply of cheap and easily accessible firearms that flow both and south. Not to mention the large domestic supply left over by the Civil War.

The Salvadoran Civil War

The Civil War lasted for 12 years, and created millions of refugees, economic devastation and a generations of shattered families. It also created sophisticated networks of former guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries who were deeply embedded in the new government. These became the domestic cartels who partnered with both international traffickers and local gang members. The gangs quickly numbered in the tens of thousands, recruiting poor young men who had been dispossessed by the war.

Along with an existing rivalry that had started on the streets of Los Angeles, the roughly equal factions of MS-13 and Barrio 18 began warring over narco menudeo, the local drug trafficking and other criminal activities. Much like the crack epidemic in the USA, homicides spiked as a result of fights over territory. The government was entirely incapable of stopping this rise in gang activity and violent crime. Combined with an impoverished government, endemic corruption created utter lawlessness. In 1995 El Salvador's murder rate was 139 per 100,000, even worse than it is now.

La Mano Dura

In response to public outcry and their own lack of success, Salvadoran governments both left and right have pursued a hardline "iron fist" approach to policing, known locally as La Mano Dura. This has had limited results to say the least, and in some ways has made the situation worse. Maras now exist as a parallel society within El Salvador. Drug dealing is a means to an end rather than a reason for existing. Gang members have little chance of returning to regular society, and their only way out is death. Gangs can operate with impunity, and the vast majority of homicides are never solved. Despite this, prison overcrowding has become a major issue. Prisons in El Salvador are now gang strongholds, since the two gangs cannot share the same prison. Because the government has declared war on them, the maras now regularly target civilians and the police. This includes acts of terrorism like killing a city bus full of civilian passengers.

It's also worth mentioning that El Salvador is the most densely populated country in Central America. Homicide rates are typically higher in poor, densely populated areas. Which is why some neighborhoods in Chicago have reached a murder rate beyond 90, despite the overall city rate being much lower. El Salvador, along with the rest of Central America, also has a higher percentage of young men compared to a country like the United States. Men under 25 are disproportionately the perpetrators and victims of homicide, and in El Salvador comprise the majority of gang membership.

Source:

Farah, Douglas, Organized Crime in El Salvador: The Homegrown and Transnational Dimensions, Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars*.* Free copy available at:

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Farah.FIN1.pdf