When Security Sector Reform Misfires: The Remaking of Public Order in El Salvador

ISA 55th Convention, Toronto, March 2014

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When Security Sector Reform Misfires: The Remaking Public Order in El Salvador By Gaëlle Rivard Piché1

In 1992, the Chapultepec accords brought to an end the Salvadorian civil war that had

made more than 85,000 victims in 12 years. Following the negotiated settlement, El

Salvador undertook the reform of its main security institutions. Yet, despite the expansion

of the Salvadorian State’s security capacities during the 1990s and the progressive

reduction of homicides during the 1990s, violence rose importantly from 2002. By the mid-‐

2000s and until the gang truce in 2012, El Salvador became one of the most violent

countries in Central America and the rest of the world (UNODC 2007). Considering that the

overarching objective of SSR is to reduce violence to enable economic, political and social

development (OECD-‐DAC 2007), this paper explores why SSR has been unable to control

armed crime and violence in El Salvador.

The link between SSR and violence remains in fact unclear. In El Salvador and other

countries, such as Afghanistan (Jarstad 2013; Sedra 2007), Haiti (Muggah and Kolbe 2012;

Mendelson-‐Forman 2006; Donais 2005) and Kosovo (Heinemann-‐Grüder and

Grebenschikov 2006), an upsurge in violence followed the implementation of SSR. I argue

that SSR, through its design and implementation, affects how security is provided, who are

the main security actors and which rules and norms are applicable. Under these reforms, as

the State expands the scope and the quality of its security provision, the coexistence of

public and private security actors creates tensions and competition, which can result in

higher levels of violence.

This paper explores how the SSR process in El Salvador has affected the production of

public order and violence at the national level in the aftermath of the civil war. Considering

how the war undermined the ability of the Salvadorian State to project its power

throughout its territory (Wood and Boyce 1996; Stanley 1999) the end of the conflict did

not lead automatically to the reestablishment of the State’s authority through the country.

In fact, over the last 20 years, the State has not successfully claim the monopoly over the

means of violence.

1 Gaëlle Rivard Piché is a Ph.D. candidate at the Norman Paterson School of International Affaires, Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. This research project is supported by the Canadian Department of National Defence and the International Development Research Centre.


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From 1993, the capacity and the level of professionalism of the State’s security

institutions increased, mainly through the downsizing of the armed forces and the

redefinition of their mandate, as well as the creation of the Policia Nacional Civil (PNC). Yet,

the weakness of the judicial system and the politicization of the PNC undermined the ability

of the State to successfully claim the monopoly over the use of coercive force, to establish a

strong social contract with its population, and to address effectively crime and violence

through sound public security strategies and policies. Hence the security sector reform

process that was implemented after the war did not enable the Salvadorian State to control

violence, through the ultimate imposition of a national monist public order regime, or the

negotiation of a cohesive pluralist regime with private security actors. Over the same

period and due partially to the inability of the State to impose itself, gangs gained

momentum in terms of capacity, organization and territorial control, setting the table for

growing tensions with public security actors from the late 1990s.

Consequently, the 1990s saw the repositioning of forces able to control the means of

violence, impose themselves as authority figures, and determine which rules and norms

regulate individuals’ behaviours. SSR, due to its technical nature and its limited scope, did

not enable the State to eliminate competing security actors. In fact, it may have led to an

increase in violence in many spaces through El Salvador due to competition and increased

tensions between the State’s security institutions and gangs.

Building on insights from legal pluralism and property rights theory, this paper first

discusses public order regimes and their impact on violence. It then explores how the SSR

process in El Salvador, focussing strictly on the State’s security institutions, has not taken

into consideration how private actors have emerged as central security actors in the

aftermath of the war, and have affected in an important manner the production of public

order in the country. Failure to do so led to important tensions between powerful public

and private actors. It also significantly undermined the quality of public order in many

spaces throughout El Salvador, which is illustrated by rising levels of violence from the

early 2000s.

1. Literature review: the different approaches to SSR


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Key scholars have argued quite convincingly that statebuilding, through the reinforcement

of governmental institutions, is critical to transition from war to peace (see, for example,

Fukuyama 2004; Krasner 2004; Paris 2004; Fearon and Laitin 2003). At the core of the

statebuilding process come the reinforcement and the professionalization of security and

justice institutions to fulfill one of the main state functions: security provision. Security

sector reform first appeared as a policy framework in the 1990s. It quickly became one of

the main elements of the statebuilding paradigm and has since been implemented widely in

many countries including El Salvador, Haiti, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of

Congo, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Timor Leste, and Liberia.

In the direct aftermath of a civil war, security is an urgent requirement as filling the

security gap is necessary to the implementation of the peace process (Walter 1997), the

control of potential spoilers (Zahar 2010, 270), and the development of a positive peace

(Galtung 1996). In that perspective, security sector reform aims at reducing armed violence

and crime to allow economic, political and social development (OECD-‐DAC 2007, 10).

Based on the OECD DAC Handbook on Security Sector Reform (OECD-‐DAC 2007), this

overarching objective should be reached by providing basic security, improving the

governance of public security institutions, and ensuring the local ownership of the reform

process. Advocates of the statebuilding approach consider that improving the capacity and

the professionalism of the State’s security agencies will contribute greatly to a sustainable

transition from war to peace (see for example and to different extents, Call and Wyeth

2008; Paris 2004; Fearon and Laitin 2003), and foster economic development and

prosperity (Collier 2007; Fukuyama 2004; Collier 2003).

1.1. The statebuilding paradigm and the Weberian State model

The statebuilding paradigm conceives the Weberian State as the only and ultimate outcome

in terms of public good provision, including security (Fukuyama 2004; Rotberg 2003; see

also the discussion about statebuilding in Call and Wyeth 2008, 8–13). From this

standpoint, when the State does not hold the monopoly over the use of coercive force, it

creates an authority vacuum in spaces where state institutions are absent or too weak to

impose themselves, leading potentially to Hobbesian anarchy (Rotberg 2003; Lake and

Rothchild 1998). The breakdown of the State’s authority and the security dilemma that is


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assumed to follow are perceived as a direct cause of civil wars; re-‐establishing state

authority throughout its territory becomes a priority for any peace and statebuilding

agenda (Walter 1997; Posen 1993).

However, this perspective assumes that before the escalation towards organized

violence, the State held the monopoly over the use of coercive force. Yet, before the

outbreak of an armed conflict, the State is often only one amongst several security

providers. The State’s institutions are either absent or too weak to impose themselves in

the spaces through the country. In these spaces, other actors fulfill certain functions

associated to the Weberian State, inclusion security provision and public ordering. Thus, a

sovereignty gap does not necessarily equate a security and an authority gaps. Assuming

that the State does retain the monopoly over the use of coercive force before all civil wars

may be going a step too far, especially regarding local public ordering

When proponents of the statebuilding paradigm recognize the role of private actors in

the provision of public good and especially security, they tend to assume that these actors

are necessarily less effective, less accountable, less responsible and less respectful of

human rights than the security institutions of the Weberian State. Yet, in some cases,

informal actors may present some of these characteristics that SSR seeks to develop in

state security institutions: accountability, low cost, effectiveness, legitimacy, local

ownership (G. Baker 2010). Thus, the statebuilding paradigm may be ill fitted to

understand the public ordering and security landscape in countries where public security

actors (the State’s agencies) cohabit, interacts and compete with private actors (non-‐state

security actors).

1.2. Hybrid political order

It might be more fruitful to conceive post-‐conflict countries as hybrid political orders,

rather than failed states or quite imperfect examples of the Weberian State. They are best

represented as spaces where multiple informal, formal and hybrid spheres of power evolve

in parallel and interact together (B. Baker 2011; Boege et al. 2008). Even during an armed

conflict, the breakdown of the State’s monopoly over the use of coercive force does not

necessarily mean that an authority vacuum is created throughout the country. The conflict


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will affect but not necessarily destroy forms of local governance. For example, during the

civil war in El Salvador, following the collapse of the State’s authority in certain parts of the

country, new mechanisms of local governance emerged, administrated by civilians who

relied “on armed actors for their coercive authority, and sometimes legitimacy” (Wood

2008, 552). In the absence of the State’s institutions, other public ordering mechanisms will

be put in place, imposed by some powerful and/or designed and managed by local

communities.

At the local level, informal, customary and other non-‐state actors regularly act as

security providers and authority figures fulfilling some functions associated to the State. In

this context, state agencies, if present, are only conceived by the population as one security

actor among others, often peripheral (B. Baker 2008). Hence, when it comes to SSR,

security provision improvement, and violence control, we need to ask who provide security

and to whom are people turning to for security, rather than who should provide security and

to whom should people turn to for security (G. Baker 2010; Andersen 2006). These

observations will provide important insights regarding authority and legitimacy at the local

level.

If SSR is implemented without taking into consideration these fundamental elements of

the security and public ordering landscape, the reforms tend to have a disruptive effect on

public ordering and security provision. SSR can reduce the legitimacy and the authority of

local actors who are perceived as being increasingly associated to the State. It can also

affect the balance of power in spaces penetrated by newly reformed public actors who may

not have the necessary legitimacy to be recognized as authority figures by the local

population. Finally, and related to these first two potential effects, it can lead people to turn

to new private actors (militias, gangs, vigilantes or cartels) who are perceived as more

legitimate than the State due to their link with the local community, and more effective

than previous forms of local authority (Clements et al. 2007).

The presence of multiple security actors relying on different sources of authority does

not necessarily means a breakdown of public order. Public and private security actors can

to interact together through informal and flexible networks that need to be taken into

account by SSR programs. The control of shantytowns in Rio de Janeiro (Arias 2006), the


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association between jihadist groups and religious figures in Northern Mali (Bøås and

Torheim 2013), and the interaction between warlords, clan structures and state agencies in

Afghanistan (Schmeidl and Karokhail 2009; Goodhand 2008) are prime examples of such

public ordering networks. The literature is however mostly silent about the impact of SSR

on security provision, public ordering and violence in hybrid political orders. This is the

objective of this paper, which looks at the case of post-‐war El Salvador from 1992 to 2004.

2. Theoretical framework

Change in the structure of the national public order regime following the end if the civil

war and SSR explains the upsurge in crime and violence that El Salvador witnessed from

the early 2000s. A public order regime is a system of control that regulates behaviours and

assigns property rights over the use of violence in a given space. It is composed of two main

elements: an authority structure and a normative framework. The degree of fragmentation

of these two components affects the regime’s quality and stability, hence influencing the

level of violence in the space it regulates. Two main hypotheses follow. First, pluralist

regimes (two or more security actors) tend to be more violent than monist regimes (one

security actor). The presence of several security actors in one space tends to feed tensions

due to potential competing claims over the control of the space and the means of violence.

Second, regimes under transition tend to be more violent than stable regimes, due to

increased competition and uncertainty between security actors.

2.1. Hypothesis 1 -‐ Pluralism and violence

The authority structure of a public order regime is determined by the number of

security actors who are willing and able to successfully claim some control over the means

of violence in order to regulate individual behaviours in a given space (Lavigne Delville

2004). Control is never complete due to its inherent costs, but some claims are stronger

than others based on the amount of economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital2 owned

2 Rather than referring to legitimacy, which is often hard to operationalize, I use the various forms of capital proposed by Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) to evaluate the level of authority of a security actor. I borrow the idea of applying these forms of capital to security actors in public ordering from the work of Bruce Baker on security architecture in Africa (B. Baker 2011). Economic capital encompasses physical and financial means; social capital refers to the role and position of an actor in the social structure of a community; cultural capital includes elements of knowledge and education; and symbolic capital is mostly related to issues of prestige and honour in the community where the security actor evolves.


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by a security actor. When powerful security actors are present in the same space and have

competing claims over the control of the regime, tensions are higher and violence tends to

increase. Considering inherent uncertainty and the fact that information is always

incomplete3 (Furubotn and Richter 2005), violence is used by security actors to signal their

intentions, reaffirm their authority, and impose their control over the people living in the

space regulated by the regime. Yet, pluralism also creates opportunities for complementary

and cooperation, especially when the authority of various security actors derives from

different forms of capital. For example, customary figures who rely on social and cultural

capital can associate themselves with gangs or militias who have economic ad symbolic

capital.

The normative framework of a public order regime is composed of one or more sets of

norms and rules that define acceptable behaviours in the space controlled by the regime. A

cohesive normative framework, generally associated to a monist regime, is composed of

only one set of norms and rules usually imposed by one security actor. As the number of

sets of norms and rules present in a regime increases, so does the fragmentation of its

normative framework. Based on the literature on legal pluralism (Alston 2012; Unruh

2003), fragmentation tends to impact negatively the quality of the public order regime and

to increase violence. Multiple sets of rules and norms in a given space create uncertainty

and facilitate opportunistic behaviours. In contexts where various forms of authority

impose competing sets of rules and norms, forum-‐shopping becomes possible since

individuals can choose under which set of rules and norms they prefer to behave (Unruh

2003; National Research Council (U.S.) 2002). Furthermore, the fragmentation of the

normative framework may create gaps where disruptive behaviours are not regulated and

undermine the quality of public order.

Consequently, pluralist public order regimes tend to be more violent than monist

regimes. The fragmentation of the authority structure and the normative framework

increases uncertainty, feeds competition, and leads to the necessity for security actors to

rely more heavily on violence to reaffirm their authority and signal their intentions. 3 Due to inherent costs associated to the establishment and the maintenance of a public order regime and the limited resources available to security actors, information is always incomplete and feeds uncertainty (Furubotn and Richter 2005, 477).


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Furthermore, the presence of multiple sets of norms and rules increase uncertainty and

favours opportunistic behaviours within the population. Hence, violence tends to be used

by security actors to regulate behaviours and punish those who transgress enforced norms

and rules.

Thus, monist public order regimes tend to be less violent than pluralist regimes.

However, in the latter case, negotiated agreements between security actors can reduce

uncertainty by facilitating information-‐sharing, providing non-‐violent means to resolve

conflict, and ultimately building trust between security actors. Violence tends to be lower

in a cohesive regime where an agreement has been reached between security actors, than

in a contentious regime, where there is not such an agreement.

2.2. Hypothesis 2 -‐ Change and transition

Like any other institutional change, regime transition tends to increase uncertainty. In

the case of public order regimes, it tends to raise violence at least temporarily. Change

occurs through two main mechanisms: internal factors and external shocks. First, a large

variety of endogenous factors can lead to a change in the structure of a public order regime,

such as competition and economic performance (Tilly 1992), redistribution of capital and

change in the balance of power between security actors (Boege et al. 2008; Libecap 1989),

or rent maximization (North 1981). Incoming information can also reduce uncertainty and

enable security actors to reach an agreement, therefore affecting positively the structure

and the quality of the regime.

External shock can also affect the structure of a public order regime and reduce

momentarily the quality of the regime. An external shock corresponds for example to the

penetration of the regime by a security actor who is potentially willing and able to claim at

least partial control. When a new security actor enters an existing public order regime,

competition occurs under two conditions. First, the challenger only penetrates a space if he

expects net benefits from regime control, or from the temporary intrusion of the space

controlled by the regime. Second, the established security actor(s) must be willing to

defend the space under its/their control. As discussed earlier, competition tends to

increase violence due to higher degree of uncertainty. Security actors need to signal their


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intentions, reaffirm their control, and clarify the norms and rules applicable, often relying

on violence and coercion to do so. Uncertainty also feeds distrust and favours opportunistic

behaviours. In any transition where security actors are willing and able to compete,

violence will rise until one of the security actors is eliminated, or an agreement is reached

between actors. Otherwise, violence will remain high, considering the contentious nature of

the regime.

2.3. SSR as an external shock

Security sector reform is an external shock. SSR implies more capable and professional

public security institutions, the expansion of the State’s control over the national territory,

the formalization of the rules and norms regulating daily life to ensure security, the respect

of good governance principles (democratization, accountability, respect of human rights,

representativeness), and local ownership. Doing so, effective SSR affects the authority

structure and the normative framework of existing public order regimes. As conceived by

the statebuilding paradigm, SSR implies a transition from pluralism to monism, in order to

impose the State’s monopoly over the means of violence, and the formalization of the

norms and rules regulating individual behaviours under the State’s authority.

The implementation of SSR has two important effects. On the one hand, it increases the

capacity and the professionalization of public security institutions, and therefore their

ability to claim control over public order regimes and compete more intensely against

private security actors. On the other hand, based on the Weberian state model, SSR

promotes the expansion of the State’s authority throughout the national territory, and thus

tends to increase the State’s willingness to claim the monopoly over the use of coercive

violence at the national level.

When the State enters a space where it was previously absent, or tries to eliminate

competing security actors in an existing pluralist regime, tensions and competition tend to

increase. During the period of transition where the State tries to impose itself as a security

actor, eliminate contenders, and formalize rules and norms in the regime, uncertainty is

higher, which feeds distrust, facilitates opportunistic behaviours, and therefore increases

violence.


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To sum up, SSR implemented in countries where the State does not retain the monopoly

over the use of coercive force and faces powerful private security actors tends to increase

violence, at least in temporarily. If the State is able to impose itself and eliminate competing

actors, upsurges in violence will be temporary. Otherwise, violence will remain high.

3. SSR and public order in post-‐war El Salvador

The early literature about peace settlement, state-‐building and security sector reform

identifies El Salvador has one of the most compelling success stories of the post-‐cold war

period (Call 2003, 827). In January 1992, facilitated by the United Nations, the right-‐wing

Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA), and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación

Nacional (FMLN), concluded the Chapultepec accords, which put an official end to 12 years

of civil war. After the 1989 intense clash in the heart of San Salvador between the armed

forces and the guerrilla, a military victory appeared impossible for either side, and

pressure from the international community led the belligerents to a negotiated settlement.

Economic liberalization, the democratization of the political game, and institutional

reforms were key elements of the peace agreement. Peceny and Stanley insist on how the

profound diffusion of liberal ideas and institutions in the country, and the adoption of

liberal practices by the elites facilitated the peace (Peceny and Stanley 2001, 157–158).

Others highlight the important role played by the international community, especially the

United Nations, in providing third-‐party guarantees (Walter 2002; Walter 1997). Yet, it

might rather be a combination of a wide variety of conditions that ensured the

sustainability of the peace process in El Salvador (Call 2002): no possible military victory,

liberal norms diffusion, third-‐party guarantees, the U.S. hegemonic influence, and change in

the structure of the international system with the end of the Cold War.

Nonetheless, the end of war and organized violence in El Salvador did not automatically

lead to the development of a positive peace (Galtung 1996). The dynamics of the war were

quickly followed by an increase in violence from 1993 to 1995, at least in terms of

homicides, as shown in figure 1:


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Figure 1. National homicide rate, El Salvador, 1993-‐20124

That first upsurge, which was attributed by many experts to the security gap following

the end of the armed conflict, resorbed in the second half of the 1990s. Yet, as homicides

decreased in an absolute manner, national homicide rates remained rather high and the

culture of violence inherited from the war and decades of authoritarianism still prevailed.

Narratives of crime and violence became part of the regular media coverage, especially

through newspapers (Moodie 2010, 2). Crime was reported on daily in a graphic manner

and gangs quickly became a central public security concern.

4 There are several limitations to the statistics presented in figure 1 and many researchers have already questioned their veracity. Yet, I still wish to present them to get a sense of the overall evolution of homicide in El Salvador after the war. Furthermore, researchers in and outside El Salvador largely use these statistics. Hence, these statistics present a narrative usually accepted by the policy and research communities.

0.00

20.00

40.00

60.00

80.00

100.00

120.00

140.00

160.00

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

homicides/100,000 population

Annual Homicide Rate, El Salvador, 1995-‐2012

Source: Fiscalía General de la Republica (1992, 1994-‐1995), Centro de Operaciones y Servicios Central de Policía Nacional Civil (1996-‐2012), El Salvador.


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Figure 2. National homicide rates, El Salvador, 2000-‐2012

Ten years after the end of the armed conflict, homicides rates started to increase again

(see figure 2). The government’s repressive discourses and strategies to address crime and

control violence failed to address the upsurge. If SSR in El Salvador managed to fill the

security gap that followed the end of the conflict, numbers and facts suggest that SSR did

not meet its ultimate objective: reducing armed violence and crime. In this section, I discuss

SSR, its progress, and its impact on security provision.

3.1. Security sector reform: a technical success, a political failure

The reform of the State’s security institutions was a corner stone of the Chapultepec

accords. Incapable of influencing the structure of the Salvadorian economy, the FMLN

prioritized the transformation of the security sector (Moodie 2010; Cruz 2006; Wood and

Boyce 1996). The Chapultepec accords included provisions for the demobilization of

combatants on each side, including paramilitary and death squads, the downsizing of the

national armed forces, civilian oversight of the military, and the limitation of their mandate

to national defence. The agreement also provided for the creation of a new police force that

would include former members of the military and the guerilla (limited to 20% of the total

0.00 10.00 20.00 30.00 40.00 50.00 60.00 70.00 80.00

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Annual Homicide Rate, El Salvador, 2000-‐2012

Source: Centro de Operaciones y Servicios Central de Policía Nacional Civil (1996-‐2012), El Salvador.


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force of the PNC for each side), but would be dominated in terms of number by new

recruits (60%), and a new intelligence service independent of the army.

Despite resistance from the armed forces and initial delays in the implementation of

these reforms, SSR as designed by the peace accords made clear progress in the five years

following the end of the conflict (Call 2003; Studemeister 2001; Salas and Chinchilla 2001;

Stanley 1999; Costa 1995). The United Nations Observation Mission to El Salvador

(ONUSAL) monitored the implementation of these reforms, which was one of the first SSR

initiatives in the post-‐cold war era. The reform process was mostly technical, focussing on

the restructuring of the public security institutions and their professionalization.

Evaluations of the process based on technical and short-‐terms objectives are therefore

positive. Such criteria include the nature of the training and formation to recruits offered

by the new police academy, the Academia Nacional de Seguridad Publica (ANSP), the

number of policemen trained and deployed, the strength of the military forces, the

limitation of the mandate and powers of the military forces to external security and

national defense, etc.

Yet, if the international community perceives the peace process and SSR in El Salvador a

success story, many Salvadorians do not (Call 2003, 827). Discussions and interviews

conducted by the author in El Salvador in 2013 reveal that many Salvadorians consider the

reforms were limited and undermined by decisions of the politic. Some even suggest that a

real and profound transformation of the security institutions has yet to be done. This

dichotomy highlights how SSR can be both a technical success and a political failure.

Several impediments have prevented a real and profound reform at the political level,

which would have really enabled the State to meet the various goals of SSR (improvement

of basic security provision, good governance of security institutions, local ownership) and

ultimately reduce violence. First, political influence guided nominations in higher ranks of

the new police organization. Most police commissioners (31) were former members of the

armed forces, while only seven came from the FMLN (The UN Secretary General 1994). The

domination of commanding positions by former military certainly questions the

independence of the young PNC and the respect of its civilian nature as prescribed by the


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peace accords. Yet, relying heavily on demobilized but seasoned military officers may have

been a way to ensure the PNC early effectiveness and quick professionalization.

Besides, the necessary judicial reforms were not undertaken, which resulted in the

inability of the justice system to ensure the rule of law in the aftermath of the war (Fariña,

Miller, and Cavallaro 2010; Popkin 2000). While the security institutions were reinforced,

especially the police, the judicial lacked the necessary resources, institutional capacity, and

political support to fulfill its function. These limitations first prevented the justice system

to prosecute effectively those accused of war crimes, and later deal in a constructive way

with raising levels of crime and violence. The weakness and the politicization of the judicial

system may in fact have contributed to gang prevalence and violence in the 2000s due to

inappropriate responses discussed later (Fariña, Miller, and Cavallaro 2010, 12).

Yet, the factor that questions the most SSR success is the overall high levels of violence

that characterize the post-‐conflict period, and the raising concerns about crime in the

country from the mid-‐1990s. Considering that the control and the reduction of violence is

the ultimate objective of SSR, the reform process in El Salvador was not successful. The

explanation for this failure derives from the technical and political evaluations of the

reform process. The SSR process in El Salvador only addressed parts of the public ordering

landscape, limiting itself to public agencies and actors. Institutions were reinforced, but the

reforms did not 1) eliminate contending security actors in order to unify the national public

order regime, nor 2) did it provide for some arrangements with private security actors who

had de facto control over many spaces through the country. Thus, SSR has had a disruptive

effect on public ordering and ultimately violence in El Salvador.

4. The ignored force: gangs as security actors

Gangs are rarely considered as actors affecting public order and security provision,

beyond being a threat to public security. Yet, In El Salvador, in peripheral spaces where the

State is either unable or unwilling to impose its monopoly over the use of coercive force,

the role of gangs as security actors has grown after the war, influencing authority

structures and the rules and norms regulating daily life in these spaces. While gangs in El

Salvador can be traced back to the 1960s, they became more active in the late 1980s in


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peripheral areas of the country’s main cities, as well as in San Salvador’ lower-‐class

neighbourhoods and downtown area (Cruz 2009, 3). Gangs have been mostly a local

phenomenon. They identify themselves to their turf rather than some larger organization

and would not maintain systematic link between local cliques5 (Cruz 2009). The war

undermined local mechanisms of governance (Wood 2008), creating space in the authority

structure of these communities that private actors, including gang, where able to fill. Once

the conflict was over, gangs remained largely in place, while the State weht through a

period of important weakness, due to the demobilization of combatants and the

transformation of the public security sector.

Street gangs known as maras6 emerged as a public security phenomenon in El Salvador

in the second half of the 1990s. Estimating the number of gang members (or pandilleros) in

El Salvador is difficult as they only started to attract the attention of researchers in the

second half of the 1990s, mostly through a research program at the Universidad

Centroamericana (UCA) in San Salvador (see for example Cruz 2001; Cruz and Portillo

1998). Furthermore, later research on gangs and violence in El Salvador refers to the study

Marcela Smutt and Lisette Jenny Miranda’s study on pandillas in El Salvador (1998) as a

first point of reference on this question.

4.1. From 1995: the MS-‐13 and 18th Street build-‐up

At the end of the 1990s, the PNC estimated there were between 10,000 and 20,000 gang

members in the country, mostly concentrated in urban zones (Cruz 2001). Furthermore,

while estimations about the number of cliques through El Salvador vary, the degree of

organization of the gangs increased importantly after the war, as local cliques started to

affiliate themselves to the MS-‐13 and the 18th Street Gang (Smutt and Miranda 1998; Cruz

5 Cliques and gangs can sometimes be used as synonyms. In the current case, especially after the introduction of the MS-‐13 and 18th Street Gang, “gang” is used to refer to the national phenomenon, while cliques defines local groups controlling specific communities or corners. Today, both the MS-‐13 and the 18th Street are composed of several cliques spread through El Salvador and who maintain more or less cordial relations. 6 While maras or mara is largely used by the media, policy analysts and researchers to designate the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-‐13) and the 18th Street Gang, I prefer the generic term of gang, or its Spanish equivalent, pandilla. In El Salvador, mara gained a negative connotation through the years. Gang members will not use the term to describe themselves, or will use it in a negative way (“Yo soy marero” means “I am fucked up”). Besides, the term mara is associated to the MS-‐13, where the M is the abbreviation of mara, and is therefore mostly rejected by the 18th Street gang.


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and Portillo 1998, 199). By the end of the 1990s, most cliques through El Salvador were

associated to one gang or the other.

Three main factors contributed to increase the strength, the degree of organization, and

the influence of gangs on the daily life of many Salvadorians. First, despite the opening of

the political space made possible by the Chapultepec accords, the post-‐war

democratization process did not concern all Salvadorians. It targeted mostly members of

the FMLN, and the integration in the elite circles of the left-‐wing leaders. Politics and

security remained mostly driven by and for elites, leaving out most of the population.

Peripheral and marginalized communities won very little from the years of war and the

following peace, which both had a disruptive effect on local governance mechanisms.

Therefore, at the end of the conflict, gangs had an important power of attraction based on

their image, offering solidarity, friendship, identity and prestige in peripheral communities

where public good provision by the State was limited (Wolfe 2011; Cruz 2009).

Second, the American immigration policy plays a key role in explaining growing gang

membership from the mid 1990s (Wolfe 2011; Cruz 2009; Zilberg 2004). Over 12 years,

the conflict displaced more than a million of Salvadorians; approximately 200,000 left El

Salvador, provoking an exodus mostly toward the United States (Moodie 2010). The end of

the Salvadorian, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan civil wars, as well as a realignment of the

international system after the fall of the Soviet Union led to a change in U.S. security and

immigration policy towards Central America. The Illegal Immigration Reform and

Immigrant Responsibility Act, passed in 1995, “established that any alien who was serving a

longer-‐than-‐one-‐year sentence would be subject to removal from the U.S. after completing

the full prison term” (Cruz 2009, 3–4; Thale and Falkenburger 2006). While the returning

Salvadorians were not all already gangs members in the U.S., they brought with them the

knowledge, the influence, and the cultural points of reference of Los Angeles’ latinos street

gangs, the MS-‐13 and the 18th Street. Salvadorians with little ties to their country of origin

walked into marginalized neighbourhoods on the outskirt of El Salvador’s main cities

where the State’s presence was weak. Gangs, old and new, often represented the only, or

the most visible, social structure to belong to. At first, sense of belonging, solidarity, and

friendship were the main elements explaining attraction for gangs. As gangs membership


17

and control over communities expended, power, social visibility, and access to drug and

money became equally or even more important factors in explaining the gang membership

and recruitment (Wolfe 2011; Santacruz Giralt and Concha-‐Eastman 2001).

Prison segregation of gangs along affiliation to either the MS-‐13 or the 18th Street gang

is a third factor that reinforced gang structure and was key in the development of nation-‐

wide gangs. Douglas Moreno, former director of the prison system and public security vice-‐

minister, acknowledges that the isolation of each gang in different prisons worsened the

gang issue in El Salvador in the late 1990s (interview with Douglas Moreno 2013).

Imprisonment based on affiliation rather than location enabled cliques through the country

to develop relationships and ties inside the walls that were later maintained outside. It also

reinforced the animosity between the gangs, leading to a reinforcement of collective

identity and further polarization between the MS-‐13 and the 18th Street. Furthermore,

considering the jails limited resources, gangs were able to take control of prisons’ activities

and rule them like their own territory. In a sense, prisons became national headquarters for

the gangs, enabling local and regional leaders to coordinate and share information. In this

context, the repressive policies by the State adopted by the successive ARENA governments

to put in jail any individual affiliated to a gang only contributed to worsen the issue, feeding

crime and violence in El Salvador.

These three elements have contributed to the expansion of gangs through El Salvador

from the mid 1990s. It also reinforced gangs’ ability to claim control over communities and

neighbourhoods where public goods’ provision by the State was limited, especially

regarding security. Furthermore, the civil war and its direct aftermath deeply affected the

social fabric of the Salvadorian society, as well as local governance mechanisms, creating

some room for cliques to take roots at the local level and gain control over communities, at

least partially. Returning Salvadorians with little resources and ties to El Salvador brought

with them practices and referents associate to gang culture in the U.S, transforming local

gang dynamics. It also created a recruitment pool of young men for local gangs, often with

prison and criminal experience, who had already experienced marginalization and

clandestinity. Finally, inadequate strategies by the State to deal with gangs only further

reinforced their structure.


18

5. Public order regimes in post-‐war El Salvador: change and pluralism

The war and the following peace process deeply affected the production of public order

in El Salvador. A series of external shocks (war, demobilisation of combatants, introduction

and growth of new public and private security actors) successively destabilized the

national and local public order regimes. SSR was an important external shock as it sought

to increase the capacity and the professionalism of public security institutions, as well as to

expend state authority throughout the national territory. Based on the state-‐building

approach, SSR aims ultimately at ensuring that the State is the only security provider,

imposing a monist public order regime at the national level. In El Salvador, it was always

assumed that, once the FMLN was demobilized, the State would become the only security

actor. Gangs and other mechanisms of local governance were kept out the picture.

Technical reforms improved the capacity and the ability of public security institutions

to expend their control over the national territory, and provide security. Yet, without the

necessary political will to ensure effective security provision through the national space,

and the required policies to successfully claim monopoly over the use of coercive force, the

State was not able to transform the structure of the national public order regime. The

delays in the deployment of the new PNC and, most importantly, the selectivity of security

provision left many spaces out of the State’s reach.

At the same time, the security and the authority gaps created by the end of civil war, in

addition to a series of social and economic factors discussed earlier, facilitated gangs’

activities and territorial control in peripheral spaces where public security institutions

were unable to regulate individual behaviours. After 1995, once SSR was well underway,

the continued inability of the State to impose itself as the main/only security actor and

eliminate contenders played a crucial role in further strengthening and consolidating

gangs’ structure and control over marginalized communities and neighbourhoods. The

initial lack of opposition from public security institutions, and gangs’ ability to access guns

and hence use force (Santacruz Giralt and Concha-‐Eastman 2001) certainly put them in a

favourable position to impose themselves as security actors, and regulate behaviours and

daily activities of many Salvadorians.


19

As the gang issues gained momentum in the media and became the main threat to

public security in the late 1990s, the Calderon (1994-‐1999) and Flores (1999-‐2004)

administrations, both from the political party ARENA, adopted repressive and aggressive

discourses advocating for gang elimination (Fariña, Miller, and Cavallaro 2010). Yet, sound

public security strategies and policies to resolve the gang problem, by gaining control over

spaces claimed by cliques to preventing their consolidation and expansion, did not stem

from the rhetoric adopted by these governments. The segregation between the MS-‐13 and

the 18th Street Gang in the prison system, as well as the adoption of the Mano Dura plan in

2003, only worsened the problem (Fariña, Miller, and Cavallaro 2010). Under the Mano

Dura, massive arrests and punctual crackdowns on communities controlled by gangs fed

the vicious circle of violence that characterized interactions between gangs and public

security institutions, leading to contentious public order regimes in many spaces and at the

national level. The alternative, reaching an agreement with private security actors to

control violence and improve the quality of public order, was only considered almost a

decade later by the Funes administration. Yet, if a truce was well brokered in March 2012

between the MS-‐13 and the 18th Street Gang, the Salvadorian government never publically

recognized its role in the negotiations that took place in the maximum prison of

Zacatecoluca, known as Zacatraz, from 2011.

Disruptive interactions between reinforced public security institutions and gangs, due

to the State’s inability to eliminate contending security actors or negotiate some form of

arrangement with them, have fostered violence in El Salvador. In that context, the high

levels of violence in the post-‐war period strongly suggest that the State does not hold the

monopoly on the use of coercive force through its territory. While gang activity in itself

certainly explains part of the violence, interaction between private and public security

actors also account for a large portion of the violence. The fact that the State did not either

eliminate gangs or strategize to reduce the disruptive effect of their activities on

marginalized communities has contributed to the culture of violence and the severe levels

of homicides that have undermined social, economic and political development in El

Salvador since 1992. SSR programming, isolated from the post-‐conflict context, did not

provided for the necessary tools and strategies to include non-‐state actors and take into


20

consideration local mechanisms of public ordering, or to impose by force the monopoly of

the State over the use of coercive force.

6. Conclusion

As conceived by the statebuilding paradigm, SSR tends to have a disruptive effect on the

production of public order in spaces where different security actors with competing claims.

By increasing public security institutions capacity and expending the State’s control over

its territory without taking into consideration already existing public ordering

mechanisms, SSR tends to undermine rather than improve security for many communities.

From a strictly strategic point of view in a context of inherent uncertainty, SSR tends to

increase violence since it creates tensions and competition, and generates ambiguity

regarding which rules and norms are applicable in a given space. The disruptive effect of

SSR can be mitigated by the State through two main strategies: eliminate competing

security actors in order to impose a monist public order regime, or reach an agreement

with other security actors to establish a cohesive pluralist regime that would control

violence. These two strategies clarify the rules of the game and reduce uncertainty.

In El Salvador, SSR was designed and implemented based on the premise that the State

already held the monopoly over the use of coercive force once the demobilization process

was over. The peace accords and the following reform process only took into consideration

part of the security and public ordering landscape. Despite the role played by local

governances mechanisms during the war in the administration of communities and the

growing influence of gangs in peripheral spaces, SSR remained focused on technical aspects

and only concerned public institutions. Therefore, once public security institutions

expended their authority, they faced existing public order regimes where private actors

where willing and able to confront them to defend their claims. Furthermore, the absence

of a sound and sustained strategy to expend the State’s territorial control and face the

growing gang problem only further worsen the violence problem.

I do not argue that SSR in itself is a sufficient condition to reduce violence and enable

political, social, and economic development. Inclusive and holistic SSR is however a

necessary prerequisite. In order to succeed in the long run, SSR needs to take into account


21

the deeply political nature of public order and security provision. It is necessary to look

beyond the Weberian State model and find more fruitful strategies to reduce violence,

improve security and ultimately facilitate development.

Even if SSR takes into account the whole public ordering picture, it may well increase

violence in the short and medium terms due to competition and the disfunctionalities

associated to pluralist public order regimes. Yet, bringing in private actors might be less

damaging for public ordering and the daily life of the population than to ignore or confront

them without the necessary resources and political will. In sum, I suggest that, by

reconceptualising SSR and its impact on public ordering in hybrid political orders, we can

better understand crime and ordinary violence in post-‐conflict countries and so-‐called

fragile states, and identify more effective strategies to improve the daily life of many

communities.


22

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Documents

When Security Sector Reform Misfires: The Remaking of Public Order in El Salvador