LATIN AMERICA : Gang Truce Gets Boost From Salvadoran City

Father Andres Alvarenga has watched in horror as the teenagers in his poor parish return from the United States covered with tattoos, sniffing glue and ready to kill other young men for little or no reason.

As in most Salvadoran cities, this country’s two major gangs--M-18 and Salvatrucha--attack each other and terrorize their neighbors regularly on the dusty streets of Alvarenga’s San Martin parish, 11 miles east of the capital.

Or they did until this week.

With support from the city government, after months of negotiations, Alvarenga persuaded 130 representatives of the two gangs to sign a truce Monday, promising to stop fighting each other and to allow free access to gang turf.

In return, the city government pledged to donate uniforms and equipment for sports and to set up workshops for teaching trades and helping gang members reenter society.

“They do not have trades because most drop out of school,” said Alvarenga, 71. “They get no support at home, so they are intolerable in the classroom.”

This is the second such community-sponsored gang truce struck here in recent months, as local officials and parish priests try to stop the spread of violence. A similar treaty was signed in the gang-filled, working class suburb of Soyapango known as “April 22.”

The truces attempt to address the root causes of El Salvador’s gang problems. Unable to find jobs, young people raised in the violence of the 12-year civil war that ended in 1992 have become criminals. An influx of Salvadoran gang members deported from the United States, particularly Los Angeles, have organized them into gangs.

“This is the result of war and family disintegration,” said San Martin Mayor Valentin Castro. “We have to find new solutions.”

Similar efforts in Southern California, where many of the gangs originated, met with little success.

A truce among Orange County gangs four years ago fell apart soon after gang members who had advocated peace were either arrested on drug charges or killed.

More recently, a prison-based organized crime group known as the Mexican Mafia tried to impose a truce on gangs in Los Angeles’ Rampart district--probably to make heroin sales more efficient, authorities say. “For a while, the truce was working well, but it has been broken several times,” said Los Angeles Police Det. John Curiel. “It’s total gang warfare again.”

Salvadoran police are equally skeptical about the possibilities of success here.

On Good Friday, two weeks after the Soyapango truce was signed, police were called out to the April 22 neighborhood to break up a fight between gangs, said Sgt. Francisco Luna. They confiscated several homemade guns and arrested three gang members.

“I hope it works,” said Officer Amanda Valladares of San Martin. “But these kids are drug addicts. They are not in their right minds. They do not even listen to their mothers.”