Police: 11 dead after attackers set fire to bus in El Salvador

[RamboLiberal]

Source: CNN

At least 11 passengers were killed and eight others injured Sunday night when assailants set fire to a mass transit bus in San Salvador, El Salvador, police said.

Witnesses said people on motorcycles intercepted the bus, doused it with gasoline and closed the doors with the passengers inside.

Authorities tried to break windows to help people escape from the burning bus, El Salvador's National Civil Police said. Emergency crews transported 13 passengers to a nearby hospital.

Ten minutes later, a group of attackers opened fire on another bus blocks away, police said, killing an 11-year-old girl and the bus conductor.

Police said they suspected the incidents were linked, and that gang members were involved in the attacks. They said they had not ruled out the possibility that the buses were targeted as a reprisal against drivers who had not paid a gang-imposed toll.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/06/21/el.salvador.bus.attack/index.html?hpt=T2

[Swede]

1. Sickening beyond belief.

For fucking money.

[Judi Lynn]

2. From US Funded Death Squads to L.A-Bred Maras

From US Funded Death Squads to L.A-Bred Maras
The Rise of Transnational Salvadoran Youth Gangs

By Kelly Richter, University of Chicago

On March 15, 2005, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrest of 103 key members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, otherwise know as MS-13. The crackdown targeted the top MS-13 networks nationwide: Los Angeles, the Washington DC area, New York City, Long Island, Newark, Baltimore and Miami. These arrests indicate a future of ensuing mass deportations of MS-13 members from the country as part of “Operation Community Shield,” a new, multi-agency initiative launched this January.

Salvadoran gangs, of which the notorious MS-13 is the largest, have established a significant presence in the US over the past two decades. The gangs originated in Los Angeles during the early 1980’s amongst Salvadoran youth fleeing civil war. They have since developed a pan-Latino membership and expanded into East Coast cities and American suburbia over the past decade, with a national membership that numbers tens of thousands in over 30 states.

Over the past decade, the phenomenon has taken on transnational dimensions. Salvadoran American gang affiliates deported from the US are arriving on the violent streets of urban El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, and most recently in rural Central America, the Mexican borderlands, Canada and other Latin American countries. Gang membership in Central America has grown rapidly – current estimates suggest up to 30,000 members in El Salvador with 20,000 more in Honduras and Guatemala. While the problem of Salvadoran youth gangs has been long-standing, the recent rapid proliferation and the intense US federal response to the phenomenon this year are without precedence.

Early this year, the FBI listed dismantling MS-13 as a top priority of its organized crime unit and began coordinating “Operation Community Shield.” The Pentagon’s South Command has declared transnational gangs like MS-13 a top threat to Central American stability. This past March furthermore, the Homeland Security Department began coordinating intelligence and training with Central American law enforcement to directly combat the gangs, with plans to exchange federal agents across borders.

Context: US Intervention in El Salvador

The current Salvadoran-American gang phenomenon is, in part, traceable to the long and tainted history of US intervention in Central America. During the Cold War, Central America served as a nexus for the projection of American fears over the rise of the “Left,” especially after the Sandinistas rose to power in Nicaragua in 1979 and President Reagan, a zealous anti-communist, came into office in 1981. Prior to and during the 1980’s, the United States openly and covertly bankrolled and trained repressive anti-communist military regimes and insurgency movements in the region. While tales of the Iran Contra scandal in Nicaragua have become urban lore, much less is remembered about US intervention in El Salvador.

El Salvador, roughly the size of Massachusetts with a population of 6.5 million, was the largest hemispheric recipient of US military aide during the Cold War – including over four billion dollars during the 1980’s. With a legacy of stark socio-economic inequality, repressive right-wing rule and democratic struggle, El Salvador reached a breaking point in the late 1970’s. Government repression came to a violent apex in systemic efforts to eradicate leftists and alleged sympathizers. Official military efforts and paramilitary “death squad” operations claimed some 30,000 victims by the mid-1980’s. The violence fostered the coalescence of leftist groups and the military mobilization of the Marxist Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN) guerilla insurgency, which led the country into a full-scale civil war.

During the official war, which lasted twelve years and claimed an estimated 100,000 lives, military human rights abuses were widespread, including torture, forced “disappearance,” and child soldiering. The FMLN also engaged in abuses, though to a significantly lesser degree. In light of the violations (including murders of US citizens), the Carter administration wavered on aid to the military junta but ultimately restored funding. When Reagan came to power, funding of the Salvadoran military dramatically increased, often against congressional opposition, and the US continued to extensively fund the Salvadoran military until the 1992 ceasefire.

The early 1980’s saw a massive influx of Salvadoran refugees and illegal immigrants entering the US to escape death squads, the military, the FMLN, economic desolation, and other trappings of guerilla war. However, the United States refused to acknowledge the extent and often, existence, of a humanitarian crisis. Salvadorans were categorically denied amnesty in favor of refugees from communist countries. While these policies were successfully challenged in the early 1990’s, the status of Salvadorans in the US has remained precarious.

The wartime cultures of violence and impunity in El Salvador have not fully subsided and new waves of undocumented immigrants continue to arrive in the US. Since the end of the war, the country has maintained one of the highest murder rates in the world, a problem only compounded by a recent surge in American-style gang activity. Of the roughly two million Salvadorans in the US today – nearly 20% of the total global Salvadoran population – many remain undocumented. The threat of deportation has bred a perceived inability to contact law enforcement authorities in US immigrant communities, creating an optimal atmosphere for criminal gang culture to proliferate.

More:
http://www.campusprogress.org/features/316/from-us-funded-death-squads-to-la-bred-maras/index.php