# Infiltration of Security Forces Mark of El Salvador Gangs' Capabilities



## Disir (May 9, 2014)

> Officials in El Salvador have reported gang members are attempting to infiltrate the country's security forces, indicating a growing level of sophistication that potentially supports the idea they have used the ongoing truce to bolster their power.
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> Twenty-six gang members have been caught trying to infiltrate the armed forces so far this year, according to Security Minister Ricardo Perdomo. The minister suggested gangs sought to enter the police and military in order to steal weapons and uniforms, obtain military intelligence and receive training, reported La Prensa Grafica.
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Read the rest here: 
Infiltration of Security Forces Mark of El Salvador Gangs' Capabilities - InSight Crime | Organized Crime in the Americas

I'd say it is common. In fact, it's no different from gangs or the old mafia putting someone through law school.


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## waltky (Nov 7, 2014)

Sexual violence rampant in El Salvador...

*El Salvador’s gang members target women and girls*
_Fri, Nov 07, 2014 - In a nation terrorized by gangsters, it is left to the dead to break the silence on sexual violence._


> Rather, to the bodies of women and girls pulled from clandestine graves, raped, battered and sometimes cut to pieces. They attest to the abuse committed by members of street gangs who take girlfriends, discard them and then deliver them to group rape and murder.  Those who gather statistics say there are no reliable numbers on sexual violence in El Salvador. Threats prevent many from reporting attacks. Others who have grown up amid abuse might not recognize rape as a crime. Still others flee to other nations.
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> US immigration lawyers say there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women and girls from Central America seeking asylum in the US after having been kidnapped and raped.  “We are seeing an exponential increase,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, a lawyer with Catholic Charities in Los Angeles. “It’s the evolution of gang warfare ... It’s what we see in other war situations around the world where rape is used as a weapon.”
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## waltky (Sep 22, 2015)

Salvadoran gangs terrorize teachers, schoolchildren...

*Schoolchildren, Teachers at Mercy of Gangs in Violent El Salvador*
_ September 22, 2015 — Veteran Salvadoran head teacher Francisco Zelada is used to working in the shadow of death threats and violence, part of the rising tide of gang violence in El Salvador that has carved up city neighborhoods and made targets of teachers and children._


> Zelada, who runs a small school in Planes de Mariona in the capital's northern suburbs, says that in the past two years he has received several death threats from gang members, some sent by text message, others a menacing voice on his mobile phone.  "The last death threat I received in March said: 'We'll shoot you while you're driving your car'. We're afraid. Some schools and the areas around them are totally controlled by gangs," Zelada told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview in the capital, San Salvador.  "We fear reprisals from the gangs. Any decision you take and they don't like, like disciplinary action against a pupil, can bring a threat," said Zelada, who also heads a teacher's union, SIMEDUCO.
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> Extortion by gangs is another serious problem for children in schools, an official from the charity World Vision said.  There has been a surge of murders in El Salvador, one of the world's most violent countries, since the breakdown a year ago of a 2012 gang truce between the Barrio 18 criminal group and their rivals, the Mara Salvatrucha.  In August alone 907 murders were recorded across the country - the highest toll in any month since the 1980-1992 civil war.
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## Unkotare (Sep 30, 2015)

That country (and neighboring ones) are really experiencing outrageously bad times.


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