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THE BIG LIE STRATEGY: LINKING GANGS TO TERRORISM IN EL SALVADOR.

Article Excerpt
The gang problem with which Central American countries have been dealing during the past couple of years appears now to have become an international war on gangs with the entry of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and at least a dozen US police forces into the discourse. The US forces met with their Central American counterparts and politicians at the Primera Conferencia Internacional del Combate a las Pandillas in San Salvador on Feb. 21-22. The two-day meeting was called to order by El Salvador's President Antonio Saca, who won election with a platform plank calling for the harshest of measures against gang-affiliated youth, who now number about 10,000 in this, the smallest of the region's nations.

Saca sketched the broad outlines of the situation in his opening remarks, telling his audience, "The problem of the gangs does not belong only to El Salvador. I consider that the phenomenon has become a regional problem, coming from the United States, Mexico, and Central America."

Police statistics put the number of youths in these organizations at about 60,000 regionwide, with Salvadoran gangs Mara 18 (M-18) and Salvatrucha (MS-13) as the main organizations.

Saca tried to tie the gangs to the wider, and better funded, war on terrorism, but that argument has fallen from favor for lack...

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