(San Salvador) Nearly 10,000 soldiers and police were deployed at dawn on Saturday around Soyapango, on the outskirts of San Salvador, as part of the war against gangs launched in March by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
“From now on, the commune of Soyapango is completely surrounded. 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 agents surrounded the city” of 242,000 inhabitants, located east of the capital, President Bukele wrote on his Twitter account.
The president announced on November 23 that towns would be surrounded so that the military could search homes one by one and arrest gang members. Soyapango is the first city where this procedure is applied.
Soldiers and police were stationed from dawn on all the access streets to the city, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving without being checked. The security forces are in charge of arresting one by one, “all the gang members who are still there”, declared President Bukele.
A few hours after the start of the operation, the Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Security, Gustavo Villatoro, announced that “twelve gang members have already been arrested, all with criminal records”.
Military and police vehicles roamed the streets, while drones hovered over the area looking for gang members. Forty “checkpoints” have been set up in the municipality of Soyapango, said Salvadoran Defense Minister René Merino.
“It surprised us, they ask us for our identity papers to verify our home, but it’s okay, it’s for our safety,” said a resident, Guadalupe Perez, 53, to AFP.
The police also stop the buses in order to check each of the passengers.
“Citizens have nothing to fear and can continue their activities in peace,” reassured President Bukele. This operation is launched against criminals and not against honest citizens”.
The encirclement of towns in order to “extract” gang members from them is part of the security plan launched by the government. “People see that the measures taken are giving results,” argued criminologist Ricardo Sosa, adding that “it is not surprising that they mainly support these operations, because they themselves have suffered from the gangs”.
Salvadorans are 75.9% to support the state of emergency and 9 out of 10 believe that crime has dropped, according to a survey by the Central American University (UCA).
Some 58,000 suspected members of criminal gangs, the dreaded “maras”, have been arrested in El Salvador since the proclamation at the end of March by President Bukele of the “war” against these gangs which reign terror in the country.
To cope with the influx of detainees, the prison administration undertook to build a gigantic prison for 40,000 suspected criminals in Tecoluca, a rural region in the center of the country.
Soyapango has for years been considered an insecure town due to the presence of gangs. However, the measures applied by the Bukele government have resulted in “a huge improvement in security”, said Mayor Nercy Montano earlier this week.
Introduced at the end of March after a wave of 87 assassinations attributed to the “maras”, the state of emergency allows arrests without a warrant, raising criticism from human rights organizations.
It was extended by Congress until mid-December.