To visit her father in the Sal-vadorian community of El Pepeto, Karla García used to run a fearsome gauntlet of gangs and guns.
The two streets separating their homes were a bullet-pocked no man’s land where members of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18-Sureños groups fought deadly battles for control.
“It was really dangerous. They’d have shootouts just outside,” said the 40-year-old from Soyapango, a satellite city east of El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador.
Yet on a recent Saturday afternoon, García sat in front of her father’s greenhouse with her family and there was not a criminal to be seen, nor a gunshot to be heard.
“They’ve completely vanished,” she said of the street gangs who for years ruled the area with an iron fist. Nearby walls – once spattered with the black insignia of the crime bosses – had been painted white by the government to symboli se a new era of peace.
El Pepeto, a working class warren of single-storey homes, is far from the only mara-dominated neighbourhood in El Salvador to be experiencing once unthinkable days of calm.
After a highly controversial yearlong “war” against El Salvador’s notorious gangs waged by the country’s populist leader Nayib Bukele, similar scenes are playing out across a Central American country once considered one of the most violent places on Earth .
Even staunch government critics such as the trailblazing news outlet El Faro have conceded that Bukele’s crackdown – which has seen more than 64,000 people jailed and slashed the murder rate – has produced “extraordinary change” for Salvadorians .
Bu hikaye The Guardian Weekly dergisinin March 03, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye The Guardian Weekly dergisinin March 03, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Starlink's conquest of the Amazon leaves Brazil in a dilemma
The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from it into the caiman-inhabited waters below.
Dalai Lama's mountain town feels the strain of tourist boom
SUVs and saloon cars pass slowly along McLeod Ganj's narrow one-way Jogiwara Road, blaring horns at pedestrians and scooter riders and playing loud music.
'I am all the world' The brutal rule of a West Bank settler
Palestinians tell ofblacklisted Yakov's reign across the Jabal Salman valley and heisjust one of many violent bosses
Stormy waters New flashpoint emerges in South China Sea dispute
Hopes that tensions in the South China Sea might ease have been short lived.
'Justice delayed' Why trust in public inquiries to bring closure is fading
After the final report of the Grenfell fire inquiry was published, Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the blaze, said: \"We did not ask for this inquiry... It's delayed the justice my family deserves.\"
Celeriac soup with almond pangrattato
I'm not ashamed to say that as soon as September hits, my stick blender comes out. Just as I embrace salads when the clocks go forward in the UK, I wholeheartedly throw myself into soup season once the summer holidays end. Autumn is approaching in the northern hemisphere and I'm ready with my ladle. Celeriac is one of my favourite soup heroes, because it gives the creamiest, silkiest finish with little effort. You don't have to make the almond pangrattato, but it is a wonderful addition.
Are smoke signals telling me to make an oil change in the kitchen?
Should you that is, not can you) cook with extra-virgin olive oil? Antonio, Atlanta, Georgia, US
Going underground
A darkly humorous encounter between an American spy-cop and the members ofan eco-commune she is hired to infiltrate
All work and no play
Hard Graft, a powerfulnew London exhibition, focuses onworkers’ exploitation, from the ruined hands ofa washerwoman to mothers forced to sell their bodies
What the princess and the shaman tell us about hereditary privilege
It should have been an Instagram-perfect wedding image, but it turned out to be something more embarrassing.