Flest mord i förhållande till folkmängd – ”en pandemi”

Organized crime in El Salvador is a serious problem. Sufficient efforts to understand or deal with this phenomenon in this small Central American country have not been made. There are an estimated 25,000 gang members at large in El Salvador with another 9,000 in prison. The most well-known gangs, called maras in colloquial Salvadoran Spanish, are Mara Salvatrucha and their rivals Calle 18; maras are hunted by death squads including Sombra Negra. Newer rivals also include the rising mara, The Rebels 13. Criminal youth gangs run lives in El Salvador with an estimation of at least 60,000 young people belonging to gangs. Today, El Salvador experiences some of the highest murder rates in the Latin America; it is also considered an epicenter of the gang crisis, along with Guatemala and Honduras. As of March 2012, El Salvador has seen a 40% drop in crime due to what the Salvadoran government called a gang truce. In early 2012, there were on average of 16 killings per day but in late March that number dropped to fewer than five per day and on April 14, 2012 for the first time in over three years there were no killings in the country. Overall, there were 411 killings in the month of January 2012 but in March the number was 188, more than a 40% reduction in crime. All of this has been happening while crime in neighboring Honduras has risen to an all-time high.