Gangs of El Salvador

2015, Crime  -   7 Comments
6.97
12345678910
Ratings: 6.97/10 from 61 users.

The cancer of gang violence has intensified to a horrifying degree in El Salvador, and the government has entered into an increasingly bloodthirsty war in an effort to contain it. Law enforcement has deemed all gang members and their associates as terrorists, and this reclassification has the potential to empower even greater fear, casualties, injustice and societal destabilization. The viability of this conflict, and the moral considerations which surround it, serves as the basis for the new documentary from Vice News titled Gangs of El Salvador.

The statistics are harrowing. In a country of just under six million people, one murder occurs every hour, and 11 percent of the population have connections to the gangs either as members or citizens who are reliant upon them for their livelihood.

Two major gangs rule the streets of El Salvador, and their reign of violence is merciless and extreme. These gangs are divided in their quests to control territory, but united in a shared war against police. This nefarious intent has expressed itself in a scourge of police station car bombings, and specific factions of gangs whose roles have been relegated to law enforcement death squads. While the police's declaration of war on the gangs is understandable given the nature of the threats against them, and the vast majority of the public regard it as a necessary step, others believe it has only worked in further stoking the flames of chaos and bloodshed.

VICE News correspondent Danny Gold boldly ventures out with law enforcement during several of their nightly raids, during which the oppressive threat of impending violence hangs thick in the air. That same atmosphere of dread permeates the streets of El Salvador as Gold struggles to connect with ordinary citizens who are too frightened to comment on the carnage they must contend with on a daily basis. Others refuse to speak out against an organization that provides them with more lucrative opportunities than any legitimate industries operating in the country.

El Salvador is clearly losing its identity to a widespread criminal element. Gangs of El Salvador is a haunting exploration of the fight to get it back.

More great documentaries

7 Comments / User Reviews

  1. edgard ta

    A product of a war created by CIA . Now all Latin American paying the price and who is more terrorized than America that goes all over the world to kill innocents children's.The solution to this problem will b sharing with this idiots gangsters the government in El Salvador the most corrupted in the world is playing a role that CIA has telling them to follow. If USA not doing nothing soon will B a serials attacks to their people in foreign soil from this beasts gangs.

  2. Al Gore

    Just hang these punks an eye for an eye

  3. Luis Mejia

    why they are goinmg to be prosecuted?
    Gang Members do not hesitate to kill whoever they want, why are military, or police will hesitate or think in killing this guys when they get a chance?
    maybe because the military, police, government-political or even congress are involve in this.
    Is that why Gang members has so much power and they are doing what they want?
    El Salvador Jails are FULL of this guys, burn the all the facilities where they are so we can finished this nightmare.
    Let me ask this why nicaraguia is not involve in this while the rest of Central America has MS13 on the sttreets.
    this is like epidemic.
    KILLING all they deserve it.
    They are killing El Salvador Society including Children, Woman, old people that worked all there life to retired for what to get here and get kill by this CULEROS.
    Come on where is the USA to help?
    they just came to EL Salvador to put the dollar?
    this is totally BS.
    Killing all including all involved, if the president is involved then putt him in JAIL.

  4. Ann

    Gangs are terrorists! More Americans die as a result of gang violence than we lost in 9/11 each year---yet we spend trillions on the war machine to perpetuate violence in countries so contaminated w/ biological & chemical weapons (That's right, we are USING WMD's against them!) they are walking dead men anyway and no soldiers should be sent to fight them. Approx. 75% of our prison population is made up of gang members---mostly foreign who should be sent back and imprisoned in their own country (and shot if they try to re-enter ours. Of course, that would make it confusing for border control to distinguish them from the CIA bringing drugs across the border.) But, bottom line, it is gang members who prevent regular working Americans from living in certain neighborhoods or even driving through areas of town without fearing for their safety. I don't worry about Terry Taliban spraying my car with gunfire and killing my children. But drive down the wrong street and gang members will do it in a heartbeat. Anyone who exhibits affiliation with gangs, no matter what age, should be prosecuted as a terrorist, treated as a terrorist (which eliminates all that unnecessary worry of violating their "rights,") and shipped off to Gitmo if they aren't one of the millions of anchor babies/illegals who can be sent back to their country.

  5. monti

    All of this is created by the puppet masters,(rothchilds,rockafeller,builderbergs,nwo). It is their m/o in which they have manifested for centuries. History will repeat itself when those in power are absolutely curropted by the power they will never cease to yield.

  6. Adam

    This documentary was a very interesting watch, it is easy to see that the interviewer is biased against the gangs (who can blame him really), but he does make the effort of at least showing the argumentative positions of gang members and the gang as a whole.

    As sam said there is a very sad level of history repeating a violent cycle in this situation, in a country that so "recently" ended a civil war based around similar reasoning. Even sadder is the final solution response that people in the area feel they have been pushed to when it is as the police officer described "the poor fighting the poor".

    I think one of the scariest messages within the documentary was the idea of terrorism (and anti terrorist ideology and legislation) being applied to the issue within a domestic context and unto the poor and disenfranchised who have been given little or no options but to join one side of the fence as a soldier or worker (for the government or the gangs, or both).

  7. sam

    Seems like the dis-enfranchised form their own groups so they can feel better about themselves and not get bullied by other dis-enfranchised groups so they won't getted bullied...ad nauseum.