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ABSTRACT
This article considers the adaptation of international peace mediation to the post-war context of urban gang-related violence. The 2012 OAS-brokered San Salvador gang truce represented a shift from the management of ‘criminal’ actors through liberal security measures and narrow pragmatic criminal pacts towards a new social inclusion strategy based on local political participation, social justice and programmes to address the socio-economic causes of gang-related violence. Mediators failed to engage key interested non-armed actors who reside outside ‘criminal’ gang-held territories, with the result that the truce lacked legitimacy at the city level. Inclusive national-level engagement is particularly important in the post-war democratic Central American city because gangs play a key role in shaping urban space and urban politics. The article depicts the politics of inclusion of gangs in peace mediation as part of a city-wide debate regarding the merits of the dominant liberal/pragmatic inclusion strategy versus ‘social’ inclusion. The spatial and discursive segregation of San Salvador into ‘political’ and ‘criminal’ realms promotes a preference for liberal security discourse and the exclusive local truce process that undermined the ‘social’ truce. City-wide inclusion is required to overcome the politics-crime divide and provide a platform to unite social justice advocates.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Editors and two anonymous reviewer for their comments and guidance on earlier drafts of this paper.
Notes
1. Cruz and Duran-Martinez, “Hiding Violence, Criminal Pacts,” 205.
2. O’Donnell, “On the State,” 1362.
3. Whitfield, “Mediating Criminal Violence,” 2.
4. Lanz, “Who Gets a Seat?” 277.
5. Paffenholz, “Inclusivity in Peace Processes,” 14.
6. Ibid.
7. Lanz, “Who Gets a Seat?” 275.
8. Ibid.
9. Van Santen, “Local Peace Mediation,” 1.
10. Wennmann, “Negotiating Exits,” 255.
11. Blackwell, War on Crime, 222.
12. Ibid., 143.
13. Ibid.
14. Colak and Pearce, “Securing the Global City,” 201.
15. Moser and McIwaine, “New Frontiers,” 333.
16. Lessing, “Logics of Violence,” 1487.
17. Bailey and Taylor, “Evade, Corrupt or Confront?” 3.
18. Cruz and Duran-Martinez, “Hiding Violence, Criminal Pacts,” 207.
19. Cruz, “The Politics of Negotiating,” 5.
20. Blackwell, War on Crime, 7.
21. Moser and McIwaine, “New Frontiers,” 8; Rodgers, “State as a Gang,” 315; Rodgers, “Gangs, Violence and Social Order,” 267; Davis, “Fragmented Sovereignty,” 37; Arias, “Criminal Governance,” 293; and Felbab-Brown, “Peace-keepers Among Poppies,” 100.
22. Locke, “State fragility,” 76.
23. Willis, “The Killing Consensus,” 25.
24. Van Santen, “Combating Organised Crime,” 311.
25. Duran-Martinez, “Drugs Around the Corner,” 3.
26. Van Santen, “Combating Organised Crime,” 313.
27. Cruz and Duran Martinez, “Hiding Criminal Pacts,” 205.
28. Jutersonke, Muggah and Rogers, “Urban Violence,” 375.
29. Moser, “Urban violence,” 5.
30. Beall, Goodfellow and Rogers, “Cities and Conflict,” 1367.
31. Blackwell, War on Crime, 121.
32. Interview with an OAS mediator, Washington, April 2018.
33. Interview with UN official, New York, April 2018.
34. See note 5 above.
35. Interviews with OAS mediators, Washington, April 2018.
36. Samara, “Development, Social Justice and Global Governance,” 115.
37. Paffenholz, “Inclusivity in Peace Processes,” 115.
38. See note 36 above.
39. Interview with civil society representative, San Salvador, December 2018.
40. Interview with local mediator, San Salvador, December 2018.
41. Humphrey, “Violence and Urban Governance,” 236; Caldeira, City of Walls, 1; Coward, “Network-centred Violence,” 245; Torres, “Razor Wire,” 57; Tsing, Frictions, 1; and Low, Behind the Gates, 1.
42. Caldeira, City of Walls, 1.
43. Blackwell, War on Crime, 8.
44. See note 1 above.
45. Moser, “Urban Violence,” 8.
46. Interview with middle-class San Salvadoran resident, San Salvador, December 2018.
47. See note 41 above.
48. See also Wolf, Politics of Gang Control, 101–103 for more examples of El Diaro de Hoy’s reporting on the gang problem in El Salvador.
49. Interviews with middle class San Salvadorans, San Salvador, December 2018 and by phone July 2019.
50. Wade, Captured Peace, 164–5.
51. Caldeira, City of Walls, 164–5.
52. Wade, Captured Peace, 165.
53. Wolf, Politics of Gang Control, 83.
54. Blackwell, War on Crime, 42.
55. See note 32 above.
56. See note 54 above.
57. Interview with middle class San Salvadoran resident, by phone to San Salvador, July 2019.
58. Interview with San Salvadoran small business owner, by phone to San Salvador, July 2019.
59. See note 40 above.
60. Wolf, Politics of Gang Control, 86–88.
61. See note 32 above.
62. See note 60 above.
63. Interviews with middle-class San Salvadoran residents, by phone to San Salvador, July 2019.
64. Van Der Borgh and Savenije, “Re-securitising Gang Policies,” 160.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Interview with FMLN political party member, by phone to San Salvador, July 2019.
68. Levine, Popular Voices, 57.
69. See note 32 above.
70. Interviews with middle-class San Salvadoran residents, San Salvador, December 2018.
71. Mocanda, “Business and Politics,” 310.
72. See note 32 above.
73. See note 40 above.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Emma van Santen
Emma van Santen is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Development Studies, Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, researching the adaptation of peace process design to new political-economies of conflict. Before Cambridge, she worked on climate change, humanitarian and peace-building policy for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, serving missions in Jakarta and UN New York. She currently lectures and supervises on international relations and international law courses at Cambridge and carries out peace mediation advisory work for INGOs such as the International Centre for Transitional Justice, the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge and the Institute for Peace and Security.