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El Salvador recently celebrated a historic feat: For 2 days in a row last month, the country recorded zero homicides. It wasn't a gang truce, or a new 'mano dura,' but a weeks-long national quarantine to slow the spread of the coronavirus. https://lat.ms/2UQAq47 @latimes
In region home to just 8% of the world's population but nearly 1/3 of its homicides, @katelinthicum @garv1763 and I looked at how coronavirus -& its restrictions-have brought an uneasy calm to street violence that has plagued communities and pushed hundreds of thousands north-BUT
The gangs that have long terrorized El Salvador have now turned their attention to enforcing social distancing restrictions, often with threats and baseball bats. “We don’t want to see anyone in the street,” one recording says. “If you go out ... you better be wearing a mask.”
In El Salvador, homicides fell from 114 in February to 65 in March. In Colombia, where guerrilla leaders ordered a one-month ceasefire, homicides have fallen by half. In Guatemala and Honduras, homicides have dropped by about a third.
Mexico, by contrast, has been much slower to respond to the coronavirus threat than other countries in the region. It recorded 2,585 homicides in March, according to preliminary government data. That is more than in any month in nearly two years.
But homicides are only one measure. In Guatemala, which has the highest rates of extortion in the Northern Triangle, per @InSightCrime - total reports were down in March, but most were complaints of gangs now extorting people at home amid a national curfew, or over the phone.
Said @TizBreda Central America security analyst: “The economic predicament that will be left by this crisis when it’s over will just fuel and feed into the structural conditions that lead thousands of people to flee their countries" Read more @latimes https://lat.ms/2y2GgGz
