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(SAN SALVADOR) Youth gangs in El Salvador are changing their recruitment methods, targeting ever younger potential members in the slum neighborhoods of the capital. The police reported that more than 7,000 suspected gang members were arrested in 2007 and the typical age of entry has gone down from 14 to 12. The cliques, which control specific areas within neighborhoods, offer "brand-name shoes and clothes, money and anything else that is attractive to kids. Minors are used to collect protection money from bus drivers and businesses in outlying slum districts.
Salesian priest Pepe Morataya, who heads a rehabilitation program for former gang members in Soyapango, said "the maras have grown because they have taken advantage of society’s inability to tackle the problem in an integral manner."
Morataya, the head of the Don Bosco industrial training skills center, said that in El Salvador "approaches towards resolving the gang problem have been party-based or religious in nature," which he described as "badly applied medicine."
Research shows that the root causes of gang culture are economic and social in nature, such as marginalization and unemployment. Around 43 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and 19 percent is extremely poor.
Fr. Moratya, the other Salesians and their lay collaborators have been meeting the challenge of working in the midst of the gangs and the violence they cause in order to transform the neighborhood. And while the work is daunting and the Salesians are not able to save all of the young people, the Salesians have been able to have an influence in the area. They provide a safe place for belonging and a place to call home so that the young people can be saved from joining the gangs.
Click to read more about youth gangs in El Salvador: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41779
Published 4/24/2008 |
