With political wars over, central American violence takes new forms in region in urgent need for peace.
| Autor | Rodriguez, George |
Decades of political internal wars are over in Central America, but the region--particularly its northern area--labeled as one of the most dangerous worldwide, is now hit by a spiraling new brand of violence, unleashed by local as well as international crime.
The problem is present in differing degrees throughout Latin America, hindering human rights, and its worst expressions take center stage in Central America, whose Northern Triangle--El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras--is a regrettable case study.
Among other consequences, criminal violence is causing internal displacement and massive migration--including that of thousands of unaccompanied minors (NotiCen, Aug. 14, 2014, and Aug. 28, 2014)--toward the US, Inter-American Human Rights System officials told NotiCen.
The region's northern trio spent the better part of last century under
ruthless military regimes, characterized--as was the case of dictatorships throughout the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean--by state-terror policies coupled with corruption and impunity.
Central American youth fleeing wars found US gangs
With the exception of Honduras, the other two sides of the triangle were theaters of war where local armies and guerrilla forces were locked in armed conflicts neither side would eventually win. Internal war in El Salvador (1980-1982) and Guatemala (1960-1996) left hundreds of thousands of casualties --mostly civilians-- and displaced and disappeared persons, as human rights were massively violated in the form of massacres, arbitrary detention, and torture.
As the exception to the Northern Triangle's rule, Honduras was not a battlefield, but military regimes caused almost 200 disappearances in the 1980s and also committed human rights violations.
In Guatemala in 1986, the three countries' presidents and their Costa Rican and Nicaraguan colleagues signed the Procedimiento para Establecer la Paz Firme y Duradera en Centroamerica, ending the region's three internal wars--including the 1982-1990 conflict between Nicaragua's revolutionary government and the US-backed mercenary force known as La Contra.
But peace proves to be elusive in this region, where violence has kept its grip. A new conflict with new actors keeps claiming lives and displacing people.
Maras (Central American youth gangs) and organized crime are the new irregular groups fighting local armies and police forces--both historic and, in some cases, recently created security bodies.
The mara phenomenon is a...
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