Crime and the government's response

The website INSIGHT - Organized Crime in the Americas has been reporting regularly this month on the problem of violent crime in El Salvador and the government's increasingly "iron fist" response to it. Those articles include:

• Murders of Soldiers Add Weight to 'Gang Conspiracy' in El Salvador
• El Salvador Unveils Elite Anti-Gang Police
• El Salvador Proposes Curfew, Militarized Schools
• The Iron Fist Returns to El Salvador
• Are El Salvador’s Gangs Plotting to 'Take Down the System'?

Insight usually puts its own analysis of the situation into these articles.   They are openly skeptical of the current path being followed by Funes and his public security team:

In the end, the military men at the helm of El Salvador’s security strategy do not seem to be bringing any innovative ideas with them. Instead, they are appealing to a well-rehearsed narrative in which wild gangs terrorize the country, and can only be tamed by ever-stronger shows of might and higher rates of incarceration, two policies that have already failed to give the results Funes says he wants.

The next six months will show whether the skepticism is warranted.