Violence In El Salvador

Majority of the countries crime and violence can be connected to the social domain of psychology. The social and cultural aspects of the country have brought up most of the violence that El Salvador sees today. As stated above the gangs create majority of El Salvador’s violence. The members of the gangs in almost every case come from poor families and neighborhoods. The government through out the years has always taken advantage of the poor in El Salvador. El Salvador has resulted in a critical dissipation of domestic class relations, and a renewed and expanded condition of estrangement both resulting in, and further driven by, the massive exodus of 25 percent of the population. While the elites of Salvadoran society embraced neoliberal restructuring
as a means to secure their position within the new trans- national capitalist class of global capitalism, the rest of the population has been largely cut off, left to fend for themselves (Wheyer & Garni, 2013). The ways of the elites have had their repercussions on the poor. The Gangs were formed in Los Angeles and after the civil war in El Salvador ended many of these gang’s members were deported from the United States back to El Salvador. They pretty much came back to find a country in shambles and a government still taking advantage of the poor. This is a huge reason to why the gangs have risen so high in El Salvador. The decision many poor people now have to make is do I join the gang and have them protect me while I participate in whatever activities they require from me or do I stay out of the gangs and have to pay up to both the government and the gangs. However the mistake these two gangs have made is that instead of standing up to a flawed government they have spent most of their time killing each other, poor against poor. The gangs will extort and kill almost anybody, but if you are under their wing you have some sort of protection. In one of the prison in El Salvador, The officers were checking for tattoos that would reveal certain gang memberships. One man among the 169 who were crammed into three cells in the tiny police station had a tattoo on his forehead. It said, “El Diablo.” Another had a tattoo that read "Revolucionario" or “Revolutionary” in Spanish. “It’s a cause we’re starting ... to take care of each other,” the man said (Harris & Desiderio, 2016). At the end of the day, the gangs still feel like they are protecting each other from the government and its corrupt elites. The advantage the government has taken over the poor has also affected the police and how strong they choose to enforce the law. If the police decide to enforce the law very strictly they can be seen as an aid to the government and it can easily bring death to the officer’s lives. It is difficult to defend and protect your government, but it’s even harder to do when your government is corrupt. Many laws have been placed in order to stop the gang crime and violence but in fear of their own life in most cases the officers choose to turn the other way and allow the gangs to get away with crime.
The law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials; however, the government did not implement the law effectively, and officials often engaged in corrupt practices with impunity. The NGO Institute for Social Democracy stated that officials, particularly in the judicial system, often engaged in corrupt practices with impunity (Global Security). Much of the government’s flaws and corruption has lead to a huge part of El Salvador’s crime today. There is another social domain that has affected El Salvador’s violence. El Salvador is a culture built around “machismo”. The women in El Salvador is overlooked and isn’t valued or seen as equal as the men. This usually leads to a lot f domestic violence in the country. However for it’s masculine views and cultures domestic violence is often ignored. One woman explained that on the one occasion she had reported her husband, the police had criticized her for leaving her children alone to go out and call them from a public telephone (Hume, Mo). Domestic violence is almost seen as normal in El Salvador because of its cultural beliefs and
practices.