HomeNewsAnalysisHow Multinationals Can Help El Salvador's Ex-Gang Members
ANALYSIS

How Multinationals Can Help El Salvador's Ex-Gang Members

BARRIO 18 / 15 JAN 2013 BY ELYSSA PACHICO EN

Multinational companies could play a role in building on the peace brought about by El Salvador's gang truce by helping former gang members re-enter the labor force, as a new report sets out.

The 16-page briefing, released by the Americas Society and Council of the Americas (AS/COA), examines the efforts of multinationals to provide job opportunities and training for former gang members in El Salvador. 

One of the case studies features Microsoft, which runs educational initiatives across the country to teach basic and advanced computer skills. Other organizations spotlighted in the briefing focus on hiring ex-gang members, including a fishing company that offers them jobs as dockworkers and sailors.

Companies have also helped former gang members by offering training programs, stress management classes, and discounted food and health services, the briefing notes.

El Salvador is believed to have 323 gang members for every 100,000 inhabitants, the briefing states. Although this is more than double the rate in neighboring Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador has managed to cut its murders by half in the last year, thanks in large part to a truce between the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and  Barrio 18 gangs. 

InSight Crime Analysis

The truce could offer an opportunity for the private sector to help consolidate El Salvador's security gains, by expanding its work with former gang members. As the briefing notes, the long-term success of the truce depends on whether meaningful economic alternatives can be found for former members of the "maras", and those at risk of joining. Companies can take advantage of the current lull in violence to expand their social programs, and thus help build a more lasting peace inside the country, the briefing argues.

However, while multinationals stand to gain much from security improvements in El Salvador, their fundamental interest remains in making a profit. The briefing's most significant finding is that these corporate social programs are most effective when both ex-gang members and the corporation stand to benefit. If the corporations aren't gaining something from these social initiatives -- more profits, more productivity, more hard-working employees -- they will not be effective in the long term. As the briefing points out, corporations are fundamentally concerned with advancing their core business interests, and if their social initiatives aren't made compatible with this, everybody ends up losing. 

While the briefing provides a wide range of examples of successful private-sector anti-gang programs in El Salvador, it sidesteps discussion of more serious challenges that corporations may face in running social programs.

As the briefing points out repeatedly, public security and violence prevention are ultimately the responsibility of the state. Still, the reality is that, especially in extremely poor areas where the state has long been absent, a corporation may end up being the most significant -- if not the only -- provider of services such as health, education, and job training. This could give local communities unreasonably high expectations of what to expect from a private-sector social initiative, and could help contribute to ill feeling against the company if these expectations are not met.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

EL SALVADOR / 20 JUL 2022

The US government has added dozens of individuals to a list of allegedly corrupt actors in Central America.

BARRIO 18 / 28 MAR 2022

A killing spree unlike anything seen since El Salvador’s civil war has delivered a macabre message from the country’s street…

BARRIO 18 / 9 FEB 2023

In El Salvador, crackdowns have led to rapid improvements in security. But there is real doubt about whether gangs are…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…