El Salvador has historically been one of the main strongholds of Central America’s best-known street gangs: the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and Barrio 18, which terrorized poor urban neighborhoods across the country for years. But since 2022, a brutal and controversial government crackdown has imprisoned more than 1.5% of El Salvador’s population for alleged gang ties and largely dismantled these groups.
The country also plays a relatively minor role in drug trafficking. It serves as a storage and transit point along the Pacific coast and as an overland corridor for cocaine moving between Honduras and Guatemala en route to Mexico and the United States.
How Does El Salvador’s Geography Facilitate Organized Crime?
Covering approximately 21,040 square kilometers, El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, bordering Guatemala, Honduras, and the Pacific Ocean. Its relatively porous borders allow illicit goods to move easily in and out of the country, making it a transit point along overland smuggling routes connecting South America, Mexico, and the United States.
El Salvador has a high population density, and its mountainous terrain prevents traffickers from transporting goods by air. As a result, the country is home to overland smuggling routes that have been used for decades to traffic migrants, weapons, contraband, and illicit drugs.
Its coastline also offers landing points where traffickers can receive drug shipments and divide them into smaller quantities for onward transport to other countries or distribution in the domestic market.
What Is the History of Organized Crime in El Salvador?
In 1992, following more than a decade of civil war that left over 75,000 people dead, the Salvadoran government and leftist guerrillas signed a peace agreement. The agreement included efforts to create a police force that incorporated members of the rebel coalition, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional – FMLN). However, violence in El Salvador did not end with the war. Instead, the postwar period brought a wave of criminal activity, as some former guerrillas never surrendered their weapons and established criminal groups involved in car theft, kidnapping, and migrant smuggling. Street gangs known as maras also emerged. The dominant gangs were MS13 and Barrio 18.
These gangs trace their origins to the migration of a significant portion of El Salvador’s population to the United States during the civil war. The gangs initially emerged in Los Angeles as a means of protecting young Salvadorans from gangs belonging to other communities. Their members were predominantly young people from low-income backgrounds who faced social marginalization.
The deportation of gang members from the United States brought the Los Angeles street gang model to El Salvador. This, combined with a preexisting culture of violence and easy access to weapons left over from the civil war, fueled a rise in clashes and killings between gangs. The government responded with heavy-handed policies that ultimately marginalized young people even further and facilitated gang recruitment. The gangs also managed to establish operational bases inside prisons to manage their activities.
The gangs were primarily involved in extortion and the retail sale of marijuana and crack cocaine in impoverished neighborhoods. On rare occasions, larger criminal organizations hired them as contract killers.
The gangs also attempted to enter the transnational drug trade by partnering with Mexican criminal organizations such as the Zetas and the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG). However, these cases were exceptional, as the gangs’ disorganized nature prevented them from becoming reliable partners for major criminal organizations.
In March 2012, the Salvadoran government and leaders of the local Catholic Church secretly negotiated a truce between Barrio 18 and MS13, granting concessions to imprisoned gang leaders in exchange for a reduction in violence. As part of the truce, the government established “peace zones,” areas where gangs pledged to end criminal activity and the government promised to withdraw the military. Following its implementation, the truce led to a decline in homicides, but violence began to rise again in 2014 as the agreement started to unravel. Critics of the truce have questioned its effectiveness in reducing homicides, with some arguing that the homicide rate was artificially low because gang members were “disappearing” their victims.
Following the collapse of the truce, gangs intensified attacks against the country’s security forces. Violence within and between gangs also increased. By the end of 2015, El Salvador had a homicide rate of more than 100 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest in the world outside a war zone.
President Nayib Bukele took office in June 2019, promising to reduce violence and improve security. During his first year in office, El Salvador’s homicide rate plummeted from 51 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 36 per 100,000 in 2019. The rate then fell by more than half over the following two years, reaching 17.6 per 100,000 in 2021. The country had not experienced such a dramatic reduction in violence since the end of the civil war.
The Bukele government attributed the historic decline in homicides to its flagship security initiative, the Territorial Control Plan, a seven-point program shrouded in secrecy that appeared to largely replicate the heavy-handed policies of previous administrations.
But the unprecedented nature of the decline also fueled rumors of a new agreement of some kind between the Salvadoran government and the gangs. This was confirmed in September 2020, when Salvadoran news outlet El Faro published an investigation documenting how senior government officials had been holding talks with imprisoned gang leaders since at least October 2019 in an effort to reduce violence. Some of the officials involved in the alleged talks had also worked with Bukele when he was mayor of San Salvador, during which time his municipal administration negotiated with gangs as part of efforts to revitalize the capital’s historic center.
The secret negotiations succeeded in substantially reducing violent deaths until March 2022, when gangs allegedly killed 87 people in 72 hours. The Bukele government responded to the massacre by declaring a nationwide state of emergency, suspending certain constitutional rights and relaxing arrest requirements. What followed was an unprecedented wave of arrests, as security forces detained tens of thousands of suspected gang members and collaborators in a ruthless crackdown. The speed and scale of the arrests decimated the gangs’ ranks. Those who were not detained were forced to go into hiding or flee the country.
The state of emergency has remained in place for more than four years, during which security forces have managed to dismantle most of the gangs’ structures, operations, and communications. On the one hand, the right to legal defense has since been suspended, while arbitrary detentions and human rights violations have proliferated.
On the other hand, lethal violence fell sharply beginning in 2022, when homicides declined by more than half compared with the previous year. In 2023, El Salvador recorded 2.4 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest rate in Latin America. By 2025, the country registered just 82 homicides, equivalent to a rate of 1.3 per 100,000 inhabitants—the lowest in its history. However, this figure excludes bodies found in clandestine graves, deaths at the hands of police, and killings in prison.
Security gains have helped Bukele maintain high approval ratings in El Salvador. However, his anti-gang campaign has also drawn criticism from human rights and civil society organizations, which have documented alleged abuses committed during the crackdown, including arbitrary detentions and torture in prison. In addition, El Salvador’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index fell from 36 in 2020 to 32 in 2025.
Bukele’s popularity enabled him to win presidential reelection with more than 70% of the vote. On July 31, 2025, the Legislative Assembly approved constitutional reforms extending presidential terms from five to six years and amending other provisions to allow indefinite presidential reelection. This will enable Bukele to continue his repressive anti-gang policies.
Since the start of Bukele’s second term, the criminalization and persecution of human rights defenders, journalists, and activists have intensified. In 2024, there were 789 violations of press freedom, at least 140 journalists and activists left the country, and new financial restrictions were imposed on civil society organizations.
Between June 2019 and February 2026, Salvadoran authorities seized more than 81 tons of various types of drugs, including significant shipments intercepted during maritime operations on the high seas.
Which Are the Main Criminal Groups in El Salvador?
Although the state of emergency implemented by President Nayib Bukele’s government in March 2022 has considerably weakened the country’s main gangs, remnants of MS13 and Barrio 18 remain active in some parts of El Salvador. On February 20 and September 23, 2025, the United States designated MS13 and Barrio 18, respectively, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
The United States and El Salvador subsequently agreed to transfer 238 Venezuelans suspected of belonging to Tren de Aragua to Salvadoran prisons. In the same operation, the United States returned two high-ranking MS13 leaders and 21 other members to face trial in El Salvador. Among the leaders was César Humberto López Larios, alias “Greñas,” a high-ranking MS13 member who faced terrorism and organized crime charges in the United States.
In addition to the gangs, El Salvador is home to drug transportation networks known as “transportistas.” These groups began moving contraband across the borders with Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala during the civil war. They continue to use these routes to smuggle migrants, contraband, pirated goods, and illicit drugs.
Transportistas typically operate with the assistance of corrupt border officials, police officers, and military personnel. They are not tied to any particular drug trafficking organization. Instead, they offer their services to Colombian and Mexican criminal groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel and, in the past, the Zetas. Although transportistas are responsible for drug shipments moving through El Salvador, gang violence has historically been the driving force behind much of the country’s violent crime.
How Are El Salvador’s Security Forces Structured?
In 2021, El Salvador’s armed forces were reported to have more than 20,000 personnel. The National Civil Police (Policía Nacional Civil – PNC) is organized into territorial divisions and specialized or tactical units, including the Police Reaction Group (Grupo de Reacción Policial – GRP), the Tactical Operations Section (Sección Táctica Operativa – STO), the Anti-Gang Subdirectorate, and the Rural Police.
Historically, policing in El Salvador has been an extremely dangerous and poorly paid profession. In 2014, security forces increasingly became targets of gang attacks, prompting officers to leave the PNC. To compensate for personnel shortages and limited resources, El Salvador has regularly deployed the military to carry out policing duties. In 2019, for example, the government deployed 3,000 soldiers as part of Bukele’s Territorial Control Plan to regain control of territory in gang-affected municipalities. Under the state of emergency, Bukele has relied on the military to facilitate mass arrests and, in some cases, surround entire communities in an effort to drive out gang members.
Throughout the security forces’ confrontations with street gangs, evidence has emerged suggesting that police and military personnel have been involved in the extrajudicial executions of suspected criminals.
What Is the State of El Salvador’s Justice System?
Weaknesses in the judicial system have long exacerbated El Salvador’s overall insecurity. Many crimes go unsolved, and suspects can spend years behind bars before facing trial.
Corruption in El Salvador’s judicial system has been another major problem. Some judges have been found to accept bribes from criminal groups in exchange for favors. In addition, the process for appointing Supreme Court judges has been obstructed by members of Congress linked to corruption and organized crime.
The weakness of El Salvador’s judicial system has also contributed to the emergence of death squads, with cases involving civilians and possibly police officers carrying out “social cleansing” campaigns targeting criminals and others deemed undesirable.
Under President Bukele, the country’s main judicial institutions have aligned themselves with the government’s interests. In 2021, the president took advantage of his party’s overwhelming majority in the Legislative Assembly to reshape the Supreme Court in his favor. Lawmakers aligned with Bukele also removed the country’s attorney general, who had been investigating government corruption. The Legislative Assembly also purged the judiciary in late 2021, dismissing dozens of judges. Many of their replacements have ties to the Bukele government.
The alignment of these institutions has virtually eliminated judicial independence, helping the president take heavy-handed security measures to new extremes. The courts have remained silent in the face of systematic violations of due process protections, while prosecutors have helped facilitate waves of questionable arrests, many based on little or no evidence.
In August 2025, a new procedure known as an open single hearing was introduced, allowing multiple members of the same criminal structure to be tried together in a single proceeding. The largest case under this procedure involved 486 MS13 leaders before San Salvador’s Sixth Court Against Organized Crime.
What Is the State of El Salvador’s Prison System?
El Salvador’s prisons are notoriously overcrowded. Years of strict anti-gang legislation have filled the country’s penitentiaries far beyond their capacity.
Bukele’s state of emergency has exacerbated the problem. By the end of 2025, El Salvador’s prisons held more than 118,369 people, with an incarceration rate of 1,963 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world. Of that total, 103,837 were held in regular prisons and 14,532 in the Terrorism Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo – CECOT), the notorious maximum-security megaprison.
Pretrial detention contributes to rampant overcrowding, as does the suspension of the constitutional right to legal defense under the state of emergency, which has left suspects languishing in prison for months or years before appearing before a judge.
In the past, El Salvador’s prisons were segregated by gang affiliation, with members of each group sent to separate facilities. This policy allowed MS13 and Barrio 18 to establish complete control over their respective prisons, turning them into centers for recruitment, operations, and consolidation. In many ways, they served as the gangs’ de facto headquarters. This was facilitated by staffing and resource shortages, which meant prison guards were often relegated to guarding the perimeter walls, leaving inmates in control of daily life inside the facilities.
During this period, gang members on the outside were expected to support those behind bars by sending them money and supplies. Imprisoned gang leaders often directed criminal activities on the streets through cellphones and messengers. This symbiotic relationship was based partly on the understanding that all gang members would spend time in prison at some point and, once incarcerated, would need the gang’s protection to survive—a form of “prison insurance.” MS13 and Barrio 18 leaders have traditionally been held in maximum-security facilities, such as the infamous Zacatecoluca prison, also known as “Zacatraz.”
The situation in El Salvador’s prisons has undergone a radical transformation. The change was gradual: in 2015, the official policy of segregating gangs in prisons was reversed. The administration of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén subsequently regained some control behind bars by introducing heavy-handed security measures aimed at cutting off communications between gangs.
In 2020, Bukele accelerated the process by placing MS13 and Barrio 18 members in shared cells and esorting to extreme measures to suppress gang activity in prisons following the mass influx of suspected gang members under the state of emergency. Reports from inside the prisons suggest that authorities now exercise near-total control behind bars and routinely subject inmates to beatings and psychological torture.
In July 2026, Amnesty International reported that more than 90,000 people had been detained since the state of emergency began and that at least 470 had died in state custody.
