The Central American Fear of

Youth
Anika Oettler, Institute of Sociology, University of Marburg, Germany

It is often asserted that youth gangs and organized crime have seized
Central America. For theories on contemporary Central American violence,
Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua present important test cases, which
demonstrate the need to differentiate the diagnosis. This paper is concerned
with the social construction of violence-related national and transnational
myths as a precondition for policy formulation. The notion of exploding
youth violence is part of hegemonic discourses and not necessarily linked to
lifeworld experiences. While discourses on youth violence differ from
country to country, with varying threat levels, patterns of attention, and
discursive leitmotifs, they share the monstrous image of brutal gangs (Mara
Salvatrucha, Dieciocho) as the most vivid object of fear.

1. Introduction: An Explosion of Youth Violence in

Central America?
In recent years, many scholars have examined violence and globalization,
dealing with the “new paradigm of violence” (Wieviorka 2003) that has
accompanied global social changes since the end of the Cold War. With
regard to Latin America, there is a wealth of literature on the wave of
criminal violence that has swept the continent.

Central America remains on the margins of international political life, but

developments relating to crime, violence, and insecurity are attracting
growing interest. It is often asserted that levels of violence in the region are
as high as, or even higher than, during the state terror, insurgency, and war
of the 1970s and 1980s. According to policy papers and academic studies,
there are “two key areas of crime in which Central America is remarkable
by global standards: the volumes of drugs trafficked through the region and
the rate of murder” (UNODC 2007, 45). Even though there is scant
evidence regarding “real” crime rates and perpetrators (Huhn, Oettler, and
Peetz 2008), the majority of crimes tend to be attributed to youth gangs
(pandillas, maras). In recent years, the question of “How the Street Gangs
took Central America” (Arana 2005) has evolved to become the center of
public debates, thereby clouding the multifaceted character of violence. The
most prominent phenomenon are the notorious street gangs Mara
Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Dieciocho (Calle 18/18th Street) that were formed
in the Hispanic barrios of Los Angeles. When the U.S. government began
deporting convicted criminals “home,” the gang phenomenon spread to the
war-torn Central American societies, increasing massively from the mid-
1990s onwards. Since then, media reports as well as policy papers have not
ceased to perpetuate the dominant image of the anomic adolescent other.
Central American youth gangs are said to have metamorphosed into a
hierarchical transnational criminal network, which is generally tied to the
narcotics trade (Bruneau 2005; Johnson and Muhlhausen 2005; Manwaring
2007). These concerns tend to be mobilized and translated into policy
agendas at global and domestic levels. Central American gangs are often
seen as major challenges to state sovereignty (Bruneau 2011; Manwaring
2007). In the latest World Development Report, they emerged as “major
bugbears” (Jones and Rodgers 2011, 987) that represent the power of
anomic social forces. It is crucial to note, however, that actual empirical
evidence on the criminal behavior of youth gangs has been provided for the
local level (Rodgers 2006; DIRINPRO 2006) rather than the national or
transnational levels. In general, there is little consensus on the causes,
logics, and structures of gang proliferation (Jones and Rodgers 2009).
Academic debate is divided as to whether Central American youth gangs
should be viewed as locally rooted groups or whether migration has
accelerated the proliferation of transnational adolescent organized crime
(Cruz 2010). Some authors argue that Central American gangs tend to
replace the state in “providing micro-regimes of order” (Rodgers 2009, 964)
in slums and poor neighborhoods, attracting members with their
cohesiveness, “gangsta” culture, and resistance identities (Hagedorn 2008;
Reguillo 2005; Liebel 2004). There is a lively debate about the scope and
extent of illegal and violent collective behavior, while others have dealt
with root causes of gang proliferation such as unemployment, migration,
and social disintegration. However, the sub-field of gang studies faces
serious problems of methodology. As Wolf notes (2010), much literature on
Central American street gangs relies on anonymous sources, self-
proclaimed experts, and media and police reports, and thus lacks a critical
foundation. Findings vary greatly, ranging from dramatizing policy papers
to naïve interpretations of gang culture.

What does “mara” mean? It is important to note that “mara,” “pandilla,”

and “youth gang” have evolved into confusing and sometimes euphemistic
buzzwords. In general, “pandilla” and “mara” are interchangeable Spanish
terms for “youth gang.” However, politicians and mass media have been at
the forefront of creating and disseminating the meaning of “mara.” The
term is strongly associated with the Mara Salvatrucha and Dieciocho gangs,
which should be labeled (adult) “street gangs” rather than “youth gangs.”
Nevertheless, they are often fearfully associated with deviant adolescents. It
is important to note that the ascription by others is not necessarily shared by
gang members, who often describe themselves as “pandilleros.” When
referring to domestic youth gangs, people in Nicaragua and Costa Rica
mainly use the term “pandilla.” Finally, it should be mentioned that there is
a persistent etymological legend. While the term “mara” is often said to
refer to “a type of ant known for its ferocity” (Manwaring 2007, 13;
Bruneau 2011), myrmecologists’ use of the term does not relate to army ant
species but rather to horror movies such as The Naked Jungle and Legion of
Fire: Killer Ants.1

In all Central American societies, maras and pandillas are seen as a greater
threat than ever before. However, we presume that this ever-present danger
is, as in other cases, mainly a result of discursive practices. The high level
of Central American criminal violence may be understood as a social fact,
which is such, because it is commonly believed. Thus, the notion of
exploding crime is part of a dominant ideological/discursive formation
(Fairclough 1995) and not necessarily linked to “real” threat levels or
lifeworld experience. The Central American talk of juvenile delinquency
shows how public discourses produce and reproduce collective patterns of
interpretation as well as systems of social rules. It is crucial to note that this
seed of fear is nourished by a diverse pattern of discourse events that differs
from country to country.
This paper reports some results of an exploratory research project on
“Public Spaces and Violence in Central America,” carried out together with
Peter Peetz and Sebastian Huhn between 2006 and 2009, with new
observational data and supplemental material added. The research project
deals with public discourses on violence and focuses on a wide range of
hegemonic spheres and “subaltern counterpublics” (Fraser 1992) related to
the media, politics, academic institutions, and the everyday social world
(for more details on our approach, see Huhn, Oettler, and Peetz 2008). Our
goal was to use multiple data sources to explore discursive fragments
circulating within different public spheres (Oettler 2008), in particular in
the media, the political arena, the academic and legal sphere, and daily life.
The research data gathered included material from six Central American
newspapers, speeches, publications of political parties and NGOs, ninety
qualitative interviews, and 227 essays written by students from nine public,
private, and rural schools and a theater project. These essays were published
as an edition that can serve as a primary source for scholarly research
(Huhn, Oettler, and Peetz 2007). In order to detect the macro-structure of
the media discourse, we analyzed all issues of Al Día and La Nación (Costa
Rica), El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador), and El Nuevo
Diario and La Prensa (Nicaragua) published in 2004, 2005, and 2006 (for
an overview of the Central American print media and the marketing of
crime, see Huhn, Oettler, and Peetz 2009).

This article is primarily concerned with the patterns of attention associated

with contemporary youth violence in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and
Nicaragua – three cases chosen for (1) a suspected similarity in the
perception of insecurity and (2) a variety of forms and contexts.2 In
deconstructing the undifferentiated image of a vulnerable region that suffers
from escalating violence and juvenile delinquency, my goal is to explore
national differences as well as varying threat levels and patterns of attention
paid to these issues. My argument is that current Central American debates
on juvenile delinquency are closely intertwined with national myths, which
provide citizens with a significant frame of meaning.

The paper is organized as follows: the next section briefly outlines the
theoretical position and methodological approach of our research project.
Rooted in the theoretical/methodological framework of Critical Discourse
Analysis, the project explores the “social construction of [violent] reality”
(Berger and Luckmann 1966) at the local, national, and transnational levels.
Powerful and less powerful speakers in different discursive spaces tend to
(re-)produce national myths. As “discourse is socially constitutive as well as
socially shaped” (Fairclough and Wodack 1997, 258), the sections thereafter
provide a brief historical overview of the evolution of political forces in
Central America, revealing how national discourses on contemporary
violence in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, deal with the basic
question: What factors underlie the understanding of youth gangs as one of
the greatest problems for public security, or even national security? (for the
concept of seguridad ciudadana, see Peetz 2011). The last section explores
the landscape of discursive and non-discursive arenas from a comparative
perspective, trying to trace back the national and sub-national origins of this
mobilizing myth.

2. Violence Discourse and Mystification

As mentioned above, the research project aims to uncover the origins,
development, and institutionalization of Central American discourses on
violence, rather than to identify the “real” magnitude of youth violence in
Central America. When we began our exploration of the issue in 2005, we
compared current academic debates with our own field experiences in Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. From our point of
view, there were two basic presumptions to be made when addressing
Central American crime. First, the waves of criminal violence that followed
the state terror, insurgent action, and war of the 1970s and 1980s did not
spread to all countries at the same speed. While public life in El Salvador
has been shaped by fear and criminal violence for more than a decade (Cruz
1997, 2004), the level of attention to this issue in Costa Rica has only
recently begun to rise (Huhn 2011).

Second, the “real” level of crime is mostly unknown. Throughout Central

America, criminal statistics are incomplete, out of date, and, as a result,
unreliable. As the state’s monopoly on the use of force is not fully
functional in most Central American countries, the police and other state
institutions are far from being omnipresent. According to Rodgers (2004,
117), many crimes are not registered in Nicaragua because the police are
completely absent in over 20 percent of all municipalities.

With regard to the quantitative measurement of crime, Huhn (2011) recently

summarized the pivotal points of criticism, ranging from the unreported
crime figures to the institutional capacity for receiving complaints, and
from crime investigations to translating these into accurate numbers. In
general, criminal statistics reflect police activity more than levels of violent
crime: due to under- and over-reporting they deliver disproportional
pictures of crime. Moreover, the political-publicist circle of intensification
(Scheerer 1978) “can be expanded by the crime rates themselves” (Huhn
2011, 137).

Young (2004) highlights the paradox that many researchers are aware of the
thin ice of data, but still keep on skating. While this in itself is a
fundamental reason to reject crime statistics, there are further epistemic
arguments for abandoning a positivist attitude. From a social constructivist
perspective, criminal statistics are a specific instrument people use to make
sense of their world. They reflect and (re)construct patterns of violent
action. “But if the information they give on crime is restricted, they may
nevertheless reveal other facts about the society that produces them”
(Caldeira 2000, 106). Thus, Central American criminal statistics relate to
hegemonic discourses on violence, with the police being one of the most
powerful speakers involved. According to the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the homicide level in El Salvador is
exceptionally high compared to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Throughout
Central America, reported homicides are increasing.3 Are these data
reflections of the “real” degree of fatal violence, or do they reflect crimes
reported to the police and other government agencies?

Although (organized) youth violence is unquestionably a significant pattern

of violence in Central American societies, our findings suggest that the very
perception of youth violence is tied to a multifaceted imagery. As an
extension of the North American Crime Myth, the discourse on North
American Transnational Youth Gangs (Johnson and Muhlhausen 2005) has
swept through Central America, producing the vivid myth of Central
American youth gangs as a transnationally organized crime structure. From
national and sub-national perspectives, then, this myth becomes off-
centered, shifting from its transnational meaning to diverse fields of
national and local significance. Through my reading of Central American
discourses on youth violence, I seek to explain what underlies the common
understanding of pandillas or maras. The myth of youth gangs becomes a
mobilizing myth if and only if it is tied to vital national myths. The myth of
Costa Rica being the non-violent Latin American exception and the myth of
Nicaragua being a safe country are key features of contemporary national
debates. In El Salvador, on the other hand, the myth of a war-torn society
being invaded by criminal adolescents permeates daily life. Although they
may be obvious, it is important to highlight two key aspects of this
particular case: First, El Salvador is a country highly affected by both
criminal activity and street gangs. Second, the phenomenon of maras has
undergone significant changes in recent years, with youth gangs
metamorphosing into organized criminal structures. At the same time,
public politics changed from mano dura (iron fist) to efforts to combat
organized crime, narcotics trade, and corruption. However, what does not
fade is the initial perception of male, marginalized adolescents being “at
risk.” In June 2011, President Funes presented his plan to introduce forced
military service for “high-risk” teenagers (Prensa Libre, June 1, 2011).

What exactly does “myth” mean? A myth is a narrative synthesis of specific

aspects of social life that is true for those who believe in it. The argument
that crime myths create fear and justify repressive social control strategies
is not new (Wright 1985; Ainsworth 2000; Garland 1996; Robinson 2000).
Crime myths often evolve from certain crime stories and then become both
exaggerated and overgeneralized. In contrast to authors like Robinson
(2000), who considers all crime myths to be untrue, I follow Katz’s
argumentation (2003, 196):

Three features are salient in assessing whether a belief is a myth. First,

myths are not necessarily false, they are ideas about matters that, under
current states of evidence and by the use of the logic of empirical
research, cannot be established as true or false. Second, myths are not
just guesses about the unknown; they are beliefs that resonate deeply
because they address immediate existential concerns that they would
resolve with presumptions. Third, myths are not simply emotionally
 evocative fantasies about central matters; they are profoundly
consequential for the distribution of power in society.

In defining deviant social groups, crime myths produce and reproduce

patterns of social exclusion. This is especially true for the vivid image of
monstrous youth gangs, which tends to dramatize and overgeneralize the
problem of youth violence. This image is profoundly consequential for the
identification of both problems to be solved and social groups to be
targeted. What if gang violence is not the key problem, but rather elitist
attitudes, gender-based violence, and/or corruption on a grand scale? If the
Central American crime myth has spread throughout the region, however, it
is just as likely that a “real” problem of youth violence may exist at the
local level. But if this is the case, the perception of insecurity tends to be
shaped by a larger process of mystification. What is felt in Central
American neighbourhoods, as we shall see in the following, is both a
reflection and further complication of the vivid image of monstrous youth
gangs.

3. El Salvador: The Mara Paradigm

Violence and repression shaped the history of twentieth-century El
Salvador. Since 1931, there have been six successful military coups and
numerous fraudulent elections, as well as short periods of democratic
opening.4 From the late 1970s until January 1992, El Salvador experienced
a guerrilla war between the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación
Nacional (FMLN) and the state. After the peace accords were signed, the
FMLN became a political party and experienced factional splits as well as
programmatic agreements. The record on implementation of the peace
accords is mixed (Studemeister 2001; Zinecker 2004). Although there have
been positive achievements such as the demobilization of military and
guerrilla forces, the subordination of the military to civilian authorities, and,
most notably, the end of the war, the peace settlement has been
“undermined by halfhearted compliance” (Karl 1995, 75) and “there also
have been notorious deficiencies” (Cañas and Dada 1999, 73). The
restoration of democratic rule in the 1980s was an “elite settlement” (Higley
and Gunther 1992), expressing the political project of “self-modernized”
sectors of the Salvadorian oligarchy (Zinecker 2004, 25). The political
system has been highly polarized for decades. “Ideology has been a major
determinant of the vote in El Salvador ever since the first postconflict
elections in 1994” (Azpuru 2010, 129).

After two decades of one-party rule by the Alianza Republicana

Nacionalista (ARENA), the 2009 presidential elections produced a victory
for the FMLN. Mauricio Funes, a well-known journalist, was the first
FMLN presidential candidate not to be a former guerrilla commander.
During his campaign, Mauricio Funes used the Obama-style slogan “Nace
la Esperanza, viene el cambio” (Hope is born, change is coming) to indicate
his moderate approach to national politics. Since taking office, President
Funes has made broad-based economic growth, job creation, and fighting
crime his top priorities.

At the time of our research, the debate on violence was inextricably linked
to the issues of homicide and youth gangs and was severely limited by a
national and international obsession with the latter. The question of “how
the street gangs took Central America” (Arana 2005) had evolved to
become the center of public debate, drawing attention and discussion away
from the multifaceted character of violence (Huhn, Oettler, and Peetz 2008).

It is important to note that the current meaning of maras arose out of a

complex and contradictory public process. Within a few years after the end
of the war, public concern about delinquency and “low intensity peace”
(Ribera 1997, 128) had risen. In the mid-1990s, right-wing politicians
exploited the issue, calling for tougher law enforcement and, particularly,
the death penalty (Vickers 1999, 400). While the academic debate focused
on the role of the media and psychosocial explanations for exploding
homicide rates (Armando González 1997; Cruz 1997), the maras were
treated as a juvenile phenomenon rather than a threat to national
security(Smutt and Miranda 1998, Cruz and Portillo 1998). Within this
particular context of political polarization, statements on violence became
increasingly focused on juvenile delinquency.

In July 2003, President Flores announced his anti-gang campaign, Plan

Mano Dura (the “iron-fist” plan), centered around raids and detentions
(Peetz 2011). One month later, according to El Nuevo Diario (August 23,
2003), the police had arrested 2,438 youths for having tattoos and for their
style of dress, with 1,505 of them already having been released again. In
October 2003, parliament passed the anti-gang law, which defined gang
membership as a crime punishable by imprisonment. As the media began
extensive coverage of the “total war” against youth gangs, repeatedly
reporting on anti-gang efforts and crimes supposedly committed by gang
members, the official electoral campaign started. During the first foro
presidencial, a presidential campaign debate held in November 2003, Saca
was asked: “Tony, why should the Salvadorans vote for Tony Saca?”
Interestingly, while the ARENA candidate referred to honesty (“manos
limpios”), freedoms (of expression, economic, religious), dialogue, and
foreign investment, he did not mention public security or anti-gang policies.
However, later on in the campaign, ARENA disseminated a manifesto
entitled País Seguro: Plan de Gobierno 2004–2009, in which the “iron fist”
against youth gangs is portrayed as the most important emergency measure
to be taken.5 As discourses on violence are, in Foucault’s words,
“interlocking, hierarchized, and all highly articulated around a cluster of
power relations” (2006, 540), ARENA was able to restrict other
representations of public insecurity. On the other hand, transnational
networks of donor agencies and NGOs tend to play a critical role in
defining political priorities and, thus, violent realities. The United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) Society Without Violence Program,
established in 1998, provided an important public space in which the
discourse on violence could flourish.6 A number of conferences were held
to cover topics such as prevention strategies, media representations of
violence, and gender-based violence (PNUD 2004, 2006). However, some
of these issues were overlooked in subsequent debates. While they were not
completely negated, they were relegated to discursive niches. One study, for
instance, points out that Salvadorian newspapers “prioritize and accentuate
violent acts committed by maras and marginalize information related to
violence against women” (translated from Las Dignas 2006, 25).

As our qualitative data indicate, the awareness of daily insecurity tends to

be multifaceted, with the hegemonic discourse on youth violence being
questioned and other forms of violence being perceived as an imminent
threat, albeit with varying degrees of sincerity. A paramedic told us:
 And nowadays, well, in quotation marks, we live a peace process after
an armed conflict, but with regard to violence, it has not been
contained, and I’m not only talking about the situation of armed
violence, in the typical case of, let’s call them, social groups,
mistakenly called maras and all that, but rather there is domestic
violence, there is violence in the streets, there is traffic violence, there
is violence of all kinds, so we are not just transporting people assaulted
by non-legal armed people [gente armada no legal] but we are bringing
in children who have been mistreated by their parents, women who
have been mistreated by their husbands, and we are even getting to a
point where men are also mistreated by their wives [laughter].
(Interview, El Salvador, December 7, 2006)

As described above, the 2004 electoral campaign was the central point from
which the discourse on organized and monstrous youth violence emanated.
However, the mano dura policy was not the only feature of the electoral
process. The media and ARENA also stoked fears of communism, trying to
establish a relationship between the FMLN and international terrorism.
Moreover, the media highlighted the US administration’s preoccupation
with leftist governments, suggesting the possibility of deportations and the
drying up of remittances, the financial lifeline that still keeps the
Salvadorian economy running. The mano dura thus began to form an
integral part of ARENAís rhetorical repertoire, but was not the only strategy
used.7

In the Salvadorian case, the entrepreneurial sector is key for both political
agenda setting and policy formulation. While the Asociación Nacional de la
Empresa Privada (ANEP) was participating in bodies such as the National
Commission on Citizen Security and Social Peace, the right-wing think tank
FUSADES has propagated a specific understanding of what is threatening
to investors. FUSADES, far from restricting its debate to “iron fist”
policies, proposes a catalogue of measures that includes small arms control,
law enforcement, prevention, rehabilitation, and institution building (Pleitez
Chávez 2006). Thus, the more sophisticated concept of the enemy, as
applied by Mauricio Funes, is also backed by the most powerful sector of
Salvadorian society. In recent years, we have witnessed an elite discourse
shifting from obsession with maras to a more multifaceted threat analysis.
On a national level, the fear of marginalized youth has given way to the fear
of organized crime. In his second anniversary address, Funes identified
insecurity and low productivity as the main obstacles to development (La
Prensa Gráfica, June 2, 2011). However, as many commentators noted, the
president failed to touch on the social roots of insecurity: the neoliberal
model.

Altogether, the image of monstrous youth gangs had a profound effect on

the political trajectory in post-conflict El Salvador. In this process, policy
makers did not simply react to a given problem. Instead, they proactively
identified and prioritized the problem of juvenile delinquency. With the
transformation of policy goals into repressive anti-gang policy, Salvadorian
policy makers introduced a “punitive populism” (Wolf 2009, 88) that
ultimately proved counterproductive. Although the change of government
had a visible impact on agenda-setting, the overall fear of youth is unlikely
to disappear.

4. Nicaragua: Contested Evidence on Insecurity

In contrast to El Salvador, popular uprising and guerrilla warfare were
successful in Nicaragua. By the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of
building a trans-isthmian canal had increased U.S. attention to the region.
The following decades were marked by long periods of U.S. military
occupation of Nicaragua (1909–1919, 1912–1925, 1926–1933) and a
guerrilla uprising headed by Augusto César Sandino. In the early 1930s,
U.S. troops withdrew and gave way to the Somoza dynasty that was to rule
the country for almost fifty years.

As mentioned above, democracy came through insurrection. After their

revolutionary triumph in July 1979, the Sandinistas encouraged a mixed
economy and carried out national crusades against illiteracy and disease. It
is important to recognize that the “first half decade of Sandinista rule …
featured experimentation, innovation, and some significant success in the
area of politics” (Walker 2000, 74). Espousing an ideological mélange or
“sincretismo político” (Cardenal 2004, 540), the Frente Sandinista de
Liberación Nacional (FSLN) fostered a system of mass organizations, with
the Comités de Defensa Sandinista (CDR) being among the most
grassrooted organizations. They functioned both as local administrative
units for food distribution and as neighborhood vigilancias (vigilance
committees).

Although the second half of the Sandinistas’ rule (1985–1990) saw

important political achievements (constitutional process, elections), this
period was shaped by the Contra War and the steady decline of both the
economy and social programs, as well as a reversal of the gains in
participatory democracy (Figueroa Ibarra 1993, 68–78, Walker 2000, 76–
77, Prevost 1997, 154–55). Soon after its electoral defeat in 1990, the FSLN
experienced internal struggles and organized Sandinista civil society
imploded (Polakoff and La Ramée 1997).8 Since the late 1990s, Nicaraguan
politics has been severely constricted by the pacto, a power-sharing pact
between Daniel Ortega (FSLN) and then head of state Arnoldo Alemán
(Partido Liberal Constitucionalista, PLC). Even after Alemán was convicted
of corruption in 2003, the pacto permitted president Bolaños little room for
leadership. Together with Cardinal Obando y Bravo, head of the Nicaraguan
Catholic Church, Ortega and Alemán formed a powerful triumvirate,
corrupting democratic governance.

In the 2006 presidential elections, former president Daniel Ortega (1985–

1990) was reelected with 37.99 percent of the vote. Since then, he has
managed to bridge the gap between the Dominican Republic-Central
America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and the Bolivarian Alliance
for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), proposed by the Venezuelan
government. Ortega introduced new anti-poverty programs and centralized
power. His government’s active efforts to “monarchize and privatize the
state” (Rocha 2010) have caused severe friction within Nicaraguan society.
At the time of writing, voters had just elected Ortega for a fourth term,
ignoring the constitution’s term limits.

In Nicaragua, the importance of insecurity in public discourse is much more

difficult to ascertain. Until 2006, public life in Nicaragua was
overshadowed by an elite discourse that described Nicaragua as a safe
country (Rocha 2005). On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of
the National Police, President Bolaños reported on the state of (in)security:
“The citizen security we have achieved is enviable, it is beginning to
constitute a legend in Latin America” (translated from La Prensa, August 6,
2004). On the same occasion, the head of the National Police, Edwin
Cordero, referred to a decline in youth gangs (pandillas) and traffic
accidents, saying that the police had achieved success both in combating the
sale of illegal drugs and in establishing a network of women’s police
stations. A consultant working for a powerful semi-state consulting agency
in Nicaragua told us:

Nicaragua is one of the most secure countries in Central America. …

yes, you notice security more in the urban part, in the rural part it is a
bit more complicated, or in the poorest sectors of Nicaragua, or in the
poor neighborhoods in Managua, you sense a bit more insecurity,
because, OK, maybe it’s a bit, well, maybe a bit strange, but, yes there
are some hold-ups among the poorest people. (Interview, Nicaragua,
December 14, 2006)

This image was reinforced by high-ranking police officials, who repeatedly

claimed that “criminal violence is minimal” (Rocha 2005, 5). Given this
image of Nicaragua as a safe country, most of the presidential candidates
avoided the issue of violence during the 2006 electoral campaign. However,
the FSLN presidential candidate Daniel Ortega, who refused to participate
in pre-electoral “bourgeois” media events, addressed his electorate by
touring the country and via party structures. His entourage touched upon the
major preoccupations of poor people, including insecurity and the supply of
electricity. Douglas Pérez, National Coordinator of the Communal
Movement, stated:

Adolescents are generally criminalized, and the problem comes from

the system … we want a government that … like we have been in the
1980s. (translated from FSLN 2006)

In general, our findings suggest that Nicaragua was a discursively divided

country in 2006, with total insecurity and unrestricted freedom forming
antithetical public perceptions. It is crucial to point out that the image of
Nicaragua as a safe country was produced not only by members of the elite,
but also by people belonging to the lower strata of society. A well-educated
employee of the security company ULTRANIC stated that Nicaragua
 is sane, relatively sane; of course, there are incidents … Here it [the
problem] is small, because it is a small country, everybody knows each
other, the capital does not provide the conditions for gangs to organize.
(Interview, Nicaragua, November 24, 2006)

Many Nicaraguans perceive crime as something imported or happening

elsewhere. “Aquí es sano, pero …” (here it is same, but …) is a phrase
often heard in Nicaragua, and also in other Central American countries. On
the other hand, large sectors of society perceive violent crime as an
important problem affecting the country. The “talk of crime” often focuses
on the poor, and some of our interviewees stated that criminal behavior is a
rational choice made by people facing famine wages and “condiciones muy
jodidas de trabajo” (very fucked up working conditions) (theater educator,
Nicaragua, October 25, 2006). The latest IEEPP opinion poll (2010, 13–15)
shows that 77.7 percent of respondents perceived ordinary crime as the
main problem of insecurity. 38.4 percent referred to youth violence, and
31.1 percent to gender-based violence. Interestingly, 65.6 percent of the
respondents identified insecurity as a consequence of unemployment. In
general, the Nicaraguan public debate on insecurity tends to address socio-
economic causes, with the lack of prospects at the center of many
statements on the crime situation. However, there are conflicting views on
the magnitude of youth violence.

First, the National Police celebrates a successful deactivation of pandillas.

In a recent report, the police identify twenty youth gangs (pandillas
juveniles) with 369 members and 163 at-risk juvenile peer-groups (grupos
juveniles en alto riesgo social). Moreover, the police claim to have
“reintegrated” 3,979 adolescents between 2002 and 2007 (see also La
Prensa, February 26, 2010, and October 23, 2010).

Second, some analysts state that Nicaraguan pandillas were

“metamorphosing into a drug institution” (Rodgers 2008, 84). According to
Oscar Bonilla, director of the Salvadorian National Council for Public
Security, Nicaragua has already imported the brutal Mara Dieciocho and
Salvatrucha from Central Americaís northern triangle – El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras (CENIDH 2010, 71, see also La Prensa, April
21, 2010).
Third, there is a growing concern about the manipulation of pandillas for
political purposes. As mentioned above, Ortega’s return to power has been
accompanied by growing repression, including police raids, criminal
charges, and harassment of prominent opposition figures and Sandinista
dissidents like Ernesto Cardenal, Mónica Baltodrano, Carlos Fernando
Chamorro, and Dora Maria Tellez. After the 2008 municipal elections,
political demonstrations were met with violence. “Meanwhile, bands of
young Sandinista-linked thugs, claiming to be the ‘owners of the streets,’‚
attacked demonstrators while the police stood idly by’ (Burbach 2009, 37;
see also CENIDH 2010, 65–66). Vilma Núñez, director of the Nicaraguan
Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), declared that the adolescents were
manipulated by the government (La Prensa, November 9, 2009). The
adolescents were supplied with weapons, food, and bus fares. As Rocha
notes, “the aggression was produced by and in the context of an absence of
political and social morality” (2008). Most strikingly, it remains unclear
whether these adolescents were actually gang members or not.

5. Costa Rica: Crime and Moral Decline

Following the annulment of presidential election results in March 1948,
Costa Rica experienced a short civil war, which brought José Figueres into
power. Since then, the political system has displayed great stability, based
on a party system effectively dominated by two parties, the Partido
Liberación Nacional (PLN) and the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana
(PUSC). A commitment to democracy, the abolition of the army, and the
“Bismarckian character of the Costa Rican state” (Davis, Aguilar, and Speer
1999, 43) have become core features of national identity. In contrast to
other Central American countries, non-communist political society has been
embedded into an institutional setting characterized by a high level of
political freedom. If the second half of the twentieth century was
characterized by the consolidation of democracy and organized civil society
(Davis, Aguilar, and Speer 1999, 44), the turn of the millennium witnessed
a significant change. The “transition to neoliberalism” (Booth 2000, 101) of
the late 1980s implied the replacement of the social democratic model with
structural adjustment and cutbacks in social security, education, and health.
While political decision-making was dominated by decrees, voters were
faced with the increasing “sameness of the PLN and PUSC” (Booth 2000,
96). The 2006 election returned Óscar Arias (PLN), the president and
famous Nobel Laureate, to office but brought the bipartisan model to an
end.9 In 2010, Minister of Justice Laura Chinchilla (PLN) won the
presidential elections.

In contrast to El Salvador and Nicaragua, political parties and decision-

making bodies in Costa Rica tend to highlight the very perception of
insecurity as a major problem. The “real” level of crime and the perception
of insecurity are often discussed as two sides of the same coin. For instance,
the final document of the PLN party congress in May 2005 and the forty-
nine-page PLN Programa de Gobierno 2006–2010 both refer to a dramatic
increase in violence and insecurity, linked to a persistent fear of crime. The
PLN proposed to “stop the increase in delinquency and reduce the acute
perception of insecurity that is currently a burden on the Costa Rican
population” (translated from PLN 2006, 24). In recent years, the twofold
problem of increasing crime and increasing fear has been perceived as one
of the main obstacles to human development in Costa Rica. Notably,
awareness of rising insecurity has circulated within the realm of academic
debates linked to international organizations (Proyecto Estado de La Nación
2000, PNUD 2005, Rico 2006).

However, it appears that the twofold problem of increasing crime and fear
was not at the center of the electoral process in 2006. While the electoral
platforms of both the PAC and the PLN included the issue of insecurity,
promising an “integral-preventive vision” (PAC 2006), the strengthening of
the police, and the recovery of values and norms, media debates focused on
free trade, privatization, the social system, and, most notably, the
personalities of the presidential candidates. The issue of violent crime
entered the stage in 2010. During the presidential campaign, Minister of
Justice Laura Chinchilla emphasized conservative sexual policies as well as
the promotion of free trade and foreign investment. However, her top
priority was the improvement of public security and, especially, the
introduction of new anti-crime policies.

In Costa Rica, the increase in crime is not perceived as being explosive in

nature, but rather as being linked to a steady socio-economic decline since
the mid-1980s. It is important to note that a perceived or real dramatic
increase in robberies has emerged as a thematic node associated with other
leitmotifs such as drug consumption and moral decline (Rico 2006, 17, 25–
26). The issue of “ordinary violence” is not treated prominently in La
Nación, but where it is addressed, it is treated intensively (Huhn, Oettler,
and Peetz 2009). Media reports reflect an ongoing concern that the country
is facing a permanent decline linked to a deterioration of the foundations of
the social security system and the social fabric of society. By attributing
crime to moral decline, La Nación, as well as other important voices,
establishes an argument that leads to the stigmatization of youth. Consider,
for example, Ottón Solís’s Convocatoria a la Ciudadanía. In this document,
the PAC associates crime and insecurity with social exclusion, loss of
solidarity, impunity and corruption, the transnationalization of organized
crime, and “domestic violence, especially violence against women” (PAC
2006, 43–44). The chapter on insecurity culminates in a statement on
rehabilitation measures with infractores (lawbreakers), “children and
adolescents with criminal behavior,” “youth gangs” (pandillas juveniles),
and “marginalized youth from rural and urban areas” as the focus groups.
How does the diagnosis of crime symptoms translate into the definition of
perpetrators to be reintegrated into society? It is crucial to note that the
Costa Rican “talk of crime” is not a discussion about youth gangs, but
rather a conversation about moral decline, with the (imagined) criminal
behavior of adolescents serving as a vivid leitmotif.

6. Organized Youth Violence as a Discursive Node

Members of the political establishment and international think tank
researchers play a key role in the process through which the meaning of
youth gangs (pandillas, maras) is progressively created. The life-
threatening scenario of brutal and hierarchical gang culture, however,
evolves into something more fluid as we take other public realms into
account.

In general, “fear of youth” is not necessarily linked to lifeworld

experiences. This is best explained with an example. Our data set, gathered
in 2006, includes 226 essays written by students from rural and urban,
marginal and upper middle-class schools (Huhn, Oettler, and Peetz 2007).
The survey was carried out in two steps. The first question was not directly
linked to problems of crime, violence, and insecurity but allowed for a
variety of answers: “Imagine you were the president of the country. What
are the country’s most important problems and how would you solve
them?” The second question referred directly to lifeworld experience: “Do
you feel secure in your family/neighborhood/village/town/country? Why?
Why not?” The students’ essays show that there are national differences in
the perception of threats (Peetz 2011). 80 percent of the Salvadorian
students identified problems related to violence, crime, and (physical)
insecurity as major problems of their country, compared to 67 percent of the
Costa Rican students and 25.6 percent of the Nicaraguan students. There is
a correlation between print media discourses and students’ perception, with
the latter differing from “real” crime rates. Furthermore, our data indicate
that the image of youth gangs is connected to class and patterns of social
exclusion. In their answers to the open question that was not directly related
to violence, sixteen (out of nineteen) Salvadorian upper-middle-class
students mentioned youth violence as a major problem of the country, while
only thirty-four (out of fifty-two) students from Salvadorian urban public
schools identified issues related to crime and violence as important
problems. Are students from an upper middle-class social background –
which, in San Salvador includes certain standards of private security – more
sensitive to crime problems than their marginalized peers? Our data indicate
that the latter tend to stress other issues such as poverty, inequality, and
joblessness. Most interestingly, however, only four (out of nineteen)
Salvadorian students from private schools mentioned youth violence as a
problem related to their own personal security. In contrast, thirty-four (out
of fifty-two) students from marginalized urban schools considered youth
violence to have an effect on their own lives. This indicates that even in
marginalized neighborhoods, fear of youth gangs seems not to be
omnipresent.

The image of maras, however, evokes feelings of fear that have gradually
become internalized. This image of organized youth violence has emerged
as a symbol for social deterioration and exploding crime rates. Our
interviewees often drew on this symbol of the mara when they were asked
to compare the current situation with the past or to comment on the
statement that Central America is one of the most violent regions of the
world. A Costa Rican priest stated:
 Yes, I think so [that Central America is one of the most violent regions
of the world], yes I think so. In other Central American countries, it is
worse and, for example, in El Salvador the maras, it’s terrible, it’s
terrible. (Interview, Costa Rica, November 4, 2006)

A taxi driver from El Salvador said:

And what we have here is violence, nothing but violence, and I think
that you will eliminate this violence only if you eliminate these maras.
(Interview, El Salvador, November 28, 2006)

A female cook:

Yes, I think so, El Salvador is the country that has more violence, more
assassinations, rapes for nothing, they kill people without any reason,
they assault people without any reason because there are many
mareros and many delinquents. I think, yes, El Salvador has more
delinquency. (Interview, El Salvador, 9 December 2006)

It is important to note that the cook identifies two groups of perpetrators,

mareros and delinquents, and presumes them to be guilty of a variety of
crimes. Although most interviewees also refer to other groups of
perpetrators and other violent settings including, for instance, school
massacres in the United States, the war in Iraq, suicide bombers, Colombian
mass violence, and insecurity in Somalia, it appears that the very notion of
maras provides a strong argument.

In recent years, the concept of pandillas/maras has entered the political

vocabulary. As political decision-makers, among them presidents, members
of parliament, and international consultants, have begun to turn their
attention towards public security, youth gangs have increasingly been
labeled as the perpetrator par excellence. It is crucial to underline, however,
that the political intentions and socio-economic settings have differed from
country to country.

According to Rocha, various factors have contributed to the identification

of Nicaraguan youth gangs as a major target group to be reached by policy
interventions. What has mattered most is the transformation of the
Sandinista police into the National Police. The existence of parallel
Sandinista and traditional elite networks within the National Police “has
generated different discourses and actions towards youth violence” (Rocha
2005, 12), with powerful international donor agencies such as the Inter-
American Development Bank contributing to making the
rehabilitation/prevention of youth violence a major priority.10 In general, it
appears that Nicaraguan decision-makers use efforts to reintegrate so-called
“young people at risk” as a marker of difference, and something that
indicates the democratic nature of Nicaraguan politics. They also take up
arguments that are circulating in other spheres of public life in Nicaragua.
After the Sandinistas’ electoral defeat in 1990, NGOs dealing with child
protection appeared throughout the country. The Instituto de Promoción
Humana-Estelí (INPRHU-Estelí), the Centro de Prevención de la Violencia
(CEPREV), and the Fundación de Protección de los Derechos de Niños,
Niñas y Adolescentes Infractores de la Ley (FUNPRODE) are some of the
most important Nicaraguan NGOs working with “adolescents at risk.” All
share the characteristic of being dependent on foreign financial resources. A
second, and more important, shared feature is participation in transnational
advocacy networks. Since the ideas of international consultants, Nicaraguan
decision-makers, and NGO activists complement one another, the notion of
youth violence has emerged as a substantial issue in public spheres.

In contrast to Nicaragua, the networked, organized civil society in El

Salvador has been an ineffective counterweight to official agenda-setting
and thus not a policy multiplier. While ARENA has used the mara label as a
meta-symbol for evil, trying to establish the idea of close ties between
maras, Jihadist terrorism, and the FMLN, the latter has circumnavigated the
issue of youth violence, focusing instead on power relations and the socio-
economic dimensions of development. Given the high degree of political
polarization, the discursive power of organized civil society has been
severely limited for a long time. Since anti-gang policies have been
adopted, human rights organizations, churches, universities, and non-
organized professionals have criticized the state for violating human rights
and exaggerating the problem of youth violence. Backed by international
NGOs and intergovernmental organizations, organized civil society has
sought to establish a counterweight to official statements. In general, critical
views on repressive anti-gang rhetoric can be articulated, but they tend to be
ignored by the mass media. Recently, however, U.S. and Colombian
“success” stories appear to have created renewed interest in the promotion
of alternative anti-crime strategies by the business sector, regardless of
whether or not these strategies are repressive. Certain interventions by
FUSADES (see above) signaled a strategic shift from “iron fist” policies to
more comprehensive anti-crime policies.

In Costa Rica, the stigmatization of youth has not yet been translated into
policy. Rather, the classification of youth as the social group most
susceptible to crime and anti-social behavior corresponds to the widespread
perception that Costa Rica is facing a moral decline. The 2005 PLN
electoral platform includes a similar argument, stating that Costa Rica is
suffering from a norms and identity crisis. Therefore, state policies should
“promote generation rescue, inspired by new principles and norms, creating
the conditions for a renewed culture of social cohabitation that allows for
the reversal of the observed tendencies” (translated from PLN 2005, item
151). Why is a generation to be rescued? Or, in other words, why do
strategies designed to prevent crime overlook adult criminals and violators
and refer solely to the imagined perpetrators of tomorrow? As described
above, adolescents at risk tend to be the only group of perpetrators that is
named.

In conclusion, as explained above, public discourses on youth violence

differ from country to country, with important thematic nodes linked to their
respective political history. The seed of fear is not automatically nourished
by “real” violent incidents but rather by discursive events. Moreover, we
have shown that the public discourse on violence is not a monolithic
phenomenon, but rather a series of overlapping or contradictory discourses
emanating from a variety of hegemonic publics and “counter-publics”
(Fraser 1992).

7. Conclusion
The argument that there are discrepancies between the portrayal of
monstrous Central American youth gangs and social reality is not new.
Previous writings have highlighted the complex and often dispersed nature
of the Central American gang phenomenon:
 While there is no doubt that a significant proportion of regional
violence is attributable to the phenomenon, gangs are relatively local-
level security issues rather than the transnational threat that the media
and some policy outlets make them out to be. (Rodgers, Muggah, and
Stevenson 2009, 23).

The combination of scant empirical evidence and dramatizing reports has

fostered the spread of myths about organized youth violence: (1) youth
violence is exploding; (2) North American transnational youth gangs have
“growing tentacles” (Muhlhausen 2005); and (3) Central American
neighborhoods are struck with fear.

There are, however, significant discrepancies here. Our qualitative data

indicate that national discourses on violence are intrinsically tied to national
myths. The myth of Costa Rica being a “peace-loving nation” (Huhn 2009),
the myth of pre-Ortega Nicaragua being a secure country (Oettler 2009),
and the myth of El Salvador being invaded by criminal adolescents (and,
more recently, by mafia organizations) are key features of contemporary
national debates. In Central America the diverging paths of development
seem to converge in terms of crime policy. The three cases discussed in this
paper encompass countries with high and medium human development
(Costa Rica vs. El Salvador and Nicaragua), countries with and without a
recent history of internal war (El Salvador and Nicaragua vs. Costa Rica)
and countries with crime rates usually perceived as exploding (El Salvador),
increasing (Costa Rica) or low (Nicaragua). These contextual features may
best be understood as a complex matrix that affects discourse content
indirectly, allowing for overlapping or even contradictory messages.
Irrespective of national differences, however, Central American crime
myths are created and perpetuated mainly by mass media, politicians, and
social scientists and serve to justify elitist status quo politics.

On the other hand, it is crucial to note that Central America is a “bounded

system” (Stake 2000), an interdependent configuration of societies
characterized by porous borders. There is a cross-national discursive
leitmotif focusing on the ever-present danger of youth violence, moral
decline, and social disintegration. The notion of organized youth violence
has become a central feature of both national and international debates on
violent Central American “realities.”

The vivid image of monstrous youth gangs is widespread but by no means

automatically associated with lifeworld experience or sufficient empirical
evidence. The talk of intentional crime, whether regarding homicide or
organized youth violence, is by no means the only talk of violence found in
public spheres in Central America (Moodie 2010; Hume 2008). What
matters to many of our interviewees are issues related to large-scale
corruption, structural violence, and/or gender-based violence (Huhn 2009;
Peetz 2011; Huhn, Oettler, and Peetz 2007). The talk of crime is performed
within ever-shifting intersections of ethnicity, class, and gender (see
Anderson, Hill, and Collins 2001; Johnson 2001). Moreover, public spheres
are often divided along residential lines. Various domains of oppression and
privilege come together in the rhetoric of (in)security, . As our data indicate,
the “talk of crime” (Caldeira 2000) serves to create and perpetuate a
patchwork of inequalities. There are, for instance, white female NGO
activists who reproduce prejudices against the poor. There are people from
poor neighborhoods who identify other poor neighborhoods as the danger
spots, and there are machos from all strata of society laden with prejudices
against women. On the other hand, there are men who communicate
feminist messages and people from poor neighborhoods who demystify the
image of the dangerous poor. And, of course, there are white feminists
engaged in the struggle against prejudice. Thus, it is crucial to recognize
that discourses on violence are plurivocal and often ambiguous, with a wide
range of speakers bound to different public realms. Perceptions of
insecurity are closely tied to a matrix of privilege and discrimination, with
income, gender, sexual orientation, and residential background being
important, albeit not determinative, factors affecting fear.

The perception of youth violence is multifaceted, with cross-sectoral and

cross-border discursive strings as well as national and subnational
peculiarities. As Downs pointed out thirty years ago, every problem of
crucial importance to society “leaps into prominence, remains there for a
short time, and then – though still largely unresolved – gradually fades from
the center of public attention” (1998, 100). In public discourse, though,
issues come and go in public attention. According to Downs, the “issue
attention cycle” usually begins with a series of dramatic events resulting in
“alarmed discovery” and “euphoric enthusiasm” that the problem can be
quickly solved (ibid.). Applying this concept to the intertwined Central
American cases, we can identify different stages of national agenda-setting
and policy formulation. While the problem of youth violence is still leaping
into prominence in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, it is already fading from the
center of public attention in El Salvador. Nevertheless, the iconographic
image of monstrous youth gangs that originate in marginalized
neighborhoods will have an enduring effect on collective memory. In
Enteman’s words: “even a million words may not be able to undo the
negative impacts of a single bad picture” (2003, 27). The picture of gang
members with their tattooed faces and torsos will endure as long as
“adolescents at risk” are seen as a menace to the social order.

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1 Thanks to Jan Oettler (University of Regensburg) and Chris R. Smith

(Earlham College) for providing useful comments.

2 Central America encompasses a common history as well as a variety of

national and local histories. Political turmoil and armed confrontation
flourished in these countries throughout the second half of the twentieth
century, with Costa Rica being the sole exception. Democratization was
achieved through civil war (Costa Rica, 1948), insurrection (Nicaragua I,
1979), election (Nicaragua II, 1990), military directive (El Salvador I,
1982), and peace negotiations (El Salvador II, 1992).

3 Intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants: Costa Rica: 6.4 (2002), 6.6
(2004), 8.0 (2006), 11.3 (2010); El Salvador: 47.3 (2002), 64.6 (2004), 64.7
(2006), 66.0 (2010); Nicaragua: 10.6 (2002), 12.1 (2004), 13.1 (2006), 13.2
(2010); source: UNODC homicide data: www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-
and-analysis/homicide.html.

4 Mass violence dates back to 1932, when military and paramilitary forces
killed an estimated thirty thousand people in the wake of a peasant uprising,
organized by local activists and members of the communist party (Dalton
1997, 163–220). The matanza is remembered as one of the main turning
points of Salvadorian history (Martí i Puig 2004, 54).
5 Only one type of perpetrator is specified in the text: “The minor law-
breaker and young adult in conflict with the law,” “the youths” and “the
maras.” When referring to delinquency and crime less concretely,
perpetrators are not specifically mentioned.

6 In 2005 and 2006, the programme implemented an Arms-Free

Municipalities Project in two pilot municipalities, San Martín and Ilopango.

7 For more information about the 2006 electoral process, see Guzmán,
Peraza, and Rivera (2006).

8 The Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista (MRS) broke away from the

FSLN in 1995, on the grounds that the political stance of the post-
insurrectionist FSLN was dominated by the authoritarian pragmatism of
Daniel Ortega, oscillating between cooperation and confrontation (Close
2005, 123).

9 Surprisingly, the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC), founded in 2000 by

Ottón Solís, received 38.9 percent of the vote, and the PUSC suffered a
devastating defeat, winning only 3.5 percent. The “newcomerís” appeal to
the electorate was successful because he presented the PAC as a force
opposing free trade and corruption.

10 A variety of institutions dealing with youth violence and/or “young

people at risk“ have been established since the late 1990s, with the National
Secretary of Youth Affairs (Secretaría de la Juventud) and the Special
Ombudsmanís Office for Children and Adolescents (Procuradoría Especial
de la Niñez y la Adolescencia) being the most important.
Anika Oettler

[email protected]