El Salvador: LGBTI+ people feel safe from gangs but fear police and military
President Bukele's state of emergency reduced gang threats but increased human rights violations by the Police and Armed Forces.
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SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador . Seven years ago, a group of gang members beat OC, a trans woman, because she was banned from walking through a popular neighborhood in eastern El Salvador. While they were attacking her, some neighbors came out of their homes to defend her. The gang members fled. Before leaving, they picked up some volcanic rocks lying in the street and threw them at her.
The 36-year-old makeup artist says they denied her entry simply because she was part of the LGBTQ+ community. They also denied her entry because she lived in an area controlled by a rival gang, even though she had no connection to that group. She couldn't even walk to catch a bus or visit a relative.
“That time they were going to take my life, but they didn’t because of the neighbors. They beat me all over against a wall,” the woman, identified as OC for security reasons, told Presentes.
President Nayib Bukele's state of emergency , OC can now move about without fear of gangs, but the new danger is the state's own security forces.
Between March 27, 2022 and June 30 of this year, the organizations report arbitrary arrests, lack of due process, home invasions, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
The arrival of the gangs
During the 1990s, hundreds of Salvadorans who were gang members in Los Angeles were deported to their country of origin. In the following years, the phenomenon spread throughout the Central American nation. Entire neighborhoods fell under the control of the so-called "Maras." These gangs, through threats of death, controlled the activities of residents and businesses.
According to experts, they committed a variety of crimes in their territories. They murdered and disappeared people, committed sexual abuse, extorted money, and harassed and discriminated against the LGBTI population. Furthermore, they forced residents to collaborate in their activities and imposed silence upon them.
According to the “Study on access to justice for LGBTIQA+ people, particularly the Trans population, in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador,” 60 hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity or expression were committed in El Salvador.
The report uses police statistics from January 1, 2020, to March 31, 2022. It indicates that, of the 60 cases, 19 involved injuries and 41 involved threats, of which 15 occurred in the departments of San Salvador, 11 in San Miguel, nine in Sonsonate, and seven in La Libertad, among others.
In addition, the same investigation reports 60 cases of disappearances in the same period.
Official information
Officially, the police institution recorded 15 murders against the population in the years 2020 and 2021. But the organization Amate reported nine crimes in 2019, five in 2020, four in 2021 and at least one in 2022, although there could be a case of underreporting.
Police arrested Jairo Castellanos on October 8th, suspected of murdering Víctor Rivas, a 24-year-old university student, three days earlier, with whom, according to authorities, he had "a romantic relationship".
“This individual (Castellanos) will pay with decades in prison for the crime he committed. The days of impunity for all criminals who threaten the lives of Salvadorans are over. This murderer will be brought to justice,” wrote the Minister of Justice and Security, Gustavo Villatoro, on the social network X.
Weekly payments and beatings
The city of San Miguel, 138 kilometers east of the capital, San Salvador, a place where more than 345,000 people live, was disputed by the gangs Mara Salvatrucha, one of the factions of Barrio 18 and Mirada Locos 13.
“I didn’t feel safe in my own country. At one point I thought about emigrating to another country because I did feel unsafe. I would say, ‘What am I going to do if I go through this area, this neighborhood? They’ll kill me or make me disappear,’” OC told Presentes.
The gang members also demanded weekly payments of $10 from LGBTI sex workers on the city streets..
Four female workers told Presentes that they were forced to pay the amount or else they were beaten with bats, broom handles, or clubs studded with nails. They were also threatened with harm to their family members. Others were murdered or disappeared.
In 2005, Elizabeth (a pseudonym for security reasons), a trans woman, was attacked by two men while working as a sex worker. She was punched and kicked, and then stabbed in an attempt to kill her. She lost consciousness and woke up wearing only her underwear. She was hospitalized for four days.
“The gangs restricted our movement. We couldn’t be here (on the street) unless we paid the fee they demanded, the so-called ‘rent’ or ‘contribution.’ We had to pay $10 a week to be authorized to work in the territories under their control,” said 37-year-old Elizabeth.
Following the deaths of 87 Salvadorans in March 2022, President Nayib Bukele asked Congress to approve a State of Emergency, which suspends some constitutional guarantees, to combat gangs.
Fewer crimes, fewer rights
The state of emergency was extended for 19 months, and since then more than 73,000 suspected gang members have been arrested. Around 7,000 people have been released and are being held under alternative measures to detention.
According to security officials, the implementation of the State of Emergency has led to a 56.7% reduction in homicides in 2022 compared to the previous year. They also report a decrease in crimes such as extortion.
“Now it’s different. The security system we have now has kind of slowed down people’s intentions to express that hatred towards us; one feels safer today,” Elizabeth told Presentes.
Complaints against soldiers and police officers
“We demand freedom for Brayan Eliú Estrada Moreno, a young man from the LGBTI community in Santa Ana, who is unjustly imprisoned due to a false accusation on Facebook. Gangs do not accept LGBTI people into their ranks, but an unscrupulous individual irresponsibly denounced him using a social network,” the Humanitarian Legal Aid organization posted on social media on September 13.
But this is not the only complaint. Seven non-governmental organizations received 5,490 reports of human rights violations during the first 15 months of the State of Emergency. Among the complainants are 36 transgender women and 37 transgender men.
Of the total, 42 violations have been committed against bisexuals, 32 against gays, 19 against lesbians and one pansexual, the report indicates.
These are often accompanied by harassment, coercion, intimidation, forced internal displacement, mistreatment, torture and even the death of prisoners, of which 180 deaths of people in state custody have already been recorded, without any investigations by the Attorney General's Office.
Legal protection for LGBTI+ people
“The LGBTI population has been exposed to different levels of violence and discrimination. The state of emergency has also aggravated their vulnerability. They are left completely unprotected due to the absence of legal frameworks and mechanisms to safeguard them,” the organizations stated in a press release.
Two transgender sex workers told Presentes that they spent three months in prison. A client accused them of theft.
Although their case was unrelated to the state of emergency declared to combat gangs, the alleged robbery victim did not press charges against the transgender women in court. They were released, but spent three months in prison, where their hair was cut and they were mistreated.
Trans women accused of being gang members
Trans women assert that some of their peers have also been detained under the State of Emergency, even though they are not gang members, and have been falsely accused. By June, the Salvadoran LGBTI Federation reported that approximately 80 people from the community remained in detention.
“The regime is fine, but not the way they’re implementing it. To take all these (gang members) away, they’ve had to sacrifice many innocent people,” Elizabeth said.
According to critics, the Human Rights Ombudsman's Office (PDDH), a state entity created to act as an independent institution and protect citizens' rights, has remained silent in the face of hundreds of cases of violations.
“The Human Rights Ombudsman's Office (PDDH) is currently compiling and systematizing all information related to the State of Emergency, which will be made public at a later date. Therefore, the requested information cannot be provided at this time,” the institution responded to Presentes after a request for information regarding complaints against the LGBTI population.
“Regarding the issue of gangs, what we’ve been told is that there is a different perception of security; they don’t experience the same level of harassment and violence as before. But that fear that existed before has certainly spread to certain groups, including police and military personnel,” Gonzalo Montano, a training specialist at the Center for Studies on Sexual and Gender Diversity in Amate, told Presentes.
In July 2020, three police officers were sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of trans woman Camila Diaz Cordova , an unprecedented sentence in the country.
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