Contesting plural security in El Salvador: The gang in retrospect

This article argues that a key lesson of the Salvadoran gang truce is that the support for these kinds of ‘plural security initiatives’ are very limited and that a sizable reduction in homicide rates is not always enough to build a political platform that is able to garner support. A truce process whose outcome is the institutionalization of a form of hybrid security, was unacceptable to a majority of the Salvadorans. Initiating a truce process as a means to restore state control might be more acceptable. But this would require more transparency and clear rules stipulating the cooperation between government officials and gang structures, at local and national levels, and specifying how the rule of law will be restored, as well as how that process will be monitored and by whom.