100 days of gang truce

Tuesday marked the 100th day of the truce between El Salvador's gangs which has dramatically dropped the homicide rate in the country.   The gangs spoke about the future of the truce yesterday reports the AP:

Leaders of El Salvador's Mara street gangs said Tuesday that they are ready to start negotiations with the government toward a permanent peace pact following the success of a three-month-old temporary truce that has lowered the Central American country's murder rate dramatically. 

The gang leaders said during a ceremony at the Izalco prison to celebrate the first 100 days of the truce that they want the government to offer job programs or some other sort of aid to gang members in exchange. 

"We want to reach a definitive cease fire, to end all the criminal acts of the gangs" said Mara 18 leader Oscar Armando Reyes. "But we have to reach agreements, because we have to survive. There was talk of job plans, but we haven't gotten any answers, and it is time for the government to listen to us." 

Reyes said the gangs weren't thinking of ending the temporary truce.
"We are issuing a call for us all to sit down and have a dialogue, to reach a definitive accord," he said. 

There was no immediate response from the government.

While the homicide rate has dropped from around 14 a day at the beginning of the year to approximately 5 per day under the truce, levels of other crime seem to have dropped little if at all.   There are also reports that the number of missing persons is increasing, suggesting that some of the drop in the homicide rate is simply that the bodies are not being found.   Yet even with those caveats, there seems to be little doubt that the gang truce has momentarily improved the security situation in El Salvador.   The government and all sectors of society should take every measure possible to try to make those improvements permanent and to enhance a culture of peace.