More than 4,350 homes squatted in El Salvador by criminals have been returned to their owners in recent months thanks to the intervention of police forces, Salvadoran Housing Minister Michelle Sol said this week.
In La Campanera, on the outskirts of the capital, “it is a great joy” for Ana Vilma Cuéllar, 62, to finally recover her house, bought more than twenty years ago by her husband but in which she was never able to live. The “maras”, gangs that sow terror in northern Central America, controlled this popular neighborhood and a criminal had taken it over.
The Minister of Housing said she had collected dozens of moving testimonies from families in La Campanera stripped of their assets under the threat of criminals.
Michelle Sol praised the police action, carried out as part of the “war on crime” launched in March 2022 by President Nayib Bukele. Since late October, thousands of police and soldiers have besieged and then controlled neighborhoods that were once strongholds of criminal gangs.
“Now the imaginary borders between neighborhoods no longer exist (…) we are ending the forced displacement” of families evicted by the gangs, greeted Michelle Sol.
stolen toilets
According to the government, at least 6,000 houses had been occupied by gangs throughout the country. In the department of San Salvador, 3,400 houses have already been seized from criminals (including half a thousand in La Campanera). About a thousand homes have been returned to their owners in three other departments, according to the Ministry of Housing.
However, the houses were often vandalized: doors and windows torn out, roofs destroyed. Even the toilets that have been stolen.
The state of emergency, declared at the end of March 2022 to wage the “war on crime,” was recently extended for the 10th time, until February 15.
This exceptional regime, which has been criticized by human rights organizations, allows arrests without a warrant. It was established at the end of March after a wave of 87 murders attributed to the “maras”.
According to the latest official statistics, 61,000 suspected gang members have been detained, including 900 leaders, most of them from the two main gangs: Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18.
Source: BFM TV
