A New Generation of Disappearances: Gangs and the State in El Salvador

Around 17,000 Salvadorans have disappeared in the third decade of the post-conflict period (2010-2020). This number more than doubles the estimated 8,000 people who disappeared during the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). Despite its astounding scale, the phenomenon of disappearance in El Salvador has garnered little attention from the international community and has yet to be fully examined. This chapter redresses this invisibility by contrasting a top-down and a bottom-up view on the phenomenon. According to state government officials, disappearances primarily occur at the hands of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs. Those inhabiting the peripheries of El Salvador and suffering the deep psychological impact of having a missing relative also hold transnational gangs responsible. However, they connect the phenomenon to abuses by state forces and to complex entanglements between state agents and gangs. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in El Salvador in 2018, this chapter argues that the new generation of disappearances in El Salvador must be analysed in relation to a broader continuum of state violations and state-criminal relations. It also points to the crucial need to engage the perspectives of relatives of the disappeared to make fuller sense of the phenomenon