....Although gangs have long been a feature of Central American societies, they have come to the fore in the region in an unprecedented manner since the early 1990s. Estimates of the total proportion of contemporary regional violence attributable to gangs vary widely—from 10 to 60 per cent—as they have been accused of a whole slew of crimes and delinquency, ranging from mugging, theft, and intimidation to rape, assault, and drug dealing. There have even been attempts to linkthem to revolution and global terrorism. A 2005 US Army War College
publication, for example, contends that Central American gangs constitute a ‘new urban insurgency’ that has as ultimate objective ‘to depose or control the governments of targeted countries’ through ‘coups d’street’ . Along similar lines, Anne Aguilera, head of the Central America office of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs branch of the US State Department, asserted in an interview published in the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica on 8 April 2005 that gangs were ‘the greatest problem for national security at this time in Central America’. Although gangs are unquestionably a significant contemporary concern in the region, such sensationalist pronouncements suggest that they remain profoundly misunderstood. The purpose of this Occasional Paper is to debunk some of these myths and present a balanced assessment of the causes, costs, and interventions relating to Central American gang violence....
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