Instability in the Northern Triangle
More than two million people have left [PDF] Central America’s so-called Northern Triangle—comprising El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—since 2019, many of them fleeing chronic violence and insecurity, extreme poverty, environmental disasters, and other hardships. Some of these problems arose from decades of civil war and political instability in the region. Since 2022, governments in El Salvador and Honduras have responded to rising crime by implementing [PDF] states of exception and mass incarceration campaigns. These policies have garnered popular support and received credit for falling homicide rates in both countries but have also suspended civil liberties, led to human rights abuses, and threatened democratic norms. Meanwhile, Bernardo Arévalo assumed the presidency in nearby Guatemala following a monthslong political crisis in which establishment figures attempted to undermine the country’s peaceful transition of power.
During the Cold War, proxy wars plagued Central America as the United States and Soviet Union competed for regional influence. The United States, fearing the spread of communism in its backyard, supported its preferred partners (largely capitalist autocrats) in coups, insurgencies, and civil wars, including decades-long wars in Guatemala (1960 to 1996) and El Salvador (1979 to 1992). Nearby, the Honduran military carried out several coups and intermittently ruled from 1955 to 1982. The country also served as a staging ground for U.S. forces in the 1970s and 1980s. During that time, illicit arms proliferated [PDF] throughout the region.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, transnational gangs such as the 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18) and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) began to attract Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans living in the United States. In 1996, the United States passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which allowed authorities to deport gang members, including those with legal permanent status, to their country of origin for any “aggravated felony.” Authorities applied the policy retroactively, including by pursuing undocumented immigrants who had completed their prison sentences. In all, the United States deported nearly thirty-one thousand convicted criminals to Central American countries between 1996 and 2002.
Many young deportees had little or no link to their native countries, having lived most of their lives in the United States, and had been socialized in a culture of gang violence. Thrust into countries still recovering from war, they took advantage of ineffectual police forces and lenient judiciaries to form local gangs, or maras, and take control of areas with little state presence. Since then, a steady stream of deported criminals and migrants has increased their membership. Gangs also target youth [PDF], more than 25 percent of whom are without schooling or employment, for recruitment. Those targeted are forced to either endure brutal gang initiations and subsequent exploitation or flee.
By the mid-2000s, gang members in the Northern Triangle numbered in the tens of thousands, with a median age of nineteen. Gangs such as Barrio 18 and MS-13 regularly battled security forces and each other for territorial control. At the height of regional violence in the early- to mid-2010s, homicide rates in El Salvador and Honduras were among the highest in the world.
Central American gangs profit from illicit trade in guns and drugs, sometimes linked to Mexican cartels, but they also exploit migrants and residents. Common strategies include setting up checkpoints to demand tolls, extorting local businesses, and seizing homes, which they turn into casas locas, or crazy houses, where they often drink alcohol, initiate recruits, and sexually abuse women and children. Ultimately, death threats, gang recruitment, extortion, and violence force many families to flee, though some boys and young men embrace gangs [PDF], which can offer a sense of pride and belonging.
The region’s governments responded to rising crime with mano dura, or iron fist, policies that aimed to imprison large numbers of gang members. Despite some initial improvements in security, prisons quickly became overcrowded battlegrounds between gang members. Authorities regularly imprisoned people solely based on their physical appearance and committed indiscriminate violence while raiding suspected gang sites. Meanwhile, prisons turned into recruitment and command centers for the gangs; in El Salvador, gang members coordinated [PDF] an estimated 84 percent of extortion operations from jail in the early 2010s.
Securitized strategies have had mixed success in reducing violence, and they have done little to alleviate poverty, address the lack of educational and employment opportunities, or transform [PDF] societal stigmas against deportees and former gang members hoping to reintegrate into society. The United States, with some success, invested billions of dollars in initiatives such as the Alliance for Prosperity aimed at boosting state capacity, reforming the judiciary, and providing social programming for youth, but plans often faltered due to insufficient funding.
Following his election in 2019, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele reportedly negotiated a truce with gangs, after which point the country’s homicide rate fell to a historic low. However, on March 26, 2022, gang members killed sixty-two people, marking the deadliest day on record since the country’s civil war ended in 1992 and prompting Bukele to order a heavy-handed crackdown. During a nationwide state of emergency that has been extended for more than a year, authorities have arrested more than seventy-two thousand people, bringing the total prison population to 1.6 percent of El Salvador’s population. Human rights groups have decried arbitrary detentions and inhumane conditions, including beating and intimidation, in the prisons. The country’s new mega-prison still has space for tens of thousands of inmates, and the prisons do not conduct rehabilitation programs.
Despite these criticisms, Bukele enjoys a nearly 70 percent approval rating, largely due to a more than 50 percent drop in homicides in 2022 compared to the previous year. He has also become a social media–savvy international sensation, with citizens of other Latin American countries holding rallies and calling on their politicians to adopt his extreme strategies. Honduran President Xiomara Castro has tried to imitate Bukele’s crackdown by issuing her own state of emergency and declaring war against gangs, but she has had less success in reducing violence. Both countries have suspended civil rights and granted the military a role in policing, which has led to abuses and a disregard for the rule of law by troops who are trained to fight, not to protect civilians. The strategy also threatens democratic norms by legitimizing authoritarian measures; incidents suggesting a democratic backsliding began even before the state of emergency, such as when troops entered parliament to intimidate the opposition in 2020.
As for governance in the Northern Triangle, decades of war and violent political transitions in the late twentieth century fostered a culture of violence and impunity, dealing lasting damage to the legitimacy of state institutions and the rule of law. Even after the region stabilized politically in the 1990s, governments remained weak, and endemic corruption persisted. Without an effective civil service, most government positions are politically appointed, fueling corruption at every level. The high turnover rate limits the number of capable, effective bureaucrats and encourages loyalty to patronage networks rather than the state. Furthermore, public trust [PDF] in the police and the judiciary is dismal regionwide, and judges who challenge corruption from within the system are routinely forced out.
As a result, Central America loses an estimated $13 billion, or 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), to corruption each year. Economic elites have little incentive to advocate for change, as they benefit from lenient taxation policies and government favors. Meanwhile, tax revenue far lower than the Latin American average leaves governments with little ability to provide basic public services. Due to the lack of social welfare and employment opportunities, many citizens rely heavily on remittances, which account for [PDF] upwards of 25 percent of GDP in El Salvador and Honduras and 15 percent in Guatemala. That cash influx relieves pressure on governments to improve services, creating a disincentive for them to curb emigration, as doing so could threaten that economic lifeline.
In 2006, Guatemala welcomed the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala after requesting help from the United Nations to fight corruption. The commission had an 85 percent success rate, removing dozens of high-level officials from office and even indicting a former president. Ultimately, however, it was shut down in 2019 amid resistance from politicians and dwindling U.S. support. The Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), launched in 2016 following a government embezzlement scandal, was less independent and ended after four unsuccessful years. El Salvador established the International Commission Against Impunity in El Salvador in 2019 but pulled out of a deal to allow the Organization of American States oversight of the program in 2021.
Climate change–induced events such as extreme weather, irregular precipitation patterns, deforestation, and high temperatures also exacerbate poverty and instability in the region. In 2020, back-to-back major hurricanes caused billions of dollars of damage in Guatemala and Honduras, displacing half a million people and wiping out crops. An estimated 7.9 million people in the region faced food insecurity [PDF] in 2021, and experts warn that storms will bring increasingly intense winds and flooding in the coming years. Meanwhile, the densely populated Central American Dry Corridor along the Pacific coast, where 30 percent of residents live in extreme poverty, has experienced [PDF] cycles of drought and inundation that threaten crop output. Though El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are ranked among the countries most adversely affected by climate change, the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative assesses them as among the least prepared to mitigate the consequences.
Decades of insecurity, wealth inequality, and weak governance have eroded economic opportunities in the Northern Triangle, and unpredictable phenomena such as hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately impacted the livelihoods of the region’s poorest. In the face of these hardships, more than two million have fled the region since 2019, with most heading north through Mexico to the southern U.S. border. On their journey, they face harassment, robbery, abuse, and abduction by criminal groups, as well as extortion by officials. Furthermore, those who cross the border illegally face the prospect of abuse, detention, and deportation if caught by U.S. border officials.
Under the Barack Obama administration, the United States provided billions of dollars in aid for projects aimed at stemming migration from Central America. The Central America Regional Security Initiative failed to reduce arrivals at the U.S. border, and deportations increased. The Donald Trump administration adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward migrants and cut aid to the region in 2019, demanding leaders do more to stop migration. Trump also sought “safe third country” agreements with several Latin American countries, which would have expanded authorities’ ability to turn away migrants, but the countries ultimately declined to participate. Between March 2020 and May 2023, U.S. authorities implemented Title 42, a rarely used public health law, to deny asylum on pandemic-related grounds. The Joe Biden administration loosened Trump-era restrictions and pledged to provide the Northern Triangle with $4 billion in conditional aid but has also continued deportations and encouraged Mexico and Central American countries to limit the flow of migrants.
In Guatemala’s presidential runoff in August 2023, political outsider Bernardo Arévalo de León won 58 percent of the vote, beating establishment candidate and former First Lady Sandra Torres. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal quickly verified the result and incumbent President Alejandro Giammattei called for an orderly transition of power. However, the establishment appeared unwilling to allow Arévalo, who campaigned on an anticorruption platform, to take office. An electoral body suspended the president-elect’s progressive Movimiento Semilla, or Seed Movement, party, and Arévalo paused the presidential transition following illegal raids on electoral facilities. He also called on supporters to rally against a “corrupt and coup-mongering minority” that he says is carrying out a “coup in slow motion.” In spite of this obstruction, Arévalo became president on January 14, 2024.
Meanwhile, progress toward the establishment of the International Commission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras has raised hopes of combating impunity in that country. In July 2023, UN experts visited Honduras to assess conditions and prepare for negotiations. However, some civil society groups have complained about delays; negotiations over the commission’s independence and the length of its mandate are still dragging on a year after the signing of a deal in December 2022.
In El Salvador, gang violence remains at historically low levels, but Bukele continues to degrade the country’s democracy. He spent most of 2023 focusing on implementing phase five of his Territorial Control Plan, known as “extraction,” which focused on encircling gang strongholds and rooting out criminals. In September 2023, Bukele announced the beginning of phase six of his plan, “integration,” and declared it “the most successful security plan in the world” in a social media post. He said his government would now focus on creating a more cohesive society by optimizing state funds and expanding access to education and training opportunities. On November 3, 2023, El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled that Bukele could run for a second presidential term, even though the constitution prohibits it, arguing that the issue was one for voters to decide. On February 4, 2024, Bukele was re-elected with almost 85 percent of the vote and his New Ideas party won a supermajority in the legislature, further solidifying his hold on power.
