Gangs said eyeing El Salvador's crime truce

A former rebel fighter now mediating between El Salvador's government and violent Mara gangs said on 17 July that Maras from Honduras and Guatemala had contacted him to state their interest in replicating a four-month truce between El Salvador's Maras that has more than halved the murder rate there, Latin American papers and Dpa reported on 18 July. Raúl Mijango, now a writer, and the Catholic Church in El Salvador are mediating in a "pacification" process backed by the Organization of American States. This began with a truce agreed on last March between the Mara Salvatrucha and M-18 or Barrio 18, Central America's two main gangs with criminal operations and tentacles in the three states. Mijango told Dpa that Maras from Honduras and Guatemala had contacted him seeking advice on how to implement a similar truce. "They themselves will have to look for ways to replicate this process in Guatemala and Honduras, as I cannot become involved in the dynamics of other nations.The only thing I can tell you is that I know of the willingness of the gangs both in Guatemala and Honduras, to want to enter a process like this," he said.