Chapter 3 – Case Study of Nicaragua
3.2. Violence as a Contributing Factor to Migration
3.2.2. Governmental Response to Gang-Related Violence
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deportees arrived in Central America with their gang related knowledge and rapidly gangs grew and spread across the region (USAID, 2OO6).
The combination of these three elements helps explain why Nicaragua has less presence of transnational gangs. First off, they were able to obtain legal status in the United States easier than the other countries in Central America, and once they arrived at the destination country, they were settled in areas far less dangerous and with less gang presence. Lastly, once the 1990 act came in play, because of their legal status in the United States, they were often not eligible for deportation or at least able to plead their cases.
3.2.2. Governmental Response to Gang-Related Violence
As gangs continue to irresistible grow stronger in Central America, and Violence has increased as Mexican drug traffickers spread their operations to the region in recent years, gang activities have failed to move forward beyond Honduras; Nicaragua’s northern neighbor. Nicaraguan authorities that have succeeded at keeping its territory free from these deadly gangs have frustrated the desired expansion of gang expansion towards the south.
The reason why Nicaragua originally has fewer gangs than its neighboring country is clear. However, since the fight on the drug war in Mexico, cartels have been looking for new territories in its southern neighbors and gang activities have grew stronger in Central America (Ribando Seelke, 2014). In this sense, if we can attribute part of central American child migration crisis to gang-related violence, it becomes indispensable to analyze what is behind this phenomenon, which makes Nicaragua a gang barrier and has avoided the widespread of gangs in its territory.
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Nicaragua’s levels of human development and institutional fragility are similar to those of northern Central America; additionally it also has a past of armed conflict like several of its neighbors. However, part of the success it has achieved by keeping gangs out of the country can be attributed to the social and institutional changes generated in Nicaragua after the 1979 revolution (Cajina, 2013). The left-wing rebels who overthrew a United States-backed dictator in 1979 went on to build a more efficient and less corrupt security forces separate from the army. This revolution created various institutions different than the ones that continued to exist in neighboring countries and along with it; they tried to strengthen the participation of its citizens, which consequently created a lot of solidarity of its inhabitants (Ibid).
Additional to what the country has done right in the past, they continue to with a commitment aimed at creating opportunities for young people as the best prevention to curb the development of gangs, who spread terror in several Central America. Instead of adopting the ‘Iron Fist’ policies seen in the other countries where the problems were addressed via tough crackdowns, and thousands of youths were imprisoned as gang members, often under weak evidence of gang association (Zinecker, 2012). Nicaragua opted on social programs that help get youths out of gangs and focused more on their reintegration into society rather than suppression. In this country, the police are taking an aggregate approach, combining patrols and investigations to help at-risk children and youth (Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, 2011).
Nicaragua has been in the most part free of gang related violence due to its less repressive tactics (Zinecker, 2012; Cajina 2013). In order to keep things the way they have
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been, a lot of work, intelligence, and mobilization have been put in play; how have they done this? According to reports that appeared in local newspapers, the police has played a key role and largely focused on strategic geographical areas to achieve their goals.
Since recent years, Somoto (a small town in Nicaragua that shares borders with Honduras) have been experiencing the influx of Salvadoran and Honduran gang members.
However, their attempt to penetrate into the country and carry out their recruitment has constantly been frustrated by the Nicaraguan police who have documented contacts between gangs in their country and Salvadoran factions of MS-13 (Aragon, 2013). Beside the work of the police to determine the territories that present a risk for the increase and influx of gangs in the country, a second very important task that that Nicaraguan security officials are doing is to identify and helping at-risk youths. The preventive policies of the Nicaraguan police and their focus of identifying and helping at-risk youths, had led to the creation of the Juvenile Affairs Division (Dajuv) for it’s Spanish acronym (Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, 2011). This part of the Nicaragua National Police operates provide information, education, and socialization through the DARE program that promotes the no access to drugs and youth violence. As the for the youth who are already involved in gangs, they offer a 5 steps program: Trice, diagnosis, attention, armistice, and demobilization (Ibid). In the country, the police have been able to identify 48 active gangs and 800 gang members, but non-that are related with the transnational gangs that are present in the neighboring countries (El Nuevo Diario, 2010).
Additionally, a factor that makes the Nicaraguan police different from that of its neighbors is the existence of a Commissariat for Women and Children that does not exist in the neighboring countries. It works as a specialized care model with highly trained police in
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matters of violence against women and childhood. In this sense, despite the fact that Nicaragua is safer than its neighbors, it still does not mean that there is no youth violence at all. However, since the police adopted a preventive and proactive, they have created a strong youth policy based on an understanding differentiated from local youth groups: group high social risk youth and youth gangs.