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Notes on El Salvador

mattlakeman.org

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Re: Notes on El Salvador

#191

Post by thr0waway001 »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #107

My friend from Central America got upset when nearly everyone at a London party took turns to do coke in the bathroom. He told me a pretty harrowing story of how his family had had their lives ruined by drug gangs. A colleague of mine was on a flight when balloon of drugs burst inside a drug mule. They died. Our appetites fuel a cycle of violence and depravity.

As a Salvadoran, our problems stem more from our own people, joining gangs and extorting and murdering our own. It became a thing after the conflict from the aftermath of the civil war (FMLN vs ARENA). That's when the gangs took over.

Consequently, that's why many of us love our current benevolent dictator. Sure he's fucking harsh but he's effective.

Anyways, you're thinking more of Mexico. And if you think about it, that's probably why Bukele has been effective. Namely, cause the gangs are separate from the drug cartels even if they may have brushed elbows. The cartel seems more organized and more deeply rooted that I doubt they could be taken down by one man's decisions.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the sentiment.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#192

Post by 0xB31B1B »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #132
keiferski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a dead comment pointing this out, but El Salvador gangs are not primarily drug gangs. The article goes into it further, but the short version is: the gangs there are/were focused more on extortion, with a consequence being that they are dramatically less wealthy than drug organizations in Colombia and Mexico.

I don't think the reason they were less wealthy was because they were primarily in extortion and not drugs, it was because they hadn't created a funnel for money from wealthier countries to enter their pockets. I believe some Russian and North Korean gangs have figured out how to do this via extortion (cyber-crime), but the drug trade seems to be another popular way to do it.

The article goes in depth on this. Basically gangs exist on a spectrum of “business” vs “honor”. Business gangs (drug cartels, mafia etc) concerned with money and the goal is being rich and use illegal means to do so. Honor gangs are concerned with righteousness and respect, their goal is power/control/respect, examples are ms13 in El Salvador, Al qida/taliban,

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#193

Post by wolverine876 »

crq-yml wrote: post #136
wolverine876 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the foundation of the American economy was built on slave labour and colonisation (even if it was a late player) I thought the slave states were significantly poorer than the free states, a major advantage of the North in the Civil War? I'm sure it's been examined, but would the South have been better off with paid labor of free people? Countries using that model do far better. Imagine someone trying to compete wit…

The US represents a certain mythology around the Enlightenment principles that were most popular at its founding: one of the big ones was Bentham/Smith utilitarian market thinking, resulting in a conflation between "pursuit of happiness" and "pursuit of property" that the founders were not exactly encouraging of, but which many contemporary authors, inspired by John Locke's writings on property, were considering. I b…

> The US represents a certain mythology

The 'mythology' is an attempt to dismiss it - ironically using Enlightenment concepts. The Enlightenment was the escape from mythology, using actual fact and reason, which is the foundation of democracy.

Much more than mythology, democracy, the US, and the Enlightment generally have been overwhelming successes in reality. Nothing in the history of humanity comes close.

The 'mythology' is that somehow dictatorship is somehow 'natural' or necessary or inevitable or even reasonable.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#194

Post by wolverine876 »

leosanchez wrote: post #176
wolverine876 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget that before the 1990s, there were the partitions with Pakistan and Pakistan-Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi's seizure of power ... > 400 million Indians still make less than many sub-saharan African nations. Yes, and they are more important than all the programmers in Bangalore. Also, non-Hindu Indians, including those who are Muslim, are relegated to second-class status (which also must affect their econo…

> Yes, and they are more important than all the programmers in Bangalore. This doesn't make any sense. > Also, non-Hindu Indians, including those who are Muslim, are relegated to second-class status (which also must affect their economic opportunity). This is not true.

> This is not true.

Perhaps you'd like to offer some more depth? There is lots and lots of evidence otherwise. For example, India's program of 'reclaiming' Muslim land for Hindu temples.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#195

Post by wolverine876 »

suslik wrote: post #155
wolverine876 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget that before the 1990s, there were the partitions with Pakistan and Pakistan-Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi's seizure of power ... > 400 million Indians still make less than many sub-saharan African nations. Yes, and they are more important than all the programmers in Bangalore. Also, non-Hindu Indians, including those who are Muslim, are relegated to second-class status (which also must affect their econo…

> they are more important than all the programmers in Bangalore. What do you mean by this?

I mean that much of the focus on India is on the "programmers in Bangalore" (which I'm using as a metaphor for the general economic boom). The people who remain in poverty are much more important, a much higher priority, IMHO.

I'm not criticizing the economic boom per se - it provides resources that have allowed huge numbers to escape poverty.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#196

Post by wolverine876 »

azinman2 wrote: post #108
wolverine876 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the government is the most powerful gang, with all the firepower of government, then they can seize power and overcome other gangs. But that doesn't reduce the gangs in people's lives.

Except the gov there wasn't able to do that until recently. Haiti has zero chance of it, Mexico let it infiltrate to include the former president, and the US has been unable to largely stomp out its gangs. I understand you were trying to make a cynical point about govs, but I don't think it's even true.

I'm making an genuine point about dictators. They are no more than gang leaders with a title.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#197

Post by wolverine876 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #159
wolverine876 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> figuring out how to make democracy work is one of the hardest tasks on earth Lots and lots of places have done it. But yes, it can be difficult - it's up to the people, like everything else. If they want it, they will have it.

> If they want it, they will have it. More like if they are lucky to have above subsistence living, and they (specifically the men) have sufficient time and are smart enough to organize and, eventually, over generations, create a culture of democracy and trust, AND a foreign power does not come in to meddle with progress or perhaps put in their own dictator, THEN “they” will have it. I would even go so far as to say…

Do you have some empirical basis for all of this? (I don't at my fingertips - it would be great if you do!)

Let's name the elephant in the room: It's trendy to talk down democracy these days, by the megalomaniacs who think they should rule the world and be unbound by others, by dictators, by the right wing in the US and other places which wants to impose its vision on everyone else.

IMHO it's children toying with matches while the house is about to be bulldozed. We'd better start standing up for democracy soon.

In particular:

> specifically the men

Why the men? At least one well-known theory is that the education and development of women is tightly correlated to overall development.

> If you walk into a land with multiple competing tribes, and you enforce democracy on it, it will usually not work because there is insufficient trust/alliance amongst the people of the country.

The problem is 'enforcing democracy' on anyone; they need to want it because they need to do it themselves. Outsiders can only do a small amount of the work.

Democracy is designed for and works better (than alternatives) for those situations: For example, the US at its founding was in many respects 13 separate countries; they sometimes had different currencies, fought battles against each other, etc.

A democratic mechanism allows them to resolve those differences by votes and laws instead of by violence. Another problem with 'enforced' democratic mechanisms, IMHO, is that they drop a default structure on the country rather than one created for their political situation. For example, Iraq used a parliamentary democracy, where perhaps, with the great division between Sunni, Kurd, and Shiite populations, something that structured power around three 'states' might have worked better.

It doesn't create a nirvana; it can't make people agree nor magically create a wealthy, developed nation, but it perhaps makes the best of what you have. It does create peace and freedom and rule of law.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#199

Post by wolverine876 »

philwelch wrote: post #137
wolverine876 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many cultures are quite incompatible with democracy, unlike the West That's an old excuse of dictators, one of a series of obviously self-serving justifications for their taking power and oppressing others. Consider the cultures worldwide where democracy has thrived: The 'West' (Western Europe/US/Canada), Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia (S Korea, Japan, Taiwan - the wealthiest part of China by far, per capita…

I think you're getting the causation backwards here. Successful countries can maintain democracies, but when a democracy runs into a crisis it can't handle, it usually ceases to be a democracy. You're just not counting the failures because most failed democracies turn into some other form of government.

> when a democracy runs into a crisis it can't handle, it usually ceases to be a democracy

Democracies, it turns out, are more stable in part because they have peaceful transitions of power. When the UK government gets into a crisis it can't handle, it gets voted out and a new government is put in its place; it's a normal process. When dictators get into such situations, there is war and destruction and death; dictatorships are far more brittle and fragile.

The idea that democracies are somehow fragile is a fantasy of dictators and wannabe dictators.

Not every democratic transition works out - it doesn't solve problems magically, and dictators try to find a way to undermine the will and freedom of the people. Sometimes, unfortunately, they succeed.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#200

Post by pcthrowaway »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #192
pcthrowaway wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the reason they were less wealthy was because they were primarily in extortion and not drugs, it was because they hadn't created a funnel for money from wealthier countries to enter their pockets. I believe some Russian and North Korean gangs have figured out how to do this via extortion (cyber-crime), but the drug trade seems to be another popular way to do it.

The article goes in depth on this. Basically gangs exist on a spectrum of “business” vs “honor”. Business gangs (drug cartels, mafia etc) concerned with money and the goal is being rich and use illegal means to do so. Honor gangs are concerned with righteousness and respect, their goal is power/control/respect, examples are ms13 in El Salvador, Al qida/taliban,

Yes, I too read the article, though that was really only one part of the overall theory. The other parts being that poor gangsters engage in more risky behaviour because they don't have as much to lose, and that the overall economic reality of widespread poverty, along with relative incorruptibility of the police and the youth of the average gang member made it harder for them to get organized and accumulate wealth.

Overall, it seems like the gangs are victim of the same cycle that poor people everywhere are a victim of: Being poor makes it harder to make better decisions to not be poor. In other latin american countries which were perhaps somewhat wealthier (while still poor by the standards of developed countries), the gangs were better able to accumulate capital which allowed them to improve their organization and eventually get into higher-margin activities that required that organization. In El Salvadore, the gangs were never able to "pick themselves up by their bootstrap" so to speak.

While new entrants to gangs in other latin american countries may also be poor, the ones who survive and avoid imprisonment long enough to move up in the ranks have the opportunity to accumulate a relatively considerable amount of wealth (with real compensation being very top-heavy, like any other organization), and the overall higher wealth of those gangs allows for better organization.

The profit/honor dichotomy being reflected on isn't unrelated to the other issues.. the gangs which have nothing to lose in terms of wealth have only their honor (which is perhaps a type of perceived or coerced power, even it is primarily over their also-poor neighbours). The theory presented by the author is that the gangs couldn't move towards the profit-focused side of the dichotomy, because they were too poor to have those opportunities in the first place.

The fact that they were extorting their poor neighbours is a reflection of the gangs themselves being poor and poorly organized, but the point I was making above is that being in extortion isn't intrinsically the cause of them being less wealthy, the cause was targeting other poor El Salvadorans due to disorganization, rather than extracting money from wealthier pockets (whether that be from drugs, or yes, also extortion)

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