Criminal Planet (2021) s01e08 Episode Script
Pay Up or Die: The Gang Extorting a Nation
-International organized
crime has no natural predator.
Crime syndicates are expanding
and forging alliances
across the globe.
As law enforcements
struggle to stop them,
up to 5% of the global
economy is now in criminal hands.
I'm Paul Radu and
for the past 20 years
I have investigated
international organized crime
in the tune of 400 billion,
and this is a very, very small
slice of what's really going on.
-I think there are some
people. Let's go, let's go.
-In this series,
I'm working with a team of
reporters around the world
-Are you angry with
yourself for being part of this?
-to discover how a
generation of international gangs
are redrawing the criminal map.
-El Salvador is the
extortion capital of the world.
Two gangs -- MS-13
and 18th Street --
hold the entire
country in their grip.
They make three quarters
of a billion dollars a year
forcing everyone from
bus drivers to multinationals
to pay up or die.
This terror tactic has given
them power and control
over whole communities.
Anyone who disobeys
is targeted by MS-13's
growing army of assassins.
We're gonna meet two
female MS-13 members.
I have personally never
met a woman gang member,
much less a hired assassin.
Ghost's words are
not hollow threats.
In the last decade,
El Salvador has had
some of the highest
murder rates in the world.
A death rate
driven by extortion.
♪♪
-Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13,
is one of the most
feared gangs in the world.
You've gotta show that you
are able to kill with a machete,
that you're able to sever
limbs, that you're able, you know,
to kill entire families, and
that you have no remorse.
They inflict terror in
people in order to go
about their business.
Extortion is a main
source of income
for criminals in El Salvador.
These gangs are controlling
so much of the public life,
so much of the
citizens' livelihoods.
A big slice of your life
belongs to the criminals.
-Ghost is training a 17-year-old
recruit, nicknamed Skinny,
to carry on the killing
while she has her baby.
Skinny needs to prove
herself as a lookout
before climbing the ranks
to become an assassin.
Back at her house,
Ghost explains why she
became a cold-blooded killer.
Uh-huh.
Ghost is one of about 30,000
members who have sworn
their allegiance to MS-13,
the largest gang in El Salvador.
But its roots actually
stretch all the way to LA,
where back in the '80s
thousands of refugees
came after fleeing El
Salvador's Civil War.
-These gangs from El
Salvador are now operating
in every corner of America,
everybody is at risk here.
[ Siren wailing ]
-Marginalized in
deprived neighborhoods,
MS-13 set themselves
up as a vigilante group
to protect their community,
but soon grew into one of
America's most dangerous
organized crime gangs.
Between 2001 and 2010,
the US deported over
40,000 Salvadoran convicts.
In doing so, they exported
gang violence and extortion
to the streets of El Salvador.
[ Siren wailing ]
-The US law enforcement
is interested in kicking
these people out,
but they don't care if
those people are gonna kill
and rape and pillage in
other parts of the world.
They were just focused on
something that was immediate,
something that would get rid
of the crime on the streets of LA,
which it didn't,
but on top of that
they created more of a
problem back in El Salvador.
-I'm about to meet the two
female gang members again,
and I think it's also
like a good opportunity
to talk a little bit more
with the younger one.
Skinny's whole life has
been shaped by MS-13,
both her parents
are senior members.
-MS-13 know that their future
is in recruiting youngsters,
in recruiting kids.
Kids are enlisted,
and especially kids who
don't have access to education,
you know, kids who don't
see any other way of life,
and children are
capable of a lot of cruelty
when they're trained
by adults to do so.
-Skinny shows me how Ghost
and her boss train
young assassins to kill.
MS-13 targets hundreds
of thousands of people
with their extortion racket,
known locally as la renta.
Typical victims are food
stall owners like Maria.
Maria is forced to pay
MS-13 30% of her income.
The gang has eyes and
ears on every street corner
to check how much each
business earns every day.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, I see her, and she says
it's like the most random
people that you can think,
it's not like your average
lookout like a gang member,
it's older ladies sometimes.
They've got a cellphone
and they're calling to
inform the gang
about what's going on,
what people are doing.
To protect Maria, we
step away from her shop.
Maria is such a brave woman.
It's really devastating to think
how much a life costs
in this country, $30.
If Maria doesn't pay
$30 each week to a gang,
that's the life of her husband
or her child potentially.
The gangs control over 90%
of El Salvador's neighborhoods
and act with impunity.
The police are under-equipped
and overwhelmed.
The criminal conviction rate
in El Salvador is less than 5%.
-People like Maria are
easy victims, easy prey,
in circumstances
where the state fails,
where the state cannot
protect its citizens,
where the state cannot
provide security and safety.
What Maria is living
there is a nightmare
because this is an
integrated system
where criminals use extortion
as a way to control people.
If they take $30 a month
from someone like Maria,
the more Marias you have,
it adds up to actually a
percentage of the country's GDP.
It's the business of fear,
you generate fear in
order to make money,
and the more fear you generate,
the more money you'll make.
♪♪
-The cycle of extreme
violence MS-13 deploys
means they even maintain
a strangle-hold
over big corporations
that run the country's
infrastructure.
They target public
transport companies
that turn over
$250 million a year.
A cash in hand business,
the buses pass through
gang territory every day.
Passengers and staff
are totally exposed.
1,300 transport workers
have been murdered
in less than a decade.
Catalino Miranda,
the owner of El Salvador's
largest bus company,
has experienced the
human costs firsthand.
The extortion fees nearly
crippled his company.
Catalino refused to
pay after 25 of his drivers
were killed in just one year.
He now spends $30,000 a
month on private security, CCTV,
and GPS tracking to monitor
his 300 buses in real time.
Standing up to the
gangs has left him
with a price on his head.
Businesses here now
spend an estimated $2 billion
a year on private security,
trying to fill the void left by
years of government failures.
In 2003, to tackle the
gang's growing power,
the government launched a
strategy known as Mano Dura,
the iron fist, which led
to mass incarceration.
Imprisoned without trial,
many were locked up based
on their physical appearance
and being inked
with gang tattoos.
Mano Dura backfired.
95% of the prisoners were
released in the first year.
MS-13 simply became
more aware of police tactics,
more organized,
and more violent.
I'm going to meet one
of the founding members
of MS-13, known Bad Boy,
who spent years in prison.
He is actually in
charge of collecting
the extortion money in his area,
and he is old school, he
has tattoos on his face,
so he is what they call
a person who's inked,
and he's permanently in hiding,
he can't show his
face out in the public.
So we are at the
unidentified location
where he has agreed to meet us.
To avoid police detection,
MS-13 now use women
and teenagers without tattoos
or criminal records
to do their dirty work.
Many police officers here
only earn $300 a month
and live in gang territory.
Fearing retribution,
they often turn a blind eye
to the gang's extortion
business, or take bribes.
The failings of law enforcement
has empowered MS-13
to scale up its
extortion business
and target not just
Salvadoran businesses,
but even some of the
world's leading multinationals.
-None of the multinationals
who operate in El Salvador
have ever admitted to
paying extortion fees.
It breaks international
money laundering laws,
and if they acknowledged it,
they could be
seen as a soft touch
and targeted by other criminal
organizations across the globe.
It's been really hard
for us to get a response
from multinationals
about extortion,
so we are literally
in one of the towns
and we're gonna doorstep
the delivery guy to see
if we can get some answers
about how the system works.
One of El Salvador's
biggest beverage companies
distribute Coca-Cola and
other global drinks brands here.
A senior staff member agreed
to talk to us anonymously.
We contacted Coca-Cola
who said they take
the allegations very seriously.
They condemn all illegal
activity, including extortion,
and are working with
their authorized bottler
in El Salvador to understand
the full extent of the claims.
For the very first time, the
president of an organization
that represents 14,000
companies, Javier Siman,
has agreed to speak
about the scale of the threat.
MS-13 is not the only
gang extorting the nation.
For decades, they have
fought a bloody turf war
with their arch
enemies, 18th Street.
One of their factions
has refocused
their extortion tactics to
go only for the big money.
[ Dog barking ]
[ Man whistles ]
-What happened?
We just got word that someone
was arrested up on the bridge
so we need to stop
and leave right now.
18th Street are on edge
because a few days ago,
the national police, backed
by American law enforcement,
arrested 572 gang members
on charges of extortion,
terrorism, murder,
and money laundering.
To try to regain
public confidence
and retain
international investment,
the police are now
mounting weekly operations
against the gangs.
So it's 1:30 in the morning
and we just got a call
from a local producer
saying there's a
massive operation.
The police are gonna
arrest about 30 extortionists,
and we were given the
green light to go with them.
♪♪
-The government
spent $31 billion
and deployed 3,000 extra troops
in 2020 to bolster
their crackdowns.
There is about 20 vehicles here
so it's gonna be a
pretty large convoy.
You can tell that these guys
are pretty scared of the gangs
because for the police
to go out and get some,
they need to call in the army
to actually secure the perimeter.
30 search warrants
have been issued
for members of 18th Street.
The police have locked up
over 5,000 gang members
in the last 18 months alone.
The members of 18th
Street arrested tonight
are part of a supposed
zero tolerance campaign
led by El Salvador's
new president.
President Nayib Bukele
was sworn in in June 2019
on a promise to eradicate gangs.
[ Cheering ]
Five years ago, El Salvador's
murder rate was the highest
in the world, outside war zones.
[ Cheering ]
Bukele's impact
appears impressive.
He claims to have cut
the murder rate by 60%.
But in September 2020,
El Salvador's investigative
news platform, Elfaro,
broke a story that
shocked the world.
Elfaro claimed President Bukele
made a secret deal with MS-13.
If they voted for him
and cut the killings,
he'd give them a seat
at the political table.
We've come to
see Carlos Martinez,
he's an investigative
journalist here,
and he's broken many
stories about organized crime
and the government and has been
threatened for uncovering these,
so he doesn't wanna be
seen outside for his safety.
-The criminals are more
powerful than the government
in El Salvador,
and this is because
they control the citizens,
they are able to
keep people in check,
they are able to
direct their lives,
they are able to tell
people what to do,
so when you add to
this political element
when you add an alleged
pact between MS-13
and the government
and the president,
that just increases the power
of the organized crime group.
-President Bukele has
categorically denied allegations
of agreeing a secret deal
with El Salvador's gangs.
We have managed to contact
one of MS-13's national leaders.
He doesn't acknowledge
any secret political deal,
but is proud to boast about
the power MS-13 wealds
over El Salvador
through extortion.
-Okay.
-Yeah.
-The gang's control
over El Salvador
has long been an open
secret, but it was only in 2018
that the real scale of their
money laundering was revealed,
after an unprecedented
police investigation.
Douglas Farah, a
national security consultant
to the US government,
has seen how MS-13 have
used their dirty extortion money
to buy influence and power.
-They have become
much more sophisticated.
They've also made the decisions
to send some of their best,
smartest people to law school,
to accounting school,
so you now have MS-13,
they've been in the
police for five or six years
and they're now rising
through the ranks.
You have smart accountants,
you have really good lawyers
now that are integrated
into the MS-13.
So they've become, over
time, much more embedded
in the society.
I never imagined watching
them sort of develop
into what they
have become today.
-Out of El Salvador's
262 districts,
the gangs control
a shocking 247.
So how do you take
the country back?
San Jose Guayabal
is a unique town
where a local mayor has
managed to regain control.
The key to this
extraordinary achievement
was rooting out
police corruption.
When Mayor Mauricio
Vilanova discovered the town's
police chief was
unreliable, he took action.
-The mayor's hands on
approach includes working closely
with former gang members
to stop violence erupting.
Thanks to the mayor
rolling up his sleeves,
there have only been
four murders in the town
in the last year.
None of them gang related.
But only a few minutes
away, 18th Street still maintains
total control of the
surrounding areas.
This neighborhood
is actually a sanctuary
apparently, for the
18th Street gang.
They kill people
here, they bury them,
they are totally
operating freely here,
so that's why the mayor
cannot come here by himself,
he needs to be escorted
by the police and the army.
The mayor's strategy is to
make sure his security team
has more firepower
than the gangs.
The mayor's ambition to expand
his strategy across the region
maybe too little too late.
Hundreds of people from the town
have been forced
to flea their homes
after suffering
years of extortion.
He's saying this is
almost like a ghost town
because a lot of families
have fled to the US mostly
after being extorted or
threatened by the gangs.
What happens here is fueling
a crisis outside of
El Salvador's borders.
In 2019 alone,
nearly half a million
Salvadorans fled their homes,
many joining the
migrant caravans
hoping to reach America.
We've been talking to
everybody, gangs, local authorities,
businessmen, ordinary citizens,
and one thing has become
clear, extortion here is endemic
and it's happening
at all levels.
Extortion is a
multimillion dollar industry
and it's not gonna
stop any time soon.
-Among the failed
states of the world,
El Salvador is a front runner.
You can't really do efficient
investment in a country
where there's an
active extortion racket,
so this definitely stops El
Salvador from developing.
If MS-13 manage to completely
take over the
government in El Salvador,
they will become a big
power in central America.
It's gonna help them
expand business,
help them connect
to other crime groups
and infiltrate even more,
not just local politics,
but global politics.
This is not just about
fighting gang violence,
this is not just being
tough on groups like MS-13,
this is really about changing
the way politicians work
and actually have
the politicians work
in the public interest,
and with long-term plans,
and in coordination
across borders.
♪♪
crime has no natural predator.
Crime syndicates are expanding
and forging alliances
across the globe.
As law enforcements
struggle to stop them,
up to 5% of the global
economy is now in criminal hands.
I'm Paul Radu and
for the past 20 years
I have investigated
international organized crime
in the tune of 400 billion,
and this is a very, very small
slice of what's really going on.
-I think there are some
people. Let's go, let's go.
-In this series,
I'm working with a team of
reporters around the world
-Are you angry with
yourself for being part of this?
-to discover how a
generation of international gangs
are redrawing the criminal map.
-El Salvador is the
extortion capital of the world.
Two gangs -- MS-13
and 18th Street --
hold the entire
country in their grip.
They make three quarters
of a billion dollars a year
forcing everyone from
bus drivers to multinationals
to pay up or die.
This terror tactic has given
them power and control
over whole communities.
Anyone who disobeys
is targeted by MS-13's
growing army of assassins.
We're gonna meet two
female MS-13 members.
I have personally never
met a woman gang member,
much less a hired assassin.
Ghost's words are
not hollow threats.
In the last decade,
El Salvador has had
some of the highest
murder rates in the world.
A death rate
driven by extortion.
♪♪
-Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13,
is one of the most
feared gangs in the world.
You've gotta show that you
are able to kill with a machete,
that you're able to sever
limbs, that you're able, you know,
to kill entire families, and
that you have no remorse.
They inflict terror in
people in order to go
about their business.
Extortion is a main
source of income
for criminals in El Salvador.
These gangs are controlling
so much of the public life,
so much of the
citizens' livelihoods.
A big slice of your life
belongs to the criminals.
-Ghost is training a 17-year-old
recruit, nicknamed Skinny,
to carry on the killing
while she has her baby.
Skinny needs to prove
herself as a lookout
before climbing the ranks
to become an assassin.
Back at her house,
Ghost explains why she
became a cold-blooded killer.
Uh-huh.
Ghost is one of about 30,000
members who have sworn
their allegiance to MS-13,
the largest gang in El Salvador.
But its roots actually
stretch all the way to LA,
where back in the '80s
thousands of refugees
came after fleeing El
Salvador's Civil War.
-These gangs from El
Salvador are now operating
in every corner of America,
everybody is at risk here.
[ Siren wailing ]
-Marginalized in
deprived neighborhoods,
MS-13 set themselves
up as a vigilante group
to protect their community,
but soon grew into one of
America's most dangerous
organized crime gangs.
Between 2001 and 2010,
the US deported over
40,000 Salvadoran convicts.
In doing so, they exported
gang violence and extortion
to the streets of El Salvador.
[ Siren wailing ]
-The US law enforcement
is interested in kicking
these people out,
but they don't care if
those people are gonna kill
and rape and pillage in
other parts of the world.
They were just focused on
something that was immediate,
something that would get rid
of the crime on the streets of LA,
which it didn't,
but on top of that
they created more of a
problem back in El Salvador.
-I'm about to meet the two
female gang members again,
and I think it's also
like a good opportunity
to talk a little bit more
with the younger one.
Skinny's whole life has
been shaped by MS-13,
both her parents
are senior members.
-MS-13 know that their future
is in recruiting youngsters,
in recruiting kids.
Kids are enlisted,
and especially kids who
don't have access to education,
you know, kids who don't
see any other way of life,
and children are
capable of a lot of cruelty
when they're trained
by adults to do so.
-Skinny shows me how Ghost
and her boss train
young assassins to kill.
MS-13 targets hundreds
of thousands of people
with their extortion racket,
known locally as la renta.
Typical victims are food
stall owners like Maria.
Maria is forced to pay
MS-13 30% of her income.
The gang has eyes and
ears on every street corner
to check how much each
business earns every day.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, I see her, and she says
it's like the most random
people that you can think,
it's not like your average
lookout like a gang member,
it's older ladies sometimes.
They've got a cellphone
and they're calling to
inform the gang
about what's going on,
what people are doing.
To protect Maria, we
step away from her shop.
Maria is such a brave woman.
It's really devastating to think
how much a life costs
in this country, $30.
If Maria doesn't pay
$30 each week to a gang,
that's the life of her husband
or her child potentially.
The gangs control over 90%
of El Salvador's neighborhoods
and act with impunity.
The police are under-equipped
and overwhelmed.
The criminal conviction rate
in El Salvador is less than 5%.
-People like Maria are
easy victims, easy prey,
in circumstances
where the state fails,
where the state cannot
protect its citizens,
where the state cannot
provide security and safety.
What Maria is living
there is a nightmare
because this is an
integrated system
where criminals use extortion
as a way to control people.
If they take $30 a month
from someone like Maria,
the more Marias you have,
it adds up to actually a
percentage of the country's GDP.
It's the business of fear,
you generate fear in
order to make money,
and the more fear you generate,
the more money you'll make.
♪♪
-The cycle of extreme
violence MS-13 deploys
means they even maintain
a strangle-hold
over big corporations
that run the country's
infrastructure.
They target public
transport companies
that turn over
$250 million a year.
A cash in hand business,
the buses pass through
gang territory every day.
Passengers and staff
are totally exposed.
1,300 transport workers
have been murdered
in less than a decade.
Catalino Miranda,
the owner of El Salvador's
largest bus company,
has experienced the
human costs firsthand.
The extortion fees nearly
crippled his company.
Catalino refused to
pay after 25 of his drivers
were killed in just one year.
He now spends $30,000 a
month on private security, CCTV,
and GPS tracking to monitor
his 300 buses in real time.
Standing up to the
gangs has left him
with a price on his head.
Businesses here now
spend an estimated $2 billion
a year on private security,
trying to fill the void left by
years of government failures.
In 2003, to tackle the
gang's growing power,
the government launched a
strategy known as Mano Dura,
the iron fist, which led
to mass incarceration.
Imprisoned without trial,
many were locked up based
on their physical appearance
and being inked
with gang tattoos.
Mano Dura backfired.
95% of the prisoners were
released in the first year.
MS-13 simply became
more aware of police tactics,
more organized,
and more violent.
I'm going to meet one
of the founding members
of MS-13, known Bad Boy,
who spent years in prison.
He is actually in
charge of collecting
the extortion money in his area,
and he is old school, he
has tattoos on his face,
so he is what they call
a person who's inked,
and he's permanently in hiding,
he can't show his
face out in the public.
So we are at the
unidentified location
where he has agreed to meet us.
To avoid police detection,
MS-13 now use women
and teenagers without tattoos
or criminal records
to do their dirty work.
Many police officers here
only earn $300 a month
and live in gang territory.
Fearing retribution,
they often turn a blind eye
to the gang's extortion
business, or take bribes.
The failings of law enforcement
has empowered MS-13
to scale up its
extortion business
and target not just
Salvadoran businesses,
but even some of the
world's leading multinationals.
-None of the multinationals
who operate in El Salvador
have ever admitted to
paying extortion fees.
It breaks international
money laundering laws,
and if they acknowledged it,
they could be
seen as a soft touch
and targeted by other criminal
organizations across the globe.
It's been really hard
for us to get a response
from multinationals
about extortion,
so we are literally
in one of the towns
and we're gonna doorstep
the delivery guy to see
if we can get some answers
about how the system works.
One of El Salvador's
biggest beverage companies
distribute Coca-Cola and
other global drinks brands here.
A senior staff member agreed
to talk to us anonymously.
We contacted Coca-Cola
who said they take
the allegations very seriously.
They condemn all illegal
activity, including extortion,
and are working with
their authorized bottler
in El Salvador to understand
the full extent of the claims.
For the very first time, the
president of an organization
that represents 14,000
companies, Javier Siman,
has agreed to speak
about the scale of the threat.
MS-13 is not the only
gang extorting the nation.
For decades, they have
fought a bloody turf war
with their arch
enemies, 18th Street.
One of their factions
has refocused
their extortion tactics to
go only for the big money.
[ Dog barking ]
[ Man whistles ]
-What happened?
We just got word that someone
was arrested up on the bridge
so we need to stop
and leave right now.
18th Street are on edge
because a few days ago,
the national police, backed
by American law enforcement,
arrested 572 gang members
on charges of extortion,
terrorism, murder,
and money laundering.
To try to regain
public confidence
and retain
international investment,
the police are now
mounting weekly operations
against the gangs.
So it's 1:30 in the morning
and we just got a call
from a local producer
saying there's a
massive operation.
The police are gonna
arrest about 30 extortionists,
and we were given the
green light to go with them.
♪♪
-The government
spent $31 billion
and deployed 3,000 extra troops
in 2020 to bolster
their crackdowns.
There is about 20 vehicles here
so it's gonna be a
pretty large convoy.
You can tell that these guys
are pretty scared of the gangs
because for the police
to go out and get some,
they need to call in the army
to actually secure the perimeter.
30 search warrants
have been issued
for members of 18th Street.
The police have locked up
over 5,000 gang members
in the last 18 months alone.
The members of 18th
Street arrested tonight
are part of a supposed
zero tolerance campaign
led by El Salvador's
new president.
President Nayib Bukele
was sworn in in June 2019
on a promise to eradicate gangs.
[ Cheering ]
Five years ago, El Salvador's
murder rate was the highest
in the world, outside war zones.
[ Cheering ]
Bukele's impact
appears impressive.
He claims to have cut
the murder rate by 60%.
But in September 2020,
El Salvador's investigative
news platform, Elfaro,
broke a story that
shocked the world.
Elfaro claimed President Bukele
made a secret deal with MS-13.
If they voted for him
and cut the killings,
he'd give them a seat
at the political table.
We've come to
see Carlos Martinez,
he's an investigative
journalist here,
and he's broken many
stories about organized crime
and the government and has been
threatened for uncovering these,
so he doesn't wanna be
seen outside for his safety.
-The criminals are more
powerful than the government
in El Salvador,
and this is because
they control the citizens,
they are able to
keep people in check,
they are able to
direct their lives,
they are able to tell
people what to do,
so when you add to
this political element
when you add an alleged
pact between MS-13
and the government
and the president,
that just increases the power
of the organized crime group.
-President Bukele has
categorically denied allegations
of agreeing a secret deal
with El Salvador's gangs.
We have managed to contact
one of MS-13's national leaders.
He doesn't acknowledge
any secret political deal,
but is proud to boast about
the power MS-13 wealds
over El Salvador
through extortion.
-Okay.
-Yeah.
-The gang's control
over El Salvador
has long been an open
secret, but it was only in 2018
that the real scale of their
money laundering was revealed,
after an unprecedented
police investigation.
Douglas Farah, a
national security consultant
to the US government,
has seen how MS-13 have
used their dirty extortion money
to buy influence and power.
-They have become
much more sophisticated.
They've also made the decisions
to send some of their best,
smartest people to law school,
to accounting school,
so you now have MS-13,
they've been in the
police for five or six years
and they're now rising
through the ranks.
You have smart accountants,
you have really good lawyers
now that are integrated
into the MS-13.
So they've become, over
time, much more embedded
in the society.
I never imagined watching
them sort of develop
into what they
have become today.
-Out of El Salvador's
262 districts,
the gangs control
a shocking 247.
So how do you take
the country back?
San Jose Guayabal
is a unique town
where a local mayor has
managed to regain control.
The key to this
extraordinary achievement
was rooting out
police corruption.
When Mayor Mauricio
Vilanova discovered the town's
police chief was
unreliable, he took action.
-The mayor's hands on
approach includes working closely
with former gang members
to stop violence erupting.
Thanks to the mayor
rolling up his sleeves,
there have only been
four murders in the town
in the last year.
None of them gang related.
But only a few minutes
away, 18th Street still maintains
total control of the
surrounding areas.
This neighborhood
is actually a sanctuary
apparently, for the
18th Street gang.
They kill people
here, they bury them,
they are totally
operating freely here,
so that's why the mayor
cannot come here by himself,
he needs to be escorted
by the police and the army.
The mayor's strategy is to
make sure his security team
has more firepower
than the gangs.
The mayor's ambition to expand
his strategy across the region
maybe too little too late.
Hundreds of people from the town
have been forced
to flea their homes
after suffering
years of extortion.
He's saying this is
almost like a ghost town
because a lot of families
have fled to the US mostly
after being extorted or
threatened by the gangs.
What happens here is fueling
a crisis outside of
El Salvador's borders.
In 2019 alone,
nearly half a million
Salvadorans fled their homes,
many joining the
migrant caravans
hoping to reach America.
We've been talking to
everybody, gangs, local authorities,
businessmen, ordinary citizens,
and one thing has become
clear, extortion here is endemic
and it's happening
at all levels.
Extortion is a
multimillion dollar industry
and it's not gonna
stop any time soon.
-Among the failed
states of the world,
El Salvador is a front runner.
You can't really do efficient
investment in a country
where there's an
active extortion racket,
so this definitely stops El
Salvador from developing.
If MS-13 manage to completely
take over the
government in El Salvador,
they will become a big
power in central America.
It's gonna help them
expand business,
help them connect
to other crime groups
and infiltrate even more,
not just local politics,
but global politics.
This is not just about
fighting gang violence,
this is not just being
tough on groups like MS-13,
this is really about changing
the way politicians work
and actually have
the politicians work
in the public interest,
and with long-term plans,
and in coordination
across borders.
♪♪