Just over a year ago, imprisoned leaders of El Salvador’s two biggest street gangs met with mediators to start putting into effect an agreement whereby they would stop fighting each other. By the end of 2012 the number of homicides countrywide had fallen by 41% from the level recorded in 2011. The government, which had initially said it had nothing to do with the truce between the gangs, switched to claiming credit for having ‘facilitated’ it. Most of the public, though, remains viscerally sceptical about the truce and the very notion of negotiating with the gangs. Moreover, facts have been emerging which at the very least cast doubt on the accuracy of the claims made about the results so far.End of preview - This article contains approximately 2010 words.
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