After raising her two children for more than two decades, Vilma Mancía, a 65-year-old Salvadoran, had given up the idea of becoming a mother altogether. But on the afternoon of April 4, 2022, six children were born to him.
That afternoon, Mancía, a thin, tan-skinned woman, was selling vegetables in her small shop in the market in the municipality of San Martín, in the greater San Salvador capital of El Salvador. When suddenly another vendor came running and told her that the police had just arrested her daughter under a sidewalk a few blocks from the market. A few minutes later, a phone call alerted her that her son had also been caught eating lunch at her home.
Although at that moment and for a long time afterwards Mancía could think of nothing but how to get his children out of prison, from that day on he was responsible for his six grandchildren, five boys and a girl aged eight months and six Years. And from then until almost fifteen months later, she continues to care for her as if she were her mother.
“I feed them, bathe them, change their clothes, take them to school, give them care and love as if they were my children,” says Mancía almost a year later that afternoon.
At the time, the emergency regime, President Nayib Bukele’s government’s repressive measure in the so-called “war on gangs,” had only been in effect for a few days, and the police and army were conducting massive crackdowns and arrests of almost everyone who stood in front of them. The raids, which led to more than 68,000 arrests more than a year later, resulted in thousands of innocent people, according to two reports by human rights organizations and the 5,000 released prisoners who have so far been found innocent.
The emergency regime introduced by the Bukele government has succeeded in disbanding the gangs while also committing a series of serious human rights abuses, ranging from arbitrary detentions to deaths from torture and asphyxiation in Salvadoran prisons. And while most of the detainees are men, women have also suffered consequences that affect them more privately.
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A woman is arrested during a police operation in Soyapango, El Salvador, in 2022. Camilo Freedman (Getty Images)
A report by the human rights organization Cristosal published last Monday pointed out that the emergency regime has provoked particular forms of state violence against women, forcing them to take on the role of caretaker of imprisoned relatives and making them nannies. by girls, boys, teenagers or older adults from your home or even from other people’s homes. As in the case of Vilma Mancía.
Forced motherhood is not a new form of slavery in El Salvador. In 2018, Factum Magazine revealed how the Barrio gang forced 18 women from a community in the capital to become mothers to children of imprisoned gang members. The dynamic is now repeating itself, but driven by the state.
There are no official figures on how many women were detained during the state of emergency. In fact, there are no official figures on the number of detainees. All that is known is that there are more than 68,000, and that is only evident from sporadic statements by officials in television interviews, or from any tweet that the police or the President have included in their accounts. All related information has been declared classified by formal means. However, a report released by Human Rights Watch last August said that by then, 15.8% of those detained under the regime were women.
The Salvadoran police have posted images of women claiming to be gang members on social media, and some of them can even be seen with gang-related tattoos. However, the role of women in gangs has been pushed back in El Salvador for almost two decades. Since 2005 at the latest, women in the structures of Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) and Barrio 18 have been forbidden from becoming active members or “homegirls” as before. Since then, their roles have been limited to being friends or gang collaborators, and their criminal activities are limited to keeping guns, drugs, extortion money, or collecting these charges, among other things.
However, the new Cristosal report reveals new insights: of the more than 5,000 complaints from the public about possible human rights violations received from the public during the almost 15 months of the emergency regime, 80% were filed by women. This means, according to the organization, that it is the women who have taken on the role of being in charge of their inmates’ trials, bringing them food and clothing to prisons.
Outside prisons, it has become normal to see hundreds of women carrying hygiene and food packages to their relatives, which has even led to the establishment of small informal markets around prisons. The cost of these packages ranges from $35 to $170, a price paid by the women who cared for their inmates.
Salvadoran women bring food to their relatives in La Esperanza prison. Kellys Portillo (Getty Images)
Since the day her two sons were captured almost 15 months ago, Vilma Mancía has not only had the burden of feeding six more mouths. He also has to deal with the trial of his two children, about whom he has found out very little, such as that he is in Mariona prison and she is in Apanteos. The time she spends bringing them food and taking care of six others robs her of her strength for work and also money.
Two months ago, Vilma suddenly had stomach pains. At first he thought some food had gone bad, then thought it was stress. But when she went to the doctor, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
“I want at least someone to help me with all the kids that have left me. I can’t keep up with everyone. They told me to turn them over to the government, but I don’t want that,” Vilma said.
Abortions inside and outside of prisons
Cristosal also documented cases of girls and young people being victims of sexual harassment and abuse by police officers and soldiers who take advantage of the almost unlimited powers the measure gives them. “In some cases, this situation has forced families to relocate or send the girls and youth elsewhere to avoid abuse or imprisonment for not yielding to police harassment,” the report said.
Likewise, many women who were pregnant at the time of their detention gave birth in prison without their families knowing anything about the health of the mother or the child. Likewise, some who gave birth shortly before their imprisonment were separated from their children.
In her report, Cristosal documented accounts of women living in inhumane conditions. “In some galleys below, thousands of women slept on the floor, without mattresses, without a blanket, and since it was winter, they got wet at night… Since there was no medical help, I saw women dying as old women. “I’m 50 or maybe 56 years old,” says one of the women interviewed.
A woman walks through a military checkpoint in Tonacatepeque, El Salvador. Camilo Freedman (Getty Images)
The document also reveals that some women in the prisons witnessed spontaneous abortions as a result of mistreatment by the authorities. “There was a woman who had to go out every day to heal and when she had the surgery they didn’t know she was four months pregnant. “After the operation, the girl got worse again, they took her to the hospital and did a curettage,” the story reads.
The emergency regime also had an impact on the lives of women who wanted to become mothers outside of prison. The document witnesses the case of a 24-year-old fisherman who died as a result of torture in prisons under an emergency regime. “The shock of death resulted in his wife, five months pregnant, losing their child,” the document reads.
But the effects of the regime don’t stop there. There are also babies who die from incarceration. This Friday, a local newspaper reported that Genesis, a six-month-old baby, died after spending the same time in prison with his mother. The mother was unaware of her baby’s death until the note was released, as she remained in prison despite a judge’s release order.
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