The Truth About Kidnapping in El Salvador Today

While many countries in Latin America continue to struggle with the persistent threat of kidnappings — most notably Mexico, where abductions for ransom remain a constant concern — El Salvador presents a remarkably different reality.

Once deeply scarred by this crime, the country has undergone a dramatic transformation that has made kidnappings exceedingly rare, almost nonexistent in the public’s perception.

Kidnappings in Latin America: A Widespread Concern

In countries like Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, etc, kidnapping remains a lucrative criminal enterprise.

Criminal groups and cartels have institutionalized abductions, creating an atmosphere of fear where businessmen, professionals, and even middle-class citizens often take extreme precautions to avoid becoming targets.

In contrast, El Salvador — once plagued by kidnappings during and after its civil war — has largely eliminated this crime from everyday life. For Salvadorans today, kidnapping is not a common fear.

The Origins: Political Kidnappings by Socialist Guerrillas

The roots of kidnapping in El Salvador stretch back to the 1970s and 1980s, during the civil war. At that time, socialist guerrilla groups — later forming the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) — frequently resorted to kidnappings to finance their operations or pressure the government.

These armed factions cynically justified kidnapping as a “revolutionary tactic,” using ideology as a cover for what were in reality violent and criminal acts aimed at obtaining ransom money or exerting political pressure.

These early kidnappings were not random crimes but part of a broader ideological and military struggle.

The Post-War Crime Wave and the Case of Andrés Suster

After the peace accords of 1992, El Salvador entered a new era — but the weapons, the trained men, and the criminal experience of the war years didn’t disappear. Many former combatants — particularly from the socialist guerrilla factions — turned to organized crime.

The 1990s saw a wave of kidnappings that terrorized the nation’s wealthier sectors.

The most emblematic case was the kidnapping of 14-year-old Andrés Suster in 1995, a young boy from a respected family.

He was abducted by a group of socialist militants linked to the FMLN, which had already transitioned into a legal political party. The case caused national outrage and widespread condemnation.

Although the FMLN attempted to distance itself from the perpetrators, public perception tied the crime to the same revolutionary ideology that had long justified kidnappings as a means to an end.

Andrés Suster’s case became a turning point — a before and after in El Salvador’s modern history of kidnapping. It exposed the moral and political decay of those who once claimed to fight for justice and freedom but now targeted innocent civilians for money.

The Organized Crime Era and the State’s Response

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, kidnappings had become a serious national crisis. In the year 2000 alone, authorities recorded over 100 kidnappings — roughly one every three days. These crimes were not limited to ex-guerrillas; they involved a mix of former soldiers, corrupt police officers, and independent criminal bands.

To confront the crisis, El Salvador launched an unprecedented institutional response. The Attorney General’s Office and the National Civil Police created elite anti-kidnapping units, heavily funded and professionally trained.

These teams focused on intelligence gathering, coordination, and prosecution — shifting from investigating individual cases to dismantling entire criminal structures.

With the active support of the private sector, particularly through the Patronato Antisecuestros, the country managed to reverse the kidnapping crisis within just a few years. Conviction rates rose sharply, impunity fell near zero, and the crime became unprofitable.

By the mid-2000s, kidnappings had virtually disappeared as a major concern in El Salvador.

The Era of Gangs: Fear Shifted, but Not to Kidnapping

Even during the following two decades, when gang violence and extortion reached alarming levels, kidnapping never returned as a prevalent crime. Mara groups like MS-13 and Barrio 18 focused primarily on extortion, territorial control, and homicides — not on abductions for ransom.

For ordinary Salvadorans, fear of kidnapping simply wasn’t part of daily life. The social perception was clear: people feared gang extortion or being killed, but not being kidnapped.

Cases that did occur were rare, often “self-kidnappings” or isolated incidents quickly resolved by authorities.

A New Era: National Cleanup and the End of Fear

Starting in 2022, El Salvador underwent an unprecedented national cleanup operation against gang structures. The government’s campaign effectively dismantled the territorial and financial networks of the maras, restoring a level of peace and security unseen in decades.

Today, El Salvador is one of the few countries in Latin America where the threat of kidnapping is virtually absent. People — including those with significant resources or public profiles — can live, invest, and move freely without the constant fear of abduction that still haunts many of their neighbors in the region.

Conclusion

Kidnapping in El Salvador has a long and painful history — from the ideological abductions by socialist guerrillas in the 1970s and 1980s, to the criminal waves of the 1990s, and the landmark case of Andrés Suster, which shocked the nation’s conscience.

But over time, through determined institutional action, cooperation between the state and private sector, and later through an uncompromising cleanup of criminal networks, El Salvador has become a nation where kidnapping is no longer a fear in the social fabric.

While kidnapping remains far more frequent in some Latin American countries — with Mexico showing alarmingly high rates despite limited transparency in official data, and nations like Ecuador also facing a worrying rise in such crimes — El Salvador stands out as a place where people can live and invest without the pervasive fear of abduction, a remarkable transformation few would have imagined just decades ago.