In 2014, when his successor, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a fellow FMLN man and the first ex-guerrilla to serve as president, assumed office, he dissolved the agreement and redoubled the old crackdown. “At no time is our government prepared to negotiate with these criminals,” he declared. “We are going to hunt them down, capture them and put them on trial.” When, as predicted, the homicides spiked, reaching new highs in 2015, the government served up the negotiators as scapegoats.
