Last week, El Salvador’s president, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, celebrated two years in office. El Faro, the country’s premier online investigative news source, acknowledged the milestone with a feature titled, “Seven Years of Governing Like ARENA.” It was a pointed commentary on the policy similarities between Sanchez Ceren’s left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and its rival party, the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which were also foes on the battlefield during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.

Since assuming office, Sanchez Ceren, a former leftist guerrilla commander, has continued the hard-line policies on gangs that go back to ARENA-led governments in the 2000s, in an effort to stem the rising tide of violence in the country. But critics are increasingly wary of his administration’s so-called war on gangs, which has recently been linked to state abuses and extrajudicial killings. ...