Sin Salida

Sin Salida (No Way Out) by photographer Tariq Zaidi documents the impacts of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13) and its rival Barrio 18 gang members on El Salvador. By depicting the gang members, police, prisons, murder sites, funerals, and the government’s war against the gangs, Zaidi illustrates the control the gangs have over the wider Salvadoran society, the violence through which they operate and the grief and loss resulting from the violence.

Both MS-13, and its rival gang, Barrio 18, have become infamous across Central and North America for developing extensive and sophisticated networks of extortion and domination across the region. Sin Salida is the result of over three-years researching, planning and photographing. Zaidi met and liaised with multiple agencies in an attempt to represent the full circle of the impact of the gang activity in Salvadoran society. The first photographs in the book were taken in 2018 but these were preceded by many months of gaining the trust of local contacts and research before Zaidi even set foot in El Salvador. It took a further year to gain permission from governmental bodies to visit the prisons, shadow the Attorney General’s office and further time still to gain permission to work with the police and special operations units.

Levels of violence in El Salvador have varied over the years, but the country’s murder rate has consistently been among the world’s highest. The government has achieved some success, bringing murder rates down from their high of 17 murders a day in 2015, to two murders a day by March 2020 — but an explosion of violence in early 2020 illustrated how volatile the country still is. The economic impact is that those who live in gang-controlled areas report less than half the income, and less educational and housing opportunities than those who live outside them. More generally, a culture of fear pervades gang neighbourhoods where anyone could be an informant, infiltrating every aspect of life.