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Rowe, Response to Bueno 1 

 

Reflections of a Practitioner on David Bueno’s 

“Gangs and Development: The Difficulties of 

Transformational Development in Gang-

Controlled Communities in El Salvador” 
Barbara Rowe 

 

 
 

As a practitioner of Christian-based transfor-

mational development, I am highly impressed by the 

quality of David Bueno’s article, as well as his unique 

insights and conclusions (Bueno 2022). He 

demonstrates a profound understanding of the history 

and current situation of El Salvador, the growth and 

development of the gang situation, and the challenges 

faced by the government, international aid 

organizations, and local churches in bringing 

community development to marginalized populations 

there. 

I served as a missionary in El Salvador for a total 

fifteen years, first for seven years during and after the 

civil war in the 1990s, and then again for eight years 

from 2012–2020. My experiences have brought me to 

believe that the way to foster transformational 

development, which, as Bueno points out, “addresses 

the whole of human life: material, social, psychological, 

and spiritual” (2022, 42), is three-fold. First, we must 

strike at the root of the problem: human sin. This 

means we must begin with a focus on individuals, 

bringing them to faith in and commitment to Jesus 

Christ, which will result in a transformation of their 

character and lifestyle, and likely bring a change in the 

life of their families as well. 

Second, group efforts are also key to 

transformational development. This is evident in the 

often-overlooked efforts of churches to bring about 

change in their own communities: providing food, 

clothing and economic assistance to needy families and 

individuals, offering training programs aimed at 

teaching job skills, teaching family values, providing 

individual and family counseling, and providing a place 

where people in the community can develop 

relationships. 

Third, group efforts on a larger scale are also 

needed to support and encourage individual and group 

efforts at the community level. Still, in my view, these 

large-scale efforts aimed at social justice are not effective 

for long-term transformational development without 

the first two. 

In the reflections that follow, I share examples 

from my work in gang-controlled areas that have led me 

to these conclusions, focusing on the first two. I start 

with a bit of background. 

 

Background 

In the 1990s, I worked with a small community of 

displaced families located on both sides of the railroad 

track in San Martín, the same community Bueno writes 

about. At that time, there was no gang presence, but we 

began to hear whispers about local gangs, and the word 

“mara” (Spanish word for gang) started coming up in 

conversations. I was working with Christ For the City 

International, and we were supporting a church plant 

while at the same time promoting transformational 

community development through economic projects, 

literacy, and health initiatives. The community assisted 

in the building of a place of worship, which also served 

as a location for the programs. 

By the time I returned to serve again in El 

Salvador, the gang phenomenon had taken hold and 

the country was firmly in its grip. Practically every inch 

of territory in the country had been divided up by gangs 

defending their turf. I lived in a lower middle-class 

neighborhood where this was evident by the presence 

of “sentries,” as the article notes, more commonly 

known as “lookouts.”  These gang members observed 

all comings and goings, as well as who came by to visit. 

I could not receive certain people in my home, 

particularly those from areas controlled by rival gangs. 

When my internet service failed, the company refused 

to come to the neighborhood to repair it (though they 

wanted to continue to bill me for the service). 

Though I did not seek out contact with the gang, 

certain situations required it and at times I was 

approached by and even threatened by gang members. 

One example occurred when I had to approach a gang 

leader to gain permission to bring in a mission team that 

would build a house for a member of the community. 

https://cfci.org/
https://cfci.org/


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 4(1), Summer 2022  

Rowe, Response to Bueno 2 

When travelling with visiting missionaries or local 

Christians into or through some communities, I 

informed the gang members in advance to avoid 

trouble. 

The most difficult encounter I had with the local 

gang was the night I found them beating my vehicle with 

baseball bats. They were angry with the person who had 

borrowed the vehicle. The police refused to come, and 

so with much prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit, I 

was able to slowly approach the car, get in and drive 

away as they retreated into the darkness. 

It is important to remember, as David Bueno 

shares, that El Salvador is a small, densely populated 

country with a history of military rule and dictatorships. 

The country is now a fledgling democracy after the 

signing of the Peace Accords that ended the country’s 

12-year-long civil war. The country emerged as a 

functioning democracy, but struggles with problems of 

political corruption and the long-standing power of the 

wealthy elite. Some elites are even closely tied to the 

gang leadership in the country in order to further their 

political and personal ambitions (Ávalos 2018, and 

Fiscalía de El Salvador… 2021”), and one of the greatest 

challenges faced by the society is the lack of a properly 

functioning justice system.  

 

Examples from Work 

My organization, Christ For the City International, 

is a mission agency with transformational development 

“in our DNA.”  Our vision is to have “No place without 

a witness, no church without vision, and no person 

without hope.”  Our vision seeks to transform 

individuals and provide local churches with support, 

which will in the end bring about transformation of the 

neighborhoods and cities in which they are located.  

Leadership is cultivated and developed at the local 

level, allowing those individuals to drive the processes 

and decisions for change at the community level. We 

also focus on supporting local individual Christians in 

mission by recruiting them as missionaries to work in 

their own (and surrounding) communities, to the point 

that over 90% of our total work force is made up of 

Christians not of North American origin. 

My main work in El Salvador was dedicated to the 

FARO project, an effort to assist local Christian 

churches in opening youth centers where pre-teens and 

teens could come to learn vocational skills, enjoy fun 

activities and sports, and learn about the Christian faith. 

We hoped to bring about personal and community 

transformation by bringing youth into a personal 

relationship with Jesus Christ and a commitment to 

serve and obey his commands, rather than being sucked 

into the gang world that permeates their environment. 

This program continues to be active in the country, and 

we have achieved moderate success in some locations. 

 

 
 

At the Individual Level 
Two examples stand out to me that illustrate the 

importance of work at the individual level. Both focus 

on the root problem of human sin. First, similar to the 

experience related in Bueno’s article by the pastor of 

the after-school program, we had a young man who was 

about to join a gang after becoming disheartened and 

cynical about his life and possibilities for the future. He 

lives in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in 

San Salvador and was living with his grandmother after 

being abandoned by both parents. After introducing 

him to the youth center and spending some 18 months 

taking him to and from the activities and classes, he 

dedicated his life to Christ and is now serving in the 

program as a coordinator. 

In analyzing what brought this complete turn-

around in this young man’s life, it is clear to me that by 

teaching him the truth about who God is, and who God 

created him to be, we were able to transform his 

worldview and provide a glimpse of a brighter future. In 

our programs he discovered he has gifts for creating 

beautiful art and learning languages. He discovered 

what it felt like to be loved for who he is, which 

reminded me of the tenuous and unstable environment 

gang members live in, where they may be betrayed or 

punished at any moment, and where struggles for power 

keep them in constant fear. He experienced true joy in 

having fun in a safe environment where he could relax 

and be himself. In short, being with us was much more 

“fun” than being with his gang friends. 

Second, in addition to the FARO program, I 

worked directly with gang members from MS-13 and 

18th Street gangs in the Salvadoran prison system, both 

adults and juveniles. In my work inside the Salvadoran 

prison system prior to 2019, I had the privilege of 

witnessing the power of the Holy Spirit at work as young 

men turned their lives over to Jesus Christ and began to 

walk the long walk of faith through discipleship. These 

young men today continue to practice their newfound 

faith, both within the prison and once they are released. 

They share the joy that they have in living lives free of 

criminal activity; lives dedicated instead to sharing about 

Jesus Christ with others and working for positive change 

in their community.  

But there were also some who had been 

“evangelized” by local churches, only to fall away and 

return to gang life.  That this happens shows how deep 

the evil of gang life goes, and how important it is for 

Christians to continue the work God calls us to. It also 

reinforced for me how the focus areas in our work, both 

in FARO and the prison ministry on adequately 

discipling young men, needed us to recognize that it 

takes time and a complete transformation of worldview 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 4(1), Summer 2022  

Rowe, Response to Bueno 3 

in order to understand fully what it means to be a 

follower of Jesus Christ. 

 

At the Group Level 

At a group level, we were careful in our Christian 

youth centers to give control and responsibility to the 

local church, providing mostly guidance and training, 

with a minimal number of resources to encourage them 

along. Our FARO program does not provide large 

amounts of resources to churches wanting to start 

Christian youth centers. Rather, we walk alongside 

them, providing training and a minimal amount of 

funds and human resources once churches 

demonstrate their commitment to their youth center 

program.  

 One of the requisites was a core group of Christian 

youth willing to participate in the program and use it to 

reach their non-Christian friends with the gospel, 

thereby assisting their friends to discover their identity 

in Christ. Church members were encouraged to 

volunteer to assist in reaching the youth in their 

neighborhoods, thereby promoting transformational 

change. 

It is well-documented by psychologists and social 

sciences that youth in their pre-teens and teens 

experience a particularly vulnerable time in their lives. 

They are exploring their own identities and how they fit 

in the world as they pull away from home life to enter 

into society on their own. This is a reality that gang 

leadership takes advantage of, recruiting boys as young 

as 8-10 years of age. 

Knowing that youth are seeking a group (other than 

family) to belong to, we developed a model where the 

Christian youth from the sponsoring church were 

permitted to determine certain aspects of the program 

such as choosing a name for the center, developing their 

own logo, and even determining their activities at the 

center. They were encouraged to invite friends and 

acquaintances to participate in these activities, 

regardless of religious background and/or gang 

affiliation. Our goal was to lead the youth toward a 

commitment to Jesus Christ and prevent them from 

joining gangs, all the more important because once in, 

it is very difficult (but not impossible) for anyone to 

leave the gang. 

Models that rely on and give most of the decision-

making power and responsibility to the local church 

are, I believe, a more effective way of working toward 

transformational community development than models 

that are brought in by outside agencies with decisions 

made primarily by outsiders.  But this kind of grass-

roots development requires a change in past program 

development standards and assessment techniques, as 

Bueno notes. Current programs measure outcomes 

using relatively short-term time frames, whereas giving 

more control and responsibility to local communities 

means that results will require more time, patience, and 

collaboration with the community as it struggles to find 

resources and answers to local problems.  

This also means that the organization assisting the 

community must allow the community to make 

mistakes, and even fail in their efforts to bring about 

lasting transformation. During my years with the FARO 

project, a number of youth centers were opened and 

then had to be closed due to lack of understanding or 

commitment on the part of the local church. In one 

case, there was an attempt by a corrupt pastor to use the 

program for his own ends. When that happened, my 

organization felt forced to cease collaboration with the 

program, sadly to the detriment of the youth living in 

that community. 

There were other challenges as well. It is hard to 

find sufficient volunteers and even staff for programs in 

poor communities where every able adult is working to 

earn income for their families. In gang-entangled 

communities it is particularly difficult when bringing 

people from outside the community is so dangerous. 

Keeping Christian youth involved at one of our centers 

was likewise challenging due to the constant migration 

of youth to the United States, where, for their own 

safety, parents would send them to live with other family 

members. 

Bueno is certainly correct in his assessment that 

small churches in poor communities are unable to 

achieve self-sustainability without outside support, 

either from national church bodies or international 

organizations. Yet it is vital that outside organizations 

avoid providing excess amounts of resources and 

making decisions unilaterally in order to safeguard 

against the disempowerment of communities and 

individuals interested in working for transformational 

change. 

 

Conclusion 

In my view, Christians have the key to lasting 

transformational development in individuals and 

communities. Bueno rightly notes that in gang-

entangled communities, change seems improbable, and 

a positive view of the future is limited. Genuine 

community transformational development takes years 

to achieve, sometime generations. Although local 

churches can be leaders in the effort to bring change in 

these communities, they cannot act alone. They need 

the support of national and international institutions to 

provide resources and training that otherwise would not 

be available to them. Work must be done to engage 

people and institutions from all classes of Salvadoran 

life, to foster a greater understanding of the value of 

raising up these communities for the benefit of the 

entire society. Finally, we cannot rule out the work of 

the Holy Spirit, who works in the hearts and minds of 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 4(1), Summer 2022  

Rowe, Response to Bueno 4 

individuals with the life-changing message of the 

Gospel! 

As Christians working for transformational change 

in these gang-entangled communities, let us remember 

the words of the parable Jesus shared in Matthew 13:44, 

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a 

field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his 

joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”  

When we share that treasure with others, and they 

receive it, their lives are transformed, and they begin to 

experience the joy and peace of being a member of the 

kingdom of God. 

 

References 

 

Ávalos, Héctor Silva. 2018. “El Salvador’s Gangs 

Influence Local Politics in the Capital: Report.” 

Insight Crime, July 9, 2018. 

https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/el-salvador-

gangs-influence-local-politics-capital-report. 

Bueno, David. (2022). “Gangs and Development: The 

Difficulties of Transformational Development in 

Gang-Controlled Communities in El Salvador.” 

Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 
3(2):37-50.  

“Fiscalía de El Salvador presenta pruebas de políticos 

ligados a pandillas.” 2021. La Prensa Gráfica, June 

24, 2021. https://www.dw.com/es/fiscal%C3%ADa-

de-el-salvador-presenta-pruebas-de-

pol%C3%ADticos-ligados-a-pandillas/a-58039430  
 

 

 

Barbara Rowe is the Director of International 

Personnel for Christ For the City International. 

She received a master’s degree in Public Health 

and Nutrition from Loma Linda University, and 

did her early work based on the theories of 

Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire. 

 

Author email: barbararowe@cfci.org  
 

https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/el-salvador-gangs-influence-local-politics-capital-report
https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/el-salvador-gangs-influence-local-politics-capital-report
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