![President Obama visits the tomb of Monseñor Oscar Romero about a year ago. [source]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1erc8jwK81qzs6yjo1_1280.jpg)
President Obama visits the tomb of Monseñor Oscar Romero about a year ago. [source]
La espera de Romero. By Otto.
Publicado el 23 de Marzo de 2012
h/t: R. Cañas
![Eli Reed, Missing Persons Families looking for “disappeared” relatives in the “Book of Missing,” Human Rights Commission Office, San Salvador, 1982 [source]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m12ihsYU3c1qzs6yjo1_1280.jpg)
Eli Reed, Missing Persons Families looking for “disappeared” relatives in the “Book of Missing,” Human Rights Commission Office, San Salvador, 1982 [source]
El Salvador has taken tentative steps to reduce its overcrowding. One afternoon, a group of female prisoners hoisted sharp farming tools — not in a fight, but to tend to crops at a prison farm that opened in February. A similar program for men will open this month, sending hundreds of prisoners nearing the end of their terms out of overcrowded jails.
“There was not much to do in the other prison,” said Blanca de Palazos, 46, finishing a six-year term for selling contraband cigarettes. “But here there is plenty to do, and most of us like growing food and being productive.”
El Salvador has also stepped up supervision of prisons. A bank of 30 television screens in the prison agency in San Salvador, the capital, beams images from every penitentiary in the country in an effort to document trouble.
But as one official put it, “Nothing is going to change overnight.”
He was right. A week later, three inmates were killed in a prison brawl.
”![Work programs for inmates like the Mara 18 gang members cost money, and the prison world in Latin America remains an upside-down, alternative universe with little public or political will to right it. “Our budget does not have a lot of resources,” said Nelson Rauda, the director of prisons in El Salvador. “If the choice is to build a children’s hospital or a prison, which do you think is going to get done?”
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Also related: Inmate’s Lament: ‘Rather Be Dead Than Here’ [NY Times]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0yk4efpAn1qzs6yjo1_1280.png)
Work programs for inmates like the Mara 18 gang members cost money, and the prison world in Latin America remains an upside-down, alternative universe with little public or political will to right it. “Our budget does not have a lot of resources,” said Nelson Rauda, the director of prisons in El Salvador. “If the choice is to build a children’s hospital or a prison, which do you think is going to get done?”
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Also related: Inmate’s Lament: ‘Rather Be Dead Than Here’ [NY Times]
Cola Champagne. If you ever step into an El Salvadoran/ Salvadoreño/ Salvadorean/ Salvatrucha restaurant and order a meal, have one of these with your food and you won’t regret it.
This photo was taken at Platano in Berkeley, California.
FPL Guerrilla welcoming Pope, El Salvador 83 by Marcelo Montecino
From what I can make of the banner,
Welcome John Paul II,
Justice _____ assassins of Monseñor Romero
