3years since El Salvador last had a full 24-hour period without a murder source
» That’s the first time since President Mauricio Funes took office in 2009, when an estimated 12 murders were taking place every day. That number got as high as 18 murders per-day in early 2012, in a country with less than 6 million people, according to a 2009 census. For comparison: New York City, which had a population of roughly 8.5 million according to the 2010 U.S. Census, averaged only 1.3 murders per day during the same period. Analysts suspect the violence has abated in the wake of a recent truce between Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas and the Mara Salvatruchas, as well as diminished fighting between the Maras and rival gang Mara 18.
ARRIBA CON LA SELECTA! A 94th minute goal by Jaime Alas draws the score (3-3) level between the under 23 squads of the United States of America and El Salvador; it also eliminates the US! The u23 US national team had big hopes and dreams with a roster that included names such as Freddy Adu, Break Shea, Mikkel Diskerrud, Terrence Boyd, Teal Bunburry and Juan Agudelo. In any case, vamonos cipotes!
Note: the video quality isn’t great but English commentating is awful.
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?”
![President Obama visits the tomb of Monseñor Oscar Romero about a year ago. [source]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1erc8jwK81qzs6yjo1_1280.jpg)
![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)
![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)
