The gangs of El Salvador

Friend of this blog, Ethan James, has a gallery of his photographs of gang activity in El Salvador published on the website of the Miami Herald this week. Click here to view The faces of El Salvador's gangs.

These images are an appropriate illustration to this week's appalling news that the first two months of this year were the bloodiest January and February in the past 5 years. There were 689 murders in the first two months, an average of more than 12 per day. The government blames the high murder rate on the gangs in the country. For more, check out this story on El Salvador's violence from National Public Radio.

It is worth noting that Rodrigo Avila was head of the national police or otherwise involved in government safety efforts throughout the current ARENA government's completely ineffective attempts to reign in the violence.

Comments

Anonymous said…
EXACTLY, Rodrigo Avila's police administration work was a failure and that is exactly why this presidential elections isn't about changing economic system but CITIZEN's CONFIDENCE, and MAURICIO FUNES has it!
Anonymous said…
We have sent 2 missionaries to El Salvador and they have been able to reach into the schools and start to change hearts of the youth. We were also sending down a team to work in rallies reaching the youth. All this with the permission of the officials. You have two ways to change the heart of a nation for good. Funes will do it with guns and the people will walk arround like zombies with no hope. They will be hearded like cattle from the cradle to the grave. Teaching people to believe in any other god or religion other than gov't will make slaves of then all. Do you think the new gov't will allow freedom of thought, love and kindness. Those who worked in ministry in the past had to go underground. I have begun to understand God's word when he says that when people live and follow unrighteousness they love death. The people of El Salvador and the U.S. are loving death in recent elections.