More troops to the streets as violence continues unabated

Troops stand watch at the dedication of a new church
in a poor community in El Salvador.

The headlines of the past ten days provoke feelings of insecurity for everyone in El Salvador. As just some examples:

• Three local school teachers were murdered in the town of San Juan Opico.
• A Mexican official who is part of Interpol was attacked in broad daylight in San Salvador by gunmen. The attack left the official wounded and his wife dead.
• Four members of a family were massacred by suspects using an AK-47 assault rifle.

There have also been riots in the prisons over the past week, with three prisoners killed and authorities not in control.

The presence of troops in the streets has produced no reduction in the level of homicides or extortions afflicting Salvadorans. With 1063 murders in the first three months of the year, the country averages 12 homicides a day.

The Funes administration has been impotent to reverse the tide of violence in the country. Searching for a step to make it look like he is doing something, Funes announced that he is prepared to expand the role of the army in public security matters. For the past six months, some 4000 troops have been providing additional support to the National Police in high crime areas. Funes indicated that he will be giving the army new tools to be more effective and that their new roles may include the country's prisons.

A longer term approach was shown as the government launched a violence prevention program focused on youth in 76 communities in the greater San Salvador area. The program, funded by funds from the European Union, aims to benefit 350,000 youth and to recover public spaces in local communities. President Funes called it the most ambitious youth violence prevention program ever launched in the country.

El Salvador's slums

Last week the United Nations Development Program office in El Salvador issued a several hundred page report on the urban slums of El Salvador. It is called the Map of Urban Poverty and Social Exclusion in El Salvador and consists of a narrative volume and a volume which maps the locations of "precarious" living conditions throughout the country.

The study focuses on the poorest areas in the urban parts of El Salvador which the report labels Precarious Urban Settlements. (acronym "AUP" for its initials in Spanish). The data in the report is drawn from the 2007 census in El Salvador. It is hoped that the detailed review of the residential living patterns of some of El Salvador's most marginalized citizens will be a tool for government planninng and intervention.

The results of the report were highlighted in an article in ContraPunto, loosely translated here:

The Map identifies 2508 AUPs in El Salvador where more than two million Salvadorans are living. More than half the urban population, therefore, live in housing that does not have acceptable conditions of access to basic services.

Depending on the levels of overcrowding, the materials houses are constructed from and their access to basic sanitation, and the accessibility for people living there to services like education, health or employment, the slum areas have been classified into four categories of precariousness: extreme, high, moderate and low.

Of the 2508 AUPs identified, approximately half (1,275) were classified as extremely precarious. In them live about 870,000 people, most of whom lack a home with minimal sanitation and whose ability to access basic services is very deficient...

Within the AUPs, the UNDP emphasizes the vulnerability for young people. Three quarters of people between 18 and 24 who live in these areas do not have academic access to higher education, ie who have not completed their primary education.

Because, as stated by the UNDP Resident Representative in El Salvador, Jessica Faieta, "the area where you live largely determines access to opportunities for education, health, work and play."

According to the Coordinator of the UNDP Human Development in El Salvador, William Pleitez, among youth who live in the slums there is a high dropout rate and that "many young people have their education interrupted by the need to find a job."

According to the report, the low level of education of these young people reduces their opportunities to access better jobs, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty and exclusion.

Photo above is by photojournalist Jesus Flores in his photo essay about the marginalized community "Benediction of God." For more images of "precarious living," see the new photo essay at El Faro, Children of Poverty.

El Salvador's volcanic landscape

With volcanoes in the news lately, a look at some of El Salvador's volcanoes seems timely. The photo above was taken by a NASA astronaut and provides a stunning relief picture of the San Miguel volcano and other volcanoes near Usulutan. The website Fire Earth has a description of the volcanoes and their history:

Usulután: Formed during Holocene (an ongoing geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago). El Tigre formed during the Pleistocene Epoch (2.588 million to about 12,000 years ago), probably the oldest of member of the family captured in this astronaut photograph. The summit crater of El Tigre has eroded. Chinameca Volcano (also known as El Pacayal) has a two-kilometer-wide caldera formed after a powerful eruption caused its dome to collapse. San Miguel (also known as Chaparrastique), the youngest member of the family, is situated about 15 km southwest of the city of San Miguel, where it takes its name from. It’s one of the most active volcanoes in el Salvador and last erupted in 2002.

Vacation Reading

I'm back from vacation (one that was extended by a volcano in Iceland) and it's time to get back to regular blogging about El Salvador. While I was gone, I hope you had a chance to check out the stories at Linda's El Salvador Blog.

I took a couple of works of fiction along with me on vacation. The first was Do They Know I'm Running? by David Corbett. The book is a crime thriller which takes as its setting the dangerous immigrants pathways between El Salvador and the Latino communities of California. Like Corbett's other book, Blood of Paradise, his new novel steeps itself in the dark underbelly of El Salvador, creating a a page-turning story with many themes you will occasionally see in this blog. Gangs, violence, the Iraq war and a failed immigration policy fill the pages, along with a dose of love and the bonds of family. [Full disclosure -- David is a reader of this blog, and was nice enough to send me a copy of Do They Know I'm Running when it was published recently].


The second book is The She Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya. Filled with irony and sardonic wit, this modern day tale of the murder of an upper-class socialite, skewers the Salvadoran wealthy class with its high end shopping malls, BMWs, and trips to Miami. As the cover flap to the book states, Castellanos Moya's narrator "paints with frivolous profundity a society in a state of collapse."

I recommend both books to anyone looking for novels of modern day El Salvador.

Reading while I'm on vacation

I'll be taking a break from blogging for the next two weeks while I'm on a vacation with limited internet access. In the interim, you may want to check out Linda's El Salvador Blog. It's a new blog which recently appeared with essays about experiencing El Salvador. It's definitely worth a read.

The reality of water in El Salvador

Access to potable water is a never-ending struggle in the rural areas of El Salvador. Julia Baumgartner describes in her blog the struggle of one community, Comunidad Rutilio Grande, with a well which is running dry:

For many of us, the thought of being without water is unimaginable. We brush our teeth, wash our dishes and clothes, shower, and drink from the faucet without thinking much about it. It has always been that way and as far as we know, it will continue to flow for us. Here in the community of Rutilio Grande, the water stopped running last week, a scary reality during the end of the dry season when the rivers dry up after 6 months of no rain.

Up until last year, this small community had been in charge of the water system, fixing the pump when it broke down. With $0 coming into the community for such instances, they decided to turn it over to the town government who has a few extra dollars to pay for such projects. In the past, they had gone weeks without water when the pump broke down. Read more.