U.S. Peace Corps pulls out of El Salvador over violence, security
Source: Reuters
U.S. Peace Corps pulls out of El Salvador over violence, security
Source: Reuters - Wed, 13 Jan 2016 19:31 GMT
By Anastasia Moloney
BOGOTA, Jan 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The U.S. Peace Corps has suspended its projects in El Salvador over safety concerns as the Central American nation struggles to stem rising murder rates and gang violence.
The Peace Corps, an overseas volunteer program, said in a statement that due to the "ongoing security environment," about 55 Peace Corps volunteers working across El Salvador on social and youth development programs were no longer safe in a country with one of the world's highest murder rates.
"The agency will continue to monitor the security situation in collaboration with the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador to determine when the program can resume," said a statement published on Monday on the embassy website.
El Salvador, a nation of 6.4 million people, is racked by drug-fueled violence, with entire city neighborhoods controlled by powerful gangs known as maras.
Read more: http://www.trust.org/item/20160113193341-r2q1z/
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Here, this explains it:
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/05/445382231/how-el-salvador-fell-into-a-web-of-gang-violence
In the U.S., in Latino neighborhoods, especially in Los Angeles. The city was divided into the Chinese neighborhood, the black neighborhood and then the Latinos. Among the Latino population, there were two notable groups: Mexicans and Salvadorans. Salvadorans became a presence in Los Angeles in the period between 1980 and 1992, which was the Salvadoran civil war.
Who was leaving El Salvador during the civil war?
Everyone. Entire families, young people, and both army and guerrilla deserters. And in Los Angeles, these Latino groups, like African-American groups, lived a difficult, marginalized life.
Above all, these gangs originated as self-defense groups, defending the Latino community, and the neighborhood, from other neighborhoods coming in to steal or inflict damage. There was originally a phrase that many of these gangs used, "Vivo por mi madre, muero por mi barrio" ("I live for my mother, I die for my neighborhood."
It's a promise to defend the community from abuses.
How did those LA gangs take root in El Salvador?
In the '90s, as the gang phenomenon in Los Angeles got more complicated, the U.S. started deporting gang members. Deportations brought airplanes full of gang members who had committed crimes and murders in the U.S. back to El Salvador.
When they got back to El Salvador, the civil war was over. What was the country like?
Not only was there no clarity about to what to do with these people — there was no infrastructure. The national police force was barely forming (it was born in 1992 with the peace agreements, and formed by ex-military and ex-guerrilla). These circumstances make it hard to pay attention to the gang problem.
The deportation of gang members back to El Salvador coincided with a very complicated social environment in the country, in which family life had been broken, financially and culturally.
Violence has always been present in this country. This is nothing new. The civil war is a violent past, but the extermination of indigenous people in 1932 is another example of how in El Salvador, violence erupts easily.
That is a reality that it seems we've inherited and it would seem that we can't ... that it's difficult for us to imagine El Salvador without violence. As if violence was part of its story, of its identity.
