The reality of life in postwar El Salvador is that nearly 20 years later violence continues to plague much of the country, Bishop Jose Elias Rauda Gutierrez of San Vicente acknowledged during an August visit to Washington. Bishop Rauda said that violence, poverty, unemployment, hunger and precarious living conditions continue to make life difficult for Salvadorans nearly 20 years after the 1992 end of the 12-year civil war. A Salvadoran government report released in early August tallied 91 murders in the previous five weeks in the Massachusetts-size country that has a population of 5.7 million, about the same as the state of Maryland. In just one department, Sonsonate, 32 murders occurred in the period covered by the report; a department is the political equivalent of a U.S. state. The daily problems of the Salvadoran people include dealing with poverty, unemployment and gang-related violence, ranging from extortion to murder, he said, noting that in some ways the violence is a vestige of the war, because so many weapons remained throughout the country. He said the country's fragile economy leaves plenty of room for drug gangs to recruit unemployed and undereducated youths. A statement of the Salvadoran bishops' conference released in early August gave the government credit for some efforts to "combat this scourge" of violence but said the crime crackdown "is not enough to give the people the social peace and security necessary."
Violence Plagues El Salvador
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
The Archdiocese of New Orleans had been ordered by a New Orleans criminal court to turn over records relating to a long-running criminal investigation involving multiple accused priests.
“Inside the Vatican” host Colleen Dulle shares how her visit to Argentina gave her a deeper understanding into Francis’ emphasis on “being amongst the people” and his belief that “you can’t do theology behind a desk.”
Christians who have lived in Nagorno-Karabakh for 2,000 years are being driven out by Azerbaijan. Will world leaders act?
The problem is not that TikTok users feel disappointed about the potential loss of an entertaining social platform; it is that many young people see a ban on TikTok as the end of, or at least a major disruption to, their social life.