Central American gangs

Gangs are responsible for much of the criminal violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The corpses in bags and under sheets reappeared on the streets of the Honduran capital, marking a spike in violence that affects northern Central America after a truce due to isolation to contain COVID-19 infections.

As unaccompanied minors have again crossed the southwest border in growing numbers in recent months, experts have agreed that the root causes of the surge lie in Central American violence and poverty that is driving people north.

Three Latin America-focused think tanks have teamed up to publish the first seven of a planned 15 policy briefs analyzing various aspects of Central American and Mexican migration at its points of departure, transit and settlement in both Mexico and the United States.

In the program, kids “acquire knowledge of the Bible, Christian values and principles, respect for God’s places, and the importance of belonging to a church.”

WASHINGTON, D. C. – Cristina Equizábal, a senior fellow at El Salvador’s National Foundation for Development (FUNDE), visited Costa Rica earlier this month – and was shocked to learn that local police had uncovered an enormous cache of M-16s, Uzis, AK-47s and other weapons in a suburb of San José.

Police in the city of San Pedro Sula told reporters that late Sunday unidentified assailants forced the victims, aged 16 to 19, to lie down in the street and then opened fire.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This year’s highly publicized influx of child migrants from Central America via Mexico to the U.S. border has sparked intense debate about the proliferation of gangs in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. But efforts by the three countries to eliminate gang violence have been ineffective and often counterproductive.

It's nice to see the United States paying attention to Central America again. Too bad it took tens of thousands of desperate children pouring across the border to attract our interest.

Central America is a region rife with problems of inequality, political corruption, weak institutions, poverty, displaced and marginalized populations, and a history of violence. Two journalists who are part of a group of fellow scribes who spent several years looking at those issues and trying to understand them have compiled enough stories to turn them into a book.