In recent years, international cartels moving cocaine, arms and laundered money have installed themselves in key transshipment locations in Latin America and the Caribbean. As their franchises expanded, they have converted several countries into global crime hubs.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – Cheers rang from a crowd of hundreds of thousands Saturday as former Archbishop Óscar Romero, whose defense of the poor and repressed divided both his nation and the Church, was beatified.
In a move long resisted by conservative Catholics and the Salvadoran right, Archbishop Oscar Romero will be declared "blessed" in a ceremony Saturday led by the pope's envoy, Cardinal Angelo Amato, in San Salvador's central plaza.
In El Salvador, the homicide rate has spiked to its highest level in a decade, putting the tiny Central American nation on pace to become the most deadly country in the hemisphere. Since a 2012 truce between the two most powerful street gangs crumbled last year, violence has surged.
According to the Salvadoran group Citizens' Coalition for the Decriminalization of Abortion, 129 women were put on trial for abortion in El Salvador between 2000 and 2011. Most of them had their charges upped to murder, according to the group, and many were convicted.
According to the authorities, 23 policemen and six members of the military have been killed by gangs this year. A total of 1,194 people were killed in El Salvador between January 1 to April 5, according to official estimates.
The recent uptick in killings underscores the breakdown in a truce the gangs declared in March 2012, which was brokered by the Catholic Church with behind-the-scenes help from then president Mauricio Funes.
Salvadoran law provides for a sentence of two to eight years in prison for induced abortion. But if a spontaneous abortion is considered to be self-induced, the woman can be prosecuted for murder and face a sentence of up to 50 years in prison.
In March, the government passed an anti-extortion law that, among other measures, forbids companies from supplying cellphone signals near jails. Under the new law, a phone company who breaks the law is subject to a fine of $753,000 per day of continued infraction.
