Gang violence and economic development in El Salvador

Carin Zissis has an op-ed in US News & World Report on Learning From a Troubled Gang Truce which is fine except that it is short on actual lessons.

Douglas Farah has a troubling report on What the Kids are Fleeing: Gang Violence Spikes in Central America with Fusion.

Some jailed gang leaders have been granted generous concessions, including sophisticated military training behind bars prisons. Fusion had access to several hours of videos of outside trainers teaching incarcerated Salvadoran gangbangers new tactics in hand-to-hand combat, small-unit maneuvering and other specialized activities.

Seriously, military training? That's not the only thing going on that, if true, should send some officials to jail.


And some economic stories from the left: CISPES on US Conditioning Of Development Aid Meets Resistance In El Salvador and Voices on the Border on The Price for a $277 Million MCC Grant. Here's Voices

The MCC program is popular with a lot of Salvadorans and politicians who see it as free money for development projects. But a growing number of environmentalists, unions, and communities argue that the Embassy’s conditions are too high a price to pay for development projects they don’t want anyway. And many see the conditions as an encroachment on El Salvador’s sovereignty.

In other coastal development news, the Inter-American Development Bank approved a $40 million loan aimed at improving the competitiveness of 30 towns along the coast.

There are numerous concerns with the environmental, economic and social impact of the proposed plans to develop the country's coastal and maritime areas. I imagine that they can't reopen FOMILENIO II or postpone a vote on it for two years in order to seriously rethink if this is what's best for El Salvador but it sure would be nice, no? It doesn't sound like the US or El Salvador is happy about the circumstances of the proposed compact.

CISPES also has a post on El Salvador’s Right And Media Reject Tax Reforms.