Arrested Development - Ex-Pats Mexico

In stark contrast to the tranquility of the little painted houses in a tree-lined suburban housing estate in El Salvador, a violent gang culture permanently kills, maims or has jailed the young of the community. With a rate of 9 murders a day amongst the young, the country is caught in a massive gang feud. The gangs, and the feud, originate from the 1980s run- down south central Los Angeles. The problem could have been contained, considers Poveda, were it not that in 1996, the US government (under Clinton) decided to send 100,000 convicted gang members from US prisons to central America. Combined with a foreign policy of supporting dictatorships and financing civil wars, the scene has been set for human tragedy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305890/

08/09/2009 | Filmmaker slain in El Salvador was worried about growing violence
Alex Renderos and Tracy Wilkinson

Christian Poveda was dismayed by the increasing viciousness of the gangs he had chronicled. 'Government authorities have no idea of the monster facing them,' he said a day before his death.


The day before he was killed this week, Christian Poveda, veteran photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, said he was worried. The Salvadoran street gangs whose lives Poveda had chronicled in recent years were turning uglier than ever.

A brief glimmer of hope -- gang leaders speaking of a truce and ending the daily, deadly violence that has terrorized tiny El Salvador for years -- had vanished. A new crop of leaders was emerging who seemed more vicious and less inclined to negotiate or moderate their criminal actions, including extortion, carjacking and killing.

"Government authorities have no idea of the monster facing them," said the French-born journalist, 54, whose recent documentary, "La Vida Loca," portrayed the desperate, brutal lives of gangs that have their roots in Los Angeles.

A day after Poveda made these comments to The Times, he was dead.

http://www.offnews.info/verArticulo.php ... doID=17322

Gunmen kill federal officer in Mazatlan, MX
[i]Google translation*

Please Shush ... does this have anything to do with this movie, country, etc

And I don't we need cut-n-paste horror stories in general. We all know how to read the news

Or at least keep it up with the 35 dead thread

It might have been the downfall of El Salvador but the gangsters sent there by the US were El Salvadoran and were in the US illegally. I think they had the right to ship them out, if it turns out bad for the country they came from well, sorry, but it is truly an El Salvadoran problem. I think it is pushing it to try and blame their problems on the fact that their gangsters were repatriated to their country. Like Honduras and Nicaraugua, the original banana republics, nothing has been done to change the rule of the corrupt few families or to provide jobs and hope to the poor.

Even back in the early '90's on flights to Costa Rica ... there was a layover in San Salvador.

Everybody off the plane and unfriendly military everywhere. I wasn't impressed