‘What we have now is a civil war’
In El Salvador, security forces are carrying out a growing number of the killings in the gang war
Story by Joshua Partlow
Photos by Fred Ramos
Published on October 28, 2016
CANTON SANTA TERESA, El Salvador — The Tiny Malditos used to own this village, strutting around with their rifles and 9mm pistols, their gang allegiances tattooed in crude gothic script across their slender teenage backs and chests.
These days, Santa Teresa doesn’t have much of a gang problem. One by one over the past year, the “sons of the community,” as the town’s Catholic priest calls them — or “terrorists,” as the government prefers — have been killed, arrested or driven out.
There was the young man shot by police behind the abandoned adobe house; three more gunned down by officers in the church courtyard; the girlfriend of a jailed gangster, found topless in a roadside ditch with two bullet holes in the back of her head.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2016/10/28/el-salvadors-conflict-with-gangs-is-beginning-to-look-like-a-war/
