Seeing beyond the Flowers.

Today we took a drive along a road known as the route of the flowers (Ruta de Las Flores). It is a bit out of season for the flowers but it was still a pleasant drive. And there were plenty of flowers to see along the way, along with street art, artisan crafts and a nice mix of street food and coffee plantations.

Our guide Carlos told us all about the history much of it sadly violent. A genocide of native groups in the 1930s by a military dictator. A civil war from 1979 to 1992 which resulted in over 75,000 deaths and many “disappeared.” Our guide told us how his grandmother was tortured and killed during these years and showed us a place where a rebel leader was shot by firing squad. This isn’t ancient history but fairly recent.

After the civil war the country was weak and at this time the USA deported thousands of gang members from Southern California. The country could not cope with these violent and organised criminals and gang warfare flourished. Gangs were more powerful than the state. As recently as 2015 El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world 103 murders per 100,000 in a year (UK is 9.9). Again our guide told us how the gangs would collect extortion money from his parent’s business and those that didn’t pay were killed.

Over the last couple of years a new president - Nayib Bukele - has led a massive crackdown. Ironically the gangs culture has been used against them. Gangs identified using tattoos. One gang for example had a sad clown face tattoo and a tear indicated you had killed someone. During the crackdown these tattoos were enough to arrest and convict (for life). During the crackdown 70,000 gang members have been put in prison (2% of population) with minimal judicial process. If you want to get an idea of scale and seriousness, see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64…

The murder rate is now 2.4 per 100,000 (less than UK) and the president has been re-elected with 83% of the vote. To bring this closer to home, our guide told us that the place we are staying was a stronghold of the notorious MS-13 gang and completely unsafe a couple of years ago. Now they are welcoming tourists and hopefully the economy can grow and flourish leading to a better life for all here.Read more