Friday Morning in Central America

Here are a few links to get you through the morning.

In Guatemala, a judge told former first lady Sandra Torres not to leave the country while she is under investigation for possible misuse of government funds when she managed President Colom's social programs. While she hasn't been charged, a complaint was filed against her last year. I don't think that anyone would be surprised if the former first lady and her husband used the social programs to benefit support for his administration and her electoral campaign. It's deplorable, but not surprising. Is there anything else to the charges?

In El Salvador, the government has confirmed that it has received a formal extradition request from Spain for 13 former military officers linked to the killing of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989. Two of the 15 wanted by the Spanish court are currently in the United States. Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez said that the request has been forwarded to the high court for consideration.

The Institute of Legal Medicine says that it never reported that only 10% of murders were gang-related. 

"We have never said that is 10 percent (the percentage of homicides committed by gangs), what happens is that police investigations do not (...) 70 of 100 around where the murder was committed, did not report who was the perpetrator, only 30 reported who was the perpetrator. Of these 30, hence the confusion likely, 10 said they had been gang, "said Magana, who said to be responsible for half of national newspapers.

So, in general, police are only able to identify murderer in 30% of the cases in which they investigate. And one-third of those that they do "solve" is gang-related. 

The Tripartite Commission comprised of the ILM, PNC, and FGR has not met yet. They will come up with an official murder toll sometime later this month or February. Then we'll know for sure whether the murder rate has gone up and by how much.

In the same article, Contrapunto also provides additional statistics from last year's murders.

Sonsonate was the department's most violent country in 2011 with a homicide rate of 110.4 per 100,000 population, followed by San Salvador and La Libertad with a murder rate of 83.8 and 70.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively.

With regard to gender, 14.8 percent of those killed in 2011 were female and 85.2 percent men.

The Vatican Insider has a detailed report on The peace mosaic that caused a “war.” It's about the destruction of the mural on the face of the cathedral in San Salvador.