Mass graves in El Salvador

(Bernat Parera / ElFaro.net)

Two articles have recently hit the international press with regards to mass graves in El Salvador.

Writing in The Nation, Óscar Martínez of El Faro investigates why Salvadoran authorities have been so slow to act in Diary of (Not) Excavating a Mass Grave in El Salvador.

There are bodies down there. Not prosecutors, not gang members, not journalists, not policemen, not even the government doubts that in this exact spot, deep below ground level, there are bodies. And now that everybody knows, the question remains: What do we do? This is the story of a well—and of the country that surrounds it.

The second article comes from Roberto Lovato in the Boston Globe with El Salvador’s archives of death.

Asked how he thought the era of mass graves in El Salvador might end, Santiago is philosophical. “The institutions — the police, the courts, human rights investigators — all that’s related to the state — have to be professionalized. Everybody knows most of the killings here are never investigated, so you can kill with impunity,” he says. “We need to figure out who really killed whom. . . . We need justice.”

While depressing, they are both worth a few minutes of your day (especially Lovato's article).