El Salvador's ongoing fight against corruption

In the World Politics Review, Christine Wade argues El Salvador’s Legacy of Impunity Hampers Its Ongoing Fight Against Corruption.

Investigating and prosecuting corruption in El Salvador is a difficult business. The country’s judicial institutions have been chronically underfunded since the end of its civil war in 1992. Those institutions are also overburdened. El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, at 64 murders per 100,000 people in 2017. In 2015, the rate of femicide there—the deliberate killing of women because of their gender—was the third-highest in the world. Approximately 95 percent of homicides in El Salvador go unpunished. This situation is the result not only of weak institutions, but also systemic corruption and a general culture of impunity that is the legacy of the brutal civil war.

Christine's book Captured Peace lays much of the blame for corruption, impunity, weak institutions, and violence on ARENA governance between 1989 and 2009. I think that many of us held out hope that a moderate Mauricio Funes presidency that had positioned itself between ARENA and the FMLN would reverse the damage done by previous ARENA administrations. However, that does not appear to have been the case. Mauricio and friends appear to have used state institutions for petty cash while FMLN officials got rich off ALBA Petroleos. The FMLN was more than happy to ally with Tony Saca to advance their partisan interests while El Salvador burned.