Death and Prostitution at "The Child's Park"

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Picture 1: As usual, when I post a photo of a person laying prone on the ground, there's a very high probability that they are not asleep. Unfortunately, this was the case today. This woman was shot three times, including once in the eye (ouch!), in front of the "Parque Infantil", near the Mayor of San Salvador's office. This park, despite being named "The childs park" (depending on your translation), the only resemblence to a child park is that some the sex workers in the brothels surrounding the park are shockingly young (see later photo). Anyway, this unidentified woman was shot for unknown reasons at 2:30 today.








Picture 2,3: As I mentioned, the park is surrounded by brothels staffed by women and men of all ages and, unfortunately, states of pregnancy. This young girl was sitting outside a brothel, watching the murder scene evolve and chatting with friends. She is, obviously, underage, also pregnant, and still a sex worker. She, and her friend "China" (next photo), were kind enough to let me take their photos after I asked them and their co-workers. Ms China, by the by, I think may be more of a he than a she, in case you're wondering. S/he still had lovely eyes, though, whatever was going on there.
If you happen to live in or visit San Salvador, and decide to cruise by this place, I would strongly, strongly advise against trying to take pictures. This goes for any prostitution zone. I would say the people in these places take a rather……"active" role in not having their pictures taken. There was a woman selling shrimp ceviche (essentially, shrimp marinated in lime and onion, with tomatoes and chilis) who had gang tattoos on her face, including two teardrops (she's killed at least twice) and a three point "la vida loca" tattoo on her other eye. When the person who sells shrimp cocktail in your neighborhood is a killer, you've gotta be pretty tough to be there.

In any regard, these photos are sad, and, as usual, the presence of underage pregnant prostitutes is taken for granted; I would point out the presence of a major police station within 200 meters of the brothel where this girl works, as well as the roughly 25 police officers working the crime scene and chatting with girls.















Picture 4: to give some idea of the politics surrounding this area, there was a dummy strung from a tree with a Rodrigo Avila ARENA party t-shirt (and tie: classy!).