Losing your head in San Salvador. Literally.

Hello again. Against my better judgement, I'm cranking up the blog again, and I hope you enjoy the photos and words. Anyway, to business: If you click on a photo, it will appear larger.

1. This is a young crack addict named Arenyo who begs in the street on Calle Juan Pablo II. It was raining hard that day, making it particularly not fun. This is in a neighborhood known as Tetunichapa, a haven for the drug business. Typically, they will beg for change on the surrounding streets, and then go to a crackhouse located next to Hospital Rosales for a little "afternoon delight", as it were. Arenyo didn't know how old he was, but guessed 17 or 18. He looks older, but then as they say, it's not the years, it's the miles. Except here it's kilometers, I guess. Whatever. This photo will be part of a kids at risk photo essay I'm doing.

2. And speaking of kids at risk, this youngster, Jorge Miguel Perez Menendez AKA "Chino De Hoover" is a member of the Mara Salvatruch-18 gang clique Hoover Vatos Locos Surenos. He is wanted for, well, let's just say a lot of things, and I'm not talking about Good Samaritan awards.

3. This is the view down the alley of an MS-18 controlled neighborhood known as Don Rua, a barrio in San Salvador. Around the corner, where the kid is covering his face, they found a decapitated young girl. We helped them look for the head for a while, but my reporter quickly grew bored so we took off for another assignment. Still no word on the head. The police said 22 gangsters from that area had recently been captured and sent to jail, and they thought it could be retribution for that. And they still haven't identified the girl.

4. These next two photos are really sad. Not like, uh, the others, I guess. Anyway, this was about a story of abandoned kids in the maternity hospital in San Salvador. A record number of babies have been abandoned in the Hospital Maternidad this year, and the El Salvadoran laws make adoption very difficult. This may seem like a bad thing, and in this case it is, but the goal is to prevent something like another Guatemala. I will bitch about Guatemala another time in more depth, but suffice it to say, Guatemala (population, about 15million) had only a few hundred less adoptions than China (population, uh, over 1 billion). Basically, it's a baby stealing factory.
Anyway, this baby is abandoned, and has HIV. The other two babies, twins, were abandoned as well. The nurse said the mothers will simply cut their ID bracelets and sneak out of the hospital. There were only a few nurses to care for over a hundred babies in the room, and when the bottles would fall out of their mouths when they were done feeding, they would just sit there and drip milk on the babies face, as the nurses were tending to others. When I see shit like this, and then I see the national police force is bragging about having bought another helicopter this week, it brings to mind the typical misplaced priorities of Central American governance.