Crime and Justice in El Salvador

In the United States, we don’t learn anything about El Salvador in history class. When I studied El Salvador for my essay, I was learning everything for the first time. Ironically, this ties into the theme of my essay. The theme was that the poor tend to not have a voice against the rich and the powerful. In the United States, a very rich country, we do not hear the stories of people like Roque Dalton or Marcelo Rivera, relatively poor Salvadorans. I learned in my research that both of these men fought those holding power in El Salvador – and both lost their lives as a result. I focused on Marcelo Rivera, the activist that was assassinated. The truth was that Marcelo was one of five activists against Pacific Rim that were murdered, including a woman eight months pregnant. Sadly, I learned these crimes were carried out without justice in El Salvador; nobody knows who the murderer (the one who ordered the murders, not the one who pulled the trigger) is today. In 1975, leftist rebels killed Roque Dalton. These rebels believed that Daton was a CIA agent; a mole for the United States. This was a serious charge as during this time, the United States financed the oppressive Salvadoran dictator.

Overall, I learned that there is injustice in El Salvador today, and the unfortunate truth is that the rich try their best to ignore this injustice, which at times might seem inconvenient to face. I believe the benefit of living in the United States is that we can more aware of these injustices, less restricted by censorship or poverty those in poorer countries face. We have more opportunity to fight these injustices and help people that don’t have the same rights we enjoy.