Tears welled in Alex’s eyes and he pressed his head into his hands as he thought about more than a year of birthdays and holidays without his mother, who was swept up by El Salvador’s police as she walked to work in a clothing factory.
“I feel very alone,” the 10-year-old said last month as he sat next to his 8-year-old brother and their grandmother. “I’m scared, feeling like they could come and they could take away someone else in my family.”
Forty thousand children have seen one parent or both detained in President Nayib Bukele’s nearly two-year war on El Salvador’s gangs, according to the national social services agency.
The records were shared with The Associated Press by an official with the National Council on Children and Adolescents, who insisted on anonymity due to fear of government reprisal against those violating its tight control of information. The official said many more children have jailed parents but are not in the records.
I guess it boils down to what you consider worst. Gangs, or a tyrannical government who disappear people without due process. It is like releasing killer monkeys to take care of your radioactive crocodile problem.
I guess at least with the government at least it is a little more surgical. Gangs tend to not really care where their bullets go.
And really the question is more: do you want one tyrannical government or six competing tyrannical governments?
Except that in this case, at least they are not disappearing with no knowledge to others.
Responsibility and accountability still lay supreme. Better than in other conditions, where you got no idea who did what to whom.
You’ll probably see people asking to have their food and education (alright, maybe they won’t ask for the education) funded by the govt. and if it’s unable to deliver, it will lose power.