No one was murdered in El Salvador on Saturday, officials said, in what was the first homicide-free day in nearly three years for the Central American country plagued by violent drug gangs.
"After years when the number of murders reached alarming levels of up to 18 per day, we saw not one homicide in the country," President Mauricio Funes said in a statement released on Sunday.
The murder-free day was the first recorded since leftist Funes took office in June 2009. At the beginning of his term, the country had an average of 12 murders a day, but that tally climbed closer to 18 per day in early 2012.
That's pretty remarkable. It's even more remarkable if you consider that weekends are typically more bloody than weekdays.
I would disagree with the article, however, when it says that "Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a transit point." The gangs do distribute drugs but they haven't really been significant players in drug trafficking.
Has anybody come across how Guatemalan and Honduran authorities have reacted to the gang truce and subsequent murder reduction in El Salvador? Did it come up during the Summit of the Americas?
I am also wondering how the FMLN would have done in the March elections had the truce been negotiated in February.
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