The Executioners of El Salvador

By Daniel Alarcón, August 4, 2015

Earlier this year, the International Business Times ran this bewildering headline: “El Salvador to Become Deadliest Peace-Time Country in the World.” It’s an odd turn of phrase; something about it doesn’t quite scan. Perhaps, given the context of life in El Salvador, it’s best to re-examine what we mean when we say “peacetime.”

. . . Óscar, who is thirty-two, sees things differently. “We’re a society that knows nothing about peace,” he told me. “I’ve never lived it.” These days, El Salvador, he argued, is in the grip of something terrible, something frightening and lawless, and it’s natural for people to be outraged.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-executionersof-el-salvador