A day of lights and shadows

There's much I want to tell you about today, indeed about the last few days which have been rich and full. But first, the bad news today in Suchitoto is that six or seven young men were killed in the village of Milingo, part of the Suchitoto municipality, in a shooting yesterday afternoon; three others were wounded. These terrible murders are probably the work of a gang, and the police speculate that the young men were killed by a rival gang - though as yet there's no real evidence that those killed were in a gang.

This shocking news has brought great pain to my town. For a long time, we've been able to think of ourselves as exempt from the gang violence here, but no longer. What can we do? Many meetings took place today to look for a powerful response, and that response begins tomorrow with a procession bearing witness to our grief.

The gang violence in this country has increased to an unbearable level. The police and military, working together, are looking for new ways to combat this epidemic - and indeed, it has the qualities of an epidemic. It doesn't help that there's not much public trust in the integrity of the police.

It was interesting that today my friends Lena and Rosi called suggesting that Margaret Jane and I might like to stay with them in Santa Tecla for a while because of these murders. This struck me as pretty funny, because Santa Tecla has its own set of gangs. I thanked Lena and Rosi, but told them that we wanted to be in solidarity with our Suchitoto community. I didn't add that nuns in la tercer edad (senior citizens) are just about the last people threatened by this gang violence. Instead, what we're losing here in Suchitoto, in El Salvador, is a generation of youth.