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  • 23
    Nov
    2012
    9:29pm, EST

    Look inside La Esperanza - El Salvador's largest prison

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    Inmates stand by a door at La Esperaza Jail in San Salvador.

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    Inmates walk out of their cells after the morning counting at La Esperaza.

    La Esperanza, the largest jail in El Salvador, was designed to hold 800 inmates but currently holds 4700 prisoners.  AFP-Getty Images photographer, Jose Cabezas, shot these images in the prison on Nov. 23.

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    Inmates walk in line at La Esperaza Jail in San Salvador.

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    Inmates participate in a religious service at La Esperaza Jail.

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    An inmate carries tortillas for breakfast at La Esperaza Jail.

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    Inmates wash themselves at La Esperaza Jail in San Salvador.

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    Handcuffs hang from a wire netting at La Esperaza Jail in San Salvador.

     

    1 comment

    Some folks may not like our prison system,especially if one does something that lands them inside it. People may also complain about overcrowding. But surely 3,900 inmates over the limit is way beyond what our inmates experience. We also have a lot more rights for our inmates. For all those who be …

    Show more
    Explore related topics: central-america, news, prison, crime, el-salvador, world-news
  • 27
    Aug
    2012
    1:26am, EDT

    Strong quake hits off coast of El Salvador; tsunami warning canceled

    By NBC News wire reports

    Updated at 2:56 a.m. ET: A strong magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck off the coast of El Salvador late Sunday, temporarily sparking a tsunami warning.

    The earthquake was followed an hour later by a second, magnitude-5.4 temblor, authorities said.

    However, the tsunami warning covering Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama and Mexico was later canceled. 


    There were no immediate reports of damages or injuries.

    David Walsh, an oceanographer with the Pacific Tsunami Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, said a minor, 7.8-inch swell was registered off Acajutla, El Salvador.


    Follow @NBCNewsWorld

    The earthquake struck 74 miles south of Usulutan, El Salvador, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website.

    The temblor took place at a depth of 32.9 miles at 10:37 p.m. Sunday.

    On Sunday, dozens of small to moderate earthquakes struck southeastern California, knocking trailer homes off their foundations and shattering windows in a small farming town east of San Diego. The largest quake registered at a magnitude 5.5 and was centered about three miles (five kilometers) northwest of the town of Brawley, according to the USGS. Another quake about an hour and a half earlier registered at magnitude 5.3. No injuries were reported.

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

    More world stories from NBC News:

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    Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

    15 comments

    The joint is jumping.There has been an earthquake swarm in the desert of So California too and we have been told to expect more aftershocks. There have been at least 210 so far with 2 moderate quakes at 5.3 and 5.5 near Brawley, about 115 miles from San Diego. As for this one in El Salvadore, I'd be …

    Show more
    Explore related topics: earthquake, pacific, central-america, tsunami, el-salvador, usgs, featured, commentid-featured
  • 24
    Aug
    2012
    6:00am, EDT

    Migration in the Americas: Mom works in US while family stays in El Salvador

    Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR

    Carmen Elena Rosales, 26, Irving Ernesto Rosales, 23, Nancy Jasmin Rosales, 15, and their father Ernesto Rosales Guillen, 47, at home in the community of Iberia in El Salvador's capital San Salvador.

    Photojournalist Kadir van Lohuizen traveled from the southern tip of South America to the far reaches of Alaska on the North American continent to explore migration in the Americas. What he found both supported and defied stereotypes, which he reported on a website and an app for iPad called Via Panam.

    El Salvador has been called the most Americanized country in Latin America. An estimated one quarter of its citizens live in the U.S. -- often illegally. A significant part of El Salvador's national income is made up of the money that these migrants send back, and American mores and customs penetrate the small Central American country.

    Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR

    Sonia Vanegas Munoz is a domestic worker in Beverly Hills. She earns $10 per hour. Vanegas Munoz hasn't seen her husband and children in six years.

    Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR

    Ernesto Rosales Guillen and Sonia Vanegas Munoz appear in a wedding picture that hangs in the couple's home in El Salvador.

    The mass migration of Salvadorans to the United States began during the country's civil war in the 1980s and continues to this day, fueled by overpopulation and poverty. After the fighting there ended in 1992 many of the refugees were sent back to El Salvador, taking American culture with them. Many of the Salvadorans who remained in the U.S., whether legally or illegally, have also never broken ties with their homeland.

    An estimated 2 million Salvadorans live in the United States. Many share housing in large cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In contrast to the Mexican or Cuban communities, Salvadorans are not conspicuously politically active, although in recent years the Salvadoran government has tried to get successful immigrants to invest and help build the country's economy. 

    'No papers, no fear': Undocumented immigrants declare themselves on bus tour

    Los Angeles and its suburbs are home to an estimated 1 million Salvadorans, the largest community from the Central American country in the United States.  The migrants, many without residence permits, often work as unskilled laborers, cleaners or nannies for American families. Because the migration had its origins in hospitable U.S. immigration policies in the 1980s during the Salvadoran civil war, the group has played a major role in the discussion over whether the United States bears some responsibility for the world's refugee problems.

    Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR

    The gate of the home where Munoz works in Beverly Hills. She left El Salvador in 2005 because her family wasn't making ends meet.

    Slideshow: Migration in the Americas

    K. van Lohuizen / NOOR

    From Colombians fleeing war to North Americans retirees moving to Nicaragua, a photographer's journey from Chile to Alaska explores both the expected and unexpected patterns of migration in the Americas

    Launch slideshow

    Experience the entire journey, from Chile to Alaska, by exploring the slideshow at right, the Via Panam website or by downloading the app for iPad.

    More Photoblogs from the Migration in the Americas series: 
    US retirees flock to Nicaragua

    On the run from water in Panama

    Bolivia hopes for windfall from producing lithium

    Follow @NBCNewsPictures

    •Sign up for the NBCNews.com Photos Newsletter

    7 comments

    The family who employs this woman should be arrested.

    Show more
    Explore related topics: travel, immigration, migration, el-salvador, world-news, via-panam
  • 21
    Aug
    2012
    12:00pm, EDT

    International team to exhume 96 bodies in graves in Mexico

    By NBC News staff

    Argentinian forensic experts have traveled to southern Mexico to exhume 96 bodies thought to be those of Central Americans who died as they tried to get to the United States, according to local reports. 

    Six experts from The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) are working with local and federal authorities in the cities of Tapachula and Ciudad Hidalgo in the state of Chiapas, Mexico's Proceso magazine reported on Monday. (Link to story in Spanish)

    The EAAF team, which plans to spend at least two months in Chiapas, arrived on Monday at a municipal cemetery in the city of Tapachula, along with medical, human rights and justice officials, as well as representatives of the Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran consulates, Proceso added.


    The EAAF was asked to help identify the bodies in Chiapas -- the majority of which were placed in one communal grave by local medical officials -- by groups advocating for the rights of migrants, Proceso reported.

    Migration in the Americas: Mom works in US while family stays in el Salvador


    Follow @NBCNewsWorld

    In most of Mexico, the bodies of indigent or unidentified people who have died in care are buried in group graves, with five to 10 corpses placed on each level, according to a Mexico forensics expert who asked not to be identified.  

    Non-governmental EAAF was established in 1984 to investigate the cases of some 9,000 disappeared people in Argentina under the military government that ruled from 1976 to 1983. It now works around the world. 

    The teams will analyze DNA samples from the buried bodies and those provided by families searching their missing loved ones, Proceso reported. The cemeteries are on routes known to be used by Central American migrants.

    Migration in the Americas: The end of North America

    The organization Voces Mesoamericanas (Mesoamerican Voices) requested the government of Chiapas look in the tombs for many missing migrants, the magazine said.  

    The organization has also looked along the so-called migrant route for clues to the location of some 2,000 migrants thought to have died along the way to the United States, Proceso said. 

    Central American migrants protest targeting by Mexico gangs 

    It isn't known how many of the estimated 500,000 Central American migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States actually make it to their destination, according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

    Many migrants are preyed on by criminal gangs and suffer assault, sexual slavery, kidnapping and murder, the organization added.

    The EAAF, Mesoamerican Voices and local officials in Chiapas were not immediately available for comment.  

    NBC News' F. Brinley Bruton contributed to this report.

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    71 comments

    If they werent in pursuit of committing a criminal act......theyd probably still be alive.

    Show more
    Explore related topics: guatemala, central-america, migrant, el-salvador, honduras, featured, chiapas, eaaf
  • 16
    Apr
    2012
    5:23am, EDT

    El Salvador has its first murder-free day in three years

    Jose Cabezas / AFP - Getty Images

    Members of the Mara 18 gang, attend a mass at a jail in Izalco, El Slavador, on April 13. They were giving thanks for the recent gang truce.

    By Reuters

    SAN SALVADOR -- 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.

    Rival gangs operating in El Salvador called a truce last month and bloodshed between the country's two most powerful gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and gang Mara 18, has abated.

    According to United Nations data, El Salvador has recently tallied a homicide rate of 66 per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world.

    Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a transit point.

    Mockumentary but no laughter: Child actors shame Mexico

    Funes, who attended this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, credited his government's security measures for the drop in violence.

    Funes has recently ordered the military to pick up routine security duties.

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    Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

    53 comments

    I thought this was going to be about the USA. Wishful thinking.

    Show more
    Explore related topics: murder, homicide, el-salvador, featured, three-years, mauricio-funes

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