Los Angeles council members to make donations for El Salvador storm victims

Five Los Angeles City Council members this week pledged to donate $2,000 each to help storm victims in El Salvador.

Council Members Jose Huizar, Eric Garcetti (council president), Ed Reyes, Tony Cardenas and Richard Alarcon promised a donation totaling $10,000 to a local disaster relief agency focused on El Salvador. 

Torrential rains in the Central American nation this month triggered flooding and mudslides that left dozens of people dead and destroyed hundreds of homes, officials said.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a press release that Los Angeles is home to the largest population of Salvadorans outside El Salvador and that his prayers are with the victims.

-- Paula Diaz / HOY

Preserving El Salvador's historic memory: Organizer explains big L.A. event

As Reed Johnson reports, over the next week, an ambitious multimedia happening at the Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown will try to salvage some of El Salvador's missing past. The project has the umbrella title "Preservación de la Memoria Histórica Salvadoreña" (Salvadoran Preservation of Historic Memory), and you can read the rest of the report here. Below you can see a Spanish-language interview with William Flores, who was one of the main organizers behind the event, in a video from DesdeAquiTV.com, which is an Internet TV channel based in LA.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

French filmmaker who made documentary on gangs is killed in El Salvador

Christian Poveda, a French filmmaker and photographer who recently made a documentary about the Mara gangs in El Salvador, was shot dead Wednesday in Tonacatepeque, a rural region north of the capital, police said. He had been shot in the head, reports the Associated Press.

His documentary, "La Vida Loca," which we covered here on La Plaza, showed the hopelessness of life for the thousands of gang members living in El Salvador.

Poveda was a strong critic of policies used by the governments of El Salvador and the U.S., which he saw as having strengthened the gang networks.He described the members of the violent gangs that he filmed as "victims of society."

He spent 16 months shooting the film in San Salvador, and said during an interview with La Plaza this year,  “I knew right from the start that I couldn't film just one character."

“Firstly, they get bored after a couple of months and don't want to be filmed anymore. Or two, they get put in jail, or they get killed.”

We'll be bringing you more on this story, but meanwhile you can watch Poveda talk about "La Vida Loca" in an interview in April.

** Updated: Read our full report on this story here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

What happened to Elian Majano?

Dallas Morning News reporter Katherine Leal Unmuth wonders what happened to Elian Majano, the young son of immigrants from El Salvador who disappeared from Lively Park in  Irving, Texas, three years ago. He was 2 years old when he went missing. 

"From time to time, I find myself thinking about an Irving toddler who apparently disappeared while playing with his older brother in Irving's Lively Park on June 21, 2006 -- Elian Majano, then two years old. Today, close to the third anniversary of his disappearance, he should be five years old.

"His father handed the photo (pictured at the right) of brothers Alexis, then 4, and Elian to me when I visited the family's cramped apartment in South Irving -- an aging complex occupied by many immigrant families. (Elian's parents are from El Salvador). Now this little boy has joined a long list of other missing children from throughout the country, his case featured on America's Most Wanted online."

Read more about Elian Majano here.

Click here for more posts on immigration and migrant issues.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Support for Los Angeles gang activist Alex Sanchez

Alex Sanchez, the nationally known anti-gang activist who was arrested last month on federal charges of racketeering and conspiracy, is gaining support from "clergy, professors, lawyers, community organizers and youths from Latino, black and Asian communities," writes Esmeralda Bermudez in the latest report on the controversial case.

"They hail the Salvadoran immigrant as a reformed gangster turned peacemaker and believe he is incapable of betraying the community's trust," she writes.

One of Sanchez's supporters, former state Sen. Tom Hayden, said outside court at Tuesday's bail hearing, during which Sanchez, head of the anti-gang group Homies Unidos, was denied bail: "If they wanted my house, they could have it."

You can read Hayden elaborating more about what he describes as a "weak case" from the prosecution  in The Nation, and watch him speaking outside the courthouse on the video below.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutor Elizabeth Carpenter says that Sanchez's supporters have "been duped by his public face."

— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Hector Tobar: An unforgettable graduate continues his journey

We need Luis Peñate, a thinker and a fighter, and others going away to college to come back to L.A. to help solve our many problems, writes Hector Tobar.

"We need Luis and all the other college-bound members of the class of 2009 to come back to Los Angeles one day. We need their brain power to sort out the messes we older generations are leaving them.

"Luis is one of those young people who was gifted to us by El Salvador, a little Central American republic that has lost too many of its brightest and most ambitious people to the United States.

"His mother, a legal U.S. resident, had spent much of her life traveling back and forth between the two countries. When she brought Luis to the United States, at age 11, he was already a precocious reader. He had just read 'The Lord of the Rings' in Spanish."

Read Hector Tobar's complete column.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Luis Peñate, second from right, with sister Brenda, left, mother Sonia and father Rogelio. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Anti-gang activist accused of gang crimes

An anti-gang activist known nationally in the United States was arrested Wednesday on federal racketeering and conspiracy charges stemming from his alleged involvement in one of the most violent street gangs in the U.S., Scott Glover and Richard Winton report.

Alex Sanchez, executive director of Homies Unidos, a gang-intervention nonprofit with offices in Los Angeles and El Salvador, was among two dozen alleged members or associates of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, also known as MS-13, charged in a 66-page indictment that was unsealed Wednesday.

The defendants, with monikers such as Creeper, Grinch, Pain and Tears, were involved in a variety of crimes, including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion and drug trafficking, over a 15-year period, the indictment alleges. Among the alleged crimes was a plot to kill a Los Angeles Police Department detective who specialized in investigating the gang, authorities said. Gang members had gone as far as choosing a handgun with which to kill Det. Frank Flores, authorities allege, but police thwarted the plot.

Read more of the report here.

Click here to see more recent posts on the Mara Salvatrucha gang.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Alex Sanchez is executive director of Homies Unidos, a gang-intervention nonprofit group. Credit: Los Angeles Times.

Mexico on high alert for Obama; Americas summit awaits

Mexico City is on high alert this morning as it awaits the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama, expected here today in his first official visit to Mexico.

'La Vida Loca' captures daily reality of El Salvador's gangs, or maras

“La Vida Loca” reflects a depressing and hopeless reality. The documentary, by photojournalist and filmmaker Christian Poveda (you can see his bio here), follows some of the members of ''la dieciocho,'' the so-called 18th Street gang in a poor San Salvador neighborhood.

“Little One” is a 19-year-old mother with an enormous "18," reflecting her membership in the 18th Street gang, tattooed on her face. The numbers stretch from above her eyebrows down onto her cheeks.

“Moreno” is a 25-year-old male member of the same gang who works in a local bakery set up by a nonprofit group called Homies Unidos. The bakery eventually folds when its owner is arrested and sentenced to 16 years in jail on homicide charges.

And ``Wizard,'' another young mother and gang member, who lost her eye in a fight, is followed by Poveda during a long series of medical consultations and operations to fit her with a replacement glass eye. She’s shot and killed before the end of the film.

Stories like that, punctuated with funerals attended by silent, heavily tattooed male gang members and wailing young wives, mothers and girlfriends, make up the sum of “La Vida Loca.”

The nature of their existence meant that Poveda had to spread his camera lens wide in the 16 months he spent shooting the film.

Violence against journalists continues in Latin America

Attacks on the Press 2008: Carl Bernstein on Self-Censorship of the Press from Meredith Megaw on Vimeo.

Here in Mexico, we keep our eye on the frequent press-freedom reports that come out, given the high levels of violence against journalists in the country and the culture of impunity that abounds.

Tuesday's release by the Committee to Protect Journalists, sadly, held no surprises.