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February 20th, 2007

   

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What Salvadoran bloggers are saying — unable to escape the past

A small portrait of the translator Tim Muth · 02:40 · Americas

The ghosts of El Salvador's twelve year civil war continue to surface in the news from El Salvador. First there was the story of Will Salgado, mayor of the city of San Miguel. On January 29, the Washington Post ran a cover story on the aftermath of the civil war which started with these attention getting sentences:

José Wilfredo Salgado says he collected baby skulls as trophies in the 1980s, when he fought as a government soldier in El Salvador's civil war. They worked well as candleholders, he recalls, and better as good-luck charms.

The skulls were taken from corpses of the El Mozote massacre victims in Morazan province which took place in December 1981. Salgado gave an interview to the periodical El Faro, in which he denies ever making such statements, but the Washington Post reporter is sticking to the story.

Blogger Jjmar has no doubt that Salgado made the statements in question, and wonders what that says[ES] for his country that such a man can be a popular mayor of a major city and is being considered as a presidential candidate in 2009. Ixquic looks at Salgado and sees a politician with populist appeal[ES], a “Robin Hood,” who has sold himself to the electorate and the people have bought his sales job. It doesn't seem to matter whether the news about him is good or bad.
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