The tiny Central American republic of El Salvador has recently distinguished itself as being the “murder city” of that region, and one of the most violent places in Latin America with an average of 17 murders per day. On a single day last week, there were 35 homicides in only 3 of the country’s 14 provinces!
The recently elected FMLN government is clearly overwhelmed by the levels of crime, and officials resist conferences or questions from the news media. The government’s ermatism and lack of transparency only further consternates the citizens of that beseeched land. The belief is that the newly constituted government has simply ascended personal friends or party members to their levels of incompetence, as government jobs and positions are simply handed out in a blatant cronyism unknown in most democratically elected states.
Jose Manuel Melgar, recently nominated Minister of Justice and Public Security, was born May 17th, 1960 in the backwater hamlet of La Haciendita living the life of a rural peasant on the slopes of the Guazapa Volcano, until, like his brothers, becomes a militant member of terrorist Revolutionary Central American Revolutionary Party (PRTC), one of the 5 terrorist organizations integrating the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla movement, “The PRTC was one of the most important groups during the time I was an active militant” Melgar likes to “brag” when referring to his terrorist activities.
Melgar became know by the pseudonym of “Rogelo Martinez” where his area of action remained on the slopes of the Guazapa Volcano where he met fellow terrorists, Francisco Jovel and Nidia Diaz among others. Although Mr. Melgar is not mentioned in the Truth Commissions finding regarding the most atrocious human rights violations committed during that civil war in El Salvador (1979-1992), the FBI in their investigations have signaled Mr. Melgar out as one of the intellectual authors of the massacred of Zona Rosa, realized by the urban commando unit (Mardoqueo Cruz) of the PRTC on June 19, 1985, in which 4 unarmed U.S. marine embassy guards and 8 civilians were murdered in cold blood while dining at the restaurant Mediterranee in the Salvadoran capital city.
On July 1st of last year and following the FMLN electoral victory in El Salvador, the president of the country, Mauricio Funes, swore Jose Manuel Melgar in as the country’s minister of Justice and Public Security following the timid protests of the Obama administration.
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