Lynchings

I bought the paper yesterday cause the name of the next town to where I live was on the front page and caught my eye.
It was the story of a lynching that had happened the day before. In Guatemala, there are on average 14 murders every day, and most are blamed (rightly or wrongly) on the gangs that have a strong hold in many communities. The police and the justice system doesn't seem to be able to do much about it - or is very slow in responding. The paper explained that 3 supposed gang members had shot dead a tuc tuc (small taxi) driver in the town. Several witnesses decided to pursue the young men and caught one. According to the news (and a video of it that was on the TV news later), the local crowd then spent more than an hour kicking and beating the man with sticks. They then poured petrol over him and burned him alive, whilst his mother begged them to stop, but was held back by the crowd.

This was included in a special report on the evening TV news - not just because of the brutality of the incident - but because events like this seem to be happening more and more often. The 'local opinions' in the paper suggest that many are in favour of these sort of actions - out of desperation in the face of the rising gang violence in communities. The president, Alvaro Colom, came into power less than a year ago, on the promise that he would fight violence with intelligence (as apposed to neighbouring Honduras and El Salvador who have introduced 'mano duro' (heavy hand) laws which make it a crime just to belong to a gang), but there's not much evidence of his programmes - and it's too early to tell if they're having any effect.

On the other hand, I have been able to visit a Christian organisation that works with active gang members, incarcerated in prisons around Guatemala. Their research suggests that much of the violence is wrongly blamed on the gangs, and that the media tends to dramatise the violence (often with no censorship of photos or videos of victims) - which both encourages communities to take the law into their own hands, and encourages more young people to join the gangs.
The gang chaplaincy project is seeing signs of hope amongst the gang members, but I think it's a long road to change the violent legacy of 36 years of a bloody civil war.