A journalist who documented the ugly world of El Salvador’s infamous gang life was killed early Wednesday morning. Christian Poveda, a veteran Franco-Spanish documentary filmmaker and photojournalist, was shot in the head and killed on the road near the country’s capital, San Salvador. No suspects have been arrested, and it is unknown why he was killed.
Poveda was just weeks away from the official premiere of his documentary about the violent, ugly world of Salvadoran gang life when he was killed. The documentary, La Vida Loca, is set to premiere on Sept. 30 in Paris. It has already been broadcast in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, and Hungary. It has never been shown in El Salvador.
Condolences and outcries over Poveda’s death poured in from around the world as the news spread on Thursday. Some commented on the importance of the story Poveda covered in his documentary La Vida Loca.
“Salvadoran journalists told me that security concerns prevent them from reporting in depth on gang violence,” said Carlos Lauría, senior program coordinator for the Americas for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
“It’s this kind of reporting that Poveda did, and a powerful inside look at youth violence. You can’t see this in the Salvadoran press because journalists are afraid.”
Lauría added that Poveda’s murder “sends a chilling message to Salvadoran journalists.”
Poveda’s documentary depicts the ugly life of two of El Salvador’s most notorious and deadly gangs—Mara 18 and Salvatrucha. It includes crude imagery of gang members gunned down in the street, the corpses of teenagers, relatives weeping over coffins, and young women with their faces covered with tattoos. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), it’s estimated that the gangs cost 3,700 lives last year alone. Other estimates put the number at about 3,500.
“The fact that he was doing work on that issue put him at risk more than with another subject,” said Clothilde Le Coz, RSF’s Washington director. Le Coz added that the last journalist killed in El Salvador was Salvador Sanchez in 2007.
If the Salvadoran government agrees, RSF plans to send an envoy to the Central American country to meet with the Justice and Information ministries to call for a speedy investigation.
To make La Vida Loca, Poveda spent 16 months with the gangs in the east San Salvador neighborhood of La Campanera.
“We must try to understand why a child of 12 or 13 joins a gang and gives his life for it,” Poveda said in an interview for the Salvadorean online daily El Faro before his death.
Marco Tulio Lima of the San Salvador police department’s homicide division commented to AFP that there is no “particular hypothesis” about Poveda’s death.
“Impunity is the norm in most cases of journalist assassinations around the world according to our research,” said Mr. Lauría of the CPJ. “There are many factors—overburdened justice systems, widespread corruption, no resources for investigations.”
Poveda was born in France in 1955 and earned a reputation as a photojournalist with a report about the Polisario Front’s war in Western Sahara. In the following years, he produced many other reports, and his documentaries were screened in festivals and broadcast by TV stations.
Poveda started going to El Salvador in the 1980s during the civil war there as a photographer for Time magazine and as a correspondent for French news media and international news agencies. He also covered wars in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. He returned to El Salvador in the 1990s to cover the armed gang phenomenon.
Poveda was just weeks away from the official premiere of his documentary about the violent, ugly world of Salvadoran gang life when he was killed. The documentary, La Vida Loca, is set to premiere on Sept. 30 in Paris. It has already been broadcast in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, and Hungary. It has never been shown in El Salvador.
Condolences and outcries over Poveda’s death poured in from around the world as the news spread on Thursday. Some commented on the importance of the story Poveda covered in his documentary La Vida Loca.
“Salvadoran journalists told me that security concerns prevent them from reporting in depth on gang violence,” said Carlos Lauría, senior program coordinator for the Americas for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
“It’s this kind of reporting that Poveda did, and a powerful inside look at youth violence. You can’t see this in the Salvadoran press because journalists are afraid.”
Lauría added that Poveda’s murder “sends a chilling message to Salvadoran journalists.”
Poveda’s documentary depicts the ugly life of two of El Salvador’s most notorious and deadly gangs—Mara 18 and Salvatrucha. It includes crude imagery of gang members gunned down in the street, the corpses of teenagers, relatives weeping over coffins, and young women with their faces covered with tattoos. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), it’s estimated that the gangs cost 3,700 lives last year alone. Other estimates put the number at about 3,500.
“The fact that he was doing work on that issue put him at risk more than with another subject,” said Clothilde Le Coz, RSF’s Washington director. Le Coz added that the last journalist killed in El Salvador was Salvador Sanchez in 2007.
If the Salvadoran government agrees, RSF plans to send an envoy to the Central American country to meet with the Justice and Information ministries to call for a speedy investigation.
To make La Vida Loca, Poveda spent 16 months with the gangs in the east San Salvador neighborhood of La Campanera.
“We must try to understand why a child of 12 or 13 joins a gang and gives his life for it,” Poveda said in an interview for the Salvadorean online daily El Faro before his death.
Marco Tulio Lima of the San Salvador police department’s homicide division commented to AFP that there is no “particular hypothesis” about Poveda’s death.
“Impunity is the norm in most cases of journalist assassinations around the world according to our research,” said Mr. Lauría of the CPJ. “There are many factors—overburdened justice systems, widespread corruption, no resources for investigations.”
Poveda was born in France in 1955 and earned a reputation as a photojournalist with a report about the Polisario Front’s war in Western Sahara. In the following years, he produced many other reports, and his documentaries were screened in festivals and broadcast by TV stations.
Poveda started going to El Salvador in the 1980s during the civil war there as a photographer for Time magazine and as a correspondent for French news media and international news agencies. He also covered wars in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. He returned to El Salvador in the 1990s to cover the armed gang phenomenon.
