Latin America
Related: About this forumEl Salvador's house of horror becomes grisly emblem of war on women
Source: The Guardian
Authorities have sought to portray the ex-policeman at whose home up to 40 bodies, mostly female, may be buried, as a freakish psychopath, despite the arrest of nine other suspects
Bryan Avelar in Chalchuapa and Tom Phillips
Tue 25 May 2021 10.00 BST
Day after day they flock to the emerald green house on Estévez Street, seeking news of loved ones who have vanished without a trace.
They say there are lots in there, maybe 40, said Jessenia Elizabeth Francia, a 38-year-old housewife who had travelled 20 miles to reach the heavily guarded building under a punishing midday sun.
Francia had come to Chalchuapa, a small town in western El Salvador, in search of her son, Luis Fernando, who disappeared seven years ago at the age of 16. I just want to find at least his bones so I can bury them and find peace, she said, clutching a cellphone showing a photograph of her missing child and the words: I have faith.
Others sought daughters or wives, Central American women feared to have fallen prey to the houses proprietor, the former police officer and alleged serial killer Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez, who is feared to have buried his victims inside.
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The case has sent shock waves through El Salvador and cast a spotlight on the femicide emergency raging across Latin America, from Argentina to Mexico, where 4,000 women were killed in 2019 alone.
El Salvador has long been considered one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, a reality that forces many to flee north to seek shelter in the United States. Last year, 541 women disappeared in the country with a population of 6.7 million, according to Ormusa (the Organisation of Salvadorian Women for Peace).
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/25/el-salvador-house-of-horror-women-murders
Judi Lynn
(160,516 posts)By Nelson Renteria 4 hrs ago
Trial lawyer Andy Stern, advocate in Salvation Army collapse case, dies in
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By Nelson Renteria
SANTA ANA, El Salvador (Reuters) - In his wrinkled hands, Jose de la Cruz held a tangled gold-colored necklace adorned with hearts and a pendant spelling out the word "love."
The necklace belonged to his granddaughter Jacquelinne Palomo Lima, one of more than a dozen people suspected to have been murdered by a former El Savaldoran police officer, Hugo Osorio, in his home.
De la Cruz, 79, also lost his daughter Mirna Cruz Lima and grandson Alexis Palomo Lima inside that house, according to police, in an atrocity that has shocked all El Salvador.
"My soul has left me," he said in an interview at his daughter's home, the walls of which were lined with diplomas and stacks of books on literature, physics and medicine.
More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/my-soul-has-left-me-family-grieves-after-el-salvador-mass-grave-discovered/ar-AAKwjAB?li=BBnb7Kz