Infiltrated: Author Hector Silva on the heart of El Salvador’s corruption

Americas Now

Author Hector Silva on the heart of El Salvador’s corruption

El Salvador has had a decades-long history of dealing with organized crime and corruption. According to a report from Transparency International, the country has one of the highest levels of corruption in Latin America.

Just last year, this organization awarded its Latin American Investigative Journalism Award to El Faro, an online news outlet operating out of San Salvador, for uncovering secret government negotiations with gangs that concluded with a truce, cutting homicides countrywide by a half. In exchange, the gang leaders were transferred to less secure facilities and given more lenient treatment.

The author and diplomat Hector Silva is extremely familiar with Salvadoran corruption. He was a reporter at one of El Salvador’s leading newspapers “La Prensa Grafica”, where he covered drug-trafficking and organized crime. Moreover, Silva recently published a book called ‘Infiltrated: Chronicle of Corruption in the National Civilian Police.”

Silva joined Americas Now’s Elaine Reyes to discuss just how entrenched this phenomenon is in the ranks of its country security forces, and the main findings of his in-depth reporting on one of the most critical issues El Salvador is facing.

Infiltrated: Author Hector Silva on the heart of El Salvador’s corruption

The author and diplomat Hector Silva is extremely familiar with Salvadoran corruption. He was a reporter at one of El Salvador’s leading newspapers “La Prensa Grafica”, where he covered drug-trafficking and organized crime. Moreover, Silva recently published a book called ‘Infiltrated: Chronicle of Corruption in the National Civilian Police.”