Violence Personally Delivered

Sunday we arrived at Porvenir with a delegation and were met with a nearly empty church. It turns out that late the night before a young man, whose family and extended family attended the church, had been killed. The family was all present at the home to begin to mourn. As the family gathered, they received a phone call from the gang. The gang member told the family not to make a big deal out of it and then apologized for killing the young man. They had thought he was someone else and killed him by mistake. Such a phone call cannot bring comfort.

In a neighborhood in Guatemala City al the homes and businesses received a piece of paper. On the paper was listed how many family members each house had or employees of each business, the hours they came and went and on the bottom the price that family or business owned the gang monthly. An address of the gang’s office was listed where payments could be made. Audacious… an office to receive extortion payments… no need to hide from the “legal” authorities.