A FRENCH film-maker who had spent months researching the criminal underbelly of El Salvador’s gang culture was found shot dead on the outskirts of the capital, local police said yesterday.
Christian Poveda was discovered near his car about 16km (10 miles) north of San Salvador with a bullet wound in his head.
Friends said he had been returning from La Campanera, a poor suburb where the Mara 18 street gang was based and where he had filmed an unflinching documentary, due to be released in France this month.
“He went out alone . . . to get back in touch with the gang whose story he had filmed,” said Carole Solive, producer of Poveda’s documentary, La Vida Loca. “But their boss was in prison and he found himself in the middle of very restless young capos who, for the first time, asked him for money.”
Police said the circumstances of the murder, committed on Tuesday night, remained unclear.
Alain Mingam, a friend and photographer, said Poveda had found himself a focus of attention after pirate copies of his critically acclaimed film became available in San Salvador. During production, several people were killed or arrested. Mingam said that once some gangs had seen the film they “accused him of making business out of them – but the bosses calmed them down”.
In a statement yesterday, El Salvador’s president, Mauricio Funes, said he was devastated by the news and ordered a police investigation.
Mr Funes, a former journalist, had met Poveda to discuss the growing problem of gang culture and heavy-handed policing tactics, of which the Frenchman was highly critical. “Christian involved himself heavily in the fight against the violence which has been eating away at the country for years,” said Ms Solive. “He made this film to try to stop it.”
Poveda (54) first came to El Salvador in the 1980s to cover the civil war, but soon became fascinated by the elaborately tattooed street gangs, or maras, who had formed vast criminal networks throughout central America.
His work neither glamorised the excruciatingly violent methods of the maras nor demonised them.
“We have to understand why a child of 12 or 13 years joins a gang,” he told El Faro newspaper.
“These children have terrible family problems or come from poor families who don’t have the time to take care of their children.” – (Guardian service)