2) A committee has been established to support the National Police Archive Recovery Project. “The Human Rights Ombudsman awaits the files on cases of human rights violations during the internal conflict.” “A. M. de Klein, member of the Anguished Mothers* organization, considered that the investment that must be made in order to catalog the approximately eighty million pages should be made instead in education and health, because the present is more important than scouring the past.” On the other hand, Mrs. Verónica Godoy, a member of the Public Safety Support Group, says that “it is vital to recover our collective memory, so that we can see the modes of operation of the National Police, whose highest-ranking members are currently expected to testify before our courts.”

3) Yesterday another officer of the National Civil Police was executed (extrajudicially) in connection with the murder

Note

* Anguished Mothers (Madres Angustiadas) is an anti-violence group in support of women and families of victims of violent crimes. of the Salvadoran congressmen and their driver. This was done by four young men under twenty years old, according to eyewitnesses, in front of Ríos de Agua Viva elementary school, owned and directed by the same police officer. “In the El Coco community, this man was known to be both a criminal and, at the same time, a police officer.”

Third Sketchbook: “Scribe”

Third Sketchbook: “Scribe”

Friday morning.

I call the chief several times; mailbox full.

Prensa Libre carries more news and commentaries about the National Civil Police, publicly identified by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Philip Alston, for carrying out “social cleansing” operations. The Rapporteur adds: “This is a good country in which to commit a crime.”

I call the chief again; he does not answer.

Afternoon.

The afternoon newspaper La Hora says: “Agents from the Division of Criminological Investigations commit extrajudicial executions, asserted the Rapporteur for the United Nations.”

For almost fifty years Benedicto Tun directed what would perhaps have been the equivalent of this division for the old National Police. Again, I ask myself: Could this have been a “decent” man?—at least in the Orwellian sense? I wonder if I will have a clearer idea about this after my interview with his son.

Saturday morning.