Salvador of the Twentieth Century

by Percy F. Martin

H. E. Dr. Manuel Enrique Araujo;
President of the Republic of Salvador 1911-1915.

Perhaps it is the Ministry of the Interior which is charged with the most numerous and most important sections. Upon this Department depend the General Direction of the Post-Office; the General Direction of the Telegraph and Telephones; the General Direction of Police; the Direction of the National Printing Establishment; the Direction of the Superior Council of Health; the General Direction of Vaccination, as well as of the Municipal Treasury and many other small offices that complete the establishments included in the public administration.

The number of measures carried out by this one Ministry during the years 1907 and 1908 amounted, more or less, to 3,600. The subjects that came under the jurisdiction of the Secretaryship of State are also many and complex; and in order to attain results they demand both constant attention and an intimate knowledge of the administrative laws, the many special regulations, the numerous statutes and dispositions which exist, as well as any quantity of minor laws.

The Judicial Power is vested in a Supreme Court, which holds its sittings in the city of San Salvador; two District Courts, which are also held in the city; District Courts which are held in the cities of Santa Ana, San Miguel, and Cojutepeque, as well as periodical Circuit Courts held in different districts; and there is a long list of Justices of the Peace.

The Justices of the Supreme Court are elected by the National Assembly for a term of two years, while the Judges of the First and Second Instance are appointed by the Supreme Court for a term of two years. The Justices of the Minor Courts are elected by popular vote.

As in most Latin-American countries, the course of justice is not always speedy, all depositions, no matter how trivial the case under trial may be, nor whether it be civil or criminal, having to be laboriously written out, "examination-in-chief" and "cross-examination" being practices little known. Naturally, an immense amount of valuable time is thus consumed, and the results are anything but conclusive.

To a considerable extent the administration of justice in Central America is based upon the same principles as those in force in the United States, and it is generally admitted, especially by those who have suffered from them, that these are far from perfect. The theory of Latin-American justice is excellent, such theory being that every man is entitled to justice speedily and without delay, freely and without price. We all know that this is not the experience of litigants generally, and in no part of Latin America can the administration of justice be considered entirely perfect. Salvador is not worse off than any of its neighbours in this respect, while, on the other hand, there is a decided amount of respect entertained for the judiciary, and few verdicts have been given which have called forth any protest, nor many rulings handed down which have excited conflict among the public.

Travellers in Latin-American countries, more often than not such as pay but a very superficial visit to those lands, are in the habit of drawing pitiful pictures of the cruelty practised upon prisoners and injustice shown towards litigants, and they indulge in harrowing accounts of "nauseating filth," "poisonous stenches," "germs of disease," "bad food," and numerous other, blood-curdling horrors. However true such descriptions of some countries are, and I rather imagine that most of them are the outcome of vivid imagination on the one hand and of blind prejudice upon the other, it is certain that nothing of this kind can be truthfully said about Salvador.

It would be ridiculous to suppose that this Republic more than any other builds luxuriously-equipped and comfortable prison-houses, to act as an encouragement for the committing of crime. The object of punishment, we are told, is prevention of evil, and we all know that under no circumstances can it be made incentive to good. The punishments inflicted upon Salvadorean prisoners are based upon much about the same scale as in other countries; but the physical condition of the prisoners as a whole is infinitely better than that which is to be met with in any other Latin-American country, with the two exceptions of Peru and Mexico.[1] Of all three countries I may say with every justice that the present prison system is of a much more lenient and humane nature than that of any other country in either the old or new world. I state this deliberately and after having visited most of the prisons in Latin-American Republics, as well as many of those to be found in Europe and the United States.

It is the object of the Government of Salvador to make as much use of prisoners' services as is legitimate, and at the same time to find for them intelligent and useful occupations. While hard work is not always compulsory, and is not always an accompaniment of a sentence to imprisonment, every encouragement is offered to prisoners to engage themselves in some kind of work; and in many instances substantial payments are derived from some of the work thus undertaken, all such payments being carefully preserved for the use of the prisoners, and handed over to them at the time of their release. Thus, for instance, in the Penitenciaría Central, at San Salvador, which is the chief penal establishment in the Republic, many of the prisoners are engaged in making furniture for the public offices, as well as military and police uniforms, boots, etc., likewise for use in the army and the police force. I am not sure whether any payment is made to prisoners for this kind of contribution; but in other penal establishments which I visited I observed that the prisoners were making baskets, mats, toys, and other small articles, which were offered to visitors for a trifling sum, and in other cases were sent to the public market for sale.