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El Salvador’s El Salvador

homicide rate fell

sharply in 2016 but

still stood at about

twice its 2013 level

Honduras had the

highest rate as

Venezuela recently as 2014

Honduras

Jamaica

But as the peace began to break down
and voters called for a more aggres-
sive response, the then-new President
Salvador Sánchez Cerén declared war on
organized crime in 2015. Unsurprisingly,
the level of violence spiked. The mur-
der rate hit 18a day shortly after the
president’s crackdown began and has
settled at about 11 a day, still the world’s
highest per capita and enough for the
World Health Organization to classify it
as an epidemic.
Juan Carlos says things have calmed
down in recent months following police
raids on local MS-13 and Barrio 18
outposts. Murders in Jucuapa have
become monthly instead of daily. But
it’s tough, he says, to know how long
that will last.

At the coffin factory—a nest of cor-

rugated iron and wood peeking out

through a copse of oak trees a few miles

up a rutted track—the work stations

inside roughly track the construction

process. Near the entrance, carpen-

ters hammer nails and cut with wail-

ing electric saws through planks hewn

from the local olive trees. In another

corner, men varnishing finished cof-

fins with a thick black sealant resemble

coal miners, their faces coated in the

varnish and their eyes watery and red

with irritation. In a separate hut across

an open-air courtyard at the back of

the workshop, the last set of work-

ers uses a spray gun to paint the cof-

fins, the way mechanics repaint a car.

“We have to get them nice and shiny,”

one says. “That’s what customers look

for.” Like their competitors, the facto-

ry’s seven workers make money by the

coffin, Juan Carlos says. He estimates

that a good carpenter there makes $250

a week; a painter, about $150.

In a hammock at the back of the

space, Jorge Cárdenas, the owner,

appears immune to the workshop’s

heat, noise, and fumes. Unlike the

Pachecos, Cárdenas, middle-aged and

rotund, has worked in the funeral

business all his life and started his

own shop in 2012. His team produces

20 to 30 coffins a week, he says proudly,

and sells them to funeral homes all over

the country. The top seller is the $90

económico, a no-frills brown model usu-

ally meant for the victims of violent

Carlos Stanley Pacheco during the funeral service for his friend Christian Alexander Alvarado, conducted by the Funerales Pacheco