El Salvador arrests 1 in French filmmaker’s death

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A French filmmaker who spent years documenting the brutality and desperation of a Salvadoran street gang has been found shot to death after heading out to a dangerous gang-dominated neighborhood.

Police said a suspected member of the Mara 18 gang was arrested Thursday on suspicion of involvement in the killing of Christian Poveda, a former war photographer whose latest film takes an intimate look at the violent lives of gang members deported back to the Central American country after serving time in U.S. prisons.

Police inspector Oscar Nuila Ramos said the suspect was detained north of the capital of San Salvador, but he refused to provide any details on what led to the arrest, saying he did not want to undermine the investigation.

Poveda, 53, was found Wednesday inside a car in the rural Tonacatepeque region north of San Salvador. He was shot in the head.

The day of his death, the filmmaker had set out to visit the gang-dominated area of Soyapango, just outside the capital, to arrange an interview with female gang members for journalists from a French fashion magazine. He told an Associated Press photographer about the outing before leaving.

Gang violence in impoverished El Salvador fuels one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America.

Poveda practically lived among members of the Mara 18 to create “La Vida Loca,” filming gang initiations, drug use, tattoo session and funerals. Pirated copies of the film are sold on the streets of the capital, and even Salvadorans consider the documentary to be a shocking glimpse into gang life.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner praised Poveda’s intrepid work, calling him “a respected journalist, a professional who never hesitated to take great risks in the name of freedom of information.”

In April, Poveda told the Los Angeles Times that despite the drugs, shootings, beatings and cruelty he captured on the film, he had sympathy for many of the gang members, whom he described as “victims of society.”

“As savage as they can be, they’re people of their word. The gangs are very well-structured organizations and the decision made by a gang is the final one. From the moment I understood that, I had no problems,” he said.

Poveda, who lived and worked as a filmmaker and photojournalist in El Salvador during the civil war that began in 1980, had recently begun touring with “La Vida Loca.”

Salvadoran Public Safety Minister Manuel Melgar called Poveda’s slaying a “repugnant and reproachable criminal act” and said police would work “tirelessly” to find the killers.

The French ambassador in San Salvador said France would support the Salvadoran investigation.

Reporters Without Borders board member Alain Mingham, a friend of Poveda’s, said the filmmaker was able to be committed to and involved with his subjects without taking sides.

The son of Spanish Republicans who sought refuge in France, Poveda reported from Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship, and also covered the civil war in Nicaragua in the 1980s, Mingham said.

During his 30-year career, Poveda wrote for a variety of publications including Time and Newsweek magazines, Paris Match and Figaro, from posts in Latin America, Iran and Iraq, Sierra Leone and the Philippines.

“His humanistic convictions went hand-in-hand with a great deal of professional rigor,” Mingham said.

Associated Press writer Martha Mendoza in Mexico City contributed to this report.