Suspected gang member eyed in filmmaker’s killing

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Christian Poveda spent years documenting El Salvador’s Mara 18 street gang, practically living among its members while filming initiations, drug use, tattoo sessions and funerals.

Authorities believe Poveda, 53, fell victim to the same brutal violence he portrayed in his documentary “La Vida Loca,” after the French filmmaker was found shot in the head in a car outside the capital, San Salvador.

Police arrested a purported gang member suspected of involvement in the killing on Thursday, a day after Poveda’s body was discovered. Inspector Oscar Nuila Ramos declined to give further details of the arrest, saying he did not want to undermine the investigation.

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

But Poveda told the Los Angeles Times in April 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.

A former war photographer, Poveda’s 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. Pirated copies of the movie are sold on the streets of the capital, and even Salvadorans consider the documentary to be a shocking glimpse into gang life.

The day of his death, the filmmaker had set out to visit the dangerous, gang-dominated neighborhood 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.

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.”

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.