A Warscapes reader from El Salvador wrote to me last night, requesting clarification on something I wrote in my post on El Salvador’s gangs and ISIS. Specifically, he queried a passage that I realize now was very poorly phrased. I had written, “How the responsibilities of the government to its people can be meaningfully balanced against the preferences of gangs, who wield real power across El Salvador, is a puzzle that has so far eluded a solution.”

The carnage being wrought in El Salvador this year is slowly attracting the attention of major English-language media in the United States.

Two years ago, I was riding my bike through Prospect Park in Brooklyn. As I was picking up speed on the downhill slope, a police car swerved in front of me.  Only one of my brakes was working and so I had to veer sharply to the left to avoid a full-on collision.  I was very confused.  It was late morning.  No cars are allowed in the park at that time.  At that hour on a balmy summer day in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the park is inhabited by cyclists, rollerbladers and those consummate over-achievers, the baby-stroller-pushing joggers.