Marvin Aguilar
The GOES has now reported zero homicides for more than 500 days. However, psychosocial factors expressed in widespread aggressiveness and citizen violence make us an unsafe country and cause death due to other circumstances, as evidenced last Easter.
Why do we Salvadorans keep killing ourselves?
The last time I reviewed data on the number of deaths from road accidents it was 1,021 deaths per year. We even became the first place in Latin America and the Caribbean by reporting a rate of 23.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in traffic accidents. 25,000 every year. 9,400 injured. An average of 2.7 deaths per day in El Salvador due to civil violence among drivers of motorcycles, cars, buses, cargo transport and passengers. Nothing to envy of the gang figures.
To this we must add the economic costs that arise from accident emergencies, which would rise to approximately $20 million annually without quantifying material damage to vehicles, unforeseen expenses for families or private property, as well as losses on days not worked both in the public and private sector that cause these violent acts by a minority percentage of Salvadorans (approximately 20%).
We kill ourselves because we are once powerful, violent. Aggressive behavior is part of being human. We have it in the reptile brain. This helped us survive as a species. And it is expressed in our body as an interaction between hormones and some neurotransmitters-inhibitors-facilitators that do not condition us to go kill another person with a car, but that chemical-biological phenomenon that occurs in some thanks to their life experiences. , internal moods accumulated at home or at work or his conditions as a garbage human being will lead that individual to develop and trigger aggressive behaviors that once in his car will make him violent and finally an unfortunate person who extended his misfortune via accident to others.
The Cuscatlán stadium 05/20/2023 showed that the Salvadoran finds an answer to his frustrations in aggressiveness. This defines us as learned aggressive. A good part of Salvadorans have been educated through violence and apparently in many this is used as a mechanism to transmit values which makes it normal and normalized by those who practice it and suffer.
The violence was always physical. The corporal punishments in public that the colonial State gave for offenses such as gossiping about women (sticks) or black slaves for being spoiled with their employers are the starting signal for the father to later violently educate his wife and children at home. and inevitably the teacher to the student.
In today’s reality, overt and systematic violence is frowned upon and punished by law. Does it mean it was eradicated? No. It mutated into moral, psychological, social violence and more recently it has become sophisticated and anonymous thanks to social networks. Indeed, no one goes down the street insulting or mocking people face to face. But thanks to fake profiles it is possible to insult anyone, especially acquaintances, without needing to know who we are. We have installed the culture of hate and digital violence.
But another group of Salvadorans also have an innate aggressive behavior. Personality alterations or brain injuries (amygdala, hippocampus, neo-frontal cortex) will cause us to be more inclined to take our aggressiveness to violence and then to crimes. That would explain why a stupid criminal transported a body in the trunk of his car, got into an accident and was discovered. Hugo Osorio or the crime of the newborn in Residencial Veranda in Santa Tecla deserve a separate case of study and thesis.
To do?
The first thing is to improve the working conditions of those who have a driver’s license. This is difficult for political and business employers to understand. There is talk of a “good work atmosphere” to recruit young and qualified people. We talk about corporate culture, work environment, leadership styles, job designs in public and private offices that can be negative or positive for the employee’s stress and tension. General stress, lack of work well-being, absence of psychological well-being and poor social functioning, mental health, anxiety and depression are factors that many of us already wrote before carry innately or learnedly. And if we add to these factors worse work components such as lack of control, many-excessive work hours, intense work pace, changing schedules and unforeseen events, poor communication, ambiguity or overload in work functions that are not reflected in the monthly salary, they are situations that have a high possibility of damaging people’s health both physically and mentally. It happens very often in fast food restaurants, hence the difficulty of maintaining a workforce for a long time.
Now let’s imagine the majority of Salvadoran drivers under these circumstances. Studies have shown that the car generates aggressive thoughts and incites them to aggressive behaviors. In El Salvador, the majority of traffic accident culprits are men and not only the majority of deaths. Are women less aggressive when driving? No. But they expose themselves less. Are bus or cargo or 4×4 transport drivers more aggressive? Yeah. A larger vehicle will provoke more arrogant and aggressive attitudes such as anger, impulsivity, road or general aggression towards drivers of small vehicles or clumsy pedestrians.
Taking into account that aggressive driving is learned, licenses should not be issued to sociopaths, psychopaths or serial killers who are easy to discover through their levels of antisocial personality disorders, substance and alcohol abuse. Including the driving log to obtain the license can help remove aggressive people from the streets and prevent more aggressive people from entering the streets. A driver’s anger level causes his personal problems. Also reducing traffic for days, updating street signage and controlling the entry of vehicles from outside adds up to improving Salvadoran road culture.
But that is something that the economic system on which the majority of Salvadorans have opted will not allow for now to legislate. We prefer to issue fines for not using walkways – to demonstrate that something is done – and to see people die in traffic accidents or condemn crimes that surprise us day after day, rather than stop believing that the rich are those who have the most and not those who need the least.
#Gang #violence #replaced #Salvadoran #violence