Luis Javier Rodriguez

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 22, 2013

Contact: Steve Vigil: 718.710.2567

Alex Sanchez: 213.383.7484

Books Donated to Salvadoran Prisons to Support an Unprecedented Yearlong

Gang Peace

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Transnational Advisory Group in Support of the Peace Process in El Salvador (TAGSPPES) is pleased to announce a donation of some 150 books to thirteen Salvadoran prisons as part of TAGSPPES’s support of the peace truce that has been in effect since March of 2012, resulting in a 40 to 60 percent drop in violence between El Salvador’s largest street gangs: Mara Salvatrucha-13 and 18^th Street.

Renowned musician and activist John Densmore, drummer for the Doors, has donated the funds for the majority of these books. The book coordinator is Alex Sanchez, director of Homies Unidos, a gang intervention program in the Central American communities of Los Angeles and in El Salvador. Prisons will receive Spanish-language versions of “Tattoos of the Heart” by Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, and “Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.” by Luis J. Rodriguez, co-founder of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley. A few English-language versions of both books will also be sent. The City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, under the guidance of HRC president Paule Cruz Takash, as well as Luis J. Rodriguez donated some of the books.

TAGSPPES was created in April of 2012 to assess, advise and assist the current peace process, coordinated by Monsignor Fabio Colindres and former Salvadoran congressman Raul Mijango. In July of 2012, eleven members of TAGSPPES spent seven days in El Salvador – visiting prisons, including one for women and a juvenile lockup, as well as government offices, schools, non-governmental agencies, and factories. Their report from October of 2012 is available to the media.

In addition talks and report backs about the gang peace have been held in Los Angeles along with the showing of the Salvadoran gang film “Fruits of War” as well as cities such as Boulder/Denver, Seattle, Chicago, upstate New York, San Francisco, Oakland, and Washington D.C., among others.

c/s