20th Anniversary

Twenty years ago today I wrote the first post on what was then called simply Tim's El Salvador Blog.

This post will be number 3,300 over those twenty years.   The posts in those early years were not much longer than a tweet today.   A few sentences and a link to what someone else had written.   Today I do not write as frequently, but I try to delve into topics I write about more deeply.

Throughout these 20 years, my goal in writing continues to be the same: to be a credible source of information about El Salvador for an English-speaking audience.   I hope that I have achieved that goal for some of you.

If I have one bias when writing El Salvador Perspectives, it is to stand with the victims. That meant standing with the victims when they were being extorted and killed by gang members, but it also means telling the stories of the victims of a government who can arrest persons without cause and send them into hellish prisons without information to their families and without a judicial system that allows the innocent to be set free.  It means standing with the victims of crimes against humanity like the massacre at El Mozote or the other crimes against humanity during El Salvador's civil war who still have not yet received justice.        

Thank-you to everyone who has offered me advice and suggestions over all these years.  I have learned so much from all of you.  And thank-you as well to the critics and the trolls -- at least I know my work is getting seen.