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El Salvador
Los Hombres de la Seguridad

Some people say that it feels like being at a convent of the US National Rifle Association when walking through the streets of San Salvador. Well, right they are. There are thousands of men with pump guns at the ready guarding banks, supermarkets, coffee bars, shoe stores...

        Shooting Location: City of San Salvador
        Coordinates: 13°41'56.2"N 89°11'20.4"W

San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, actually meant no more to me than a place where I would change buses during my onward journey to the surfing beaches of El Tunco, since the guide books did not report of anything that a survey of the city would have arguably been worthwhile for. However, I still had five hours’ time and, without hesitation, climbed aboard a minibus that took me into the city center, not far from the Metropolitana Cathedral.
 
I touched down in a sea of kiosks; each street had a range of different goods on offer. It was colorful and loud, but my camera hardly accommodated the views, which I had not already captured in photographs on other markets. And although I can cope amongst large crowds of people, a feeling of uneasiness stalked me the entire time. Everyone was staring at me. I was obviously the only tourist for miles. In the end, I collected enough material for a small photo spread of this city’s market bustle and travelled onto El Tunco.

When I examined the photos in my hut on the beach, the photo of a security guard, who was on duty outside of an Asian restaurant, piqued my interest. He was holding a pump-action shotgun in front of his belly and smiled mischievously. It was me who, doubtlessly, took the photo, I had also spoken with the man but the photo did not really catch my eye until now. Photographs of armed men are definitely nothing new, but this man’s smile, with his weapon in hand, stopped me in my tracks.

I recalled this day once more, yet it became apparent to me that these security men had been standing at every second shop. I remembered the hooded policemen, who forced themselves through the crowds on the bed of a pickup truck and scanned them with the laser pointers on their precision weapons. There were rolls of barbed wire on the balconies to prevent burglars and the pharmacies were trellised to deter bandits. And the five heavily-armed Special Forces unit, which cleared a path to a supermarket to collect two sacks of cash, came to mind again. Much of this, I had only seen in my peripheral vision and had, therefore, only taken a few photos. But it became clear to me that these martial appearances and the seemingly fluctuant violence must have caused this uneasiness.

The photo of the security guard haunted me. The next morning I travelled back to San Salvador. I wanted to capture these guards on camera. I learned a few sentences in Spanish by heart and tried to persuade the hombres to pose for me. This was not at all easy. The majority of the guards and shop owners chased me away. And even when a guard did agree to it, I only had 30 seconds to get their attention, position the men, put them into focus and clear the background. For five hours I trudged like this, through the scorching midday heat - quickly and in a zig-zag movement, from street to street without stopping to rest. In the end I was exhausted, but happy.

It was a wrap!