It has become common to state that criminal violence has superseded political violence in

Central America. This paper presents the first results of a research project which analyses

the social construction of violent realities in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The

authors describe the print media landscape in Central America and examine both the quality

of leading newspapers and the main clusters of topics constituting the news discourse

on violence. The analysis of the macro-structure of topic management in Central American

newspapers allows to differentiate the “talk of crime”: it is more heterogeneous than often

thought. There are signs that the problem of juvenile delinquency is emerging as the center

of a cross-country discourse on “ordinary violence”. On the other hand, the talk of

crime is centered around few topic clusters, with sexual violence and border-related discourse

on violence being of key importance. Finally, the paper points to a heterogeneous

array of discourse events that is connected to political developments and power-relations.