Funes visits the Pope to speak of Romero

Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes visited Pope Francis at the Vatican today where they talked about the possible canonization of Oscar Romero.

Our friend Polycarpio at the SuperMartyrio blog as always has complete coverage:

Pope Francis received Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes in a private audience in which they discussed Archbishop Oscar A. Romero’s canonization cause. The Salvadoran president gave the Pope a reliquary containing a piece of garment that Msgr. Romero was wearing when he was assassinated. At the center of the garment, clearly visible, is a bloodstain. The reliquary monstrance is in the shape of a cross, with the arms depicting stylized human figures, representing the participation of the people of God in the death of his bishop. The case is the work of the Sisters of Divine Providence Hospital in the chapel where Romero was killed. 

The President pointed out among other things that he was a pupil of the Salvadoran Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande, who was killed three years before Romero, who then drew inspiration from his example. 

Funes sought the papal audience after Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the cleric spearheading Romero’s canonization, announced a month that the cause had been ‘unblocked.’ “We wish to prod the beatification process along,” Funes said in an interview. He also said he wanted to thank Pope Francis for signaling that the cause should proceed. He took the Pontiff’s decision as “a hopeful sign that it is seen as going well.”

“If we can help with anything to prod the cause along we will do it,” Funes said last month. He added that, “My perception is it can be done such that after that audience I can bring back welcome news to the nation.” 

El Salvador’s ambassador to the Holy See, Manuel Lopez, told The Associated Press yesterday that when he met Francis, the Pope told him, ‘‘I hope that under this pontificate we can beatify [Romero].’’ The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed that Francis is indeed very much in favor of the slain archbishop's sainthood case.Eight years earlier, Pope Benedict XVI received El Salvador’s then-president Elias Antonio Saca, in June 2005 and the two had discussed the status of Romero’s canonization cause. Mr. Saca had served as an altar boy for Archbishop Romero. In July 2007, Mr. Saca’s government publicly petitioned the Vatican to canonize Romero, in an effort to settle complaints about the lack of an official investigation of the crime.

Mr. Funes was elected to succeed Mr. Saca as a candidate of the leftwing FMLN, the former guerrillas who squared off against rightwing forces and a military dictatorship that ruled El Salvador through the early 1980s. When Mr. Funes came to office, he vowed to make Romero his moral reference point and has declared Romero as the “spiritual guide of El Salvador.” On the 30th anniversary of Romero's death, Funes acknowledged state participation in the assassination and asked forgiveness for it.

Funes completes fourth year with favorable approval ratings

President Mauricio Funes complete his fourth year in office on June 1.   A poll from the Universidad Tecnológica asked Salvadorans how the president was doing.

On a scale of 1 to 10, respondents gave Funes a grade of 6.5.    Almost 52% agreed with the statements that Funes' actions were focused on addressing the needs of the poorest members of Salvadoran society.    When asked who president Funes' decisions had favored, 34.2% said the people, 27.0% said Funes himself, 12.7% said "the Left", 3.5% said "the Right," and 8.8%  said the business sector.

One interesting question is how much Funes' favorable approval rating will help the chances of his vice president, Salvador Sanchez Ceren in his run for president in 2014.   They have not really been seen as part of the same team, despite being part of the same political party.   I can't think of the last time they made a public appearance together.

Reaction to ouster of public security chiefs

There was a lot of reaction over the weekend to the news that the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court had ruled that the Minister of Public Security and the Director of the National Civilian Police (PNC) were both named invalidly because both were ex-military officers.

President Mauricio Funes indicated in his weekly radio call-in show that he would comply with the ruling of the Constitutional Chamber.  While he criticized the judges for having an anti-military philosophy, he said that democratic order required that he comply with the ruling whether he agreed with it or not.

Former president, and current presidential candidate, Tony Saca applauded Funes' decision to promptly comply with the decision as the appropriate one and indicated agreement with the court's ruling.

Vicepresident, and current presidential candidate, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, stated that the court's ruling would complicate the public security policies of the country.    Without directly criticizing the ruling, he indicated that this ruling played into the hands of those persons who wanted to see the gang truce fail.   For Sanchez Ceren, this is a tricky issue since an FMLN party official had criticized the appointment of the two generals in early 2012, but as a member of the Funes administration, he officially backed their positions.   Now as the FMLN's candidate for president, part of his campaign is for the FMLN to suggest that the benefits of the truce are the result of his party's public security strategy.  

A spokesman for the conservative ARENA party used the occasion to criticize the public security policies of the Funes administration.   He asserted that the government should care less for the gang members and more for the victims.

The gang leaders themselves held a press conference in prison where they criticized the court's ruling saying that it was playing with public security and "even worse with the lives of Salvadorans."  They said that the deposed ministers had played important roles in backing the mediators of the truce.   Despite these warnings, the gang leaders re-affirmed that they were still committed to the process of the truce.

One of the country's leading conservative papers, La Prensa Grafica criticized the decision as going beyond the borders of the constitution.

Christian preachers of the Evangelical Alliance of El Salvador came out in support of president Funes' decision to comply with the ruling as strengthening democracy in the country, and expressed their hope that Funes would name replacements who would work with the interests of the security of all the people at heart.

An article in La Prensa Grafica also reported that residents of high crime neighborhoods where the military currently patrols in conjunction with the PNC  were worried that El Salvador's Supreme Court would next rule that such joint military operations were prohibited on the same basis.  

Constitutional Chamber tosses out Minister of Security and head of PNC

The Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court declared today that the Minister of Public Security and the Director of the National Civilian Police (PNC) were both named invalidly because both were ex-military officers who had retired just before taking their civilian jobs.

President Mauricio Funes had named the former Minister of Defense general David Munguía Payés to be Minister of Public Security and retiring general Francisco Ramón Salinas Rivera to be Director of the PNC in November 2011 and January 2012 respectively. These appointments came despite criticisms from his own party and human rights groups about the appropriateness of naming military men to be in charge of civilian policing.

One of the achievements of the 1992 Peace Accords which ended El Salvador's civil war was the removal of the military from domestic affairs. This principle, which became a part of the post war constitution, required a complete separation of the military and the police so that the abuses of the preceding decades of military dictatorships and support of oppressive oligarchies would end.

Today the Constitutional Chamber ruled that the appointment of these two ex-generals violated that prohibition. A general may not take off the uniform of a soldier one day and put on the suit of the Minister of Public Security the next. The Chamber was not persuaded that these military men had first retired to civilian life before being appointed to their positions. A general in El Salvador's armed forces had been formed and trained by the military, and that did not disappear when he retired.

Munguía Payés has played a high profile role since he was named Minister of Public Security. On taking the post, he declared that the homicide rate would be reduced by 30% within a year, a prediction which most doubted. Yet following the gang truce, which he now publicly supports, the homicide rate has fallen more than 50%.

The Constitutional Chamber has once again shown itself to be unafraid to deal with major constitutional issues and to challenge president Funes or the National Assembly. This ruling adds to its other pro-democracy rulings including the requirement that voters be allowed to select individual deputies and declaring unconstitutional the manner in which almost 2/3 of the justices of the Supreme Court had been selected.

The ruling is in effect immediately, and the Chamber urged Funes to move forthrightly to name new civilians to the posts.

The gang truce and the Catholic Church

I just finished reading an excellent new white paper titled The El Salvador Gang Truce and the Church: What was the role of the Catholic Church?.  The paper is written by Steven Dudley, one of the directors at Insight Crime, and is the first of a whitepaper series from the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at the American University.

The paper takes a close look at the role of Bishop Fabio Colindres as a public face to the mediation effort and the reaction of the Catholic church hierarchy in El Salvador:

When asked why they chose the Church to help in the process, the negotiators have danced around this subject. The government’s chief negotiator Mijango focused on what he called the “moral authority” the Church held in El Salvador and its experience in mediating conflict in the country. He also drew on what he said was a shared understanding of the Church’s longtime role in El Salvador. “There is a recognition of the Church’s role as an institution that had mediated the conflicts that we have suffered as a society,” Mijango explained. “No one has the moral authority the Church has in this society.” 

There is, of course, some truth to this, but the decision to include the Church seemed more like a ploy than a strategy. For the negotiators, and possibly the gangs themselves, the focus was not on drawing from that “moral authority” to establish firm ground upon which to build the peace, but on using that “moral authority” to calm a cynical populace, and convince a skeptical business community to participate. The distinction is critical. In one scenario, the Church, as an institution is a protagonist, a creator and participant in the construction of peace. In the other scenario, the Church is a figurehead, a prop.

To most observers, the Church seems to be more of the latter: a symbolic actor that provides the negotiators with enough political capital to push the process forward and gain the initial trust of the populace while the process consolidates.   

“I think I need to be frank,” Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chávez told El Faro. “The question is: as the Church, are we legitimizing [the truce] or are we doing something more?”

Read the full whitepaper here.

Some of the challenges the Catholic church is feeling were evident in a statement released last Sunday. Dudley describes this latest pronouncement:

The rifts caused by Colindres' participation in the truce -- which was signed by El Salvador's two largest street gangs, the MS-13 and the Barrio 18 in March of last year -- are still playing out in this Central American nation of seven million people. On May 12, the Catholic Conference of Bishops, the collective body of the Church hierarchy, emitted a public statement questioning the truce.

"The truce has not produced any benefits for the honorable and hard-working population," the statement reads, adding that extortions and other gang-related criminal activities have not slowed.

Brokering a deal with what most Salvadorans believe are parasitic criminals who prey on the weakest in society was always going to come at a cost.

Navigating the issues of crime and punishment, sin and forgiveness, justice and rehabilitation, will always be a tricky thing for the Church. The Church must always side with the victims, but when is it appropriate to recognize some gang members as victims themselves? How does the Church promote the possibilities of redemption and rehabilitation?

(I'm good at the questions. Not so good at the answers.)

Development vs. environmental protection

The NGO EcoViva highlights this recent article which appeared on ContraPunto and IPS describing the potential conflicts between US-funded development opportunities and ecological protection of sensitive areas along El Salvador's Pacific coastline:

Even though the Salvadoran government has placed its bets on developing the Pacific coast region, community leaders understand that it brings a threat to the environment in the zone. 

If private investments arrive to natural protected areas in the Salvadoran coast, as intended by the government as part of a second round of funding from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, under the U.S. Partnership for Growth (PFG), “the natural resources that we have protected for so long would be seriously affected,” said Amilcar García, secretary of the Mangrove Association, which is located in the Lower Lempa, in the southern part of the department of Usulután. 

In December 2011, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the U.S. government agency that promotes the PFG announced that El Salvador was selected from 22 countries as eligible for a second non-refundable aid package, the so called “second compact”, of US$277 million. 

MCC could give final approval by the end of the year after analyzing the projects presented by the country. 

The MCC was created by the United States Congress in 2004 to help poor countries overcome poverty and has designated $8.4 billion dollars in assistance all over the world, according to their web page. 

The first “compact” started in 2007 with an injection of US$461 million, to develop El Salvador’s Northern Zone. 

The community members of the Lower Lempa are not completely convinced of the advantages that the second compact will bring. 

“We agree that the funding brings good things like schools, roads, medical clinics, that’s fine, but we are concerned about the private investment in tourism,” added Garcia.

Read the complete article here.

The rainy season begins

The rainy season in El Salvador begins in May.   The rain storms of the season  bring the possibility of flooding each year along the country's rivers and mudslides across its volcanic slopes.   This map shows all the areas of the country which were impacted by Tropical Depression 12-E in 2011, and provides a good illustration of the areas at risk each and every year.

El Salvador's Civil Protection Commission has identified 2671 zones at risk from the rainy season weather which is forecast to include as many as 14 tropical storms in the western Pacific and 18 storms in the Caribbean and Atlantic.

The Commission also reported that it will be spending more than $75,000 on a project to reduce flooding by the  Río Grande de San Miguel which has overtopped or broken through levees and flooded the community of Puerto Parada in Usulután on a regular basis in recent years.


  

Case of Beatriz gets international attention

The case of a young woman in El Salvador, known only as Beatriz, drags on without resolution, and has drawn increasing international attention.   Doctors say that she needs a therapeutic abortion to save her life, but El Salvador's absolute anti-abortion law prohibits it.  Appeals to El Salvador's Supreme Court have produced no results.

You can read the latest developments at the Guardian and from al Jazeera.

A blow against impunity in Central America

A Guatemalan court has convicted former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity.    Through a decades long civil war, Guatemala's indigenous people suffered brutal massacres by the country's army.   Now, thirty years later, the country's own courts have meted out justice.   From the LA Times:

MEXICO CITY -- Efrain Rios Montt, the former Guatemalan military dictator who ruled his country during one of the bloodiest phases of its civil war, was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity Friday for the systematic massacre and displacement of ethnic Mayan people. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison. 

The landmark ruling by a three-judge panel headed by Yassmin Barrios came after a dramatic trial that featured testimony from dozens of Maya who described atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army and security forces as they sought to clean the countryside of Marxist guerrillas and sympathizers during the 1982-83 period that Rios Montt, a general and coup leader, served as the country’s de facto leader. 

The ruling is likely to be derided by Guatemalan conservatives, many of whom see Rios Montt as a hero who prevented the country from being overtaken by communist rebels who had been attempting to foment revolution in the poverty-stricken countryside for decades. 

International human rights groups, however, had been hoping for such an outcome for decades.
A 1999 report by the country’s truth and reconciliation commission listed widespread human rights abuses during the civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996 and claimed more than 200,000 lives. The panel found that 93% of the rights violations were committed by the government or its paramilitary allies. 

Guatemalan prosecutors accused Rios Montt of responsibility for the massacre of more than 1,700 Ixil Maya, as well as systematic rapes, tortures and the burning of villages.

This conviction for human rights violations in the 70's and 80's is sure to have an impact in El Salvador on the debate over repeal of the country's amnesty law which so far as precluded any similar trials for war crimes during the Salvadoran civil war.

The new normal

The reduction in the homicide rate in El Salvador which began with the gang truce in March 2012 has continued through the first four months of 2013. The National Civilian Police report that there were 764 homicides in January through April, down 502 murders from the same period the year before.   The PNC also reported a 63% reduction in murders of women.

The murders are down, but there is little analysis available of who the victims are and whether there are fewer murders proportionately in the so called "cities free of violence."   The same report also indicated that there has been no reduction in robberies, kidnappings or extortion.