Defense minister responsible for torture can be deported

A defense minister during El Salvador's civil war, who has lived in retirement in south Florida for years, can be deported, a judge ruled this week. The AP reports:

In a groundbreaking decision, a federal immigration judge has ruled that the former defense minister of El Salvador can be deported from the U.S. for his role in killings and human rights abuses during the 1980s.

The ruling by the Orlando-based judge, James K. Grim, marks the first time a 2004 law aimed at stopping human rights abusers from taking refuge in the U.S. has been successfully used against a nation’s top military official, according to the San Francisco-based Center for Justice & Accountability.

The judge found that the former defense minister, Gen. Eugenio Vides Casanova, can be deported for the torture of Salvadoran citizens, the 1980 killings of four American churchwomen and the 1981 killings of two Americans and a Salvadoran land reformer.

The general's role in human rights abuses was first brought to court in the US in an action seeking to have him and retired general Jose Guillermo García held responsible for the murder of the four US churchwomen. A South Florida jury did not find them liable. But another set of plaintiffs, including torture victim Juan Romagoza Arce, obtained a $54 million judgment against the same two generals in 2002.

The current deportation proceedings are far different from the treatment Vides Casanova received in the 1980s, when the stalwart US ally received the Legion of Merit medal from president Ronald Reagan and later retired in Florida.

The crimes of the Salvadoran civil war are playing out in other US immigration courts as well. Inocente Orlando Montano, wanted by a Spanish court for his participation in the 1989 murder of the Jesuits, has been charged with immigration fraud in a federal court in Boston for lying about his military service when he entered the US.   Meanwhile General Guillermo Garcia, who was also successfully sued in the Arce case, faces deportation for immigration fraud unrelated to his military role.

No contest in San Salvador mayor's race

ContraPunto has a summary of recent polls leading up to the March 11 elections. One thing the polls are showing -- the race for mayor of San Salvador is not even close. Current mayor from the ARENA party Norman Quijano is trouncing Jorge Schafik Handal in the preferences of the city's voters. Handal is the son of one of the founders of the FMLN, Schafik Handal, who ran for president of El Salvador in 2004 and lost. Depending on the poll, Quijano's minimum lead is 25% and some of the polls have him leading by 50-60 points.

Latest poll shows voters split

The most recent poll from CID-Galup/Diario La Pagina shows 34% of voters planning to vote on March 11 for FMLN candidates for National Assembly deputy, 32% for ARENA candidates, and 16% for other parties. Almost one in five Salvadorans polled were undecided. The poll of 1008 eligible voters was taken between February 16 and 19 .

These results are typical of the results almost every time Salvadoran are polled about their political preferences. One third of the voters show allegiance to ARENA on the right and one third to the FMLN on the left and everyone else is somewhere in between.

I have yet to see any polling looking at voter preferences for individual deputies on the slate of any party.

Celebrating a war criminal

With their right fists clenched and thrust into the air, leading politicians of ARENA commemorated  Major Roberto D'Aubuisson on the 19th anniversary of his death Tuesday.  Among those at the ceremony at D'Aubuisson's tomb were former president Alfredo Cristiani and current San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano.

 D'Aubuisson is the founder of the ARENA party.   He is also the man who ordered the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero and was the sponsor of right wing death squads during the 1970s and 80s.  This annual celebration of a war criminal by the ARENA party faithful shows that the culture of impunity is far from disappearing in El Salvador.  It's shameful.

The worst forms of campaigning

The Facebook page called "Sociedad Civil"  (Civil Society) is sharing a photo album of the worst examples of campaigning during this campaign season leading up to the March elections.  You'll need to be able to read Spanish to understand some of the comments, but some photos, like the one above, speak for themselves.

Crime and the government's response

The website INSIGHT - Organized Crime in the Americas has been reporting regularly this month on the problem of violent crime in El Salvador and the government's increasingly "iron fist" response to it. Those articles include:

• Murders of Soldiers Add Weight to 'Gang Conspiracy' in El Salvador
• El Salvador Unveils Elite Anti-Gang Police
• El Salvador Proposes Curfew, Militarized Schools
• The Iron Fist Returns to El Salvador
• Are El Salvador’s Gangs Plotting to 'Take Down the System'?

Insight usually puts its own analysis of the situation into these articles.   They are openly skeptical of the current path being followed by Funes and his public security team:

In the end, the military men at the helm of El Salvador’s security strategy do not seem to be bringing any innovative ideas with them. Instead, they are appealing to a well-rehearsed narrative in which wild gangs terrorize the country, and can only be tamed by ever-stronger shows of might and higher rates of incarceration, two policies that have already failed to give the results Funes says he wants.

The next six months will show whether the skepticism is warranted.

Deep flaws in criminal justice system says UN

The United Nations issued a report last week pointing to the serious problems in El Salvador's criminal justice system:

2 February 2012 – A United Nations expert human rights panel has voiced concern about the right to security impinging on the right to be free from arbitrary detention in El Salvador, as well as extreme overcrowding in prisons and police facilities in the Central American nation.

Wrapping up a 10-day mission to the country, the five-member UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also highlighted the lack of written notification of sentences to the defendant and the lack of effective access to defence counsel.

Another concern was the “over-reliance on informers and testimony by opportunistic witnesses,” the Group said in a news release issued in the capital, San Salvador.

“This practice not only affects the credibility of testimonies due to the incentives offered, but also jeopardizes the fairness of the judicial process as the procedure of cross-examination is often not made possible,” said the Group’s Chair-Rapporteur, El Hadji Malick Sow.Prisoners who were interviewed privately complained of the invasive and humiliating searches faced, including of their relatives and lawyers, introduced since the armed forces were charged with security in prisons.

The Group questioned the effectiveness of the judiciary, particularly concerning the right to be brought promptly before a judge. “The fact that some individuals wait eight years for an appeal, with minimal intervention from judges, is disconcerting,” said Mr. Sow. (more).

Residential voting

In my last post I described the changed rules for electing deputies to the National Assembly.   Another change for the 2012 elections will be a significant expansion of residential voting.   Residential voting simply refers to having polling places which are closer to where people actually live.  Currently people are assigned to polling places which may or may not be the closest site to their home.

There will be residential voting in nine departments in the eastern and central parts of the country: Cuscatlán, Cabanas, Usulután, San Miguel, La Paz, San Vicente, La Union, Morazán, Chalatenango as well as the cities of San Salvador and Santa Tecla.  This expansion of residential voting will cover approximately half the population.   More voting centers will be set up in rural communities closer to people than the actual municipality's center.   In the cities, people will vote in their neighborhoods rather than being assigned a voting center alphabetically according to their last name.

Our friends at Voices on the Border describe the positive impacts seen in the pilot program for residential voting in the department of Cuscatlán:

The program had a positive effect on voter participation. In the 2004 presidential elections, 70 percent of Salvadorans on the Electoral Register in Cuscatlán cast a vote compared a national average of 67 percent. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Cuscatlán had 63.5 percent electoral participation compared to a national average of 54 percent. In 2009, the pilot program in Cuscatlán had 65.5 percent participation in parliamentary elections and 71.5 percent participation in presidential elections compared to 54 and 63 percent respectively on the national level. While national participation remained the same or fell, participation in Cuscatlán, already higher than the national average, rose in both presidential and parliamentary elections.

Additionally, the program is expected to facilitate voting access for many of the most vulnerable members of Salvadoran society, including the elderly, persons with disabilities, and those without the financial means to travel a longer distance.

When voting centers are closer to home, it is also more difficult for political interests to perpetrate electoral fraud by bringing in people from other communities, or as has been alleged in previous elections, from Honduras or Nicaragua. Citizens are more able to police the voting registry and identify people that are not from their community.

For those with internet access, the TSE has set up an online form which lets any Salvadoran learn where his or her polling place will be this year.   For everyone else, an educational effort is needed to make sure voters know if and where their polling place has been changed.

Residential voting is supposed to cover the entire country for the 2014 presidential elections.   It's a good reform to make Salvadoran democracy more participatory.

The new voting rules

El Salvador has national elections approaching on March 11.   Salvadorans will be going to the polls to elect mayors and to elect deputies to the National Assembly.   The rules have changed this year as a result of decisions by the Salvadoran constitutional court.   For the first time, independent candidates can run for election to the National Assembly.  Also for the first time, voters can express their preferences for individual candidates from the slate assembled by a particular party.

Here's a review of the changed process.  Each department within the country is allocated a certain number of seats in the 84 seat National Assembly according to its population. So, for example, the populous San Salvador department has 25 deputies and the less populous San Miguel department has 6 deputies.

Each seat in the department has a vote quota equal to the total number of votes cast in the department divided by the number of seats. To use round numbers, if 1 million votes were cast in San Salvador department to allocate 25 seats, the quota would be 40,000 (1 million / 25). A political party would then receive one seat in the National Assembly for each 40,000 votes it receives. So, in our example, if ARENA received 400,000 votes, it would receive 10 seats in the National Assembly from San Salvador.

Under the prior system, the voters could not vote for individual deputies; they voted only for the political party. The ballot for deputies to the National Assembly was simply a series of party logos, and the voter marked the logo of the party for whom he wishes to elect deputies to the National Assembly.

The parties would develop their slate of deputies for each department, and rank those deputies from 1 to the total number elected in the department (25 in San Salvador for example). If the FMLN won sufficient votes for 12 seats, the top 12 names on its list become the deputies. There were no independent candidates.

Under the new system, voters will be able to vote for individual party candidates and for independent candidates, but with a series of limitations that the parties in the National Assembly adopted to minimize the impact of the court rulings which opened up the vote.

Here's what an example ballot looks like:

You can mark your ballot in several ways:

• Mark the banner of one party
• Mark the pictures of one or more candidates from the same party
• Mark the banner of one party and mark the pictures of one or more candidates of that same party
• Mark the picture of one independent candidate

Your ballot is void and will not be counted if you vote in any of these ways:

• Mark the pictures of candidates in more than one party
• Mark the banners of more than one party
• Mark the banner of one party and a candidate in a different party
• Mark an independent candidate and mark any other candidate or banner
• Mark two or more independent candidates

You can see if you follow these rules by practicing with an online voting game which the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) created at this link.

Remember that there are two allocations being made by these votes.   First -- of the available seats in a department, how many are allocated to each party.   Second -- of the seats which a party won, which candidates will fill those seats.   Voting for an individual on a party ticket allows the voters choose how to allocate the seats a party wins, rather than the party leadership.  

With respect to independent candidates, as I understand it, they will get a seat in the Assembly if they receive at least the number of votes equal to the share for one deputy.   To return to our example of the 25 deputies in San Salvador, a independent candidate must receive at least 1/25th of the total votes cast in order to win a seat.

It's confusing, and much more complicated than the prior system of simply putting an "X" on your favorite party flag.   Unfortunately, as of today, the TSE has not started a campaign to provide voter information about these changes.   ContraPunto describes internal squabbles within the TSE blocking the start of an information campaign.   With some 40% of Salvadorans saying they do not know about these election changes, and probably a higher percentage not knowing the rules for casting a valid ballot, various civil society organizations are trying to start an educational effort to fill the void left by the TSE.

I'm predicting some chaotic situations on election day.   There will be a much larger number of void ballots than in prior elections and many disputes at the election tables as the votes are counted that night.

Look for much more coverage of the elections in the coming weeks.

El Salvador's gangs

Central to any discussion of crime and violence in El Salvador is the role of the maras or street gangs.  They are a major contributor to the epidemic of murder, extortion and other crime afflicting the country.  Researcher Sonja Wolf sets out the scale of the problem in a recent article titled The Maras: An Escalating Problem in El Salvador for the Latin America Bureau.  

Wolf describes the gangs' lifeblood - extortion:

Extortions constitute the gangs' chief source of income. Initially they approached community residents for comparatively small sums, but over the years the shakedowns have become more extensive and sophisticated. Mano Dura, which entailed the large-scale incarceration of gang youths and especially leaders, required street-based members to collect more funds to support their detained peers and hire defence lawyers. Extortions had been coordinated from within the prisons until stricter security measures made it more difficult to smuggle in mobile phones. The gangs have since changed their modus operandi, often dispatching children to deliver the extortion request to victims.

Nowadays shopkeepers, market vendors, teachers, and sex workers operating in gang territories all need to make regular payments, but public transport companies are particularly affected. Each year dozens of bus drivers are murdered and buses burnt in order to enforce extortion demands. In June 2010, Dieciocho members killed the driver and fare collector of a microbus and subsequently set fire to the fully-loaded unit, burning 17 passengers alive and injuring 14 more. Route 47, servicing the Mejicanos municipality in Greater San Salvador, had been exclusively extorted by MS-13, but when the Dieciocho sought to gain a share of the business, hostilities between the local cliques ensued and culminated in the bus massacre. The maras make millions of dollars annually, profits that are laundered through loans to shopkeepers or investments in microbuses and night clubs. These entertainment venues in turn are sites of further criminal activities, notably the extortion of other establishments and drug sales.

In the rest of the article, she details the involvement of the gangs in schools, in the drug trade, and in widespread instances of rape of girls in gang territory.   For a fuller treatment of the gangs in El Salvador, consider getting a copy of   Maras: Gang Violence and Security in Central America, where Sonja Wolf has a chapter devoted to El Salvador's gangs.