An article in the Christian Science Monitor's Global News Blog highlights efforts to make Suchitoto a city where violence against women is rare:
SUCHITOTO, EL SALVADOR – Time seems to have stood still in the colonial town of Suchitoto, about 30 miles from El Salvador’s frenetic capital, with its quiet cobblestone streets and perfectly preserved architecture. But now its white-washed walls are adorned with a 21st-century message: “In this house we want a life without violence toward women.”
The words, which are accompanied by a bird and flower, the symbol of Suchitoto, forms part of a campaign by the Feminist Collective for Local Development to “elevate societal rejection of domestic violence, and make it a subject we should all be worried about,” says local feminist activist Morena Herrera.
It seems to have worked: The overall impression, reading the message on home after home – where women sweep their front porches and men gather in rocking chairs to talk on lazy afternoons – is one of camaraderie around an issue that is often overlooked in macho cultures in Latin America. In El Salvador, which contends with skyrocketing crime rates from street gangs, violence against women is even less prioritized, says Ms. Herrera.
The program in Suchitoto is supported by the United Nations Development Fund for Women. According to a fact sheet for the program, which is titled "Cities Without Violence Against Women, Safe Cities For All," the goal of the program is:
To contribute to the reduction of public and private forms of violence inflicted upon women in cities through the strengthening of active citizenship in the exercise of their rights and the development of a public and social agenda that generates conditions for a shared coexistence in freedom.
The program is in several countries in Latin America. Its website is located here.
El Salvador's civil war ended seventeen years ago. Immediately after the war, a UN Truth Commission heard testimony about many crimes and atrocities committed during the war and issued its report, "From Madness to Hope" in 1993. Rather than institute the recommendations of the report for a process of national reconciliation and justice for the victims, the Salvadoran National Assembly quickly passed a law providing for amnesty for all events occurring during the war years.
Since that time, any justice for the victims of human rights abuses during the 1970s and 1980s, has come only in forums outside of El Salvador itself. Civil trials for damages were brought in US courts by torture victims against Salvadoran officers, cases were brought before the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights, and now a proceeding has been commenced in Spain seeking to impose responsibility for the 1989 murders of the Jesuits. But El Salvador has not had any internal mechanism to allow victims of human rights violations to petition for justice.
Last month, however, a "Tribunal of Restorative Justice" was convened to hear the testimony of some of those victims. The tribunal was organized by the National Coordinator of Committees of Victims of Violations of Human Rights in the Armed Conflict and the Human Rights Institute of the University of Central America (IDHUCA). The tribunal came into being because the government of El Salvador has used the amnesty law of 1993 as a reason not to investigate serious human rights violations which occurred during the civil war. The tribunal was seen by its organizers as an alternative and complementary mechanism to begin the process of restorative justice in the country, a process which has been absent since 1993.
The Tribunal included an eminent panel of jurists and human rights experts:
President:
Don José María Tomás, Spanish Magistrate Judge and president of the Justice Foundation, Valencia, Spain. (background)
Vicepresident:
Doña Gloria Giralt de García Prieto, Salvadoran woman who has struggled for justice in her country (background)
Judges:
Don Paulo Abrão Pires Jr., lawyer and law professor, president of the Brazilian Amnesty Commission.
Don Belisario dos Santos, former secretary of justice and defense of the citizenry from the state of Sao Paulo Brazil and member of the International Commission of Jurists.
Don Ricardo Iglesias, lawyer, consultan on human rights, and member of the American Association of Jurists (El Salvador)
Don José Ramón Juániz, lawyer, president of Lawyers of the World of Valencia, Spain.
Over three days, from March 25-27, the panel heard the testimony of 11 victims and witnesses of human rights violations during the 1980s in El Salvador. The hearings took place in the chapel of the UCA, where the six Jesuit priests, murdered by the army in 1989 are interred and paid silent witness to the proceedings. The witnesses included Francisco Ramírez, a journalist detained and tortured for being a critic of the government, and Julián Terezón, a father who saw his son murdered and his daughter forcibly disappeared during the conflict. The panel also heard from Miriam Ayala and Julio Rivera, child survivors of the 1980 massacre at the Rio Sumpul, who described the army's actions massacring hundreds of women, children and the elderly fleeing into the river and towards Honduras. Descriptions of some of the other testimony can be found at the blog of the IDHUCA here and here.
The testimonies heard by the Tribunal were powerful and disturbing. They narrated stories of incredible human suffering -death threats, tortures, disappearances, assassinations, scorched earth campaigns, massacres- all committed directly by or with the complicity of the Salvadoran Armed Forces.
The power of these testimonies, and the absence of any action by the Salvadoran state to address these wrongs, led for a renewed call to repeal the general amnesty law which was passed in 1993, soon after the close of the armed conflict:
It is not a little thing that a group of international jurists, a Salvadoran human rights specialist and a valiant woman who struggles for justice, demanded the repeal of the Amnesty Law imposed on the country 16 years ago. It is not, because their call was made after listening to the testimonies of various victims of the past political and armed conflict. The atrocities committed then can not remain in obscurity. The population tortured, massacred, assassinated or disappeared does not deserve to have its victimizers hidden behind official impunity. (From an IDHUCA blog entry).
Yesterday,on April 24, 2009, the Tribunal released its written decision. The 55 page document is well worth reading. The decision summarizes the testimony heard by the tribunal and the considerations of human rights law involved in resolution of such matters. It rejects the justifications of the Salvadoran state concerning its action or inaction in addressing these events (although no government representative participated to present its case). Among other things, the Tribunal's decision calls for compensation for the victims and for El Salvador to move forward to create mechanisms to learn the truth of these events and others and to make the information known throughout Salvadoran society.
Along with the release of the Tribunal's decision, the following video was released on the theme of restorative justice:
A new corruption scandal has implicated a senior ARENA official and cost the current Attorney General of El Salvador the chance at another term in office. Carlos Roberto Silva Pereira was arrested in southern California in October 2007. He had fled El Salvador where he faced corruption and money-laundering charges. He has been held by US authorities since that time and has not yet been extradited back to El Salvador. Silva is applying for political asylum in the US claiming his prosecution in El Salvador is politically motivated.
Two weeks ago, the online periodical El Faro disclosed a tape recording of a conversation between Roberto Silva and Alfredo Tórrez, an ARENA party official:
In that conversation, which took place in March 2008, the party's local director in San Salvador, Adolfo Tórrez, speaks with the former deputy Roberto Silva, offering to clear Silva and his wife in exchange for US$500,000. Torrez insinuates that he has already contacted judges and prosecutors to drop the charges of money laundering, corruption, and narco trafficking against Silva. (from Journalism in the Americas).
The El Faro article also includes a copy of an FBI memorandum by the FBI's Legal Attache in San Salvador, Leo Navarrete, in which he describes obtaining the tape recording from a private investigator, and then giving the tape recording to Garrid Safie, Attorney General of San Salvador.
Despite receiving the tape recording, Safie apparently did not open any kind of investigation into the links between Torrez and Silva. This inaction is being used by ARENA officials to explain why they will not support Safie in his bid to have a second three year term as attorney general.
In addition, ARENA has relieved Torrez of his duties as ARENA's director for the department of San Salvador and has started proceedings to expel him from the party.
El Salvador's civil war ended 17 years ago. Today, the story of the conflict manages to provide a source of income for some families. The Christian Science Monitor Global News Blog looks at war tourism in the area of the Guazapa volcano:
LA MORA, EL SALVADOR – Dormant volcanoes and desolate Pacific beaches are the standard choices for tourists to El Salvador. But now, former Marxist guerrillas are trying to carve their own niche in the industry – offering tours that retrace their steps in the brutal 12-year civil war that took 75,000 lives.
Candelario Landaverde, who runs tours along the Guazapa volcano, where he fought for nearly a decade, says the idea is to preserve the national memory. “It is not because we cannot forgive,” he says, “but so that we never forget.”
This part of the country, an hour’s drive from the capital, San Salvador, is better known as a day-trip destination for fresh air in the countryside. But these hills, particularly this volcano, were a stronghold for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), former rebels fighting a US-funded military who transformed into a political party after they put down their arms. So Mr. Landaverde, with a group of other families in their tiny town of La Mora, offers tours on horseback or foot that pass trenches, a destroyed church, and a school that was once a rebel encampment. (more)
For other posts on war tourism in El Salvador, see here and here.
El Salvador suffers the environmental effects of deforestation, but a model approach from Israel may provide a path for reversing the damage. An article on the GreenProphet.com blog describes cooperation between El Salvador and Israel on reforestation projects:
Unsuccessful investments in coffee plantations, a long civil war in the 1980s and then a destructive earthquake in 2001, has left El Salvador with serious environmental degradation, making much of the country look like rubble.
Rabbi Yerahmiel Barylka, director of the KKL-JNF [Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael - Jewish National Fund] Latin-American Desk, traveled to El Salvador last year to take part in a seminar to see what Israel could do. “Together with the manager, our Latin American representative at KKL, we went to El Salvador as part of a 40 person group, which included people from El Salvador who work with environmental protection and in the field of education,” says Barylka.
As part of the initial meeting, a press conference was held in El Salvador between the Israelis and El Salvadorians and included Carlos José Guerrero, Minister of the Environment in El Salvador; Matanya Cohen, the Israeli Ambassador in El Salvador; and Michael Adari, the KKL-JNF Latin America Chief Emissary.
“I gave them the basic information on how to set up a non-profit organization,” Barylka tells ISRAEL21c. “In the future we will invite all the consul representatives from El Salvador based in the United States and will give them additional seminars,” he says. Hopefully, the consul members will learn how to appeal to potential donors in the US on how to give money to save El Salvador’s environment, through tree planting.
“Afterwards we will send foresters from El Salvador to Israel to learn about the KKL,” he adds. (more)
The model of the KKL includes fund-raising among a country's diaspora to encourage them and others to donate to tree planting in their home country.
In the lead up to the March presidential election, El Salvador's government was not talking about a downturn in El Salvador's economy related to the world financial crisis. But as IPS reports, with the election over, the information is coming out:
But shortly after voters awarded a victory to President-elect Mauricio Funes, who will take office on Jun. 1, the head of the Central Reserve Bank (BCR), Luz María de Portillo, and Eduardo Ayala, technical secretary at the Office of the Presidency, admitted otherwise.
They reported a sharp decline in exports and tax revenue, as well as the loss of thousands of jobs over the past eight months.
"We have been warning about this situation for a whole year," especially about the condition of the state coffers and the fall in GDP, but "unfortunately (the government) turned a deaf ear," Jorge Daboub, president of the Salvadoran Chamber of Trade and Industry (CCIES), told IPS.
In his view, the "electoral climate" prevented the situation from being acknowledged, and preventive measures were not taken to counteract the global economic and financial crisis that originated in the United States, which absorbs 57 percent of Salvadoran exports.
"Now we have to cope with the consequences of those bad decisions," Daboub said.
The business leader reported that 36,000 jobs have been lost since August 2008, and that sales were 21.4 percent down in February in comparison to the same month last year, especially exports to the United States. Tax revenue also declined, by 12.5 percent in the same period.
The economy "is in a tight squeeze," he said.
Official figures indicate that value added tax (VAT), the main source of tax revenue, fell by 25 percent, from 130.8 million dollars to 98 million dollars in the twelve months to January 2009, due to the fall in internal consumption and lower revenues from fuel sales.
This tough economic situation, and its impact on government revenues, is going to provide a real challenge to Mauricio Funes and the FMLN to deliver on their promises of increased social programs and spending.
The radio program LatinoUSA recently broadcast a story about a Salvadoran whom the US government wants to deport and the Colorado community which is fighting to keep him in the US:
In the story of José Mendoza Turbín, a young immigrant who left El Salvador because his life was threatened by local gangs, his political asylum request was recently denied by ICE. And now, community leaders in Glenwood Springs, Colorado are petitioning ICE officials to use their immigration discretion and set aside his deportation order.
Another immigrant's story is captured in this video interview produced by blogger Carlos Quiroz, in which an anonymous immigrant describes the details of his journey to enter the US illegally.
Thirty years ago, on Easter Sunday, Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero preached the following words:
You that have so much social sensitivity, you that cannot stand this unjust situation in our land: fine – God has given you that sensitivity, and if you have a call to political activism, God be blessed. Develop it.
But look: don’t waste that call; don’t waste that political and social sensitivity on earthly hatred, vengeance, and violence. Lift up your hearts. Look at the things above.
APRIL 15, 1979 (EASTER SUNDAY)
As El Salvador goes through its historic transition of power, these Easter words are still relevant.
Quote taken from The Violence of Love, available for free download here.
The Los Angeles Times website describes the new documentary by Christian Poveda, La Vida Loca (The Crazy Life) and uses it as the centerpiece for a discussion about the causes and solutions to the gang problem:
That's a reality that Poveda feels a lot of Americans don’t know about and should.
“Americans have to realize how much damage the U.S. has done to this region,” he says.
Poveda, who lives in San Salvador and has worked as a photojournalist covering the country before, during and after the 12-year-long civil war that began in 1980, is talking from experience.
The current situation in El Salvador is one of the less-inspiring examples of the long-standing social and economic ties between the United States and Latin American countries, he argues.
Gangs were formed by Salvadorans living on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s. When the peace accords that ended the civil war were signed in El Salvador in the early 1990s, huge numbers of gang members returned to the country, some of them by choice but most of them through deportation by U.S. authorities. Many were sent back after completing prison sentences.
As Rocky Delgadillo, a Los Angeles city attorney, notes in this column for the L.A. Times, “this only exacerbated the problem, spreading gangs like a virus until they grew into transnational `super-gangs'.”
Poverty and a lack of opportunities in post-war El Salvador made the country a ripe recruiting ground. (more)
Semana Santa -- Holy Week -- in El Salvador is filled with religious festivities and family vacations. A collection of videos from La Prensa Grafica show activities throughout the country:
As part of my current series on economic topics, I've collected a series of comparative economic statistics for El Salvador and its neighbors in Central America. The source of these statistics is the CIA World Factbook which compiles these statistics and many, many more. The chart below compares the per capita GDP (gross domestic product) of these nations. This is the economic output of the country divided by its population and is a rough measure of the economic prosperity of a country.
For this measure, GDP is measured on a "purchasing power parity" basis which is designed to allow comparisons among countries. For a greater explanation, you can read the definitions from the CIA World Factbook.
(click on chart for a larger version)
The statistics for the individual countries are set out below:
El Salvador GDP $43.94 billion Per capita GDP $6,200 Population 7,185,218 * Growth rate 3.2%
Costa Rica GDP $48.48 billion Per capita GDP $11,600 Population 4,253,877 Growth rate 3%
Nicaragua GDP $16.83 billion Per capita GDP $2,900 Population 5,891,199 Growth rate 2%
Honduras GDP $33.63 billion Per capita GDP $4,400 Population 7,792,854 Growth rate 4%
Guatemala GDP $68.02 billion Per capita GDP $5,200 Population 13,276,517 Growth rate 3.8%
Panama GDP $38.49 billion Per capita GDP $11,600 Population 3,360,474 Growth rate 8.3%
Belize GDP $2.577 billion Per capita GDP $8,600 Population 307,899 Growth rate 4.8%
* Note -- I'm not sure where the CIA got its population figure for El Salvador. The 2007 census in El Salvador tallied only 5.7 million people in the country. Even though the CIA labels the figure a July 2009 estimate, this is almost a 25% difference. Using the 5.7 million figure would produce a per capita GDP of $7700.
Remittances, the money Salvadorans abroad send back to family members in El Salvador, are falling as the economic downturn in the US and elsewhere impacts immigrant workers. The chart below was prepared from data maintained by El Salvador's Central Reserve Bank which tracks remittances on a monthly basis. (click on the image for a larger version).
What the chart shows is that from 2006 through 2008, each year remittances grew. But starting in August 2008, remittances are no longer higher each month than the remittance amount in the same month one year earlier. For 6 of the 7 months from August 2008 though February 2009, remittances were less than the previous year. The decline over that period is some $81.5 million from the corresponding period or a decrease of almost 4%.
This 4% decline represents a significant shift from the prior pattern of steadily increasing remittances. Since remittances have been perhaps the single greatest source of money to lift families in El Salvador out of poverty, this decline is worrisome, although not unexpected.
Over the next few weeks, I will be devoting a greater percentage of blog posts to economic topics. The economy and the world financial crisis pose large challenges to the incoming administration of Mauricio Funes and the FMLN. Funes made many promises in the election campaign, but economic realities may impinge on how many of those he can fulfill.
One unique factor about El Salvador's economy is dollarization. El Salvador abandoned its own currency at the beginning of this decade and only uses the US dollar now. An article from the Canadian paper the Globe and Mail makes the argument that dollarization has played an important role in promoting the stability and growth of the economy in El Salvador:
El Salvador has no domestic (“sovereign”) currency and, hence, no monetary policy of any kind. Almost alone in the world, El Salvador has no central bank. Lucky El Salvador. This tiny country has used the U.S. dollar as its official currency for eight years – and has avoided most of the problems experienced by poor countries that try to act like rich countries....
Why would a country freely abandon its sovereign currency? Why would a country voluntarily surrender its paper money, a symbol of nationhood? The answer is that El Salvador decided that its currency was too important to entrust to its own politicians, its own financiers, its own industrialists – and, indeed, its own people. One of the principal agents of dollarization was an economist named Manuel Hinds, who twice served as the country's minister of finance....
Mr. Hinds argues that central banks are apt, for poor and underdeveloped countries, to embody a Faustian deal that invites the deliberate corruption of currencies and incites either populist excesses at best, or mob violence at worst.
Back in October 2005, I wrote about some of the downsides of dollarization, which include ceding control of the country's destiny to the US Federal Reserve. As the US generates trillion dollar budget deficits for years to come to stimulate its economy, the spectre of inflation and a weak currency may be in the future for El Salvador. In the campaign, Funes indicated he would not reverse dollarization, although that had been a longstanding position of the FMLN. There is also ongoing talk of a new Central American currency among the countries in the region.
This is Tim's El Salvador Blog, a place for looking at what's going on in El Salvador. Participate in the discussion by adding your comments. This site began November 17, 2004. For older articles be sure and check the archives.
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