Blogs by friends

I've been privileged to meet a number of commited young people from the US, who have relocated to El Salvador to serve in various ways. Some of them also write compellingly about their experiences.

Danielle recently wrote:

A friend tells of a recent experience leading a workshop for children in inner-city San Salvador. The children were asked to draw pictures of what they like about their community, and what they don't like. My friend asked a nine year old girl what she planned to draw for “dislike.” She replied in a soft voice: “I don't like that they kill people.”

There are implications for this in a child's life. One: living in entrenched violence, you cannot leave the house after sunset. How many times has she seen the stars?...
(Read more)

Nick explored some of the theology which flourishes in the reality of El Salvador:

The preference to serve the poor and the outcasts lies at the heart of liberation theology, which has long found its fertile ground in Central America. El Salvador alone has given us such theologians as Rutilio Grande, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Jon Sobrino. The bishop of the Salvadoran Lutheran Church, Medardo Gómez, has also written many books on theology, on what he calls the theology of life. He follows liberation theology, but changes how we see "the least of these". Rather than focus on liberating the poor, we ought to focus on liberating those in deepest need. This change in terminology opens the door to include each of us. We all have deep needs, whether they be financial, physical, emotional, or spiritual.
(Read more)

Julia is living in El Salvador and wrote about school supplies last week:

This year, with Mauricio Funes in office, the government promised to provide school supplies, uniforms, and shoes for each public school student. In doing so, the goal was make school more accessible for students, since uniforms, shoes, and school supplies are necessary, yet unaffordable for many Salvadorans. At the same time, it has provided work for many small businesses within the country. During the first week of school, I got to help out at a couple of different schools distributing tickets and supplies to parents and kids. So far, it seems like this is having a really positive affect on kids and is achieving what it set out to do.(Read more)

Testimony in Jesuits massacre case in Spain

The Center for Justice and Accountability provides this update on the case in Spain where former Salvadoran military officials are being tried for the 1989 murder of the Jesuits:

In an unprecedented proceeding, CJA's International Attorney, Almudena Bernabeu, took evidence yesterday from the only surviving non-military eye-witnesses to the massacre which occurred just over twenty years ago at the University of Central America "José Siméon Cañas" (UCA). Jorge and Lucía Cerna testified before Spanish Judge Eloy Velasco from the United States via video conference. This proceeding marks the first time that the U.S. government, to our knowledge, has allowed evidence to be taken on U.S. soil in a human rights prosecution in another country. A representative from the U.S. Department of Justice was present for the Cernas' testimony.

On November 15, 1989, Lucia Cerna was a housekeeper for the UCA and sought refuge from the raging civil war at the University with her husband, Jorge, and their 4-year-old daughter. Little did they realize that the Salvadoran military would launch an attack at the UCA that very night. The Cernas both testified about witnessing the raid by the Salvadoran military and the murder of the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

This is the first time that Lucia Cerna has testified since she and her family were forced to flee El Salvador twenty years ago as a result of a statement she gave which identified the Salvadoran military as responsible for the murders at the UCA. Today's testimony also represents the first time Jorge Cerna has presented his eye-witness account in a criminal proceeding.

Another fact-finding mission

The beginning of 2010 has been a time of fact-finding missions to the Cabañas region of El Salvador, as international groups, deeply concerned by the violence in Cabañas that appears related to gold-mining, have come to the region to gather facts and make their own evaluations.

A delegation from Voices on the Border recently completed their mission. They describe their findings on the VOTB blog:

With regards to the debate over mining, delegates found existing environmental damage from Pacific Rim exploration projects, a fatally flawed environmental assessment, insufficient public consultation on proposed mining projects, and attempts by Pacific Rim to curry favor among segments of the government and local population. Pacific Rim’s activities have created deep divisions in Cabañas. For example, in an interview with the delegation, the Mayor of San Isidro, Cabañas admitted that his government accepted significant financial support from Pacific Rim. Accepting financial contributions makes it difficult for the Mayor to remain objective when considering the needs and demands of his constituents, and deepens the fissures between those who are pro- and anti-mining. The debate over mining is healthy, but it cannot be held in a climate of impunity, where intimidation and violence prevail.

The group plans to issue a comprehensive report later.

[Disclosure -- I provided some funds to help enable some persons to participate in the delegation. I did not participate in the delegation's work or its conclusions]

Report on the gold mining conflict in El Salvador

Richard Steiner, a professor at the University of Alaska active in environmental matters and a member of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Commission on Environmental Economic, and Social Policy (CEESP)has produced a report on gold mining in El Salvador. Steiner

Traveled to El Salvador from Jan. 20 – 28, 2010, to conduct a Rapid Assessment / Fact-Finding Mission regarding the situation with respect to the proposed El Dorado gold mine in the District of Cabanas. In particular, the assignment asked for information on the security situation in Cabanas, the recent wave of extra-judicial killings of environmental leaders opposing the mine, continuing threats toward citizens, the government response to the situation, the CAFTA actions filed by mining companies against the government, and the effort to ban metals mining in the country

His report, which is available at this link, offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the mining conflict in the country. While the report is plainly sympathetic to the anti-mining point of view, and is limited in its attempts to present opposing points of view, all the issues are covered.

Ride the train

There's a tiny passenger rail ine which runs between the city of Apopa north of San Salvador and the capital city. My friends David and Nancy recently took the trip and described it in their blog:

Join us for a ride on the local commuter train, but first a bit of history. The current railroad company is the result of a merger between two companies, one of which is the International Railways of Central American, a former subsidiary of the infamous United Fruit Company (of Banana Republic fame).

Thousands fled El Salvador during the civil war, hopping on freight trains headed out of the country. After the war, passenger traffic declined as the trains were routinely held up and passengers robbed. In October 2002, all rail transportation was suspended.

With El Salvador the most highly populated country in Central America and with a severe shortage of land, the former right-of-ways were settled by squatters.
In 2007 the rail company resumed limited service and required all squatters off their tracks. Thousands of people were forced to move. Hundreds of others merely shortened the size of their homes, allowing for passage of the train.

We arrived at the downtown San Salvador train station at 4:20 in the afternoon. At the platform we saw a modern diesel engine with two tanker cars and five antique passenger cars. We boarded and started our journey to Apopa about 20 miles away. The train traveled two blocks and made its first stop. In all we must have made 30 or 40 stops, each one about 15 seconds as people climbed on and off.

If the windows were without wire screens, we could have touched the homes, clothes lines, children playing and people walking along the tracks. The train rolled by their front doors, over their driveways, across patios and play areas. One can look into many homes, wave to the residents, see what they’re eating and what’s on the television.

As we picked up speed, the passenger cars heaved left and right and then across a ridge with a fantastic overview of the valley below. The steep hillsides are populated with homes and the country side is bright green reflecting the lush vegetation that grows wild in Central America. The Apopa train station was a 4-pole metal roofed open air structure with no amenities.

The whistle blew for 2 hours warning all that the train was coming. There are no street signals or crossing guard arms. The tanker cars wet the rail bed to prevent a cloud of dust from choking the passengers and the residents. Each passenger car has a National Police man on guard. The return trip back to San Salvador went a little faster because it was mostly downhill. Our 2 hour train ride cost 20 cents round trip. It was a great experience to see another view of the city and the country side.

To add to this great verbal picture of the ride, you can watch the photos in this recently posted Youtube video:



David and Nancy are in El Salvador as volunteers with the Volunteer Missionary Movement, which sponsors volunteers who work as educators, engineers, youth workers and more in Central America and throughout the world. You can learn more about VMM and find out how to support its work at www.vmmusa.org.

Stories of Guazapa

Northeast of San Salvador lies the ancient Guazapa volcano. Over the past 10 years, many of my visits have involved spending time in communities around the volcano. During El Salvador's civil war, this was a battle zone.

Three documentaries pull together a view of Guazapa then and now. Dr. Charles Clements had been a US Air Force pilot in Vietnam before he left the military, and became a Quaker and a doctor. Clements then spent a year behind FMLN lines in Guazapa treating civilians needing medical care in the war zone. The Academy Award winning short documentary, Witness to War, is based on his memoir of the same name.

While Clements was working behind the lines in the Guazapa region, he was visited by American journalist Don North. North also spent time behind the FMLN lines, interviewing the guerillas, seeing how people lived, and documenting the impact of attacks by the US-supplied armed forces. North then produced the documentary Guazapa: The Face of War in El Salvador.

Twenty-six years later, North and Clements returned to the area around Guazapa to see for themselves the changes in El Salvador since the signing of the peace accords in 1992. Those changes culminated in the election of the country's first FMLN president, Mauricio Funes in 2009. The documentary North produced is titled Guazapa: Yesterday's Enemies.

The trailer for Yesterday's Enemies:

I recommend Yesterday's Enemies to anyone planning a visit to El Salvador as part of a delegation or who wants insights into how the country continues to emerge from the madness of its civil war. There is information on how to order Yesterday's Enemies, as well as The Face of War at the website of North Star Productions.

For those of you in the southeast Wisconsin area, there will be a screening of Yesterday's Enemies and The Face of War on Monday, February 22, as part of the El Salvador Movie Night series at St. John's Lutheran Church, 20275 Davidson Road, Brookfield, Wisconsin 53045.

Critique of labor conditions

The International Trade Union Confederation released a report this week regarding the status of labor rights and working conditions in El Salvador. There is an English language summary at this link. This is an excerpt regarding conditions for women workers in the maquiladora sector:

A new ITUC study on core labour standards in El Salvador reports that many of the 67,000 mostly women workers employed in the country’s 15 export processing zones suffer from appalling treatment ranging from verbal abuse and threats to physical abuse and sexual harassment. There is a clear anti-trade union policy and dismissal of workers planning to join or form a union. Many consider that working conditions in export processing zones can be assimilated to forced labour.

The complete report in Spanish is available here.

In a troubling development, human rights and labor leaders have condemned the recent murder of Victoriano Abel Vega, a leader of the municipal union in Santa Ana:

According to the information received by the ITUC, the trade union leader was murdered on his way to San Salvador where he was to attend a meeting with several other trade unionists in preparation for a complaints procedure regarding the unfair dismissal of several employees of the municipality of Santa Ana in breach of Conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Abel Vigo had been issued with death threats in connection with his role as a trade union leader and his denunciation of the dismissals. (source)

Funes navigates an independent course

Nine months into his presidency, Mauricio Funes continues to follow his moderate left-wing policies. He is a far departure from the decades of right-wing presidents before him, but he has also acted independently of the hard-line leadership of the FMLN.

An interesting article in Americas Quarterly titled Mauricio Funes: His Way looks at the course which Funes has been navigating:

Today, his country and party are changing, but President Funes continues to face challenges from the Left as well as the extreme Right. Business and conservative sectors do not trust him. In attempting to win their confidence, President Funes has reached out to conservative party leaders and business representatives. He appointed an economic cabinet with representatives from the financial sector to prove and honor his campaign promise to respect the free market. Like a good pupil, he is following and implementing the policy recommendations of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank. On the other hand, President Funes faces criticism from the Left for supporting the Centro Democrático Unido (CDU) party and the emerging political movement Amigos de Mauricio that is based on the coalition of independent parties that backed him in last year’s election. The Left sees reaching out to moderate parties as a threat to the FMLN’s social base in the 2012 parliamentary and municipal elections. More sophisticated, less polarized analysts believe that President Funes is strengthening a centrist movement to protect himself from both the Right and the Left. (more)

Greater violence

I don't like writing about the crime problem in El Salvador or the ongoing wave of homicides striking all parts of the country. There's too much grief, pain and hopelessness in confronting the problem. And it is clear that the current government, like governments before it, has no idea how to turn the tide. But it's too important a topic not to cover.

The Voices on the Border blog puts the bloody statistics into context:

[In the first 36 days of 2010], around 440 murders have been reported in El Salvador. The victims range from political activists, presumably killed for their opinions and public pronouncements, to bus drivers, robbed and murdered by groups locally called delincuentes. Recently in Suchitoto, 7 people were killed in a single incident, now being pronounced a massacre by community members. If this pattern of violence continues consistently, the country could expect to experience near 5,000 homicides this year.

In comparison, New York City, whose population size is similar to El Salvador’s, reports only 412 homicides for the entirety of 2009. Los Angeles, which historically has a relatively high crime rate, reports 51 murders this year, and 747 in 2009. However, the population of Los Angeles is at least 9,862,049 (2008 Census), with nearly 2 million additional inhabitants than the 2008 population of El Salvador. Besides population differences, the LA murder rate equals only 62 deaths per month.

As a consequence, El Salvador continues to have the highest murder rate in the Western hemisphere, and one of the highest in the world.

In recent weeks, the violence seems to have increased even more if that is possible. Saturday night, masked assailants arrived at a restaurant outside of Tonacatepeque, 30 miles from San Salvador. Looking for members of Mara 18, they separated women from the men, inspected the men for tattoos, and despite not finding tattoos according to the report in El Faro, opened fire with M-16 assault rifles and 9 millimeter pistols, killing 5 men and wounding 6 whose ages ranged from 21 to 54 years. This attack followed by a week a massacre in normally peaceful Suchitoto, where seven were killed with the same types of weapons. Some of those killed in Suchitoto were reportedly linked to gangs. Links between the two massacres are being investigated.

So were these killings by "squadrons of social cleansing" enacting vigilante justice to rid El Salvador of gangs? Were these deaths the product of gang rivalries? We'll probably never know, given the state of criminal justice in El Salvador.

Adding to the terror of Salvadorans, grenades have been used in some recent attacks. In mid-January, 20 were wounded when assailants on motorcycles tossed a grenade into a bus parking lot in downtown San Salvador.

The Human Rights Institute of the University of Central America (IDHUCA) issued a statement deploring the ongoing violence as a violation of the basic human right of security, noting the failure of those government organizations whose role is guarantee the safety of the country's citizens. The IDHUCA pointedly noted the fact that having troops in the streets to patrol high crime areas has had no positive effect on the murder rate.

One of the events motivating the IDHUCA to speak out are the death threats received by the country's human rights ombudsman, Oscar Luna. Luna received phone calls threatening his life from an anonymous "anti-delinquency extermination group," which gave him 48 hours to leave the country and announced its intentions to begin the social cleansing and extermination of delinquents. Are the murders in Suchitoto and Tonacatapeque part of that plan?

The country's business organizations are complaining loudly. During a national meeting of business leaders at the end of January, the president of the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), bitterly complained that Mauricio Funes had no plan to combat crime. He warned that the president, who was willing to apologize to the country for the government's killing of civilians during the civil war, was going to have to apologize for all the civilians murdered with a government incapable of protecting them.

When interviewed, the Minister of Public Security, Manuel Melgar, inspires little confidence. In a recent interview in El Faro, Melgar was asked when a public security policy would be unveiled. Melgar avoided the question, stating that you don't want the criminals to know what you are going to do, and that matters of public security could not al be made public. The only point he would acknowledge was a possible plan to control guns in the country. Asked about the role of the armed forces, Melgar stated that their role was for the president to decide, and refused to be drawn into discussions about a wider scope of action for the army.

The archbishop of the Catholic church in San Salvador, Monseñor José Escobar Alas, expressed support on Sunday for the government's anti-crime plan, and its consultation with all elements of society, and urged each group in El Salvador to unite against criminality.

It's starting to become clear that the government's failures to date, whatever its good intentions, are leading "extermination groups" to take the law into their own hands. That's a recipe for a spiral of violence. I fear for the poor communities caught in the crossfire.

Adopting children from desperate parents

The story of American missionaries arrested in Haiti as they attempted to bring Haitian children to sanctuary outside of the quake-stricken country continues to be front page news in the US. El Salvador has also had difficult times when parents might feel compelled to give up their children to foreigners. A recent BBC story tells about adult children, given up for adoption during the civil war, now reunited with their birth parents:

Baptised Janet Ruiz, Martina was just 18 months old when [her mother] Graciela last saw her. It was 1982 and El Salvador was engulfed in a brutal civil war.

A year earlier, the family had been driven out of their village in the east of the country by left-wing guerrillas who had also killed Martina's father. Left alone to bring up four young children, her mother did not know where to turn for help.

Then a brother mentioned a lawyer he knew who arranged adoptions abroad for Salvadorean children. At first Graciela refused to listen, but later acquiesced.

"It was the fear and the uncertainty that convinced me, that and the bombs," she said quietly. In August of that same year, she travelled to the capital to meet the lawyer and one of the Italian families. In the lobby of an upmarket hotel, Graciela said farewell first to Silvia, then to Martina.

"The lawyer said they [the adoptive parents] would bring Martina and Silvia back every seven years and would send photos each year. After about a year, a year and a half, I heard nothing," she said.

Martina and Silvia, who has yet to travel back to El Salvador, are among several hundred young Salvadoreans located by the Asociacion Pro-Busqueda since it began work shortly after the civil war ended in 1992.

I have written before about efforts to bring back together parents and children split apart by the civil war. Some situations were adoptions from desperation like this one. Others were abductions by the armed forces, to terrorize/punish campesinos who supported the guerrilla forces. Such situations explain why Haiti, like El Salvador, has laws and red tape on adoptions to avoid adoptions compelled by coercive circumstances.

Good behavior

I recently came across this article on the internet titled How to Behave While Visiting El Salvador. It's short, but has some good basic points. Here are the "do's":

Do…

• Wear clean, non-wrinkled and stain-free clothing. Although you are on vacation, Salvadorans are very conscious about their appearance.
• The first time that you meet someone, shake hands and say mucho gusto (nice to meet you)
• Take some time to learn basic Spanish before you travel to El Salvdor. Use the formal usted in your conversation with locals until they use the informal tu first
• Salvadorans believe greetings to be important. Say buenos días (good morning) or buenas tardes (good afternoon/evening) before starting a conversation It is also courteous to say hello to the person sitting next to you on the bus and to make a general greeting when entering a public place like a restaurant.
• Take your time. Don’t expect everyone to rush as if you were in New York.
• Bring mementos and souvenirs from home to give as gifts to Salvadorans you come in contact with

The article also has a list of Don'ts.

Anyone want to add some more tips in the comments?

Two new documentaries about El Salvador's water crisis

As progressive journalist Jason Wallach writes:

El Salvador receives 3 times as much water in rainfall as what its 6 million inhabitants consume annually, yet 40% of Salvadorans do not enjoy potable water in their homes.

This paradox lies behind two new documentaries about El Salvador's water crisis. Wallach has written and produced Until the Last Drop: Tales From the Battle for El Salvador's Water. Here is the trailer:

(link).

El Salvador's Center for the Defense of the Consumer and the documentary film project Witness.org combined to produce the documentary Chronic Neglect: The Water Crisis in El Salvador. Here is a 6 minute version of the documentary:

link.

The full length versions of both documentaries, which are available on DVD, each run about 30 minutes. We recently screened them both in my monthly El Salvador Movie Night in the Milwaukee area, and they were well received by the persons who attended. Both documentaries do an excellent job of illustrating the plight of the poor who need access to potable water and the complexities of dealing with this intractable problem.

Remembering Oscar Romero

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero. Romero was assassinated while saying mass on March 24, 1980 in a killing ordered by right wing death squad leaders. With the 30th anniversary date approaching, we are going to see more articles about Romero, his legacy, and his formal recognition as a saint of the Roman Catholic church. (Multitudes of the common people Romero loved in El Salvador already view him as a saint).

An article in Spero News describes the discourse of the Salvadoran Catholic church surrounding the prospects of Romero's beatification:

The Catholic Church has urged Salvadorans to pray for promoting the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, and called in a special way to have respect for the figure of the assassinated Archbishop, so as not to influence on his process of beatification. "If someone is canonized, it is because God wills it," said the Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas of San Salvador, referring to the process of beatification underway at the Vatican.

During a press conference, he informed that the case "is very far along," but no one knows "how long it will take still" before Archbishop Romero is declared Blessed. The Arcbishop was assassinated March 24, 1980 while celebrating Mass in the Church of Divine Providence. "We would have liked that on a day like this we would be able to give everyone the good news that Archbishop Romero was declared Blessed, but we still have no communication," said the Archbishop, recalling that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero.

A note to regular readers of the blog: Because of a busy schedule I have fallen behind on regular posts about what's going on in El Salvador. I'm going to try to do better going forward. (Guest posts are also welcome).