Combating dengue fever

El Salvador is in the midst of a national campaign against an epidemic of dengue fever. The mosquito-borne illness causes high fever, headache and joint ache, and in the hemorrhagic variant, can be fatal. 1965 cases of the disease have been reported in the first 70 days of 2010. The campaign consists of cleaning vacant lots, water disinfection and fumigation of houses, as well as ongoing education of Salvadorans on the importance of eliminating standing water where the mosquitoes breed. A dozen or more children died from dengue during 2009 in El Salvador.

Violence against women in El Salvador

A recent statement from the United Nations warns about the levels of violence including murder impacting women and girls in El Salvador:

24 March 2010 – Violence against women and girls in El Salvador remains prevalent and pervasive, with the number of murders on the rise and kidnappings, sexual assaults and sexual harassment all too frequent, an independent United Nations human rights expert has warned.

Rashida Manjoo, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, wrapped up a three-day visit to El Salvador on Saturday by stressing that the Central American country still faces “significant challenges” in dealing with gender-based violence.

“Of particular concern to me is the growing prevalence and forms of such violence, especially the alarming rise in the numbers of murders of women and girls and the brutality inflicted on their bodies, which is often accompanied by kidnapping and sexual assault,” she said in a statement.

Ms. Manjoo expressed concern that the violence against women and girls is taking place in so many different settings.

“Domestic violence, sexual abuse against women and children in the home and the community, violence and sexual harassment in the workplace, particularly in the maquila sector [factories operating in duty-free zones] and the domestic sphere, police-related violence and sexual commercial exploitation” are all serious problems, the Special Rapporteur said.

According to La Prensa Grafica, 102 women were murdered in January and February of 2010 in El Salvador, frequently at the hands of spouses and lovers. A March 7, 2010 article in the online periodical ContraPunto points out that two women are murdered each day in El Salvador, and although the number of women murdered is only 10% of the total homicides in the country, the number of women murdered is rising more rapidly than the number of men. From 2008 - 2009, killings of women and girls increased 84% in the country.

Activists decry an attitude of indifference towards the problem of femicides on the part of the public security arms of the government. They call for greater awareness of the problem on the part of police, and training for law enforcement and judges. A PNC official interviewed in the ContraPunto article, however, indicated that police were not disposed to investigate murders of women differently from any other homicide.

"How we killed archbishop Romero"

An English language translation of El Faro's interview with Álvaro Saravia is now available online here.

The introduction to the interview:

Major Roberto D´Aubuisson participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Archbishop Romero, although a son of former president Molina provided the sniper, asserts Captain Álvaro Saravia. Thirty years later, he and some of the other people implicated in the crime reconstruct those days of arms trafficking, cocaine and kidnapping. Reduced to ignominy, Saravia has been a pizza delivery man, a used car salesman and a drug money launderer. Now he is burning in the hell he helped create during a time when killing “communists” was a sport.

Funes asks forgiveness for Romero assassination

The president, Mauricio Funes, apologized today on behalf of the Salvadoran state for the death of the archbishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, which occurred on March 24, 1980.

"In my capacity as President, I apologize on behalf of the Salvadoran state for this assassination committed 30 years ago. On behalf of the Salvadoran State I apologize to the family of Romero, and I extend my condolences," said Funes, ... in the corridor between gates 8 and 9 of the airport terminal, where he unveiled a mural commemorating the religious leader.

Responding to the words of Funes, Gaspar Romero, brother of the martyred archbishop, said: "I accept with humility, love and gratitude the apology, albeit 30 years later. "

At the end of the ceremony, during a conference with local media, Funes said of the ritual of reconciliation: "I apologized because the state failed to investigate, but it is not for me to investigate, that is up to the judges of the Republic" he clarified.

Translated from La Prensa Grafica

30th anniversary of Romero's assassination

On March 24, 1980, while saying mass at the chapel at the Divina Providencia cancer hospital, archbishop Oscar Romero was slain by an assassin's bullet.

Listen to a special BBC radio program about Romero and his legacy here.

New video recounts the murder of Oscar Romero

In conjunction with its interview of Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia, El Faro has released a video with English subtitles containing excerpts from the interview along with images, other eyewitness testimony, and the audio recording of the gunshot which martyred Romero:



Thanks to David for pointing out the video.

Accomplice to Romero murder speaks

Former Salvadoran air force captain Álvaro Saravia has previously admitted to participation in the plot to kill Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero, although he denies being the gunman. Today the online periodical El Faro published a lengthy story with an interview of Saravia where Saravia names names and provides details of the plot.

Shortly after the interview appeared on the El Faro site, the site was no longer reachable on the Internet. (coincidence?). I was able to grab a copy from the Google search engine cache, and you can download it here, if the El Faro site is not reachable.

Saravia says the gunman was a Salvadoran from the security team of Mario Molina, son of former Salvadoran president Arturo Armando Molina. Mario Molina, along with ARENA founder Roberto D'Aubuisson, were the intellectual authors of the plot to kill the archbishop.

More to come.

Reading Romero

I would like to appeal in a special way to the army’s enlisted men, and in particular to the ranks of the Guardia Nacional and the police --- those in the barracks.

Brothers: you are of part of our own people. You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters. Before an order to kill that a man may give, God’s law must prevail: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God. No one has to fulfill an immoral law. It is time to take back your consciences and to obey your consciences rather than the orders of sin. The Church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such abominations. We want the government to understand seriously that reforms are worth nothing if they are stained with so much blood. In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuous, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!

The Church preaches its liberation just as we have studied it today in the Holy Bible --- a liberation that includes above all, respect for the human person, the salvation of the people’s common good, and transcendence, which looks before all to God, and from God alone derives its hope and its force.

Homily of Oscar Romero
March 23, 1980
One day before his assassination

We are truly fortunate to have a wide library of the words of Oscar Romero freely available in English translation on the Internet. The most comprehensive resource of which I am aware is the collection of Romero's homilies and his pastoral letters from the Archbishop Romero Trust. In addition to these materials, the website has a photo gallery, secondary resources, and more. Make sure you visit it as you commemorate the 30th anniversary.


For a long time, my favorite collection of Romero quotations has come in the book The Violence of Love. This 231 page book with a forward by Henri Nouwen has excerpts from Romero's homilies over his tenure as archbishop and provides great devotional reading. The book is available in its entirety for free download in English or Spanish at this link.

Another bishop in a gunman's sights

During this week that El Salvador commemorates the assassination of Oscar Romero 30 years ago, an attempt has been made on the life of another bishop. Bishop Martín Barahona leads the Anglican church of El Salvador. An unknown gunmen fired shots, missing the prelate, but gravely injuring his driver. From the Episcopal News Service:

On March 17 in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, an unknown man approached Barahona, who was accompanied by his driver Francis Martínez and a church musician, and started shooting at them. Barahona was unharmed, but Martinez was hit in the stomach and his arm was broken by one of the gunshots.

The Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador issued a statement March 18 denouncing the attack, and Barahona held a press conference March 19, saying the attempt on his life is cause for serious concern in a country that has been rife with gang violence and criminal activity since the end of the civil war in the early 1990s.

"I leave the authorities to do their investigation, but I am worried by this kind of violence we are all suffering," said Barahona during a March 18 press conference.

From the blog Caminante:

"At this point we don't know if there was a particular motivation or whether this was random, which is symptomatic of the pervasive violence that affects all sectors of daily life in El Salvador," [said the Rev. Lee Alison Crawford, rector of Trinity Church in Rutland, Vermont and a member of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council].

Crawford, who is the canon missioner of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador, said she had been in touch with church members in El Salvador after receiving word of the shooting.

The ongoing violence in the country, she said, comes from a "complex combination" of factors, including gang and other criminal activity, a "profusion of arms floating around the country" since the end of the civil war in the early 1990s and the country's economic stresses.

A personal note -- I have met Bishop Barahona, a good man and spiritual leader committed to social justice in his country. We can only hope and pray for his continued safety, for healing for his driver, and that this crime, unlike so many others, will not be left in impunity.

Guide to the 30th anniversary celebrations for Archbishop Romero

A guest post from our friend and Romero devotee Carlos X. Colorado:

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Óscar A. Romero of San Salvador, the conmemoration of which will become a prominent activity for Salvadorans and Romero's admirers in the next week, leaving everyone else who is witness to the events perhaps wondering what all the fuss is about. Last week, the Board of Education of the State of Texas voted against including Romero in a list of historical figures who resisted against oppression because the group did not believe Romero to be sufficiently notable. (The Board's decision was rightly lampooned by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show: "You say we should not teach people this [who was Oscar Romero] because no ones knows it")

Most people know that Romero was admired by the leftist opposition and reviled by those close to the rightwing governments of the 1970s and 80s, and that Romero is the subject of an on-again/off-again canonization cause at the Vatican. But even among Salvadorans, most of the public is excluded from the rabid Romero-haters who still insist he was spearheading Marxist recruitment in the region, and his devoted followers who will spend an entire night out at an overnight candlelight vigil, or march across San Salvador chanting about social struggle. As the Jesuit Dean Brackley laments, Salvadoran youth today, “know more about Britney Spears than Oscar Romero.”

For the rest, who may know who Romero was, but not necessarily understand all that he represents in Salvadoran and Catholic circles, a few points to be on the lookout as the 30th anniversary commemorations unfold:

1. Look for the good word from Rome. An important gauge for the nearness (or remoteness) of a Romero beatification would be a statement from the Pope himself acknowledging Romero, or the appearance of an article in the Vatican paper, L'Osservatore Romano, or both. Neither prospect is far-fetched, and either would provide considerable cause for hope.

2. See who attends official observations in El Salvador. The red carpet at this "Oscar" party will be worth watching. Civil society groups have asked President Mauricio Funes, the leftist leader who has broken official silence about Romero by declaring his government to be a follower of Romero's "preferential option for the poor," to insist that representatives of the three powers of the state, and of the military, attend the commemorations, to make it a true affair of state. They have also asked him to revoke the Amnesty Law that blocks investigation and prosecution of the crime. (Well, one can dream.)

3. Watch the media coverage of the events -- particularly, look at the conservative sources like El Mundo and El Diario de Hoy. Traditionally, the Romero anniversary gets dozens of write-ups in the liberal Co Latino newspaper, and thoughtful, though less numerous, pieces in the brainy El Faro weekly. This journalistic output gets down to a trickle at the other end of the political spectrum, which typically also plays down the importance of the commemorations (famously, crowds that CoLatino estimates as "thousands," La Prensa Gráfica will characterize as "hundreds," and EDH will as "dozens," or even "tens").

Thirty will be the largest round-number yet associated with a Romero anniversary, and the rise to power of the Left, with a President who openly touts Romero as his moral guide, raise a lot of expectations about the magnitude of this year's event. Yet, what happens with each of the above criteria, will be critical to understanding the cultural importance of 'Romero XXX.'

Romero's life documented in film and video

If you want to learn about Oscar Romero for the first time, or want to introduce a friend to the life of "San Romero de las Americas," video and film is one way to do it.

There is a documentary called Romero by Romero which has a lengthy trailer available on Youtube. The documentary contains archival footage of Oscar Romero ministering to the people of El Salvador and interviews with his contemporaries. It's a good new addition to the English language material available about Romero and his work:

Part 1


Part 2.

Of course, the classic treatment of Romero's life in English is the well-known feature film Romero starring Raul Julia:

Trailer.

You can also search on YouTube for "Oscar Romero" and you will see a great number of Romero tribute videos of varying quality.

If you are in southeastern Wisconsin on Monday, March 22, you are invited to a screening of Romero as part of my El Salvador Movie Night series. The movie will be shown at 7:00 pm at St. John's Lutheran Church, 20275 Davidson Road, Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Agreement ends takeover of university

According to reports from El Salvador an agreement was reached last night to end the occupation of the University of El Salvador. The negotiations occurred under the auspices of Human Rights Ombudsman Oscar Luna. University officials have agreed to review the cases of 235 students who were denied admission to the university in the most recent round of entrance exams.

Protesters take over University of El Salvador

Since March 4, masked protesters have controlled the grounds of the University of El Salvador, shutting down the country's largest public university. The protesters are youth who were not admitted following the last entrance exams. The entrance exams were taken by some 23,000 students and 9500 were admitted to study at the UES. Those who are mot admitted often have few financial resources and very likely cannot afford the higher cost privately run universities in the country.

The Rector of the University, Rufino Quezada, has been vocal in criticizing the police in being unwilling to retake the university. Quezada announced a plan to resume some classes away from the campus after a round of negotiations with the protesters was not fruitful.

El Faro has a photogallery of the takeover of the UES here.

Salvadoran state commemorates Romero anniversary

During his recent visit to El Salvador, Brazil's president Lula de Silva visited the tomb of Oscar Romero with Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes.

This year, for the first time ever, official El Salvador is acknowledging and commemorating the life of Oscar Romero, as the thirtieth anniversary of his assassination approaches on March 24.

On March 4, the Salvadoran National Assembly passed a decree declaring March 24 each year to be Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero Day. On March 24, president Mauricio Funes, who commited himself to Romero's option for the poor when he was elected the country's first leftist president, will apologize on behalf of the Salvadoran state for Romero's murder at the hands of a right wing death squad.

Today a concert and cultural event was held in San Salvador in Romero's honor. President Funes, members of his cabinet, the diplomatic corps, and the slain archbishop's brother were in attendance.

In the past, many sectors of Salvadoran society have commemorated March 24 with marches, vigils, concerts and other events. Eighteen years after the signing of the peace accords which ended El Salvador's civil war, the national government is finally joining with the rest of the country in commemorating El Salvador's beloved pastor.

Cross border families

The website for Maryland Community Newspapers, Gazette.Net, has an excellent series of stories on Salvadoran families who have members living in the US and the strains caused by the global economic downturn. The stories and videos highlight some individual families as well as exploring the macro context of the flows of migrants northwards and remittances southwards.

This quote sums up some of the situation:

"[Migration is] one of the most heartfelt problems in El Salvador. .... We can't prohibit immigration, and we can't forget those people who leave, because they sustain us. But we have to create the conditions for them so they don't want to leave," said [Jorge Schafik Handal] Vega, who heads the parliament's commission on external affairs and Salvadorans abroad. "We can no longer depend anymore on exporting people to support our economy."

US and Salvadoran ambassadors

Fourteen months after Barack Obama became president of the US, there is still not a new US ambassador in the embassy in San Salvador. Last December, Obama nominated Mari Del Carmen Aponte to the position, but her appointment is stuck in the Senate. Some conservatives are urging that her nomination be rejected, citing allegations that in the past she had connections to someone who had connections to Cuban intelligence agents.

El Salvador acted only slightly more rapidly, presenting its new ambassador to Washington on the morning before Mauricio Funes' March 8 meeting with Obama. The new ambassador is Francisco Altschul.

Perhaps the US Senate needs to read the article by Sarah Stephens on the Huffington Post titled Why should we care about El Salvador?"

To the surprise of many, El Salvador under the leadership of this center-left president and a party representing a former guerrilla army is becoming the most reliable Central American ally of Washington.

But whereas the Bush Administration could count on former Salvadoran governments to send troops to Iraq and in essence, as one analyst said, "to act as the lapdog of the State Department," President Funes is attempting to build a balanced, independent foreign policy.

During his first eight months in office the president and his foreign minister Hugo Martinez have normalized diplomatic relations with Cuba, Vietnam and Libya while simultaneously making clear that he looks to Brazilian president Lula de Silva and to Barack Obama as his models for governance, not Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez.

As the Salvadorans pursue an open, non-aligned diplomatic strategy, realities on the ground in the U.S. and in El Salvador require the presidents to forge a close, mutually beneficial relationship.

Funes and Obama meet at White House

Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes met today with Barack Obama at the White House. Their remarks following the meeting were released by the White House:



You can watch the video or read a transcript here.

Practical El Salvador

Searching the Internet recently I came across the blog El Salvador: The Life. The site is "designed to help deportees and families of deportees (or anyone else planning to move to El Salvador) prepare for the process, what to expect and how to begin. This is not intended for tourist, but rather those planning to move." It has a number of posts about day-to-day life, including such topics as Internet access, the postal system, and plumbing. The most recent post provides a sample of grocery prices. Check it out.

Pacific Rim speaks about its fight with El Salvador

Canadian mining company Pacific Rim, which is in a battle with the government of El Salvador to force the country to grant it gold mining permits, spoke publicly this week about its pending international arbitration under CAFTA:

On January 4, 2010, the [Government of El Salvador "GOES"] filed preliminary objections to PacRim's claims under CAFTA and El Salvador's Investment Law. Copies of the GOES's filing and PacRim's response to ICSID are available on Pacific Rim's website (www.pacrim-mining.com). Under CAFTA Article 10.20, the Tribunal is to rule on the objections on an expedited schedule, has set a hearing on the objections for May 31 and June 1, 2010, and is expected to issue a ruling by September 2010. PacRim believes that El Salvador's objections are not only completely without merit, but are also frivolous, and that GOES filed them purely as an attempt to stall the arbitration proceedings. PacRim fully expects that the Tribunal will reject the objections and proceed with the arbitration claim.

DIALOGUE WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF EL SALVADOR

The Company was discouraged to hear public comments made on January 13, 2010 by President Mauricio Funes in which he voiced environmental concerns for mining; comments which were, in the Company's opinion, groundless and ill-conceived. The Company had been encouraged by a series of meetings held in the fall of 2009 with the highest levels of President Funes' cabinet and leadership from the ruling FMLN party to discuss the environmental, technical, economic and social aspects of the proposed El Dorado mine. During all of these meetings, the Company was encouraged by the positive reactions to the technical and environmental aspects of the mine.

El Salvador has mining laws, investment laws and environmental laws in place. PacRim has complied with if not exceeded all of the requirements of these laws. The actions and inactions of the GOES over the past years have severely eroded not only Pacific Rim's market value, but also El Salvador's reputation as a place for foreign investment. Before El Salvador can hope to attract the future foreign investment sorely needed in this time of economic crises, the country must demonstrate that it is willing to protect and enforce the rights of existing foreign investors.

Oscar Romero and his legacy

March 2010 is an important month for historical memory in El Salvador because it contains the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero. On March 24, 1980 Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated by El Salvador's ruling oligarchy. The bishop who carried El Salvador's poor in his heart, was murdered for his tireless denunciations of the oppression and violence he saw sponsored by the Salvadoran state. Throughout the month leading up to March 24, I will have a series of posts about Romero and his legacy.

The basic story of Romero is contained in this article from US Catholic:

Oscar Romero gave his last homily on March 24. Moments before a sharpshooter felled him, reflecting on scripture, he said, "One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives." The homily, however, that sealed his fate took place the day before when he took the terrifying step of publicly confronting the military.

Romero begged for international intervention. He was alone. The people were alone. In 1980 the war claimed the lives of 3,000 per month, with cadavers clogging the streams, and tortured bodies thrown in garbage dumps and the streets of the capitol weekly. With one exception, all the Salvadoran bishops turned their backs on him, going so far as to send a secret document to Rome reporting him, accusing him of being "politicized" and of seeking popularity.

Unlike them, Romero had refused to ever attend a government function until the repression of the people was stopped. He kept that promise winning him the enmity of the government and military, and an astonishing love of the poor majority.

Romero was a surprise in history. The poor never expected him to take their side and the elites of church and state felt betrayed. He was a compromise candidate elected to head the bishop's episcopacy by conservative fellow bishops. He was predictable, an orthodox, pious bookworm who was known to criticize the progressive liberation theology clergy so aligned with the impoverished farmers seeking land reform. But an event would take place within three weeks of his election that would transform the ascetic and timid Romero.

The new archbishop's first priest, Rutilio Grande, was ambushed and killed along with two parishioners. Grande was a target because he defended the peasant's rights to organize farm cooperatives. He said that the dogs of the big landowners ate better food than the campesino children whose fathers worked their fields.

The night Romero drove out of the capitol to Paisnal to view Grande's body and the old man and seven year old who were killed with him, marked his change. In a packed country church Romero encountered the silent endurance of peasants who were facing rising terror. Their eyes asked the question only he could answer: Will you stand with us as Rutilio did? Romero's "yes" was in deeds. The peasants had asked for a good shepherd and that night they received one.

CAFTA's 5 year anniversary

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) turns 5 this month. An article from the Latin Business Chronicle looks at the benefits of the treaty from a business standpoint:

Over its first few years, U.S. companies reaped significant benefits. Between 2005 and 2008, U.S. exports to the region increased by around 48 percent to reach $24.3 billion, while U.S. imports from the region increased by 10 percent to $14.4 billion. Inward foreign direct investment as a percentage of region’s GDP rose from 3.4 percent in 2005 to almost 5 percent in 2008, and higher remittance inflows and tourism from the United States helped lift per capita income. “Before the recession, the countries of the region all increased their exports by double-digit rates,” says David Lewis, vice-president of Manchester Trade, a Washington, D.C., trade consultancy. “They were very aggressive about taking advantage of new opportunities in agri-industry, agricultural products, and textiles. [CAFTA] was a shot in the arm for them.” For example, El Salvador increased its exports of agricultural products to distribution networks in the U.S. Hispanic market, to little fanfare in the U.S.

More recently, the global economic downturn has taken a major toll on the region’s economic growth, foreign direct investment and trade volumes. In 2009, all five Central American members of CAFTA – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua – suffered declining GDP. The biggest loser was Honduras (minus 4.4 percent), hit hard not just by declining demand for its apparel exports but by the disruption in the uncertainties that emerged last summer when left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya was arrested by the Honduran military, acting on an arrest order issued by the Honduran Supreme Court. (The democratic election of Porfirio Lobo Sosa as president of Honduras last November has since restored stability to trade with Honduras.)(more)

Measuring the impact of a complex treaty like CAFTA is exceedingly difficult. How much would growth have been without the treaty? How is the income generated from trade distributed in the country? How do we measure the impact of new lawsuits permitted by CAFTA like the claims by Pacific Rim over gold-mining? There are winners and losers under CAFTA - even after 5 years no one can honestly say how the costs and benefits were distributed across Salvadoran society.

The opposition to dams on El Salvador's rivers

There is organized opposition to the construction of hydroelectric dams on the rivers of El Salvador. In January, the government suspended any project work for the proposed El Cimarron dam on the Lempa River. From the group International Rivers:

The act of coming together to strategize about protecting their communities against the ravages of big dams has finally paid off for some communities. The Salvadorian government announced in January that it was scrapping the proposed El Cimarron Dam. The dam, which would have blocked the Lempa River, would have displaced nearly 35,000 people from their homes and farms.

In his announcement that the dam was shelved, President Mauricio Funes said it would not be built in its current design because of the environmental and social problems it would cause. El Cimarron dam would have been the sixth largest hydroelectric dam in El Salvador. The project, which does not have a feasibility study yet, included a river diversion and an 8km tunnel. It has been in the planning stages for 12 years, and its costs have tripled in that time. Although South Korea sent a delegation to El Salvador last year demonstrating interest in financing, the deal never closed.

Although the El Cimarron dam has been shelved, president Funes continues to express his support for the development of the El Chaparral dam north of San Miguel and expansion of the 5th of November dam. Funes believes these hydroelectric projects are important to address an electrical power deficit facing the country in the near future.

There is an organized opposition to such projects in El Salvador. A blog with news from this movement is located at http://elsalvadorantirepresas.blogspot.com/. The International Day for the Fight Against Dams is March 14.

Like the gold mining debate, the debate over construction of dams on El Salvador's rivers pits environmental costs and disruption of local communities against promises of economic development and jobs for a country which needs both.

Narcotics trafficking in El Salvador

The US State Department released its 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report today. An excerpt from the report discussing El Salvador follows:

Status of Country. El Salvador remains a transit country for cocaine and heroin from the Andean region of South America, en route to the United States. While it remains difficult to determine reliable estimates of quantities flowing through El Salvador land routes or territorial waters, USG experts estimate that approximately 400 metric tons of cocaine flows through the Eastern Pacific region. In 2009 the Government of El Salvador (GOES) continued to target maritime and land trafficking of cocaine and heroin along its coastline and overland routes, as well as narcotics-related money laundering. El Salvador hosts a Cooperative Security Location (formerly known as the Forward Operating Location) at Comalapa airport. The base is crucial to regional detection and interception efforts. Transnational street gangs are involved in street-level drug sales but not major trafficking....

Corruption. The GOES does not as a matter of policy encourage or facilitate illicit production or distribution of narcotics, psychotropic drugs, or other controlled substances, nor does it launder proceeds from illegal drug transactions. No senior Salvadoran government officials are known to engage in, encourage, or facilitate the illicit production or distribution of drugs, nor the laundering of proceeds from illicit drug transactions. Shortly after winning the March 2009 Presidential elections, Mauricio Funes of the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) announced that his government would conduct investigations of allegations that former high-ranking members of the DAN are linked to narcotics traffickers. It is not clear at this point whether these allegations, so far unsubstantiated, are primarily political in nature, or, in fact, reflect a legacy of narcotics-fueled corruption...

The Road Ahead. El Salvador’s ability to investigate and prosecute criminal activity would be enhanced by passage of pending legislation for asset forfeiture and wiretaps. Although the Salvadoran Congress voted in 2009 to amend the constitution to allow for use of wiretaps and other electronic intercepts, they have yet to pass implementing legislation to allow prosecutors and police to begin using the new investigative tools.

El Salvador also lacks the basic ability to investigate and prosecute financial crime. Institutional shortcomings in the Attorney General’s FIU leave the country dangerously vulnerable to financial crime and money laundering. As remittances remain an important sector of the Salvadoran economy, we encourage the GOES to carefully monitor this activity to ensure that remittances are not a cover for money laundering. The GOES can also ensure that sufficient resources are provided to the overburdened Attorney General’s office, as well as to the financial crime and narcotics divisions of the National Civilian Police.

On a broader level, El Salvador could enhance its drug control efforts further by providing additional manpower, resources, and equipment to the National Civilian Police units on the front lines of the fight against narcotics traffickers. Additional measures, such as implementation of wire tap enabling legislation and establishing an asset forfeiture regime, would also be very welcome indications of the GOES’s sincerity in addressing narcotics-fueled transnational crime.