Protesting the Empire as Obama visits

My post on US president Obama's visit to El Salvador on Tuesday pretty much reflected the coverage in Salvadoran and US mass media: Smiling schoolchildren waving US and Salvadoran flags. Two presidents elected on platforms of hope and change giving a press conference. A somber Obama visiting the tomb of Oscar Romero. A state dinner (where the pupusa was featured). This portrayal of the visit earned me a complimentary email from a contact at the US Embassy.

But not everyone was happy to see Barack Obama on Salvadoran soil. Protesters in the streets of San Salvador and in cyberspace raised their voices against a variety of aspects of US policy impacting this tiny country in Central America.

The video below from the SHARE Foundation shows some of the protests which were centered around the Plaza Salvador del Mundo. As the statue of the Divine Savior of the World looked on, a potpourri of civil society groups marched, demonstrated, and voiced their anger:



A regular theme seen and heard from the demonstrators was the characterization of the US as the "empire," imposing its imperial will throughout Latin America and the rest of the world on behalf of multi-national corporations.  ContraPunto described the demands of protesters who gathered at the Plaza Salvador del Mundo.  The Voices from El Salvador blog also provided photos from the protests.  There was an alphabet soup of civil society organizations, and their messages included demands that Obama leave the country, that CAFTA be repealed, for closure of the US-sponsored International Law Enforcement Academy, for immigration reform, for freedom for the Cuban Five, and in opposition to gold mining. ContraPunto also noted that:

Undoubtedly one thing most repudiated by protesters was the visit the crypt of Monsignor Romero [by Obama]. The Ecumenical Coordination of the Church and the Poor in El Salvador (CEIP) said it was an insult to the memory of Romero because he sought to build peace and the United States does not.

As Obama visited the Metropolitan Cathedral and Romero's tomb, the security presence was tight.   A police source told ContraPunto that there were sharpshooters on top of the National Palace and the National Theater.   How could you not be reminded of the sharpshooters from the US-backed government who fired on the thousands of mourners at Romero's funeral from those same perches?

Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, told NCRonline that Obama's visit to Romero's tomb fell short:

Obama’s visit "could have been a historic moment," Bourgeois said, one similar to former President Clinton’s rare apology for the US role in the training and arming of Guatemalan security forces that slaughtered more than 200,000 civilians.

"Obama didn’t even acknowledge, let alone apologize for, the U.S. role in El Salvador," Bourgeois said.

Before arriving in El Salvador, Obama visited Chile where he declined a request to apologize for the US-backed coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power. A U.S. Senate committee long ago confirmed that the CIA had orchestrated the coup, and SOA records show that hundreds of Chilean officers went through the school in the 24 months prior to the 1973 coup. Obama refused to offer an apology despite the fact that he told Chileans that a necessary ingredient to create a democracy is "accountability for past wrongs."

Prominently on sale in San Salvador was Fidel Castro's book, Obama and the Empire. Diario CoLatino published an interview with the Cuban Ambassador about the book.

Greg Grandin, author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, wrote about Obama's visit in an article titled Barack Obama, Oscar Romero and Structural Sin in the Nation. He concludes:

We can only hope that Obama finds inspiration in Oscar Romero’s life: Romero, after all, started his public career as a cautious moderate who believed he could quietly work with El Salvador’s ruling class to coax needed reform. The reality of Salvadoran society forced his conversion into an outspoken, confrontational leader who directly attacked those who perpetuated what he called “structural sin:” “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed,” Romero wrote before his murder, “it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” If Romero was alive today, he would recognize CAFTA’s Chapter 10, along with the broader, disastrous policies Washington is pursuing in the Mexico-Central America-Colombia security corridor, as prime examples of “structural sin.”

But at El Faro, they noted that even the hard-line leaders of the FMLN, who have often used the anti-empire theme in their rhetoric in the past, had toned it down:

The speeches against America or against certain policies of that country were not even remotely heard during the recent commemoration of their March election victory of two years ago. FMLN leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who in late 2009 said they had to fight "against the empire" in reference to the United States, said Saturday before hundreds of supporters that Obama's visit is "good news."

The Salvadoran vice president also chose to remember the U.S. accompaniment of  El Salvador to reach the 1992 peace agreements but avoided mentioning [the US] military and logistical support which had supported some of the past dictatorships in El Salvador and more than once have been part of FMLN speeches.

Much of the reaction to Obama's visit by Salvadoran bloggers seemed to be negative.  Omar Nieto described the discourse in the blogosphere in a post for Global Voices.  As an example, he cites a post by Carlos Molina:

Why can’t we say anything to the genocidal power that comes to our house? We are afraid, it’s clear. Our fear is the same as that of someone who's had a family member kidnapped, the [fear] of blackmail that inhabits our nightmares: “You let me put a few [military] bases and I do not deport your father, your sister, your cousin …” (translation by Global Voices))

Bloggers like Victor in Alta Hora de la Noche, also reflected on the stop at Romero's tomb:

Monsignor Romero is not honored with the visit of the man alleged to be “the world's most powerful man”. He is honored by a memorial mass, or when an elderly couple from the very poor county of Morazán tell me with a smile that despite their physical aches due to the long journey, it was worth it. At last they have come to the Bishop’s grave, their Bishop.

Members of the anti-mining movement also used Obama's visit as a reason to raise their policy concerns. They focused attention on the impact of the DR-CAFTA trade agreement of which the US and El Salvador are parties. In particular, they pointed to DR-CAFTA's investor protection provisions which have allowed North American gold mining companies to bring arbitration claims against the government of El Salvador when the companies are denied the opportunity to mine for gold out of concern for the environment.

Members of the National Roundtable against Mining held a press conference to voice their concerns about the lawsuits authorized under DR-CAFTA . Originally, the $77 million lawsuit of Pacific Rim against El Salvador under DR-CAFTA was scheduled to have hearings in Washington, D.C. which would have overlapped Obama's visit. For reasons which were not immediately known, those hearings were rescheduled until May.  The confluence of Obama's visit and the prospective start to the hearings gave a push to the mining activists work.

Activists in the US in solidarity with the Salvadoran anti-mining movement worked to get concerned members of Congress involved.  19 members of the US Congress signed a letter to President Obama which was released in connection with the visit to El Salvador.   The letter called on Obama to act to eliminate investor protection provisions in trade agreements like CAFTA which allow multi-national corporations to bring arbitration suits for millions of dollars in damages against countries challenging enforcement of environmental regulations.

The impact of the US and its policies in El Salvador is undeniably enormous.  That power has been, and will likely continue to be, exercised both for good and for evil.   The demonstrations in El Salvador this week show that civil society groups intend to hold the governments in both countries accountable.

Romero -- 31 years later

March 24 is the 31st anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero. The visit on Tuesday to Romero's tomb by the president of the most powerful nation on earth, shows the enduring power of the message and example set by Romero, the voice of the voiceless.

To reflect on that message, a great way is to visit the Super Martyrio blog maintained by our blogging friend Polycarpio. The blog is dedicated to exploring Romero and his legacy and to "the inside track on the beatification cause of archbishop Romero of El Salvador."

Polycarpio has just published a series of posts on the last 40 days of Romero's life, and seven sermons the archbishop preached during that time. From the introduction to the series:

On Valentine’s Day 1980, Óscar Romero began a ‘Quaresima’ of Love, embarking on the last forty days of his life, an incredible period in which he crowned his pilgrimage upon the earth with martyrdom, following Jesus down the Lenten path on a route that included a passion in the Garden and culminated with a Pietà scene at the foot of a cross in the chapel of a cancer hospital. Óscar Romero’s ‘Quaresima’ was the crescendo of a life lived for the ages. Five days in, a bomb took out the radio station that broadcast Romero’s sermons. Undaunted, Archbishop Óscar Romero continued to broadcast using short wave radio and international radio networks that picked up his masses and broadcast them to an even wider audience than he had before. Romero preached seven sermons that began with the Beatitudes and followed the Way of the Cross all the way to its consummation in a drama that Hollywood itself would find hard to replicate.

In addition to the Super Martyrio blog, 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.

Obama visits El Salvador

Video of Obama's arrival.

Shortly after noon today, March 22, US president Barack Obama arrived in El Salvador for a state visit.   Public offices and many schools were closed, as the country welcomed Obama.   Following an arrival ceremony at the airport where he was greeted by the foreign minister and the mayor of San Salvador, Obama was flown to the Salvadoran presidential residence for meetings with president Mauricio Funes.   Obama is accompanied on this trip by his wife Michelle and his daughters.

Following their meetings, the two leaders gave a joint press conference.  The full text of the two presidents' press conference is available here.  There was a discussion of various development support which the US will be providing El Salvador, as well as security and combating drug-trafficking.

One of the important topics for El Salvador was US migration policy.  In statements in El Salvador, Obama stated, “I thought that President Funes gave a very eloquent response to one of my questions during our bilateral meeting. He said: ‘I don’t want a young man in El Salvador or a young woman in El Salvador to feel that the only two paths to moving up the income ladder is either to travel north or to join a criminal enterprise,’ ”  Obama indicated that he would move immigration reform forward in the US Congress.  

Obama is cutting short his visit to El Salvador in light of the new military actions in Libya. He will no longer make a planned visit to Mayan ruins outside of the capital scheduled for Wednesday.

Obama did make a highly symbolic visit to the Metropolitan Cathedral and the tomb of slain archbishop Oscar Romero.   Obama was escorted by president Funes as well as San Salvador archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas.

 El Diario de Hoy has a special section on its web site devoted to the presidential visit.  There are photo albums of the visit at the Facebook site of the US embassy in El Salvador.  While at the Huffington Pst, you can see a photo essay devoted to Michelle Obama's time in El Salvador.  Al Jazeera - English aired this video in connection with Obama's visit.

Return to El Salvador available on Hulu

If you have access to the Hulu video streaming site, you can now watch the entire documentary Return to El Salvador.   I recommend the documentary strongly, and it's great to see Jamie Moffett's film available in this way.  You can watch the documentary on the Hulu site here.

Move those on TPS status to permanent residency

My friend Jose Artiga, executive director of the SHARE Foundation, asked me to share this open letter to the editor, timed to coincide with president Obama's visit to El Salvador.



Dear Editor,

This March, US President Barack Obama will visit Chile, Brazil and El Salvador as part of a major initiative to renew and strengthen ties between our countries. This visit to El Salvador coincides with the 31st anniversary of the assassination of Monsignor Oscar Romero, the archbishop who fought against great odds on behalf of the oppressed.

President Obama’s visit to El Salvador is historic; marking the first time a U.S. President will meet with President Mauricio Funes of the FMLN in El Salvador after the twelve year Civil War and nearly two decades of right wing rule. This visit represents a new chapter in US-Salvadoran relations and raises hope and expectations for a constructive working partnership.

According to the US Census, today, 1.7 million Salvadorans live in the United States. Salvadorans represent the third largest Hispanic community in the U.S. after Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Close to one million Salvadorans are U.S. citizens.

We participate in the social, economic, political and cultural life of the United States. We have born and raised our children here. We have constructed small and large businesses, been elected to local, state and national political offices, shared our art, food and music. We are teachers and students, engineers and electricians, health care providers, non profit employees, gardeners, janitors and executives.

We celebrate the wonderful mosaic of cultures that make up the United States of America. We vote in local, state and presidential elections. We are part of the rich fabric of the American family. We preserve a strong link to El Salvador; we have organized dozens of Associations to support our places of origin within El Salvador, and provide vital economic resources, sending over three billion dollars in annual remittances.

For the last decade, over 200,000 Salvadorans have resided in the U.S. legally under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) – granted by the Bush, Jr. Administration in the aftermath of the 2001 earthquakes which devastated El Salvador. These Salvadorans work, study, pay taxes and do business. To qualify for the renewal of their TPS every 18 months, they have demonstrated they are in full compliance with U.S. laws.

On the occasion of President Obama’s first visit to El Salvador, the Salvadoran American National Council is asking President Obama to use his authority and establish an executive process using existing laws such as the cancellation of removal to allow those qualifying and with Temporary Protective Status (TPS) to adjust their status to permanent residency.

Granting permanent residence to this community is a creative way to support immigrants that want to play by the rules, and that have a ten year excellent track record of being law abiding and hard working members of the community. It will be consistent with the US tradition of keeping families together.

Such action is not without precedent. In 1992, during the transition from the Bush, Sr. to the Clinton Administration, former President Bill Clinton changed the TPS status into a DED (Deferred Enforced Departure) and later many Central Americans, Cubans and people from the former Soviet Union were allowed to apply for permanent residency.

Please join me, the Salvadoran American National Council, and hundreds of churches of all faiths in the US in asking President Obama to fortify the bonds between the US and El Salvador by taking these 200,000 Salvadorans in the US from their 10 year old temporary status to a permanent residence.


Jose Artiga
Executive Director, SHARE Foundation
co-President Salvadoran-American National Council

Jose Artiga is the Executive Director of the SHARE Foundation (www.share-elsalvador.org) and Co-President of the Salvadoran American National Council. SHARE strengthens solidarity with and among the Salvadoran people in El Salvador and the United States in the struggle for economic sustainability, justice, human and civil rights. The Salvadoran Council is a membership organization committed to strengthening democracy and the social and economic development of all Salvadorans.

Justicia ¡Ya! -- Justice Now!

There's a chink in the culture of impunity in El Salvador this week. More than a decade too late, there are finally convictions in the rape and murder of little Katya Miranda. She is the 9 year old girl, killed in 1999 by her grandfather and workers at the family's beachfront property. The grandfather, Carlos Miranda, was politically well-connected with sons who were high officials in the police and army. His first trial ended in an acquittal, which most viewed as a symbol that those with power could still get away with anything in El Salvador.

A campaign led by the Human Rights Institute at the University of Central America, and taken up by Salvadoran bloggers and civil society organizations, demanded justice, and finally in 2009 Miranda and seven others were arrested.

Our friends at the Voices from El Salvador blog summarize this week's convictions:

Twelve years after nine-year old Katya Miranda was kidnapped, raped and murdered, a Salvadoran court finally convicted her grandfather, Carlos Miranda, and five of his employees of kidnapping. The court sentenced Carlos Miranda to 13 years in prison and ordered him to pay $100,000 to Hilda Jimez, Katya’s mother. The court sentenced the others to 8 years in prison and ordered each of them to pay $20,000 to Katya’s mother.

The night of April 4, 1999, Katya and her sister were staying at her paternal grandfather’s beach house in San Luis la Herradura, La Paz. Sometime during the night, she was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Though her grandfather and five of his employees were at the house at the time, the all claimed that they heard and saw nothing. The Attorney General’s Office arrested Carlos and Edwin Miranda, Katya’s grandfather and father, in January of 2000, but the court acquitted them of murder later that year. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court ordered the legal process against the Mirandas closed.

The Attorney General’s Office reopened the case in 2003, but did not make any progress until 2009 when they again arrested Carlos Miranda and six others. Because the court had tried Miranda and others for murder in 2000, they could not be tried again. Instead, prosecutors charged them on kidnapping and other related charges, for which they were convicted.

Loss of a Comando

One of the greatest organizations in El Salvador is the Comandos de Salvamento and their brave emergency medical service volunteers. Earlier this week, the Comandos mourned the death of one of their leaders, Eduardo Rivera Mayén. From the Comandos website:

Dozens of EMS volunteers from Comandos de Salvamento were accompanied by members of the Red and Green Cross, the National Fire Dept, family members, friends, delegates from political parties and representatives from Civil Protection to say their last goodbyes to friend and colleague Eduardo Rivera Mayén. Commonly called, "Mayen" by close friends was the main Comandos de Salvamento spokesman for the Salvadoran press. During mass disasters, civil war firefights, street protests, mass casualty incidents, or violent crime, Mayen was always there, calm and professional under extreme circumstances to offer concrete information to Salvadoran journalists and comforting words to families of those affected. Mayen was transported from the Comandos Central Base through the streets of San Salvador followed by more than twenty ambulances from different EMS organizations. The burial ceremony took place at the CampoAmor cemetery in Cuscatancingo. Near the end of the ceremony, his family was given the infamous journalist vest that Mayen used for many years while working with Comandos de Salvamento.

From El Salvador Noticias:

His work in the Comandos began in the last years of the Salvadoran civil war, especially when the conflict became more dangerous in the capital, because of an increased number of insurgent military actions, aimed at San Salvador.

It was common to see the Comandos enter combat zones between the guerrillas of the FMLN and the Salvadoran army, protected by their yellow flags, and then leave carrying injured civilians in their arms, to carry them to medical facilities. Mayén Rivera was one of those comandos.

An article from La Pagina said "Eduardo Rivera Mayén formed part of the list of anonymous heroes of Comandos de Salvamento, dedicated for almost 26 years to their Salvadoran kin in the moments when they needed help, being part of the country's history."

Eduardo Rivera Mayén

Obama's upcoming visit to El Salvador

There's nothing like a US presidential visit to spur news stories in the English language press about El Salvador. President Obama will visit El Salvador on March 22-23, and White House confirmed those plans Tuesday despite ongoing foreign and domestic crises. A number of publications have recently explored US-El Salvador relations.

In an article titled Testing Salvadoran Democracy, Carlos Rosales addresses the question "Why is Obama going to El Salvador" by describing the current political scene in the country. He attributes the visit, in part, to the political successes of Mauricio Funes: "Aside from obvious bilateral issues including public security and immigration, Obama’s decision could be a tip of the hat to El Salvador’s moderate leftist president."

The Brookings Institution web site features an article titled Prospects for President Obama's Meeting with President Funes of El Salvador. The article describes Obama's itinerary in the country:

President Obama is popular in El Salvador and his visit will be an all-absorbing national event. He will spend the evening on March 22 in the capital city meeting with leaders from business, labor and civil society before heading out to northern Salvador for a morning visit to rural communities that participate in integrated development projects. “Generating Opportunities” seeks to provide health clinics, scholarships to keep kids in school, job training and micro-credit programs. It should support current livelihoods for the communities and provide future employment opportunities within the country. These northern communities were the scene of military repression during the civil war and Obama’s visit to this area emphasizes reconstruction and reconciliation by a U.S. president, whose nation was allied with the Salvadoran army.

The article concludes:

President Obama’s principal contribution is the U.S. demonstration of confidence to a nation that is consolidating its democratic institutions. Alternation to the leftist FMLN government was fraught with uncertainty, but Funes' capacity to achieve political stability places him in a position which American politicians fully understand and sympathize. By his visit, Obama is signaling assurance in the Funes government’s capacity to rebuild the economy, distribute wealth and contain the violence. We must hope that foreign investors will build upon this assurance to develop manufacturing plants, alternative energy production and agro-industrial businesses. If Funes builds upon the visit to attract new investment, El Salvador has an excellent chance of leading Central America toward greater prosperity.

The Brookings Institution also put out another piece today with similar optimistic themes about this visit:

President Obama is clearly signaling that Funes will be his interlocutor of choice in Central America. A progressive yet pragmatic leader with good relations across the region, Funes has become the embodiment of a successful political transition in a country scared by a tragic political history. The fears that El Salvador’s political system would not be able to withstand the Left’s comprehensive electoral victory appear now entirely misplaced. Whatever problems the country may face now—and there are plenty—political instability does not seem to be one of them. As Obama visits Chile on the same trip, his stop in El Salvador implies recognition of the great strides that El Salvador has made in bringing about a modern vibrant democracy.

In El Salvador what they want to hear about, says Hispanically Speaking News, is that the US will move towards immigration reform.

In what will be a very symbolic part of the trip, President Obama plans to visit the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador and the crypt where Oscar Romero is buried, according to a White House briefing today. That visit will be the day before the 31st anniversary of Romero's assassination while saying mass.

Commerce Group arbitration dismissed

The arbitration claim filed by Milwaukee, Wisconsin based Commerce Group was dismissed yesterday by the international arbitration tribunal hearing the case. The Commerce Group had filed suit under the DR-CAFTA trade agreement's investor protection provisions, asserting that El Salvador's decision to revoke its permission to mine in the country was improper.

The decision by the tribunal is a narrow and technical one. The arbitrators ruled that the Commerce Group had failed to comply with the "waiver" requirement under DR-CAFTA which requires that a party cease any other legal proceedings over the dispute and proceed only before the arbitration panel. Because the Commerce Group was still proceeding in the Salvadoran court system to challenge the permit process, the waiver requirement was not met. A copy of the decision can be downloaded here.

Because this is a narrow procedural decision, it sheds no light on the prospects for the similar arbitration brought by Canadian gold mining company Pacific Rim. Unlike the Commerce Group, Pacific Rim survived the initial motion to dismiss its claim.

Starting to look towards 2012 elections

A good source of information about what's going on in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America is the Central American Politics blog of Mike Allison of the University of Scranton.  Mike recently described opinion polling about preferences for the 2012 elections of legislators and mayors:

The survey indicates that 31% intend to vote FMLN and 27% for ARENA in the upcoming congressional elections. Only 5% intend to vote for a third political party (Obviously not a good sign for GANA). Support for the FMLN declined from 34% in November while ARENA's support increase by 1%. 

In 2009, the FMLN won 35 seats with 43% of the nationwide vote while ARENA won 32 seats with 39% of the vote.

In terms of their preference for mayor, 30% intend to FMLN and 27% for ARENA. The PCN, PDC, and GANA captured a combined 9% while another 34% remain undecided.

You can go to the original polling results from the Mitofsky polling firm at this link.

The results are not that much dissimilar to what we have seen this far out in advance of other elections in El Salvador. The FMLN and ARENA split about 50% of the vote, small parties are inconsequential, and most Salvadorans don't express a preference. Some of the things to watch over the next 12 months will be: (a) how much does Mauricio Funes' popularity continue to raise the fortunes of the FMLN despite his disagreements with party leaders, (b) how much impact is there from electoral reforms allowing individual candidates to run, and (c) can ARENA hold on to the mayor's office in San Salvador? Expect to see increased painting of party colors on electrical poles and roadsides commencing soon.

Gangs and those in relationship with them

Two stories were in the press this week about the impact of the maras, Salvadoran gangs, on the lives of those in relationshp with them .   One story involved the murder of French documentary filmmaker Chistian Poveda.   A Salvadoran court convicted 10 gang members from Mara 18 and one policeman for complicity in Poveda's murder.  Poveda produced the documentary La Vida Loca which sympathetically, but unflinchingly, looked at the lives of gang members in one neighborhood of Soyapango, outside of San Salvador.   Despite his relationship built up over many months with the gang clique, Poveda could not avoid being another victim of El Salvador's gang violence.

Another story about relationships with a gang tells the story of what happens to the families in a gang-controlled neighborhood when police arrest all the men in the community:

After putting her four children to bed, a mother retreats to her bedroom and lies down. She silently weeps and caresses the cold spot next to her, where her husband once slept. 

A woman stands behind the counter at a bodega, carefully kneading dough in preparation for the day's tortilla sales. A toddler grasps her leg. 

A little girl climbs into a city bus stopped at a red light. She hopes to trade her small smile for some spare change.

And inside a dirt-floor shack, a boy feeds his baby sister a morning bottle while their mother works another 12-hour shift.

That's how Daniel Menijvar describes the daily lives of women and children in Duarte Melendez, a small community in El Salvador.

Two years ago, an estimated 85 percent of the community's men, many of whom were associated with MS-13, one of the most violent gangs in the western hemisphere, were jailed on charges of murder, robbery, extortion and the sale of illegal weapons and drugs, Menjivar said. Their children were left fatherless, and many women were left without financial stability. Read more.

The number of gang members in El Salvador may be between 10,000 and 20,000 (counting membership is notoriously difficult) but their impact far exceeds their numbers. Loving a gang member, filming a gang member, living next to a gang member, or just knowing a gang member places you within a circle filled with tragedy.

El Salvador under Tsunami alert

Following the massive earthquake off the coast of Japan today, El Salvador is under a tsunami alert.    The alert covers virtually all countries around the Pacific basin.  Any wave is expected to impact El Salvador around 4:00 pm local time.

Update -- live streaming video from La Libertad available here and shows the waves at the coast.  (Nothing out of the ordinary at 4:00 when I watched.   Surfers in the water).   8:00pm -- no reports that tsunami waves had any impact on El Salvador.

As a country prone to earthquakes and with a low-lying coastline, El Salvador is vulnerable to tsunamis.  I looked at the website of El Salvador's National Earth Studies Service (SNET), and it indicates that the last "micro-tsunami" to be measured in El Salvador was January 13, 2001 and originated from an earthquake off the coast of Australia.   That date, however, is best remembered as the date of the  first of the two large 2001 earthquakes which claimed many lives and destroyed homes throughout El Salvador.

New archaeological finds in El Salvador

An article at Travelio.net describes new archaeological finds in El Salvador. These discoveries were made by French archeologists:

One of the most remarkable findings was in Morazan, where they found a site with Maya motifs, when it had been previously believed that the Maya civilisation hadn’t extended beyond the Lempa River. In the same site, they found the remains of a fortress which probably predated the arrival of the Spanish, and had only been briefly mentioned in documents in the 1940s.

At La Union, they found a rock carving of a snake which had great similarities with the Jaguar Disc at the Maya site of Cara Sucia in Ahuachapan (El Salvador), found at the end of the 20th century. This illustrates the movement and possible commercial routes followed by the pre-hispanic peoples, and may indicate that the Lempa River wasn’t a static border and may have shifted through the times.

The investigators were also particularly interested in pottery found as this will help them date the sites more accurately and establish whether their ancient inhabitants had contact with other cultures.

According to experts, eastern El Salvador was a kind of crossroads for different civilisations, and that can be appreciated in its rock art which features elements from different places.

El Salvador has a number of archeological sites where scientists are learning the history of the ancient peoples who called the country their home. These sites include:

• Ceren
• San Andres
• Cihuatan
• Tazumal

You can also learn a great deal and see artifacts from these and other sites at the National Museum of Anthropology in San Salvador.

Salvadoran women migrants

The impact of migration is a regular subject for those seeking to understand El Salvador. You can listen to a radio story titled A New Life: Salvadoran Women in D.C. about women from El Salvador who have migrated to the US, and how their experiences compare with their prior lives at home.

The radio journalism is part of a project by Kate Sheehy called Alma y Lucha: Soul and Struggle in Women Migrating from El Salvador and seeking funding through Spot.us.

Grassroots anti-mining movement goes to court

The grassroots environmental coalition in El Salvador, the Mesa Nacional Frente a la Minería Metálica (Mesa), has filed a friend of the court brief in the international arbitration filed by the Canadian gold mining company Pacific Rim against El Salvador.   The Mesa is represented by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).  The brief makes three central points:

[We] will endeavor to use this submission to make sure that the Tribunal understands that:  (A) the grassroots, peaceful opposition to Pac Rim‟s proposed mine—and the government‟s response to it—were and are entirely legitimate and should be celebrated as a new dawn for representative democracy in El Salvador, not saddled with a hundred-million-dollar price tag; (B) the environmental concerns underlying that opposition were, and are, well-founded, but were not adequately addressed in Pac Rim‟s Environmental Impact Assessment (the “El Dorado EIA”); and (C) Pac Rim‟s involvement in Salvadoran and regional politics in support of its proposed mine has been deeply problematic, and the proposed mine itself has already generated disturbing levels of intra-community conflict and violence.

You can download the full brief here.  The brief makes the argument well that arbitrations under trade agreements should not be allowed to overturn a country's right to develop environmental policy to protect its citizens.  A listing of all court filings in the case is maintained by the government of El Salvador at this link.

In the other arbitration involving gold mining, there may be a decision soon on El Salvador's motion to dismiss the claims of Milwaukee-based Commerce Group.

Articles highlight environmental challenges in El Salvador

Journalist Dahr Jamail has been writing a series of articles on environmental issues in El Salvador for Al Jazeera and IPS. In today's article he writes about the impact of climate change on El Salvador:

San Salvador - "We have a very clear position," El Salvador’s Minister of Environment, Herman Chavez, told Al Jazeera at his office in San Salvador, the capital.

"The President of El Salvador, last year on July 20th, in an extraordinary meeting of presidents that was convened here in San Salvador, launched the intervention process. We put Climate Change as the number one issue for the region."...

In January, new figures provided by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that Earth’s global average surface temperature for 2010 tied 2005 for the hottest year on record. The two agencies' figures also showed that 2010 was the wettest year ever recorded....

"Climate change for us is not a hypothesis,” Minister Chavez added. "It is a very concrete reality that strikes us. The disasters we've been having are very clearly linked to climate change."

El Salvador, like other countries in the region, has been dramatically affected by severe weather events including extreme rain events and flooding from tropical storms and hurricanes that are increasing in both frequency and intensity. (more)

Jamail's articles have also described how there is a growing grassroots environmental movement, organizing to combat the effects of climate changes and other ecologic perils. In an article titled El Salvador's Environmental Crisis he writes:

A few years later, in response to this, subsistence farmers and fishermen/women whose livelihoods depended on the viability of these local ecosystems threatened by both climate change and the unsustainable practices of the sugar cane industry formed The Mangrove Association. This group works to support a grassroots coalition of community groups called La Coordinadora, which today includes more than 100 communities.

This community organising has formed into a resilient social movement that has created both a new way of organizing and viable alternatives for environmental sustainability.

In direct contradiction to the monoculture farming of sugar cane that is so destructive to the environment, as well as a crop that is easily destroyed during the extreme weather events associated with climate change, an example of this new model is how the region is shifting to diversified farming.

In an area that was previously a monoculture area of corn, Jesus Fuentes now runs his diversified farm on two hectares.

"Our efforts to counteract this regions vulnerability to climate change caused severe weather events have resulted in this farm for me,” Fuentes told Al Jazeera, "So now, one species may be damaged by a storm or flood, but not all of them."

In that way, he grows grain, fruit, vegetables, raises cows and chickens, and grows cashew nuts to augment his income. His family is fed entirely by what they grow themselves. When the area floods, at least one of his crops, such as cashews or mangoes, survive to provide food and income enough for the family to live on.

Not far from Fuentes' farm is the Bay of Jiquilisco Biosphere Reserve that holds the nesting grounds for four species of endangered sea turtles. Commercial fishing coupled with their eggs being sold as a delicacy on the black market has caused a perilous existence. Recent studies show that between 70 and 90 per cent of all Eastern Hawksbill nesting areas are found in the Bay of Jiquilisco.

To date, the Mangrove Association, through working with local communities, has created turtle hatcheries that have released over 750,000 sea turtles.

In this emerging environmental movement, women often play a leading role, as Jamail notes in an article titled Women at the Forefront of Grassroots Organising.  Jamail profiles several women leaders of civil society groups, including Cristina Reyes of Ciudad Romero:

Reyes said one of the most important achievements of women's organising work in recent years has been "the confidence we have given each other."

She has helped build a shelter managed by her community, a service for women that includes psychological counseling, and a way for women to file confidential reports on domestic violence or sexual abuse, and to obtain support.

Reyes' busy life is indicative of the increasingly important and prominent role that women are playing in grassroots social movements in El Salvador.

"We're at a place where we're trying to figure out what else we can do to help women," Reyes said. "We look forward to the future and to more of this work."

Take some time and read these articles to learn more. You can also find these articles and more information on environmental issues facing El Salvador, particularly in the Lower Lempa region, at the site of EcoViva.