Deportation trial focuses on torture practiced during Salvadoran civil war

The story of torture and other human rights abuses committed by Salvadoran armed forces during that country's bloody civil war is again being recounted in a Florida courtroom.  This time the site is an immigration court where the US is presenting evidence as it seeks to deport General Eugenio Vides Casanova, former head of the Salvadoran National Guard and former Defense Minister.  

An article in The Guardian describes the proceeding:

He was honoured by Ronald Reagan as a cold war ally and even retired to Florida, but Eugenio Vides Casanova's US welcome has evaporated as he faces deportation to El Salvador over torture accusations.

Vides, a former general and defence minister during one of central America's most vicious civil wars, was due to be charged on Monday in a Florida immigration court with grave crimes and should be sent home to face justice.

The case, which marks a departure in US policy, was welcomed as evidence that the Obama administration was dealing with the "scandal" of alleged human rights abusers from abroad enjoying retirement on US soil.

Vides, who received the Legion of Merit from President Reagan, is the first senior foreign military commander to face immigration charges brought by a special human rights office at the department of homeland security.

The New York Times is also covering the proceeding.

The general's role in human rights abuses was first brought to court in the US in an action seeking to have him and retired general Jose Guillermo García held responsible for the murder of the 4 US churchwomen. A South Florida jury did not find them liable. But another set of plaintiffs, including torture victim Juan Romagoza Arce, obtained a $54 million judgment against the same two generals in 2002. Many of the witnesses from those earlier cases, including Romagoza, and former US Ambassador Robert White are expected to testify in this newest legal proceeding.

The action against Vides Casanova is being brought by the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center  of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a policy to not allow the US to be a safe haven for human rights violators.   The Center is also pursuimg general Garcia for immigration fraud and seeking to deport him as well.

Multi-national business and poverty reduction

You don't often expect to see beverage company Coca-Cola, bottler SAB Miller, and the poverty and environment activists at Oxfam America collaborating. But the three organizations jointly issued a report this week titled Exploring the links between international business and poverty reduction — The Coca-Cola/SABMiller value chain impacts in Zambia and El Salvador . The report looks at the overall societal impact in El Salvador and Zambia of the operations and sales of Coca-Cola and of SAB/Miller which bottles Coke products. For these two companies, who depend on product sales to consumers, helping lift the economic prospects of local economies makes it possible for more consumers to purchase Coke products. (I'm not commenting on whether anyone needs to drink more Coke).

The report issued by Oxfam and the two multi-national corporations contains the following statement:

For overall growth to contribute toward poverty alleviation, it must be converted into incomes for the poor, where individuals have access to good jobs with acceptable rates of pay. This underscores the importance of driving inclusive economic growth to ensure that its benefits reach all social groups, and particularly the poorest members of society. Growth must be underpinned by improvements in education and health, gender equality and environmental protection in order for it to really make a difference in the lives of the poor.

While the private sector makes a vital contribution to poverty reduction, it must do so in cooperation with other stakeholders. Economic growth requires an enabling environment, in part created by good governance, robust regulation and enforcement practices, and clear accountability mechanisms. Together these elements provide a framework for governments to lead on poverty reduction in partnership with business and civil society. However, the framework for consistent, stable growth is not robust in many developing countries, and poverty is often widespread.

The rest of the report evaluates the impact of company operations in El Salvador and Zambia from the harvesting of sugar cane to the retail sales of Coke in little neighborhood shops:

Sugar for the production of the Coca-Cola Company beverages in El Salvador is purchased by SABMiller’s bottlers bottling plant, Industrias La Constancia, primarily from two sugar mills: Central Izalco and El Angel, as well as diverse inputs from other suppliers. ILC’s bottling plant in the country is located just outside San Salvador in Nejapa. Coca-Cola products are then distributed through ILC’s own distribution depots by its own trucks and independent owner-drivers and by third-party distributors to an estimated more than 64,000 customers, including small retail shops and large supermarkets.

The report estimates that these operations in El Salvador are responsible for 4200 jobs in the formal Salvadoran economy. There are a variety of costs associated with the operations noted in the report, but it would be fair to characterize the report as finding the soft drink operations to be a net positive for El Salvador yet with significant areas where the companies could perform better.


Hat tip to Fritz.

Salvadoran wins international environmental activism prize

Francisco Pineda, a leader in the anti-mining movement in Cabañas, was named yesterday one of the 2011 recipients of the Goldman Environmental Prize. The Goldman Prize annually honors grassroots environmental heroes from six continents. The Prize "recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk." Each winner receives a cash award of $150,000

Francisco Pineda is a farmer with a degree in sustainable agriculture and is the founder and president of the Environmental Committee of Cabañas, a community volunteer association. In the process of organizing his community against a waste dump that would have polluted local water supplies, he taught himself about water ecology and became an environmental leader in his region.

Since 2004, Pineda's environmental organizing has included opposition to the gold mining planned by Pacific Rim. Pineda and his colleagues have been educating the people of Cabañas by going door-to-door and organizing community meetings. Since 2004, the movement has grown to include 26 communities and more than 450 members. Pineda helped establish the National Anti-Mining Board and with his coalition organized a series of local and national demonstrations to bring more attention to the issue.

Being a community organizer opposed to a major economic project like a gold mine is deadly business. In 2009, assassins killed other members of the environmental movement in Cabañas. Pineda, however, continues his activism on behalf of the environment in Cabañas and other areas of El Salvador.

This video highlights the work of Pineda.

El Salvador from the Inside

I don't know how I had missed this blog before, but well worth a visit is the blog El Salvador from the Inside which has the subtitle "stories about a resilient people." Written by a "gringa in El Salvador," the blog captures great scenes of ordinary life in El Salvador. Recent posts have included tales of wandering street vendors, washing in a pila, and an old gentleman and his birds.

El Salvador looks to develop local cash crops

The local Salvadoran market could support farmers who grow cash crops like avocados, tomatoes and plantains. That's the conclusion of the Salvadoran government working with the US Millennium Challenge Corp. to develop the economy of the northern zones of the country.

Blogger Colleen O'Brien describes the market which the government hopes to tap:

Five products were identified as the most economically important in the region: Hass avocados, pineapples, tomatoes, plantains, and cacao. Hass avocados are a variety developed in the U.S. using a strain from Guatemala, and now dominate the worldwide market. El Salvador consumes about 12 thousand tons each year, but only produces a little over 2 thousand tons. Pineapples are the second most cultivated crop in the world after bananas; El Salvador imports 12 thousand tons and produces 8 thousand tons. Tomatoes are another economically important crop; approximately 70 thousand tons are imported to satisfy the local needs - only 28 thousand tons are produced in the country, demonstrating a major gap between demand and supply. Two crops that Fomilenio is hoping to boost for the export market are cacao and plantains. Cacao (Theobroma cacao), also called cocoa tree, is an evergreen tree native to El Salvador. Its seeds are used to make cocoa powder and chocolate, and typically fetches a high return on investment. Plantains are the other crop Fomilenio would like to see grown in increasing numbers. El Salvador is the third largest importer of plantains in the world, and according to experts from Fomilenio, it is a profitable crop that can be a viable alternative to sugarcane production. Under irrigation, the production levels could be very high; Fomilenio believes 130 thousand hectares of land could be devoted to this crop.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Radicals in El Salvador

Although the left-wing FMLN heads the National Assembly, and its candidate Mauricio Funes became president in 2009, there are a vocal group of young radicals in El Salvador who advocate for more revolutionary change.  Their anger focuses on the role of the US in Salvadoran affairs and the military and police tactics of their government fighting a tremendous crime problem.

An article titled Dispatch From El Salvador: Obama’s Drug War Feels Eerily Familiar looks at the discontent of the far-left in the country:

Watching this army of cell phone-wielding protesters through the smoke of rickety buses, it feels eerily like 1980, the year El Salvador’s civil war started, after U.S.-trained death squads murdered Monsenor Oscar Arnulfo Romero—the country’s ultimate symbol of peace, and of the consequences of militarization. Then, the militarization of society was driven by political ideologies; today, it is driven by the purported war on drugs. In both cases, the driving force has been Washington, D.C.’s agenda—and its guns....

For Ana Maria and many of her generation of radical Salvadorenas, Obama has replaced Ronald Reagan as the new face of danger on the tank and troop-filled streets of San Salvador. The military is the centerpiece of Obama’s El Salvador agenda. His Central American Citizen’s Security Partnership offers $200 million in technical assistance and aid to military-security forces, which he says will “confront the narco-traffickers and gangs that have caused so much violence.” Students believe the initiative is once again militarizing daily life, under cover of drug wars. (Read more).

The radicals are not numerically significant, but they do like to take to the streets. Opinion polls, however, show that most Salvadorans are centrists at heart.

El Faro -- El Salvador's quality online news source

My most trusted source of information about politics and the news of El Salvador is the online periodical El Faro. Carlos Dada, founder of El Faro, recently described the work of El Faro in ReVista, the Harvard review of Latin America. He explained the role of independent media like El Faro:

It is often said that there is no democracy without independent media; but the opposite is also true: there are no independent media without a democracy. Today, the democratic processes of the Central American countries are at risk. The levels of violence, impunity and victimization are alarmingly high, and citizens demonstrate, in poll after poll, less hope and more inclination to support other types of regimes if they can guarantee safety and a decent living. Democracy, they say, has not been able to satisfy those basic needs.

The problem, of course, is that democratic institutions have not been able to deliver a better life for citizens. Even though we have registered great achievements since the end of the armed conflicts, the status of institutions in Central America has regressed in most cases and stalled in El Salvador, the healthiest country in that context.

We strongly believe that independent media play a crucial role in demanding accountability and pointing out what is not being done right in the state institutions. Thus, we put a strong emphasis on investigating corruption and abuse of power.

I'll be continuing to look to El Faro for stories to share with readers of this blog.

El Salvador tallies the victims on the route through Mexico

El Salvador's foreign ministry released a report this week detailing the violence against Salvadoran migrants travelling through Mexico on their way to the United States. The press conference given by the government was reported in the Latin American Herald Tribune:

SAN SALVADOR – At least 21 Salvadoran migrants were killed last year in Mexico while trying to reach the United States, while 250 others were the victims of serious crimes or human rights abuses, El Salvador’s foreign ministry said.

Deputy Minister Juan Jose Garcia said that 14 of the slain Salvadorans were among the 72 undocumented migrants massacred last August in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas by suspected members of the Los Zetas drug cartel.

“The crime of kidnapping was one of the main attacks that violated the basic rights of the Salvadoran migrants. In all, the consular network (in Mexico) registered 12 collective cases of the kidnapping of migrants coming from El Salvador,” according to the foreign ministry report....

“The total number of cases that we have registered is 126, 31 cases of human rights violations and 95 of serious crimes. The number of victims is 250,” he said.

The report notes, however, that the victims have almost certainly been undercounted. Although not calling the report an indictment of Mexico, the report does identify incidents where Mexican police were involved in the kidnapping of migrants.

Many of the murder victims died in the massacre in Tamaulipas, Mexico in August, 2010. Salvadoran authorities recently arrested one of the coyotes, human smugglers, responsible for arranging passage for many of the Salvadoran migrants killed in Tamaulipas.