Thinking about Honduras

One week ago, the military in Honduras ousted Manuel Zelaya as president of that country. Since that time, the great majority of the world community, including the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), El Salvador and the US have condemned the military coup. When the OAS declared that Honduras would be suspended from the organization if the country did not restore Zelaya to the presidency by Saturday, July 4, the new government in Honduras responded by quitting the OAS. Tensions are running high today as Zelaya plans to return to Honduras and the government plans to stop him.

I'm not a student of Honduran government and politics, so I have not been writing about the coup in this blog. The blogging community does have several good sources of information in English and Spanish about the evolving situation. A Global Voices blog post published just before the ouster of Zelaya gives an overview of the tensions in the country in the days leading up to the coup. Global Voices followed up with a post on the night following the coup.

Latin America blogger Boz offers his usual insightful commentary about what is going on in the country. Among his comments:

The interim Micheletti government in Honduras has not helped itself by issuing a curfew, censoring the media and breaking up protests. Their attempts to claim democratic legitimacy don't look particularly convincing when they decide to shut down pro-Zelaya media outlets and censor the international coverage entering the country. The only remotely positive thing they've done is call for presidential elections in November as scheduled, but that doesn't negate the fact that the government could be an unelected regime for the next six months.

There are a number of themes which run through discussions of the Honduran coup:

• Was it a "coup" at all? Both the legislature and the Supreme Court in Honduras found that Zelaya's proposed referendum on changing the Constitution was illegal and support his ouster.

• Aren't we past the time in Latin American history when masked army troops can come into the presidential residence and depose a democratically elected president?

• Are Zelaya's close ties with Hugo Chaez of Venezuela and Castro in Cuba a reason to support his removal?

• What justification exists for the new Honduran government to shut down television stations and the press, impose a curfew, arrest foreign journalists, use force against demonstrators, and generally squash the ability of Hondurans to learn what is going on in the country?
  
  
• There is a significant block of Hondurans who support Zelaya's ouster, what right do international organizations have to dictate the internal politics of the country?

For some up to date blogging on Honduras, try the LatinAmericanist, IncaKola News, Justin Delacour or Boz, and in Spanish there is the Honduras Resistencia Blog.

El Salvador condemns coup in neighboring Honduras

Military forces ousted Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected President of Honduras early Sunday morning in a coup. Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes condemned the overthrow and announced that El Salvador would not recognize the new government installed in Tegucigalpa. Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua all announced they would close their borders to land trade with Honduras for 48 hours.

Activist disappears

Friends and family are speaking out about the disappearance of Marcelo Rivera, an activist involved in many contentious issues. From the Voices on the Border blog:

The social leader and activist, Marcelo Rivera, has been missing since June 18, and people in the community of San Isidro, where Rivera lived and worked claim that his disappearance is a result of human rights offenses and institutional corruption. While community members in San Isidro, Cabañas demonstrate against his disappearance and demand his return, the search for Rivera has had shown no success thus far.

Rivera was last seen by neighbors and family on June 18 in late afternoon hours in El Molino in the jurisdiction of Ilobasco. The search began on Sunday, June 20, led by family, neighbors, and community members. Some family members have said that they “have not seen involvement in the investigation neither from the PNC, or from the Attorney General of the Republic.”

The activist is a well-known social figure as a member of the Departmental Board of Directors of the FMLN, Director of the Casa de la Cultura, and Legal Representative of the Association of Friends of San Isidro Cabañas (ASIC). In January, Rivera was a head opposition leader in the denunciation of local election results in San Isidro, claiming fraud and corruption. Rivera has also been highly involved in the resistance to Pacific Rim’s mining projects.

Homies Unidos executive director indicted

Homies Unidos is an NGO working in Los Angeles and El Salvador to work with gang members and to attempt to get them to leave their violent and destructive lifestyles. I've written about the group on this blog.

Today comes the surprising news that the organization's executive director in Los Angeles, Alex Sanchez, has been arrested on federal racketeering charges along with 23 other purported MS-13 gang members.

According to a press release on the FBI Los Angeles office website:

The sixteen-count federal indictment, unsealed today, charges 24 members and associates of MS-13 with participating in a racketeering conspiracy that involved a variety of crimes including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion, robbery, narcotics trafficking, and witness intimidation, over a period of fifteen years. The indictment alleges the defendants who engaged in the racketeering enterprise, were responsible for seven murders and eight conspiracies to commit murder since 1995....

The indictment charges Alex Sanchez, the Executive Director of "Homies Unidos," a non-profit organization which purports to use the public and private charitable contributions it receives for gang intervention efforts. Sanchez is charged with racketeering offenses, including conspiracy to murder, during the time he was associated with Homies Unidos.

Sanchez was from El Salvador and was admittedly a former MS-13 member. In 2002, he won political asylum allowing him to remain in the US:

Sanchez, now 37, was deported in 1994 to his homeland, El Salvador, because of a decade-old auto-theft conviction and a subsequent parole violation for possessing a firearm. A year later, he returned illegally to the U.S. and eventually helped form the local chapter of Homies Unidos....

In requesting political asylum for Sanchez, his attorney, Alan Diamante, argued that his client might be killed if he was returned to El Salvador because of his links to the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha and his stance against police corruption.

The police chief of San Salvador, [former California State Senator Tom] Hayden, three anthropologists, a photojournalist and a psychologist were among the witnesses who testified on behalf of Sanchez.

The work of Homies Unidos in El Salvador led CNN to name its director there, Luis Ernesto Romero, a CNN Hero in 2007. There is no suggestion that Romero is implicated in any way by the indictment. More information is available in this Wall Street Journal article.

From the FBI press release, the indictment and arrests appear to center on the actions of the gang in the Los Angeles area. Anything which works to weaken MS-13 is a good thing, but hopefully the spillover from the arrest of Sanchez won't destroy the good work that Homies Unidos had been doing in El Salvador. (Although it is easy to foresee that donations to the nonprofit group will quickly dry up because of the cloud over the organization). The Homies Unidos website was reachable earlier in the day today, but has since been removed from the web.

Past corruption to be investigated

A change of power in the government provides the opportunity to expose corruption practiced by the prior ruling party. In El Salvador, new president Mauricio Funes has formed a commission to investigate corruption under the prior right wing administrations of ARENA. Funes is already making public alleged examples of graft in government agencies. Raúl Gutiérrez at IPS has an article describing Funes' initiative against corruption:

SAN SALVADOR, Jun 23 (IPS) - Serious allegations of corruption involving central figures in the government of right-wing former Salvadoran president Antonio Saca (2004-2009) will be investigated by a commission led by Finance Minister Carlos Cáceres.

Left-wing President Mauricio Funes, who took office on Jun. 1, announced the decision in his first address to the nation, in which he referred to situations encountered by members of his cabinet in several of the ministries they took over.

The presidential commission will be made up of experts and lawyers who will document every case and recommend appropriate measures, said Funes, who won the Mar. 15 elections as the candidate for the formerly insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party.

The team of experts will investigate the National Registry Centre (CNR), the ministries of Public Health and Social Assistance, Interior, and the Environment and Natural Resources, as well as the Salvadoran Institute of Social Security (ISSS).

One of the most shocking cases, according to Funes, is at the CNR, the land and property registration institution, where there are alleged to be 29 "ghost employees" on the payroll, drawing salaries every month but never turning up for work.

These irregularities require an immediate, thorough investigation, to identify administrative and criminal responsibilities, said the president, who did not rule out the possible existence of further anomalies. (more )

It's politically expedient to attack the corruption of a prior government. The tough part is making sure that your friends and allies don't engage in the same activities now that they are in power.

Soccer as a gang prevention tool

Maria Hoisington,a student of Latin American Studies and Human Rights at the University of Washington, published an article in Upside Down World looking at one community's use of soccer leagues to help keep youth out of gangs:

Not only have these policies been unsuccessful in gang abatement, police repression and targeting of youth has, in effect, criminalized the act of being young. In the past five years, there have been constant outcries from non-governmental organizations, human rights groups, opposition party members, and civil society denouncing repression and calling for alternative solutions. I spent April and May of 2009 in El Salvador researching one of these alternatives; a violence prevention program implemented in 2006 by the local government in San Martín, a municipality located outside the capital city, San Salvador. San Martín has historically been one of the most violent municipalities in the country, but has enjoyed substantial success in lowering its crime statistics and providing opportunity for youth during the past three years. The manner in which the local government in San Martín discusses and treats youth issues is drastically different from that of the national government, and directly affects how local youth view their own opportunities and participation in society. A key aspect of the program, known as Plan ‘San Martín Seguro’, or ‘A Safe San Martín’, is a soccer league for youth ages six to eighteen. My investigation focused on the experience of young men who participate in the league. Our discussions centered around the marginalization of communities due to gang presence, the soccer league as a tool for violence prevention, and their experiences of police repression.(more)

No single approach to fighting gang violence in El Salvador will be sufficient. Prevention efforts like these soccer leagues help combat gang recruitment. Other efforts are needed to strengthen Salvadoran families, to improve the effectiveness of the police and the courts, and to provide opportunities for employment for young adults. There will be no quick fixes.

Will Funes achieve the agenda of the left?

My friend Danny Burridge recently wrote an article titled El Salvador: Promises, Perils and Reality published by the North American Congress on Latin America. In the article, he looks at the goals of Salvadoran civil society organizations on the left and whether Funes can and will achieve them. Here is an excerpt:

The peaceful and historic transfer of power in El Salvador reflects the consolidation of "formal" democracy, but deep social change and true democracy are still slightly beyond the horizon. Its years as a guerrilla organization and decades as an opposition party have left the FMLN as a largely hierarchical political organization. The party could build on its formidable grassroots network and work towards becoming an institution that facilitates democratic participation in government decision-making.

Funes will be under intense pressure from myriad interests to reduce the influence of El Salvador's diverse social movement and jettison his promised preferential option for the poor. Despite inevitable missteps, and critics' destabilizing discourses, the Salvadoran people will need to provide critical yet massive support to the Funes government in strengthening the paths toward true change.

Danny Burridge lives and works in San Salvador as the a coordinator for the Volunteer Missionary Movement.

Surf's up

El Salvador's Pacific coastline has big waves, and big waves make for great surfing. I came across this El Salvador surf video on a blog called KZURC:

UPDATE:
A regular reader of the blog wrote to remind me not to forget the drowning danger in the dangerous riptides and undertows which exist at various beaches. Many have drowned. Read my post from last year about the tragic avoidable accidents.

The fight against crime

The toughest problem facing the new FMLN government is getting El Salvador's violent crime problem under control. The previous ARENA administrations had no luck at all. Out friends at Voices on the Border describe the first steps announced by Mauricio Funes to combat cime:

On Thursday of last week, President Funes announced his plans to reinforce the national police force (PNC) and invest around $11.5 million in improving their capabilities and conditions. He spoke at a press conference following the induction of Carlos Antonio Ascencio Girón as the new General Director of the PNC and Mauricio Landaverde as the Assistant Director.

The president also announced that beginning in July, all sergeants, corporals, and agents would receive an extra $2 per work day towards food costs. The cost of these bonuses will total $36,064 per day for the18,032 members of the police force included in the plan.

The PNC will also add 1,300 new agents who will provide reinforcements in 25 of the most violent municipalities in the country. Funes also plans to form municipal commissions that will work in coordination with the police and the mayor’s office to prevent violence. In rural areas, groups will work will the armed forces (FAES). The archbishop of El Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, recently voiced his support for the collaboration of the FAES and the PNC.

In the first 13 days of June, an average of 14 people were killed per day, over 10 times more than in the United States. Much of this violence is connected with gangs and affects the younger population. In the past, there have been reports of police corruption and collaboration with gangs and drug trafficking.

President Funes also made it clear that his administration would not tolerate corruption within the PNC. He stated that “[t]hose that betray the institution and their fellow officers by involving themselves in crime will not have a place in the police family…they will be removed from the institution and will be held responsible for their actions.”

40th anniversary of the Soccer War

Almost 40 years ago, in July 1969, El Salvador and Honduras fought the "Soccer War", so-called because of tensions triggered by World Cup soccer qualifying matches played between the two countries that summer. Forty years later, those old animosities have subsided, and the countries played another World Cup qualifying match as this article describes:

I went inside, the only gringo in the room, and ordered a beer and sat down next to a big guy named Pedro. He was a Salvadoreño who had lived most of his life in the American capital, where virtually all the handiwork, construction, delivery, and gardening is done by men from the Latin republics, yet Pedro's passion for his fatherland -- and for football -- had never waned. Like all the others in the gaudy club, he had come to watch a World Cup qualifying match between his country and its neighbour, an important step on the path toward a place in next year's finals in South Africa, but more meaningful -- to me, at least -- as proof of the healing power of time.

It was exactly 40 years ago -- during the summer of Apollo 11 and of blissed-out Woodstock -- that El Salvador and Honduras went into combat for three deadly days in what came to be known as the Football War. The Salvadoran army pushed deep into Honduran territory before its supply lines were obliterated by the enemy's propeller-driven air force. Thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed and the enmity persisted for decades. But now the men of both countries could sit together in a foreign tavern and watch a rematch without fear.

The history books say that the Football War began as a dispute involving hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans who had migrated from their tiny, overcrowded republic to neighbouring Honduras, seeking land to till. Tensions simmered through the decade, then erupted into rioting during World Cup qualifying matches in each country in mid-July, 1969 -- the very week that Neil Armstrong was making his "giant leap for all mankind" on the Sea of Tranquility.

Honduras won the World Cup qualifying match this week, defeating the Salvadorans 1-0.