El Salvador Perspectives

Thirty seven years ago this month, four Dutch journalists were ambushed by troops of the Salvadoran army and murdered.

In early 1982, El Salvador was a dangerous place for journalists covering the civil war between FMLN guerrillas and the country's armed forces. Despite the danger, four Dutch journalists,Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Joop Willemse and Hans ter Laag, ventured out to the department of Chalatenango to get an interview with guerrilla fighters. The Salvadoran army ambushed their group and killed all the journalists.

The ambush was one of the war crimes documented in the 1993 UN Truth Commission Report following the conclusion of El Salvador's civil war:

On the afternoon of 17 March 1982, four Dutch journalists accompanied by five or six members of FMLN, some of them armed, were ambushed by a patrol of the Atonal Battalion of the Salvadorian armed forces while on their way to territory under FMLN control. The incident occurred not far from the San Salvador-Chalatena…

Religious and water rights groups organized today to protest a mega-real estate project in the municipality of Apopa, just northeast of San Salvador at the base of the San Salvador volcano.   The proposed urbanization development of  8000 houses, shopping centers, churches and more threatens the available water resources in the region, according to the groups.

The development is called "Valle El Ángel" and is a project of real estate developer Urbánica.    Urbánica is a business of the wealthy Dueñas family in El Salvador.  Currently the land, along the Pan-American highway, is primarily used to grow sugar cane. 



Urbánica last year described the development as a mixed-use small city consisting of 840 acres where it would build 6500 houses with a contemplated investment of $500 million over 20 years.
The project was initially promoted with great fanfare in 2016 as the Dueñas family announced they had reached agreement with the water authority ANDA to allow them to drill 9 d…

March 24 is the 39th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero by a death squad in El Salvador.   It was one of the opening events of a bloody civil war which would have tens of thousands of civilian victims.

Despite the notoriety of the murder of a man who would subsequently be declared a martyred saint of the Roman Catholic church, no prosecution of his killers has ever reached conclusion in the Salvadoran courts.

After an amnesty law was passed in 1993, no prosecution moved forward for 23 years until that law was declared void by the Constitutional Chamber in El Salvador.   Shortly thereafter the case against Romero's killers was reopened, but there has been little visible progress.  The Due Process of Law Foundation has a good summary this week of where such legal proceedings stand today:
The Attorney General’s office (under Douglas Meléndez, whose term ended in early January 2019) publicly supported the reopening of the Romero case. Nonetheless, Judge Chicas had to is…

On this International Water Day, a march proceeded in the streets of San Salvador demanding that the country protect its water resource and that water not be privatized or put under the direction of business interests.  The march headed towards the headquarters of the sugar cane trade association because the industrial sugar producers are one of the largest water exploiters in the country.

It was the second water march in three days.   On Wednesday, the University of El Salvador ("UES") led marchers  towards the National Assembly.   The UES was protesting a legislative proposal approved in committee which would give private interests representation on a governing water board. 

The UES march resulted in some protesters allegedly damaging property including automobiles and windows.   Two protesters were taken into custody.

That is where Nayib Bukele got into the act tweeting:
Exijo a la @PNC_SV la inmediata liberación de los estudiantes de la @UESoficial que están detenidos.

…

The legislative battle over who will have a voice in regulating El Salvador's water resources has heated up this week and is perhaps headed towards a final showdown.

The task of drafting new water legislation in El Salvador is in the hands of the Environment Committee of the National Assembly.   On Monday, the Committee approved a provision which would create a governing body (the "ente rector") over water resources composed of seven members.  Those seven members consist of one each from:

Ministry of the Environment (MARN)Ministry of Agriculture (MAG)University of El SalvadorLocal water boardsMunicipal governmentsPrivate industrial usersPrivate agricultural users (sugar cane)
Those last two members from private business interests generate serious concerns and opposition from environmental groups.  The position of a broad alliance of water rights groups is that there should be no private interests holding a right to appoint specific members of the governing body.   They la…