El Salvador Perspectives

Organizations which advocate for human rights in El Salvador continue to differ over the US-run International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) . At the ILEA, law enforcement instructors from the US teach courses to police, judges and prosecutors from El Salvador and the rest of Latin America. The courses taught at the ILEA cover topics such as trafficking in persons, anti-gang activities, drug crimes and crime scene management. I have previously expressed my support of the ILEA concept. The most recent embodiment of the debate over the ILEA began with an article in the NACLA Report on the Americas by Wes Enzinna, a UC-Berkley graduate student in Latin American Studies and freelance journalist. Enzinna's article contains a variety of attacks against the ILEA including the refusal of the school to release its list of graduates or its training materials, the opposition of Salvadoran human rights groups, the clear human rights abuses of El Salvador's National Police, statemen...

My post concerning the ILEA a few days ago was more of a position piece than what I usually write. To help even things out, here is a report from a visit to the ILEA by representatives of the School of the Americas Watch: VISIT TO INTERNATIONAL LAW ACADEMY (ILEA) San Salvador By SOAW/CISPES Delegation - March 21, 2007 Report written by Lisa Sullivan, SOAW Latin America Coordinator Background on visit In March 2007 a delegation of the School of Americas Watch visited El Salvador as part of the SOAW Latin America initiative. El Salvador was the twelfth country visited by an SOAW delegation, part of a series of visits to all Latin American countries that are currently sending students to the SOA. The goal of the initiative is to encourage governments to reconsider their participation at SOA and to engage local organizations in the campaign to close the school. Prior to the visit to El Salvador, members of the delegation had heard numerous concerns expressed about the new Latin Americ...

Reviewing news articles this week, I came across an article in Upside Down World calling for protests to close the US-sponsored International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador. The article, written by J.L. Heyward of CISPES , is an unfortunate collection of unsupported allegations, irrelevant connections, and logical fallacies. Heyward's basic position is: The project is a US attempt to continue militarizing Latin American police and to essentially "export" the US's criminal justice system to Latin America from a base in El Salvador. It can also be thought of as a last ditch attempt of the US government to maintain dominance in the Latin American region, as socialist movement and electoral revolution is on the rise. I would think most people would think that exporting the US criminal justice system -- where judges and prosecutors are not corrupt, where the rights of the accused are respected, where police are experts at investigating crime -- would be a...

Many organizations which form the opposition in El Salvador are steadfastly opposed to the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) which will use US personnel to provide training of police, judges and prosecutors from around Latin America. Critics like CISPES and others , argue that the ILEA is simply a reincarnation of the discredited School of the Americas, where the US trained Latin American military forces in counter-insurgency tactics which often led to human rights abuses when the trainees returned home. But the issues are not so simple . El Salvador needs police with more training and professionalism if it is to solve its crime problems. And an important voice for human rights in El Salvador, the Human Rights Institute at the University of Central America is participating in the ILEA. Benjamin Cuellar, director of the Institute, was asked : Q. What do you say to people who criticize the institute for collaborating with the ILEA? There are two levels, the people who ...

The Salvadoran National Assembly yesterday approved the agreement with the US for establishment of an International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador. The ILEA will use US personnel to provide training of police, judges and prosecutors from around Latin America. The establishment of the ILEA has been vigorously opposed by the opposition in El Salvador and civil society organizations. Voices on the Border sets out well the grounds for the opposition to the ILEA: While no one argues that more training and professionalization would help the Salvadoran security forces; which since being re-formed after the war, have been plagued by accusations of corruption, arbitrary detention, and abuse; many question the ILEA as the ideal tool to accomplish that goal. Section 660 of the U.S. Foreign Aid Bill prohibits aid to foreign police forces except in democratic countries with exceptional human rights records. Although we cannot conflate todayÂ’s Salvadoran civilian police force w...

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) issued a lengthy memorandum this week criticizing the Bush administration's plans to establish an International Law Enforcement Academy in El Salvador for training Latin American police forces. Here is a taste of the memorandum: On June 10, the National Center for U.S. - El Salvador Sister Cities reported Saca'’s remarks that “all Salvadorans should feel proud that the United States has chosen us” to host the ILEA. The Center also reprinted a statement by Jaime Francisco Vigil, Director of the Salvadoran National Public Security Academy (ANSP), in which he suggested that the choice of El Salvador was made, in part, because its police force is the "most honest, nearest to the people, and is not corrupt like in other parts of the world.”" To the contrary, during the height of the Salvadoran civil conflict, tens of millions of dollars were passed under the table to senior officials of the Salvadoran security forces by U.S. emba...

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced at the meeting of the Organization of American states this week that El Salvador would be the location for a new International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) for the training of police personnel from throughout the western hemisphere. The ILEA was an idea first advanced by President Clinton in 1995. There are currently academies located in Europe, Asia and Africa. An academy for the Americas was proposed to be located in Costa Rica in 1997 and an agreement for the Costa Rica location was signed in 2002 . Opposition from social and human rights organizations, however, prevented the academy from ever being established in Costa Rica. Now it appears that the ARENA government has convinced the US that El Salvador would be a friendly site. The Human Rights Ombudsman for El Salvador, Beatrice Carrillo, has issued a sharply worded statement criticizing the proposal. She decried the threat to El Salvador's sovereignty represented by th...