El Salvador Perspectives

Flooding in Olocuilta July 9 El Salvador Perspectives has been on vacation for the past month.  Here is a short summary of some of the major stories during that time. Flooding rains which impacted much of the country continue. Days of flooding rain began in mid-June over El Salvador and other parts of Central America as tropical weather systems impacted the region.  In El Salvador, at least 19 people died in floods, mudslides and other calamities due to the rain between June 14 and 19 with thousands forced to evacuate to government run shelters.  After that first week of flooding in mid-June, the country continued to be buffeted by more storms and rains.  Saturated soils meant that rainfall runoff quickly overran river banks or prompted trees to fall over.   The storms have continued in early July.   As of July 8, there were 8 government run shelters open housing 196 people.  A child drowned in flood waters over the weekend.  Beyond ...

Rainbow colored pedestrian crosswalks in San Salvador support the rights of the LGBTQ community according to an article by Melissa Vida at GlobalVoices titled  El Salvador’s ‘Rainbow Crosswalk’ Promotes Pedestrian Safety and LGBTQ Rights .  The sidewalks first appeared at the end of June.   Vida writes: In El Salvador, more than 20 artists and LGBTQ rights activists painted crosswalks with the colors of the rainbow LGBTQ pride flag between the Boulevard of Heroes and Andes Avenue. This is the first time that a Central American country has authorized support for the LGBTQ community in this way.  To have a permanent work of art in the center of the country's capital city, the Salvadorian LGBTQ community achieved an important advance in their visibility and their normalization in society, something that goes far beyond the Gay Pride Month which is organized in June. While I have my doubts that the crosswalks will have any impact on pedestrian safety in San Salvado...

There appears to be no improvement at all in the situation of violence faced by the LGBTQI community in El Salvador, especially the trans community.  The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called for an investigation into the number of murders of transgender individuals in El Salvador. From a Reuters report : An uptick in deadly violence against transgender women in El Salvador prompted the United Nations on Friday to call for an investigation into crimes against sexual minorities in the conservative Central American country.  So far this year, seven transgender women have been killed in El Salvador, according to the Geneva-based Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Local LGBT organizations put the death toll at 17 through the first four months of the year.  In 2016, at least 25 transgender women were killed over the course of the entire year, according to the local organizations.  Leading transgender activist Kar...

The recent murders of three transgender individuals in the department of La Paz in El Salvador highlight the violence and discrimination which LGBT persons face in El Salvador.  The murders which occurred in the final two weeks of February have terrorized an already threatened community in the country. From the Washington Blade : Bryam Rodríguez of the San Salvador-based Generación de Hombres Trans de El Salvador told the Blade on Friday that his organization is “outraged by incidents of discrimination, violence and principally the reported and unreported hate crimes that are taking place in the area of San Luis Talpa.”  “There is no doubt that the actions committed by these criminals are promoted by transphobia, machismo and the government’s lack of interest (in urging) the police to conduct an exhaustive investigation to find those responsible and punish them for their acts,” added Rodríguez. The US State Department is reported to "support" an investigation into th...

Rev. V. Gene Robinson, a retired Episcopal Bishop from New Hampshire, recently visited LGBT prisoners held in a Salvadoran prison.  He wrote about it in an essay on the Daily Beast website titled Out and Proud in El Salvador's Gangland :   It is the transgender prisoners that touch my heart the most. Amazingly, many of them are quite stylishly dressed and wearing makeup, which is surprising, given the conditions in which they are detained, and even more surprising considering the environment in which they are currently living out their lives. Consider, just for a moment, what it takes to be in the body of man and to wear high heels, make up and earrings in a place like this which is the epitome of machismo. It takes an enormous amount of courage for any person, born into the body of one gender but feeling on the inside like the opposite gender, to live her life authentically. To do so in a Salvadoran prison defies comprehension and inspires respect for their grit and d...

The headline of the article is  Transgender people voted for the first time in El Salvador's history ,  but the situation the article describes is much less sanguine.   Despite a recent victory over discrimination at polling locations, the LGBT community in El Salvador faces entrenched societal and institutional discrimination in El Salvador.   Journalists Danielle Marie Mackey and Gloria Marisela Moran provide a candid assessment of the slow progress towards the elimination of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

As the issue of same sex marriage and LGBT rights dominates US media this week, I thought I would share this article from the Episcopal News Service titled  The making of an LGBT ministry in El Salvador .   It was November 2007. Not long after Torres arrived, a male couple found the church. And then came another gay man and another, and eventually the number grew to six. Bishop of El Salvador Martin Barahona suggested that the group help the diocese begin a ministry on sexual diversity, but the group declined, Torres said. “We said, ‘No, El Salvador isn’t ready.’”  Two years later, the group was meeting regularly on Saturday afternoons and had doubled in size.  “We were 12, and we started to talk about our experiences in the [other] churches, and we said maybe it was time to call and invite the people we know,” Torres said. “Half of the people who came wanted to change [their sexual orientation] but that wasn’t our vision or our mission.”...  The group’...

The Denver publication Westword has a cover article this week which shines a light on violence against LGBT persons living in El Salvador. The story, titled Coming Out to America , tells the story of Kassandra, a transgender Salvadoran woman fled to the US, seeking asylum from the violence, prejudice and persecution she faced at home.   A 2010 report to the UN titled The Violation of the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Persons in El Salvador provides an overview of the situation facing LGBT individuals in the country. The story of Kassandra puts a personal face on that situation.

Attempts to amend El Salvador's constitution to prohibit same sex marriages have stalled in El Salvador's National Assembly for now. The decision of the FMLN to withhold its support from the amendment kept the proposal from gaining the necessary two-thirds majority vote. The IPS news service has a lengthy analysis of the politics of LGBT rights and the constitutional amendments in El Salvador: The proposed reform would add a stipulation that only "men and women who were born so" are competent to enter into marriage. In addition, "Marriages between persons of the same sex celebrated or recognised under the laws of other countries, and other unions that do not fulfil the conditions established under Salvadoran law, will be null and void in El Salvador." ... Amendments to articles 32, 33 and 34 of the constitution, closing off any possibility of marriage or civil union between homosexuals, or the adoption of children by same-sex couples, were introduced to ...

There is currently a greeting card campaign to show solidarity with the head of Entre Amigos, an organization working in the GLBT community in El Salvador: LONDON, November 20, 2006 – Amnesty International is encouraging people across the UK to send a message of solidarity to William Hernández – a gay activist in El Salvador who has received death threats apparently intended to deter him from campaigning – as Amnesty launches its annual Greetings Card Campaign. William Hernández is the director of Asociación Entre Amigos (Between Friends Association) and he and other members of the organization have received death threats. It is believed that these threats are attempts to prevent Hernández and his colleagues from providing sex education to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and also to discourage them to speak out against human rights violations against LGBT people. Learn about how to send a card as part of this campaign here . You can also find links to other inform...

Dozens of gay and lesbian protesters marched today in a Gay Pride March in San Salvador. The marchers demanded an end to discrimination and equal opportunities in employment and education. On the same day, El Salvador's Roman Catholic archbishop, Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, used his weekly press conference to urge the legislature to pass an amendment to El Salvador's constitution which would ban same sex marriages. For some background about GLBT issues in El Salvador, you may want to read this post by Meg about Entre Amigos, a group which sponsors the Gay Pride marches and works with the GLBT population in El Salvador, or this background article . UPDATE Shortly after I wrote this post, Meg updated her own blog with a post on Salvadoran Gay Pride , which provides much more insight.

A variety of issues have been discussed in the Salvadoran blogosphere in past weeks. Much discussion went to Jack Hitt's article in the April 9, 2006 Sunday New York Times Magazine titled Pro-Life Nation . In the article, Hitt describes El Salvador's complete criminalization of abortion which includes the prosecution and imprisonment of women who have abortions, and there are no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother. The article produced a spirited debate in comments on Tim's El Salvador Blog where some celebrated the "pro-life" policy of the government and others condemned the idea that a government which was not addressing poverty and childhood diseases could be considered as pro-life. Meanwhile numerous liberal blogs commented on Pro-Life Nation by forecasting that it was the future of abortion law in the US if conservative groups had their way. Blog posts such as I have seen the future and it is El Salvador on the Carpetbagger Repo...