El Salvador Perspectives

The Central America Free Trade Agreement became effective for El Salvador on March 1. In at least one sector of El Salvador's economy, textiles, the treaty has produced no benefits. In fact, textile exports from El Salvador to the US have dropped significantly in the past two months according to statistics from the US Commerce Department Office of Textiles and Apparel . An article from the Gannet News Service explains some of the reasons why textile exports from Central America to the US have dropped since March 1: "[CAFTA has] caused trade to be much harder to do in Central America," said Copland, president and chief executive officer of Copland Industries, near Burlington, N.C. The primary problem is that only three of the countries - El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua - have ratified the agreement that allows them to ship textile and apparel goods duty-free to the United States. Duties or import taxes on textile goods from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and ...

My friend Meg recently wrote in her blog : [In El Salvador] there is a strong presence of influential women with strong character. I have met women here who are a definite force to be reckoned with and are seen as the matriarch of a whole family or community at times. These are the women who keep careful watch over every child (no matter what age) and keep the men in line and on their toes. In such a machismo culture, I find this reality to be surprising and a bit refreshing. Some recent articles highlight the efforts and organizing of some of these women of strong character, working to improve conditions in El Salvador for themselves and their children. On the AJWS website , the work of the Institute for the Investigation, Training and Development of Women (IMU), is featured. This organization seeks to empower women in post-war El Salvador: El Salvador'’s civil war had a high level of female participation and women served as armed combatants in addition to providing domesti...

The high levels of violence in the country continue without solutions . Much of the violence is tied to gang activity . Blogger Hunnapuh notes that pressured by the business sector, which fears that foreign investment will avoid a country with high levels of violence, president Tony Saca has finally recognized that the situation is not improving. Long forgotten is his campaign promise to make El Salvador the safest country in Central America (currently it has the highest murder rate). Ligia at Que Joder writes about the violence that: The police don't have a formula to stop this, nor the psychologists, nor the family. Firm hands, helping hands, workshops, talks about values -- these interventions don't work because the causes are not the same or simple. For the moment, that's all we know. Meanwhile, El Visitador is incredulous that the left-wing opposition FMLN wants to change the government's current anti-poverty program, Solidarity Net, so that funds go to mun...

The AP has a fairly dramatic story of an American heart surgeon who was operating on a charity mission at Benjamin Bloom Children's Hospital in San Salvador: A heart surgeon had to take a break from a mercy-mission operation in El Salvador so he could donate his own rare-type blood for his 8-year-old patient. Dr. Samuel Weinstein said he had his blood drawn, ate a Pop-Tart, returned to the operating table and watched as his blood helped the boy survive the complex surgery.... The 43-year-old Weinstein was on a charity trip with Heart Care International when he did the surgery at Bloom Hospital in San Salvador. In the May 11 operation, which had begun 12 hours earlier, the boy's failing aortic valve was replaced with his pulmonary valve and the pulmonary valve was replaced with an artificial valve. "The surgery had been going well, everything was working great, but he was bleeding a lot and they didn't have a lot of the medicines we would use to stop the bleeding,"...

The International Monetary Fund recently released a report on the state of El Salvador's economy from the perspective of this global monetary institution. Here is an excerpt: The economy has weathered well the oil price shock and the effects of tropical storm Stan. Real GDP grew almost 3 percent in 2005 and is running at a pace of 3½ percent for this year. Inflation has moderated after a brief increase last October due to the pass-through of higher oil prices and temporary food price increases caused by the tropical storm. The external current account deficit widened slightly to 4½ percent of GDP in 2005 due to a higher oil import bill, despite stronger workers' remittances and rising prices for traditional exports. The government's program for 2006 seeks to maintain sound macroeconomic policies, place priority on social spending, and deepen structural reforms, with the aim of enhancing economic growth and social prospects. The mission supported plans to strengthen tax re...

The Business Software Alliance yesterday released its 2006 Global Software Piracy Study . The BSA estimates that in 2005, 81% of software in El Salvador was pirated, ranking El Salvador one of the 20 countries with the highest rates of software piracy. Latin America, as a region, had a high incidence of illegally copied software with an average piracy rate of 68%. The Business Software Alliance is a trade organization of the software industry and promotes crackdowns on copyright violations worldwide.

An assortment of stories in the Salvadoran press recently: El Salvador decided not to advance its clocks forward one hour. Although other Central American countries are making the time shift in the hopes of saving energy, the government in E Salvador found the forecast savings to be too minimal. Central American countries and the UN World Food Program met in San Salvador to discuss coordinated responses to emergency relief when hurricanes strike. The countries will establish a Regional Emergency Center in Soyapango, outside of San Salvador, where relief supplies will be pre-positioned. Hurricane season officially starts on June 1. El Salvador's archbishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle stated in his weekly news conference that the church is aggrieved by the anti-immigrant measures being proposed by the US government. He pointed in particular to the proposals to send 6000 National Guard troops to patrol the southern US border and to build hundreds of miles of border fencing.