El Salvador Perspectives

Solidarity Net is the program of president Tony Saca's government to provide subsidies of $30 to $40 per month to poor families with children. As the school year nears its end, La Prensa reports on government statistics that 95 percent of families are complying with their agreements to keep children in school and enrolled in health programs. Some 18,540 families are receiving the small monthly subsidy in communities considered to be the poorest in the nation. Only 5% of families have suffered reductions in their subsidies for failure to comply with the covenant of co-responsibility which requires them to send their children to school and keep them enrolled in medical programs. Some $2.5 million has been transferred to families so far under the program. The La Prensa article reports that while their have been solid increases in school attendance, the most significant impact has been in enrollment in local health units, where increases have been as much as 300%. Those increases ...

A junior Salvdoran army officer who was convicted of participating in the murder of the six Jesuits and their housekeeper at the University of Central America in 1989 is being deported from the US, but has amnesty in El Salvador: Oct. 27 (CWNews.com) - A former Salvadoran military officer who was convicted in connection with the 1989 murder of 6 Jesuit priests has been arrested in California and now faces deportation, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos was arrested at a motel in Los Angeles, and charged with entering the US illegally. He faces a deportation hearing next month. Cerritos is one of 8 members of a military counter-insurgency unity who were charged with killing the Jesuit priests and members of their staff at a residence in San Salvador. The murders came at the height of the country's civil war, when many Catholic priests were viewed with suspicion because of links between Marxist guerillas and proponents of liberation theology. Cerritos had bee...

As I have noted earlier, there are growing protests by civil society organizations in El Salvador against the prospect of expanded gold mining in the country. It is worth noting, however, that the gold mining companies continue to talk optimistically. One such company is Condor Resources : Condor Resources plc is a young Australian-based mineral resources company that is developing a number of deposits in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The company is listed on AIM, with ticker symbol CNR and market capitalisation of just over £9 million or US$17 million. The Chief Executive is Nigel Ferguson, an exploration geologist with twenty years’ experience in the field including the assessment of the Geita Gold project for what was then Ashanti Goldfields. The company policy is to employ local personnel where possible, and the local workforce is typically employed from within a five kilometre radius of each operation. ... Both El Salvador and Nicaragua operate attractive Mining Codes and allow f...

A recent CID-Gallup/El Diario de Hoy poll shows a desire for get-tough measures to deal with criminals. Polling Data Which of these solutions would be the best to deal with crime in El Salvador? Deploying the army to fight criminals - 29% Enacting tougher punishments - 24% The death penalty - 21% Hiring more police officers - 15% Allowing minors to be tried as adults - 12% Do you have confidence in criminals being rehabilitated in Salvadoran prisons? Complete confidence - 15% Some confidence - 20% Little confidence - 34% No confidence - 27%

Salvadoran bloggers on the left are writing posts questioning El Salvador's level of military spending, particularly where there are pressing social problems in the country including crime, sanitation, and poverty. This small Central American country of six million people had a military budget in 2005 of $162 million (source: CIA World Fact Book ). The blogger Hunnapuh looks at the level of spending (es) on the armed forces. He performs some basic math to show that persons in the armed forces above the lowest ranks are earning more per month than a teacher or a doctor. This disparity has lead Hunnapuh to campaign on his blog for the abolition of the army. El Visitador disagrees, calling the army a necessary insurance policy (es). Without an army, he posits that El Salvador would look like Cuba and Mexico would be ruled by Commandante Marcos, as armed rebel movements take control of Latin American countries. On the Hunnapuh blog, a poll (es) is being conducted asking reader...

The money sent back to El Salvador by Salvadorans living in the US and elsewhere continues to grow significantly according to recent released data : Remittances to El Salvador grew 18.1% to $2.44 billion during the nine-month period, the country's central bank said in a press release. Salvadoran banks handled 21.9% of remittances through their offices in the U.S. and paid out about 70% of all family remittances through their branches in El Salvador. El Salvador received $2.83 billion in remittances last year, equivalent to 16.6% of the country's gross domestic product. Why such strong growth? Are there that many more Salvadorans emigrating? Are Salvadorans abroad getting wealthier and having more money available to send home? Is there a perception that families back home are even more in need of funds than in the past? Are there other reasons? There is little doubt about the importance that remittances now play in the economy of El Salvador and that this money provides a ...

El Salvador's Ministry of Tourism has a glossy new public relations campaign to encourage the people of El Salvador to think of the country as a tourist destination. You can see two minute-long video spots here and here . Not everyone agrees with the message of the ad campaign, however. A friend recently sent me this satirical response to the Ministry of Tourism.