El Salvador Perspectives

Military forces ousted Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected President of Honduras early Sunday morning in a coup. Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes condemned the overthrow and announced that El Salvador would not recognize the new government installed in Tegucigalpa. Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua all announced they would close their borders to land trade with Honduras for 48 hours.

Friends and family are speaking out about the disappearance of Marcelo Rivera, an activist involved in many contentious issues. From the Voices on the Border blog : The social leader and activist, Marcelo Rivera, has been missing since June 18, and people in the community of San Isidro, where Rivera lived and worked claim that his disappearance is a result of human rights offenses and institutional corruption. While community members in San Isidro, Cabañas demonstrate against his disappearance and demand his return, the search for Rivera has had shown no success thus far. Rivera was last seen by neighbors and family on June 18 in late afternoon hours in El Molino in the jurisdiction of Ilobasco. The search began on Sunday, June 20, led by family, neighbors, and community members. Some family members have said that they “have not seen involvement in the investigation neither from the PNC, or from the Attorney General of the Republic.” The activist is a well-known social figure as a mem...

Homies Unidos is an NGO working in Los Angeles and El Salvador to work with gang members and to attempt to get them to leave their violent and destructive lifestyles. I've written about the group on this blog. Today comes the surprising news that the organization's executive director in Los Angeles, Alex Sanchez, has been arrested on federal racketeering charges along with 23 other purported MS-13 gang members. According to a press release on the FBI Los Angeles office website: The sixteen-count federal indictment, unsealed today, charges 24 members and associates of MS-13 with participating in a racketeering conspiracy that involved a variety of crimes including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion, robbery, narcotics trafficking, and witness intimidation, over a period of fifteen years. The indictment alleges the defendants who engaged in the racketeering enterprise, were responsible for seven murders and eight conspiracies to commit murder since 1995.... The...

A change of power in the government provides the opportunity to expose corruption practiced by the prior ruling party. In El Salvador, new president Mauricio Funes has formed a commission to investigate corruption under the prior right wing administrations of ARENA. Funes is already making public alleged examples of graft in government agencies. Raúl Gutiérrez at IPS has an article describing Funes' initiative against corruption: SAN SALVADOR, Jun 23 (IPS) - Serious allegations of corruption involving central figures in the government of right-wing former Salvadoran president Antonio Saca (2004-2009) will be investigated by a commission led by Finance Minister Carlos Cáceres. Left-wing President Mauricio Funes, who took office on Jun. 1, announced the decision in his first address to the nation, in which he referred to situations encountered by members of his cabinet in several of the ministries they took over. The presidential commission will be made up of experts and lawyers w...

Maria Hoisington,a student of Latin American Studies and Human Rights at the University of Washington, published an article in Upside Down World looking at one community's use of soccer leagues to help keep youth out of gangs: Not only have these policies been unsuccessful in gang abatement, police repression and targeting of youth has, in effect, criminalized the act of being young. In the past five years, there have been constant outcries from non-governmental organizations, human rights groups, opposition party members, and civil society denouncing repression and calling for alternative solutions. I spent April and May of 2009 in El Salvador researching one of these alternatives; a violence prevention program implemented in 2006 by the local government in San Martín, a municipality located outside the capital city, San Salvador. San Martín has historically been one of the most violent municipalities in the country, but has enjoyed substantial success in lowering its crime stati...

My friend Danny Burridge recently wrote an article titled El Salvador: Promises, Perils and Reality published by the North American Congress on Latin America. In the article, he looks at the goals of Salvadoran civil society organizations on the left and whether Funes can and will achieve them. Here is an excerpt: The peaceful and historic transfer of power in El Salvador reflects the consolidation of "formal" democracy, but deep social change and true democracy are still slightly beyond the horizon. Its years as a guerrilla organization and decades as an opposition party have left the FMLN as a largely hierarchical political organization. The party could build on its formidable grassroots network and work towards becoming an institution that facilitates democratic participation in government decision-making. Funes will be under intense pressure from myriad interests to reduce the influence of El Salvador's diverse social movement and jettison his promised preferenti...

El Salvador's Pacific coastline has big waves, and big waves make for great surfing. I came across this El Salvador surf video on a blog called KZURC : UPDATE: A regular reader of the blog wrote to remind me not to forget the drowning danger in the dangerous riptides and undertows which exist at various beaches. Many have drowned. Read my post from last year about the tragic avoidable accidents.