El Salvador Perspectives

A negotiated solution to the crisis in Honduras appears to have been reached. Ousted president Zelaya and the de facto government will form a power-sharing government and respect the outcome of the upcoming November presidential election according to this report from the BBC. The Honduran Congress must approve the deal. The consitutional crisis began in Honduras on June 28 of this year, when democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya was forced out of the country by the Honduran military. In September, Zelaya snuck back into the country and has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy ever since then. The period since Zelaya's ouster has been marked by significant protests by citizen groups and repression by the de facto government.

A collection of statements about violence in El Salvador and whether there should be a role for the military in patrolling the streets: [S]even member organizations of the Central American Coalition for the Prevention of Juvenile Violence issued a communiqué rejecting the participation of the Armed Forces of El Salvador (FAES) in public security functions. In the statement, institutions such as the Centeral American University Human Rights Institute (IDHUCA) and the Center for Orientation Training, among others, demanded that President Mauricio Funes not incorporate the Armed Forces in the National Civilian Police’s work, saying that this is unconstitutional. They added that the previous presidents used the military to fight crime and that “this measure has been ineffective” and, in fact, homicides have risen. Instead, they called upon Funes to strengthen the Police with financial resources and training. These institutions disagree with the majority of officials and organizations linke...

From Madness to Hope was the title of the UN Truth Commission report which documented the violatons of human rights which occurred during El Salvador's civil war. Now a new dramatic work with the same name is being performed at the Los Angeles Theater Center . From the press release : The new play by William Flores, "De La Locura A La Esperanza (From Madness to Hope)" commemorates the events of the difficult struggle as the people of El Salvador waged a fight for freedom against oppression. Flores, who also directs, has assembled a cast of over 30, including actors, dancers and singers, communicating a historical record of those turbulent times through dramatic scenes, songs and traditional folkloric dances. The show is accompanied by visual exhibits from the Museo De La Palabra Y La Imagen including: From War to Peace (Images and documents about the Salvadoran Civil War); and The Legacy of Salarrue (Paintings, images, objects and manuscripts from the private collecti...

Worth a visit is the website El Salvador: Stories of War and Hope . The website has collected oral testimonies of participants in the events of El Salvador's civil war. The words of these participants put a human face on that tumultuous period for an English speaking audience.

ARENA, the conservative party which ruled El Salvador for twenty years before its defeat in presidential elections in March 2009, has an internal rebellion on its hands. As described in El Faro , twelve of ARENA's 32 deputies in the National Assembly have declared themselves independent of the party leadership. They are demanding 2 seats on COENA, the national executive council which directs the party. The president of ARENA and head of COENA is former president Alfredo Cristiani, and he has denounced the rebels declaration of independence from party leadership. On the ARENA website , a statement condemns Herbert Saca, cousin of former president Tony Saca, for instigating the rebellion for unnamed personal motivations. Herbert Saca was a close adviser to his cousin during the Saca administration. The party has been searching for persons or reasons to blame ever since it lost the presidency earlier this year.

The Spanish company Calvo Group has opened a major expansion to its tuna processing operation in El Salvador. It is a major source foreign investment in the country : Grupo Calvo inaugurated new production lines yesterday in La Union Port, a project backed by a USD 2 million investment. Its new industrial enterprise, spanning 2,000 sqm, has the capacity to process up to 4,000 tonnes of a variety of products. The factory has incorporated new machinery to process and can tuna loins, which will allow the company to increase its local supply as well as shipments to the European Union (EU), Central America, Brazil and Taiwan. In total, Calvo has already invested around USD 140 million and will employ 1,500 fixed workers from La Union and adjacent municipalities. At this time, it processes some 35,000 tonnes of tuna loins and high quality canned products in El Salvador, and that total will increase substantially thanks to the new investment. In 2008, Calvo exported products from El Salvad...

I have written several times before about the growing numbers of US airlines which fly their passenger jets to El Salvador for maintenance work. The work is done by Aeroman, the maintenance subsidiary of TACA, and is a source of hundreds of good-paying jobs for the mechanics. I wrote about Frontier Airlines , Jet Blue and America West sending their planes south. When Southwest Airlines announced that it too might move maintenance work to El Salvador, my post produced a spirited debate about the possibility that safety might be compromised by using the less-expensive Salvadoran mechanics. There was no proof, and it might have just been put down to the pain of unionized American workers losing their jobs to foreign outsourcing. But now National Public Radio in the US has run an investigative report including interviews with Aeroman mechanics and instances of faulty work creating unsafe conditions on US Airways passenger jets. From the report: [T]he mechanics say managers keep pr...