El Salvador Perspectives

Starting with Tropical Storms Agatha and Alex, continuing though Tropical Storm Matthew earlier this week and additional soaking rains, the amount of rain falling on El Salvador has created serious problems in many places. As of today, 61 communities were under red alert because of the risk of flooding and landslides as a result of the rain. Most of those communities are in low-lying coastal zones. The remainder of the country is under orange and yellow alerts. Schools were cancelled at noon today. Authorities count 2,352 persons evacuated, 1,117 persons in 18 shelters. Thirteen communities are cut off by flood water and can only be reached by boat. Three people have died. There is $600,000 in damages to roads. The impact of the rains on farming will bring hunger. La Prensa Grafica reports that 60% of the bean harvest has been lost on account of the rains. In addition, 40% of the corn harvest will be lost. A reduction in the coffee crop is also expected as too much mois...

An article in the Latin American Herald Tribune describes a recent court decision in El Salvador which limits protections which the press might have to suits by people who do not like what is written: SAN SALVADOR – El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled that the media and television station owners, editors and managers may be brought to trial for slander, injury or defamation in a decision interpreted as a blow against press freedom. The high court’s Constitutional Chamber issued a 4-1 decision on Friday regarding the “unconstitutionality” of the third clause within Article 191 of the Criminal Code, which guarantees protection against criminal rulings against the press, Supreme Court spokesman Mario Larin said. In reaction to the ruling, the country’s main dailies, including El Diario de Hoy, La Prensa Grafica and El Mundo, agreed that the decision constitutes a “blow to freedom of expression.” “The ruling of four justices will foment fear and intolerance,” warned El Diario de Hoy, while ...

If you travel to view the site of the El Mozote massacre near Perquin in Morazan Deapartment, one of the things you will see is this mural on the side of the little church which faces the plaza. The mural was a project of visual artist Claudia Bernardi who uses art and murals as a tool to restore a sense of community in populations impacted by massacres or other human rights atrocities. A recent article on the Huffington Post tells the story: To see Bernardi's gorgeous images is to be seduced by their jeweled colors of raw pigment and lured by their lyrical titles. But a closer look reveals skeletal remains, fragments of the silenced, drawn with indelible tenderness. Her work weaves visual poetry with a brutal frankness informed by her time spent in mass graves exhuming innocent victims of political conflicts. As a member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (AFAT), a scientific organization founded to investigate human-rights abuses against civilian populations, Bernar...

When El Salvador holds an election, voters often have to travel a long distance from their homes to cast their ballot. Polling places are often at a great distance from smaller communities, and in the capital city of San Salvador, you might be assigned a polling place on the opposite side of the city because your name begins with a particular letter. A technical team for Eugenio Chicas, president of the Supreme Election Tribunal, has now designed a Residential Voting Plan, which could address many of these issues. From the SHARE Foundation blog : In this proposal, voting conditions will improve and become much accessible for Salvadorans all over the country. Instead of 460 voting centers, there would be 1755 stategically placed in schools that have the capacity to recieve all the registered voters. The idea being that no voter would need to travel more than three kilometers to vote. Currently, in places such as the Tamarindo Beach, voters travel up to 40 kilometers to reach the nea...

Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes described his National Integrated Health System yesterday which aims to reform the way that healthcare is delivered for the majority of Salvadorans. Funes described his proposal as "revolutionary" and "real change." An article in ContraPunto describes aspects of the new system: The flagship program of the new system is Integrated Network Health Services, which aims to spread out the health service with Community-based Family Health Teams (ECOS), which will carry coverage throughout the country under the premise that it will be the state that moves healthcare towards the citizens, rather than the latter having to search out care, as is the case today. These teams are already working as pilot programs since August in 74 municipalities, and are composed of five people: a doctor, nurse, nursing assistant, a health promoter and a utility person. Each ECOS will be responsible for 200 families, which will have charge of all aspects ...

Two different headlines today are intricately related. On the CNN Money website, the headline was Gold Edges Up to a New Record , which told readers that for the first time in history, the price of gold on international markets closed at $1280 an ounce. In the Salvadoran newspaper DiarioCoLatino, the headline was San Sebastian: The Open Secret of Mining Pollution . This article describes the legacy of pollution in the San Sebastian river, which local residents and activists say stems from a gold mine there. The mine is owned by the US company the Commerce Group, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is the record high prices of gold which have led North American gold mining companies like the Commerce Group and Canadian firm Pacific Rim to go to battle with the government of El Salvador. The Salvadoran government currently prohibits both firms from operating gold mining concessions. With gold at record high prices, the conflict between monetary profits and the fear of environmental ...

If you have spent any time driving through the countryside of El Salvador you have seen them -- remittance houses -- those houses with a certain ostentation and a pastel paint job built using remittances from Salvadorans working in the US. It's an identifiable architectural style (or lack of style?) in El Salvador. Now the country's leading art museum, the Museum of Art of El Salvador, is running an exhibition devoted to the architecture of remittances . The show is titled Architecture of Remittances: Dreams of Return, Symbols of Success and runs through October 17. If you cannot visit the museum before the show ends, the exhibition has a website here with many photos of remittance architecture and narrative about the cultural forces that these houses represent.