El Salvador Perspectives

More recordings of secret meetings have surfaced showing prominent FMLN officials meeting with leaders of the country's notorious gangs.   In these meetings, the FMLN discusses creating a multi-million dollar micro-credit program to be managed by the gangs and discusses complaints of the gangs about prosecutions and cooperating witnesses. The recordings were surreptitiously made by the gang members attending the meetings, and the recordings subsequently found their way into the hands of three online journalism sites:  El Faro, RevistaFactum, and InsightCrime.   Here is the introduction to the InsightCrime article : Two videos reveal another layer of secret negotiations between El Salvador’s ruling party, the FMLN, and leaders of the three main gangs in El Salvador. One involves the former Minister of Public Security, Benito Lara, and another is with current Interior Minister Aristides Valencia, in which the latter offers the gang leaders up to $10 million in micro-c...

Former president of El Salvador Antonio (Tony) Saca was arrested on corruption charges in the early hours of Sunday morning as he left the celebration of his son's wedding.  Along with Saca, police arrested Julio Rank, Saca's ex-secretary of Comunications,  César Funes, the ex-president of the ANDA water authority, and Elmer Charlaix, Saca's former private secretary, and three other officials involved in managing funds in the office of the president. As Reuters reports ,  Saca joins two other recent Salvadoran presidents with corruption charges: In March, El Salvador's supreme court ordered a civil trial of the former president, as well as his wife, Ana Ligia de Saca, because he could not explain how he acquired $5 million at the end of his term.  Saca, who also had his bank accounts and properties frozen, was expelled from his political party, the conservative Nationalist Republican Party (Arena), in 2009 due to the alleged irregularities.  In ...

On October 31, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation will hold a commemoration in Sweden for the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.   The event will include the participation of Pope Francis, LWF President Bishop Dr Munib A. Younan and LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Martin Junge.   It is part of a dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches regarding their common beliefs and practices. The symbol of this event in Sweden is a cross painted by Salvadoran artist Christian Chavarria Ayala.  You can read about the images on this cross here .  Christian says he has painted around 250,000 crosses of different sizes and colors to raise awareness on issues such as poverty, water, globalization and peaceful coexistence. The crosses are the “best therapy to cope with difficult moments,” says Christian. Christian grew up during El Salvador's bloody civil war.   In an attack on his childhood home, Christian saw the...

Quick takes from news stories this week from El Salvador. El Salvador's fiscal crisis continued without resolution.   Currently ARENA asserts it will only approve $500 million in bonds, while the government and FMLN insist on $1.2 billion.   Added to the crisis are demands from health system workers for increases in their national salary scale.  LPG  (sp). El Salvador saw more than 100 police officers resign in the first six months of the year, and a large number try to seek asylum in the US or Canada for their own safety.   Still, this number is down from 2015 and 2014, and seems to parallel the rise and fall of the overall homicide rate in the country     Insight Crime  and Texas Tribune . El Salvador's Vice President Óscar Ortiz said on October 20 that the Special Reactionary Forces (Fuerzas Especializadas de Reacción El Salvador - FES) had proven particularly efficient against the gangs during its first six months of operations, reported...

If you listen to the radio or watch TV in El Salvador you will hear the ads -- warning Salvadorans that the path of migration towards the US is fraught with danger and will not result in the "American dream."   Those ads are part of an effort by the US government to reduce the flow of Central Americans towards the north. As one of its series of articles on Central Americans migrating to the US, the Texas Tribune reports this week on the US-funded programs which are trying to reduce the factors which push people out of the country: Policymakers are hoping that anti-gang initiatives like the one playing out in Yaritza’s high-risk school in tiny Caserio El Pital, located in one of the country's most violent regions, will help reduce crime by stopping kids from joining the street gangs that rule huge swaths of territory here.  The materials and instruction she receives — courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer — are part of a major foreign assistance effort. This particular prog...

El Salvador is in the midst of a financial crisis.   Its government is running out of funds to pay its bills; the political parties are deadlocked in negotiations to find a solution; and there are suggestions the government might even default on its debt. From Bloomberg : El Salvador President Salvador Sanchez said the government was in a state of emergency as he pushed lawmakers to agree to a global bond sale to ease a liquidity crunch.  A "lack of liquidity" must be solved this year to "avoid negative consequences of greater dimension," Sanchez said in a televised address, as yields on the Central American nation’s debt soared.  The government is willing to reach an agreement on a fiscal responsibility law in congress that would include tighter spending rules, Sanchez said, while calling on lawmakers to approve a $1.2 billion bond sale. Standard & Poor’s placed El Salvador on credit watch last week and said the country’s B+ rating may be downgraded if ...

If there is anything which El Salvador truly needs it is independent and courageous journalists.   But as the Texas Tribune notes in a piece titled El Salvador journalist faces threats from gangs, government , such journalism can provoke official intimidation.   The article describes how one Salvadoran journalist, Jorge Beltran, faced threats of prosecution after publishing an article about gangs which the government did not like: In late December 2015, he published a map detailing which of San Salvador’s neighborhoods are controlled by the country’s powerful streets gangs, including the Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and the Barrio 18. It was intended as an interactive guide to help people navigate the confusing and treacherous gang boundaries; knowing where not to cross is literally a matter of life and death here.  But national law enforcement authorities were deeply embarrassed by the notion that they had lost control of huge swaths of San Salvador to the maras, the ...