El Salvador Perspectives

Earlier this week, El Salvador launched a commission to search for the thousands of persons still missing from the years of the country's civil war.   Twenty-five years after the war ended, there will be an actual government effort to help identify the whereabouts of people who disappeared during the war.   Presumably most were killed during the war, but their bodies never recovered. Massachusetts Congressman James McGovern, a longtime friend of El Salvador, issued a statement including: I commend President Sánchez Cerén, the Government of El Salvador and the Salvadoran people for working together to establish the National Commission to Search for Disappeared Persons in the context of El Salvador’s armed conflict (Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas en el contexto del conflicto armado en El Salvador/CONABUSQUEDA)....  I firmly believe that the establishment of this National Commission will play an important role in the effort to addres...

There are 159 days to go until the March 4, 2018 national elections in El Salvador when the population goes to the polls to elect all the country's mayors and members of its national legislature.  Election authorities hope that these elections run smoother than the last elections in 2015 .    The election process for deputies to the National Assembly in 2015 was an epic failure .    For weeks, the final results were unknown and eventually there was a recount ordered by the country's Supreme Court.      The problems related to the complexity of the ballots.  Here was the 2015 ballot for deputies in San Salvador.     Valid ways to vote include voting for all the candidates of a party, some of the candidates, a mixture of candidates from different parties, and for independent candidates.   The candidates were all running against each other for 24 at-large seats.   It was the first election in which voters ...

Many times when people ask me to answer a question about El Salvador, I start by saying,  "Well, it's complicated."   A perfect example of that is the story of  Dany Balmore Romero García.   Dany Romero was arrested last year as part of Operation Check ,    He was reputed to be a former MS-13 gang member turned human rights activist, and many protested his arrest at that time.   Yet wiretaps leaked to El Faro, suggested that Romero had not left his gang involvement behind him, leaving me to write a post titled " Who to Believe? " A preliminary hearing in the Operation Check case commenced today for almost a hundred defendants from MS-13 including Dany Romero.    We may learn more from the two weeks of testimony expected to be presented. In the meantime, Nicholas Phillips has written a thorough portrayal of Dany Romero and all the complexities of his life which was published at Insight Crime with the title   The Allegory of El Salvador...

During 2017, El Salvador has seen a dramatic increase in the killing of members of the police and armed forces.   Through September 23, there have been 29 police agents killed, 13 members of the armed forces, and 2 prison guards, according to statistics from Justice and Security Minister, Mauricio Ramírez Landaverde.   This is a dramatic 600% increase from 2016 , when only 4 police and three soldiers had been killed through the end of August.  The numbers do not include family members of police and soldiers who have also been targeted.   The surge in killings of security force members comes at a time when the overall homicide rate has been cut almost in half. These killings have lead to calls from the PDDH and others for greater protection for elements of the police and armed forces.   The murders are almost certainly committed primarily by gangs in the country and could represent reprisals in response to the harsh tactics implemented by the government as ...

For the first time since the 1993 Amnesty Law shut down all attempts at justice in El Salvador for war crimes, victims testified in a Salvadoran court in the case of the 1981 massacres at El Mozote and the surrounding communities.  On Thursday and Friday, four witnesses took the stand to describe the horror of the massacre committed by Salvadoran armed forces.   The defendant military officers did not show up to hear the victims' testimony. This is not the first time these victim witnesses have given statements.   All of them had given statements in this case between 1990 and 1992, before the case was "archived" as a result of the passage of the Amnesty Law in 1993.   Their testimony is summarized in findings from the InterAmerican Commission for Human Rights and from the subsequent judgment of the InterAmerican Court for Human Rights. This week's witnesses were (along with summaries from the InterAmerican court processes): Eustaquio Martínez Vigil, who l...

The legal proceedings in the case to hold former military commanders responsible for the 1981 massacre at El Mozote and surrounding villages will continue Thursday and Friday of this week.  New witnesses will be testifying in front of a judge in a courtroom in San Francisco Gotera, Morazan about the events more than 36 years ago.   Their testimony will be added to testimony from other witnesses taken originally in the case before it was shut down by the 1993 amnesty law. Lawyers representing the victims, who are pushing the case forward, held a press conference earlier in the week to denounce yet again the lack of action by the attorney general in the case and the military's failure to provide any records or information about the historical events.   The victims see an attempt to delay and obfuscate on the part of the defendants: However, lawyers of Tutela Legal stressed that military authorities of the time cannot claim ignorance due to the high rank they held, ...

At the same time that journalists and human rights groups are denouncing the problem of extra-judicial killings by security forces in El Salvador, the government is increasing even more its iron fist approach to law enforcement. The government has announced that it is deploying more military and police at bus stops, markets and plazas and other places where people congregate in San Salvador.   In the two days since the announcement, I saw heavily armed soldiers and military equipment at such places at Plaza Salvador del Mundo and the Arbol de Paz traffic circle. In addition, the security forces were enacting random checkpoints on the streets in the capital city, adding to the vehicular chaos of San Salvador.   Passengers at bus terminals were being checked for identification to determine if they were on wanted lists. Police were also  shown checking finger prints of youth who were not carrying identification with them. The government announced that it had stag...