El Salvador Perspectives

I was double-checking some events in El Salvador's past today when I came across this forgotten piece of history:  in 1823, a delegation from El Salvador came to the United States to try and persuade the US to allow El Salvador to become a state .   Now wouldn't that have been interesting! First Mexican Empire At that time, El Salvador was seeking protection from the First Mexican Empire , which then reached from northern California to Texas and down to Guatemala.   El Salvador's need for protection and its interest in becoming a state apparently ended when the Mexican emperor abdicated, the empire was dissolved, and the Central American countries formed the Federal Republic of Central America which would exist until 1841. Now El Salvador seems even more a US state -- its currency is the US dollar, 1 out of every 4 Salvadorans lives in the US; Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Starbucks have invaded El Salvador. Of course there is that ...

The InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights issued a report today on its working visit to El Salvador in November 2017.   The IACHR's report has a particular focus on the human rights of women and girls.   The press release announcing the report summarizes its findings: The IACHR observes that the State of El Salvador has made some progress in the areas of citizen security and the rights of women and other groups at special risk, such as the “Safe El Salvador Plan” or the Ciudad Mujer (“Women’s City”) program. At the same time, the IACHR expresses its deep concern about violations of human rights stemming from citizen insecurity, the lack of universal access to basic services, and the lack of budgetary resources to ensure the proper functioning and development of human rights policies. With regard to the rights of women and girls, the IACHR notes the prevalence of violence and discrimination against them, which is clearly reflected in the total criminalization ...

The very high levels of gang-related crime and violence in El Salvador have filled El Salvador's prisons to more than overflowing.    The prisons are literal hellholes holding thousands more prisoners than their capacity.   Not only are the conditions inhumane and in violation of international norms, but many persons subjected to those conditions have not been convicted of a crime but were swept up in one of the many sweeps by Salvadoran security forces.   And the government's "exceptional measures" have deliberately made conditions even more extreme. These conditions prompted a rebuke last November by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.   In his  remarks at the conclusion of his visit to El Salvador in November Zeid stated: We are informed of the State’s efforts to fully control the country’s jails, through the Extraordinary Security Measures, which since April 2016 have placed thousands of people in p...

A representative of the United Nations is in El Salvador this week to investigate reports by journalists and human rights groups of extrajudicial executions and other abuses by security forces. Dr. Agnes Callamard is the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Summary or Arbitrary Executions, and is in El Salvador from January 24 to February 5 at the invitation of the Salvadoran government . Human rights groups in El Salvador are using Callamard's visit to focus once again on the issue of extra-judicial killings by security forces.   Advocates  have pointed to the " lethality " of so-called confrontations between police and gangs in which gang members are shot and killed yet few police are killed or wounded and almost no gang members are wounded but not killed.  In addition. there are emblematic individual cases, such as the youth disappeared by the armed forces in the municipality of Armenia, the massacre at Finca San Blas , the extra-judicial killings doc...

The young are leaving rural El Salvador for the country's cities.   The result is rural farmers who are getting old with no one to take their place.  According to the country's agriculture ministry, the average age of farmers is now 57 years old. The exodus of the young seems to be driven by rural poverty.   56.1% of households in rural El Salvador suffer from multi-dimensional poverty compared to less than 22% of households in urban areas.  The government of El Salvador has a program of scholarships for young people in rural areas, as part of its "Amanacer Rural" (Rural Dawn) program.   The scholarships are aimed at giving young people the skills to make farming a profitable occupation and an alternative to leaving for the cities.

Environmental scientists are studying a massive die off of fish in the Lempa River, El Salvador's largest river which also passes through Honduras and Guatemala.  This photo gallery from Univision shows some of the eco-tragedy affecting this important river. Activists are blaming industrial coffee processing in Guatemala for dumping their waste products untreated into the Lempa.   "Aguas mieles" produced during the process of de-pulping the coffee berries is a known water contaminant.   Discharging those wastes is being labeled "eco-cide" by those affected. El Salvador's environment minister called on her counterparts in Guatemala and Honduras to consult on what steps needed to be taken. The Lempa River is more than 422 kilometers long and is an important source of water for agriculture and hydro-electric power in Central America and for sustenance of the people who live by its banks.

Gerson Martínez The leadership of the left wing FMLN has apparently chosen the former Minister of Public Works, Gerson Martínez, to be the party's candidate for the 2019 presidential elections in El Salvador.  The FMLN has held the presidency since 2009, but faces an uphill challenge in 2019 with an unpopular current president and the presidential ambitions of San Salvador mayor Nayib Bukele and his new political party called Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas). Gerson Martínez is a 63 year old former guerrilla .  His actual name is Manuel Orlando Quinteros Aguilar, but he has used the name Gerson Martínez since the time he was a student activist.  He was one of the persons involved in the founding of the FMLN guerrilla coalition in 1980 and played leadership roles in the FMLN guerrilla movement during the country's civil war.   After the signing of the 1992 Peace Accords, Martínez was elected to the National Assembly as an FMLN deputy in 1994 ...