The Martyrs of Calabozo

This song was written by a young man from the community of Amatitan Arriba in Northern San Vicente about the massacre that occured in his community in 1982.

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Salvadoran remittances drop 11 percent in 2009

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador

El Salvador's central bank says the money citizens living abroad sent home during the first seven months of this year dropped 11 percent compared to the same period in 2008.

The bank says remittances between January and July reached $2 billion in the Central American country compared to $2.2 billion during the same period last year.

In a report issued Monday, the bank blamed the decrease on rising unemployment in the United States, especially among Latin American immigrants.

Remittances represent the largest source of legal foreign income. About 2.5 million Salvadorans live in the United States.

-Associated Press

Community Activists in Cabañas are Receiving Death Threats

Less than a month after the assassination of Marcelo Rivera, an increasing number of activists from the northern Department of Cabañas report to be receiving death threats. Like Marcelo, the targeted people have been outspoken against mining and have denounced electoral fraud. They also have called for a full investigation into Marcelo's killing. The death threats seem to be linked to the murder since often they refer that the victims will "end up just like Marcelo." Click here to see a video in Spanish about death threats that activists have received.

The first to receive death threats were three young reporters who work for Radio Victoria. José Beltrán, Ludwing Iraheta and Vladimir Abarca explained in a press conference that after they began to cover the disappearance and murder of Marcelo they started to receive hand written and phone death threats. Radio officials denounced this situation to the police (PNC), the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman and the Office of the Attorney General.

Radio Victoria is a community broadcaster located in the town of Victoria, Cabañas. The radio run mainly by youth, started in 1993 with the purpose of giving the isolated community, its own means of communication. According to its website, the radio is a "welcoming space where people can make announcements, send greetings, talk about their problems, look for solutions, discuss politics, and share dreams." The radio has played a key role in exposing the Pacific Rim mining project, the municipal and presidential elections and its fraud scandals, and more recently, the murder of Marcelo Rivera.

Father Luis Quintanilla, a progressive Catholic priest and a long time defender of human rights, has received similar threats. One of the threats read "the damned reds [communists] disguised as priests will be finished off," "keep quiet if you don't want to end up like Marcelo," declared the priest in a press release. However, in this case the threats went beyond words. On July 27th Father Quintanilla was driving from Victoria when four armed, hooded men, stopped him and pulled him out of his car to kidnap and murder him. However the priest was able to escape by jumping into a gully.

On July 28th, the Director of the Association for Economic and Social Development (ADES), a non-profit operating in Cabañas, was also threatened. Later, Isabel Gomez, head of the news team at Radio Victoria received a threatening call in the press room. When the second to last person left the radio, Isabel received the call in which the aggressor acknowledged the fact that she was alone at the radio. Isabel's house was also broken into and vandalized.

As time goes on, the list of threatened people continue to grow. By July 30th all the staff from Radio Victoria had been threatened. The radio was also sabotaged. The radio antenna in Sensuntepeque (Cabañas' main city) was stolen and the electrical system was sabotaged causing the transmitter to fail. Therefore the radio has been on and off the air. The lives of the staff members have been disrupted as they have had to change their daily routines and look for refuge. However they are still working and struggling to keep the radio on air. As one of the staff members said "they will not silence us; we know that our people accompany us and that we will continue forward, because we believe that another Cabañas is possible." Our friends from the area informed us that many community members are volunteering to guard and protect the radio at night. Police officers are also present.

In a press conference the Salvadoran Human Rights Ombudsman, Oscar Luna, called on the Attorney General Office and the National Civil Police (PNC) to investigate and find the material and intellectual authors of these death threats and bring them to justice. He urged the authorities to take steps to protect the lives of the victims.

ADES Santa Marta stated in a press release that "ultra-right wing groups linked to organized crime groups are trying to keep the population of the Department in a state of terror and are making lethal attacks against social leaders and political and environmental activists. The negligence of the Public Prosecutor and the Police at the Departmental level favors, reinforces, and shelters these violations." ADES also called on the international community to pressure the Salvadoran authorities to investigate these human rights violations.

Over 100 organizations demand an investigation of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera's Murder

San Salvador, El Salvador. One hundred and eight international organizations sent last Friday July 24, a letter to the Salvadoran Acting Attorney General, Ástor Escalante Savaria, demanding an exhaustive investigation of the kidnapping and brutal murder of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno. Among the signatory organizations are the Salvadoran American National Association (SANA) and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). Gustavo Marcelo Rivera was from San Isidro, Department of Cabañas. He disappeared on June 18th and his body was found 11 days later with signs of terrible torture according to a forensic report.

In the letter the organizations vehemently reject the statements that prosecutor Rodolfo Delgado gave to the media, expressing that the hypothesis of the crime is that Rivera was killed by gang members after a disagreement. According to the organizations, by attributing the motives of the crime to common violence, the prosecutor is discarding a priori the existence of intellectual authors of this assassination.

Rivera was a renowned leader in the struggle against mining in El Salvador and in addition he played a key role at denouncing the electoral fraud that resulted in the suspension of the municipal elections in San Isidro in January 2009. For this reason the international organizations consider that there is enough evidence to suggest that that the crime was committed for political reasons and that "the failure to investigate this motives , including the slow response of the police in the initial search for Marcelo constitute serious irregularities that need to be investigated and corrected."

Therefore, as representatives of the international community, the 108 organizations call on the Office of the Attorney General to carry out an impartial, exhaustive, and effective investigation in order to bring to justice the intellectual and material authors of this horrendous crime, and prevent these tragedies from happening again. It is alarming that in the last weeks, several activists including three young reporters from Radio Victoria have received death threats for publicly denouncing the mining activities. This shows the urgency for a through investigation. The international organizations state that "If Marcelo's murder is left in a state of impunity, it will generate a climate of intimidation and uncertainty for social leaders and activists, undermining the advances in the democratic process in El Salvador."

The organization also sent copies of the letter to following authorities: Salvadoran President, Mauricio Funes; the Ministry of Governability, Humberto Centeno; the Director of the National Civil Police, Carlos Ascencio; the Chief of Public Safety- San Isidro Delegation, Saúl Venegas; the Charge d'Affaires, US Embassy to El Salvador, Robert Blau; and the Canadian Ambassador to El Salvador, Claire Poulin.

To read the letter in English click here.

To read the original letter in Spanish click here.

El Salvador's Gold Fight

This is another very informative article about the Gold Mining in El Salvador. Written by Michael Busch and posted on the Foreign Policy in Focus website.

As El Salvador transitions from decades of conservative rule to the administration of leftist President Mauricio Funes, the country faces an international showdown triggered by a restrictive free-trade agreement between the United States and Central America. Canada's Pacific Rim Mining Corporation is suing the government for its refusal to allow it to mine gold in El Salvador's rural north. If Pacific Rim succeeds in securing the $100 million settlement it seeks, that would set a troubling precedent. At stake is a question that affects all nations: Can private interests trump national sovereignty under international law?

Click here to read the rest.

Public opposition brings ban on gold mining in El Salvador

This is a great article written about the opposition to mining in El Salvador. It can be found on the Progressio website.

El Salvador has become the first country in the world to ban gold mining, thanks in part to opposition from Salvadorean civil society.

The key role played by Salvadorean civil society in achieving the ban has been recognised by an international human rights award for the El Salvador National Committee Against Metal Mining, with which Progressio works closely. An umbrella organisation of Salvadorean human rights groups, the Committee set out to raise awareness and carry out advocacy work in order to make the Salvadorean government take action against the problem.

Nicoletta Marinelli, a Progressio development worker who has coordinated the Committee’s communications work, explains: “Metal mining contaminates surface and subterranean waters with cyanide and heavy metals. In Central America it has caused health problems which have mainly affected women and children.

“It has also displaced and divided communities, generating new outbreaks of conflict in a region which is still recovering from the wounds inflicted during decades of civil war.”

The amount of water available to communities close to the mines has also been affected. A mine consumes large quantities of water, putting the ecosystem at risk and competing with the local population for water resources.

This ban will have a positive effect on rural communities and on the environment, says Nicoletta: “Mining threatens traditional forms of production such as agriculture, livestock farming and fishing. In addition, when agricultural production takes place close to a mine, plants absorb the cyanide and the heavy metals and this is dangerous to human health.”

International recognition

The Committee’s work has been recognised at international level by the US-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which has awarded the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award to the Committee “for its courage in embarking on this struggle, despite the odds against them, in order to make El Salvador the first country in the world to ban gold mining.”

“This award recognises work undertaken by many people over many years,” says Nicoletta. “It also recognises that prosperity is not based solely on economic growth: rather it reconciles social wellbeing with the environment and economic prosperity.”

So what’s the next challenge? To continue to advocate for a law which bans mining, and to regionalise the fight against mining. “I think that the award has motivated the committee members to fight beyond the Salvadorean borders and to support other Central American associations,” concludes Nicoletta.

Alert: First Victim of the Struggle against Mining in El Salvador

Dear friends,

With great sadness the SHARE Foundation informs you of the brutal murder of Marcelo Rivera, a great community leader from San Isidro, in the northern department of Cabañas. He was kidnapped on June 18th, 2009, near the town of Ilobasco, Cabañas. On July 1st, his body was found inside a dry well. DNA tests were conducted and confirmed that the body belonged to Marcelo. His belongings were found in a nearby abandoned house in the middle of a corn field. According to the medical examiner, Marcelo was kept alive several days after his disappearance. His body showed signs of brutal torture typical of a death squad killing.

However on Thursday July 9, a prosecutor from the Attorney General's Office, Rodolfo Delgado, declared that 4 gang members had been captured as suspects for the crime. Delgado's hypothesis is that Marcelo had been drinking with the gang members the night of his disappearance and that they killed him after a fight. Delgado discounted the political motives of the crime, and solely attributed Marcelo's murder to gang violence that did not merit investigation. Marcelo's family and social justice organizations strongly rejected these assertions. Miguel Rivera, Marcelo's brother expressed, "To say that my brother died at the hands of gang members is not a credible story and it becomes an insult to our family. My brother was tortured; he was alive for 9 days after his disappearance. His trachea was broken with a nylon cord when they strangled him, forcing his arm toward his face. This is not the work of gang members; it is a crime of torture."

In a press conference held on Friday July 10th various coalitions of social organizations, including the Coalition for Peace, Dignity and Social Justice and the Workers Commission on Human Rights and Historical Memory, among others, publicly rejected the prosecutor's statement. According to the organizations, it was Marcelo's activism what brought him to his death. Marcelo was an activist since his youth. In high school, he and his brother Miguel founded a community library in San Isidro; later they founded what it became the "Friends of San Isidro Association" (ASIC), a hometown group with members in San Isidro and the United States.

ASIC became the vehicle for community organizing in San Isidro. Through ASIC, residents work to improve their lives and defend their natural resources. They became unpopular with their municipal authorities when they opposed two of the main projects that the Mayor wanted to promote: a garbage dump and the development of the gold mining industry. Pacific Rim Mining Company's main mining project in Latin American is El Dorado gold mine which happens to be in San Isidro, Cabañas. The mining company claims to have invested $77 million exploring the area; its managers hired workers and gained favors from the San Isidro mayor. ASIC, as part of the National Working Group against Metallic Mining in El Salvador (La Mesa), began a fearless opposition to the mining company. Marcelo was seen as the leader behind the community struggle.

Moreover, Marcelo was politically active. In the January 2009 municipal elections, Marcelo, as an electoral volunteer supervising the voting centers, led a campaign to denounce and prevent the fraud that was about to take place in San Isidro when ARENA party members tried to bring illegal voters from the neighboring countries. As a result of the denunciation, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) suspended the elections in the town for one week. The incumbent mayor won the elections in the midst of the fraud scandal. After these events Marcelo was the target of verbal attacks, harassment and defamation campaigns. An ARENA member even tried to run him over with a car.

None of these threats were ever investigated by the police and are not being considered in the current investigation. Social organizations are demanding that Attorney General Office and the National Civilian Police do not assume that the murder was not premeditated and that there are not intellectual authors involved. They demand an investigation into the threats Marcelo received before his kidnapping and respect for the integrity of Marcelo's memory. The organizations believe this murder is politically motivated because it fits the parameter established in the report written by the Joint Group to Investigate Politically Motivated Illegal Armed Groups (1994). These parameters include: "a victim with a profile as a political opponent; the modus operandi directed toward elimination, denoting planning and operating capacity; and posterior impunity that is facilitated by the State."

In the meantime Marcelo's family, his community and the anti-mining organizations throughout the country are mourning Marcelo. Hundreds of people attended his funeral last Saturday, July 12, in San Isidro. The streets of the small town were filled with people in all directions. The youth painted a mural in Marcelo's memory at the community library that he and his brother founded. He was a beloved leader, an incredible and inspiring person. Marcelo will live in the hearts and minds of the people who struggle for peace and justice; his memory will be present in those who work to protect their environment and to make the world a better place. As a signed carried by a group of youth read: "Marcelo, nobody will quiet your voice, nor end your struggle. We demand Justice! You can kill people but not their ideals."