MESOAMERICA
VOLUME 23, NUMBER 5, MAY 2004
EL SALVADOR
Masked Protestors Occupy
National Cathedral
On 29 Apr, a group of masked members of the Salvadoran
Social Security Institute Workers’ Union (STISSS) occupied the National
Cathedral in San Salvador, demanding the government reinstate 100 health
workers who lost their jobs during a nine-month strike that ended in June ’03. The
group also voiced their opposition to the privatization of healthcare and the
government’s decision not to pull Salvadoran troops out of Iraq.
The demonstration
seriously escalated when the National Civil Police (PNC) arrived at the
cathedral just after noon. During the
confrontations between the police, union members and other protestors, store
windows were smashed and several vehicles, including two passenger buses and
the van of a local news network, were set on fire. The police used tear gas and pepper spray to control the crowd
and arrested 37 union members, including its leader, Ricardo Monge. According
to the Red Cross, 25 people were injured in the confrontations.
A group of union
members who escaped arrest continued to occupy the cathedral for more than 30
hours. Police asked for permission to
enter the cathedral to detain the demonstrators, but Catholic Church officials
would not grant them permission.
Finally, demonstrators were
convinced to leave the cathedral on 30 Apr by Auxiliary Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chávez
and human rights prosecutor Beatrice de Carrillo.
On 31 Apr, members of
the STISSS met to discuss the release of Monge and the other detainees. There
were also protests in Los Angeles, California, by several solidarity groups,
demanding the release of the prisoners.
According to the
police, Monge and other protestors now face criminal charges of public
disturbance, conspiracy and resisting arrest.
It is expected that they will also face several civil suits for the
damage done to local businesses and vehicles.
President Francisco
Flores and other members of his political party, the National Republican
Alliance (ARENA), blamed the disturbances on the leftist Faribundo Martí
National Liberation Party (FMLN), saying the events were “terrorist acts” meant
to cause instability in the country.
Other government and
police officials also held this view. Interior Minister René Figueroa said that
the acts of the protestors required “vigorous action” by authorities and that
these events “could even be a destabilizing strategy on the part of the FMLN.”
He went on to say that the FMLN “is used to this type of activity, to
provocation, to urban street terrorism, such as we are witnessing.”
Ricardo Meneses, the
PNC chief, also called the acts “terrorism” and said that he would not tolerate
“any more acts of terrorism.”
The national
cathedral has been the stage for numerous protests and demonstrations in the
past, especially during the country’s 12-year civil war that ended in ’92.
Between ’03 and ’04 the National Cathedral has been occupied by protestors a
total of four times, including this latest occurrence.
Salvadoran Troops Will Not Pull Out of Iraq
The Salvadoran
government made a controversial decision to keep its troops in Iraq despite the
decisions of other Latin American countries and Spain to pull their armed
forces from the Middle East region. Salvadoran troops were under the command of
pull its troops from Iraq in Apr.
El Salvador, which
has approximately 380 soldiers and officials in Iraq, opted to maintain its
troops there at least until 30 June.
According to President Flores, El Salvador is committed until 30 June,
and will reevaluate its presence in Iraq after that date.
The decision, which
makes El Salvador the only Latin American country to maintain its troops in the
US-led operation in Iraq, has recently been the issue of debate in Salvadoran
society. It was the central issue in several protests and was one of the
concerns that provoked the violent confrontations at the National Cathedral on
29 Apr.
Despite these
concerns, members of the current ARENA government stand behind their decision
to keep Salvadoran troops in Iraq. ARENA Congressman Norman Quijano commented
that “we will not run out of there [Iraq] like chickens.”
Coffee Production Better
than Expected
At the end of the
coffee producing year ’03-’04, coffee production had a better than expected
yield, totalling 178 million kilos.
This total yield of coffee represents a relatively small drop in
production, only 3.6% compared to the expected 25% drop in production that
economists were predicting from the previous harvest.
Despite this fact,
the Salvadoran Coffee Council (CSC) is still concerned about the drop in
production, saying that the volume of coffee produced is still historically low
compared to the ’90s when the coffee industry was producing 430 million kilos a
year.
According to the CSC,
these low levels of production not only affect coffee growers, but they also
mean that unemployment has risen in rural areas. In ’04, only 49,000 workers
were employed by the coffee industry nationwide, 5,500 less than the year
before and a small portion of the 215,000 workers employed in ’92-’93, during
the coffee industry’s better years.
DNA Helps Track Missing
Children
The Human Rights
organization, “Pro- Búsqueda de Niños
Desaparecidos” (In Search of Missing Children), with the help of Physicians for
Human Rights (Boston), the University of Berkeley and the Laboratory of the
Department of Justice of California, started a
DNA bank to help find children who disappeared during the country’s
civil war from ’80-’92.
The director of
Pro-Búsqueda, Marina Dolores Ortíz, said: “we have been able to establish a
process that is not very complicated, but is exact, to help locate children who
disappeared during the armed conflict.”
According to Ortíz,
the process only requires the saliva samples of three family members of the
disappeared child. Once the samples are
collected they are sent to the laboratories at the University of California,
Berkeley, for testing.
The organization,
founded in ’94, has resolved 274 cases of missing children, 75 of which have
been resolved with DNA testing. In 157 of the cases, the organization was able
to reunite children, most of whom had been adopted by families in the US and
Europe, with their biological parents. The organization has also documented 38
children who were killed during the civil conflict, which took a tragic toll of
at least 75,0
They hope to continue
their work by matching the DNA of families who have lost their children with
the DNA of children who have been found. Ortíz says that they have approximately
1,000 samples of DNA from families and children, and now they must match the
samples.
The gene
bank is not only a resource for families who have lost their children, but also
for children who were adopted during the civil war in El Salvador, so that, in
the future, they can use DNA testing to find their biological parents.
- Emilie Walker