MINNEAPOLIS, SATURDAY JUNE 12 – “One of my three addictions is El Salvador,”
Said Wayne Wittman, to those gathered at the Resource Center of the Americas to commemorate the life of Archbishop Romero. Wittman, Steve Boyer and Duane Krohnke spoke about their many visits to El Salvador in delegations with Augsburg College Center for Global Education, Peter Yarrow, Veterans for Peace, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, and others.
Their most recent visit brought them to the massive marches commemorating the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, on March 24, 2010. Romero was one of the world’s great champions for the poor and oppressed, constantly speaking out against violence until 1980, when he was shot in the chest at the conclusion of Mass.
The American visitors to El Salvador saw "Monseñor: The Last Days of Oscar Romero” at its world premiere in El Salvador, and this summer the documentary about his life will be released in the U.S.
Many who gathered had visited El Salvador and shared insight on the causes of conditions there, including poverty, crime, & the impunity of war criminals, as well as the responsibility that Americans have—
to stop our military aid to Central America, change America’s policies of aggressive free trade, and shift immigration issues into the light of macro-economic crises rather than that of individual morality.
The U.S.’ Involvement in El Salvador
The US has been involved in El Salvador’s affairs at least since Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, when Roosevelt reached out to Central America with a paternal attitude.
What the US accomplished by military force in the past, it now attempts to accomplish through trade agreements like CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement.
Before 1980, the US used Low Intensity Conflict to protect its interests (corporations) in Central America. Oscar Romero was one of few in the Catholic Church who spoke out against Low Intensity Conflict strategies used in El Salvador: torture, rape, and cycles of indiscriminate assassinations & selective assassinations.
According to the 1989 volume War Against the Poor,
“US low-intensity conflict strategy in El Salvador utilized generalized terror against civilians in order to sow fear and shape the collective memory of the people. It was hoped that once terrorized the people could be intimidated into silence with lesser amounts of violence, that is, through selective terror. If over time selective terror proved an insufficient deterrent to the 'crimes of the poor,' then violence escalated accordingly.”
Between 1980 and 1992, the Salvadoran Civil war was fought in the context of the global Cold War, with Cuba and the USSR backing the Marxist-Leninist rebels and the United States backing the right wing military Salvadoran government. It was not just a proxy war of superpowers, but also an economic & psychological war against poor people's movements & their ability to organize from the bottom up.
The military fought the rebels with American guns and helicopters, paid itself with American aid money, and sent its officers to the School of the Americas in the state of Georgia, where they graduated with degrees in torture, assassination, mass murder and mass intimidation. Every November Americans protest this training at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia—though now the School is renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney remarked that El Salvador was our model of democracy. His ominous remark hung over the debate at the Resource Center of the Americas like a shadow. How many more countries will we spread democracy to, if democracy looks like civil war, impunity, kidnappings, and the endless intimidation of civilians?
This sort of democracy came to Nicarague as well as El Salvador, where Father Miguel D’Escoto told Minnesotan Professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, years ago,
“A nation that wages war against the poor in Nicaragua will ignore the needs of its own poor. A country which in the name of ‘democracy’ fights wars against the self-determination of other peoples cannot remain a democracy. I have felt for a long time that the U.S. people will one day be the most repressed in the world.”
(War Against the Poor, Nelson-Pallmeyer, 1989)
President Mauricio Funes
On March 15, 2009, Mauricio Funes, a television journalist, became the first president from the FMLN party. Like President Obama, he is a center-left politician who decided to resume relations with Cuba in 2009. Also like Obama, his platform was transparency and revealing the corruption of past governments, but his popularity has declined throughout his first year in office.
Those marching on March 24 demanded an investigation of Romero’s death, the end of impunity, and refusal of amnesty to the perpetrators of the massacre, though many of them are dead.
First Recognition of Romero by Salvadoran Government
Today a mural with images of Romero hangs in the departure zone of the San Salvador International Airport. It was the government’s first recognition of Romero’s assassination as a tragedy. When his life was commemorated this year, the government recognized him as the country’s Spiritual Guide.
Roberto D’Aubuisson
The speakers' delegation passed a notable statue in San Salvador: a monument to Roberto D’Aubuisson, unmarked but for a plaque in remembrance of D’Aubuisson's son. Roberto D’Aubuisson founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which he led from 1978 to 1985. He was behind the paramilitary death squads and ordered the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980.
They saw a demonstration against D’Aubuisson at the monument, and a counter-demonstration. They saw a man in black spray-painting swastikas and epithets on the sidewalk near the monument; police stood by and later cleaned up the spray paint. The delegates noticed that police tended to avoid confrontation in the open.
The US embassy recognizes this as a culture of impunity. The embassy told the delegates that only 5% of common crimes result in convictions in El Salvador, corruption and impunity prevail, and there is a greater fear of crime in cities now than there was fear in the countryside during the Civil War.
CAFTA
The speakers spoke about the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by CAFTA when they projected their photos of shanty towns and cardboard homes in El Salvador.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement is a force of globalization acting on not only the imports & exports of economies, but the farms, villages, and towns of Latin America. It frees the flow of capital from country to country, but restricts the flow of people. Foreign companies are free to set up shop in countries where they can use up the natural resources, offer goods at prices that kill local competition, and bust unions mercilessly. When governments try to impose regulations for environmental protection or worker safety, they are often hindered by the free trade agreements, and multinational corporations can actually sue them for denying their rights to invest however they like.
Liberation Theology
Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara once said that when he gave food to the poor they called him a saint, but when he asked why people were poor they called him a communist. This association with communism is the main accusation made against Romero's sort of liberation theology, which still divides religious people in El Salvador.
The American delegates who spoke had noticed a sharp struggle between the rich, powerful, and very real Opus Dei and liberation theology. One encourages bodily suffering and endurance of suffering on earth for the rewards in heaven; the other wants to end the suffering of the poor.
Upcoming Trips to El Salvador
Americans continue to visit El Salvador to learn Spanish, listen and join in solidarity with people's movements. Minneapolis' Holy Trinity Lutheran Church is taking a delegation there this summer, and the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad is taking a special delegation there in November.
http://www.cis-elsalvador.org/
Gold Mining Controversy
The American delegates learned of a fight over potential gold mining in the Department of Cabanas. The Canadian mining company Pacific Rim opposes El Salvador's ban on gold mining for environmental reasons. Pacific Rim is prospecting for what it calls the El Dorado Project.
Three anti-mining activists from the Cabanas Environment Committee have already been killed in 2009: Gustavo Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera, and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto. Their murders fit the pattern of Low Intensity Conflict: mysterious, unidentified killers go after the opponents of the Church, the government and foreign companies, then the government says that guerrilla fighters are responsible and denounces their terrorist tactics.
Journalists and staff of the independent Radio Victoria have also received death threats for their coverage of this controversy in Victoria, Cabanas.
RECOMMENDED ACTION:
Send appeals to authorities:
calling on them to order a prompt, full and independent investigation into the threats against Radio Victoria staff, and the recent killing of Ramiro Rivera and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, environmental activists in Cabañas department, and to bring those responsible to justice
requesting that they ensure that full protection is provided to all Radio Victoria staff and volunteers, and to members of the Cabañas Environment Committee and their relatives who have received threats
APPEALS TO:
Presidente Mauricio Funes
(President)
Casa Presidencial
Alameda Dr. Manuel Enrique Araujo, No. 5500
San Salvador, El Salvador
Fax: +503 2243 9947
Fiscal General
(Attorney General)
Fiscalía General de la República
Final 4a Calle Oriente y 19a Avenida Sur, Residencial Primavera
Santa Tecla, La Libertad
San Salvador, El Salvador
Fax : +503 2523 7170
E-mail: astor.escalante@fgr.gob.sv
E-mail: cc: radelgado@fgr.gob.sv
Comisionado Carlos Asencio Girón
Director de la Policía Nacional Civil
(National Police Director)
Policía Nacional Civil
6ta. Calle Oriente entre 8va y 10ma
Ave. Sur, # 42 Barrio La Vega
San Salvador, El Salvador
E-mail: carlosascencio@pnc.gob.sv
Please send copies and messages of support to:
Radio Victoria
Av. José Matias Delgado #47
Victoria, Cabañas, El Salvador, C.A.
E-mail: radiovictoriapopular@yahoo.es
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