El Salvador

Yesterday, President of El Salvador Mauricio Funes swore in retired general David Munguía Payés as the country´s new Minister of Public Security and Justice, following the sudden resignation of Manuel Melgar from the position on November 8. “This was not a decision that the President made; he is simply a spokesperson. It’s a decision that was made somewhere in the U.S. capital,” said Roberto Lorenzana, spokesperson for the governing leftist party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

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In this interview Salvadoran activist Carolina Amaya says that the challenge of social movements is to deconstruct the false paradigm of development that triggered the economic and environmental crisis that puts the life of our civilization at risk.

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The body of murdered fourth-year university student and active member of the environmental movement in the area of Ilobasco, Cabanas, Juan Francisco Duran Ayala, has finally been returned to his family in San Salvador. Juan is the fourth person active in the anti-mining movement in the department of Cabanas to be murdered in the past two years.

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An environmental analysis of the first two years of Mauricio Funes’ Administration. […]

El Salvador’s breadbasket has an alternative vision to the one that US biotech firms like Monsanto would like to impose: “food sovereignty.”

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As part of his visit to El Salvador yesterday, the last stop on a Latin American excursion occurring despite events in Japan and Libya, Barack Obama visited the tomb of Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, assassinated on March 24, 1980.

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Women are playing a leading role in a powerful social movement addressing natural resource protection, adaptation to climate change, and corporate accountability in this coastal village in El Salvador. Cristina Reyes is currently in her second term as president of the local community council in Ciudad Romero, located in the department (province) of Usulután, on the Pacific Ocean.
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Why do 700 Salvadorans leave their native country every day? This is the burning question behind documentary filmmaker Jamie Moffett’s latest project, Return to El Salvador. Narrated by Martin Sheen and endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the film provides a rare glimpse into how the lives of North Americans are directly tied to those of this tiny Central American nation. I recently interviewed Moffett about the film.

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Monsignor Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated while giving a mass on March 24th, 1980. Romero had become a recognized critic of violence and injustice, and was therefore perceived as a dangerous enemy by certain military and right wing civil groups. This March 24th, a mass honoring Monsignor Romero’s memory was held on the same altar where the latter one was gunned down exactly thirty years before.
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Indigenous peoples in the western Salvadoran town of Izalco commemorated the 78^th anniversary of  the slaughter of 30 thousand indigenous people and peasants, killed during the popular uprisings.  On January 22, 1932, more than three thousand farmers, indigenous and political leaders protested  low wages, unfair distribution of land and hoarding of wealth in the hands of a few elite Salvadoran families.

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