El Salvador

December 20, 4:00pm – Hitmen gunned down and killed our compañero Ramiro Rivera Gomez, Vice president of the Comité Ambiental de Cabañas, [Cabañas Environmental Committee], in the Canton of Trinidad, city of Ilobasco, Cabañas.  Rivera was a leader in the resistance against the Pacific Rim Mining Company.
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At the recent Pacific Rim Mining Company shareholders’ meeting in Vancouver, BC, shareholders voted to extend repayment on $6.7 million of stock-like warrants for another year. About $800,000 of the extended warrants belong Pacific Rim Executive Board members themselves, so the move sent a clear signal to investors that the company is committed to carrying through with its $77 million investment arbitration claim against the government of El Salvador. […]

A leader in the movement opposed to re-opening the El Dorado goldmine in northeast El Salvador was in stable condition after being shot eight times in the back and legs. Doctors at San Salvador’s Rosales Hospital said it was “miraculous” that Ramiro Rivera survived the attack, which occurred in front of Rivera’s modest house. Rivera identified one of two assailants as Oscar Menjívar, who was detained by police in Cabañas, where both men reside. […]

On June 18 Gustavo Marcelo Rivera, a community leader and anti-mining activist, whose most recent work targeted a controversial and widely unpopular gold mine project proposed by Canada’s Pacific Rim, was disappeared. Less than two weeks later his corpse was found at the bottom of a 60-foot-well, while an autopsy later revealed he was strangled to death and tortured.
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A wave of violence targeted at anti-mining protesters has ripped through Cabañas in north-eastern El Salvador, and Pacific Rim Mining Corporation, the mid-size Canadian company which has spent millions in its effort to exploit the area’s ample gold deposits has remained curiously silent on the attacks. […]

This is Part Six in a series of interviews with members of the Salvadoran Social movement titled "What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left."

Radio Zurda is a radical youth media collective that broadcasts a weekly radio program on 22 community stations in El Salvador. Through a live Internet feed, the program has the capacity to reach millions of people around the world with critical and otherwise under or un-reported news and a consistent drive for community engagement, collective process, and political empowerment.
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As a result of ever-increasing rates of violence, number of gang members, and citizen insecurity, the government of El Salvador implemented a series of ‘zero tolerance’ policies in 2004, known as Mano Dura, or the Iron Fist. However, the gangs are not understood as the product of social and economic factors that leave youth with little opportunity for alternatives to crime.

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This is Part Five in a series of interviews with members of the Salvadoran Social movement titled "What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left."

Corporate media’s two-dimensional depiction of Salvadoran youth leads us to believe that most are caught up in a vicious cycle of gang violence; it has failed to convey the full picture, which involves hundreds of youth moving thousands more into political activism and shepherding a new generation of leftist thinkers in El Salvador.

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