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<div align="center"><big><big><b><font face="Times New Roman">Communities
Demand Justice for Anti-mining Activists</font></b></big></big><br>
<font face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://cispes.org">CISPES</a>
Update</font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman">October, 2009<br>
</font>
<div align="left"><i><b>also in this update:</b></i><br>
<ul>
<li><a href="#Election_of_new_Attorney_General_ends">Election of new
Attorney General ends legislative deadlock</a></li>
<li><a href="#FMLN_blocks_same-sex_marriage_and">FMLN blocks same-sex
marriage and adoption ban</a></li>
<li><a href="#Indigenous_community_participates_in">Indigenous
community participates in official Independence Day celebration</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<font face="Times New Roman"><br>
On September 24, community activists demanded justice for recent
victims of political violence in front of the City Hall in San Isidro,
Cabañas. The date marked 100 days from the disappearance of
anti-mining activist Marcelo Rivera, whose body was found in a well
with signs of torture on June 30 following his June 18 disappearance.
Nearly 100 days have passed since journalists from community radio
station Radio Victoria began receiving death threats. Click <a
href="http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=621&Itemid=28">here
to read more about the recent wave of political violence</a> against
anti-mining activists in Cabañas. <br>
<br>
The demonstrators denounced the lack of investigation of the violence
and threats, calling on the newly-elected Attorney General Romeo
Barahona to end the impunity that his predecessor, de facto Attorney
General Astor Escalante, allowed. <i>(See next section on Barahona’s
election.)</i> Local priest Óscar Antonio Granados called on Barahona
to investigate the intellectual authors of the crimes and the sources
of the death threats received by journalists and other activists.<br>
<br>
In their statements, activists continued to name local authorities from
San Isidro’s Mayor’s office and the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim
as those responsible for the violence and threats. Environmentalist
Francisco Pineda explained that, “from the Mayor’s office there are
people hired to be promoters and ask the people to accept mining.”
Pacific Rim, which is currently suing El Salvador for violation of the
Central American Free Trade Agreement or CAFTA (click <a
href="http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=496&Itemid=28">here
to read more on the case</a>), issued a statement in late August
claiming the company had no involvement in Rivera’s murder and denying
ties to Óscar Menjívar, who is currently in jail for shooting
anti-mining activist Ramiro Rivera (no relation to Marcelo) eight times
in the back. Community members maintain that Menjívar had been hired
by Pacific Rim to promote the El Dorado mine in San Isidro and that
Menjívar is a hired assassin for pro-mining interests.<br>
<br>
</font>
<h3><a name="Election_of_new_Attorney_General_ends"></a><font
face="Times New Roman">Election of new Attorney General ends
legislative deadlock</font></h3>
<font face="Times New Roman">On September 18, El Salvador’s Legislative
Assembly elected and swore in Romeo Benjamín Barahona as the new
Attorney General of the Republic for the period of 2009-2012, five
months after former Attorney General Félix Garried Safie’s term
expired. The vacant position was immediately assumed by the Adjunct
Attorney General at the time, Astor Escalante, while the Legislative
Assembly remained in deadlock, unable to come to consensus on the new
Attorney General appointment. Click <a
href="http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=564&Itemid=28">here
to read more about the deadlock</a>. <br>
<br>
Barahona, who served as an Adjunct Attorney General for eight years,
was elected unanimously by the Legislative Assembly following
negotiations mediated by President Mauricio Funes. Before offering
their support for Barahona, members of the leftist party Farabundo
Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN) legislative fraction
questioned him regarding a series of concerns and were reassured by his
responses. Political analysts have pointed out that commitments made
during this interview along with the FMLN’s decision to support his
election have created a level of accountability with the new Attorney
General that did not exist for his predecessors, whose loyalty remained
with the right wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party.<br>
<br>
Barahona’s appointment has generated criticism from sectors that view
it as a continuation of the flawed administrations of former Attorneys
General Safie and Belisario Artiga, with whom Barahona served as
Adjunct Attorney General. In response to Barahona’s first press
conference in which he named extortions and homicides as the primary
crimes he would be investigating, the director of the Foundation for
the Study of the Application of Law (FESPAD) María Silvia Guillen
remarked, “the combat of delinquency and [common] crime will always aim
itself against the poor; [in Barahona’s appointment] we lost the hope
that the corruption of previous governments would be prosecuted.”<br>
<br>
</font>
<h3><a name="FMLN_blocks_same-sex_marriage_and"></a><font
face="Times New Roman">FMLN blocks same-sex marriage and adoption ban</font></h3>
<font face="Times New Roman">On September 24th, a constitutional reform
that would ban same-sex marriage and adoption was defeated after the
FMLN party fraction refused to support the ban. Despite the reform’s
approval by the previous legislature, the same-sex marriage ban fell
short of the 56 votes necessary from the current legislature, as all
constitutional reforms must be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote
in two subsequent legislatures. The lead up to last week’s plenary
involved a massive lobbying campaign by the Catholic Church,
evangelicals, and right-wing groups. Two weeks before the vote, El
Salvador’s Catholic Archbishop Monsignor José Luis Escobar proposed
that the right-wing refuse to approve the 2010 National Budget if the
FMLN did not support the reform.<br>
<br>
The plenary debate was dominated by 40 minutes of arguments from the
ARENA party, claiming the FMLN does not advocate for the Salvadoran
family. In response, FMLN legislative deputy and member of the party’s
National Women’s Secretariat Margarita Velado declared, “We have a
clear ideology in favor of the family,” citing the distribution of
school uniforms, construction of the new Maternity Hospital, and other
projects that the FMLN government headed by President Funes has begun.
She added that if the Assembly really wanted to look at defending the
family, “they should look towards other problems, like the fact
that…9.4% of [female] adolescents have been raped by close relatives
and 34.8% of households are the responsibility of one person.”<br>
<br>
Despite the reform’s failure, the right-wing says they plan to continue
trying to ban same-sex marriage. FMLN legislative deputy and party
spokesperson Sigfrido Reyes said the right’s insistence “is a strategy
that is trying to politically exhaust the FMLN” and maintained that his
party would not change their position.<br>
<br>
</font>
<h3><a name="Indigenous_community_participates_in"></a><font
face="Times New Roman">Indigenous community participates in official
Independence Day celebration</font></h3>
<font face="Times New Roman">On September 15, for the first time ever,
El Salvador’s official Independence Day celebration included the
participation of the country’s indigenous community. At the civic
activity in the Jorge Gonzalez Stadium, representatives from indigenous
communities in Nahuizalco, Sonsonate, and Santa Ana performed a
ceremony in which they called on the four directions and asked for a
true independence and inclusion of indigenous people. <br>
<br>
Representatives from the indigenous communities expressed their
satisfaction at their inclusion in the official activities but were
careful to point out that El Salvador still lacks true independence.
“This celebration is not ours, because there is not freedom, the
country is very indebted and that is not freedom for us, the Free Trade
Agreement [CAFTA-DR] is not freedom and neither is the system of life
in which we experience so many murders and violence,” they stated.
Calls were made to celebrate “our true Salvadoran heroes…Farabundo
Martí, Feliciano Ama, those who offered their lives for our people.”
Members of the University of El Salvador’s student movement marched in
the parade that ended at the soccer stadium in order to demand that the
government work towards a “true independence.” Social movement leaders
were satisfied to see this new openness in the celebration, noting that
it was the first time that critical voices were allowed in the official
activities.<br>
<br>
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