[Cispes-update] Communities Demand Justice for Anti-mining Activists in El Salvador

[CISPES National Office]

*Communities Demand Justice for Anti-mining Activists*
CISPES <http://cispes.org> Update
October, 2009
/*also in this update:*/

    * Election of new Attorney General ends legislative deadlock
      <#Election_of_new_Attorney_General_ends>
    * FMLN blocks same-sex marriage and adoption ban
      <#FMLN_blocks_same-sex_marriage_and>
    * Indigenous community participates in official Independence Day
      celebration <#Indigenous_community_participates_in>


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 here to read more about the recent 
wave of political violence 
<http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=621&Itemid=28> 
against anti-mining activists in Cabañas.

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.  /(See next section on Barahona's 
election.)/  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.

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 here to read more 
on the case 
<http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=496&Itemid=28>), 
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.


      Election of new Attorney General ends legislative deadlock

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 here to read 
more about the deadlock 
<http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=564&Itemid=28>. 
 

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.

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."


      FMLN blocks same-sex marriage and adoption ban

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.

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."

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.


      Indigenous community participates in official Independence Day
      celebration

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.  

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.

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