Bukele wins El Salvador presidency vowing to end corruption

February 04, 2019

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — A youthful former mayor of the capital easily won El Salvador's presidency, getting more votes than his three rivals combined to usher out the two parties that dominated politics for a quarter century in the crime-plagued Central America nation.

The Supreme Electoral Court declared Nayib Bukele the winner late Sunday, saying he had nearly 54 percent of the votes, with about 90 percent of ballots counted. Carlos Callejas of the Nationalist Republican Alliance ended in a distant second at less than 32 percent, while even farther back were former Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez of the currently governing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and a minor party candidate.

By surpassing the 50 percent threshold, Bukele won outright and avoided the need for a March runoff against the No. 2 finisher. Bukele claimed victory even before the formal announcement of his win, inviting a jubilant crowd in the capital of San Salvador to celebrate in the streets.

"This is a victory for the Salvadoran public, really," Bukele said to cheers. All four candidates promised to end corruption, stamp out gang violence and create more jobs, with crushing crime at the top of the agenda, but Bukele's campaign resonated more with his countrymen and polls had pointed to him as the strong front-runner going into the election. Roughly 67,000 Salvadorans belong to gangs that terrorize their communities with extortion, murder and other forms of violence.

The candidates proposed creating economic opportunities and restoring social values to dissuade Salvadorans from engaging in criminal behavior. El Salvador is small both in size and population, with just 6.5 million people. Close to a third of its households live in poverty, while the World Bank says per capita income is $3,560. Salvadorans searching for a better life have joined recent caravans of migrants trekking across Mexico hoping to reach the U.S.

Bukele, 37, made his political debut in 2012 as a small-town mayor with the FMLN and won election in the capital three years later, automatically making him a potential presidential contender. But his frequent criticism of the leftist party's leadership got him expelled, and he ran for the presidency as the unlikely standard-bearer for the small, conservative Grand Alliance for National Unity, whose initials — GANA — mean "win" in Spanish.

The FMLN and the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as ARENA, had dominated El Salvador's politics since a 1992 peace deal ended a vicious civil war. But both parties have been stained by corruption scandals and neither has been able to stem gang violence.

"I came to vote because I want the country to change, because we are tired of so much corruption," said one voter, Estela Henriquez, at a polling place in the capital. More than 4,500 election observers, including representatives of the Organization of American States and the European Union, were on hand. There were no reports of major problems in voting.

Salvadoran front-runner seeks to end decades of 2-party rule

February 03, 2019

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Salvadorans will choose Sunday from among a handful of presidential candidates all promising to end corruption, stamp out gang violence and create more jobs with the front-runner hoping to end three decades of two-party rule in the country.

The Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies, a think tank based in Guatemala, found great similarities in the four candidates' proposals. Top of the agenda is public safety: roughly 67,000 Salvadorans belong to gangs that terrorize their communities via extortion, murder and other forms of violence. The candidates have touched on ways to generate economic opportunities and restore social values to dissuade Salvadorans from engaging in criminal behavior.

Leading in the polls is Nayib Bukele, the former mayor of the capital, San Salvador. Bukele has campaigned on promises to create a commission to tackle impunity and corruption. He also proposes taxing property and idle agricultural land, levying higher taxes on luxury goods and combating tax evasion.

An election of Bukele, 37, would put an end to decades of two-party rule in El Salvador. Bukele made his political debut in 2012 with the ruling FMLN party, which arose from a leftist guerrilla movement after peace accords ended El Salvador's civil war. Today he is the standard bearer of the Grand Alliance for National Unity — its initials, GANA, mean "win" in Spanish — and he's challenging the political dominance that has reigned since the 1992 peace accords.

A recent poll gave Bukele support from about 40 percent of Salvadorans, compared with 23 percent for businessman Carlos Callejas of the conservative Arena coalition. He was even further ahead of the FMLN's Hugo Martinez, a former foreign minister.

More than 4,500 election observers, including representatives of the Organization of American States and the European Union, will be on hand when Salvadorans go to the polls. If none of the contenders clinch more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getting will compete in a second round runoff in March.

The country is small both in size and population, with just 6.5 million inhabitants. Close to a third of households live in poverty, while the World Bank says per capita income is $3,560. Salvadorans searching for a better life have joined recent caravans of migrants trekking through Mexico toward the U.S.

El Salvador, Taiwan break ties as China isolates island foe

August 21, 2018

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan broke off diplomatic ties with El Salvador on Tuesday as the Central American country defected to rival Beijing in the latest blow to the self-ruled island China has been trying to isolate on the global stage.

The break in ties means Taiwan is recognized as a sovereign nation by only 17 mainly small, developing countries. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that his government had established ties with El Salvador.

"History will prove that establishing diplomatic relations with China is in full accordance with the fundamental and long-term interests of the country and the people of El Salvador," Wang said. Taiwan split from mainland China amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing, which considers Taiwan its territory, campaigns relentlessly to isolate the island globally. It cut off relations with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's government shortly after she took office in 2016 and has been steadily ratcheting up both diplomatic and economic pressure.

Earlier this year, the West African nation of Burkina Faso and the Dominican Republic broke ties with Taiwan and resumed or established diplomatic relations with China. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu on Tuesday condemned what he called China's campaign of luring away Taiwan's allies with promises of vast financial aid and investment.

Taiwan is willing to consider cooperating with its allies in education, farming or even infrastructure initiatives, Wu said, but refuses to compete with China in buying diplomatic support. Wu said that El Salvador had repeatedly sought large amounts of funding from Taiwan for a port project that a Taiwanese team of engineers dispatched by the government thought wasn't economically feasible.

"We think this is an inappropriate development plan that risks causing both countries to fall into great debt," Wu said, noting that some developing countries were increasingly concerned about the risks of unsustainable debt linked to Chinese investments.

Wu said El Salvador's ruling party was also expecting Taiwan to provide funds to help it win in elections, but Taiwan refused. "It is irresponsible to engage in financial aid diplomacy or compete with China in cash, or even in providing illegal political money," Wu said. "My government is unwilling to and cannot do so."

Some analysts say Chinese President Xi Jinping, one of the most powerful Chinese leaders in decades, seems determined to bring Taiwan under Beijing's control during his time in office, which would place him in the history books alongside Mao Zedong.

The island's 23 million residents are strongly in favor of maintaining their de facto independent status, but Xi has previously warned a Taiwanese envoy that the issue of unification cannot be put off indefinitely.

Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren said on national television that China and El Salvador would discuss ways to cooperate in trade, investment and infrastructure development. "It will give great benefits to the country and provide extraordinary opportunities on a personal level to each one of you," he said.

The move comes just a day after China's foreign ministry said it had complained to the U.S. over Taiwanese President Tsai's visits this month to Los Angeles and Houston while in transit to diplomatic allies Paraguay and Belize.

The administration of President Donald Trump has been boosting relations with Taiwan amid a brewing trade war with Beijing. Tsai urged the island's people to unite despite the pressure the government was facing diplomatically.

"Taiwan will not yield because of pressure," Tsai said in a televised address. "We will be stronger and more united, and this will strengthen Taiwan's determination to go out."

Marcos Aleman in San Salvador, El Salvador, contributed to this report.

Pope names cardinals for Laos, Mali, Sweden, Spain, Salvador

May 21, 2017

VATICAN CITY (AP) — In a surprise announcement Sunday, Pope Francis named new cardinals for Spain, El Salvador and three countries where Catholics are a tiny minority: Mali, Laos and Sweden. "Their origin, from different parts of the world, manifests the universality of the Church spread out all over the Earth," Francis said, speaking from the window of the Apostolic Palace to thousands of faithful in St. Peter's Square.

The five churchmen chosen are Monsignor Jean Zerbo, archbishop of Bamako, Mali, where he has been involved in peace efforts amid Islamist extremism; Monsignor Juan Jose Omella, archbishop of Barcelona, Spain; Monsignor Anders Arborelius of Stockholm, who became a Catholic at the age of 20; Monsignor Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun, apostolic vicar of Pakse, Laos; and Monsignor Gregorio Rosa Chavez, an auxiliary bishop who works as a parish pastor in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Francis will formally elevate the five to cardinal's rank in a ceremony at the Vatican on June 28. Then the new "princes of the church," as the red-hatted, elite corps of churchmen who elect popes are known, will co-celebrate Mass with Francis the next day, the Feast Day of Saints Peter and Paul, an important Vatican holiday.

Since being elected pontiff in 2013, Francis has made a point of visiting his flock in places where Catholics are in the minority, as well as of working to improve relations between churches and among believers of different faiths.

His brief pilgrimage last year to Sweden, where Lutherans are the Christian majority, was hailed by some as instrumental in helping to improve relations between the two churches. While there, he joined Lutheran leaders in a common commemoration of the Protestant Reformation that divided Europe five centuries ago.

Arborelius, who is 67, converted to Catholicism when he was 20. In 1998, when he was consecrated as a bishop in Stockholm's Catholic cathedral, Arborelius became Sweden's first Catholic bishop, of Swedish origin, since the times of the Reformation,

In Mali, a country bloodied by Islamist extremism, Muslims constitute the predominant religious majority. Zerbo's clerical resume reveals him to be a churchman working for reconciliation in society, a virtue repeatedly stressed by Francis. The Vatican noted that Zerbo, 73, who was named an auxiliary bishop of Bamako in 1998 and 10 years later was made that city's archbishop, has played a role in peace negotiations.

Extremists attacked a hotel in Bamako in 2015, killing 19 people. Last month, the U.N. peacekeeping chief for Mali called the security situation there alarming, warning that extremist groups operating under the al-Qaida banner were carrying out more sophisticated attacks and Islamic State militants were slowly making inroads.

There has been slow progress in implementing a peace deal reached in June 2015 between Mali's government, Tuareg separatists and armed groups in the north. In Laos, the tiny Catholic community has often struggled to persevere, including under communist-led rule. Mangkhanekhoun, 73, was ordained a priest in 1972 and has served as a bishop since 2001. The Vatican paid tribute to his work in visiting faithful in mountain villages. Since early this year, he has served as apostolic administrator in Vientiane.

Catholicism has been the majority religion in Spain and in El Salvador, although in parts of Central and South America, evangelical Protestant sects have been gaining converts from the Catholic church.

The resume of Chavez, 74, also includes credentials valued by the pope, who has made serving the poor a key focus of the Catholic church's mission. Chavez heads the Latin American division of Caritas, the Catholic charity. He was appointed an auxiliary bishop in 1982 for San Salvador, where he now will be based as a cardinal after serving as a parish pastor in the city.

Chavez worked closely with the late Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who during El Salvador's civil war was shot to death by a right-wing death squad while saying Mass in 1980. Pope Francis has denounced Catholic clerics who "defamed" Romero after the slaying, a campaign that delayed Romero's eventual beatification.

Francis' pick for the Spain cardinal's post, Omella, 71, worked as a missionary in Zaire earlier in his career and serves on the Vatican's powerful Congregation of Bishops office. Since December 2015, he has been archbishop of Barcelona.

In announcing his selections, Francis expressed hope that the new cardinals with their work and "their advice will sustain me more intensely in my service as bishop of Rome, universal pastor of the church." In other remarks to the faithful in the square, Francis referred to the situation of another Catholic minority — Chinese whose loyalty to the pope has put them at odds with authorities of the state-sanctioned Catholic church in China, and sometimes brought persecution.

He prayed that Catholics in China would be able to bring their "personal contribution for the communion among believers and harmony in the entire society." Francis is eager to see improved Vatican-China relations. Both sides have for decades been at odds over Chinese authorities' insistence that they have the right to appoint bishops, a prerogative the Vatican says only belongs to the pope.

He urged Catholics in China to "stay open to meeting and dialogue, always."

El Salvador scraps amnesty law, opens door for prosecutions

July 15, 2016

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The striking down of El Salvador's amnesty law is giving hope to thousands that justice for human rights abuses committed during the Central American country's 12-year civil war could now be within reach.

Others, though, fear the Supreme Court's scrapping of the law that protected the military, paramilitary groups and guerrilla fighters — some of whom are in the current government — could tear open old wounds in the still polarized country.

Even President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who was part of the command structure of the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front during the war, could theoretically face prosecutions, legal experts said Thursday.

On a 4-1 vote Wednesday, the Supreme Court overturned the amnesty law, which had been enacted in 1993 five days after a truth commission's report blamed the military for the vast majority of abuses during the war. The ruling made clear that amnesty was lifted for not only those accused of directly committing crimes, but also the command structures of the military and guerrilla forces who gave the orders.

"Today is an historic day for human rights in El Salvador," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director for Amnesty International. "By turning its back on a law that has done nothing but let criminals get away with serious human rights violations for decades, the country is finally dealing with its tragic past,"

The Truth Commission that investigated the war's atrocities determined that more than 75,000 people were tortured, killed without justification or forcibly "disappeared." It estimated that government forces, paramilitary groups and death squads were responsible for 90 percent of the crimes and guerrilla fighters for just over 3 percent.

The amnesty law kept countless cases from being prosecuted. Among them was the 1980 assassination of Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero. The Truth Commission said the mastermind was Maj. Roberto D'Abuisson, the now dead founder of the conservative Republican Nationalist Alliance, which governed El Salvador until 2009.

Another pivotal case was the 1989 slaying of six Jesuit priests — five Spaniards and one Salvadoran. In 1991, a Salvadoran court determined the amnesty law prevented punishment of nine members of an elite battalion for the crime.

The same army unit was allegedly responsible for the 1981 massacre of 1,000 inhabitants of the El Mozote area. In 2012, the Inter-American Human Rights Court condemned the incident and ordered El Salvador's government to pay reparations to the victims' families.

With the amnesty law ruled unconstitutional, "I think we're going to start to see many more cases," said Carolyn Patty Blum, senior legal adviser at the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability, a group that has been pursuing cases against Salvadoran war crime perpetrators in courts outside the country since 1998.

"My hope is that we will see a dramatic change and that these historic crimes will start to be investigated much more seriously and much more deeply, rigorously," she said. Blum, who is currently involved in a case against high-ranking Salvadoran officials in a Spanish court for the killing of the six priests, urged U.S. President Barack Obama to order a large declassification of U.S. documents related to El Salvador's war that could aid in prosecutions.

Others criticized Wednesday's ruling. Ulises del Dios Guzman, a former Supreme Court justice, said in a local television interview that the decision "opens a spectrum of possibilities that could be really serious for the country" and could even reach the president.

"This drags us to the past and an unharmonious situation that could cause real confrontation and recriminations," he said. The defense minister, Gen. David Munguia Payes, called the ruling "an error" that could lead to a "witch hunt" and turn the country upside down.

Miguel Montenegro, director of El Salvador's Human Rights Commission and himself a victim of torture by government forces during the war, stood on the other side, calling the ruling "a joy." It "is an appropriate medicine to heal the wounds that remain open, bleeding. It makes us happy; it's an opportunity to get justice, to end the impunity," Montenegro said.

Both opinions were present in the streets of the capital. "I don't understand this well, but I believe that it's fair to imprison all of the murderers," said Roberto Romero Castro, who was waiting to catch a bus.

Alfonso Castillo, selling ice pops in the street, was wary. "This is going to bring problems," he said. "They should leave it be because everyone is going to want to send to prison those who killed their relatives."

Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Leftist declared winner in Salvador's election

March 14, 2014

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador's electoral court on Thursday declared leftist candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren the winner of the tight presidential election, making him the first former rebel commander to win the presidency of a nation where 76,000 died in a civil war.

With all the votes counted, the electoral court announced on its website that Sanchez Ceren, candidate of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the FMLN, got 50.1 percent of the votes. Norman Quijano of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance party, known as ARENA, had 49.9 percent.

With about 3 million ballots cast in Sunday's runoff election, Sanchez Ceren won by less than 7,000 votes, and Quijano's party vowed to appeal the election until a new ballot is held. ARENA informed its members it had filed a complaint with El Salvador's attorney general, where it is presenting evidence of fraud. So far it has not made any such evidence public.

Outgoing President Mauricio Funes was a journalist who was sympathetic to the FMLN rebels during the 1980-92 civil war but was never a guerrilla, unlike Sanchez Ceren, who most recently served as Funes' vice president.

A campaign comparing El Salvador's left to Venezuela's ruling socialist bloc brought Quijano from far behind in the polls to the near tie. Sanchez Ceren has sought to distance himself from Venezuela's crisis, saying during his campaign: "El Salvador is not and cannot be Venezuela."

He said his role model is Uruguayan President Jose "Pepe" Mujica, who spent 14 years in prison during Uruguay's dictatorship. A flower-farming former guerrilla, Mujica gives away 90 percent of his presidential salary, doesn't have a bank account, drives a 41-year-old Volkswagen and never wears a tie.

"Mujica is the example to follow, because he works on two main fronts: development and social investment," Sanchez Ceren said. He has promised to maintain good relations with the United States, where hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran migrants live.

Much like Mujica, Sanchez Ceren, 69, favors rolled-up shirt sleeves and usually eschews suits and ties. Close associates call him "Profe," or "Teacher," a reference to his beginnings as a grade-school teacher in a poor rural school.

"In truth, at the end of the day, I'm a teacher, and my greatest pride is when people call me 'Teacher,'" Sanchez Ceren said at a ceremony in February where he was given an honorary doctorate by the country's National University.

Sanchez Ceren was one of 12 children born to a carpenter and a food vendor. Once he started working, he quickly became an activist in the teachers union, pressing demands for better salaries and working conditions. Amid bloody repression of union leaders in El Salvador in the 1970s, he gravitated toward the rebel movement, then a series of leftist groups allied under the umbrella of the FMLN.

By 1978, Sanchez Ceren headed into the mountains as an armed guerrilla, and by 1983 he became one of the rebels' five top commanders, using the nom-de-guerre "Comandante Leonel Gonzalez." He was seen within the movement as an advocate of dialogue, and he served as a negotiator in the 1992 peace accord that ended the war.

"He is true to his revolutionary principles. He is a stalwart who is a life-long party member, but he is not stuck in the past," said Miguel Montenegro, an official of El Salvador's Human Rights Commission.

Sanchez Ceren is likely to face continued resistance from emboldened activists of ARENA, which governed El Salvador for two decades before losing the presidency to Funes in 2009. Ernesto Muyshondt, ARENA's vice president for ideology, said Thursday that there is strong evidence that members of the FMLN party engaged in double voting across the country.

"We have testimonies, we have videos where people who work closely with FMLN talk about how they did it," Muyshondt said. ARENA has filed complaints with the electoral tribunal and with federal prosecutors and has said it will appeal the results to the country's Supreme Court.

Sanchez Ceren also has to deal with one of the highest murder rates in the world. A 2012 gang truce seemed to cut the country's daily average of 14 dead by half, but the drop appears to have been short-lived. Police statistics show 501 murders the first two months of this year, an increase of more than 25 percent over the same period of 2013.

El Salvador's presidential election proves tight

March 10, 2014

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Authorities declared El Salvador's presidential runoff election too close to call late Sunday, with just a 0.2-percent margin separating a one-time Marxist guerrilla and the conservative former mayor of El Salvador's capital.

Preliminary returns with more than 98 percent of votes counted showed Salvador Sanchez Ceren, the leftist candidate of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the FMLN, less than 6,000 votes ahead of his conservative adversary, former San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano, out of about 3 million ballots cast.

It was a surprising result, considering that opinion polls in the weeks leading up to the election had put Quijano 10 to 18 percentage points behind Sanchez Ceren. The president of El Salvador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Eugenio Chicas, said the race was "extremely tight" and said neither candidate could claim victory.

"This tribunal orders neither party to declare itself the winner, in light of results that are so close that only the final count can decide," Chicas said, adding that "the margin is so close that we ask for prudence."

He said the final vote count would begin Monday. Sanchez Ceren, 69, had been seen as the favorite to become the first true guerrilla to lead this Central American nation. Outgoing President Mauricio Funes was a journalist who was sympathetic to the FMLN rebels during the civil war but was never a guerrilla.

Quijano, 67, ran for the once long-ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as ARENA, which lost the presidency to Funes in 2009. Sanchez Ceren campaigned on a promise to deepen the outgoing government's popular social programs and govern as a moderate. He said he envisioned ruling like Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, also a former guerrilla who formed an inclusive government.

Quijano accused the former guerrilla of appearing to want to lead the country like Venezuela's late socialist president, Hugo Chavez, and he warned of a return of communism. He also promised to crack down on rising gang violence.

Sanchez Ceren was a top rebel commander who helped negotiate the 1992 Peace Accords that ended El Salvador's 12-year civil war. During the war that killed 76,000 people, the United States supported the Salvadoran government against the FMLN to prevent communism from spreading in Latin America.

El Salvador is dealing with one of the highest murder rates in the world. A 2012 gang truce seemed to cut the country's daily average of 14 dead by half, but the drop appears to have been short-lived.

Homicides, mostly of gang members, have risen again this year; police statistics show 501 murders the first two months of this year— a more than 25 percent increase over the same period of 2013. More unsettling is the fact that many dead have turned up in mass graves, leading some to believe the gang truce could have been either an illusion or an agreement to cover up the violence.

During the campaign, Quijano lambasted Funes for negotiating with criminals because of the truce he struck between the Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street gangs. He promised to get tough on criminals, possibly militarizing public security.

The ruling party, in turn, focused on alleged ARENA corruption, accusing Quijano's former campaign manager of mismanaging millions in aid he received from Taiwan.

El Salvador's ex-rebel poised to win presidency

March 08, 2014

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — A former Marxist guerrilla who has promised to continue the government's popular social programs is poised to win El Salvador's presidential election runoff on Sunday, giving the ruling party a second consecutive term.

Most polls show Salvador Sanchez Ceren, 69, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, with a lead that ranges from 10 to 18 percentage points ahead of San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano, the candidate of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as ARENA.

Quijano, 67, campaigned with Cold War references to the country's 12-year civil war, in which the United States backed the Salvadoran government against the FMLN to stop the spread of communism in Latin America. Quijano said Sanchez Ceren, one of the top rebel commanders, would take the Central American country down a communist path and invoked images of Venezuela's late socialist president Hugo Chavez.

"The FMLN proposals are based in giving the country's sovereignty to Venezuela," he said during the campaign. But analysts say the strategy backfired in the country of 6 million people more concerned with gang violence and a sluggish economy than ghosts of the past.

"(It) only works with one sector of society, the most conservative one in Salvadoran society, which is still afraid of an electoral victory by the FMLN," said political analyst Alvaro Artiga. Sanchez Ceren said he will take a moderate approach to government like that of his presidential model, Uruguay's President Jose Mujica, another former guerrilla who formed an inclusive government.

El Salvador has had one of the highest murder rates in the world, even with a 2012 gang truce that was billed as cutting the country's daily average of 14 dead — the majority gang members — in half. Current President Mauricio Funes, a former television journalist who never participated in the war, was elected in 2009 as the FMLN's first, unseating decades of ARENA governments. Sanchez Ceren would be the first true guerrilla to lead the country. He helped negotiate the 1992 Peace Accords that ended the war that left 76,000 people dead and 12,000 missing.

He campaigned door to door while his party worked to paint ARENA as the party of corruption. Funes pushed the investigation of former ARENA President Francisco Flores, formerly Quijano's campaign manager, over the destination of millions in aid he received from Taiwan.

Quijano criticized Funes for negotiating with criminals based in coming up with the truce between the country's two largest and most dangerous gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street. After an initial drop in killings in 2013, murders are on the rise again so far this year. According to police, between Jan. 1 and March 1, there were 501 murders, 106 more than in the same period of 2013. And many dead are starting to be discovered in mass graves, fueling criticism that the truce didn't nothing more than cause the gangs to hide their victims and create the illusion of less crime.

Sanchez Ceren said he will fight crime by boosting community investment, better education and fortified police. He will also continue Funes' social programs, including giving books, shoes and uniforms to school children, seeds and fertilizers to the poorest farmers and a small pension to the elderly.

Quijano said he would deploy the army to fight street gangs. He has proposed giving military training to all young men between ages 18 and 30 who are unemployed and not in school. Though Quijano initially criticized Funes' social programs, he says he will continue them as well.

Salvadoran Campesinas Go Organic

Edgardo Ayala

TECOLUCA, El Salvador, Sep 30 2011 (IPS) - The guavas grown by Mariana Rosales are big and bright green, and the best thing about them, she says proudly, is that she does not spend a single cent on fertilizers to produce them – something extremely rare in a country like El Salvador.

It is no longer easy for Rosales, 64, to bend down to collect the cow manure, leaves and other biodegradable materials she uses to produce the organic fertilizer used in her garden. But her enthusiasm for sustainable farming gives her the energy she needs.

“I still have the strength to continue growing my veggies and fruit,” she told IPS. Besides guavas, Rosales grows beans, corn, cucumbers, ayote (a kind of squash), rice, mangos, lemons and other crops – all organic.

She is part of a women’s collective that for the past four years has been involved in organic farming in the fields around the town of Tecoluca, 73 km east of San Salvador in the central province of San Vicente.

The area forms part of the Bajo Lempa region in the hot lowlands of El Salvador, which is regularly hit by floods and is seeing more irregular rainfall patterns year after year, as a result of climate change. Harvests are often ruined, which drives up the prices of staple foods like corn and beans.

That makes it even more important for Rosales to be able to grow her own food – and it is even better if she can do so in a sustainable manner, in harmony with the environment. That is the objective of the project organised by the Popular Movement of Organic Agriculture (MOPAO), which groups 17 local and national organisations.

One of them is the 500-member Municipal Association of Women from Tecoluca, that is working hard to boost self-sufficiency in food, which gives them greater economic autonomy.

“We want to promote the production of healthy, environmentally-friendly food, while bolstering food security and sovereignty,” MOPAO coordinator Rosa Tobías told IPS.

“We also want to fight against many kinds of inequality,” said Tobías, who is raising her four children on her own.

The association’s project promotes a central role for campesinas (peasant women) in family decision-making about what crops to grow, and how, as well as greater participation in the benefits. The members also put a priority on sustainable agriculture – and are running into heavy resistance from their husbands and other men in their families and communities.

Modesta Pérez, 36, had a hard time convincing her family of the benefits of using organic fertilizer. “My father-in-law and my partner told me: ‘look, that little bit of dirt that you put on the crops doesn't do any good’, and I answered, ‘it’s not dirt, it’s organic fertilizer’,” says Pérez, who grows corn and kidney beans on rented land.

Now the men in her household and her community have found that organic agriculture works and provides them with greater autonomy, she tells IPS on her farm, filled with pride.

“El Niño” takes its toll

Food security and sovereignty is hard to achieve in a country where agricultural production is at the mercy of drastic climate variations: either the rain pours down and the crops rot in the fields, or there is no rain at all and they dry up.

For instance, the “El Niño-Southern Oscillation” (ENSO) weather cycle, a warming of the Pacific Ocean surface waters that periodically affects global weather patterns, caused a shortage of rain in Central America in September and October 2009.

That hurt the year’s second harvest in much of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported.

Then Hurricane Ida, whose rains lashed part of Central America in November of that same year, caused millions of dollars in damage to agricultural infrastructure.

In El Salvador it also claimed 198 lives, left 15,000 people homeless and caused 240 million dollars in losses.

In May 2010, serious damage to crops was once again caused by Tropical Storm Agatha in Guatemala and El Salvador.

To feed its population of 5.7 million people, El Salvador has to import beans, a staple part of the local diet, from Nicaragua, and more recently from China.

At times of scarcity, the price of beans rises threefold, to 1.50 dollars a pound, in a country where 40 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day and 19 percent on less than one dollar a day, according to United Nations figures.

FAO statistics show that 22.7 percent of the economically active population in the country is engaged in agriculture, while 9.6 percent of women formally participate in farming – an underestimate because many work on the family farm, but are not counted.

“Now that beans are so expensive, I’m eating the ones I have grown myself,” Rosales says.

Native seeds vs hybrids

An important part of the project in Tecoluca is promoting the use of native seeds, to avoid dependence on hybrid or genetically modified (GM) varieties.

The “agroservicios” or privately owned retail farm stores that abound in this country sell hybrid seeds as part of a marketing strategy imposed by transnational corporations like the U.S.-based agriculture biotechnology giant Monsanto.

GM seeds are only good for one harvest as they cannot reproduce themselves, which makes it necessary for farmers to buy new seed each year in the agroservicios.

But with native varieties, farmers save the best seeds from the harvest to use for the next planting season, and are thus free from dependence on corporations for their seed stock. However, native seeds have virtually disappeared on the Salvadoran market, where hybrid varieties have a monopoly. Only a limited number of farmers, in different parts of the country, still grow the traditional varieties.

“We want to set up a native seed bank and are coordinating efforts with farmers from other parts of the country, to get them to provide seeds,” said MOPAO coordinator Tobías.

Cayetana López, 39, is in charge of the production and sale of the association’s organic fertilizer. In her yard she has set up an improvised shed, where 30 bags holding 80 pounds each of compost were piled, ordered by a local farmer, when IPS visited

“We produce it ourselves, according to demand,” which she said is still low because farmers have used chemical fertilizers for decades and are still skeptical with regard to the organic kind.

“It will take some time for people to accept the benefits of organic agriculture. The idea is not for them to abruptly change the way they grow things overnight; the change will be gradual,” she added.

Besides the health advantages of not consuming farm products grown with chemical fertilizers, there are economic benefits for the farmers.

One quintal (100 lbs) of organic fertilizer costs the members of the association 12 dollars, while the same amount of synthetic fertilizer ranges between 60 and 70 dollars. The huge savings are gradually motivating other local farmers to try organic fertilizer. The earnings from sales of the fertilizer go into the association’s common fund.

Both consumers and producers benefit from organic agriculture, and the planet benefits even more, Ricardo Navarro, with the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology (CESTA), told IPS.

He noted that chemical fertilizers contain nitrogen, an excess of which goes into the atmosphere, as well as rivers and the sea, where it fertilizes algae blooms that deplete oxygen, creating dead zones.

“The use of chemical fertilizers has negative environmental repercussions…and these women are doing the planet a world of good with their organic farming,” the environmentalist said.

The women’s association also produces plant-based medicines in an attempt to begin salvaging traditional knowledge inherited from the Nahuat pre-hispanic indigenous culture.

The members of the association thus grow aloe vera, which was traditionally used to help restore the digestive system. They also grow mint and other curative plants, and produce honey and biogas.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/09/salvadoran-campesinas-go-organic/.