El Salvador’s political parties are preparing for 2009, when presidential, legislative, and municipal elections will be held in the same year for the first time since 1994. The current President, Elias Antonio Saca, won a five-year term in March 2004. It was the fourth successive victory for the controversial ARENA party. However, Saca is ineligible to stand for a second term. When elected, the former radio and TV sports presenter promised to crack down on criminal gangs and to strive for transparent government. None of that has happened. A recent BBC news report (26 November 2008) about violent death in Latin America says that, ‘The grimmest figures are for El Salvador, where the murder rate among young people is 92 per 100,000 people. A key factor is the presence of violent youth gangs.’

According to non-governmental organizations that work with these gangs, or maras, they are the product of a society where there is no social safety net, the economy is in crisis, salaries are minimal, and mass migration to the United States has destroyed the family unit. But youth gangs are not the sole legacy of El Salvador’s recent history, where impunity and lack of accountability stalk the land.

There are two main political parties in El Salvador: the right-wing ARENA and the left-wing FMLN, the former revolutionary guerrilla organization. ARENA has been linked to death-squad murders during the civil war, but President Saca claimed that his victory was ‘a moment to forget all the past.’ He also rejected calls to scrap amnesty laws that protect former officials from prosecution. Saca owns one of the many radio networks in El Salvador where press freedom is guaranteed under the country’s constitution and the media freely and routinely criticise the government and report on opposition activities.

In the 1980s El Salvador was ravaged by a bitter civil war that lasted until 1992. This was fuelled by gross inequalities between a small but wealthy elite, which dominated the government and the economy, and the overwhelming majority of the population, many of whom lived – and continue to live – in abject squalor. The war left some 75,000 people dead and caused damage estimated at $2bn.

In 1992 a United Nations-brokered peace agreement ended the civil war, but no sooner had El Salvador begun to recover when it was hit by a series of natural disasters, notably Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and earthquakes in 2001. These left at least 1,200 people dead and more than a million others homeless. Today’s economy depends heavily on money sent home by Salvadoreans living in the US.

At the end of the war, a Truth Commission registered more than 22,000 complaints about the political violence that took place between January 1980 and July 1991: summary killings, kidnapping and torture. Some 85% of the violence was attributed to State agents, paramilitary groups, and death squads. The Salvadoran armed forces were accused (60% of complaints), the security forces (25%), military escorts and civil defence units (20%), ‘death squads’ (more than 10%), and the FMLN itself (5%). But the Truth Commission only had three months in which to do its work and much remained unreported

According to an Amnesty International report (1985) government forces openly dumped mutilated corpses in an apparent effort to terrorize the population. Despite mostly killing peasants, the armed forces also readily killed anyone they suspected of sympathy with the guerillas – clergy (men and women), church lay workers, political activists, journalists, labour unionists , medical workers, liberal students and teachers, and human-rights monitors. The State’s terrorism was effected by the security forces, the Army, the National Guard, and the Treasury Police; yet it was the death squads that gave the Government plausible deniability of, and accountability for, the political killings.

Typically, a death squad dressed in civilian clothes and travelled in anonymous vehicles (dark windows, blank licence plates). Its brand of terrorism included publishing future-victim death lists, delivering coffins to future victims, and sending the target-person an invitation to his/her own funeral.

Despite all that had occurred during the civil war, an Amnesty Law was passed in 1993 providing immunity from prosecution for large numbers of the military accused of human rights crimes. The Law benefited leaders of the FMLN, which by then had become a legal political party. Human rights activists and United Nations experts see the Law as the biggest hurdle to gaining respect for human rights in El Salvador.

WACC is currently supporting two projects whose aim is to help El Salvador come to terms with its past. The first is a documentary about murders in Ingenio Colima being produced by the audiovisual department of the Universidad Centroamericana in El Salvador and directed by Oscar Orellasa (see story ‘Documentary reveals atrocities in El Salvador’ 8 December 2008).

The second project supports CODEFAM, an association of victims’ families, providing training in the use of new technologies of information and communication to construct web pages for disappeared women and men, and national and international electronic networks that strengthen their solidarity and campaign work.

In view of the impending elections, CODEFAM recently endorsed a public statement (10 September 2008) issued by the Working Commission on Human Rights and the Historical Memory of El Salvador. In the context of election campaigns, it regrets repeated calls by presidential candidates and representatives of political parties to confer ‘political legitimacy’ on the 1993 Amnesty Law. It accuses them of ‘not listening to the voices of the victims of human rights violations during the civil war and of sticking to positions that allow impunity to continue.’

Calling the Amnesty Law ‘one of the most shameful acts in post-war Salvadorean politics’, the statement says it is unacceptable for former high-ranking military leaders, some of whom have been identified as responsible for crimes against humanity and who already face criminal accusations – or have faced them and avoided them by means of rigged trials – to threaten, discriminate against and show public disdain for the families of victims.

The statement affirms that ‘Wounds do not heal by decree and, in order to turn the page of history, it has first to be read. Democracy, peace and reconciliation are not built on the innocent blood of so many victims, concealing the truth, and the impunity of those who practiced genocide in El Salvador.’

WACC strongly supports the call for an end to impunity and for concrete steps towards restoring the historical memory of El Salvador so that the country can begin its long process toward reconciliation.

Source: http://www.memoriahistoricaelsalvador.org.sv/

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