Gangs Kill 2 Bus Drivers in El Salvador

More evidence of the violent crime commited daily on the streets of el salvador.. wil funes find away to reduce these senseless loss of life?

SAN SALVADOR -- Police in El Salvador said Thursday that suspected gang members killed two bus workers and wounded a third in the past 24 hours.Unidentified individuals killed a fare collector and wounded a bus driver Thursday at kilometer 12 of the Pan-American Highway, a National Civilian Police, or PNC, spokesman told Efe, adding that the suspects fled and have not been arrested.

A 36-year-old bus driver was killed Wednesday in Soyapango, which is in the eastern section of San Salvador, the PNC spokesman said.The suspects opened fire on the bus driver and then set his vehicle, which covered route 41 B, on fire.Investigators said the driver may have been attacked because he refused to pay "rent" to the gangs that operate in the area.Bus drivers and operators who refuse to pay extortion money have been targeted by gangs.

Salvadoran media reported Thursday that more than 20 bus operators plying route 41 B have decided to support a "partial strike" to protest the death of their fellow driver and pressure authorities to deal with the situation.A group of unidentified individuals set fire Wednesday to a bus in Cuscatanciango, located north of San Salvador, but no one was injured in the attack, police said. EFE

Israel Recognizes El Salvador's Holocaust Role

(Caption Picture: A panel at the Embassy of El Salvador discusses the role that two men, both working for El Salvador, played in saving approximately 30,000 Jews.)

In a time when the jewish population of England was in danger of being exterminated at a very quick pace. A small country in El Salvador stepped up to the plate to offer citizenship to those that were in danger of being sent to a concentration camp. In honor of that El Salvador honored by Prime Minister Tzipi Livni in a ceremony showing how big El Salvador’s hearts are in a time of unprecedented tyranny by an evil dictator...

Link to Original Article Click Here

Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni is presenting a special Certificate of Commemoration on Tuesday to El Salvadoran Foreign Minister Marisol Argueta de Barillas in tribute to her country's policy of saving Jews during the Holocaust.
The certificate, which will be presented to Foreign Minister Barillas after a working lunch, states:
"The government and people of Israel extend their deepest gratitude to the El Salvadoran government, which, by issuing El Salvadoran citizenship papers at the consulate in Geneva, headed by Consul-General José Arturo Castellanos Contreras, contributed to saving perhaps as many as 30,000 persecuted European Jews during the Second World War."

During the Second World War, Contreras issued thousands of false citizenship papers to Jews from central Europe, mainly from Hungary. In 1942, he appointed a Transylvanian-born Jewish businessman named György Mandl as the consulate's "First Secretary," a fictitious title that does not exist in the Salvadoran diplomatic hierarchy, in order to enable him to issue the life-saving papers. These documents enabled whole families to register as citizens of El Salvador and avoid deportation to Nazi concentration camps.

In July 1944, El Salvador requested that Switzerland act as the protector of its citizens in Hungary, at the time under Nazi occupation. As far as it is known, the vast majority of El Salvadoran citizens in Hungary at that time were Jews who received their citizenship papers from the consulate in Geneva.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Barillas toured Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum. The El Salvadoran government is seeking to have Contreras officially declared Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

A 2008 documentary called "Glass House" told the story of Contreras' heroic efforts. It was directed and produced by husband and wife Brad and Leonor Avila Marlowe.

Tony Saca urges Salvadoran immigrants to stay in the U.S

Reported from the L.A Times Click Here

Salvadoran President Tony Saca will be traveling to the United States to urge Salvadoran immigrants there to re-register in a temporary visa program.

The Central American leader plans to visit Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles Dec. 6-9. Earlier this month, Saca visited Washington, D.C. and New York's Long Island.

During his trip, Saca will ask some 240,000 Salvadorans to stay in the visa program created to help El Salvador after two deadly earthquakes in 2001. The U.S. government extended the program in September.

Salvadoran immigrants have until Dec. 30 to sign up for the extension, which allows them to stay in the United States until September 2010.

Some 2.5 million Salvadorans live in the United States and sent home a record $3.7 billion in 2007.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Central American crime is our problem

I found this article on a respected website into the issues of crime in El Salvador. It suggest that as the increase in crime in el Salvador directly effects the us and that the first problem for President elect Barak Obama is to figure out away to stop the influx of new immigrants into the path of gangs and extortion. Yet how can the US help stop this influx when we were the ones that shipped criminals back to el Salvador with nothing to go back to. SO the social nor would be to stick with what you know and these people that were sent back knew Gangs offered a family structure to take care of their own. I wonder what other policies Barack might handle in his new administration that seem to have no answer

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – One of the first issues President-elect Barack Obama's transition team will look into when it starts mapping its Latin America policy: the wave of crime that is rocking much of the region and that is increasingly spreading into major U.S. cities.

According to a new study by U.N. Development Program economist Carlos Acevedo, Central America has the world's highest regional homicide rates, and several Caribbean and South American countries are not far behind.

El Salvador's homicide rate of 68 killings a year per 100,000 inhabitants – the world's highest, after Iraq – is followed within the region by Guatemala, with 45 homicides; Colombia and Honduras with 43; and Venezuela with 41. By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate is 5.7, the study says.

And from what I heard from international experts and government officials during a recent visit, a major increase in the number of U.S. deportations of undocumented migrants with criminal records is swelling the ranks of the unemployed in Central America and further driving up crime rates.

"A friend of mine was robbed at gunpoint on a bus three times within one week," Mr. Acevedo told me. "I've been luckier: I have only been robbed once, also at gunpoint, when I stopped my car at a red light."

I asked several law enforcement experts here what the Obama administration should do. Most agreed that Central America is getting too little of the $400 million Merída Initiative U.S. aid package to help combat violence in Mexico and Central America. They also complained that most of the U.S. aid is focused on anti-drug equipment rather than on crime prevention.

It's time to step up transnational anti-gang efforts, take stronger actions to prevent U.S. arms trafficking and change the focus of U.S. anti-crime measures toward more education and crime prevention programs.

Increasingly, crime in Central America has become far more than a local issue. Increasingly, it's a U.S. problem.

for origianl article please referance fromthe dallas morning star http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-oppenheimer_24edi.State.Edition1.1acb7d5.html

Rich and Poor.

Agreat story by Coco McCabe returning from a recent trip from san salvador whose first hand knowledge explores the poverty that is so prevalent here.

SAN SALVADOR -- What was it about El Salvador? This was my first trip to the country and I hadn’t quite analyzed the sweep of emotions -- disquiet among them -- that it had aroused since my plane touched down in the dark. I couldn’t see much as we sped away from the airport that first night, but I could feel plenty: the deliciousness of the air conditioning in the brand new van that picked me up, the smoothness of the highway -- as wide and well-paved as any in the US -- slipping away beneath us as we rolled toward San Salvador. Roads like this don’t come cheaply, I thought.

Soon, lights from the city -- about 1.6 million people live there -- flooded the sky and we were climbing steep hills past luxury hotels and San Salvador’s version of the World Trade Center, with a new, towering addition still under construction. Wealth seemed to shimmer everywhere.
But in the morning, I began to see a different El Salvador. We drove, first thing, out to the municipality of Santa Catarina Masahuat to visit a program Oxfam America had helped to fund on preserving indigenous knowledge. Up a rough road, at the crest of a hill, Cesar Donal Ascencio Reyes, a community activist, was waiting for us outside his house of corrugated metal and mud bricks. Though he knew nothing about construction, he had built it himself. That’s what you do when you don’t have money, he said.

And many people in El Salvador don’t: Almost 41 percent of the country’s 5.7 million citizens live on less than $2 a day, including 19 percent who survive on less than $1 a day. Many of the houses in Reyes’ neighborhood looked just like his. Light pricked through pinholes in the walls, ruts pocked the dirt floor, and the metal roof trapped the heat, baking the interior. Creature comforts included a latrine at the back of a chicken pen and a concrete tub -- or "pila'' -- for storing water. Water from the tap only runs twice a day, for one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon.

Reyes' house sat on a 2,500-square-foot plot -- a chunk of land he had managed to buy for about $2,000. Thirteen years later, he was still paying it off. But a dream has kept him going.
"I'm thinking about how I can split this up and leave a house for each of my girls," he said. "That’s my dream." Three daughters dividing one small plot would still be better than having no plot and no home of their own at all -- the fate his parents endured.

Back in San Salvador that evening, I thought about Reyes’ pila and its water with the greenish cast as I stepped into the shower in my hotel room. The water shot from the shower head, hot and without limit. Later, I flicked on the air conditioning, and slipped between the crisp sheets of the bed someone else had made for a restless night’s sleep. A couple of days later, in a semi-flooded field next to a small, Oxfam-built house in Animas Arriba, my colleague, Enrique Garcia, summed up what was bothering me.

"The main problem in Latin America is the inequities," he said. "The countries are not poor; the people are. In a very small country you can see the world. El Salvador is a good example: You can find the poorest and the richest."

The earth beneath our feet was spongy and water had pooled in the deep hoof prints left by grazing cattle. A few weeks before, the field had been a lagoon, swamped, as it was every year, with too much rain. And at its muddy edge lived Rogelio Ochoa, his wife Maria Eugenia Mendoza de Ochoa, and six children. The little house, with walls and a roof of corrugated metal built high off the ground on cement blocks, was theirs -- a replacement for the old adobe one that had collapsed the year before during unusually heavy rains. The flooding that ensued also wiped out much of the corn in the area that small farmers were on the verge of harvesting.Corn constitutes their basic staple and, if they’re lucky, earns them a small income.

In a country the size of Massachusetts, where for years most of the arable land was consolidated in the hands of a few, many poor rural farmers rent the land they till. And some, like the Ochoa family, don’t own the ground on which their houses sit. With nowhere else to live, the Ochoas had settled in marginal land that, at certain times of the year, was almost a bog.

The profile for El Salvador on the US State Department’s website says that country’s economy has been growing steadily since the civil war ended in 1992 and the poverty that once afflicted 66 percent of the people at the close of the war had dropped to 31 percent in 2006.

But numbers crunched by bureaucrats in the comfort of their office buildings are just statistics. They don’t tell the whole story -- the story we really need to hear-- the way a visit to the countryside can.

"If you go out of the capital and go to see a family, you can feel it, " Garcia said. "You can touch the poverty."

story referanced from
http://www.boston.com/news/world/blog/2008/11/el_salvador_fro.html

Photo Of San Salvador

I think i see my house from Here :)

Pacific Rim mining Company

canadian mining company Pacific Rim is featured on a mural in El Salvador, where company promoters are being blamed for dividing the community. the residents of one community are feeling the impact of mining long before any ground has been broken. Locals are talking about contamination – but not the kind caused by environmental pollutants – it is "social contamination" that is tearing apart the village of Trinidad, and athe Canadian mining company that is being blamed. So who is right?

Another beautiful Sunset from El Salvador

Another beautiful Sunset from El Salvador

FMLN Campaign...

The campaign today officially started with the FMLN they continue to be the favorite in the polls and people seem to be responding well.. this will be a historic move for El Salvador. with most people feeling that the Arena party has let them down and that a change in govenment is badly needed. i will continue to watch another historic election not to unlike americas.

article referanced from Here "http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44738"

SAN SALVADOR, Nov 17 (IPS) - As the campaign gets underway, the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the favourite in the polls for El Salvador’s March 2009 presidential elections.

A win for the FMLN would be historical in a country traditionally governed by the right, analysts point out. Since this Central American country declared its independence from Spain in the 19th century, it has been governed by conservatives, economic liberals or military dictatorships (from 1931 to 1979). And since 1989, it has been ruled by the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). Christian Democratic and Social

Democratic parties won the presidential elections in 1972 and 1977, but the military resorted to fraud and repression of opponents, forcing many of them into exile. In 1980, civil war broke out, with the leftist FMLN guerrillas fighting government forces. The insurgent group became a political party after a peace agreement was signed in 1992.

Today, the party’s presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, is leading the polls by a margin of two to 15 percentage points over his main rival, ARENA’s Rodrigo Ávila. Although the campaign did not actually begin until Friday, Nov. 14, political scientist Napoleón Campos told IPS that the Supreme Electoral Court has allowed the parties to informally campaign for nearly two years. Under the country’s electoral laws, campaigns can only last four months in the case of presidential elections, two months in the case of parliamentary elections, and one month for municipal elections.

For the first time ever, the FMLN -- the main opposition party -- stands a real chance of winning the presidency, after four unsuccessful attempts since 1994. But despite the natural wear and tear suffered by ARENA after nearly 20 years in power, and the impact of the current international financial crisis, Campos said the scenario could change from here to Mar. 15. Local media outlets have estimated that the country’s six political parties will spend a combined total of 30 million dollars in the campaign.

The parties taking part in the elections, besides the FMLN and ARENA, are the Christian Democratic Party, the National Reconciliation Party, Democratic Change and the Democratic Revolutionary Front.

The FMLN is also ahead in the polls for the Jan. 18 legislative and municipal elections. Nelson Zárate, director of the Centre for Research on Public Opinion (CIOP), whose latest poll found that Funes is 15 points ahead of Ávila, told IPS that the leftist candidate has generated "a wave of credibility that is drawing people to vote for the FMLN" at all levels, not only in the presidential elections. Funes, a popular journalist and talk-show host, did not even actually belong to the FMLN until August, which in the view of analysts puts him in a position to draw voters who would not have cast their ballots for one of the party’s long-time leaders. The FMLN kicked off its campaign with a caravan of hundreds of cars that set out from San Salvador on Saturday with Funes at its head. T

hey were joined by more and more cars until thousands were driving from city to city around the country. The aim of the caravan, said the head of the party, Medardo González, is to awaken people’s "confidence" in the change that the FMLN proposes to bring to the country. ARENA’s campaign opened, as always, in the western city of Izalco, which is a symbol for the governing party. In 1932, an estimated 30,000 indigenous peasants were slaughtered there by the anti-communist dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who took power in a January 1931 military coup. (END/2008)

Arch Bishop refuses to Persecute those Responsible

After 19 years the arch bishop still refuses to persecute those responsible for the horrendous murder of the Jesuit priest. The Decision I do not quite understand yet there are many unsolved crimes during this time this one just happened to be the most famous..


SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador opposes reopening the prosecution of Salvadoran officials in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, the cleric said Sunday.

Human rights activists have pushed for a trial of a former president and 14 other Salvadoran officials in Spain, where five of the killed Jesuits were born.

Archbishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle called the killings at the height of the country's 1980-92 civil war "a frightful crime," but said he was sure that former President Alfredo Cristiani was not involved.

"Opening this case in another country's courts won't help the process of domestic reconciliation," he said. "El Salvador's affairs should be resolved in El Salvador."
The Jesuit order in El Salvador also decided not to participate in the Spanish case, Jesuit university rector Father Jose Maria Tojeira said.

Activists said a former defense minister was present at a meeting where the attack was planned on the Jesuits, whom the army accused of supporting leftist rebels. The human rights groups said Cristiani helped to cover up the crime.

A housekeeper and her daughter also died in the attack.

Spanish courts sometimes invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows for the prosecution of crimes against humanity and other grave offenses such as terrorism, even in another country.

A trial over the massacre was held in El Salvador in 1991, but only two of the 10 defendants were convicted of murder and they were released early from their 30-year sentences under a 1993 amnesty, human rights groups said. Others convicted of lesser charges did not go to jail at all, they added.

Cristiani signed a 1992 peace accord with leftist rebels that put an end to a civil war that killed 75,000 people.

El Salvador's softened rebels see chance of power

While it was not that long ago that El salvador was in the middle of a civil war and after years of failed arena partys positions on many things the FMLN will finally have a chance to prove themselves in a rough political country. I hope they do well. Not everything arena has done has been bad but like most political parties hunger for more power takes over and maybe with a more left wing government the el salvadorens might finally have a chance at a renewed hope.

Quote from article "Mauricio Funes, the man she hopes will heal old wounds by bringing a party of softened former rebels to power for the first time in presidential elections in March.
Funes, a bespectacled former TV journalist is the first presidential candidate fielded by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front who is not himself a former guerrilla. An eloquent centre-leftist, he reported on El Salvador's 12-year civil war but never fought in it.
Leading in opinion polls, Funes promises to pursue market-friendly policies and get on well with Washington if he wins. He appeals to pro-U.S. voters who never before supported the FMLN, while maintaining strong support from long-time loyalists like Hernandez.

"We remember what they fought for. Before, the war was in the streets and now it's inside us," Hernandez said in the former FMLN rebel stronghold town of Suchitoto, ringed by forest where her parents and hundreds of others died.

Quote take from "http://uk.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUKLNE4AD05K20081114" click here for full article

Stunning El Salvadoran Sunset

I had to share this photo of a Stunning Sunset in El Salvador

Earth Quakes in San Salvador

I remember my first earthquake experience while staying at the princess hotel in San Salvador.. I was 5 stories up on the building in my room. I had never been in an earthquake before. the bed shook the windows shook i was scared.. but it was over rather quickly.. After realizing what it was i was quite shaken but for the next several months they happen quite regularly. Even to the point where you do not even notice them any longer. But when the big ones do hit it takes a tremendous tool on this country. Hopefully we are years away from another one so large. Ex 2002

"An earthquake registered 5.4 on the Richter scale shook on Tuesday some areas of El Salvador without producing victims or damages.
The earthquake took place at 9:05 a.m. local time (1505 GMT) and had its epicenter in front to the coasts of Guatemala, according to information reaching here from San Salvador.
Salvadorian National Service of Territorial Studies (SNET) said that the earthquake was of three degrees at the Mercalli scale. This means it was light, but was felt by people at houses and buildings.
On Oct. 16, another earthquake measuring 6.5 in the Richter scale hit coast in the border between Mexico and Guatemala."

Émigrés Want to Meet in El Salvador

Émigrés Want to Meet in El Salvador

For those El Salvadorens liveing a outside the counrty this is a was for them to voice there vote for there home country i think this is a great idea to help people that have moved on from el salvador around the world to help and participate in there countrys Future.

San Salvador, Nov 11 (Prensa Latina) Hundreds of émigrés will participate in the 6th Convention of Salvadorans Abroad, which will take place in this capital from November 25 to 27 at the Jose Simeon Cañas University.

During the annual meeting, organized by the Association of Salvadorans in the World, Salvadoran residents in other countries will talk about a lecture called “The Human Capital of Diaspora: Far Beyond the Remittances.”

Francisco Rivera, president of the group, said that the meeting will last three days, with the central objective to strengthen the vision of those who are living abroad, said local newspaper el Diario de Hoy.

Salvador Sanabria, director of El Rescate, now involved in the preparation of the meeting, said that the meeting will call for the approval of the vote for Salvadorans living abroad to meet their families.

“The political class in El Salvador confirms the lack of will to grant the human right of suffrage to more than 2 million Salvadorans, who are now living abroad, and will not be able to take part in the elections in January and March 2009,” said Sanabria.

Jose Manuel Ortiz, a member of the organization living in Spain, considered that being included in the vote, will be a great expectation.

During the event, a panel will work with 4 candidates of the 6 political parties in El Salvador, inscribed to participate in the elections.

On the financial and economic crisis in the US, organizers said they have not scheduled a specific panel to discuss the problem, and people interested can be present in the event, if they register on:

http://salvadorenosenelmundo.blogspot.com/ "source of original article --

Funes Leads Polls in El Salvador..

Interesting article on how we can start to see El Salvador also leaning to the left. along with our own country. I guess the time for change has taken hold around the world i look forward to watching the rest of el salvadors political season

Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Left-wing presidential candidate Mauricio Funes is leading in El Salvador, according to a poll by Borge & Asociados published in El Diario de Hoy. 41.5 per cent of respondents would support Funes of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in next year’s election, up 3.9 points since July.

Rodrigo Ávila of the governing conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) is second with 37.8 per cent, up 7.3 points in four months. One-in-five respondents remain undecided.
ARENA’s Antonio Saca, a media businessman, was elected in March 2004, garnering 57.73 per cent of the vote. ARENA candidates have won the last four presidential elections in the Central American country. Saca is ineligible for a consecutive term in office.

In September 2007, Funes became the FMLN’s presidential nominee. In March 2008, Ávila, a former National Police chief, won ARENA’s three-candidate internal nationwide primary.
The FMLN was once an umbrella armed group of left-wing revolutionaries fighting against the Salvadoran establishment. In the early 1990s, the FMLN was disbanded and became a legal political party.

On Oct. 27, Funes reiterated that he would maintain a close relationship with Washington if elected and regardless of who becomes the next president of the United States, saying, "I will work hand-in-hand with the American president-elect, because the relationship between our countries is government-to-government."

Polling Data
Which candidate would you vote for in the next presidential election?

Oct. 2008
Jul. 2008
Jun. 2008
Mauricio Funes (FMLN)
41.5%
37.6%
37.5%
Rodrigo Ávila (ARENA)
37.8%
30.5%
23.2%
Other candidates
--
0.4%
0.8%
Undecided
20.7%
31.6%
38.5%

original article published here. http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/32175/funes_leads

New President

Well.. it is finally completed the US has finally elected the new president of the united states Barack Obama...

Is this a good thing for El Salvador..?

Maybe not I guess it depends on the elections coming up in April on how the country of El Salvador will fair against its new more liberal neighbors to the north..

The FMLN party of El Salvador has a lot of things in common with Barrack Obamas political views.. which will hopefully help El salvador..

Funes congratulates Obama .. Following the victory of Barack Obama in the election for president of the United States, Mauricio Funes issued a statement congratulating the president-elect. "These winds of change have begun to blow from the United States to refresh the global atmosphere, in need of more democracy and greater social justice. The Americans have not been afraid to choose change, as they have staked out the future and not the immobility of the past," said Funes.

Both countrys need the have that feeling of change available to them..but .. the majority of El Salvadoren feel that a Obama win will have a tremendouse effect on there country in a positive way i gues we will just have to hold out and see what develops... keep an eye out its going to be an interesting ride .. for more information on the new presidents policys on latin america read it here http://justf.org/node/264

Thought I would share something..

I was surfing the internet the other day and came across a very interesting blog.. http://jesusfloresfotos.blogspot.com/ This blog is about a photo journalist in el Salvador who is trying to collect the images of a side of El Salvador only rumored about but rarely seen..

This blog depicts a side of El Salvador that until recently has been withheld from the world or themselves either because people choose to ignore it and pretend it does not exist or the suppression and censorship by the government..

The establishment of the national police force school and the recent resignation of the national police chief bring article here

(http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSN2350739120080823)

Indicates to me that they are trying to change but it will take sometime.. and el Salvadorians need to stand together and say enough is enough to help restore their neighborhoods and provide better security for themselves and their families. But. Looking at the pictures by this very talented I hopes tell the other story of el Salvador not to scare away but maybe to anger those enough to want to do something for a positive change.