by Marilyn Langlois
Locking eyes with one of the people before me and reaching deep
into my heart, I took my turn and aid, “Marilyn Langlois, California,
mediadora, Perdón.” All 25 of us from throughout the United States on our
recent School of the Americas Watch delegation to El Salvador made a similar
statement on three occasions to our hosts, giving our name, state of residence,
profession, and apologizing for not doing more to stop our government from the
key role it played in the atrocities committed against Salvadoran peasants and
advocates for the poor during the 1980-1992 war.
We spoke with community organizations that
included survivors of the war, elected deputies on the Human Rights Commission
of the country’s Legislative Assembly (equivalent to a Congressional
committee), and to the general public via a press conference held at the
Monument to Memory and Truth, a huge stone wall in a public park etched with
tens of thousands of names of people who were murdered and disappeared.
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| Monument to Memory and Truth, Parque Cuscatlán, San Salvador |
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| Survivor tells of family members lost in the war. |
We were well received by a
variety of community members and officials, most of whom who share our vision
of society free of militarization and where the root causes of violence like
economic disparities and social exclusion can be fully addressed. The SOAWatch
movement advocates closing the infamous School of the Americas/WHINSEC at Fort
Benning, Georgia, which has a sordid history of training Latin American
soldiers in killing, torture and other means of repressing the poor. We met
with members of El Salvador’s military high command, who have become more open
to civilian oversight in recent years, but remain under US tutelage. When we
asked the Subchief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to refrain from sending
Soldiers to SOA/WHINSEC, as well as withdrawing Salvadoran personnel from the
United Nations military occupation of Haiti, he listened politely and said he’d
get back to us.
Vice
President Salvador Sánchez Cerén voiced strong support for both of our
requests, noting that dismantling the SOA/WHINSEC will be a step forward to
peace, and that the UN has lost prestige by participating in missions such as
the one in Haiti. Vice President Sánchez further stated that the US continues
to impose its vision of national security (prioritizing military readiness over
uplifting the poor) on El Salvador, while he and his party (FMLN) aspire to
achieve greater independence and sovereignty. Although the massive repression
and killing by El Salvador’s US supported army ended with the 1992 Peace
Accords, the war on the poor waged by economic elites continues in this country
as elsewhere.
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| Vice-President Salvador Sánchez Cerén (3rd from right), the FMLN candidate for President in 2014, with members of our delegation |
During our visit I found many common struggles shared by
Salvadorans and the residents of my home town, Richmond, California (with a
diverse community that includes many Salvadoran immigrants), in the areas of
violence prevention, environmental justice and public access to airwaves.
We met with Padre Antonio in the Mejicanos area of San Salvador,
where gang activity is rampant. His holistic approach to violence prevention
has many parallels to our work here in Richmond, calling for more education,
housing, employment, job training and less emphasis on incarceration and police
repression. A truce negotiated between the two main gangs a year ago has
resulted in a dramatic decline in murders, but economic and social problems
still need to be addressed. As Padre Antonio stated, “The truce is not the
solution, but without the truce, there is no solution.”
We met with anti-mining
activists of the organization MUFRAS-32 in San Isidro, Cabañas province, who
are advocating to protect their rivers from certain severe contamination if
Canadian mining corporation Pacific Rim is allowed to begin operations there.
So far a moratorium on mining is in place, but Pacific Rim is suing El Salvador
for loss of potential future profits (!) based on CAFTA . The financial stakes
for big corporations in this struggle are high. In 2009 Marcelo Rivera, a
leader in the anti-mining movement, was murdered, and when a lawsuit was filed
to hold the perpetrators accountable, two witnesses were killed. Similar to
Richmond’s growing number of murals in outdoor spaces showing a vision for our
city free of the toxic pollution from the Chevron oil refinery, MUFRAS-32
activists use art and public murals as part of their campaign to educate the community.
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| “Mining Contaminates my Nation.” |
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| Activist Hector Berrios, mural in San Isidro with vision for a healthy future |
We
met with staff of the community radio station Radio Victoria in Victoria,
Cabañas province. Even though the 1992 Peace Accords assured the right to free
speech and access to air waves, they faced huge obstacles before managing to
acquire one frequency (92.1) that is shared among ten local community radio
stations in the northern region of El Salvador, with programming coming local
residents sharing information that is unavailable in the corporate media. Radio
Victoria is near the Honduras border and has provided much coverage during and
after the 2009 coup and on-going repression in Honduras. It emphasizes youth
leadership development and trains young people to be journalists and work in
the station. Radio Victoria has faced threats and harassment, reminiscent of
attempts to sabotage community radio stations here in the San Francisco Bay
Area.
The words of Monseñor Oscar Romero, who was murdered by US trained
snipers during a church on March 24, 1980, still ring true today, offering us
an ongoing challenge to restructure our society so that everyone can live with
dignity:
“Si queremos de veas un cese eficaz de la violencia, hay que
quitar la violenzia que está en la base de todas violencias: la violencia
structural, la injusticia social, el no participar los ciudadanos en la gestion
publica del país, la repression…”
“If we really want an effective end to violence, we must remove
the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social
injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country,
repression…”
--Sept. 23, 1979
April 3,
2013
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