El Salvador: News & Updates

IRTF is grateful to the 200 supporters who gathered on October 27 at Pilgrim Church in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood for IRTF’s annual Commemoration of the Martyrs. In addition to marking the 44th anniversary of the martyrdom of Cleveland’s missioners in El Salvador (Jean Donovan and Sister Dorothy Kazel, alongside Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke), we commemorated 36 human rights defenders killed in Central America and Colombia this past year because they dared to speak truth to power.

Our keynote speaker, Lorena Araujo of the largest campesino organization in El Salvador (CRIPDES), held the crowd’s attention with horrific stories of mass arrests, detentions and deaths currently happening under their government’s State of Exception, now in its third year. With more 88,000 imprisoned (and more than 300 deaths in prison), El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world—surpassing the astronomical rate of incarceration in the United States. 

As the people of El Salvador face the greatest challenge to their democracy since the end of the civil war in 1992, they invite us to renew and deepen our solidarity.

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Since early 2023, IRTF has been involved in an international solidarity campaign to drop bogus criminal charges against five environmentalists in El Salvador. After 20 months of petition gathering, calls to the US State Departement and US Embassy, a sign-on letter from the US Congress and other advocacy efforts, we are happy to report that the Santa Marta 5 have been freed!

The five prominent community leaders (Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco, and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega) were all instrumental in the successful campaign to save El Salvador’s rivers from the threat of gold mining. With a unanimous vote in El Salvador’s National Assembly in March 2017, El Salvador became the first nation on earth to ban all metallic mining.

Since they were arrested in January 2023 on politically-motivated charges, IRTF has participated in an international campaign spanning 31 countries demanding that the bogus charges be dropped and denouncing the political motivations behind their detention given the lack of evidence presented by the Salvadoran Attorney General’s office.

In a letter to the government in March 2023, a group of UN special rapporteurs and the vice-president of the UN working group on arbitrary detention, said: “We fear that the case is an attempt to intimidate those who seek to defend the environment in the country, and especially those who defend human rights from the negative impacts of mining.”

Bukele's crackdown on gangs has led to a drastic drop in homicides and is praised by many Salvadorans, but rights groups slam abuses in prisons, saying inmates are forced to confess and held without contact from families and lawyers.

The Salvadoran NGO Socorro Juridico Humanitario (SJH) estimates that almost a third of those detained are innocent -- based on a study of 3,500 cases.

"I am not defending, or against, the government. What I want is for them to hand over my brother, who is innocent," Yessica said at her home in San Jose Las Flores, north of the capital San Salvador.

Five years ago, her brother Carlos Alfonso, 44, was beaten to death by gang members in his neighborhood, and now she is afraid that Leonel, who suffers from epilepsy, will die in jail.

Many human rights organizations including the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Human Rights Watch have been reporting and presenting evidence of the human rights violations committed by President Bukele's government. As a reaction to this violence, people are heading demonstrations on the streets of El Salvador. These marches often get stopped by the police, but this time, on August 16 the Movement of Victims of the Regime reached the Presidential Palace. 

"We wanted to get to the Presidential Palace. We had already been to almost all the government institutions, but we still hadn't gone to the Presidential Palace, [..] they always meet us with barricades. So one group of us gathered at the Savior of the World monument to attract attention while another went to the Presidential Palace, getting there quickly so they wouldn't block us," said Samuel Ramirez, a spokesperson form the Movement of Victims of the Regime.

On August 6, a new group in the U.S. House of Representatives, the El Salvador Caucus, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting that the State Department remove the elevated travel advisory status for El Salvador, its first official correspondence aimed at influencing U.S. policy towards El Salvador. The caucus—formally announced on July 8 by Florida Republican and vocal Trump supporter Representative Matt Gaetz, who co-chairs the caucus alongside Texas Democrat Vicente Gonzalez—emerged as increasing numbers of international headlines report on widespread human rights violations under Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s militarized state of exception, which has suspended many basic civil liberties nationwide for over two years in a so-called “war against gangs.”

In Gaetz’s words, however, “The El Salvador Caucus will exist to… encourage the strong reforms that President Bukele has put into effect” and “vindicate the choices President Bukele has made.”Like other congressional caucuses, the El Salvador Caucus has no authority within Congress other than to advance a common interest. The caucus’ stated mission is to promote “a better understanding of issues related to the United States’ relationship with El Salvador, our mutual interests and the interests of the United States.” In Gaetz’s words, however, “The El Salvador Caucus will exist to… encourage the strong reforms that President Bukele has put into effect” and “vindicate the choices President Bukele has made.” The caucus’ early actions and Gaetz’s statements suggest the group’s role is not only to boost the image of Bukele but also to drive the agenda of the Bukele government within the United States.

The article by Efren Lemus in El Faro on August 19, 2024, highlights severe issues within El Salvador's Bureau of Prisons under the state of exception. It documents cases where court-ordered releases were ignored, leading to deaths and continued unjust detainment. Families like that of Luis Armando Rodríguez faced repeated bureaucratic obstacles after his release was ordered, ultimately resulting in his death in prison. The Bureau of Prisons, accused of crimes and secrecy, has failed to comply with court orders, perpetuating a pattern of human rights abuses and institutional impunity despite international scrutiny.

In this monthly newsletter, please read about : 1) ICE Air: Update on Removal Flight Trends, 2) US Government Policy: Some legislators and DHS trying to do more to offer humanitarian relief to migrants, 3) Migration Impacts on Women, 4) At the Border, 5) Beyond Borders: Health and Safety in the Age of Migration in Mexico, 6) Changing Demographics: Migrants to the US Come from Different Corners of the Globe, 7) Danger in the Darién Gap: Human rights abuses and the need for human pathways to safety, 8) Texas Gets Tough on Migrants, 9) Economic Benefits of Immigration – both documented and undocumented migrants, 10) Biden Can Claim Record Numbers of Removals.

TAKE ACTION NOW

Here is what you can do to take action this week and act in solidarity with migrants and their families. (See details at the bottom of this newsletter.)

A) Join a Solidarity Delegation to Southern Mexico:  November 11-16, 2024

B) Stop Criminalizing Migrants Traveling through the Darién Gap

C) Volunteer to Assistant Migrants and Refugees in Cleveland: Catholic Charities

D) Volunteer to Assistant Migrants and Refugees in Cleveland: NEO Friends of Immigrants

E) Get Paid to Assist Migrants and Refugees in Cleveland

F) Act Now for Welcoming, Dignified, and Just Immigration

Read the full IRTF Migrant Justice Newsletter each month at https://www.irtfcleveland.org/blog  

In less than a decade, El Salvador has gone from the murder capital of the world to having one of the lowest homicide rates in the Western Hemisphere. President Nayib Bukele has been at the helm of this radical transformation. Since taking office, he has led one of the most aggressive anti-gang crackdowns ever seen, suspended key constitutional rights, reshaped the judiciary, eroded prosecutorial independence, and consolidated unprecedented political power in the process.

Data from the Salvadoran government indeed suggests that violence has plummeted to historic lows under Bukele. A closer look at the data and methods used by his administration, however, reveals a more complicated reality of violence, state control, and repression in the country. Under Bukele’s crackdown, the government has been undercounting homicides by as much as 47 percent. In May 2021, Bukele’s government formally started changing how it counted homicides. Then, in April 2022, just days after Bukele declared the régimen de excepción, the government began excluding figures for persons killed in clashes with the police or military, which include shootings, patrols, and operations by state security forces. Where El Salvador has become a true leader—not only in the Western Hemisphere but globally—is incarceration. Under Bukele’s rule, El Salvador has become the most incarcerated country in the world.

Lastly, both Bukele’s supporters and critics have largely taken his administration at its word, failing to consider that the very data touted by the president and his administration is deeply flawed and that homicides under his rule have been deliberately and dramatically undercounted.
“Everyone is talking about Bukele’s model and that it is going to be successful there,” Salvadoran political scientist José Miguel Cruz told Foreign Policy, “and that is just a fantasy.”

The article by Salvador Meléndez and María Teresa Hernández in the Associated Press on August 1, 2024, highlights the annual pilgrimage in El Salvador to honor Saint Oscar Romero, who was canonized in 2018. Thousands of pilgrims travel 160 kilometers from San Salvador to Ciudad Barrios, where Romero was born. Romero, beloved for his advocacy for the poor and working class and his opposition to military repression, was assassinated in 1980. The pilgrimage, which started in 2017, aims to unite his birthplace with his burial site. Participants, inspired by Romero's legacy, engage in prayer, cultural activities, and celebrations. This year's pilgrimage marks the 500th anniversary of Christianity's arrival in El Salvador and emphasizes the enduring influence of Romero, especially amidst the current government's harsh crackdown on gangs and human rights violations.