IRTF News

In El Salvador, testimony from police officers and conflicting statistics on mass graves are leading critics to question if homicides in the Central American country are being fully reported as access to official information tightens. Documents from El Salvador's Institute of Legal Medicine, seen by Reuters, show authorities recovered 207 bodies from mass graves over two and a half years, between June 2019 and February 2022. In contrast, documents from the Attorney General Office show 158 bodies recovered in over three years, between January 2019 and February 2022 – a difference of 49. Human rights groups and family members of homicide victims say they are alarmed by this discrepancy. The confusion is partly caused by restrictions to previously public information across government agencies under President Nayib Bukele, they said.

Last month, the White House announced more than $1.9 billion in ​“private sector commitments” to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as part of Vice President Harris’ ​“Call to Action” to address the root causes of migration from northern Central America. The irony apparently lost on the White House is that it is promoting the same economic model that has caused so many to be forced to leave their homes and migrate in the first place. The United States has long promoted corporate interests, which generate profits for U.S. companies and local elites, at the expense of the majority of the peoples of northern Central America, and this new ​“Call to Action” is no different. 

Last month, the White House announced more than $1.9 billion in ​“private sector commitments” to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as part of Vice President Harris’ ​“Call to Action” to address the root causes of migration from northern Central America. The irony apparently lost on the White House is that it is promoting the same economic model that has caused so many to be forced to leave their homes and migrate in the first place. The United States has long promoted corporate interests, which generate profits for U.S. companies and local elites, at the expense of the majority of the peoples of northern Central America, and this new ​“Call to Action” is no different. One of the defining features of the economies of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is the small group of extremely powerful families whose business empires control much of each country’s economy. Many members of the oligarchy have amassed enormous riches precisely by impoverishing the majorities, whether it be by paying miserable wages on agricultural plantations, profiting from stolen Indigenous land, or exerting influence over political actors to win favorable state contracts. 

Using the law as a weapon of repression, the corrupt, pro-global capitalist regime in Guatemala arrested Ruben Zamora, the latest defender of democracy and rule of law, human rights and justice, land and the environment to be ‘criminalized’. The U.S., Canada, IMF, World Bank and transnational companies and banks maintain ‘business-as-usual’ economic, political and military relations.

Just months after Florida Atlantic University “booted the braids“, confirming that their university would not be renewing its contract with Wendy’s after years of student organizing, the Florida State University Student Senate passed a resolution recognizing the achievements of the Fair Food Program and endorsing the national boycott of Wendy’s. With this historic resolution in the state’s capitol, FSU joins other universities like the Methodist Theological School in Ohio and Florida Gulf Coast University that have added their voices to the nationwide movement of student and city governments calling for universities and communities alike to refuse to give so much as a dollar of business to the hamburger giant until it joins the award-winning Fair Food Program.

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.

Yesenia Portillo, a Salvadoran American activist raised in Los Angeles, said there is a perception that Salvadorans in the U.S. are overwhelmingly supportive of Bukele. But Portillo said there are many in the U.S. who don't support him, and are “becoming more vocal about their concerns, especially as more political exiles arrive in the U.S." Portillo said that in El Salvador, there is more opposition to Bukele than polls reflect. “Feminists, LGBTI+, labor, and environmental organizations in El Salvador have been taking to the streets by the tens of thousands to criticize his policies and that often doesn’t get highlighted,” she said.

I trust that you, like me and many around the world, are still celebrating and feeling the hope of the people’s victory in the recent presidential elections of Colombia. Just as we saw the hope of new beginnings in Chile and Honduras, this victory was only made possible by the unstoppable and ongoing work of social movements, particularly the resistance of Indigenous communities. In this moment of hope and celebration, we must also acknowledge that much has been sacrificed to get here.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s national drug strategy, which includes a focus on harm reduction to respond to an overdose crisis at home, is at odds with the country’s ongoing “Drug War” in Latin America, which has perennially failed to curb drug supplies, at a huge cost in human lives. A new report by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) argues that the global drug prohibition regime and the 50-year-long U.S.-led “war on drugs” has not only had disastrous results across the world but are increasingly exacerbating other serious problems. These include violence, corruption, organized crime, forced displacement and migration as well as forest loss and climate change.