Archive for September, 2009

This past Saturday, in the small community of Las Araditas in El Paisnal, El Salvador, the rural communities from the municipalities of El Paisnal, Aguilares, San Pablo Tacachico and Suchitoto, came together to commemorate their martyrs. On September 29th, 1979, thirty years ago, community leaders Felix Garcia, Patricia “Ticha” Puertas, Apolinario “Polin” Serrano and Jose Lopez were killed by the armed forces when their car was pulled over on the road to Santa Ana. Feliz, Ticha and Polin were all leaders of the the Christian Federation for Salvadoran Peasants-Union of Peasant Workers. Inspired by the theology of liberation and the words of priests such as Rutilio Grande, these illiterate peasants organized themselves to fight for their rights. Their deaths were mourned by all those who knew and loved them, including Monseñor Romero who was still alive at the time of their deaths.
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Esta articulo fue publicado en El Faro. Es una entrevista con Guadalupe Mejia, fundadora de Asociacion Comite de Familiares de Victimas de Violaciones de Derechos Humanos “Marianella Garcia Villas” o CODEFAM. CODEFAM es una contraparte de SHARE.
Leer el articulo.

This article was published in the Washington Post yesterday.  SHARE Director Jose Artiga is quoted.

Salvadorans Seek a Voice To Match Their Numbers

Summit Aims to Raise Political Visibility

By N.C. AizenmanWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday,

September 24, 2009

For nearly three decades Salvadoran immigrants have been among the nation’s

most organized newcomers, founding clubs to raise money for schools back home, establishing medical clinics for new arrivals and battling in Congress and courts to gain legal status for tens of thousands of political dissidents who fled persecution by the U.S.-backed government during El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s.

Yet, even as Salvadoran immigrants and Americans of Salvadoran descent have grown to number 1.6 million — essentially tying them with Cubans as the nation’s third largest Latino group — they have mostly shied from direct participation in U.S. politics. Read More »

Esta es una entrevista con artesanos de la comunidad Buen Pastor en el region de UCRES in Aguilares, San Salvador.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SxSMes6obo

This was an interview done with artisans from the Buen Pastor community outside of Aguilares in Northern San Salvador. Buen Pastor is a sistering community of Good Shepherd in Kansas and works with SHARE’s counterpart UCRES.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SxSMes6obo]

Cada semana, Equipo Maiz, un organazation para la Educación Popular y contraparte de SHARE, publica La Pagina de Maiz. Para leer la publicación de la semana, haz click en el link.

“Independencia”, o el dia que nos comieron el mandado

This reflection was written by Laura Davison, a freshman in Journalism at Missouri University. Laura participated in a SHARE delegation this past June with her church Good Shepherd which is located in Kansas City, Kansas.

Here I am, Lord.

Here we are: Ten of us, four adults and six students, riding a bus to El Buen Pastor, a community of about 100 people in central El Salvador. As we sat there, slightly perspiring partly from apprehension and partly from the heat radiating off the sticky vinyl seat, the nervousness, excitement and French toast from breakfast mixed in our stomachs. We weren’t sure what to expect, do and say in a country in which most of us had spent less than 24 hours and where we spoke very little of the language. And how were we supposed to react when we arrived in El Buen Pastor, a place we had heard about for years but all of us, save one, had never experienced? What were we to say? What were we to offer? We felt powerless. Sure, we had been preparing since January for our stay in El Salvador. But as we passed pickup trucks with workers crammed into the bed of the truck on the way to find work for the day, mothers and children selling fruit in run down shacks on the side of the road and dirty dogs roaming the street, the reality of a country suffering from high unemployment, poverty and gang violence set in. We really were out of our element.

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Monseñor Romero Coalition

Press Release

“MONSEÑOR ROMERO: TRUTH, JUSTICE AND HOPE” The Monseñor Romero Coalition, of which the SHARE Foundation is a member, wishes to inform the Salvadoran civil society and the international community of the launching of a citizens campaign entitled “MONSEÑOR ROMERO: TRUTH, JUSTICE AND HOPE.”

In the context of the thirtieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Monseñor Romero in March of 2010, this campaign wishes to enhance the figure of Monseñor Romero as a world symbol for commitment to the poor, through the struggle for truth and justice that reclaims human rights for the oppressed and victims of violence.

The focus of the campaign will be to demand the completion of the recommendation given in 2000 by the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights (CIDH) in regards to the case of Monseñor Romero. These recommendations have yet to be fulfilled by the government of El Salvador.

The opening activities will commence on August 15, 2009, in Ciudad Barrios located in the department of San Miguel, the birthplace of Monseñor Romero. There will be a mass, a public forum and a procession starting at 10:00 a.m., all of which will be coordinated with the Parish of Ciudad Barrios.

The campaign will consist of public activities, press conferences, community meetings and other activities focused on the prophetic message of Monseñor Romero. It will also consist of the public demand that the state authorities fulfill the recommendation given by the CIDH. All activities will occur starting with the launching of this campaign and culminating in the commemoration event on March 24, 2010.

The Monseñor Romero Coalition will publicize all activities that occur as well as an action taken by state authorities in regards to the requirements presented to them.
The recommendations of the CIDH for the Romero case that have by unfulfilled by the Salvadoran state, in regards to those declared responsible for the assassination are the following:

• Carry out a complete judicial investigation that is effective, impartial and with few obstacles, with the means of identifying, bringing to court and penalizing all the intellectual and material authors for the crime established in the above stated report without damaging the decreed amnesty;
• Compensate for the consequences of these violations, including the payment of just reparation;
• Adapt internal legislation to the American Convention without affecting the General Amnesty Law.

Monseñor Romero is a light of truth, justice and hope for the entire world, but especially for his loved people of El Salvador.

San Salvador , August 13, 2009

SAN SALVADOR, Sept 2 (Reuters) – Suspected Salvadorean gang members killed French filmmaker Christian Poveda, whose 2008 film “La Vida Loca” crudely depicts the hopeless lives of members of the infamous Mara 18 street gang, local police said on Wednesday.

Poveda, 53, was shot on a road 10 miles (16 km) north of the capital of San Salvador, as he drove back from filming in La Campanera, a poor, overcrowded suburb and a Mara 18 stronghold.

President Mauricio Funes said in a statement on Wednesday night that he was “shocked” by Poveda’s murder and ordered a thorough investigation.

“La Vida Loca” (The Crazy Life) closely followed the lives of several heavily tattooed gang members, some of whom were jailed or killed during the shooting of the film.

Poveda first came to El Salvador in the early 1980s to cover the civil war that ravaged the poor Central American for over a decade. He returned after the armed conflict was over to cover street gangs.

The Mara 18 and rival Mara Salvatrucha gangs make up a huge criminal network that runs from Los Angeles, where a diaspora of Salvadoreans lives, down through chunks of Central America.

Authorities estimate there could be as many as 30,000 so-called mareros, who sell drugs, rob illegal migrants or extort businesses in the tiny country of just 5.7 million people.

“MONSEÑOR ROMERO: VERDAD, JUSTICIA Y ESPERANZA”

La Concertación Monseñor Romero informa a la sociedad salvadoreña y comunidad internacional, el lanzamiento de la campaña ciudadana “MONSEÑOR ROMERO: VERDAD, JUSTICIA Y ESPERANZA”.

La campaña busca enaltecer la figura de Monseñor Oscar Romero, como símbolo mundial de compromiso a favor de los pobres, desde la lucha por la verdad y la justicia que reclaman los oprimidos y las víctimas de violaciones a los derechos humanos, en el contexto del XXX Aniversario del martirio de Monseñor Romero en marzo de 2010.

La campaña, desde esa perspectiva, adoptará como un eje central de su temática, la exigencia del a las recomendaciones dictadas en 2000 por la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) en el mismo caso de Monseñor Romero, las cuales hasta hoy se encuentran incumplidas por el Estado de El Salvador. Read More »