Transparency and the Transnational Highway: Community Concern over MCC-Financed Infrastructure
By Michelle Petrotta, SHARE's Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow
 The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a corporation of the United States government that provides financial aid to developing countries in order to promote economic growth as a means to reduce poverty. The MCC and the government of El Salvador signed a Millennium Challenge Compact on November 29, 2006 that outlines a five year, $460.94 million anti-poverty campaign in the Northern Zone of El Salvador. Over half of the funds provided in the Compact, $233.56 million, have been allotted to the transportation project, $139 million of which will finance the design, construction, and rehabilitation of a transnational highway that will extend across the Northern Zone. According to the Compact's description, the transnational highway is being built in order to reduce physical isolation of the Northern Zone, and increase access to health and educational centers. El Salvador President Antonio Saca has announced that actual construction will begin in December 2008. The design phase of the transnational highway was set to end in June 2008, although the public has not yet been informed of any final design decision.
 Community Resistance
The community of Guarjila, a long-time partner of the SHARE Foundation located in the Chalatenango department, is composed of repatriated refugees and people who were wounded during the Salvadoran Civil War. They have faced many hardships throughout their displacement, their return to El Salvador from refugee camps in Cerro Grande, Honduras, and the resettlement process. The community met the construction of the transnational highway with resistance because they felt that they were not included in the public consultation process for the design of the development plan for the Northern Zone. Because the transnational highway designs pass directly through the middle of their rural community, it will completely alter the social fabric of their way of life forever.
When the team of architects first came to Guarjila in order to survey the area, community members pulled out the surveyor's stakes in order to show their disagreement with the plan. Soon thereafter, community members decided to form a committee to voice their concerns with the construction of the transnational highway. Jose Serrano, a member of the Guarjila Transnational Highway Committee, has said, "Not only will the highway physically destroy the place in which many of us live; it will also destroy the sense of community and social life that we have here in Guarjila, and the tranquility of the people who live here. It has cost us so much to resettle here and to gain that tranquility."
 Displacement of Families
In October 2007, the design company invited community members of the Northern Zone to a public meeting in which they shared the three possible designs for the highway route through Chalatenango. After seeing the potential designs, community members had a better idea of how many families and houses would be affected by the construction; however, they were not permitted to have copies of the design plan to distribute in their community. According to the Guarjila Transnational Highway Committee, the different design options for the transnational highway will displace anywhere from 10 - 50 families and their homes. One of the designs is planned to run directly through the Jon Cortina Museum, an important site of community patrimony that celebrates the life and work of Father Jon Cortina, a Spanish priest and engineer who accompanied the community throughout their resettlement to Guarjila through the design and construction of approximately 200 houses with aid from the Spanish government. Another design option will affect access to a communal water source. Construction for the section of the highway that will run through Guarjila is planned to occur between June 2009 and June 2011.
 Juan Jose Llort, Executive Director of FOMILENIO, the Salvadoran agency charged with the responsibility of implementing the funds from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, has state that all rights of way will be purchased prior to construction. Llort has also confirmed that expropriation and reassignment of persons who live on the rights of way will be the last resource; first, they will evaluate the value of the property and make an offer for sale based on that evaluation. The National Center of Registration is in the process of registering the ownership of land of all persons who reside near the future transnational highway while verifying which rights of way need to be purchased prior to construction. Llort has estimated that they will need to acquire the rights of way of approximately 400 families, but he estimates they will only need to "resettle" 6 - 10 families. The families in Guarjila who will be displaced by the highway construction would like to collectively bargain the sale of their rights of way, homes, and land to FOMILENIO, to better ensure that they are getting a fair deal and that there are no hidden terms throughout the negotiations.
Community Concerns and Lack of Transparency
The people of Guarjila's main source of information about the design and construction of the transnational highway is the newspaper or through repeated questioning of the architects and surveyors who come to work in the community. FOMILENIO has not made public the final design, nor made publicly available the potential design plans that are being contemplated. Infrastructure projects in El Salvador do not provide the same type of transparency and availability of information to the public as they do in the United States. Development designs for any potential road or massive infrastructure project in the United States are considered public information that citizens have an actual right to access. The people of Guarjila and the people of El Salvador deserve the same right to public information and transparency during the design process of the transnational highway.
 A frequent preoccupation of the Guarjila community members as expressed by several members of the Transnational Highway Committee is that there is a high probability that the people of Guarjila will not benefit from any of the projects financed by the Millennium Challenge Corporation - of the scholarships that were awarded by FOMILENIO, none of the students from the area were recipients; and with regard to the productive development project, no informational material explaining the details of the project has been specifically distributed in the area, neither by their mayor nor any member of FOMILENIO. Above and beyond those concerns, the community is worried about the security of their environment as affected by increased transportation through the area and the consequent pollution; and the personal security of community members due to increased crime. With regard to food security, expropriation of land and purchasing families' rights of way to the area will displace people from their land, which the majority of rural families in Guarjila depend upon for their subsistence. Taking away land signifies taking away a means of survival. The community members prefer that the transnational highway pass through areas that will decrease the risks associated with construction.
Another fundamental concern of the communities of Guarjila, which resonates throughout Chalatenango, is that construction of the highway, by facilitating access to the area, will allow mining companies better access to conduct exploration and exploitation. The communities of Chalatenango have voiced their opinion loud and clear - they are opposed to metallic mineral mining exploration and exploitation in El Salvador, and that their opposition is non-negotiable.
The SHARE Foundation hopes that FOMILENIO and the Millennium Challenge Corporation are able to fully and openly address the concerns of the Guarjila community, and others in the Northern Zone of El Salvador who will be displaced and resettled due to the transnational highway construction.
For more information on the MCC and its effect on El Salvador, click here.
For information on other advocacy issues facing El Salvador, visit SHARE's Advocacy Program's page.
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