Executive Decree 56: The Public Documents

Bajo Aguan's Modern Tragedy of the Commons

Human rights abusers who help stop climate change, and the global system that
keeps them in business

Danielle Marie Mackey
December 3, 2012

Originally published in Guernica Magazine. See full article here.
Also published in the Utne Reader print edition of May/June 2013. 

Image from Flickr from Honduras delegation

In the Bajo Aguan, a Somersault in Land Philosophy Brings Widespread Inequality

Carmen* watches as steam rises from the coffee mug between her hands and dissolves into the cool morning air. She leans against the clay walls of her family hut and sighs, tired from a dawn spent pounding dough into breakfast tortillas. Her husband and their six year-old son left for work on the African palm tree plantation about an hour ago. In a few more hours, the boy will return to Guadalupe Carney, their rural Honduran community, to collect lunch for himself and his father. Carmen is eager to bask in the morning quiet while it lasts.

Suddenly, her son skips back through the door, chewing a blade of grass. “Weren’t you going to help Daddy today?” she asks, her eyebrows knitting with concern.

“Nope,” the boy shrugs. “He sent me home.”

Her cell phone rings. Carmen begins to feel faint as she registers her husband’s words: “Things are getting ugly here. I don’t want any of you on the plantation today. I’ll see you tonight.”

It is November 15th, 2010. Shortly after she hangs up the phone, Carmen’s husband and at least three other farm workers are shot to death.

                 *                      *                     *

The “Tragedy of the Commons” scenario is commonly used to explain why fighting climate change is difficult. It describes “a group of livestock farmers who share grazing land [and] allow their animals to overgraze on the communal turf, despite knowing that they are ultimately destroying everyone’s resource, including their own.” A farmer could choose to limit his livestock’s grazing time in order to protect the communal resource, but that would mean less food for his animals. The challenge for curbing climate change has been to find a way to incentivize the choice to protect the commons. And quite a challenge it has been: as environmentalist Bill McKibben put it in a recent article, “Since all of us are in some way the beneficiaries of cheap fossil fuel, tackling climate change has been like trying to build a movement against yourself.”

One proposed solution is known as the Green Economy, which purportedly protects the environment while creating wealth. It accomplishes this through programs like the carbon credit market, and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program (REDD+.) Through these programs, international organizations like the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) have begun paying for the protection of ecosystems that do valuable things for the environment. When a tree absorbs greenhouse gases, for instance, it is considered to be performing an “ecosystems service.” From the green economy perspective, this service should paid for, just like any other. “We see the green economy as the only type of economy that can deliver sustainable development and really solve the problem of persistent poverty… the only kind of economy that can manage to do all this while reducing ecological scarcities and reducing environmental risks,” argues Pavan Sukhdev, former special advisor to the UN Green Economy Initiative, in a videotaped interview from March 2011. “It means it’s the only economy for the future,” he explains.

The creation of a “carbon market” also allows for the industrialized nations of the global north to avoid making the significant changes necessary to reduce their own carbon emissions. Now, they can choose instead to pay for the protection and expansion of ample natural ecosystems in other countries, mostly those in the developing global south. Transnational corporations can go into the business of ecosystems protections, buying undeveloped territory and promising to keep them pristine. In theory, where trees are being planted does not matter, because they lower the total amount of climate-changing carbon emitted to the atmosphere from wherever they are.

Thus, natural resources have acquired a new business value. In this way, the green economy aims to incentivize protection of the commons. In fact, it can now be more valuable for a landowner to protect a forest than to raze it for planting crops.

According to recent estimates, humanity has very little time to slow climate change—possibly as little as sixteen years—or we will have passed a critical limit. The green economy seems to make saving the planet an easy choice. Why, then, are protests breaking out in resistance to it, especially across the developing nations of the global south?

An example from the Bajo Aguan region of Honduras exposes the major problem: the green economy has caused a modern Tragedy of the Commons by incentivizing practices that hurt the common good, like resource hoarding. Whether by omitting necessary safeguards, or because it is simply untenable by design, the green economy is exacerbating existing social inequalities in the name of saving the environment. In fact, in the Bajo Aguan, the green economy has even cropped up in the middle of a low-intensity war that has consumed entire communities.

                 *                      *                     *

The road that led Carmen to the foot of her husband’s fresh grave began nearly two centuries ago. And, just as with the green economy, it is related to pressure from international institutions.

Continue reading here. 

Will the historic Salvadoran gang truce matter?

Civil Society leaders call a conference to discuss opportunities and challenges to a sustainable peace

Danielle Marie Mackey
October 30, 2012
Article originally appeared at Le Monde Diplomatique online. 

Civil society members listen as the conference speakers analyze problems and offer solutions.

San Salvador    Just over two hundred days have passed since the two rival Salvadoran street gangs, MS 13 and Barrio 18, signed a historic truce. The pact has seen various hiccups since its signing—under the pressure of investigative newspaper El Faro, President Mauricio Funes’ administration admitted that it had negotiated the signing of the pact in exchange for favors for leading gang members, and that it was not brokered exclusively by the Catholic Church as they previously insisted; and the bloody discovery of the bodies of schoolboys in July raised questions about whether the agreement was still in place. However, the homicide rate immediately fell upon its signing and has, in comparison to what is normal in El Salvador, stayed low. “Even one fewer death every day is a huge opportunity for this people... we’ve already seen hundreds of lives saved,” says Maria Silvia Guillen, the director of the Foundation for the Study of the Application of the Law (FESPAD) and past representative to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The question that civil society leaders like Guillen are raising is whether the truce will dissipate before important changes are made to Salvadoran law and society that are necessary in building a sustained peace. If these changes are not made, leaders warn, the opportunity will quickly slip away.

Exactly what changes are necessary was the subject of a recent San Salvador conference in late September, called The Truce: Opportunities and Challenges. “The problem of violence in El Salvador has never been 100% the fault of the gangs,” stated Rodrigo Bolanos, the owner of League clothing factory, where one-fifth of employees are gang-affiliated. “It is 10% their fault, and 90% the fault of the history of inequality in this country.” Young people in El Salvador, who make up the majority of gang members, are also the hardest hit by this chronic lack of opportunities. Even today, the country earmarks less than 2.5% of its gross domestic product for education and underemployment rates remain high. “This sort of social exclusion is the first step in the evolution of violence,” explained Fr. Antonio Rodriguez, who runs Passionist Social Service community programs for violence prevention in urban Mejicanos.

Since the first gang members were deported from Los Angeles to El Salvador in the early 1990’s, the cost of this social exclusion has been very high. “The number of victims since the gang phenomenon began is above 50,000; what we were living before the truce was a new type of social conflict, not simply a crime wave,” asserted Raul Mijango, former guerilla and one of the truce mediators. “We have seen in the past that heavy-handed approaches to solving the problem haven’t worked...now, it’s time to try alternatives.”

Conference participants pointed out that several root causes of this social conflict still remain: among them, a failed penitentiary system, widespread discriminatory attitudes in society and laws, and too few opportunities.

El Salvador’s nineteen prisons are overcrowded and violent: built to hold 8,000 prisoners, they today hold 24,000. “In a functioning prison system, a person should be able to leave incarceration and return to civil society rehabilitated,” said Fr. Jose Maria Tojeira, the rector of the Jesuit University of Central America. With conditions as they are in the Salvadoran system, it is no wonder that prisons have actually increased gangs’ power, and certainly do not offer a chance to prepare to return to normal civilian life after release. No specific plans to overhaul the prison system have been announced since the truce was signed, but Mijango stated at the conference that the government has recently accepted two loans for upwards of $70 million from unidentified international institutions, to be used toward this end.

Another roadblock to lasting change is widespread discrimination toward active and former gang members in society and the legal system. These attitudes ensure that the doors to opportunity remained closed to youth in gang life. “It has been six months now (since the truce signing) and Salvadoran society hasn’t reacted like it needs to... We understand the hatred against the boys for all that they have done,” stated Mijango. “But now, they’re the ones making proposals for a social recuperation in this country.” Fr. Tojeira added, “This is historic: the poor and marginalized are no longer waiting for the powerful to take a step forward.... They are facilitating progress for our society.” The speakers pointed out that if the social exclusion that created the cycle of violence in El Salvador continues, the truce will be unable to break that cycle.

However, the government’s involvement in negotiating the truce is a notable break from previous attitudes, argued Guillen. “For as long as we at FESPAD have done violence prevention work with young gang members, we have been criticized for ‘protecting criminals.’ Now, this government is instituting that very work as policy. This is a very hopeful change.”

According to Geovanni Morales, MS-13 member and employee of the Social Reinsertion area of SSPAS, young people in gangs need psychological support, trust and opportunities when they attempt to leave the violence of gang life. “Put yourself in our shoes. Behind me, there are many youth wanting to change like I have, to contribute to society. But that won’t happen if the discrimination continues.”

Morales’ statement prompted a young man from the audience to stand and thank him for his honesty, telling the audience that he was inspired to try to change his attitude about gang members in his neighborhood. Mijango cautioned the young man about yet another of the road blocks to sustainable peace: the Anti-Gang Law, passed by the Funes administration in 2010, which makes it illegal to in any way aid or accompany gang activity. “If you reach out your hand to a gang member, you could be put in jail. That’s why we see abolition of this law as necessary,” he explained. Gang members had also demanded that the law be repealed as part of truce negotiations, but the government has yet to take any concrete steps to do so.

Speakers from left to right: Raul Mijango, Fr. Antonio Rodriguez, Rodrigo Bolanos, Maria Silvia Guillen, Fr. Jose Maria Tojiera, and Geovanni Morales.

 The lasting effectiveness of the truce may also depend on the success of several proposals unveiled at the conference. The Passionist Social Service distributed a proposal for an alternative to the Anti-Gang Law, which they call the Special Law for Withdrawl and Rehabilitation of Members of Gangs and Criminal Organizations. It would allow gang members who have been processed for a felony to clear their records if they will choose to leave the gang, and would destine some State resources to rehabilitation programs. The proposal points out that Article 27 of the Salvadoran Constitution establishes rehabilitation of delinquents as a responsibility of the government. The proposal also suggests the creation of the National Institute for Gang Rehabilitation, which by legislative decree would have the responsibility of coordinating and overseeing the various rehabilitation efforts that could surface under this proposed law.

Factory owner Bolanos unveiled another proposal at the conference aimed at creating alternatives to violent gang life: a self-sustaining industrial park that includes education through a second-year technical university degree, childcare, and recreational areas. The park is intended to be built in a marginalized urban neighborhood in San Salvador known as the IVU, which has a 95% unemployment rate and high levels of violence. The center of park would be a clothes factory, which would employ at least one member of every family in the community, including gang members. It would be built on land owned by the local mayor’s office. Bolanos believes that this type of employment opportunity that also strengthens community ties would be an effective antidote to the violence that gang activity usually implies. “The gang members that I have employed at League have been efficient and honest workers.... There are a few other business owners with me in this, but not many. We are all in a learning process; we are the first in the Americas to see this problem with dignity, to truly recognize that we are all human beings,” he stated.

Rodrigo Bolanos shows a digital model of his proposed industrial park.

The Funes administration is also poised to act, according to Mijango. He announced that the government has recently accepted six projects from the United States Agency for International Development, the first $40 million of which will be dedicated to reinsertion into society for former gang members and violence prevention programs. He also announced that the government is awaiting similar funds from the European Union.

The extent to which these proposals will be enacted is yet to be seen. Whether greater society will be willing to move beyond long-held attitudes about gang members is also a pending piece of the puzzle.

Despite the unknowns, small signs of change surface at the conference. “All of us who are here today have been through our own rehabilitation process,” said an audience member. “We’ve all somehow learned to see this problem differently, to see each other first as human beings. I decided long ago that I want to be part of a society where everyone is allowed to participate, and we are now one step closer. We are hearing politicians and business people say that they’re ready to institutionalize dignity...this is called ‘Revolution,’ ladies and gentlemen.”

(Danielle Mackey is a journalist specialized in Latin America)

Central American farmers seek buffers against climate change

Catholic Relief Services' Paul Hicks talks to the press at the release of the report.

October 27, 2012
Originally appeared in the National Catholic Reporter online and in print.

In 2009, El Salvador was not only the most vulnerable country in Central America to climate change -- it was No. 1 in the world.

In the past several years, natural disasters have hit the country with increasing frequency. Their intensity and duration have risen exponentially, as well as their cost.

The total economic loss from three of the five storms in 2009-2011 is estimated at some $1.3 billion, with much of that coming from lost crops.

"With climate change, we face a challenge much greater than we ever could have imagined a few decades ago," Salvadoran Minister of the Environment Herman Rosa Chávez said at an Oct. 11 conference announcing a new study on the impact climate change will have on countries in the region. "Each year that we do not act is one more year of losses."

Storms are not the only problem. An increased frequency of uncommon weather patterns has had a wide impact. This year, for instance, drought ravaged farmers both in the United States and in Central America -- prompting fears of a worldwide spike in food prices.

This combination of events causes serious consequences for people who do not have access to economic or institutional buffers, like insurance, that enable them to survive this type of shock.

In Central America, the livelihoods of a million small-hold farmers of maize and beans, the region's staples, will be at risk. The food security of the region is under threat.

That problem is the subject of the new study "Tortillas on the Roaster," an effort of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

The study, funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, focuses on Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

In a keynote address at the Oct. 11 conference, Rosa Chávez argued that the road to environmental change must be a different one than it has been in the past.

"This cannot be another green revolution with the same logic of a technological cure. That just kills us slowly and patiently," Rosa Chávez said, referring to transgenic seeds and chemical fertilizers that have been forcefully marketed to Central American farmers in past decades.

That approach has been widely criticized for harming plant biodiversity and locking small farmers into unaffordable production cycles.

"The temptation to be convinced by a new technological cure is ever-stronger today," Rosa Chávez said.
Rosa Chávez's concerns are echoed in the "Tortillas on the Roaster" study, which aims at addressing how small farmers and others at the local level can prepare to adapt to climate change.

"Until now, climate change projections for Central America have been general, covering wide geographic areas," the study's executive summary states. "As a result, smallholder farmers and other decision makers have been slow to adapt adequately to the threats of climate change. They know that climate change is occurring, but they do not have enough detailed information to act on it."

"Tortillas on the Roaster" aims at filling this knowledge and action gap first by providing detailed climate projections for areas of 5 square kilometers or smaller in this four-country region, within two distinct time frames: 2010-2039 and 2040-2069.

It looks at the impact of higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns on the countries' most important crops, beans and maize. The study then provides "detailed, actionable information for specific areas" directed at small farmers, extension agents, the development community and policymakers.

If adaptive measures are not put in place, the report predicts, the four countries will lose about $20 million a year through lowered maize and bean production by 2020. Maize production could be cut by one-third and bean production by as much as 25 percent, according to the report. This would affect local markets as well as export markets.

The report highlights the importance of environmental management. It says, for example, that farmers who employ good soil and water management practices and crop diversification will be able to mitigate the effects of climate change in an economically sustainable way.

"There has been such an emphasis on chemical farming, for example in El Salvador, that many farmers can tell you more about the names of the pesticides that they use than about the macro and micro nutrients that are critical for plants," Paul Hicks, regional coordinator of CRS' Global Water Initiative-Central America project, said at the Oct. 11 conference.

"What the report emphasizes is that the solution is instead biological and ecological. The answer is to build human capital through vibrant and effective agricultural extension services; we want farmers who have a very good understanding of basic agronomy, soil, water and plant management."

The hope is that the information provided in "Tortillas on the Roaster" can be put into practice as soon as possible.

"This study has the possibility to truly make an impact in the entire region of Central America if it is used well, if it is used to make the actors act," Emily Martin of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation said at the report's release.

CRS plans to push for action by making strategic alliances with local and national government institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and small farmers around the region.

"We recommend that the information be used as a guide to leave behind uncertainty, and to begin right now to invest in education and research to strengthen human capital," said Axel Schmidt, CRS' project coordinator for the study.

Hicks said that a key concern is also convincing U.S. Catholics that their actions impact those in the global south.

"Between now and 2050, the consensus projection is that there will be a need for between 70 percent and 100 percent more food to meet global demand," Hicks said.

"And yet, we consume far more food in the U.S. than we actually need, and an estimated 30 percent goes to waste. … We have a responsibility to reduce waste, to be conscious about our food choices."

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture is based near Cali, Colombia. It conducts research for sustainable and economically reliable development in tropical regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, headquartered outside Mexico City, is a nonprofit agriculture research and training organization that maintains the world's largest maize and wheat seed bank.
Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States.

For more on the "Tortillas on the Roaster" study and to read a full copy of the report, click here.


[Danielle Marie Mackey is a freelance journalist and interpreter living in San Salvador. NCR staff contributed reporting to this article.]

This story appeared in the Oct 26-Nov 8, 2012 print issue under the headline: Seeking buffers against climate change .

When Climate Change and Structural Injustice Collide

Applying Systems Ecology to the Salvadoran Coast

Danielle Marie Mackey

September 2012

As communities in the Southern U.S. struggle to recover from yet another violent flood, two small coastal communities in El Salvador seek sustainable solutions to their own annual flooding problem, with the help of a scientific investigation. What they have found is a microcosm of the systemic causes of worldwide climate change.

Local boys fish from their boat in the mangrove forest in El Salvador.

AHUACHAPAN     El Tamarindo and Hacienda el Zapote are located in the southern region of the state of Ahuachapan, on the banks of a mangrove forest that separates the Paz River from the Pacific Ocean. In recent years, villagers from these communities have experienced troubling changes in their local environment: annual flooding, well-water coming up laden with salt, and, most alarmingly, the land beneath their feet slowly disappearing, sinking into the mangrove water.

The villagers make a meager living in their tin homes by fishing and hunting shellfish to sell to local restaurants, and they are watching their life-source dwindle. “The flooding, the rising water levels—we had to know what’s going on,” says Maria Dolores de Rodriguez, a representative of the Civilian Protection Task Force and a resident of the area. “This is serious for us.” They appealed to the Salvadoran government, who in response assembled an investigation team to look into the problem.

The team, composed of the Salvadoran Ecological Organization (UNES), World Geologists, and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID,) began to examine the waterway’s location and appearance over time using aerial images from as early as 1949. What they found are serious problems in the way that people are interacting with their local ecosystem, which -- when coupled with the river's natural movement over time compounded by rising sea levels as a result of climate change -- is causing systemic degradation. Who is being affected, and why, are also systemic pieces of the puzzle: the fallout of injustices rife throughout the country’s history.

Homes in the threatened village communities of Ahuachapan, El Salvador.

The Paz River has moved nearly 800 meters west in the past sixty years. It, like all rivers, must change its route over time to maintain its biological health. The Paz tapers into a mangrove forest as it nears the Pacific Ocean, which is a unique ecosystem of its own—a mixture of salt and fresh water, host to many species of fish and plants that thrive in this brine environment, which the villagers make their living by selling. Local residents benefit from the mangrove’s ability to moderate temperatures, and—until recently—have enjoyed its capacity to temper another of the necessary characteristics of a river: annual flooding.

Civilizations that live near riverbanks have throughout history organized their life rhythms around the annual flooding. For thousands of years, Egyptians even regarded the Nile’s summertime flood as a gift, since it would leave behind a fresh layer of extremely fertile soil. Riverbank populations knew how to take advantage of the river’s natural cycles—including where and how it was safe to live. Today, most human floodplain communities of the global north enjoy a complete system of floodgates and levees, but as demonstrated recently in the Southern U.S., sometimes even these safeguards cannot overpower flooding, and floodplain populations therefore live at risk.  

El Salvador is the most overpopulated nation in Latin America, and its inhabitants—especially the majority poor—do not have many options for living spaces. There is no national levee system, and the few that were installed at particularly critical points in the largest river, the Lempa, were quickly damaged to the point of ineffectiveness. In this country, those who live in disaster-prone zones cannot simply pick up and find somewhere safer.

Added to these logistical struggles, the investigation team pointed out a major difference between the Ahuachapan photographs from 1949 and more recent years: the number of trees. As the village population has grown over time, they have increasingly chopped down the mangrove forest for firewood, grazing land, and housing space—causing deforestation that has left the mangrove unable to help control the annual flooding. And as sea levels continue to rise world-wide, the encroaching salt water on Ahuachapan's coast threatens to overpower the delicate brine water balance, threatening the existence of the mangrove forest, and therefore the villager communities themselves.


One theory that can help explain sudden environmental changes is known as Systems Ecology. This theory points out that ecosystems are exactly that: systems, in which all physical and biological components that reside there affect, and are affected by, each other. If all organisms in an ecosystem are healthy and present, the system works well. The contrary is also true: a critical absence of trees in a mangrove impedes it from controlling flooding. The humans who cut the trees, if they do not reforest, set the system off-balance. So, why are the villagers deforesting their lands to such a critical level?

Throughout Salvadoran history, the systemic impact that one being has on the rest is nowhere truer than within the human population. For instance, the Ahuachapan villagers are relatively recent inhabitants of the coast, refugees who fled there in the late 1980’s in a wave of internal migration during the Salvadoran Civil War. Thus, while the Egyptian floodplain dwellers benefited from ancestral knowledge about their local ecosystem, their Salvadoran counterparts do not. They are originally from the mountainous North. “The villagers’ ancestors were crop farmers, not fishermen,” explains Oriol Pedraza, a geologist with World Geologists and member of the investigation team. Thus, the people’s response to their new environment was to continue surviving the way they had always known: to deforest in order to farm and raise cattle.

Oriol Pedraza, Geologist member of the investigation team, explains the results of the scientific study he helped carry out. The waves of the Pacific Ocean roll in behind him.

 But civil war was not the first domino to fall in El Salvador’s long history of structural injustice, leading to many present-day struggles like the one that the villagers face. After the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, their descendants in El Salvador, a small landowning elite, turned to monoculture agriculture of export products that were profitable on international markets. This era of Salvadoran history started two trends that would continue for generations: damaging agricultural practices, and forced migration of the majority poor to the least livable areas of national territory.

As a response to high indigo prices on international markets in the mid-19th century, the small elite took over the southern coastal lands, which were hospitable to indigo because of the hot, tropical climate. Vast indigenous populations which resided in that area were either forced into near-slavery or had to abandon their lands, migrating to the northern mountains. With the invention of synthetic dyes in the late 1800’s, indigo was no longer profitable, so the landowners turned their attentions to coffee. Once again, this would necessitate wide-scale migration: coffee needs high elevation and cool temperatures to grow, which the northern mountains offer. The landowners thus took control of the north, and the remaining free indigenous fled[1].

The chain of social inequality would continue in the ensuing century, and by 1980, social tensions broke into Civil War. The villagers of Ahuachapan are just a few of the many thousands that fled the war’s violence, eventually rebuilding their lives on different land—and in completely different ecosystems—than where they had started.

Present-day El Salvador is the most vulnerable country in the world to natural disasters, according to a 2010 report from the United Nations. From the viewpoint of ecological systems, this makes perfect sense. Years of ecologically unfriendly practices—monoculture agriculture, constantly migrating populations, a decade of scorched earth war tactics, overpopulation—have set Salvadoran ecosystems off-balance. At the root of all this is the way that people’s actions have impacted each other, especially in terms of the landed elite’s attitudes toward the majority population. And thus, for countries like El Salvador, the solutions to today’s deep-rooted ecological struggles will not be easy. “A rural farmer once told me, ‘I take care of the earth because it takes care of me,’” says investigation team Education Technician, Margarita Diaz. “I saw great wisdom in that man, and I think we will not find the answer to this problem without a wide-spread awareness and attitude change, so that we’re more like him.”

The investigation team is seeking a solution though education. They have produced popular education-style books about healthy river and mangrove behavior, with suggestions on how to mitigate the impacts of flooding. Engaging cartoon images spread messages about being mindful to not extract too many natural resources. The manual suggests that the single best solution for the villagers, given the ecological context of the area, is to put their houses on stilts.

“Our objective is to strengthen the communities’ understand of the problems they’re facing,” says the investigation team Coordinator, Benjamin Coreas. “We’re offering workshops for community leaders so that they know what’s happening, and can explain it to others. It’s important to open spaces of conversation and debate among villagers, because it empowers them to push local government to make good decisions.” Geologist Pedraza adds, “The information is here now; if nothing changes, it’s the fault of those above us. We all have a role to play in solving this—you, me, local communities, and governments.”

[1] Equipo Maíz, Historia de El Salvador (San Salvador: Asociación Equipo Maíz, 1989), 54-110.



(Danielle Marie Mackey is a freelance journalist and interpreter living in El Salvador. All photos credited to author.)

"There is No Turning Back Now"

Graffiti covers the buildings in the capital city, Tegucigalpa. Messages about the coup, corruption and violence silently communicate citizen resistance to Honduras’ status quo. This phrase says, “I come to sing for those who have fallen.”

 

Honduran LGBTQ Activists Confront Oppression, Make Historic Gains

Danielle Marie Mackey

Tegucigalpa, Honduras. 

The Honduran LGBTQ community is a relatively young movement that faces overwhelming discrimination and violence in a post-coup nation. In the early years, the community was nominally tolerated; gay male hairdressers of the Air Force wives, for instance, competed as comedy acts in annual Air Force beauty pageants. It was until the year 2000 that the first legally-constituted LGBTQ organizations appeared. Activists say that advances in human rights protections have historically been followed by waves of repression, but that the most recent wave—that which has followed the 2009 coup—is the most severe. The Diversity Resistance Movement (MDR for its name in Spanish) is an LGBTQ group that formed in the tumultuous wake of the coup. In June 2012, I sat down with three of its members—Roberto Canizales, a history professor at the National University; and Ever Guillen Castro and Jose Palacios, both advocacy officers with European cooperation agencies based in Honduras.  The three long-time activists discussed everything from who’s behind the repression, to the recent murder of their friend Erick Martinez, to the hope they have for the future of their community. Visit MDR on Facebook or at their blog-news site.

Interview also published on the Latin American Working Group's blog.

How did the coup affect repression against the community?

RC: The Honduran context since the coup is conservative and reactionary. This was one of the two biggest political crises in our history. Before, sexual diversity didn’t even appear in the national agenda. But suddenly, LGBTQ activists were leading the post-coup marches, and the political resistance movement began to pay attention to us. You’d see the typical leftists next to folks from our community. But this also generated selective police repression against us—after all, we are both resistance members and gay. That’s where the seemingly-impossible statistical increase in violations began.

EGC:  Between 1995 and 2008, there were 17 hate crimes registered against our community. From the June 2009 coup until January 2010, there were 17 more. Then, from President Lobo’s inauguration in January 2010 until now, there have been 58 assassinations – a total of 75 since the coup. We’re vulnerable because we show our faces in the marches. Then, you have murders of transgender sex workers for instance, which the authorities easily blame on her work, or they try to link her to drug trafficking. The point is: the more visible we’ve been, the more repression we face.   

RC:  We have no doubt: there is a clear policy of social cleansing on the part of the government against people from vulnerable social sectors, like youth, farm workers, sexual diversity—anyone who thinks differently than the current regime.

Roberto Canizales, history professor and activist.

Have you been denouncing these abuses?

JP: We’re frustrated; besides the fact that the police are behind many of the murders, the state is not investigating and they are not putting those responsible through the justice system. Nor are they doing anything to prevent future crimes. In fact, we feel that only two cases have received adequate investigation and judgment. And something to emphasize is that in both of these favorable findings, the real investigation was done because of international pressure on the Honduran government.

EGC: For instance, a police officer attempted to assassinate a transgender sex worker in 2009. Apparently, what happened is that the police officer hired her for sexual services, and then refused to pay. They fought; he stabbed her 17 times, thought she was dead, and dumped her body in an abandoned place. She regained consciousness and went to the hospital, and then denounced the police officer, who was jailed temporarily. Suddenly the victim began receiving threats saying that she must withdraw the case or die. To protect her, someone started the rumor that she was leaving the country… and one day before she was supposed to leave, two trans(gender) friends of hers were gunned down, probably because the killer thought that one of the two was her. We let everyone believe she was indeed killed. She was evacuated from the country and now lives in exile…. Even the attorney general who had taken the case began receiving death threats during the trial, which she (the attorney general) told us must have come from different people, because of the different spelling mistakes the text message threats had…. In the end, it turns out that the president of the Supreme Court at that time had been involved in the coup, and he was trying to clean up his public image, so he was responsive to the international pressure that poured in about the case. There was plenty of evidence pointing to the police officer, and lo and behold, the police officer was found guilty and given a 10 year sentence.

Ever Guillen Castro, advocacy officer and activist.

What happened to your friend Erick Martinez on May 8, 2012?

EGC: Erick was on his way to a meeting with LIBRE. (Martinez was running as a candidate for the party.) We don’t know exactly what happened, because he spoke with the last person at 10 am. The coroner says that he was killed sometime between 2-4p.m. He was kidnapped, taken outside the city and strangled to death, left beside the highway.

JP: We’re all really impacted by his death…. I think he was killed not only because he was a Resistance candidate, but also he was someone who represented sexual diversity in a way that vetoed the decades-old arguments about homosexuality as evil. If he arrived to the legislature as one of us, they could no longer deny (the sexual diversity community) fundamental rights…. Erick was a journalist, a human rights activist, openly gay…. he had a lot of friends and was well-known. He was a threat. …We don’t know exactly who did it. We have submitted the case to the special prosecutor, but we don’t have high hopes for a full investigation or answers.

Erick Martinez

What advances do you feel that your community has made?

RC: Transitioning from a self-vindicating movement to one that is expressly political is a success. The Honduran public is more aware of sexual diversity with each passing day, as well. The Pride March of 2011 had great turn-out.

JP: And this isn’t the case only in Honduras—there is a wave throughout Latin America of a new political left that is open to our community, at least in putting forth legislation in our favor. But of course, these advances also worry the traditional power forces, and bring repression in response.

EGC: Over the years, our LGBT organizations have really matured…. There are now 14 groups in the whole country, 5 or 6 which have legal standing.

JP: In LIBRE, there are 11 commissions within the party core which represent marginalized groups, and the LGBT community is one. We have youth from the community running as political candidates. They are our future. 

EGC: We’ve also made moves internationally. In 2010, two Honduran LGBTQ groups made a formal denouncement to the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights denouncing the Honduran state as a human rights violator…. We started to form a relationship with the Honduran Secretariat for Justice and Human Rights to demand justice in the cases of assassination against the community, and met with the national police, who promised to solicit the FBI for support in assassination investigations.  The UN has also pressured the government to investigate.

Why do you continue in this work?

JP: Because we’re stubborn. (Laughter.) Maybe it would have been better to never have gotten involved, but now that I have, there is no turning back now. They can kill half the world, but … this is a historic moment for the community, and we have a responsibility. To turn back now for me is not a valid option.

RC: It’s a matter of commitment to yourself, first, and then to our community. In our choice to be visibly active, we have met other people in the social movement who also want to build a better country. It has been my involvement in the MDR that I lost my fear, that I was able to say, ‘I am gay,’ and to struggle for my rights, despite it all.

Jose Palacios, advocacy officer and activist.

Update: On Wednesday, September 12, 2012, the Honduran police captured a member of the 18^th street gang, 18 year old Eduardo Jose Lopez Gutierrez, and charged him with murdering Erick Martinez. The police claim to be seeking possible accomplices and intellectual authors of the crime. Given the long string of assassinations over the past two years, the identity of the intellectual author is extremely important, and also the one link that the Honduran justice system seems unable to provide in the vast majority of crimes in the country.


*All activists gave permission to use full names and photographs. All photos credited to author except Erick Martinez's image, credited to El Heraldo newspaper of Honduras.

The Peace Center that Emerged from a War Zone

DANIELLE MARIE MACKEY

Originally published in the National Catholic Reporter print edition of September 25-Oct 10, 2012. Edited version available online; visit NCR at www.ncr.org. All photos credited to Centro Arte para la Paz.

Youth take part in an activity at the Art Center for Peace, in Suchitoto, El Salvador. In the year 2011 alone, 33,000 people visited the center-- many taking part in activities just like this one, which seek to build peace through the arts.

 

SAN SALVADOR--The tiny town of Suchitoto, El Salvador is made up of 82 rural communities and an urban center, a cobble-stoned town filled with colonial architecture that brings tourists from near and far. It is also the birthplace of the 7 year-old Centro Arte para la Paz (Art Center for Peace.) The Centro began when two U.S. women religious living in El Salvador—Sister of Charity Peggy O’Neill and Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell—came across an abandoned, war-torn building built in 1840, and saw its potential. El Salvador continues to rank among the most violent countries in the world, and peace-building work is ever vital; in 2011 alone, nearly 33,000 people visited the Centro. I recently sat down with Sr. Peggy O’Neill, New Jersey native, who for the past 55 years has been a Sister of Charity, and for the past 25, a Suchitoto resident. We discussed everything from this “peace center that uses the arts as a vehicle,” to the importance of her religious community, and the wisdom of the Salvadoran people.

DM: Can you tell me a bit about Suchitoto as a community?

PO: (During the war) rebel forces emerged from local families, because of the hard hand of the government forces here—12,000 people died in Suchitoto. There were six massacres. One of the reasons why Suchitoto seemed to be problematic to Government was that the people were superbly organized because of the presence of two Catholic priests, who, in the midst of the poverty early on, began cooperatives and an alternative agricultural school. Also, the Sisters’ presence here, as educational agents who explored justice issues, helped organization. There were lots of retreats and Christian Based Community work, too.  

The people began to talk about the fact that they had no medical attention, no options for schooling, no decent housing, and that farmers who worked the land didn’t have the right to own the land. Suchitoto was a wealthy town, and that meant it had many hacienda owners living in the urban area, and very mistreated poor people working the land in the rural surrounding area—“mistreated” in the sense that they were just barely surviving, not in the sense that they were brutalized physically.

This speaking out against injustice—this kind of an expression of strong-voice to government—really drew attention. But, the military forces’ attempt to try to quiet the organization via massacres only kept putting gasoline on a fire, and organization got stronger. …But these people never justified their protests without using the litmus test of their faith.

DM: Can you tell me about the history, and present work, of the Centro Arte para la Paz?

PO: This is healing space. …We set out with a passion to use this place to build a culture of peace in Suchitoto; where we survived a war with all its trauma and fear, knowing how heinous it is and how long healing takes. 

We offer classes and programs on alternatives to violence, art classes, a community museum. We also run a hostel and apartments for our visiting volunteer teachers, and the money we raise through that supports the classes and programs, which are free because our local youth couldn’t pay for them. The rest happens through grant writing, volunteers, and donations. We have purchased the building, and we have formed an ownership association made up of only Suchitoto locals.

This place is a physical sign of hope: it was abandoned for 25 years, and now, the ruins are restored, the gardens are blooming, the facilities are full of activities. And the community handles it with care. Young people do not mar this place—there is no graffiti here. This is a peace center that’s emerging from a war zone. And this is what sisters are trying to do all over the world.

I think it (our work) is giving opportunities. It’s widening the community member’s horizons, giving them self-esteem, challenging in every way, whether we’re doing classes on photography or music or yoga. It’s teaching peace within, and peace in community. …We’re not only dealing with violence left over from the war; also, the violence that’s presently challenging youth—gangs, immigration, etc. So we also seek to give the young people marketable skills, through projects like a community museum that has taught them research, graphic design, and knowing their own story. Part of healing is knowing your own story.

Youth from Suchitoto at their graduation ceremony from the Clown Theater workshop at the Art Center for Peace. Sister of Charity Peggy O'Neill, one of the Center's founders, stands at left.

DM: What has been the significance of the presence in Suchitoto of the Catholic Nuns from the U.S.?

PO: What really made the women’s movement gel here (in Suchitoto) was the Church, because we had Catholic sisters who were in the feminist model already, and we realized that (local) women were ready…. The Sisters would call women’s meetings in the church, and husbands would let them go because it was a religious thing. We were talking with the women about the pain of burying their children, about abuse, about the fact that women didn’t have rights to own land or animals.  We began to talk about God in new ways; about Mary as a strong woman, about how motherly God was to us, to ask questions like, Why have we never had a church with a big image of Mary nursing? That’s a truly a Eucharistic symbol! Isn’t that what Jesus wanted – to satisfy our deepest hunger always? We began to discuss these new things with unschooled, but truly wide-awake, women, who were longing. We had chosen to live in El Salvador because the Church was so openly on the side of the poor, and soon, we also began to offer literacy classes and gender equality workshops with the help of the diocese. 

I want to emphasize what a privilege it was for us sisters to walk alongside the people during the war. The people took away our fear. We learned a sense of communal hope from them. We learned to lean into the scriptures differently. During this time, we too had to say, “From whence do I draw my strength?” We cast our lot with them, and we drew our strength from them. None of us sisters could have done it alone here. 

The same was true about each other. We cast our lot with each other, as sisters, and drew our strength from each other. We were lucky because we had a double community—the women of Suchitoto, and each other. I’m so grateful for my order. I’ve never wanted to be more than a sister to anybody, and I first learned that by belonging to a community of women that call themselves sisters. And even now, we’re intimately connected, even from far away. Sometimes it’s hard, because I miss out on big life events and meetings, being so far away. But I can only be here because of the sisters back home—their support financially, spiritually; they support my work at every step.

DM: Why art?

PO: I believe so strongly in creativity because I think it’s a wonderful metaphor for the “G word”—for God. All of this creative impulse flaring forth—that loving impulse to share—from that, creation emerges. And when people create, when they say yo puedo (I can)—sing a song, play a guitar, research my history—that is empowering.

I think that’s what this center is about: empowering, using power in the most creative ways. These people know that what empowers their hope is their faith in story: the story of Jesus, the story of the prophets, and now more than ever, their faith in their own story. They’re beginning to see their story within the larger story. It’s not just the people leaving Egypt and God is out there somewhere; it’s we are the people who left Egypt. They called Egypt “Honduras” for us. (Refugee camps to which the people of Suchitoto fled during the Civil War were in Honduras.) Here I’m seeing power used correctly—power being so powerful, so freeing.

Suchitoto community members receive a harp lesson

DM: Can you talk about your relationship with El Salvador as someone who grew up in the United States?

PO: I’ll put it this way: I can grasp ideas and knowledge, I can grasp data and have understanding. But when I am grasped, it’s wisdom. It’s not knowledge …I have been grasped by El Salvador: by its people, by its struggle, by its faith, by its beauty in all its woundedness. That’s wisdom; that’s the oneness that happens when you’re grasped. It’s the oneness that happens when you’re grasped by a lover, when you’re grasped by truth. It’s very different from knowledge.

I want to share what has grasped me, but it is always bigger than my words can convey. I mean, when you’re served a plate that has rice, beans, toasted tortillas—but it’s shared out of somebody’s substance, not their excess—you are grasped by that gesture. And I think that people all over the world need to have more experiences of being grasped by.

Right now, in the United States, we live under the myth of scarcity. And there’s a woman by the name of Lynne Twist…who talks about the “great truth of sufficiency.” We live under this notion that we don’t have enough—time, money—we’re convinced there’s scarcity, and that really does keep us buying more, wanting more, having more. So we live under the impression that there isn’t enough for everybody: not enough oil, not enough food, not enough etc—and we know that five billion people—billion with a “b”—go to bed hungry every day. We know that. But we also know that there is enough food to feed the world twice over with just the grains that we have right now. But they want to keep us living under this myth, because it means we really don’t change anything.

I really saw scarcity here. I watched a little boy eat the skin of a banana after he gave the banana fruit to an old man. I mean, I never knew you could eat the skin of a banana. So the question is: Why is there scarcity? The thing about this myth is that it covers up our perception of scandals. If I am not scandalized by the fact that there are 5 billion people going hungry, if I am not scandalized by the planned lack of education, or by the planned corruption in government or courts …if I believe the myth, I won’t act against the scandals.

There’s a refreshing sense of perception, and perseverance, here.  To give you an example: I remember going once to a presentation on the Neoliberal (economic) model with my friend Mercedes, and I came out exhausted. We had just come off the war and I hear about this thing that’s going to be so global and so hard, and I come out exhausted, and she came out fired up. She said, “Well Peggy, at least we know what’s killing us.” Salvadorans expect obstacles, they can see them clearly, and they immediately shift into figuring out the solution.

Sister O'Neill stands among the plants on the grounds of the Art Center.

DM: What do you think keeps us from “seeing the scandal?”

PO: Fear. Laziness. I can make a whole list. Individualism. Waking sleep. Protection, protecting my turf. You can go on and on. Why are we afraid? We are afraid because most of us are comfortable, and we’re afraid to lose our creature comforts.  We don’t want to wake up, because it will mean we must live differently.

But how do we give birth to that (new) world? You have to do it not alone. There’s got to be movements of people who actually engage in this “Great Turning,” from empire to the power of earth community. I think what we have to recognize again that everything is holy. Everything is sacred. We must pronounce this again: the land is sacred. You cannot rape it. Women are holy; they cannot be playthings during wartime.  Human lives are holy; we can’t make all the money we make from gun sales. Cultures are holy. So we can’t say ours is better; we can only say, how do yours and mine match, how do they help each other grow?

We live in the 21^st century, and scientists are shouting at us in every way they can: “We truly are connected to everything!” If you ask the question, in the 21^st century, Who is my neighbor? The Samaritan, of course. And the whale and the forests, and the trees. You belong. Everything is connected, everything is your neighbor.

To volunteer for the Centro Arte para la Paz, contact Sister Peggy O'Neill at ponelsal@yahoo.com.