If the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti remains in power in Honduras, the Central American right may be encouraged to stage further coups against the fragile democracies that have emerged in the region over the last two decades, analysts warn.

The forces of democracy and the international community must continue to exert pressure to reestablish the constitutional order and enable ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, whose term ends in January, to return to office, experts from different countries in the region told IPS.

Ernesto Rivas Gallont, former Salvadoran ambassador in Washington from 1981 to 1989, says the Honduran civic-military coup will have profound implications for several Central American countries if Micheletti’s grip on power is consolidated.

“If those who perpetrated the coup prevail in Honduras, there is no doubt that it will embolden the Central American right,” the former diplomat told IPS.

“It’s hard to admit, but (Fidel) Castro and (Hugo) Chávez are right” to fear that if the coup-mongers consolidate their power, “a series of coups d’état could be unleashed against governments in the region,” Rivas Gallont wrote in his blog, referring to statements by the former Cuban president and the Venezuelan president in early July.

“It is only too obvious that the coup has exacerbated differences between left and right, and not just in Honduras,” he said.

Zelaya was taken at gunpoint from his house in his pajamas by about 200 troops in the early hours of Jun. 28 and put on an air force plane to Costa Rica. The coup d’état was engineered by the Honduran military, the leadership of the two traditional political parties, and big business.

The ousting of the president came after weeks of political arm-wrestling over the Zelaya administration’s plans to hold a non-binding popular vote on constitutional reform on that very day. But analysts say Zelaya was overthrown because of some of his social policies, and his alignment with more radical leftwing governments in Latin America.

The “survey,” as Zelaya called it, which could not be legally held because plebiscites and referendums are banned in an election year, would have asked people whether they were in favour or against creating a constituent assembly to amend the country’s constitution. Had the “Yes” vote won, assembly delegates would have been elected in the Nov. 29 presidential, parliamentary and local elections.

Pro-coup sectors say Zelaya wanted constitutional reform in order to seek reelection, prohibited by the Honduran constitution, in order to stay in power. The ousted president says that was never his intention, nor was it mentioned in the survey question.

Micheletti, who led the political movement for the military overthrow of the democratic government as former president of Congress, says he will not bow to international pressure. Today he is the interim president of a government that has not been recognised by a single country and has been universally condemned.

The United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS), the European Union, the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), among others, have all condemned the coup in Honduras and vigorously demanded Zelaya’s reinstatement as the constitutional president.

In contrast, and in spite of these strong pronouncements, only “the Central American right has justified the coup, using Chávez as a pretext,” IPS sources said.

For instance, they said, rightwing sectors in El Salvador have recently been supplanted in government after decades in power by the formerly-guerrilla leftwing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). “They may be tempted to carry out actions similar to what happened in Honduras, of the kind that have marked our history,” they warned.

The rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, which governed El Salvador from 1989 up to June this year, and is now in opposition, deplored Zelaya’s “exile” but did not condemn the coup.

“It is also true that President Zelaya committed serious constitutional violations that led other state bodies” to remove him from office, says a paid ad by ARENA published in the Salvadoran media in early July.

The ad also urges Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes to “refrain” from interfering in the Honduran crisis, arguing that “it could affect relations between the two countries.”

The Funes administration issued an immediate condemnation of the coup, and two days later at a SICA meeting in Managua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua agreed to close their borders with Honduras for 48 hours Jul. 1-2, as a way of exerting pressure on the de facto Micheletti government.

SICA is made up of all the Central American countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The Dominican Republic is an associate member.

Funes also hosted Presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Zelaya, as well as U.N. General Assembly president Miguel d’Escoto and OAS Secretary-General Miguel Insulza, who waited in San Salvador in solidarity with Zelaya during his failed Jul. 4 attempt to return to Honduras.

Some members of the business community, political leaders and columnists for conservative Salvadoran media outlets have said Funes should learn from what has happened in Honduras, and not attempt to introduce constitutional reforms like Zelaya’s.

Salvadoran analyst Leonel Gómez agreed with Rivas Gallont that events in Honduras could lead to more coups against democracies in the region.

“The danger here is that it might motivate other forces to perpetrate other coups d’état like the one in Honduras,” said Gómez, who has participated in investigations of corruption and the supply of funds to dictatorships in the region with U.S. Democratic lawmakers Patrick Leahy and the late Joe Moakley.

The expert said that some Guatemalan military officers “would be delighted to receive orders to do the same thing” as their Honduran colleagues.

Centre-left Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom publicly denied that a military coup was being plotted in his country, after Chávez warned of the danger of an overthrow attempt. But Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú said vested economic interests in Guatemala could be planning to undermine the rule of law.

Recalling that in the past U.S. governments have “written dark chapters in the history of Central America” through their support for military dictatorships and coups d’état, Gómez urged the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to “act with greater firmness and in accordance with its principles.”

The day after Zelaya was deposed, Obama said “the coup was not legal” and that Zelaya “remains the democratically elected president” of Honduras.

With the exception of Costa Rica, the countries of Central America were governed by military regimes during most of the 20th century. In most cases these regimes were imposed by powerful economic interests in collusion with conservative politicians and with assistance or direct intervention by the United States.

In the 1980s and 1990s civil wars broke out between leftwing guerrillas and the armed forces.

According to historians, Costa Rica escaped the general trend largely because of the abolition of the army, announced by then president José Figueres (1948-1949, 1953-1958, 1970-1974) on Dec. 1, 1948. The measure came into force in 1949, in spite of an attempted military coup to prevent it.

Meanwhile in Honduras pro-Zelaya protesters are blocking highways, the curfew has been reimposed, and talks in Costa Rica between Micheletti’s and Zelaya’s envoys, mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, are in a deadlock

Serious allegations of corruption involving central figures in the government of right-wing former Salvadoran president Antonio Saca (2004-2009) will be investigated by a commission led by Finance Minister Carlos Cáceres.

Left-wing President Mauricio Funes, who took office on Jun. 1, announced the decision in his first address to the nation, in which he referred to situations encountered by members of his cabinet in several of the ministries they took over.

The presidential commission will be made up of experts and lawyers who will document every case and recommend appropriate measures, said Funes, who won the Mar. 15 elections as the candidate for the formerly insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party.

The team of experts will investigate the National Registry Centre (CNR), the ministries of Public Health and Social Assistance, Interior, and the Environment and Natural Resources, as well as the Salvadoran Institute of Social Security (ISSS).

One of the most shocking cases, according to Funes, is at the CNR, the land and property registration institution, where there are alleged to be 29 “ghost employees” on the payroll, drawing salaries every month but never turning up for work.

These irregularities require an immediate, thorough investigation, to identify administrative and criminal responsibilities, said the president, who did not rule out the possible existence of further anomalies.

According to the new CNR director, Fernando Batlle, some of the phony employees were on the payroll from 2002 until May 31 this year, costing taxpayers over 700,000 dollars a year to cover their salaries of between 1,200 and 3,400 dollars a month.

People who are alleged to have received these payments include present and former government officials and their relatives, all of whom have ties to Saca’s party, the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) that ruled this country since 1989.

Among them are Gloria Calderón, sister of former president Armando Calderón (1994-1999), lawmaker Enrique Valdés, and Laura Rodas de d’Aubuisson, the widow of Central American Parliament legislator Eduardo d’Aubuisson, who was murdered in Guatemala in 2007. The authorities in that neighbouring country blamed drug mafias for his death, in connection with which Guatemalan policemen were arrested.

The murdered man was the son of the late Major Roberto d’Aubuisson, the founder of ARENA, who ordered the assassination of Roman Catholic Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, killed by a sniper on Mar. 24, 1980 while he was celebrating mass.

Former officials in the Saca administration and conservative newspaper columnists Ivo Príamo Alvarenga and Marvin Galeas are said to have charged the state consultancy fees while they were actually working for ARENA, particularly during the recent electoral campaign.

President Funes also announced that hidden microphones had been found in the office of the new Interior Minister, Humberto Centeno.

Gerardo Suvillaga, the former CNR director and campaign manager for ARENA’s presidential candidate Rodrigo Ávila, who was defeated in March, made light of the accusations.

“We do have two ghosts haunting the CNR. Look for a woman in white and a little boy. They’re really scary,” Suvillaga said.

Meanwhile, ex-president Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994), the leader of ARENA, asked Funes to produce the evidence and refrain from making “baseless” accusations.

“He should be careful, because he can ruin people’s honourable names if a proper investigation is not done,” said Cristiani.

Other ARENA figures claimed that Funes’ accusations are a “smokescreen” to cover up the high crime rates he inherited, including a murder rate of 61 per 100,000 population, the highest in Latin America and one of the highest in the world.

The head of the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), Raúl Melara, spoke out in support of the new president’s commitment to root out corruption in the public administration.

“It is important to investigate this, and if any financial or other irregularities are found, they should be submitted to the proper authorities,” said Melara, traditionally a supporter of the right.

Jaime López, coordinator of the transparency programme for the Foundation for the Study of the Application of Rights (FESPAD), expressed backing for the president’s announcement, but said it could have been presented more forcefully if all the evidence had been made public.

He said the president could have avoided the “party-political disputes” that ensued by presenting the full list of persons and amounts involved in the ghost employee scandal.

López, who has worked on corruption issues in Central America for over 15 years, said that to pursue the case the president should hand over the evidence to the Comptroller General’s Office, which would carry out the investigation, and in turn to the Attorney General’s Office if crimes were involved.

The Comptroller General’s Office, the country’s highest audit body, has for over 20 years been under the control of the rightwing Party of National Conciliation (PCN), a traditional ARENA ally in parliament, where the Comptroller General is elected every three years by a simple majority.

Civil society organisations have complained on several occasions that reports of corruption have been shelved by the PCN-controlled audit office, in return for political and economic favours received under the four ARENA administrations from 1989 to May 2009.

The Global Corruption Barometer 2009, a report by Transparency International (TI) on surveys carried out by Gallup International and other pollsters in 69 countries, places El Salvador among the seven countries in which political parties and the justice system are perceived to be the most corrupt institutions.

A Gallup International poll of 500 people in El Salvador in March 2009 indicated that 69 percent of respondents had these perceptions, according to the Fundación Nacional para el Desarrollo (FUNDE), the Salvadoran affiliate of TI.

FESPAD’s López said Funes should “open government archives to the public, with or without a freedom of access to information law,” as the government alone cannot investigate every act of corruption, but needs the help of the public and the press.

The new president should implement a “code of conduct that guarantees there will be no corruption in his government,” López said.

At his inaugural ceremony Monday, the first-ever leftwing president of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, said his main goal was to “beat poverty, political backwardness, the marginalisation of broad sections of society, desperation, and the lack of future prospects for our young people.”

The insurgency-turned-political party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) will invest 474 million dollars in the next 18 months to generate 100,000 direct jobs, the new president announced.

Funes received a two-minute standing ovation when he arrived at the convention centre where his swearing-in ceremony was held, attended by 72 foreign delegations and 4,000 special guests, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The veteran TV broadcaster who took 52 percent of the vote in the March elections said the rightwing ARENA, which ruled El Salvador since 1989, “governed for the few” and had been “complacent towards corruption, due to fear of, and complicity with, organised crime.

“I guarantee that the new government will not be about family privileges, cronyism, or shady patronage,” said the new president, who had 82 percent support in the latest survey carried out by the University Institute of Public Opinion (IUDOP), at the Central American University, in late May.

“We need to reinvent the country. We need to carry out a peaceful, democratic and ethical revolution; the change is starting today,” said Funes, considered a moderate leftist, flanked by 12 Latin American heads of state and other international leaders and personalities.

He also pledged to improve infrastructure and basic services, and build and repair 25,000 low-income housing units in urban areas, while implementing a plan to fight malnutrition, targeting 85,000 children under the age of three.

Funes was accompanied by his wife Vanda Pignato, a Brazilian-born lawyer who used to represent the leftist Workers’ Party of Brazilian President Lula – a friend of the new president and the first lady – in El Salvador.

El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war between the FMLN and government forces left 75,000 dead, 8,000 “disappeared” and 40,000 disabled – mainly civilians, at the hands of the military and far-right death squads that had U.S. support.

Major Roberto D’Aubuisson (1944-1992), who founded ARENA, was the leader of the death squads since the late 1970s.

The FMLN failed in its previous three attempts at the presidency since it became a political party as a result of the 1992 peace agreement that put an end to the war.

Funes is taking over a country in crisis, with a budget deficit of at least 500 million dollars, which could balloon to 1.2 billion dollars by the end of this year, which would be equivalent to one-third of the national budget of 3.6 billion dollars.

Officially, 40 percent of the population of 5.7 million live in poverty, while eight percent are unemployed and 43 percent are underemployed, mainly surviving as street vendors.

This Central American nation is also the most violent in Latin America, with a homicide rate of 61 per 100,000 people – one of the highest in the world – according to the latest official figures.

In his 50-minute inaugural address, Funes reiterated his preference for a government along the lines of the administration of Brazilian President Lula, who he said was his “reference point” in terms of social programmes for the poor.

“Lula has shown that it is possible to have a democratic government of the people along with fair distribution of wealth,” said the new president, looking over at the Brazilian leader.

Funes also announced that his government would reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, which El Salvador broke off in the early 1960s. The socialist island nation will thus once again have direct ties with all of the countries of Latin America, nearly five decades after it was isolated at Washington’s behest.

He was interrupted as many of those present chanted “Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.”

Anglican Bishop Martín Barahona, who attended the ceremony, said he hoped “the changes that this country needs will be carried out, and that everyone will now have opportunities.”

Panchita Tennant, the 90-year-old daughter of a U.S. diplomat who served in San Salvador during the 1930s, said “I think it’s fabulous, because since independence there has never been a leftist president; I have great hopes for Funes, because he is a sensible and intelligent person, who will benefit the poor.”

This tiny, crowded mountainous country has been governed by military dictatorships and conservative and rightwing forces since it became an independent nation in the mid-19th century.

Alfredo Rivera, a 66-year-old street vendor who sells costume jewelry, told IPS that “Funes, with the help of God, will be a good president. I hope he keeps his promise to create jobs.”

Some 60,000 Salvadorans gathered in the Cuscatlán stadium for the “peoples celebration,” attended by Funes, Lula and leftwing Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.

President-elect Mauricio Funes of El Salvador is about to take over a country in recession, with an expanding budget deficit, growing unemployment, and soaring poverty rate.

Social organisations are calling on Funes, of the leftwing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), to implement a model of sustainable development capable of improving the living standards of the people of this impoverished Central American nation.

Funes, who in the Mar. 15 elections beat the candidate of the rightwing ARENA party that has governed El Salvador since 1989, will become the country’s first leftist president when he is sworn in on Jun. 1.

“There is a 500 million dollar fiscal deficit,” one of Funes’s chief advisers, Alexander Segovia, told IPS, pointing out that the economic situation “will be a huge challenge” for the new government.

Segovia blamed the loss of 40,000 jobs since October – after the international economic crisis broke out – on the 21 percent drop in exports from February 2008 to February this year, mainly to the United States, which absorbs 57 percent of this country’s total sales abroad.

That in turn drove the official unemployment rate – which does not include those working in the informal sector of the economy – up from 6.7 to 8.0 percent between October and April.

And if the current trend continues, by the end of the year, 50,000 more Salvadorans will join the 2.8 million people already living in poverty, the economist predicted.

The authorities estimate that 40 percent of El Salvador’s 5.7 million people are poor, and that 43 percent of the 1.2 million people making up the economically active population are under-employed – working part-time or barely scraping by on casual work – or are active in the informal sector, as street vendors, for example.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported in early May that around one million people could join the ranks of the unemployed in Central America and the Dominican Republic as a result of the global crisis.

The ILO predicts that unemployment in this region will grow from six percent in 2008 to nine percent by the end of the year.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2008 indicates that 81 percent of the economically active population of El Salvador does not earn a decent salary.

The budget deficit is a consequence of the drop in exports, tax collection and remittances sent home from Salvadorans abroad over the past eight months, as well as the mismanagement of public finances by the government of outgoing President Antonio Saca, say economists and business leaders.

Tax collection was 12.5 percent down in February with respect to the same month in 2008, and remittances were 7.8 percent down, according to official figures.

President Saca has acknowledged the size of the fiscal deficit, but said public finances are not in “an alarming state.”

UNDP economist Carlos Acevedo predicted that the fiscal deficit will reach 1.2 billion dollars by the end of the year, “which would mean nearly one-third of the national budget” of 3.6 billion dollars for 2009.

“That is huge. It is more than five percent of GDP,” added Acevedo, a member of the committee set up by Funes to design emergency measures to help the country weather the crisis.

The president-elect, a popular veteran TV broadcaster who is not only new to politics but is also a newcomer to the FMLN, recently said he would present “an integral anti-crisis programme that will protect the poorest of the poor” and that “will include policies aimed at removing the structural obstacles standing in the way of human development.”

Ricardo Navarro, director of the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CESTA), a local NGO, said “the current crisis is not only economic and financial, but is also a crisis of energy and food, while a climate change crisis is looming as well.”

That means “an immediate strategy must be established to survive” the recession, while planning for sustainable development policies in the medium-term, he said.

“We must recover the capacity to produce our own food, generate renewable energy and protect the environment,” said Navarro.

These specific problems are added to the structural ones, like poverty and marginalisation, for which “a solution requires national unity,” said Segovia. “No sector, neither private nor public, will be able to fix the crisis on its own. Everyone is needed,” he underlined.

Francisco Segura, a 50-year-old street vendor who sells ice cream, urged Funes “to live up to your election promise” to reduce the value added tax on basic products and medicines from 13 percent to zero.

That would “boost our family budgets,” he told IPS.

Rafael González, 54, who works at a small grocery store, said the new government should “launch a dialogue between business, the government and workers” in order to establish a policy for decent wages.

“Our wages just don’t stretch far enough,” said González. “For example, if they pay me today, tomorrow I don’t have enough money to cover the rest of my needs.”

“How can sustainable development be achieved?” asked Acevedo, who responded to his own question with a metaphor: “Right now we’re trying to reach the beach to keep from drowning in this shipwreck, and later we’ll try to built a hut for temporary shelter, while we plan for the medium term.”

Representatives of School of the Americas Watch visited El Salvador to ask the incoming government of the leftwing FMLN, which will take office in June, to stop sending military officers to the U.S. army academy, which has long been accused of teaching torture techniques.

El Salvador has a special significance for School of the Americas (SOA) Watch, because the movement was founded in 1990 by Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois (a former naval officer and Vietnam veteran) in response to atrocities committed during this country’s 1980-1992 civil war.

Bourgeois became an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America after four U.S. churchwomen – two of whom were friends of his – were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers in December 1980. The November 1989 murders of six prominent Jesuit priests, along with their housekeeper and her teenage daughter, then became a catalyst for the emergence of SOA Watch.

SOA Watch has offices outside of Fort Benning, Georgia – where the SOA, renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC) in 2001, is located – and in Washington, D.C.

“The light of our movement was switched on in El Salvador, where the killings of the priests helped open our eyes to the way the U.S. army was using our taxes,” Lisa Sullivan, SOA Watch’s Latin America coordinator, told IPS.

“Our money was used to train members of the Salvadoran military in how to kill peasants, priests and nuns,” said Sullivan.

The 12-year war between government forces and the leftist FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) guerrillas left 80,000 people dead or disappeared, mainly at the hands of the armed forces and far-right death squads.

The FMLN, which became a political party in 1993, won the presidential elections in March.

The SOA was founded in Panama in 1946 as a U.S. army training school for Latin American military personnel.

It trained Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, before and during the years of the U.S. “national security doctrine.” Many SOA graduates ended up involved in human rights violations throughout the hemisphere, in Mexico, Central America and South America.

In 1984, then president of Panama Jorge Illueca kicked the SOA out of his country, and it was moved to the army base at Fort Benning, Georgia.

In response to the controversy and protests by human rights activists, the SOA was officially “closed” in December 2000. But it reopened a month later as WHINSEC – in the same installations, with the same staff carrying out the same work.

The United Nations Truth Commission in El Salvador found that 19 of the 26 Salvadoran soldiers and officers implicated in the murders of the Jesuit priests were SOA alumni.

The 64,000 Latin American soldiers who have trained at the SOA also included three of the five Salvadoran troops who raped and killed the three U.S. nuns and a Catholic lay worker in 1980 and two of the three cited in the March 1980 assassination of Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot by a sniper while conducting mass.

A total of 48 of the 69 Salvadoran officers cited by the U.N. Truth Commission for human rights violations had been trained at the SOA.

The list of SOA graduates also includes: former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega (1983-1989); Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola, former members of the military juntas that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983; and other dictators like Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975) of Peru, Guillermo Rodríguez (1972-1976) of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer (1971-1978) of Bolivia.

Since SOA Watch protests against the school began, nearly 200 activists have served a combined 81 years in prison for acts of civil disobedience, like attempting to enter the grounds of Fort Benning.

One of them is Jesuit priest Joseph Mulligan, who was arrested in November 2003 for trespassing and spent February to April 2004 in a prison in Georgia.

Mulligan told IPS that he took part in the SOA Watch protest vigils held every November outside of Fort Benning to commemorate the murders of the Jesuit priests because as a U.S. citizen he feels responsible for what his government does in Latin America.

The largest number of protesters drawn to the annual vigil was 22,000, in 2006. Six SOA Watch protesters are currently in prison for civil disobedience, serving sentences ranging from two to six months.

“We want to send the army and U.S. society the message that we are opposed to the continued training of soldiers who go on to violate human rights,” Mulligan said.

SOA Watch activist Pablo Ruiz, from Chile, called for the construction of “a new concept of the armed forces,” and protested that the president of his country, socialist Michelle Bachelet, has not yet removed Chilean soldiers from the school in Fort Benning “because the power of the military is still very strong.”

According to SOA Watch figures, civil war-torn Colombia sends more troops to SOA/WHINSEC than any other country: 323 in 2007, followed by Chile (195), Peru (134), Nicaragua (78), the Dominican Republic (65), Ecuador (62), Panama (50), Honduras (44), El Salvador (37), Guatemala (35), Costa Rica (22), Paraguay (15), Mexico (13), Jamaica (10), Belize and Brazil (four) and Canada (two).

The SOA Watch activists say they have visited 16 Latin American countries since 2008, meeting with local officials to urge them to withdraw all troops from SOA/WHINSEC.

Their efforts have borne fruit in several cases. Chile only sent 45 troops in 2008, and Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and Venezuela have ceased to send troops altogether.

Sullivan said that when President-elect Mauricio Funes of the FMLN takes office in June, there is a possibility that El Salvador will follow suit.

Mary Anne Perrone, another SOA Watch activist, said that when Vice President-elect Salvador Sánchez Cerén met with the group’s representatives, he admitted that he was unfamiliar with WHINSEC, but that he would take the information provided by the activists very seriously.

El Salvador had plans to increase the number of troops sent this year to SOA/WHINSEC to 58.

A source close to Sánchez Cerén confirmed to IPS that he met with the SOA Watch representatives, but did not discuss the results of the meeting.

“It’s disturbing; governments are often not fully informed that troops from their countries are undergoing training at WHINSEC, because since 2005 the school no longer reveals the names of its students, since most of them are attending on the basis of a personal invitation,” said Sullivan.

“We believe it is important to strengthen the concept of sovereignty in Latin America,” the SOA Watch Latin America coordinator added. * Not for publication in Italy.

The global economic crisis has had a severe impact on Central America and the Dominican Republic, and unemployment and poverty will increase significantly, according to a new study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The ECLAC report studies the effects on the region of the international recession that began in the United States, identifies the mechanisms by which it spreads, and recommends public policies to mitigate the impact.

Jorge Máttar, head of the ECLAC regional office in Mexico, told IPS that most of the Central American economies are highly vulnerable because of their heavy dependence on the United States.

In his view, the outlook is uncertain, because it cannot yet be determined whether the worst of the crisis is still to come, or how long it will last. What is sure, he said, is that this year will be “a very negative one.”

The report titled “Enfrentado la crisis. Istmo centroamericano y República Dominicana: Evaluación económica en 2008 y perspectivas para 2009” (Facing the Crisis; Central American Isthmus and Dominican Republic: Economic Evaluation for 2008 and Prospects for 2009) was presented in San Salvador on Wednesday.

Some 300 economists, civil servants, and representatives of civil society attended the launch, including economic advisers to leftwing president-elect Mauricio Funes, who will take over from the rightwing incumbent, President Antonio Saca, on Jun. 1.

The main routes of “contagion” of the crisis are the falls in exports, cash remittances from migrants living abroad, foreign direct investment and tourism, as well as restrictions on international financing which limit the availability of credit within countries, the study says.

“The countries worst hit by the crisis will be those that have seen their income reduced by lower levels of remittances from, and exports to, the United States,” Máttar said.

The president of the Salvadoran Chamber of Trade and Industry (CCIES), Jorge Daboub, told IPS in early April that 57 percent of Salvadoran exports go to the United States.

The Central Reserve Bank (BCR) reported that remittances declined by an estimated 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period last year.

BCR figures show that 3.79 billion dollars entered El Salvador as remittances in 2008, equivalent to 17.1 percent of GDP that year. Most of the funds were sent from the United States, home to 90 percent of the 2.9 million Salvadorans living abroad.

The Salvadoran government estimates that the economy will grow by one percent this year, but economists believe there will be zero growth, or that the economy will even shrink. In 2008, the authorities reported GDP growth of 3.2 percent.

Nearly 40 percent of El Salvador’s 5.7 million people live in poverty, according to official figures, which civil society organisations regard as underestimates. Unemployment is officially estimated at seven percent of the economically active population, but 43 percent are underemployed.

As for Honduras, income from remittances represents 20 percent of its GDP, according to ECLAC.

Daboub confirmed that 36,000 jobs have been lost in Honduras since August 2008. Exports fell by 21.4 percent between February 2008 and February 2009, particularly exports to the United States.

The crisis could cause the loss of some 120,000 jobs in 2009 in Central America, a region of 40 million people, “indicating the magnitude of the crisis,” Máttar said.

Igor Paunovic, the head of ECLAC’s economic development unit, said the crisis would add 400,000 people to the number living below the poverty line in the region, increasing the overall proportion of poor people from 51 to 52 percent.

The ECLAC economists, who said growth in the region in 2008 averaged seven percent, forecast growth of no more than one percent in 2009. And remittances could decline by between five and 15 percent this year compared to last year, they added.

The main impact of the crisis is due to the fall in exports, since the United States is the main trading partner of the countries of Central America, purchasing between 40 and 60 percent of their exports, the economists said.

This means that the impact has had “immediate consequences” for the region’s economies, Máttar said.

In March the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast “even deeper and prolonged recession” on a global scale, and a gradual “modest recovery” in 2010, with an average economic growth rate of 1.9 percent.

Alexander Segovia, an economic adviser to president-elect Funes, said that facing up to the crisis requires integrated public policies that combine macroeconomic and social measures, in order to protect the most vulnerable.

He criticised the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which has governed El Salvador since 1989, for repeatedly asking the poor to “tighten their belts,” making them pay for the impact of crises and structural readjustments while sparing the business community.

“It is not fair that the most vulnerable should pay for this crisis,” Segovia said.

More public spending is needed, to provide “some sort of protection for the most vulnerable, because they are the people who suffer most during these crises,” Paunovic said.

Increasing state spending on health, education and public works, to create jobs and make these economies more competitive, is another recommendation of the regional United Nations agency.

The countries of the region should take short, medium and long-term measures, monitor the situation continually, and prepare for a long, deep crisis, the ECLAC experts concluded.

The main challenges faced by El Salvador’s leftwing president-elect Mauricio Funes are forging understandings with other political sectors, adopting measures to deal with the economic crisis, and especially its effects on the poor, and strengthening the country’s institutions, say analysts.

Credit: FMLN

Funes of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) will have to act fast, even before he takes office on Jun. 1, to generate confidence at the political level, among the business community and in society at large.

The director of research and development at the Business Foundation for Educational Development (FEPADE), Joaquín Samayoa, told IPS that Funes will have to work out “understandings” with other political forces to ensure “democratic governance.”

He will also have to “creatively” tackle domestic economic problems that have been aggravated by the global recession, which will have a particularly heavy impact on this impoverished Central American nation, said the analyst. El Salvador adopted the dollar as its currency in 2001, and 80 percent of this country’s exports go to the United States.

The crisis has already been reflected in the loss of jobs and in a drop in the remittances sent home by Salvadorans in the United States, which are “a lifeline for a large number of families living in extreme poverty,” he added.

Funes, a veteran TV journalist who was not a member of the FMLN until he was nominated as the party’s candidate, garnered 51 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections, against the 49 percent taken by his rival Rodrigo Ávila of the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which has governed the country since 1989.

The FMLN insurgency, which fought government forces in the 1980-1992 civil war, became a legal political party in 1993.

The war left 75,000 people – mainly civilians – dead and 6,000 forcibly disappeared, largely at the hands of far-right death squads led by the late founder of ARENA Roberto d’Aubuisson (1944-1992).

El Salvador, the smallest country on the mainland of the Americas, which is severely overcrowded with 5.7 million people in a mountainous territory of 21,000 square kilometres, has one of the highest murder rates in the world: 61 per 100,000 people.

Casey Reckman, associate director of Fitch Ratings, an international credit rating agency, said this week that Funes would have a tough time ahead of him because of the impact of the U.S. recession, and added that cooperation among political sectors is crucial to implementing long-term fiscal policies and restore the confidence of investors.

According to the Central Reserve Bank, some four billion dollars in remittances were sent home by Salvadorans in the United States last year, equivalent to 17 percent of GDP.

But in January, remittances dipped eight percent with respect to the same month in 2008.

Ninety percent of the 2.9 million Salvadorans living abroad are in the United States.

In his victory speech, Funes said he would build a government of national unity because “the country belongs to all Salvadorans,” but clarified that he would put a priority on the poor, who he said were the victims of the neoliberal free-market policies followed by ARENA since 1989.

Analyst Dagoberto Gutiérrez said the country’s first leftwing president will also have to dismantle a state apparatus created by, and at the service of, ARENA.

He said that from its very origins, El Salvador’s small wealthy elite “has been primitive in essence,” generating political and social confrontation in a country where the “opulence” of a few contrasts sharply with the “disgraceful poverty” of the majority of the population.

“Funes has to show the people that his government won’t be just another government, and to do that he will have to establish a new state apparatus to overcome entrenched corruption after two decades of rule by ARENA, which took advantage of the state to benefit the dominant class,” said Gutiérrez.

The new president will also have to use referendums as an instrument to give “voters greater participation in decisions of far-reaching significance for the direction that the country will take,” he added.

Samayoa said “any party that has been in the government for a long period of time tends to act in an arbitrary manner,” and called for “vigilance and intolerance of corruption on the part of the government.”

Outgoing President Antonio Saca said he would seek a “smooth, expedited transition,” and has invited Funes to accompany him to the Mar. 25 summit for the Central American Integration System (SICA), to be hosted by Nicaragua.

ARENA leaders have said their party will be a “constructive” opposition force, while remaining vigilant to protect the country’s “freedoms.”

In its editorial Monday, the ultra-conservative El Diario de Hoy underwent a radical shift in position, stating that “the proposal for national unity is welcomed with open arms.”

“El Salvador is divided, and requires a strong dose of wisdom from both halves to find the best route forward for the country,” the editorial said.

During the election campaign, the newspaper had accused Funes of being “the candidate of the party of kidnappers and criminals.”

The president-elect will head to Brazil Thursday to meet with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who called him on Sunday to congratulate him on his triumph and reiterate his earlier offer of helping El Salvador in the fight against poverty.

Carlos Gómez, who has been driving a taxi for two years, remarked to IPS that he voted for “change” and that he hopes Funes will live up to his promise to improve living standards for the poor, through the creation of jobs, price controls for basic products, and more effective measures against crime.

The question that should begin to be answered over the next few months is how inclusive and participative the new government will be, and how constructive ARENA will be as the main opposition party, said Samayoa.

Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes of the leftist insurgency-turned-political party FMLN promised to build an “inclusive” government, with a view to bringing about reconciliation in Salvadoran society and creating a “future of progress” for all Salvadorans.

With over 90 percent of the votes counted, Funes took 51.7 percent of the total against 48.7 percent for his rival, Rodrigo Ávila, the candidate of the rightwing Nationalist Republican Front (ARENA), which has governed the country since 1989.

“This is the happiest night of my life, and I also want it to be the night of greatest hope for El Salvador,” Funes said late Sunday when he declared his victory, alongside vice president-elect Salvador Sánchez Cerén, other FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) leaders, and the future first lady, Brazilian-born Vanda Pignato.

Funes, a 49-year-old TV journalist and former correspondent for the U.S. CNN cable news network, said “a spirit of national unity” would reign in his government, which would leave aside confrontation and revanchism.

“It is time to move towards the future; the fatherland belongs to all Salvadorans,” he said.

President Antonio Saca and Ávila both called Funes to congratulate him.

Funes will head the first leftwing government in the history of El Salvador, which has been governed by military dictatorships and conservative and rightwing forces since it became an independent nation in the mid-19th century.

Sunday’s turnout stood at 61 percent, with just over 2.4 million of the country’s 4.2 million voters casting ballots.

Although a 1992 peace agreement put an end to a 12-year armed conflict between the FMLN and government forces that left 80,000 people dead or “disappeared” and 40,000 disabled, this impoverished Central American country of 5.7 million still has one of the world’s highest homicide rates: 61 per 100,000 population.

And while the 2006 official unemployment rate (the latest available figure) was 6.6 percent, 43 out of 100 economically active people are under-employed or scrape by with temporary jobs, casual labour or working in the informal sector of the economy, mainly as street vendors.

Analyst Ernesto Rivas Gallont said Funes won because his message reached Salvadorans, overcoming the intense “fear campaign” waged against him.

“The people were fed up after 20 years of government by ARENA; voters have matured,” Rivas Gallont commented to IPS.

The biggest challenge Funes now faces, he said, is to create “a more just country,” fighting poverty and restoring “the rule of law.”

More than 40 percent of Salvadorans are poor, according to official statistics.

After it became a legal political party in 1993, the FMLN lost three presidential elections, in 1994, 1999 and 2004.

“I’m overjoyed, at last we are free; we are going to have a more just society,” FMLN supporter María Artiga told IPS during the celebration that stretched into the wee hours of Monday morning.

Artiga formed part of a huge tide of people in red – the colour of the FMLN – along the Paseo General Escalón and Alameda Roosevelt, two of the capital’s main thoroughfares.

People “spoke out for change,” FMLN legislator Jorge Jiménez told IPS.

“I’m happy, after so many years of struggle,” said a visibly moved Jiménez, who as a guerrilla fought on Guazapa mountain, one of the insurgent group’s strongholds in northern El Salvador.

Responding to Funes’s victory, former president Armando Calderón (1994-1999), of ARENA, said “democracy and El Salvador have won.”

The president-elect’s spokesman, David Rivas, told IPS that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva phoned Funes to congratulate him and to reiterate the offer of support that he made during the four meetings they have held, in El Salvador and Brazil.

The campaign for next Sunday’s presidential elections in El Salvador wrapped up at midnight Wednesday, muddied by complaints of irregularities and fear mongering propaganda that could influence the outcome.

Although opinion polls and the feeling on the street indicate that Mauricio Funes, the candidate of the leftwing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), is the clear favourite, the die is not yet cast, historian Raymundo Calderón, dean of the faculty of science and humanities at the University of El Salvador, told IPS.

Calderón said the fear campaign waged by the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which has governed the country since 1989, against a possible triumph by the FMLN, a former guerrilla movement, could tip the balance in favour of governing party candidate Rodrigo Ávila.

ARENA’s campaign slogan is “I Will Not Hand Over My Country”.

The professor cited television programmes in which it has been repeatedly stated that if the FMLN wins, El Salvador will fall under the influence of Venezuela’s firebrand leftist leader Hugo Chávez. He also pointed to images that have saturated the media and the streets, including fake photos showing Funes alongside Chávez.

Funes urged the 150,000 supporters who showed up at the FMLN final campaign rally last weekend to “defend the vote” and report any irregularities – an allusion to the ruling party’s alleged practice of paying foreigners, mainly from other Central American countries, to cast fake ballots in favour of ARENA, as denounced in the January municipal and legislative elections.

The leftwing candidate also blasted Ávila for refusing to engage in a debate on a Mar. 5 programme organised by the CNN television news network.

“We will build a government of national unity; change is urgently needed,” Funes, a veteran television broadcaster and talk show host, told his followers on Avenida Juan Pablo II, a main artery that cuts across the capital from east to west.

ARENA’s final rally drew around 50,000 people to the Cuscatlán stadium, where Ávila offered support to those who are “overwhelmed” by economic problems.

“To me it is unacceptable that there are families who do not have electricity and running water, and that there are still adults who can’t read in El Salvador,” said the candidate, a former National Civil Police chief, who hopes to win a fifth consecutive term for ARENA.

Ávila, the president of ARENA, urged voters to “defend our system of freedoms and defeat the prospect of becoming just another pawn in the totalitarian delirium of Hugo Chávez.”

In a survey carried out Feb. 1-15 by the University Institute of Public Opinion (IUDOP), 49.3 percent of respondents said they would vote for Funes, against 31.7 percent who favoured Ávila – a 17.6 percent lead. However, 14.3 percent did not say who they planned to vote for.

IUDOP director Jeannette Aguilar told IPS that it is not yet possible to say who will win on Sunday, since ARENA controls the entire state apparatus.

ARENA is banking on the possibility that Funes will fail to win the 50 percent plus one vote needed to avoid a runoff.

Rafael Roncagliolo, a Peruvian sociologist, journalist and election consultant who visited El Salvador in early March, described the media fear campaign against the FMLN as “atrocious and denigrating.”

José Ramos, a 41-year-old private security agent, said either candidate could win the race, but added that he hoped for “a change, for the good of our children.”

Raúl Ayala, a 76-year-old pensioner, said he backed ARENA, which he said would “defend freedom and national sovereignty.”

This week, 140 U.S. and Latin American academics sent an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling on the Barack Obama administration to “categorically disavow the allegations made in the…fear campaigns” and to “emphasise that the Government of the United States is committed to working with any political party that wins the Salvadoran Presidency”.

The letter says “The problems of the Salvadoran electoral system are structural and so severe that they tip the balance in favour of the party holding executive office.”

The 140 experts on Latin America further state that “The Supreme Electoral Tribunal, like almost all other Salvadoran institutions including the Supreme Court and the major news media, are highly politicised and unduly influenced by partisan interests, particularly in favour of the party holding executive office.”

Civil society groups have reported that public officials and the owners of private businesses have threatened to fire their employees if they do not prove that they voted for ARENA, by using their cell phones to snap a shot of their ballot.

El Salvador’s economic crisis has been aggravated by the recession in the United States, where 90 percent of the 2.9 million Salvadorans living abroad reside. In 2008, Salvadorans in the U.S. sent home nearly four billion dollars in remittances, equivalent to 17 percent of GDP.

This Central American nation, which already has one of the highest murder rates in the world – 61 homicides per 100,000 population – is suffering from a growing wave of violence, related to organised crime, youth gangs, vengeance killings and even alleged rightwing death squads.

Although the FMLN has consolidated the hard-line leftwing vote and has expanded towards the centre, analysts say it may fall short of the absolute majority of votes needed for a first-round victory.

If Funes does win, he will head the first leftwing government in the history of this nation, which has been governed by conservatives and military dictatorships since it became an independent republic in 1838.

The global economic crisis has begun to be felt in this Salvadoran town on the Pacific coast, where remittances sent home by family members working in the United States have begun to shrink.

Like in other parts of the country, remittances in Chirilagua – a town of 20,000, with a similar number of people living in Los Angeles, Houston, New York and other U.S. cities – have become not only a main source of income but also a source of major cultural change.

The town, once inhabited mainly by farmers who used horses to work in the fields and wore cowboy hats and boots, is now full of youngsters riding ride around on bicycles and wearing baseball caps, bermuda shorts and sandals, while waiting for the next monthly transfer from their relatives abroad.

“Nearly everyone receives remittances,” which have brought about “profound” cultural changes, said Mayor José Méndez, who has governed Chirilagua – located 175 km east of the capital – for five consecutive terms since 1994.

“Many people have swapped farming for remittances,” the loquacious 71-year-old mayor told IPS.

But things have begun to change, say observers, because remittances, which have become a lifeline for the local economy, shrank in 2008 for the first time since records on the phenomenon began to be kept in 1995.

Sociologist Juan José García, an expert on migration and remittances, told IPS that although global remittance flows grew 2.5 percent last year with respect to 2007, the slowdown was significant when compared to 17 percent growth in 2004.

“A crisis lies ahead: the tendency is for remittances to substantially decline in 2009 and 2010,” said García.

The Central Reserve Bank (BCR) reported that annual remittances grew threefold from 1998 to 2008, to 3.78 billion dollars a year, making them the country’s main source of foreign exchange.

Last year’s remittances represented 17 percent of GDP in this country of 5.7 million people.

Ninety percent of the 2.9 million Salvadorans living abroad are in the United States, where most of them live and work as undocumented immigrants.

Official figures indicate that 381,700 families, accounting for nearly 27 percent of the population, receive transfers from abroad. The money mainly goes towards food, clothing and paying the monthly power, phone and water bills.

The BCR reported that remittances declined last year by 2.1 to 6.6 percent a month from August, when the global economic crisis broke out, to November.

One of the victims of the recession spreading outwards from the United States is María Hernández, who is now scraping by selling tortillas in the central square of Chirilagua.

Her two children, Jamileth and Antonio, left for the southeastern U.S. state of Virginia four and seven years ago, respectively. But since October, they are no longer sending her the 400 to 500 dollars a month that she used to receive, because they are now only working part-time.

“The flow of remittances has stopped. But fortunately I am used to working, as I have done since the age of seven,” says the 55-year-old single mother, while placing a tortilla on a hot plate, a Mother’s Day gift from her kids last May.

Hernández told IPS that she is now having trouble “paying the 100 dollars a month for my house, since the sales of tortillas only stretch far enough to buy food” and pay the bills.

According to an analysis of the latest U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Centre, a Pew Research Centre project, unemployment among foreign-born Hispanics in the United States rose from 5.1 to eight percent in 2008.

And media reports put the unemployment rate among foreign-born Latinos at 12.4 percent in the state of California – the highest rate in 40 years. A majority of Salvadoran migrants live in Los Angeles county and the rest of southern California, where they generally work in construction, services, retail and tourism – the industries that have felt the strongest impact of the recession.

Statistics from the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería, El Salvador’s immigration office, show that more than 20,000 Salvadorans were deported from the United States in 2008, as a result of tighter controls, said Gilma Pérez, coordinator of the migrants programme at the Central American University’s Human Rights Institute.

Pérez also said the crackdown on illegal migrants and the profound crisis affecting the United States have temporarily curbed emigration to that country, with the number of Salvadorans attempting the journey shrinking from around 700 to 400 a day.

In Chirilagua, meanwhile, some 100 people show up every day to pick up their money transfers of between 50 and 200 dollars from the La Guadalupana savings and credit cooperative, said Abisahí Romero, who works at the office.

The cooperative, which has been operating for 10 years, is now associated with the U.S.-based Western Union, a global leader in money transfer services.

But in the last few months, Romero has noticed “a major drop in the number of people receiving remittances, and in the amounts that are being sent.”

In fact, he said, there have been “at least 10 cases” in the office so far this year in which families from Chirilagua and the surrounding areas have actually wired money to their relatives in the United States, to help them weather the recession there.

Some of the families have sent up to 1,000 dollars to the U.S. – savings built up here with the remittances sent by their loved ones abroad.

Rosalía Márquez, who owns a beauty salon in Chirilagua, said she has seen her revenues drop 60 percent in the last six months.

“Revenues have really shrunk; if there are no remittances, there is no work,” complained the cosmetologist. She was forced to lay off her two employees, and says many of her clients have told her they are no longer receiving remittances.

In the nearby town of Intipuca, where a huge part of the population emigrated to the United States, fancy U.S.-style houses, luxury cars and travel agencies coexist alongside youth violence and poverty, and the local hero is Sifredo Chávez, the first Intipucan to make the journey to the United States in the late 1960s, who later helped family members and friends move there. A statue of Sifredo stands in the town’s central square.

José Rodríguez, a 72-year-old peasant farmer who lives alone now that his entire family has left the country, laments that the remittances have become “scarce” but says he has not lost hope that things will change in El Salvador so that people will have opportunities and will no longer have to move abroad – a reference to next Sunday’s presidential elections.

La Montañona, a forested mountain in northern El Salvador that reaches 1,800 metres above sea level, was a stronghold of the FMLN guerrillas during the country’s armed conflict. Today, its forests and stories of bombings and rebel hideouts have begun to draw ecotourism.

Partial view of La Montañona. Credit: Mancomunidad de la Montañona.

At the top of the mountain, the view is spectacular. A chain of volcanoes and mountains stretches towards the horizon, obliterating the border with neighbouring Honduras. The fresh mountain air makes it easier to forget the poor state of the road leading to La Montañona, in the department (province) of Chalatenango, around 100 km from the capital.

An ecotourism area was designed on 300 hectares of land on the mountain, with hiking trails, camp sites and tunnels to explore, by the Representative Committee of Beneficiaries of La Montañona (Corbelam), made up of 155 former guerrillas and local residents keen on “salvaging the collective memory.”

The area was the scene of bloody fighting between the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) and government forces during the 1980-1992 civil war.

In 1982, the rebels managed to expel the army and gain control of the area, where they installed the Radio Farabundo Martí station (RFM), which for the rest of the war broadcast from a hideout three metres below ground, similar to the tunnels of the Viet Cong, which were the nightmare of U.S. troops in the 1965-1975 Vietnam war.

Marco Tulio Calderón, president of Corbelam, guides us to one of the tunnels, where the RFM transmitter was run on a diesel engine.

“Tatú: historic site, a work of engineering built to protect the spot from aerial attacks. The RFM became a legend that is now coming to life,” reads a sign at the spot known as El Roble, where some 30 guerrillas-cum-journalists prepared three broadcasts a day.

“The first thing tourists ask about is where are the ‘tatús’ (underground guerrilla shelters and tunnels). People can’t believe how they survived in those conditions,” says Calderón as we go down one of the damp tunnels, slightly over one metre wide, two metres high and several metres long. The tunnels are connected to small chambers and to breathing holes, which during the war were covered by vegetation.

The term “tatú”, the Guaraní word for armadillo, was used by the Uruguayan urban guerrilla National Liberation Movement or Tupamaros in the 1960s and 1970s to name their own tunnels, “tatuceras”, which they dug when they tried to expand to rural areas.

Calderón says the atmosphere in the tunnels was “oppressive,” with the constant military operations and shelling.

“The blood of many compañeros is here, and now we can show the place to the new generations, so they can learn about what happened,” he says.

These areas were unknown to most insurgents, says Calderón, who is only 37 years old. The shelters were built in just six months by civilians with limited knowledge of construction techniques.

Half a kilometre away is “el hospitalito” (the little hospital), another underground site where up to 20 wounded could be held temporarily.

“The idea is to offer the tourist something simple but authentic, to show what happened in the war, while we bring in funds to maintain the forest, through a sustainable management programme that benefits the people of Chalatenango,” says Francisco Mejía, the treasurer of Corbelam.

The group obtained ownership of the 300 hectares after the January 1992 peace agreement put an end to the war that left 75,000 dead, at least 6,000 forcibly disappeared and some 40,000 disabled.

Walking along the paths, tourists come across huge bomb craters and trees hit by mortar fire – signs of the attacks aimed at silencing the RFM.

An empty bomb-shell casing is now used as a bell at the local school.

Wilfredo Cepeda, one of the founders of the RFM in late 1981, says the clandestine radio station’s broadcasts were frequently jammed by the army. He also recalls that several members of the team “learned to read and write while working at the station.”

Cepeda and other members of the radio station’s staff helped design the ecotourism attraction in 2006, with the aim of preserving the unique aspects of the tunnels, which were visited by 1,400 tourists in 2008. The ticket costs a dollar, but getting here entails a one-hour drive from the nearest town, on a very bad road.

The site is a historic reference point and provides an opportunity for “guerrilla tourism,” said the former rebel, who is now a university professor.

The “Mancomunidad (commonwealth) of La Montañona” is an association of seven municipalities that was officially established in 1999 on the mountain of the same name.

The Salvadoran Research Programme on Development and the Environment (PRISMA) has led several studies on water, fauna and flora in the area, which have given rise to an inventory of local species and water resources.

The researchers found several plant species that had not been documented in the country and others that perhaps have never been registered anywhere in the world, Wilfredo Morán, an adviser to PRISMA projects in Chalatenango, told IPS.

For example, the “Participative inventory of plant species from the La Montañona forest,” published in 2005 by PRISMA, says the “vismia” (of the Clusiaceae family), a green-leafed bush with ochre- coloured berries, produces a phosphorescent orange latex.

But “conservation is only possible if the needs of local residents are met at the same time,” says Morán.

The northern part of this Central American country of 20,000 square kilometres and 5.7 million people has been “historically marginalised,” he explains.

Running down the sides of the La Montañona mountain are the Sumpul, Azambio, Tamulasco and Motochico rivers, which are fed by some 300 streams. And the forest is home to coyotes, deer, wild boar, and the margay, or “tree ocelot.”

Corbelam has three tourist cabins equipped with solar power, and a restaurant is under construction. There are also plans to repair the road and bring piped water and electricity to the local community. The people involved in the project also grow subsistence crops and raise chickens.

Morán says the site has the potential to be developed as a tourist area, but the road keeps visitors away.

Neither the national government nor the local governments of the municipalities that make up the “commonwealth” provide support for forest conservation in the area, says Calderón, despite the fact that some 200,000 local residents depend on the woodland’s environmental services, such as the water provided by the streams and rivers.

Corbelam protects the forest and has developed a system to fight fires, consisting of wells and water channels that operate on the force of gravity.

By Raúl Gutiérrez
SAN SALVADOR, Mar 9 2009 (IPS)

“I would not say that the media in Latin America contribute to fomenting civic culture, overall. They generally head in the opposite direction,” says Rafael Roncagliolo, a Peruvian sociologist, journalist and election consultant.

Rafael Roncagliolo Credit: Eric Lemus/IPS

Voters in El Salvador will go to the polls on Sunday, Mar. 15 to choose a new president, in elections that have drawn close attention both domestically and abroad because of the very real possibility that the leftwing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) candidate, popular talk show host Mauricio Funes, will win.

The campaign has been marked by questions about the transparency of the electoral process and an aggressive propaganda campaign against the FMLN by the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).

ARENA has ruled the country since 1989, before the end of the 12-year (1980-1992) civil war, in which around 80,000 people – mainly civilians – were killed, primarily by government forces and far-right death squads.

The campaign has also seen an increase in violence, in a country that already has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and whose economy has been hit hard by the global economic crisis.

The fear campaign waged in the media against the FMLN is “atrocious and denigrating,” said Roncagliolo, the founder and former secretary general of the Asociación Civil Transparencia (ACT – Transparency Civil Association), a Peruvian organisation that works with election and democracy issues, and head of the intergovernmental International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) for the Andean region.

The Salvadoran electoral system is “anachronistic” due to the control that the political parties have over the electoral court (TSE), said the expert in this interview with IPS, during a visit to El Salvador as an adviser to the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the Salvadoran Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP – University Institute of Public Opinion).

IUDOP, with the support of the NDI, implemented a national election observer mission and “quick count” or parallel tabulation system during the Jan. 18 municipal and legislative elections, in which 2,000 election observers were deployed around the country. A similar procedure will be employed in Sunday’s presidential vote.

In a late 2008 IUDOP survey, only 11 percent of respondents said they had a high level of confidence in the TSE, 34 percent said they had little, and 39.3 percent said they had none.

Nevertheless, Roncagliolo believes “the conditions for free elections and for the people to express their preferences are in place.”

IPS: What is your view of the Salvadoran electoral process? RAFAEL RONCAGLIOLO: It has many problems. For example, the makeup of the TSE, changes in playing rules after the electoral process has begun, or the dirty campaign in the media in favour of one candidate, based on discrediting his rival.

An electoral court made up of members of the political parties is anachronistic. The worldwide tendency is to professionalise election bodies; representatives of political parties sit on them only as observers.

In the Peruvian system, for example, the electoral court is comprised of delegates of the Supreme Court and the Attorney-General’s Office, representatives of law schools, and representatives of lawyers. This contributes to the transparency of elections.

IPS: The European Union election observers mission in El Salvador has reported a bias in media coverage in favour of one political party. What is your experience in Latin America? RR: Today, the media’s responsibility towards democracy is one of the main problems everywhere. We no longer have censorship by governments, but we have commercial censorship which serves the interests of media owners and leads to biased reporting.

All parties should receive equal coverage, not only in quantitative but in qualitative terms. That is democracy.

The media can have their opinion spaces, but they cannot take a stance for a candidate. They must be standard bearers for the voter’s right to cast an informed vote. That is the media’s democratic responsibility. In many cases, they only give coverage to some candidates in order to denigrate them.

IPS: What is your perception of the current media campaign here? RR: I think it’s atrocious. For example, one spot shows a protest against a group of people demanding free elections in Nicaragua in which a red FMLN shirt is shown, as if people couldn’t wear what they wanted. And that incident is presented in the Salvadoran press as if there were FMLN involvement in criminal activity in Nicaragua. [The ruling leftwing FSLN in Nicaragua faced accusations of fraud in the recent local elections]. That is simply unacceptable; it is outrageous manipulation.

Dirty smear campaigns are being carried out all over the continent, in some countries to a greater extent than in others, depending on how deeply rooted civic culture is in each case.

IPS: Should there be some kind of limits? RR: The thing here is that whoever has more money produces more publicity, and that is not equitable. There are some kinds of limits that work. For example, today there are four countries in Latin America – Chile, Mexico, Brazil and Ecuador – that have regulations that limit private financing of political parties, and others that penalise media slander.

But I would not say that the media in Latin America contribute to fomenting civic culture, overall. They generally head in the opposite direction; they meddle in the private lives of candidates and do not foment debate on the big, central issues, when they should be the big channel for public debate.

IPS: There has never been a presidential election debate in El Salvador. What is the experience in the rest of Latin America? RR: I believe that debate during election campaigns is essential. And I’m not talking about the rights of the candidates; I’m referring to the rights of voters. Voters have a right to be informed, and debates are a very important source of information. There are countries where elections without debates (between the candidates) are inconceivable.

In Peru, ACT managed to turn debates into a tradition. Debates are also an integral part of election campaigns in Chile and Brazil.

IPS: The presidential candidate of ARENA, Rodrigo Ávila, has refused to debate. RR: The one who has refused to debate here is the one who has all of the media outlets in his favour.

IPS: And what do you say about that attitude? RR: A lot of progress must be made to have a democratic civic culture.

Excerpt:

The leftist FMLN is the front-runner in the polls for Sunday’s parliamentary and municipal elections in El Salvador, and analysts say a victory would boost its chances of winning the Mar. 15 presidential elections.

The analysts consulted by IPS said that if the outcome of the elections matches the latest opinion poll results, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) will have a real chance of a winning historic victory in a country that has traditionally been governed by the right.

Álvaro Artiga, a political scientist at the Central American University (UCA), said Sunday’s elections would allow political parties to measure the support they have managed to build up in nearly two years of campaigning.

The elections will be like a “first round, and will test the strength of the parties ahead of the presidential elections,” said the analyst, who is the head of the university’s political science graduate programme.

On Sunday, voters will elect the members of 262 town councils, 84 members of the single-chamber legislature, and 20 members of the Central American Parliament.

Under the country’s electoral laws, campaigns can only last four months in the case of presidential elections, two months in the case of parliamentary elections, and one month for municipal elections.

But both the FMLN – the main opposition party – and the governing right-wing Nationalist Republican Party (ARENA) began to campaign in mid-2007, in the face of lax oversight by the Supreme Electoral Court, which is controlled by the right.

The most prestigious and respected polling firms in El Salvador give the FMLN a 7.5 to 15.2 percent lead over ARENA.

An early December poll by the Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP) found that the FMLN, a former guerrilla movement, is 7.5 and 15.2 percent ahead in the municipal and legislative elections, respectively.

And in late December, the Centro de Investigación de la Opinión Pública (CIOPS) reported that the FMLN enjoyed an 11.3 percent and 14 percent lead in the municipal and legislative elections.

Jan. 2 was the cutoff date for publishing survey results on voting trends.

Polls commissioned by conservative media found that the FMLN had a narrower lead, of between 1.5 and 6 percentage points.

The proportion of respondents who say they will vote for the FMLN has grown by at least two percentage points in the last few months, in the midst of a scare-mongering media campaign by right-wing sectors.

A group of 30 Salvadorans complained to the Social Initiative for Democracy (ISD), a local election monitoring group, that some state institutions and private companies have organised “informative chats” in which they warn their employees that if the FMLN wins, it will usher in a “communist government” along the lines of the administration of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

ISD director Ramón Villalta told IPS that these irregularities are the result of the control that certain political parties have over the Supreme Electoral Court and the lack of clear rules guaranteeing a transparent electoral process, which he said gives rise to worries about the possibility of fraud, since the election authority has refused to provide copies of the voter lists to the opposition parties.

The Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office (PDDH) is investigating at least 10 cases of election-related injuries and murders. The head of the PDDH, Óscar Luna, had urged all political parties to sign a “no-aggression pact” in November.

The campaign for the municipal and legislative elections ended Wednesday at midnight with caravans and rallies in the capital.

The FMLN guerrillas demobilised after a 1992 peace agreement put an end to El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. Far-right death squads were blamed by a United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission for the majority of the 75,000 killings and 8,000 forced disappearances committed during the armed conflict.

Christian Democratic and Social Democratic parties won the presidential elections in 1972 and 1977, but the military resorted to fraud and repression of opponents, leaving a number of them dead or “disappeared” and forcing many to flee into exile, in what historians see as one of the catalysts of the civil war.

Even if the FMLN performs well in Sunday’s elections, it will not be able to win a simple majority in parliament (43 seats), and the alliance of right-wing parties will continue to dominate the legislature.

The other parties taking place in the elections are the right-wing Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and National Reconciliation Party (PCN) and the centre-left Democratic Change (CD) party and Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR).

The FMLN, which has failed to win the presidency in three elections since 1994, has chosen Mauricio Funes, a popular talk-show host and former CNN correspondent, as its presidential candidate – a move that will enable the party to draw voters who would not have cast their ballots for one of its long-time leaders, according to analysts.

“The FMLN’s strategy in nominating Funes is smart,” while “people see the ARENA candidate as more of the same,” Nelson Zárate, head of CIOPS, told IPS.

Opinion polls referring to the presidential elections show that Funes enjoys a lead of 16 to 17.3 percentage points on his ARENA opponent Rodrigo Ávila.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) has sent 82 election observers and the European Union has sent 40 for Sunday’s poll. In addition, a number of research centres and non-governmental organisations will send thousands of their own observers around the country to monitor the vote.

By the end of 2008, El Salvador had the largest number of cell phones per person in Central America, with 6.6 million for a population of 5.8 million.

Experts say the large number of cell phones is a reflection of consumerism, promoted by intense advertising campaigns. Another factor that has played a role is the large number of Salvadorans living abroad, many of whom communicate with their families back home via mobile phone.

According to El Salvador’s telecoms regulatory agency, SIGET, 90 percent of mobile lines in the country are prepaid, which is usually more expensive than postpaid or billing, due to higher costs per minute.

Of the total number of cell phones in El Salvador, two million were purchased in 2008 alone, as a result of advertising blitzes launched by the five telecoms companies operating in the country: Movistar (owned by Spain’s Telefónica), Claro (controlled by Mexico’s Telecom), Tigo (Telemóvil, a unit of the Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular or MIC), Digicel (a Caribbean-based mobile telecommunications operator), and the less popular Red (run by the Salvadoran company Intelfon).

The first three provide fixed phone line services as well, and Spain’s Telefónica and Telecom, owned by Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, also operate part of the cable television market.

SIGET’s statistics for the 2007-2008 period indicate that Panama has 90.1 cell phones per 100 people; Guatemala 72.4; Honduras 55.5; Nicaragua 48.6; and Costa Rica – where there are no prepaid cards – 34.5.

SIGET telecommunications manager Saúl Vásquez said many people own more than one cell phone, because they are drawn in by the constant promotions offered by the telecoms companies.

Blanca Flores, a student of communications who has two cell phones, said she purchased her second after having problems with the first.

“I kept losing my Claro connection, so I decided to get another number, from Telemóvil,” she told IPS.

The large proportion of Salvadorans who live outside of the country – 2.5 million live in the United States – has had a major influence on the expansion of cell phone use. Many migrants’ relatives use mobile phones to communicate, especially with their families in rural areas of El Salvador where fixed lines are unavailable.

War and poverty over the last three decades have driven thousands of Central Americans abroad, mainly to the United States.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reported in an August 2008 study that poverty had risen since early 2007 from 51.4 to 59.4 percent of the population in Guatemala; from 35.1 to 41.7 percent in El Salvador; from 69.5 to 73.4 percent in Honduras; and from 41.5 to 46.8 percent in Nicaragua.

José Santos, manager of a sausage company, told IPS that he uses two cell phones, one for work and the other for personal matters.

“It facilitates my business dealings,” said Santos. “I hook up through the company’s telephone network, which is cheaper.”

He added, however, that he believes people have too many cell phones, which he said “cause stress and undermine privacy.”

Santos admitted that most Salvadorans fall into the “advertising trap” and that many people use their cell phones for “insignificant conversations,” and give mobile phones even to their youngest children without gauging the effects on the family budget.

In the last five years, companies have stepped up their advertising in the media as well as in movie theatres and by means of leaflets handed out on the streets or at sales stands in shopping centres.

Salvadorans are easy prey, “because we live for appearances,” said anthropologist Ramón Rivas. “If our neighbour buys a car, we want to buy one that’s more expensive or better, and the same thing goes for cell phones. The most important thing, family welfare, is left aside.”

This way of thinking leads to “a world of competition, of illusions, where the most important thing is to prove that I am better than the next,” according to Rivas, who said that companies exploit that tendency to sell their products.

This cultural pattern is driven by “family remittances, which have become a key support for the economy,” said Rivas.

According to the Central Reserve Bank (BCR), El Salvador received 3.45 billion dollars in expatriate remittances between January and November 2008, equivalent to 18 percent of GDP.

In greater San Salvador, it is common to see students, newspaper hawkers, bus drivers, street vendors, employees and executives holding their cell phones to their ears for minutes at a time or sending text messages.

A Spanish judge’s decision to investigate 14 Salvadoran military officers for the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador is a “sign of hope against impunity,” according to lawyers and activists.

In his resolution, which was seen by IPS, Madrid Judge Eloy Velasco stated that under the principle of universal jurisdiction he is competent to investigate 14 members of the Salvadoran army for their alleged participation in the Nov. 16, 1989 murder of the six priests, their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter.

The judge’s decision was in response to a lawsuit filed in November by two human rights groups, the Spanish Association for Human Rights (APDHE) and the San Francisco-based Centre for Justice and Accountability (CJA).

Almudena Bernabeú, a Spanish lawyer with the CJA, told IPS from San Francisco that she was very pleased that “the judge concurred that the officers can be tried for crimes against humanity and terrorism.”

David Morales, a lawyer at the Foundation for Studies on the Application of Rights (FESPAD), told IPS that “this is encouraging news in the effort to put an end to impunity in this country.”

Morales has been a plaintiff in several human rights cases, including one brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against the Salvadoran state for the March 1980 assassination of the Catholic archbishop of San Salvador Óscar Romero, who was killed while celebrating mass.

Romero was murdered by a death squad on the orders of Roberto D’Aubuisson, the late founder of the ruling right-wing Nationalist Republican Party (ARENA), according to the United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission created by the peace agreement that put an end to the 1980-1992 civil war.

Morales said the legal investigation into the Jesuits’ murders – one of the most notorious cases of human rights abuses committed during the armed conflict – will confirm that the 14 officers are guilty of the crime, as has “already been demonstrated,” and will show that Salvadoran courts have refused to bring them to trial.

The IACHR has accepted two complaints on the same case filed by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus).

In the Nov. 13 lawsuit they filed in Spain, the APDHE and CJA also accused former president Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994) of covering up the murders of the priests and the two women.

Morales said at the time that the case is “illustrative of what happened in El Salvador, and has an invaluable historical dimension in the context of the search for justice and reparations for the victims.”

Although Velasco did not accept the charge against Cristiani because covering up a crime against humanity does not fall under the principle of universal jurisdiction – which permits prosecution of the worst atrocities no matter where they were committed – grounds for investigating the former president could emerge during the judge’s probe, experts say.

In the early hours of Nov. 16, 1989, members of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl counterinsurgency battalion raided the San Salvador campus of the Jesuit University of Central America (UCA), killing six priests – five of whom were Spanish citizens – their housekeeper Elba Ramos and her daughter Celia Marisela Ramos.

The killings were committed during a military offensive in San Salvador by the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which is now a political party and the country’s leading opposition force.

Immediately after the murders, the Cristiani administration and the armed forces accused the FMLN, but later acknowledged army involvement.

Two of the nine members of the army accused of the crime, Yushi René Mendoza and Guillermo Benavides, were convicted in 1991. However, they were released only two years later, following approval of the amnesty law decreed by Cristiani in 1993, which is seen by Salvadoran and international human rights groups as an obstacle to justice.

Some 75,000 people – most of them civilians – were killed and 7,000 forcibly disappeared during El Salvador’s civil war, mainly by government troops and far-right paramilitaries.

President Antonio Saca – who like Cristiani is a member of ARENA, which has governed El Salvador since 1989 – said in November that the lawsuit would “reopen wounds of the past,” and that he thought very highly of Cristiani.

Armando Pérez, the head of the Committee of Relatives of Victims of Human Rights Violations (CODEFAM), told IPS that the judge’s decision is a sign of the effectiveness of the Spanish justice system, and “represents an advance in the fight for justice,” by contrast with the severe shortcomings of the Salvadoran justice system, which he said is caught up in party mentalities and loyalties.

Human rights groups and legal experts say the amnesty law and the lack of will on the part of prosecutors and judges have stood in the way of bringing those responsible for crimes against humanity to justice.

In the case of the Jesuits’ murders, the CJA chose to file the action in a Madrid court because Spain and El Salvador have an extradition agreement, and because Spain’s judges admit the principle of universal jurisdiction, already applied by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón to secure the 1998 arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), who died in 2006.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Salvadoran state to fully comply with its sentence in the case of the murder of businessman Mauricio García Prieto, and to put an end to threats and harassment of the victim’s parents by government agents.

The decision was handed down in response to the Salvadoran government’s advisory opinion request filed in March to seek an “interpretation” of the Inter-American Court December 2007 ruling that says the state should conclude the pending investigations into García Prieto’s homicide.

The Court said the investigations must be completed regardless of whether the statute of limitations on the murder has expired or the fact that El Salvador did not accept the competence of the Court until 1995, a year after García Prieto was killed.

Guadalupe de Espinoza, a lawyer with the Human Rights Institute at the University of Central America (IDHUCA) who is heading the process, explained that the Court reiterated its December 2007 verdict, which was not on the June 1994 murder, but referred to the lack of justice in the case and the threats and attacks suffered by José Mauricio and Gloria de García Prieto, the victim’s parents.

Under Salvadoran law, the statute of limitations runs out on a murder charge after 10 years.

On Jun. 10, 1994, Mauricio García Prieto, his wife and their five-month-old son were intercepted by two masked men outside of a relative’s house, one of whom shouted “We’ve come to kill you, son-of-a-bitch!” before shooting the businessman at point-blank range, according to witness testimony.

Human rights advocates and the García Prieto family said at the time that the murder was linked to a rash of death squad killings of former commanders of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which had recently become a legal political party.

The FMLN guerrillas demobilised after a 1992 peace agreement put an end to El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. Far-right death squads are blamed for the majority of the 75,000 killings and 8,000 forced disappearances committed during the armed conflict.

After the murder, the wealthy García Prieto family was in constant contact with police chiefs and prosecutors, but failed to obtain a satisfactory response about the progress of the investigation, which they say was marred by irregularities and served as a cover-up for those who ordered the killing.

Although two people are in prison for carrying out the murder, those who planned and ordered the killing have never been identified.

A few months after the murder, the victim’s parents began to receive threatening telephone calls, and noticed they were being followed.

Gloria de García Prieto alleged several years after the murder that a former army general was one of those who ordered her son killed, but conclusive evidence has not been found.

After the Inter-American Court handed down its initial ruling in December 2007, lawyer David Morales, who was working in the Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office (PDDH) at the time of the murder and led the investigation, said his office had concluded that García Prieto may have been killed by a death squad made up of members of the dismantled security forces who were purposely embedded in the National Civil Police (PNC) when it was created in 1993.

“Several police chiefs tried to hinder the investigation,” said Morales, who also represented the plaintiffs in the case against El Salvador being heard by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, involving the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero by far-right paramilitaries.

De Espinoza told IPS that the state has not complied with any of the verdict’s three points, but that the Human Rights Institute would press forward, to get the Salvadoran justice system to fully fulfill the sentence.

“The most important part of the sentence, without downplaying the rest, is for those responsible for the murder and the attacks on the victim’s parents to be brought to trial,” said de Espinoza, who is also the assistant director of IDHUCA.

“Until those responsible for the crimes are punished, there will be no justice,” she said.

The recent Court sentence, issued in late November, stipulates that the Salvadoran government must compensate the victim’s family for the legal costs incurred, and provide them with medical and psychological assistance. It also says the García Prieto family, members of IDHUCA and experts working on the case must be provided with protection according to the terms specified by the Court, and not as the government deems best.

In addition, the sentence must be published in the Official Gazette and at least one other national media outlet, said the Court.

The second sentence “is highly significant for Salvadoran justice” and is “a reference point for the fight against impunity,” said the victim’s mother.

This is the second ruling against El Salvador handed down by the Inter-American Court. The first was issued in March 2005 and involved the failure to bring to justice those responsible for the forced disappearance of two sisters, three-year-old Ernestina and seven-year-old Erlinda Serrano, at the hands of the army during a military counterinsurgency operation in 1982.

Human Rights Ombudsman Óscar Luna told IPS that in his annual report, he describes a deterioration of basic rights in 2008.

Of 2,485 complaints filed with his office, 1,603 are blamed on the National Civil Police. Among the most frequent charges against them are violations of individual security, excessive use of force and coercion.

“The fact that the PNC is the most frequent target of complaints is disturbing,” because it implies that the security of citizens is undermined by those who have the duty to protect them, said the official.

Gloria de García Prieto said the bugging of the family’s telephones and the harassment continue, although in a more sophisticated manner.

She clarified that they have not accepted the conditions in which the state has offered them protection because they found out that the agents “who supposedly would protect us were spying on us.

“They would come to our house just to listen to our conversations and identify who was visiting us. They were like the Trojan horse.

“How can we trust agents of the state if they are the ones who killed my son?” she asked.