From 2010 onwards, the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA) formed a link with MUFRAS-32 (Movimiento Unificado Francisco Sánchez – 1932) in El Salvador, supporting the latter’s projects through solidarity and financially. In 2022, unable to find sufficient funds of its own to support a MUFRAS-32 project designed to stimulate the production of organic crops in the municipality of San Isidro (Department of Cabañas, El Salvador), ENCA applied to the Unicorn Grocery for funding for the project. In 2023, the application was accepted and the project went ahead.
In February 2024, on behalf of ENCA, Liz Richmond visited El Salvador and met up with Hector Berrios and Zenayda Serrano, the two main protagonists of the MUFRAS-32 project. Her report to ENCA and the Unicorn Grocery is split into two parts:
- A general background to the Salvadoran socio-economic and political situation in which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like MUFRAS-32 have to operate. This part of the report will be uploaded onto the ENCA website (enca.org.uk ) and will be included as a stand-alone item in the website of The Violence of Development (www.theviolenceofdevelopment.com ). A copy of the report will also be sent to the Unicorn Grocery.
- A report more specifically directed at the progress of the MUFRAS-32 project funded by the Unicorn Grocery. This part of the report is intended for inclusion in the next edition of the ENCA Newsletter (No. 92), and a copy will also be sent to the Unicorn Grocery.
By Liz Richmond (ENCA member)
September 2024
MUFRAS-32 is a community-minded environmental political lobbying group, formed in 2001, based in the San Isidro Municipality in the Department of Cabañas, El Salvador. The organisation supports local efforts in rural areas to improve the quality of life of residents and works to promote and defend human and environmental rights and prevent harmful ‘developments’.
Its members seek social and environmental justice via political activism and community organisation, training, and awareness raising, along with the production of organically grown vegetables to promote the protection and defence of strategic resources, such as water and soil, whilst caring for the consumer’s health in local communities.
Brief summary of El Salvador’s political, social and environmental contexts
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele remains in presidency since the February 2024 election, despite the constitution prohibiting a second term in office. His government implemented a state of emergency from 27 March 2022, which has been granted repeated extensions to date, which restricts the right to protest, or gather, to be informed of rights and have access to a lawyer. It extends the time that someone can be held without charges to 15 days.
Human rights groups, nationally and internationally, report that the authorities have committed widespread human rights violations in arresting thousands due to alleged gang activity; however, many have no discernible links to gang crime and are law-abiding citizens. Others have been forced to collaborate by the major gangs, and there are links to some state involvement with the gangs. Abuses include mass arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment in detention, and due process violations. Deprivation of liberty can be due to anonymous telephone calls (tip-offs), any crimes which previously would have been attributed to gangs, minor arguments, or for having tattoos, or previously being booked by the police, or to meet the detention quotas of the police or the Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador/FAES).
El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world and recently built a mega-prison – Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism, as detailed in ENCA 87 (https://enca.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ENCA-87.pdf ).
Cristosal, a national human rights organisation (who have had to relocate to Costa Rica) has documented deplorable prison conditions, torture cases and over 265 deaths in custody. Arrests are calculated to be almost 80,000 at July 2024 since the state of emergency. Amnesty International states that the suspension of fundamental human rights “is an action that cannot be justified under any circumstances or in any context.”
Zenayda Serrano and Hector Berrios of MUFRAS-32 say that Bukele, founder of the political party ‘Nuevas Ideas’, poses as a ‘saviour’ and provides a false sense of security to the people in answer to violent gang crime, as opinion polls demonstrate. Whilst the streets appear to be safe, the militarism associated with the state of emergency allows the regime to exert a permanent measure of repression, to violate human rights with impunity and to contravene the constitution. Thousands of innocent people are detained with a presumption of guilt. Zenayda’s elderly father was detained, due to alleged money laundering from his farming supplies shop, and it took 18 days to gain his release. He confirmed abysmal prison conditions, including lack of hygiene and medication, despite him having hypertension, and food served to multiple inmates in one bowl.
Zenayda and Hector report underhand tactics prior to the February 2024 election, including free food parcels delivered to poor communities, and school shoes, uniforms, laptops and free meals for school pupils. However, they remind us that the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberación Nacional) when in government had passed the law to secure this provision to schools and pupils. Electoral corruption was believed to be high, and 62% of people did not vote for fear of, or lack of faith in, the system, and there are reportedly errors in the electoral system.
Amnesty International (AI) warns that El Salvador is experiencing the “gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence”.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/el-salvador
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-68244963
They spoke further of the human rights challenges under the state of emergency, exacerbated by poverty, social exclusion, and socio-political pressures. There is limited transparency and accountability. Femicides and violence against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) people are common. They regularly hear of abuses committed against children and young people, some as young as 10 years of age, forced to have sex with military personnel in exchange for not being arrested or imprisoned. Those detained are reportedly as young as 12 years of age. There are regular disappearances, and these include children and young people. Genocide Watch report 6,443 disappeared persons since Bukele came to power in 2019, of which one-third have not been found, and 327 reports of forced disappearances since the state of emergency began in March 2022. On 21 August 2024, several non-governmental organisations launched a registry of disappeared persons in El Salvador. https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/ngos-start-registry-of-disappeared-persons-in-el-salvador#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20most%20recent,6%2C443%20reports%20of%20disappeared%20persons.
In June 2021, the congress approved Bukele’s proposal for the use of Bitcoin, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies, to become legal tender in El Salvador. This moves the currency from a form of payment that businesses can choose to accept, as it was already legally accepted, to one that they have to accept. This has severe financial and environmental consequences, as reported in ENCA 82. https://theviolenceofdevelopment.com/bukele-eyes-bitcoin-to-renew-el-salvadors-economic-independence-but-the-economic-and-environmental-impacts-might-not-add-up/
References
Latin America News Dispatch, 6 February 2023, El Salvador
Sara Acosta, 3 February 2023, ‘El Salvador builds largest prison in the Americas’, EFE Online News Editor
Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS), ‘What the ‘state of exception’ means in El Salvador’
El Salvador Solidarity Network (ESNET), ‘El Salvador’s State of Exception’
Ekö (SumOfUs), 10.03.23, ‘El Salvador’, petition.