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El Salvador Bounces Back After War, Quake, Eruption
FrontLines - March 2010
By Angela Rucker
In El Salvador, there
is much talk about
what has come after.
After the 12-year civil war
that began in 1980 and claimed
perhaps 75,000 lives. After the
destructive, 7.7 magnitude
earthquake in January 2001, and
the 6.6 quake the following
month. After the Santa Ana volcano
erupted in 2005 and forced
hundreds to evacuate. And after
last November’s mudslides displaced
15,000 people and buried
many buildings.
USAID responded quickly
to the devastation from the
mudslides, which President
Mauricio Funes called
“incalculable.” |
Ana Marisol Mendez de Franco is
part of USAID’s Mediation Project,
an effort to resolve disputes before
they grow out of hand. Death threats
are the top complaints that lead to
mediation in a country that still bears
some emotional scars from its 12-year-old
civil war. A lawyer by training, de
Franco says the best part of her job is
when the two parties reach an amicable
conclusion and leave satisfied.
|
“We were the first ones on
the ground when they needed
it,” said the director of
USAID’s El Salvador office,
Larry Brady. “The groundwork
we laid is really paying dividends
now.”
Sitting between Guatemala,
Honduras, and the Pacific
Ocean, El Salvador is known as
the Land of Volcanoes for its
frequent and unpredictable seismic
activities. It also has a reputation
as a survivor—of natural
and manmade disasters.
With a population of 7 million,
the smallest of the Central
American countries is on the
rise although economic progress
still hasn’t reached many
in rural areas.
Last year’s election of leftist
Funes—the first president
from his FMLN party since the
end of the civil war—brings
with it some uncertainty for
U.S. and USAID initiatives.
The biggest challenge the
country faces is that El Salvador
leads the Western Hemisphere in
homicides. “There were 26
homicides last weekend,” Brady
said in a mid-January interview
with FrontLines. The figure is
typical for any weekend there.
The country is
home to an estimated
25,000 gang members.
And they exert significant
power in the
communities where
they live, extorting
business owners and
others and creating
mayhem and fear.
They are entrenched,
and most officials
believe they are a threat
to El Salvador’s overall
security as well as economic
and social
development.
“It’s just tragic,”
said Brady, noting that
the Salvadoran government
is working
with U.S. agencies
such as the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, State
Department, Drug Enforcement
Administration, and USAID to
address the problem. USAID’s
efforts focus on prevention in
addition to social and economic
development.
“We work on the soft side;
they work on the hard side,” he
said. “It is going to take a concerted,
multifaceted effort by the
United States and the Salvadoran
government.”
In the 1990s, after a spate of
kidnappings, citizens got fed up
and the government formed an
anti-kidnapping unit to go after
the criminals. This could happen
again.
Meanwhile, the USAIDbacked
Mediation Project is
addressing the culture of confrontation
by attempting to
resolve conflicts before they
reach the formal court system.
In its first year a decade ago,
the project had six cases. Last
year there were 38,285 mediation
cases in multiple settings, including
at the public defender and
attorney general office levels and
in secondary schools and universities.
The largest category of cases that reach mediation centers
is death threats. Other kinds
of cases include fraud, theft,
injury, damage, and various
types of confiscation, such as
land disputes.
“Mediation takes on a
larger role and is really promoting
a cultural change,” said
Eva Patricia Rodriguez Bellegarrigue,
chief of party for
USAID’s project.
“It’s a tool in a society where
we were not trained for democratic
dialogue,” she said. “We
think that expanding mediation
also builds a strong democracy.”
Separately, USAID’s El
Salvador office is promoting
exports, economic development,
education, health care,
and eco-friendly production.
Brady said what often gets
overlooked in the country is its
turnaround since the war’s end
nearly two decades ago.
“The untold story here is
what USAID did to bring the
rebels to the peace table in the
1990s,” Brady said, “and what
we did to ensure the benefits
of a free and democratic
process.”
★
FrontLines writer Angela Rucker wrote this series of articles following a trip to El Salvador in January. All photos by Angela Rucker.
FrontLines is published
by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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Material should be submitted
by mail to Editor, FrontLines, USAID,
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