· January, 2011

Stories about El Salvador from January, 2011

El Salvador: 19 Years Since Signing of Peace Agreements

  27 January 2011

Peace accords ending a Salvadoran civil conflict were signed 19 years ago on January 16, 1992. Although Salvadorans consider the peace agreements were an accomplishment, they feel the country has not achieved the peace, stability and reconciliation that was expected.

El Salvador: Transparency Law Stalled

  24 January 2011

A law that, “would have required government institutions, and private entities tied to the state, to make information available to the public without, necessarily, a formal request, by establishing an accessible database of information,” is stalled, as reported by Voices from El Salvador's Weblog.

El Salvador: Court System Employees on Strike Demand Higher Salaries

  21 January 2011

Court system employees have been on strike demanding raises for five days. Tim explains that, “As a consequence, more than a thousand court hearings have been cancelled, bodies have gone unidentified in the forensic medicine office, and more than 87 prisoners have been released for failure to have an initial...

El Salvador: A Decade Since the January 13 Earthquake

  13 January 2011

Hunnapuh [es] asks if El Salvador has learned “the lesson” 10 years after the January 13 earthquake. Blogger “Jjmar” answers the question reporting that construction companies still build homes in vulnerable places, and that people still purchase and live in these high-risk homes.

El Salvador: 10 Years with the US Dollar

  13 January 2011

Remembering 10 years since El Salvador began using the US Dollar as its currency, Tim from Tim's El Salvador Blog explains: “It would be fair to say that the move to the dollar has never been popular among the ordinary people of El Salvador.”

Latin America: Introducing “Multilatinas”

  11 January 2011

Ben from The Latin Americanist explains: “Multi-latinas are companies that operate across Latin America, primarily with Latin American capital, and that take advantage of their local expertise to find niches and beat international competitors.” He argues that Multilatinas are “one of the most positive developments” among the different agreements Latin...

Veterans in El Salvador and Guatemala

  10 January 2011

Mike writes about veterans: “When we talk about the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, we tend to measure the human costs into terms of the dead and the disappeared.  We forget that there are thousands of people, if not millions, who carry the wounds of war with them...

El Salvador: Political Violence in Cabañas

  5 January 2011

Voices from El Salvador's Weblog reports: “Another wave of political violence swept through Cabañas, El Salvador over the Christmas Holiday […] The tension between the local civil society organizations that led the anti-mining movement and local power structures continues to grow and result in threats and violence.”