Stories about El Salvador from January, 2011
El Salvador: Court System Employees End Strike
Judiciary workers have concluded a week-long strike requesting higher salaries. Voices from El Salvador's Weblog summarizes how the strike ended and its impact.
El Salvador: 19 Years Since Signing of Peace Agreements
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
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
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: President Funes Prohibits Campaigning by Government Officials
Taking into consideration that 2011 will be a pre-electoral year and that during 2012 El Salvador will be in full presidential campaign mode, President Mauricio Funes has said he will not allow his officials to campaign. This has caused diverse reactions in the Salvadoran blogosphere.
El Salvador: A Decade Since the January 13 Earthquake
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
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.”
El Salvador: Top Stories of 2010
Tim's El Salvador Blog shares a roundup of what Tim considers the top stories of 2010 from El Salvador.
Latin America: Introducing “Multilatinas”
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
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
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.”
Latin America: Homicide Rates Show Several Countries “More Dangerous than Mexico”
Bloggings by Boz argues that “the intense US and global media focus on Mexico's violence risks missing the ‘more dangerous than Mexico’ countries.” He shares statistics that show that Honduras, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia and Jamaica have higher homicide rates than Mexico.