11. El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the
Global War on Terror
Sources:
NACLA–Upside Down World, August 24, 2007
Title: “El Salvador: Water Inc. and the Criminalization of Protest”
Author: Jason Wallach
The Nation, December 31, 2007
Title: “GWOT: El Salvador”
Author: Wes Enzinna
Peacework, September 2007
Title: “Salvadoran Activists Targeted with US-Style Repression”
Author: Chris Damon
In These Times, November 13, 2007
Title: “El Salvador’s Patriot Act”
Author: Jacob Wheeler
Inter Press Service, August 19, 2007
Title: “El Salvador: Spectre of War Looms After 15 Years of Peace”
Author: Raul Gutierrez
Student Researchers: Juana Som and Andrea Lochtefeld
Faculty Evaluator: Jeffrey Reeder, PhD
Salvadoran police violently captured community leaders and residents
at a July 2007 demonstration against the privatization of El Salvador’s
water supply and distribution systems. Close range shooting of rubber
bullets and tear gas was used against community members for protesting
the rising cost, and diminishing access and quality, of local water
under privatization. Fourteen were arrested and charged with terrorism,
a charge that can hold a sixty-year prison sentence, under El Salvador’s
new “Anti-terrorism Law,” which is based on the USA PATRIOT
Act. While criminalization of political expression and social protest
signals an alarming danger to the peace and human rights secured by
Salvadorans since its brutal twelve-year civil war, the US government
publicly supports the Salvadoran government and the passage of the draconian
anti-terrorism law that took effect October 2006.
Salvadorans, however, maintain that fighting for water is a right,
not a crime.
The conflict that confronted the small community of Santa Eduviges
over their demand that their water system be de-privatized and put under
the National Water and Sewage Administration’s (ANDA) control stands
to be repeated now that right-wing deputies in El Salvador’s Legislative
Assembly are threatening to pass a controversial General Water Law.
The legislation calls for water administration to shift from the national
to the municipal level and requires local governments to sign over water
management through “concessions” — or contracts with
private firms—for up to fifty years. The proposed law has become
a lightning rod for opposition from community groups and social organizations
who say it amounts to a privatization of the country’s water system.
El Salvador’s water workers union (SETA) accuses the government
of engaging in a plan to discredit the state agency in order to justify
privatization. ANDA’s budget was slashed by 15 percent in 2005,
falling to its lowest level in a decade, a perplexing reduction in a
country where 40 percent of rural Salvadorans have no access to potable
water.
SETA took out half-page ads in the nation’s two biggest daily
newspapers opposing the General Water Law, which according to the ad
“would privatize water and condemn thousands of our compatriots
to suffer thirst for the inability to pay.”
SETA members point to the devastating results of the recent privatizations
of the country’s telecommunications and electricity sectors, which
led to the firing of thousands of workers. Many of these workers were
forced to re-apply for the same jobs at half the pay with none of the
state-provided benefits.
Privately run water concessions in Latin America have a terrible track
record. The most notorious example occurred with a project imposed by
the World Bank in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The Bank made delivery of a loan
conditional on the privatization of the country’s largest water
systems. When the Cochabamba water services concession ran by the US-based
Bechtel Corporation raised household water bills by 200 percent, it
sparked a civil uprising that forced the company to leave the country
and the water system to be put under public control (Censored
2001, #1).
After Cochabamba, the World Bank retired the word “privatization”
and replaced it with terms like “concessions” and “decentralization,”
or “private sector participation.” But critics say whatever
the euphemism, the end result is the same: higher rates, lower quality,
and less access.
Outcry from international human rights organizations led to the release
of the Santa Eduviges activists, after nearly a month of imprisonment.
But instead of loosening their grip, in August of 2007, President Saca
and his ultra right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance Party (ARENA)
pushed through penal code reforms that changed disorderly conduct from
a misdemeanor to a felony. Three weeks later, the government arrested
eight leaders of a nurses’ trade union for striking against the
privatization of healthcare services and lack of medicine. If convicted,
the union leaders could face eight years in prison under El Salvador’s
new “Patriot Act.”
“The objective of these anti-terrorist laws isn’t to fight
terrorism, because there haven’t been acts of terrorism here in
many years,” says Pedro Juan Hernandez, a professor of economics
at the University of El Salvador and an activist. He says the new law’s
objective is to “criminalize the social movement and imprison community
leaders.”
The Salvadoran social activists fighting for water access, healthcare
and education, and now the right to protest, have seen enough war, says
Hernandez. “But the origins of the violence are in the politics,
the unemployment, and the government’s policies against the population,”
he explains. “We are back to the level we were when the armed conflict
began.”
Washington’s support for these repressive measures comes at a
time when El Salvador is the only Latin American country with troops
still in Iraq and was the first to sign the Central American Free Trade
Agreement. Adoption of a US-based Patriot Act and the housing of the
controversial US-run International Law Enforcement Academy (see Story
#4) establish Saca as a strong US ally in the increasingly militarized
neo-liberal agenda in Latin America—sometimes understandably confused
with the Global War on Terror.
UPDATE BY JACOB WHEELER
So much of the destruction wrought upon the people of El Salvador during
the second half of the twentieth century originated in Washington —
corporate land grabs, environmental destruction, abuse of workers, death
squads and counterinsurgency, harmful trade pacts and stunted democratic
movements — and yet, a positive new chapter to El Salvador’s
history may be written in early 2009. For the first time since the Peace
Accords were signed in 1992, ending El Salvador’s brutal, twelve-year
civil war, the progressive Farabundo Martí National Liberation
Front (FMLN) party has a reasonable shot at winning power in national
elections (the parliamentary election will take place in January 2009,
followed by the presidential election in March). As of late spring 2008,
the FMLN held a comfortable lead over the incumbent, right-wing ARENA
party, which has perpetuated the same harmful policies that led to civil
war in 1980.
If it gains power, FMLN is expected to stop the disastrous privatization
of healthcare and water access, restore workers’ rights, fight
to amend trade deals so that they benefit more than just wealthy corporations,
end El Salvador’s participation in the occupation of Iraq, and,
in general, follow the path paved by pragmatically progressive Latin
American governments — such as those of Lula in Brazil and Correa
in Ecuador, instead of the fiery, combative style of Chávez in
Venezuela. FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes has made one thing
clear: Washington is not going anywhere, and despite the scars of the
past, he’s willing to work with George W. Bush’s successor.
I’ll be penning a series of stories in late 2008 and early 2009
about El Salvador’s upcoming elections for In These Times. In them
I hope to broadcast the voices of those who are rarely heard, chronicle
the evolution of the Salvadoran progressive movement — from guerilla
rebels, to grassroots organizers, to politicians ready to seize San
Salvador — and influence the way both independent and mainstream
media in the United States cover these important elections. Please look
for future coverage of El Salvador in our magazine and at http://www.InTheseTimes.com.
UPDATE BY WES ENZINNA
Since the publication of my article, and following an international
outcry by human rights observers, the charges against the thirteen protestors
arrested in Suchitoto have been dropped. The judge presiding over the
case, Ana Lucila Fuentes de Paz — who I later discovered had been
trained at the US-run International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in
San Salvador — ruled that there was not enough evidence to convict
the protestors. Under the “Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism,”
the protestors faced up to eighty years in prison.
Despite this positive ruling, however, the story of the Suchitoto 13
does not end happily. On May 3, nineteen-year-old Hector Antonio Ventura
— one of the thirteen arrested and charged in the Suchitoto case
— was murdered in the town of Villa Verde. Ventura was beaten in
the head and fatally stabbed in the heart by unknown assailants.
There is considerable suspicion that the killing was politically motivated,
and Ventura’s murder followed a spate of political assassinations
against leftist activists in El Salvador, among them the January slaying
of FMLN mayor Wilber Funes. Further, the killing occurred just two days
after Ventura had agreed to give testimony of his experience at a public
‘Day Against Impunity,’ planned for July 2, 2008, by the mayor
of Suchitoto. “Given his role as one of the accused in the high-profile
anti-terrorism case,” writes a member of the Committee in Solidarity
with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), “Ventura’s death
could likely be politically motivated.”
Members of the Salvadoran human rights community are demanding a full
investigation of Ventura’s death, yet the government has not been
forthcoming about such an investigation. Political crimes often go uninvestigated
in El Salvador, and many critics say that ARENA has contributed to the
climate of impunity by prosecuting leftist activists, such as the vendors
and Suchitoto 13, while ignoring cases of alleged political violence.
The 2009 presidential election represents the biggest possibility for
the Salvadoran public to reject by electoral means ARENA’s “iron
fist” policies. Indeed, many analysts predict an FMLN victory in
March. However, while many observers look hopefully toward the March
elections, other critics claim ARENA has been engaged in electoral fraud.
In particular, the ruling party has been accused of manipulating census
numbers in FMLN strongholds such as Santa Tecla, Soyapango, and Las
Vueltas, in order to deny FMLN candidates of government funds. Further,
on May 9, 2008, Walter Aruajo, ARENA representative and head of El Salvador’s
Supreme Electoral Tribunal, announced new restrictions for international
election observers. The new restrictions, Aruajo explained, “intend
to regulate that no group of observers come and take part in political
activity in the country.” “Meddling in the electoral process,”
he continued, will result in expulsion from the country.
Critics worry the absence of a clear definition of “meddling”
could leave the door open for the arbitrary application of these new
restrictions, and more generally, they worry that these moves foreshadow
an effort by ARENA to protect its electoral power through the creation
and enforcement of self-serving and constitutionally questionable laws.
UPDATE BY CHRIS DAMON
In the year following the arrest of fourteen social movement activists
in Suchitoto, there have been gains for the Salvadoran social movement,
which launched unified, concerted actions to overturn the law and to
achieve the unconditional liberty of the detainees; however, there have
also been significant losses.
Thirteen of the original fourteen activists arrested spent twenty-six
days under detention in the main men’s and women’s prisons.
As a result of prison overcrowding, for some this meant going without
a bed and having to purchase water for bathing and drinking. The thirteen
were released July 27, 2007, under conditional terms that prevented
them from traveling outside the country pending the presentation of
further evidence against them by the state.
This waiting period extended for seven months, finally ending on February
8, 2008, at which point the state attempted to quietly change the charges
from “Acts of Terrorism” to “Public Disorder and Aggravated
Damages.” Given this change, the Special Tribune appointed to handle
terrorism charges transferred the case to the regular judicial system.
An audience was held February 19 for which the States Attorney’s
office failed to show up to present their case leading the presiding
judge to grant definitive liberty to all fourteen defendants due to
the lack of charges or evidence presented. Despite an appeal by the
States Attorney, the ruling was upheld on April 4.
Jubilation over these victories was short lived, given that on the
night of May 2 one of the former defendants, Hector Antonio Ventura,
was murdered as he slept in his small village of Valle Verde, Suchitoto.
While no one has been arrested or charged in the murder, both the media
and authorities have characterized the death as related to the epidemic
of gang crime which plagues the country, the most violent in Latin America.
However, the murders of activists like Ventura have caused human rights
organizations to take notice. On May 12, the Foundation for the Study
of Law Application (FESPAD), together with other social movement organizations,
presented the case as the central element of a formal request to the
States Attorney’s office to investigate this and fourteen other
murders that they argue may represent the use of gang elements to commit
political assassinations. They cite the “Combined Group for the
Investigation of Illegal Armed Groups with Political Motivations”
(1994), which established criteria for determining the probability of
political motivation in a given crime: modus operandi, characteristics
of the victim, and level of impunity achieved by the authors. Since
the initial release of FESPAD’s list of fifteen suspicious murders,
the list has been expanded to nineteen.
As of yet there has been no official response to these demands. And
the controversial Anti-Terrorism Legislation remains in effect.
UPDATE BY RAUL GUTIERREZ
I strongly believe that it is important for Salvadoran society to be
informed adequately on developments such as those that happened in Suchitoto
on July 2, 2007, since that confrontation represented a strong risk
for the country’s political stability and democratic coexistence
— particularly after the achievement of 1992 peace accords that
left behind twelve years of war, 75,000 deaths, and 8,000 disappeared.
From my perspective, independent journalism should provide Salvadorans
in-depth information and analysis on the national reality based above
all on ethics, giving voice to those mostly unheard.
Meanwhile, the assassination of Héctor Ventura — one of
those arrested during the protest in Suchitoto — on May 2 has added
more fear among those detained in Suchitoto, according to David Morales,
one of the accused defendants, who then worked for Tutela Legal (Legal
Guardians), a human rights agency of the Roman Catholic Church, and
now is member of the Foundation for the Study of Law Application (FESPAD).
The fourteen detainees who were arrested during the demonstration spent
twenty-seven days in jail under charges of “acts of terrorism.”
Lorena Martínez, president of the Association for Development
in El Salvador (CRIPDES) and one of those jailed, reported that Ventura
was stabbed in his heart while visiting a friend near Suchitoto. Ventura’s
friend was also injured during the attack but now is recuperating.
“We believe this was a political attack; first of all, we were
accused of being terrorists and during detention our human rights were
cynically violated,” stated Martínez. When asked if the
crime could be part of the country’s circle of violence, she replied:
“It could be.”
The community leader said that the charges against the fourteen protesters
went on for nine months and finally on April 16, a court dropped the
charges against all the accused.
“It was a very tough experience; I could never have imagined being
in jail in time of peace without committing any crime whatsoever,”
Martínez explained, and added that mass detention “was part
of the Salvadoran Government plan to criminalize social unrest which
seeks to intimidate people.”
On the other hand, it seems there was no direct response to the article
published on Inter Press Service. Nevertheless, I have to point out
that most mainstream media coverage was biased, and in most cases only
used government accounts of the confrontation. Further, some media did
not cover police aggressions against protesters, journalists, and town
residents not participating in the demonstration. The detention of Haydé
Chicas, press officer of CRIPDES, while documenting the arrest of three
coworkers, was aired by some media implying that she had been part of
a protest that had blocked the road minutes before.
Anyone wanting further information regarding Suchitoto developments
may contact the following persons:
Lorena Martínez, president of the Association for the Development
of El Salvador; (503) 226-3717; http://www.cripdes.org
David Morales, defendant of those arrested in Suchitoto; (503) 236-1888