By Jana Barney, Boston CISPES and KristinParks, Bay Area CISPES

From April 27 to May 7 of 2007 wehad the opportunity to be two of 16 delegates, representing eight U.S. cities andtwo European countries, from CISPES. The delegation traveled to El Salvador and met with an array of socialorganizations, government officials, and FMLN deputies as well as experts onthe political, social, and economic dynamics of El Salvador. The delegation wascomposed of people from the non-profit, healthcare and technology sectors, aswell as artists, veterans, students, scientists, and teachers. We met threegroups nearly every day, and were blown away by the level of the trust theSalvadoran people granted to us. Many of us came to ElSalvador to put a face to our solidarity work, and wereastounded at the cohesion among social groups in El Salvador.

                   The Womens Secretariat

The main objective of the FMLNWomens Secretariat in their campaign towards El Salvadors 2009 elections is toreach out to women, particularly in rural areas, and politically educate andempower them. The Secretariat fights an uphill battle against sexiststereotypes, fear, limited education, culturally enforced gender roles, andfamilial expectations that specifically affect women. One approach they use foroutreach is to go door to door during the day when women are more likely to behome with children and can engage fully. Another method is to draw women into apublic space to do artisan skill-building activities such as knitting orcrafts. These meetings, politically innocuous at first, gradually stimulateconsciousness raising conversations relating to their socio-economic status andthe countrys politics.

May Day San Salvador:70,000 in the Streets!

On May 1, 2007, San Salvador, wejoined nearly 100,000 Salvadorans for the May Day March: organized unions,DVD/CD vendors, students, teachers, health care workers, agriculturalcooperatives, organized sex workers, women against domestic violence, LGBTactivists, and the FMLN. Children marched in cardboard water droplet costumesthat read no privatizar and elderly women adorned in crimson FMLN apparelsold bags of water and passed out photocopied literature.

The intricate level of organizationin the social movement of El Salvadoris well represented in the May Day March in San Salvador. In the months leading up to themarch, it was decided that unions would lead the march, followed by the broadersocial movement. The FMLN brought up the tail of the march, demonstrating theFrentes supportive relationship with social movements. The May Day March istestimony to the extent and diversity of people and social groups who areaffected by oppression, as well as their alliance to fight againstprivatization, free trade, repression, and multinational corporate interest.

Water Workers Host Public Forums to Stop Privatization

Several days after the march, theCISPES delegation traveled to the department of Morazan to accompany SETA in awater forum, one of SETAs 80 in the past year. The union organizers haveworked long unpaid hours traveling around the country to raise consciousnessand mobilize El Salvadorscitizens about the precarious status of their right to water. One speakerexclaimed, We must stop privatization, not tomorrow but now, or else they willeven privatize love. Another cried out that people can live with out cellphones, they can live with out electricity, but they cannot live with outwater.

The proposed legislation wouldprivatize not only water from public water systems, but water from streams,natural bodies of water and small wells on private land. The public watersystem in El Salvadorhas already started a process of decentralization, wherein municipalities aregiven responsibility for their water system without financial support, andmost, out of financial burden, are forced to sell to private companies.Although it is clear that the road ahead against water privatization will belong and difficult, it is clear that SETA will continue their struggle topreserve their countrys human right to water.

Visiting the InternationalLaw EnforcementAcademy

The 2007 CISPES delegation was thefirst CISPES group to tour the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) and meet with ILEA officials (seerelated article on the ILEA for more history). It was difficult to suddenly beface to face with men of power, whose job is to further oppress themarginalized and struggling faces with whom we had been meeting with all week. Thestaff of the ILEA claimed that their institution is completely transparent.However, our requests for any sort of documentation of the schools operations,including course descriptions, a list of instructors, and a list of students,were all denied.

When confronted about records ofhuman rights abuses in the National Police Academy (PNC), the ILEA staff deniedthis, but admitted that, If the PNC is corrupt, everything we do here istainted and the ILEA would have to disassociate from the PNC. These statementscame hours before the Diario CoLatino printed a front page story about 8 casesin which the PNC is connected to deathsquad-style murders in 2006. The days before our meeting with the ILEA, El SalvadorsHuman Rights Ombudswoman, Beatrice DeCarillo informed us that a great majorityof the human rights abuses reported to her office are complaints against thePNC.

Our visit to the ILEA reinforcedhow important it is for us to carry the lessons of El Salvadors social movement home.The Salvadoran organizers we met with are diligent in the face of their ownexclusion from political spaces. In El Salvador,U.S. policies andinstitutions are active oppressors; as people in the U.S., it is our responsibility toeducate ourselves about our governments domestic and international policies,as well as the impact that our own privilege has on other peoples humanrights. Organizing in the UnitedStates can be difficult because manyactivists do not fight against neoliberalism out of a need for basic human rightslike water, food and healthcare; we fight out of choice, out of consciousness,and even out of guilt. One of our biggest challenges is to develop ways to raise consciousness about U.S.imperialism in communities that do not already have this analysis, takinginspiration from the creative strategies of groups like the WomensSecretariat.