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Who is
Sister Cities?
The U.S.-El Salvador
Sister Cities Network is a grass-roots organization of U.S. citizens and
residents who have ongoing partnerships with small rural communities in El Salvador. Those
partnerships began in 1986 as a citizen-based response to the U.S. intervention in El Salvador’s civil war.
Today, twenty sister cities from across the United States are paired with
Salvadoran communities in six of El Salvador’s fourteen
provinces through our sister organization, the Association for the Development
of El Salvador, CRIPDES.
Sister
Cities works to connect and strengthen movements for social justice in the U.S. and El Salvador by sharing
experiences, support, and accompaniment. We strive to build a new kind of
globalization, one built from the ground up and united by human values of
justice and solidarity.
Sister Cities Programs:
Sister Cities works to connect and strengthen
movements for social justice in the U.S. and El Salvador by sharing experiences, support,
and accompaniment. We strive to build a new kind of globalization, one
built from the ground up and united by human values of justice and
solidarity.
Sister Cities History
►During the US Government backed
Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980´s which left more than 70,000 dead, Sister
Cities joined the repopulation work of CRIPDES (then the Christian Committee for the Displaced), morally and physically accompanying communities as they returned home from refugee camps in Honduras and other regions of El Salvador to communities still threatened and persecuted by the Salvadoran military.
►With the signing of the Peace
Accords in 1992, Sister Cities accompanied the Salvadoran organized communities of CRIPDES in the process
of democratization and reconstruction of their country for a peaceful
future, implementing and protecting the political gains granted by the Peace Accord agreements.
►In more recent years, Sister Cities
has responded to natural disasters that have devastated El Salvador, such as Hurricane Mitch in 1998
and the devastating earthquakes of 2001.
►In 2003-2004, Sister Cities brought
people concerned about Free Trade policy together with Salvadoran communities
in denouncing exclusive Free Trade Agreements such as CAFTA and played an active role in the Stop-CAFTA Coalition, which continues to monitor and report on the effects of CAFTA in Central America and the United States (www.stopcafta.org).
►In 2005, communities in the northern province of Chalatenango began organizing against the
threat to community lands, resources, and health posed by newly arrived Canadian, US, and Australian gold mining companies. Sister Cities began advocating for and working in solidarity to support the communities in their right to self-determination in the face of international gold mining interests.
►Since last July 2007, Sister Cities
has effectively advocated for the human rights of social movement leaders accused
of terrorism by the Salvadoran Government for peaceful protest, working in solidarity with CRIPDES and the broader Salvadoran social movement to reverse the serious human rights violations committed in the case of the "Suchitoto 14".
►Today, Sister Cities is made up of 16 Sister City projects and many individuals across the
country who carry out our ongoing work for justice, dignity and
self-determination through physical, moral, and political accompaniment.
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