The Presidential Candidates in the Nov 24th election

Daily Updates on the Elections — How to Stay Informed

With El Salvador’s second round of presidential elections just one week away, the coalition of solidarity organizations has created a website with up-to-the-moment news about the electoral context and updates from observation sites on voting day.  Sister Cities is one of the organiozations that will be sending news this week and throughout the day on […]

Updates from Honduras After Fraudulent Presidential Elections

In the last two weeks the executive published some 80 decrees and Congress approved some 20 new laws and a great quantity of reform proposals to the Honduran legislation – that is more than in 2012 and 2013 together and hasn’t been seen since 1982! Here are some of the highlights of those reforms: Among these reforms is […]

Sister Cities Electoral Observation Delegation to Arrive for Presidential Elections

Sister Cities has brought electoral observation delegations to El Salvador for 20 years since the first presidential elections following the Peace Accords in 1994 to advocate for transparency of the democratic process and to support the communities of our partner organization, CRIPDES. Now, 20 years and 4 presidential terms later, a delegation of 10 individuals […]

A Summary of El Salvador´s Electoral Context and US Intervention

By Cori Ring, Sister Cities Volunteer   For the United States government, Central America remains a key strategic region for a variety of factors, including US business interests couched in terms of ¨progress and development¨ and the continuing ¨War on Drugs¨ that provides a convenient and important justification for continued US military aid to countries […]

Solidarity Organizations Announce Electoral Observers and US Neutrality

In anticipation of the electoral observer delegations arriving in the coming weeks, Sister Cities together with four other Solidarity organizations held a press conference today to announce the arrival and mission of the observers, as well as to reiterate the neutrality of the United States in El Salvador´s presidential elections, coming up on February 2nd.  […]

Sister Cities Volunteer Reflects on Immigration and Immigrants

By Catie Johnston, former volunteer in San Vicente and new Sister Cities Co-Coordinator This weekend I went down to Houston to visit my host brother.  The last time I saw him he was riding into the sunset in the back of a pickup truck, leaving El Salvador to try for the American Dream.  I stood […]

U.S. Ambassador Forced to Make Neutrality Statement after 51 Congresspeople Sign Letter to State Department

Today, Tuesday December 17th, readers of one of the largest newspapers in El Salvador, La Prensa Grafica, may have been surprised to see a unique headline-“United States Neutral in 2014 Elections“. The headline and the two-full pages of coverage on the 2nd and 3rd pages of the newspaper were a result of the effort of […]

SC Coordinator Alex Early with scholarship students participating in a mural painting workshop

Departing SC Coordinator Urges Supporters to Give their Hearts for a more Just El Salvador

December 2013   Greetings Amigos and Amigas of Sister Cities, As some of you may know, in January I will be leaving my post as Sister Cities Co-Coordinator here in El Salvador. For the past four years, I have had the pleasure of working with our committees in Crystal Lake, Binghamton, Arlington, Chicago, Lawrence, Wichita […]

First Days in Chilama, La Libertad

From our volunteer Cori Ring-Martinez’s blog, Learning from Mi Pueblo. Check it out for more updates on Chilama and El Salvador!     As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been in El Salvador now for two months, and I have spent the majority of that time in La Libertad, the department south […]

Burning History in San Salvador

Destruction of Historical and Human Rights Archives by SARAH MASLIN   At the crack of dawn on Thursday, Nov. 14, three armed men broke into the offices of Pro-Búsqueda, a non-profit in San Salvador that reunites families with children who went missing during El Salvador’s 1979-1992 civil war. They beat up the guards, poured gasoline […]