By Yolanda Magaña originally published April 9, 2014 in Spanish. Unofficial translation Representatives of the U.S. government reaffirmed yesterday that El Salvador does not meet three conditions to access Millennium Challenge Corporation Funds (MCC), the program known as Fomilenio II, which have to do with fighting money laundering, free trade and the investment […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
November 14, 2013 At 4:30am this morning in San Salvador, three armed men forced their way into the office of Probusqueda, a prominent Salvadoran human rights organization that searches for and reunites children who were forcibly disappeared during the civil war with their families. After the men attacked, tied up, and disarmed the security guard, they […]
By Alexandra Early The Salvadoran people have been waiting for seven years for the Legislative Assembly to pass a comprehensive law to protect their right to safe and clean water. In July they decided they are done waiting and staged a series of rallies, road blocks and press conferences to pressure the legislature to […]
Obama and the Militarization of the “Drug War” in Mexico and Central America May 7th, 2013 Written by Alex Main for the Center for Economic and Policy Research During his trip last week to Mexico and Costa Rica, President Obama sought to down play the U.S.’s security agenda in the region, emphasizing trade relations, […]
January 11th , 2013 by Alexandra Early On December 12, 2012, 12 young people were arrested in the poor community of El Progreso 3, in the northeastern part of San Salvador. Dressed all in black with their faces covered, police from the much-feared Anti-Gang Unit stormed the community in the middle of night, going […]
November 23, 2011 On November 21st, Milwaukee Public Radio Station WUWM invited Matt Hrodey, a journalist with Milwaukee Magazine, and John Machulak, the lawyer for the mining company Commerce Group, to an on air interview about the Commerce Group’s actions in El Salvador and its suit for $100 million against the Salvadoran government. […]
Learning From 25 Years of Solidarity, Struggle, & Tortilla-Making in El Salvador Written by Alexandra Early & Jan Morrill for Social Policy Magazine. Full article at www.socialpolicy.org. This summer, Sister Cities celebrates twenty-five years of cross-border solidarity with the campesinos of El Salvador. Among other things, this milestone means that North Americans visitors have […]