Feb
Defending Natural Resources, Sister Cities
Hundreds Join 3-Day March to Free the Suchitoto 14 – February 13, 2008
February 13
Twice as many people as organizers expected – an estimated 700 – left the town of Suchitoto Monday morning, February 11, carrying photos of those who have come to be known as the “Suchitoto 13″ and posters reading ”Liberty for the Political Prisoners of Suchitoto”. Organized by the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador (CRIPDES), the Foundation for Cooperation and Community Development of El Salvador (CORDES), the Popular Resistance Movement 12th of October (MPR-12), and others, the march travelled 25 kilometers (16 miles) in its first day to arrive for an evening of music, theater, and vigil in the town of San Bartolome Perulapía, Cuscatlán.
The following day, the march traveled from Perulapía to Soyapango, an urban municipality in the east of San Salvador. On Wednesday, February 13, the group joined a mass mobilization of an estimated 3,500 people for the last leg of their voyage to arrive at the Special Tribunal building in San Salvador, where they supported the Suchitoto 13’s defense lawyers as they met with Special Tribunal Judge Ana Lucila Fuentes de Paz, who on the same day declared herself incompetent to see the case and sent it back to the district judge in Suchitoto. (For more legal details of the case, see the February 11 case update.)
