In English, “El
Salvador” translates to “the savior”.
Although the land
has been occupied since the 1st century, it became an independent
country in 1821, after having been ruled by Spain since 1524.
From the late 19th to the mid-20th
century, El Salvador endured chronic political and economic instability
characterized by coups, revolts, and a succession of authoritarian rulers.
Persistent socioeconomic inequality and civil unrest culminated in the Salvadoran Civil War from 1979 to 1992, fought between the military-led
government backed by the United States, and a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups. The conflict ended with the Chapultepec Peace Accords. This negotiated settlement established a multiparty
constitutional republic, which remains in place to this day. During the civil
war and afterwards, large numbers of Salvadorans emigrated to the United States. From 1980 through 2008, nearly
one million Salvadorans emigrated to the United States, such that by
2008, they were the sixth largest immigrant group in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador
Peter,
Paul and Mary - El Salvador (25th Anniversary Concert)
There
are two kinds of political folk songs. One is political only because it raises
ethical questions, like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" The other
is topical and deals with specific issues of the day, "Buddy, Can You
Spare a Dime?" is such a song. "El Salvador," written by Noel
Paul Stookey, is a combination of both.
In late 1982 Noel became concerned,
after reading a firsthand report in Sojourners Magazine, about U.S. involvement
in Latin America, specifically El Salvador, For anyone who had been involved in
the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era, it all sounded too familiar, so he
wrote a song. In January, 1983 Mary Travers was invited to join a group of
congressmen, public policy analysts, former government officials, and one other
performer to go to El Salvador and try to assess the level of human rights
abuses there. She came back convinced that American military aid only
intensified a desperate political situation crying for reform.
El Salvador was a country run by
fourteen families and a notoriously brutal military, In the past five years
40,000 to 50,000 civilian deaths have been attributed to the army and no one
knows how many "Disappeared" at the hands of the "death
squads" and various other security forces.
What was true in 1983 is still true. El
Salvador's problems cannot be solved militarily nor should they be. Increased
U.S. military involvement does nothing to redress the social inequalities that
have plagued that nation for decades. It is most certainly not a democracy,
In a democracy the civilian elected
government has absolute control over the military. In a democracy elections are
held on a regular basis with candidates who hold conflicting points of view and
who are able to campaign and express those views without fear for their
personal safety, In a democracy the basic human rights of an individual are
respected. None of these conditions exists in El Salvador.
American military aid to those in power
in El Salvador effectively sanctions the government's refusal to negotiate
reforms necessary to bring peace and democracy to that troubled country. The
song "El Salvador" follows in the folk tradition of political songs
in that it is a call of concern and conscience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador_(Peter,_Paul_and_Mary_song)
The current ruler
of El Salvador is a man named Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez. Despite his harsh rule,
he was invited to the White House last week.
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez (Spanish: [naˈʝiβ buˈkele]; born 24 July 1981) is a Salvadoran politician and
businessman who has been the 81st and current president of El Salvador since 1 June 2019.
In July 2019, Bukele implemented
the Territorial Control Plan to reduce El Salvador's 2019 homicide rate of 38 per 100,000 people. Homicides fell by 50 percent
during Bukele's first year in office; digital news outlet El Faro and the United States Department of State accused Bukele's government of secretly negotiating
with gangs to
reduce the homicide rate. After
87 people were killed by gangs over one weekend in March 2022, Bukele initiated
a nationwide crackdown on gangs, resulting in the
arrests of over 85,000 people with alleged gang affiliations by December 2024. El Salvador's homicide rate decreased to 1.9 homicides per
100,000 in 2024, one of the lowest in the Americas. Bukele passed a
law in 2021 that made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador and promoted plans to build Bitcoin City, but by 2025, El Salvador's bitcoin experiment had largely been unsuccessful.
In June 2023, the Legislative Assembly approved Bukele's proposals to reduce the number of municipalities from 262 to 44 and the number of seats in the
legislature from 84 to 60. He ran for re-election in the 2024 presidential election and won with 85 percent of the vote after the Supreme Court of Justice reinterpreted the constitution's ban on consecutive re-election.
El Salvador has experienced democratic backsliding under Bukele, as he has dismantled democratic institutions, curtailed
political and civil liberties, and attacked independent media and the political
opposition. Bukele has been described as an authoritarian and autocrat.
In February 2020, Bukele ordered 40 soldiers into the Legislative Assembly building to intimidate
lawmakers into approving a US$109 million
loan for the Territorial Control Plan. After Nuevas Ideas won a supermajority
in the 2021 legislative election, Bukele's allies in the legislature voted to replace
the attorney general and all five justices of the Supreme Court of Justice's
Constitutional Chamber. Bukele
has attacked journalists and news outlets on social media, drawing allegations
of press censorship.
Before Bukele's presidency, he considered himself a member of the radical left, but Bukele has since not identified with any political
ideology. Political analysts have described him as a populist and a conservative. Bukele has high job approval ratings in El Salvador and is popular throughout Latin America.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The crown jewel of El
Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime strategy — a mega-prison where visitation,
recreation and education are not allowed — became the latest tool in U.S.
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration on Sunday, when hundreds of immigrants facing deportation were
transferred there.
The arrival of the immigrants, alleged by the U.S. to be
members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, took place under an agreement for which the
Trump administration will pay the government of President Nayib Bukele $6
million for one year of services.
Bukele has made the Central American country’s stark, harsh
prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. In 2023, he opened the
Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where the immigrants were sent over the weekend
even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring their deportations
under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members.
Bukele ordered the mega-prison built as he began his
campaign against El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022. It opened a year later in
the town of Tecoluca, about 72 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital.
CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison
does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to
society after their sentences.
Bukele ordered the mega-prison built as he began his
campaign against El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022. It opened a year later in
the town of Tecoluca, about 72 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital.
The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates.
Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.
Occasionally, prisoners who have gained a level of trust
from prison officials give motivational talks. Prisoners sit in rows in the
corridor outside their cells for the talks or are led through exercise regimens
under the supervision of guards.
Bukele’s justice minister has said that those held at CECOT
would never return to their communities.
The prison’s dining halls, break rooms, gym and board games
are for guards.
How many
prisoners does El Salvador hold?
The government doesn’t regularly
update the figure, but the human rights organization Cristosal reported that in March 2024 El Salvador had
110,000 people behind bars, including those sentenced to prison and those still
awaiting trial. That’s more than double the 36,000 inmates that the government
reported in April 2021, a year before Bukele ramped up his fight against crime.
Cristosal and other advocates have
accused authorities of human rights violations.
Cristosal reported last year
that at least 261 people had
died in El
Salvador’s prisons during the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited
cases of abuse, torture and lack
of medical attention.
In slickly produced videos, the
government has shown CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into common areas
and made to sit nearly atop each other. Cells lack enough bunks for everyone.
Why were
immigrants sent to CECOT?
The migrants were deported after
Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used
only three times in U.S. history.
The
law requires a president to declare the U.S. is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to
detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under
immigration or criminal laws. Trump claimed the Tren de Aragua gang was
invading the U.S. in invoking the wartime authority.
Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously
lawless prison in Venezuela and accompanied an exodus of millions of
Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living
conditions after their nation’s economy came undone last decade.
The
Trump administration has not identified the migrants deported, provided any
evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any
crimes in the U.S.
van hollen abd garcia - Search Images
Video released by El Salvador’s
government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes into an airport tarmac lined by
officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled,
struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend at the
waist.
The video also showed the men being
transported to CECOT in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military
vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground
as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white
uniform – knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs – and placed in
cells.
Closing comments:
1)
Tax
payers are currently paying $6 million a year to El Salvador - money that has
not been authorized by congress. If the money is being paid by wire transfers, it
is illegal.
2)
The Supreme Court is temporarily allowing
the transfers – but with conditions. The 5-4
ruling did not touch on the underlying legal questions about the government’s
use of the Alien Enemies Act, one of the most high-profile and contentious
immigration enforcement actions so far in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Instead, the majority ruled that the five Venezuelan immigrants who challenged
the policy did so in the wrong court, leaving open the possibility that those
targeted for deportation could refile their case in Texas or other
jurisdictions where they are detained. They emphasized
that the court’s order on Monday means the government cannot again usher any
detainees onto planes in “a shroud of secrecy” and without a hearing as it did
on March 15.
“Nor
can the Government “immediately resume” removing individuals without notice,”
wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown
Jackson and Barrett. “To the extent the Government removes even one individual
without affording him notice and a meaningful opportunity” to contest a planned
deportation, she added, “it does so in direct contravention of an edict by the
United States Supreme Court.”
3)
Mass
deportation is very expensive. In total, we
find that the cost of a one-time mass deportation operation aimed at both those
populations—an estimated total of is at least $315 billion. We wish to emphasize that this figure is a
highly conservative estimate. It does not take into account the
long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the incalculable
additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over
13 million people in a short period of time—incalculable because there is
simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible. For one
thing, there would be no way to accomplish this mission without mass detention
as an interim step. To put the scale of detaining over 13 million undocumented
immigrants into context, the entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022,
comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and
jails, was 1.9 million people.
There were more than 1.1 million international students in
the United States during the 2023-24 academic year, according to a recent report released
by the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the
Institute of International Education. The number includes students who remain
in the country briefly after graduation to gain work experience.
The report identifies New
York University, Northeastern University and Columbia University as the three
largest host schools for international students. At N.Y.U., their enrollment
has increased nearly
250 percent over the last decade.
Losing foreign students could also be
bad for the broader economy, experts say. International students pumped
nearly $44 billion into
the American economy and generated 378,000 jobs last year alone, according to
NAFSA: Association of International Educators, which promotes international
education.
4) The White House's escalating
trade war with Canada, China, Mexico and the European Union, combined with
other factors, could weigh heavily on foreign tourism in the U.S. this year,
the report
from Tourism Economics found. Canada accounts for the sharpest
projected decline in travelers to the U.S., with the firm forecasting a 15%
drop in the number of visits from the U.S.' northern neighbor in 2025.
Overall,
international travel from all foreign countries to the U.S. is expected to drop
by just over 5%, according to the report. Factoring in diminished spending by
Americans traveling domestically this year, overall travel spending in the U.S. could drop up to $64
billion in 2025, according to Tourism Economics, a unit of investment
advisory firm Oxford Economics.
"The
negative effects of an expanded trade war scenario will reach U.S. hotel room
demand in 2025," Tourism Economics said in the report. "Domestic
travel will be negatively affected by slower income growth and higher prices
while international travel to the U.S. will be hit by a trifecta of slower
economies, a stronger dollar and antipathy towards the U.S.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-trade-war-us-tourism/
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