News » November 13, 2007

El Salvadors Patriot Act

Last year the government adopted a “Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism,” which gives police and judges leeway to clear the streets of demonstrators and imposes mandatory sentences of 60 years for what was once considered a freedom of expression

By Jacob Wheeler

Protestors march in front of a court in San Salvador on July 7 to demand the release of 14 rural activists accused of terrorism.

On July 2, Salvadoran police arrested 14 rural activists who were protesting water privatization in Suchitoto, a colonial town in the middle of the country. The government plans to try them on Feb. 8 under the country’s new anti-terrorism laws, which could make them the first political prisoners in the nation’s post-war era.

In recent years, the Salvadoran government has faced increasing community resistance to the privatization of healthcare and water. Citizens have also protested against Pacific Rim, a multinational corporation that plans to develop the El Dorado mine in Cabañas province and pollute the local water supply.

In response, in October 2006 the government adopted a “Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism,” which gives police and judges leeway to clear the streets of demonstrators and imposes mandatory sentences of 60 years for what was once considered a freedom of expression. Intentionally vague, the law defines terrorism as crimes that “by their form of execution, or means and methods employed, evidence the intention to provoke a state of alarm, fear or terror in the population, by putting in imminent danger or affecting peoples’ life or physical or mental integrity, or their valuable material goods, or the democratic system or security of the State, or international peace.” According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the Salvadoran government modeled the new anti-terrorism law after the U.S. Patriot Act.

A small international outcry by those organizations followed the July arrests, and the government released the activists after nearly a month of imprisonment (though they still face trial in February). But instead of loosening their grip, in August, President Antonio Saca and his ultra-right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) Party pushed through penal code reforms by a one-vote margin that changed disorderly conduct from a misdemeanor to a felony. Three weeks later, the government arrested eight leaders of a nurses trade union for striking against the privatization of healthcare services and lack of medicine. If convicted, the union leaders could face eight years in prison under El Salvador’s new “Patriot Act.”

“The objective of these anti-terrorist laws isn’t to fight terrorism, because there haven’t been acts of terrorism here in many years,” says Pedro Juan Hernandez, a professor of economics at the University of El Salvador and an activist. He recently traveled to the United States with members of U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities to bring attention to the Salvadoran social movement. “What happened in New York and in Madrid were acts of terrorism,” says Hernandez. “But it’s not an act of terrorism to peacefully mobilize or concentrate a group of people demanding their rights, including what’s written in the constitution.” He says the new law’s objective is to “criminalize the social movement and imprison community leaders.”

In July, 60 U.S.-based organizations signed an open letter to Saca that appeared in the Salvadoran press. “While the Salvadoran government has the task of ensuring public security, charging demonstrators under an ‘anti-terrorism law’ … does not appear to be the measured response of a government seeking to maintain order while observing basic civil rights, such as the right to freedom of association and the right to protest,” the letter stated. A month later, 41 members of the U.S. Congress also signed and sent Saca a letter that expressed concern about the arrests of the 14 activists under the new anti-terrorism laws. Predictably, the White House and the U.S. Embassy in the capital city o have remained silent.

That silence might stem from El Salvador being a member of the “coalition of the willing” that has supported the United States in its invasion of Iraq. Saca has contributed as many as 380 soldiers at any given time to the war effort.

Meanwhile, $461 million goes to El Salvador through the Millennium Challenge Account, an aid program that President Bush announced at the Inter-American Development Bank in 2002. This money goes to the Central American nation despite the challenge account’s criteria that countries adhere to the “rule of law,” “political rights,” “civil liberties” and “voice and accountability.”

Sixteen years ago, the government of El Salvador signed the Peace Accords with anti-government FMLN guerrillas, ending 12 years of a brutal civil war that killed approximately 80,000 people. The accords were established “to create the necessary conditions to improve the quality of life of the population, especially of those living in extreme poverty.”

But more than a decade-and-a-half later, the country’s poor remain choked by desperation. Almost 50 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line and 61 percent have no access to water in their homes, according to USAID. The average Salvadoran child attends only 3.4 years of school. Remittances from the 2 million Salvadorans working in the United States account for approximately 17 percent of El Salvador’s economy, according to the U.S. State Department. This is greater than the money generated by any other export.

“The signing of the Peace Accords created the opportunity for reconciliation and to change the causes that led to the armed conflict,” says Hernandez. “But we’ve missed out on that opportunity. In the last 16 years, the government has implemented neoliberal economics, privatized services and signed free trade agreements that haven’t solved the economic problems but have made them more profound.”

The Salvadoran social activists fighting for water access, healthcare and education, and now the right to protest, have seen enough war, says Hernandez. “But the origins of the violence are in the politics, the unemployment and the government’s policies against the population,” he explains. “We are back to the level we were when the armed conflict began.”

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• Reader Comments

  I can’t understand why more citizens around the world aren’t disturbed to the point of anger over laws like this. It shows how effective the use words that conjure frightening images can be in manipulating people’s feelings, therefore their behavior. All you have to do is cry “terrorist”, even if there’s no terroristic event in hand, and masses of otherwise decent people just roll over.

  In whose interest is it that we be afraid all the time, even (especially!) if the fear exists at a subliminal but steady level? Who benefits by the use of the word “terrorist” to describe a peaceful demonstration? Who wants us to be cowed by worry?

  They’re not our friends. They want to pull our emotional strings with subtle use of psychlogical manipulation, which they study and perfect the use of. It’s even more insidious than that other manipulator of emotion, oratorical hyperbole, “whipping up the crowd”, because it taps into primal feelings of self-protection that can be co-opted by those who know how to trigger them, who then direct our actions with their mastery of language.

  The Salvadoran government doesn’t want the populace to be indignant about the arrest and charging of peaceful demonstrators, therefore they’re called “terrorists”.

  These are very formidable enemies, my friends, these power elites who have become expert at keeping us looking over our shoulders for danger that, virtually always, isn’t even there. They know a lot about what makes people tick, and how to trick us without us even knowing we’ve been tricked.

  Beware of those who have a way with words, who can push your primitive cognitive buttons. “What do they want me to do? Are they controlling me, tricking me?” That’s what we should all be asking ourselves.

  Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism (in El Salvador)

  The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (in the USA)

  The USA PATRIOT (a.k.a. the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act (in the USA)

  The Human Security Act of 2007 (here in the Philippines)

  Tricky language. Emotional manipulation. Loss of freedom. Punishment of legitimate dissent. Crippled democracy.

  If you know of others in your home countries, with similar weasel-word phrasing, please share.

  Posted by Kuya on Nov 14, 2007 at 10:21 AM

  Kuya, this kind of deadly game has been going on for many years with different names and different potential perils. BAck in 1976 in Argentina the military overthrew the elected government and started kidnapping, torturing and in many cases “disappearing” no less than 30.000 people whose activities were mostly called “leftist”. Those military were trained at the School of the Americas, by CIA agents and it has taken over thirty years to be able to take a small number of the torturers to court. In those days practically all the world looked the other way. The method is the same: talk about terrorism, frighten people with uncertain perils and keep anyone who thinks different on the run.
  “Tricky language. Emotional manipulation. Loss of freedom. Punishment of legitimate dissent. Crippled democracy”. Your definitions are superb and so true.
  No military dictatorships are necessary now. They have perfected the strategy and can get away with doing the same with regular governments which are mostly just a facade behind whom the real power is hidden.

  Posted by Maria on Nov 15, 2007 at 4:49 AM

  Yes Maria, and what really upsets me is the ease with which these strategies play out. As you say, it doesn’t even require real oppression any more, in the sense of an overtly fearsome government posture. It’s not needed, because the people themselves go right along.

  I’m not in the habit of using pejoratives like “sheeple” and the like, but damn, it’s just too easy to fool too many of the people too much of the time!

  Posted by Kuya on Nov 15, 2007 at 8:08 AM

  Kuya, as you have perhaps noticed we were the only ones to discuss this article. Perhaps because we do care about what goes on in the world and consider humanity as a whole, something which is considered as utopic to call it mildly. Most of the time what you read in these pages are long diatribes between Democrats and Republicans as if they were any different but who finally agree at the time of pointing their forefingers at the rest of the world.
  There are so many ways of disuading people to take an active role while we continue to suffer all kinds of injustices and see our countries sinking lower all the time… There are the media, the films on TV (90% are showing violence, weapons, arrogance or worship of the “famous”), we are constantly reminded there is an almighty Empire who decides who is good or evil, we are told they have the right to possess and develop monstruous weapons, they have a right to contaminate our planet, to create unnecessary needs, to exercise pressure on every country for the simple reason that “they can”. The brutal experience Latin America suffered in the 70 and 80’s crippled the next generation who feel they have no choice but adopting the American trends, be it in clothes, music, or gadgets. Natural resources are being taken over, local people can hardly enjoy landscapes or resorts because they have been taken over to build luxurious hotels for the very rich, casinos and cabarets are proliferating everywhere not to cover local needs but to satisfy tourists from the “First World”, with local governments accepting to sell land so long as they are allowed to continue in office and obtaining good bribes for it.
  Trees are cut down, rivers and seas are being contaminated with chemicals and plastic garbage, most people have to work harder just to cover their basic needs and when they get home all they do is watch a football game or a bad film before they go to sleep so they are fit to start a new long working day. You canīt blame them for not taking an active part in anything because participation channels have been shut off for a long time and all thatīs left is the dubious privilege of voting every so many years for one of two equally rotten candidates.
  Sorry if I sound so depressing, but I still keep the flame alive and hope things will change but it will take a lot of effort on our part and not to give up. Love.

  Posted by Maria on Nov 26, 2007 at 4:48 AM

  It is potentially depressing, the true things you mention, Maria.

  But depression is immobilizing, and giving up is what some crafty bastards want us all to do, to give up and to just go along, overfed by cheap junk food, celebrity-worship, and all the other distractions.

  Working with young people helps remind me that there’s no such thing as stasis, and there are reasons to keep pushing for those forward steps, slow and halting though they are.

  But people are interconnecting more than ever, gaining affinities with one another more and faster than at any time in the world’s history. For me, that’s very hopeful. Expats and hometowners alike have more opportunities than ever to gain a sense that we’re all in it together, on this planet, and more all the time are getting the clue that it’s time to quit fighting and defrauding each other.

  Love in return.

  Posted by Kuya on Nov 26, 2007 at 10:21 AM

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