CRISPAZ El Salvador Weekly News and Analysis
Nov. 13-19, 2006
In this edition:
1) CAFTA Impacts Documented in New Book
2) Coronel Convicted in Romero Murder Goes Public (again)
3) US Finally Approves $461 million from Millenium Fund for El Salvador
CAFTA Impacts Documented in New Book
The Sinte Techan Network released a new book by Raul Moreno last week that describes the impacts of CAFTA on the Salvadoran agricultural sector.
“CAFTA-DR: Agriculture and Food Sovereignty” documents trends for a number of commodities such as beef, pork, dairy and basic grains leading up to CAFTA’s March 2006 implementation in El Salvador. The book then postulates how positive growth trends in Salvadoran agriculture are set for a collision course with CAFTA’s market-driven policies. Hard data for the CAFTA period are not yet available, but Moreno’s sober analysis and projections are food for thought.
CAFTA mandates that El Salvador and other Central American nations open their commodity markets to a minimum tonnage of imported goods each year. The amount of those imports increases annually according to 15-year import schedules developed for each commodity.
Moreno’s trend analysis carefully demonstrates how, in many cases, CAFTA’s schedules exceed the current import averages for most commodities. This means an unnatural, forced opening of the Salvadoran economy for cheaper imported agricultural products. The pricing inequities, Moreno argues, is resultant not from superior competition from foreign producers, but from the enormous subsidies that the US dishes out to its producers. Moreno argues further that the long-term effect will be downward price pressures on small-scale local production (already suffering a disadvantage due to dollarization), a loss of farm jobs and a national food production crisis.
"'Free Trade' is a myth. There cannot be a free access to products in a context where a hegemonic power, the US, can impose particular protectionist measures over the importation of agricultural goods while, at the same time, imposing an indiscriminate opening for the export of its products and capital,” writes Moreno in the book's concluding chapter.
Coronel Convicted in Romero Murder Goes Public (again)
Captain Alvaro Rafael Saravia made news this March when he publicly repented for his involvement in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in 1980. He went public in a Miami Herald interview that the publication said was conducted “somewhere in Latin America.” At the time, Saravia said his repentance was, “a moral obligation that I have as a human being with society, the Church and myself.”
Saravia was convicted in absentia and fined $10 million for his involvement in the plot by a civil court in Fresno, California. Last week, the same Saravia went public again with an interview published in the Salvadoran daily Diario Co-Latino where he again professed detailed knowledge of the Romero’s death, but said his conviction was “unjust.” He also denied the direct involvement of ARENA-party founder Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, who is widely thought to be the intellectual author of the crime..
In the Co-Latino interview, Saravia said he knew the identity of the man who pulled the trigger and other key details of the plot against Romero, but was maintaining silence until he could finish a book on the subject. He hopes the book will be released March 24 of next year. If the date holds, it would coincide with the 27th anniversary of the tragic assassination.
Saravia’s publicity stunt falls on the heels of the deportation of Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos by US Immigration authorities. The former Salvadoran military officer was convicted in connection with the 1989 murder of the Jesuit priests.
Cerritos was arrested at a motel in Los Angeles, and charged with entering the US illegally. He faces a deportation hearing next month. According to Catholic World News, Cerritos had been convicted, served a prison term in El Salvador, and received amnesty from the government in 1993.
US Finally Approves $461 million from Millenium Fund for El Salvador
Vice President of the Millenium Challenge Account in the US, John Hewko, paid a visit to El Salvador on Nov. 8 to formally announce the approval of Millenium Fund cash. Delays in making the announcement had been attributed to cash shortages in the account leading up to the closing of the US fiscal year.
Of the $461 million, $85 will be dedicated to “production incentives,” in the agricultural sector. Another $138 million will be applied to a controversial highway that will carve through northern El Salvador. The highway plan has been criticized by church and social movement leaders as filling the interests of large corporations, but largely ignoring the needs of local communities and the environment.

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