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[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for March 25, 2013. See original here. Long-time activist Roberto Cañas was a signatory to the peace accords of 1992 that marked the end of the 12-year civil war in El Salvador.]

By David Ernesto Pérez

San Salvador – Once the civil war was over, the Truth Commission was installed in El Salvador for the purpose of investigating hundreds of massacres, summary executions and disappearances. On March 15, 1993, the group submitted to the United Nations a report concluding that 85 percent of the crimes committed in the conflict were the responsibility of the armed forces.

On the same day that the members of the Truth Commission – Belisario Betancur, Thomas Buergenthal and Reinaldo Figueredo Planchart – submitted the results of their investigation, which had taken more than six months, then President Alfredo Cristiani Burkard of the ARENA party [Alianza Republicana Nacionalista] was promoting the implementation of an “immediate amnesty.” (more…)

((Brasil de Fato photo))

A country that for 36 years saw a revolutionary movement, with a political-military strategy, elects as president a former general of the counter insurgency

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato of São Paulo for November 9. See original here.]

By Silvia Álvarez

In contrast with the neighboring countries of El Salvador and Nicaragua, which saw insurgent civil wars that solidified into electoral triumphs, the left in Guatemala seems not to have made the transition into a political party. On Sunday, the 6th, thousands of Guatemalan citizens went to the polls to elect as president the candidate of the extreme right, Otto Pérez Molina of the Partido Patriota (PP). In an electoral dispute whose ideological coloration was dominated by the right, the principal theme of the campaigns was security despite the fact that the country is suffering from other serious problems like poverty and unemployment, aggravated by the tropical storms that devastated the country in the past month. (more…)