El Salvador: body of missing activist found with signs of torture

[Judi Lynn]

El Salvador: body of missing activist found with signs of torture

Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 07/18/2009 - 16:53. On July 8, DNA tests confirmed that a body found in a well in Cabañas department, El Salvador, on June 30 is that of prominent community activist Gustavo Marcelo Rivera. The body was found by community members who had organized a search for Rivera, missing since June 18. Witnesses reported that the body exhibited signs of torture techniques generally tied to targeted political assassinations. However, initial reports coming from the National Civilian Police (PNC) state that gang members were responsible for the murder.

The victim's brother, Miguel Rivera, dismissed the gang violence explanation. "Saying that my brother died at the hands of gang members is an unbelievable story and becomes a mockery for my family. My brother was tortured. He was alive for nine days after his disappearance. His trachea was broken by a nylon cord that strangled him, pushing his arm up to his face. This is not an act of gang members. It is torture."

Rivera was director of the Casa de Cultura in San Isidro, and was active in social justice and environmental struggles. Friends and family members report that he received many threats in response to his public denunciations of San Isidro Mayor Ignacio Bautista of the ARENA party. Rivera was vocal in his stance against attempted fraud in the municipal and legislative elections of Jan. 18, which led community members to shut down the town's voting centers, forcing a make-up election to be held the following week. Rivera was also active in the national movement against mining projects that threaten El Salvador's principal watersheds.

Civil society organizations Coordination for Peace, Dignity, and Social Justice (CPDJS), the Foundation for the Study of the Application of Law (FESPAD), and the National Roundtable Against Metallic Mining all denounced the murder as politically motivated, and called on the PNC and Attorney General to carry out an exhaustive investigation to determine the intellectual authors of the crime. In a joint press conference, the groups stated: "Marcelo was being threatened by members of the ARENA party in San Isidro and by those that impose death projects in the area , which Marcelo always opposed, and for this he was defamed and denigrated."

More:
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7601

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.Global Spotlight
AJWS Calls for Justice in the Murder of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera, of Grantee ASIC in El Salvador

Gustavo Marcelo Rivera was a well-respected and devoted community leader, teacher, environmental rights and democracy activist in the municipality of San Isidro, Cabañas in northern El Salvador. In order to serve the educational, health and cultural needs of his community in one of El Salvador’s poorest areas, Rivera founded and led Asociación Amigos de San Isidro (ASIC), a grassroots community-development NGO and AJWS grantee.

http://www.ajws.org/

[Peace Patriot]

1. The murderers may have gotten "gang members" to do their dirty work or part of it,

or maybe will find some "gang member" patsies to take the blame, but it is simply not credible that "gang members" would do this--unpaid, and unprompted--and highly believable that the ARENA Party and/or some of John "death squad" Negroponte's hired thugs (currently active in Honduras) would. Targeted assassination of community leaders is a Negroponte speciality. El Salvador recently elected a leftist president--part of the overwhelming trend toward leftist democracy in South and Central America. Negroponte's death squads have no doubt been activated throughout the region, as prep for more coups, such as the one that just occurred in Honduras. Several activists have already been murdered in Honduras, and over a thousand political prisoners rounded up.

I think there should be a general commission--perhaps organized through the OAS--to investigate every such murder throughout the region, and to seek out any common threads or command centers. This is very likely not just a local matter, in my opinion.

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I have to say that my first reaction to this report, and to the photo of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera, was just speechless sadness. It took me a few moments to be able to think about it at all analytically and in context. Such sorrow that this gentle-faced man, who was doing such good for his community and the world, suffered such horrors and is gone. Rage that this is happening again in Latin America, that John "death squad" Negroponte is an honored adviser to Hillary Clinton, that John McCain's US taxpayer funded "International Republican Institute" is pouring our money into rightwing groups in Honduras--the kind of groups that pay for murders like this--that our AG is Eric Holder, the attorney for Chiquita International that paid for murders like this (thousands of them) in Colombia, and that, no matter what we do here, no matter who we elect, the same horrors, perpetrated by the same people, against the poor in Latin America, and against their courageous leaders, continue. Immense sadness. And rage.