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The exodus of thousands of unaccompanied and undocumented children from Central America countries to the US — via Mexico's unforgiving northern border — has become a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented dimensions. While organised crime continues, economic violence remains unresolved and the US doesn't get its migration policy right, such children will keep risking their lives.
El Salvador is a small, largely agricultural society, with one of the highest population densities in the world. A largely Australian owned mining company proposes to mine for gold there, at great social and environmental cost to the local population. In Australia the wellbeing of people in areas affected by mining is central in the granting of permits. Are we willing to accept a lowering of standards for the overseas operations of Australian companies?
I met a young woman who had been sold as a domestic servant when she was five, and later on-sold for sex work in Bangkok, Malaysia and Australia. I also met a girl in a village of El Salvador: for generations her family had lived by making rope from cactus fibre. Her work contributed substantially to the family income and made her a valued member of her society.
On the eve of the violent overthrow of the elected government of Chile 40 years ago, Pablo Neruda wrote a cycle of cantos that came to be called The Book of Questions. Twelve days after the coups the poet was dead. It is hard to miss the military and political connotations of some of Neruda's 'questions'.
The relationship between the Catholic Church and the poor was explored most seriously in Latin America. I caught its dimensions most vividly in a dawn trip on a clapped out US school bus to a small regional town in El Salvador.
Thirty years ago today Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot as he celebrated Mass. His blood and the chalice were spilled together on the altar. His anniversary will be remembered around the world, for he provides one of the universal images of what living faithfully as a Christian might look like today.
í 16 November 1989. Bangkok. We looked forward to hearing from Jon Sobrino, the El Salvador Jesuit theologian, who had been speaking at another meeting. But at breakfast we heard the dreadful news.
Twenty years ago, six Jesuits were assassinated for their promotion of social justice and human rights in El Salvador. This month, their deaths are being used to shine a light on El Salvador's first democratically elected FMLN socialist government.
US Republicans lobbied President Obama to impose hardships on Salvadorians livingin the US should the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front win last week's election. When the left did triumph, he did the opposite and congratulated the new leader.
I love the way you go from fat to thin ... Straight to curly (October 2008)
I love the way you go from fat to thin ... Straight to curly
Michele Gierck is a freelance writer. Her book, 700 Days in El Salvador, was published by Coretext in 2006.
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