Photo credit: SHARE Foundation
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to participate in the Roses in December delegation hosted by our partners at the SHARE Foundation and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to honor the 42nd anniversary of the martyrdom of the four Ursuline and Maryknoll sisters killed in 1980 by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran National Guard.
Holding annual commemorations of the lives of the countless martyrs of Salvadoran revolutionary struggles is a strong tradition that exists among many communities in El Salvador. Attending a mass near the site of the church women’s assassination, joining in a procession to and ceremony at their gravesite, and participating in other commemorations was a powerful new experience for me, since I was born and raised in the U.S. after my family was forcibly displaced from El Salvador due to the military violence of the 70s and 80s.
Given Bukele’s systematic denial of that history in order to consolidate a dictatorship, keeping historical memory alive, including commemorating the martyrs and human rights defenders of those years, is all the more urgent.
Your support is so important to our work at CISPES and we’re grateful that we can continue to connect young people in the Central American diaspora with our history of struggle – through hosting popular movement leaders, delegations to El Salvador, and more.
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During our time in El Salvador, we also met with family members of people whom the Bukele administration has arbitrarily arrested and held for months on end, despite having no ties whatsoever to organized crime. I heard stories of many young children, even babies, being left without their parents, under the State of Exception.
It’s impossible to not see how the pain of these families echoes the pain of so many thousands who lived through the war and many are now taking to the streets – and risking violent persecution – to demand freedom for their children, siblings and parents.
It was also impossible to deny the parallels that the U.S. State Department and Pentagon have played – and continue to play – in training and arming El Salvador’s police and military.
It is far past time, more than three years in to the Bukele regime, for the international community to pay attention and organize – especially in the U.S., where tens of millions of U.S. tax dollars under the guise of the War on Drugs and “border security” are being funneled to a dictatorial regime in our so-called “backyard.”
That’s why CISPES’ campaign to end U.S. military and police aid to El Salvador is so important. I am proud of the work we have done over the past few months to maintain a ban on U.S. military equipment grants to El Salvador. But the family members of those detained are counting on us to do so much more.
Please make a generous gift to CISPES today to support our work of uplifting their experiences and their demands in the U.S.
In solidarity,
Yesenia Portillo, Program Director
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