USNS Comfort Arrives in El Salvador After Completing Nicaragua Visit

American Forces Press Service
2007-07-28

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2007 – USNS Comfort has arrived in El Salvador, the hospital ship’s fifth port of call during a four-month humanitarian deployment to more than a dozen Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Before arriving in El Salvador July 25, the ship provided medical and veterinary care in Belize, Guatemala, Panama and Nicaragua. As of July 23, medical specialists aboard the Comfort had seen more than 83,000 patients, and veterinary specialists had seen 2,800 animals.

The Comfort set sail from Norfolk, Va., June 15, as part of U.S. Southern Command’s “Partnership for the Americas,” a training and readiness operation designed to strengthen multinational partnerships and improve interoperability. The floating hospital is also scheduled to visit Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Peru, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago before completing its voyage in September.

In El Salvador, U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard and Public Health Service specialists, along with Canadian forces and non-government organizations like Project Hope, are providing free health care services -- adult and pediatric primary care, dentistry, optometry and veterinary services.

“Comfort’s humanitarian mission has been a tremendous success so far and I know the men and women who work aboard Comfort will continue the outstanding job they’ve been doing by providing needed medical care to the people of El Salvador,” said Capt. Bob Kapcio, Comfort’s mission commander.

Comfort will be in El Salvador for seven days, treating patients at Unidad de Salud Acajutla, Caseria Costa Brava School, and Delfina Rivas School. Servicemembers from Comfort will also repair medical equipment at Hospital Sonsonate.

Construction Battalion Maintenance 202 will renovate several of the work sites in El Salvador by repairing water systems, roofing, and re-building certain structures. Project Hope will train at Casa Comunal in Acajulta.

In Nicaragua, Vice President Jaime Morales and other local government officials visited the Comfort July 23 to tour the ship’s facilities and meet crew members and patients.

“Having Vice President Morales here was a great honor,” said Comfort’s mission commander Capt. Bob Kapcio. “This really gave us a chance to show the Nicaraguan leadership our commitment to the people of Nicaragua and we hope that this visit strengthened the bond between us.”

U.S. Navy Seabees from aboard the Comfort spent July 20 to 24 repairing and restoring the water system at the 15 de Julio Health Care Center in Chinandega. For three years, the 15 de Julio Health Care Center, a facility that cares for 150 patients a day, has been without running potable water. All water used by the center comes from three 55-gallon drums, filled from a neighborhood water tank located down the road, then transported back by an aging pick-up truck.

“The water is vital for everything, most importantly sterilization and hygiene,” said Eddy Artola Vasquez, director of the center. “It has to be rationed for the most serious patients that come to the clinic.”

"The major city that supplies this village with water is 16 miles away. Ruptures and a lack of pressure have plagued the piping system. The people in charge have limited funds to provide an adequate water system with enough pressure to reach the center," he said.

The Seabees replaced a broken pump and created a piping system to take water from a newly-dug well to an elevated tank. The tank will provide running water with enough water pressure to accommodate the facility’s needs.

“This job is important. It will better the lives and the living situation of these people that are trying to provide medical help to the people of Nicaragua,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Burton, with Construction Battalion Maintenance 202.

“By us completing our mission, the clinic staff can better complete their mission,” continued Burton.

The veterinary team aboard Comfort provided services to more than 1,200 cattle, horses, pigs, and dogs at seven ranches in the Chinandega region of Nicaragua from July 20 to 23.

The team, comprised of U.S. Public Health Service officer Lt. Cmdr. Gregg Langham and Army Sgt. Leona Thomas, visited farms throughout the region providing preventive medicine including tetanus shots, deworming, flea and tick treatments, and anti-parasite vaccinations along with minor care for sick and injured animals.

“Since we’ve arrived here, we’ve been to several beef cattle farms and we’ve been deworming and vaccinating the cattle because either the people don’t have access to these services or these services are too costly for the local people,” Langham said.

Nicaraguan Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry officials worked alongside the Comfort veterinarian team. The ministry, an organization partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provided instructors from a veterinary school in Managua, along with a veterinarian and fourth-year veterinary school students for this cooperative mission with Comfort.

“It’s such a positive collection of so many different talents and we all came together,” Langham said. “Fortunately we have veterinarian instructors and students -- that’s been a tremendous help to us. They’re hungry to learn and we're both hungry to pass along information.”

“I am delighted with the impact the veterinarian team is making in just a matter of a few days in Nicaragua,” said Capt. Craig A. Shepherd, USPHS chief environmental health officer and officer in charge of USPHS aboard Comfort. “In addition to deworming and vaccinating hundreds of farm animals, a great opportunity to train and work with local veterinarians and third- and fourth-year veterinarian students occurred as well, and we look forward to doing the same in other countries we will visit.”

Nicaragua is the first location that Comfort staff treated cattle. The inspection of cattle plays a vital role in regional public health as the cattle is destined for human consumption.

“These cattle are going to be consumed by the people so I think that it’s a great service for the people,” Thomas said. “The Comfort mission is a great place to be. I think it’s great that the Army is participating in this and providing humanitarian services for the people of Nicaragua."

"I think that this is one of the most satisfying missions I’ve been doing so far in my military career and I’m glad to be here,” Thomas said.

 

A first impression rarely matches preconceived ideas. I came to El Salvador with a handful of previous notions about life here. Other than my prediction about the sweltering humidity, which can easily be compared to living in a steam room, I've been wrong about most of my ideas.

My appreciation for the people of El Salvador sparked when my plane landed and the people on our flight, mostly Salvadorans, began clapping excitedly as we reached the ground. These people were clearly proud to be home. In my sheltered American mind I actually sat there in a stupor wondering how these people could be so happy to return to such an impoverished state. Don't they know that they live in a third-world country? I soon realized my thinking was wrong.

More...   http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/64925

(by Chris Damon) The tiny Central American nation of El Salvador has long been out of sight, out of mind to most U.S. residents. Once the guns of the 12 year civil war went silent in 1992, the country signed peace accords, disbanded the famously repressive National Guard, modernized the police force incorporating ex-combatants from both sides into its ranks and embarked upon a somewhat haphazard process of healing.

Recently, that process of healing has been put to the test due to the jailing of 14 local and national activists arrested July 2 during protests in and around the small colonial city of Suchitoto. Dozens of social movement organizations coalesced in Suchitoto due to plans by Salvadoran president Antonio Saca to unveil there his administration’s new "National Decentralization Policy." Many local activists view that policy as a thinly veiled plan to privatize water resources. Among the 14 protesters arrested were four staff members from the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador (CRIPDES) who were intercepted and forcibly removed from their vehicle.

July 7th, Ana Lucila Fuentes de Paz, Specialized Judge for Organized Crime, a new court system established by the Anti-terrorism legislation, sentenced 13 of the activists to three months of preventative detention to allow the public prosecutor to gather more evidence to support the charges of acts of terrorism, public disorder and illicit association.

Advocates for civil liberties have questioned the anti-terrorism legislation. Lilian Cotto, deputy for the Central American Parliament, noted Saturday that the right to protest is constitutionally protected. Anaite Vargas, Technical Secretary for the Inter American Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development’s, Ecuador Chapter, asked president Saca to not apply the Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism and Organized Crime against the detainees in Suchitoto given that these laws have become in effect a form of governmental malpractice against civil society’s legitimate right to pacific protest.

U.S. citizens should not be startled by events unfolding in El Salvador given that the anti-terrorism legislation passed there was inspired by this country’s Patriot Act. In fact, many aspects of Salvadoran public policy are U.S. inspired, for while El Salvador has been far from the minds of most U.S. citizens, the reverse is far from true. This Massachusetts sized nation of six 6 million residents, counts another 2 million former residents or expatriates, most of who are now living in the United States. The country dollarized its economy in 2001, giving up its local currency, the colon, in favor of the US dollar. And El Salvador is currently the only Latin America nation which still has troops in Iraq.

El Salvador followed closely the passage and application of the Patriot Act in the United States, passing its own "Anti-terrorism Law" September, 21 2006. And similarly, to the Patriot Act, El Salvador´s law was pushed through the Legislative Assembly following the widely publicized shooting of two riot police officers in front of the National University on July 5, 2006.

To date the law had been applied to leaders of the street venders who have periodically confronted police efforts to evict them from downtown areas within the metropolitan area. Vicente Ramirez, a leader of the street venders, was released on a plea bargain July 5, after charges were reduced from terrorism to aggravated damages, nearly 5months after having been jailed for a protest that included rock throwing and the burning of a municipal vehicle in Apopa. Another group of street venders are awaiting trial under the new law for protests in downtown San Salvador May 12.

The July 2 detainees include social movement leaders, community residents and even a young journalism student. 43 year old Lorena Martinez is known to many in the United States due to her years of advocacy efforts on behalf of 300 CRIPDES communities made up of poor campesino families, many of them former refugees and displaced persons as a result of the civil war. As president of CRIPDES, Ms. Martinez together with the other national and local leaders, have toiled ceaselessly for basic services, housing, roads and other necessities for these communities. Many of those who have attended one of Ms. Martinez’s speeches or lectures during her frequent U.S. tours will remember her slight, almost girlish appearance and frequent, self-effacing giggles when asked how she could also be a former guerrilla combatant when she looks like a recent college graduate. Martinez’s parents, poor rural campesino’s, were victims of government massacres in the southern department of Usulatan early in the war.

Martinez was captured along with CRIPDES’s 36 year old vice-president Rosa Centeno, a long time staff member of CRIPDES’s small loan programs for rural women. With them was Hayde Chicas a 24 year old journalism student at the National University who has been gaining practical experience working part time in the CRIPDES communications office. The fourth member traveling in the association’s pick-up truck was Manuel Antonio Rodriquez, 40, ashy, unassuming driver and night-watchman for the association.

What is most disturbing perhaps to human rights activists, is that while most of the other 14 individuals captured on July 2nd were, in fact, blocking highways and attempting to impede the president, governmental authorities and invited guests from reaching Suchitoto, a small, picturesque tourist village 44 kilometers north of San Salvador, the CRIPDES activists were intercepted on their way to the demonstration.

Rodriquez was roughly yanked from the vehicle and thrown to the ground. The captures, while surprising in their preemptive nature, were not altogether unexpected within the extremely polarized political climate of El Salvador. However, when the 14 were not charged or released within the initial 72 hours, concerns grew. And on Saturday, July, 7, Judge Fuentes determined evidence presented against 13 of the 14 to be sufficient to warrant preventive detention for three months. Eventual prison terms under the new law could reach 60 years.

Following Saturday’s resolution Karla Albanes, lawyer for the detainees remarked that she would limit herself to say only that political pressure had been brought to bear. That politics would play a role is not surprising for a nation suffering extreme degrees of political polarization.

(From VOA) A group advocating press freedom is condemning El Salvador's arrest of a journalist on terrorism charges.

In a news release Tuesday, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres) called the arrest of María Haydee Chicas during a demonstration a "grave abuse of authority".

Police detained Chicas in El Salvador's northeastern city of Suchito. She had been reporting on a forum of community groups and non-governmental organizations protesting government plans to privatize water distribution. Chicas faces a possible sentence of 40 to 60 years in prison under El Salvador's new anti-terrorism law.

In the statement, the press freedom group appealed to Salvadoran President Elías Antonio Saca to intervene in the case. The organization says it is ridiculous to claim that someone who was just doing their job as a journalist was engaged in an act of terrorism.

(From La Prensa Gráfica) The police in Suchitoto, Cuscatlán, reported arresting three people on Monday who participated in a demostration agaisnt the government's policy on water for that city.  At about 9:00 a.m., tens of demonstrators closed the highway between San Martín and Suchitoto where President Saca announced his government's policy on privatizing of the water system in Puerto San Juan.  http://archive.laprensa.com.sv/20070702/lodeldia/20070702/12515.asp

 

(From CISPES) On July 2, various organizations and communities in the municipality of Suchitoto gathered for a protest against the official announcement of the "National Policy of Water Decentralization" by President Antonio Saca. The peaceful protest was brutally repressed by the riot police (UMO) along with specialized forces of the National Civil Police (PNC). In the end, 13 people were arrested by the police and accused of "public disorder," including four leaders of the rural development organization CRIPDES. The riot police eventually opened fire on the protest with rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray, injuring around 75 people. Throughout the day helicopters circled Suchitoto and San Salvador, and the riot police didn't withdraw from the scene until well into the afternoon.

LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Condor Resources PLC said it is strongly lobbying the government of El Salvador to issue permits for its drilling programme at La Calera [Cabañas]. Drilling has been delayed as the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources has failed to grant an environmental permit.

The company said the delay is not in accordance with the mining laws and bye-laws of El Salvador and that enquiries had revealed that all mining and exploration companies operating in the country are experiencing similar delays.

Condor Resources plc is a UK based AIM listed exploration Company with a strong focus on the exploration and development of gold and silver resources within Central America.

The Company owns outright or can earn a majority interest in a substantial portfolio of concessions largely prospective for high-grade epithermal gold and silver in El Salvador and Nicaragua in Central America.

By VOA News, 03 July 2007

A human-rights group is denouncing El Salvador for failing to investigate last July's killing of two elderly political activists.

Amnesty International says the murders of Francisco and Juana Manzanares were reminiscent of El Salvador's death squads of the 1980s. The group notes that local organizations fear a resurgence of the violence.

The two opposition party (FMLN) activists were found dead in their home on July 2, 2006.

In a press release on Sunday, Amnesty said it has not received a response to a letter it sent in March to El Salvador's attorney general asking for details about the investigation. Amnesty urged Salvadoran authorities to live up to their human-rights commitments by protecting the work of political activists.