News

Working in a dangerous country

By: F, Astrid, Wim VDB

Violence against small businesses persists in El Salvador.

Working conditions in El Salvador are difficult for Trias and its partners due to criminality. “The members of CCA, partner organisation of Trias, often deal with criminality. For example, their livestock is stolen on a regular basis”, says Astrid Vreys, the Trias coordinator in Central America. “Another example is service provider Fademype, which had to change its working schedule to ensure that its employees could return home in broad daylight. Fademype’s client banking groups are at risk of being held up on payday. Many businesses are being blackmailed by criminal gangs, which makes it harder for them to expand. A great deal of their expenditure is spent on security”, Vreys stresses.

“Trias employees must always notify us when they go on site and when they actually reach their destination. They are never just by themselves when driving to the intervention areas, but are always accompanied by partner organisations that are familiar with these areas. Our office in San Salvador closes at dusk. We just cannot work any longer because of the danger”, Vreys says.

In 1992 Mauricio Funes’ liberal FMLN guerilla signed a peace treaty with the right-wing government. This treaty ended the twelve-year-long civil war. At the same time, they established democracy in their country which was a breath of fresh air for a government that was based on a militarist system. Seventy thousand people died and another eight thousand disappeared during the civil war.

But safety, as it seems, has not improved over the years. El Savador still remains one of the most violent countries in the world, where organized crime (gangs the locals call “maras”) rules the roost. According to the Institute of Forensic Health seventy murders are committed per hundred thousand inhabitants. Several sectors are now demanding a new peace treaty which will shatter violence and inequity.

Still, the Trias employees on site and our partner organisations work in hazardous conditions. “The danger is creeping around every corner”, Vreys explains, “violence is ever present, you have to be careful all the time. One night last week, we heard nearly twenty gunshots. Apparently the shots were fired in open air from a car that was just driving by, which actually happens pretty often here. The police are everywhere and they are mostly armed to the teeth to fight the maras.

36 percent of six million Salvadorians are poor, eleven percent of which are even living in extreme poverty, according to the Salvadorian ministry of Economics. “I doubt that a now often mentioned new peace treaty will be a solution to poverty and insecurity”, Vreys says, "one has to focus on structural solutions for the country’s development. The economic and social policies require a different approach.”