El Salvador

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, warns that governemnt attacks on water defenders and others likely herald a return to metal mining, banned in the country since 2017. The IPS report also examines the increasing authoritarianism of the Bukele government and the new cllimate of fear it is inducing.

Five top films directed by Latin American women, in celebration of International Women's Day. Including The Eternal Memory by Maite Alberdi.

A state of emergency and ruthless action by the authorities has dramatically curtailed the activity of gangs which previously ruled vast swathes of El Salvador. But there are many innocent victims and the underlying poverty, inequality and injustice remain untouched.

Five water defenders from Santa Marta, Cabañas, El Salvador have been arrested in connection with the 1989 murder of a woman in their community. However, their active membership of an organisation opposed to mining and strong signs that the government wants to subvert the country's mining ban suggest another motive for their persecution

Tim Hollins and Mogs Russell founded a group based in Birmingham, UK, which has accompanied Nueva Esperanza, a community of returned refugees in the Bajo Lempa area of Usulután, El Salvador. Here they describe how this collaboration began, and its successful focus on supporting the community's school and teachers

Cornelia Gräbner describes an extraordinary set of documents which capture the most intense and dangerous phase of repression in El Salvador, leading up to the 1992 Peace Accords.

British journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy, who died on 1 March 2022, was one of the founders of Latin America Bureau. He reported from Latin America for the Financial Times and the Observer.

Sr Pamela Hussey, for more than 40 years a campaigner for Peace and Justice, especially in El Salvador, has died at the age of 99. Many LAB supporters remember her with affection and respect.

El Salvador's civil war featured a number of brutal massacres by the army, especially the one at El Mozote in Morazán. Much less well-known is the butchery of peasants and children at Quesera in Usulután, on the River Lempa, carried out by the Army's US-trained Atlacatl Batallion.

In The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country from Corporate Greed, Robin Broad and John Cavanagh tell the harrowing, inspiring saga of Salvadorans' fight — and historic victory — to save their water, and their communities, from Big Gold.