Arcatao, El Salvador is a small town in the mountains on the border of El Salvador and Honduras. On today’s show, host Bert Zipperer speaks with Barbara Alvarado, TJ Hinds, and Claudia Enz about the Madison Arcatao Sister City Project. They talk about the history of the organization and their upcoming 40th anniversary celebration.

The Madison Arcatao Sister City Project was founded in 1986 during the Salvadoran Civil War by concerned Madisonians in defense of human rights. The relationship continued after the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords that ended the 12 year war during which an estimated 70,000 people were disappeared.

They discuss the US’s role in the Salvadoran Civil War and how the people of El Salvador were brutally oppressed. The Sister City Project worked with Salvadoran churches that were steeped in liberation theology to support the people of El Salvador to rise up. Alvarado shares a Salvadoran saying, “solo el pueblo, salva el pueblo,” or only the people can save the people.

The current president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has revived the oppression of the Salvadoran people, under the rhetoric of being tough on crime. Alvarado, Hinds, and Enz discuss the lack of due process in El Salvador and how the Bukele is using taking political prisoners and creating industrial-scale prisons like CECOT.

Featured image of a sign outside a church in Arcatao, El Salvador via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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