CISPES
On Tuesday, November 8, Manuel Melgar resigned from his post as Minister of Security, to which he was appointed by President Mauricio Funes soon after his inauguration in June 2009. SOURCE/CISPES
Yesterday, President of El Salvador Mauricio Funes swore in retired general David Munguía Payés as the country´s new Minister of Public Security and Justice, following the sudden resignation of Manuel Melgar from the position on November 8. The move prompted outspoken opposition from Salvadoran social organizations who view it as a violation of the 1992 Peace Accords that ended the country’s Civil War and transferred public security from military to civilian administration.
Although President Funes has denied the “influence of foreign governments” in this cabinet switch, Roberto Lorenzana, spokesperson for the governing leftist party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), said, “This was not a decision that the President made; he is simply a spokesperson. It’s a decision that was made somewhere in the U.S. capital.”
A Wikileaks cable from the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador reveals Washington’s evident disapproval of Melgar– a former commander of the FMLN guerrilla army during the country’s 12-year Civil War—since his appointment. In the 2009 cable, the U.S. Embassy official warns that funding for the Mérida Initiative, one of the U.S. “War on Drugs” initiatives in Mexico and Central America, would be “contingent upon guidance from Washington regarding how best to work around Melgar.”
According to the Salvadoran digital periodical El Faro, the U.S. finally forced Melgar out by leveraging a second international program, Partnership for Growth; El Salvador is one of four countries worldwide handpicked by the U.S. for the new program. El Faro’s sources in the Ministry of Security claim that Melgar’s removal was a U.S. condition for sealing the Partnership for Growth, officially signed just four days prior to Melgar’s resignation. The program’s initial report named violence and crime as El Salvador’s primary constraints to economic growth, quickly turning what the U.S. had publicly touted as an economic development program into another security initiative.
“It’s shameful how blatantly the U.S. is manipulating El Salvador´s affairs of state right now” said Alexis Stoumbelis, of the U.S.-based Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, calling the apparent U.S. intervention that led to Melgar´s resignation “ a major violation of El Salvador’s national sovereignty and a deliberate maneuver to hijack El Salvador’s security apparatus to serve the U.S. agenda of re-militarizing Central America under the pretense of fighting its bloody and disastrous ‘War on Drugs’.”
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