New Salvadoran martyr sign that political violence continues
Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno mourned in San Isidro

In the wake of the election of Maricio Funes, new president of El Salvador and a member of the Frente Farabundo Mundi para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), political violence still plagues El Salvador. The following report from the July 28 edition of Co Latino Daily, translated by CRISPAZ’s Francisco Meno, offers details of the mourning of an ecological activist in Cabañas who had protested mining near his home of San Isidro.
 
His relatives, friends, neighbors. His school students. Students from his artistic workshops. Colleagues from the association. His comrades from the party. Partners from the anti-mining struggle. Maybe even his assassins. Everyone mourned.
 
Relatives and close members of the family are the ones who almost always bid farewell, crying to the deceased, and on rare occasions one can see other people who have attended doing it as well. The burial of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno was one of those exceptional cases, where there was a collective cry of hundreds of children, teenagers and the elderly, both men and women.
 
He disappeared for three weeks and later was found murdered with signs of being tortured.
 
Representatives of the ecological movement from Cabañas, a department of El Salvador located in the northern reaches of the country, claim that Rivera Moreno was a victim of persecution and death threats during the last few months of his life, especially after the legislative and municipal elections on Jan. 18, when he led a protest against the alleged fraud that Jose Ignacio Bautista, mayor of San Isidro from the ARENA party, had planned on carrying out. Bautista happened to be re-elected.
 
Five years back, Marcelo also led a resistance to Pacific Rim’s mining projects. The Canadian mining company had sued the Salvadoran government in an international tribunal of the World Bank for denying the permit to reopen the mine El Dorado, located only a few kilometers from San Isidro.
 
He fought the mining threat from the role of a teacher, a cultural promoter, a member of an organization and as a political activist, says Francisco Pineda, leader of the environmental committee from Cabañas.
 
When Gustavo Marcelo disappeared, he was working as the director of the cultural house in San Isidro, the legal representative of the association Friends of San Isidro Cabañas (ASIC), a member of the of the national round-table on metallic mining, and a member of the FMLN leadership board in Cabañas.
 
Weeks later, employees from the coroner’s office confirmed to his family that the body—found inside a 60-foot-deep well—was in fact Gustavo Marcelo.
 
It was 20 days of distressing search,”laments Miguel Rivera, who has not had time to cry for his brother’s death. His indignation weighs more than his sorrow. It bothers him that the attorney general and the police have refused a full investigation and have hastily declared that it is only a common delinquency-related case, because Gustavo Marcelo was with a group of gang members who took his life after a heated discussion.”
 
Miguel states that his brother did not drink, smoke nor did he have any relationships with gang members.
 
The lines of investigation must begin with the threats he received, due to his opposition to the metallic mining and for his resistance to the fraud of ARENA in San Isidro, according to a director of a human rights NGO who asks his name be kept anonymous.
 
Saturday, July 11, at two in the afternoon, the sun in San Isidro burned more than in any other place. After the funeral Mass, hundreds of people accompanied the teacher, environmentalist, cultural promoter and political activist on his last walk around the town he fought for, before going to the place that will allow him to forever rest from the struggles and wars here on earth.
 
His body leaves the cultural house where the wake had taken place, then passes in front of his house, currently under construction. It now heads to the place where the ASIC office is and then returns to the town center, where a group of teenagers greets him with “Camarada,” his favorite song from the Venezuelan group Los Guaraguao.”
 
Those who are in front of the funeral march take turns being pall-bearers. In the back, a group of young people carry a sign that states, “Marcelo, no one will quiet your voice, nor your fight. We demand justice! They can kill people, but never the ideas.””
 
Gustavo Marcelo’s body then passes in front of the school, later in front of the police station that shows little interest in investigating the disappearance and assassination. The police here protect the mayor more than its people, a man complains. They must be investigated, he also demands.
 
The distressed mother is able to make it to the entrance of the cemetery. Her son went all the way; he went as far as he said he would. Before his burial: a song, a prayer, many chants, words from a family member, another payer, another song, a speech from FMLN Sen. Sigfrido Reyes. Everyone wants to say something to Gustavo Marcelo before he leaves.

Here lies your son, San Isidro, your uncle Titihuapa, with its hills liberated now. Here we will continue your path and defend with pride our heritage so that tomorrow, when we see a kid reading under the shadow of a tree, we will know that it is your face, your living face.”
 
Later tears and some chanting begins again. What does the town of San Isidro want? Justice! And we demand that the authorities get to the bottom of this case, so the intellectual and material authors of this crime can be brought to justice.”