Despite President Juan Manuel Santos’s low popularity, and a climate of distrust about the future, optimism is growing about the outcome of the peace process in Colombia. Many now hope that the deal will improve the country on various fronts.

El Salvador faces a number of challenges before its agricultural sector becomes a viable mode of subsistence for many rural families.

This year’s annual report from the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights has identified a number of severe human rights violations in the Central American nation dating from 2015 to the first months of 2016.

Operation Condor was an illegal and brutal cooperation between military regimes in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Uruguay during the 1970’s and 1980’s.  The intent was to share information, resources, and exchange prisoners to be secretly tortured and even executed. 

Whatever their class, ethnicity, religion or political views, people generally regard peace as a good of the highest order. Very few will publicly disagree that peace should be a central focus in the political debates in Colombia.

Colombia found its military shattered as the 1990s drew to a close, following forty years of civil war. While the guerrilla had the support of the population, the army had to impose it or buy it. And whereas the guerrilla used primarily artisanal weapons, the army had resources, strategies and tactics taken from military school.

During the 1950s and 1960s, a spy from the Soviet Union freely wandered the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay in complete tranquility. She lived in the city center, married a writer, and owned an antique shop. No one ever spotted her.

Ravna Shamdasani, spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, worries that the extrajudicial executions carried out on at least 12 people last year in the Mexican city of Tlatlaya last year will go unpunished and that the victims will be denied justice.

To achieve peace Colombia will need to clear its territory from explosives planted by the guerrillas. Doing so could cost up to one billion pesos.

A recently published book by Allier and Crenzel titled The Struggles for Memory in Latin America analyzes the political memory struggles in different countries in the region, including El Salvador. This specific chapter concerning El Salvador is called “The peace limitations in the Salvadorian case: confronted memories and permanent victims.”