A vandalized ARENA billboard in San Salvador. Photo by Luis Galdamez.

On the night of March 15, 2009, I was surrounded by thousands of celebrating Salvadorans. The first left-wing president, Mauricio Funes of the FMLN, a left-wing political party, had just been elected and San Salvador was erupting into a sea of red.

I had come to El Salvador to work as one of 5,000 election observers. The vote over, I was on the street to show my support for the president-elect, and my relief that the process had gone off without any major conflicts. When wearing my credentials, I had been greeted by Salvadorans with smiles and handshakes. One elderly street vendor pulled a member of my group close and whispered, “Thank god you are here. We don’t want any more trouble.”

In the week preceding election day, my group of 26 people, a third of whom were Salvadorans now living in Canada, met with political groups from the left, right, and centre. Damian Alegria, a member of the leftist FMLN, recounted his harrowing years as a guerrilla fighter in San Salvador. He endured imprisonment, torture, and the disappearances of compatriots while fighting the right-wing ARENA party and its U.S.-funded paramilitary.

Then it was time to visit Adolfo Tórrez, a leader of ARENA, the party formed in 1981 by Roberto D’Aubuisson, a death-squad organizer who had been trained at the School of the Americas. In power since ’89, ARENA’s stranglehold on El Salvador was, with this election, finally being pried open.

My group had to squeeze our way through a parking lot overflowing with shiny sports cars and SUVs to get to ARENA’s San Salvador compound. The room housed standard office furniture but also bizarre items more at home in a teenager’s hangout: hobbyist models of fantasy warriors (Lord of the Rings elves, Roman gladiators), racks of Samurai swords, and a wall of promotional pictures from the movie 300.

Several female members hurriedly brought us bottled water and coffee, while the men mingled, speaking fluent English to the non-Salvadorans, asking our names, our home towns, where we worked, etc. It felt like interrogation in the guise of small talk.

Tórrez was the director-general for the Department of San Salvador. He was a well-tanned, fit man with flashy gold jewelry. His demeanour was casual and familiar, but the whole time we were there, a tall young man circled around, videotaping us. When one of our group asked a question, his camera lens closed in on her and remained there long after she had finished talking. Other ARENA party workers moved amongst us, taking photos from every angle. Tórrez’s smile was as incongruous, and as strangely sinister, as the Smurf toys that sat on a corner desk in front of portraits of D’Aubuisson and Augusto Pinochet.

Still videotaping us, ARENA officials walked us out and shook our hands as we boarded our minivan. They took extra care to thank the Salvadorans of our group. Sitting at the back of our van, I couldn’t help but repeatedly look over my shoulder as we drove away from ARENA. I had the feeling they were watching us for miles.

Like a page from ARENA’s violent history, on July 2, Adolfo Tórrez was found shot in the heart outside his home. Pronounced a suicide, his death cuts short the corruption investigation he was under—and ensures that he takes the party’s secrets with him to the grave.

Honduran citizens cast their votes in defiance of a military coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and cancelled planned elections. Photo by Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters.

Sunday morning was dark and my alarm didn’t go off, so I slept in. I was awakened late in the morning to a fellow gringo, my friend Luke, shouting through my window. “Ashley!” he yelled, “wake up, did you hear what happened?” I had heard nothing but silence that day. I let him in and before he could explain what was going on my alarm began to flash and my cellphone began to ring. The silence is broken. On the other end of the phone my father shouts, “Are you okay, what is going on there Ashley. Come home.” Before I even knew it, my father told me that overnight, I’d been swept up in a military coup.

I had arrived in the small city of Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras, in the early summer of 2009 to work with an NGO and study the atrocities of the Canadian gold mining industry for my master’s thesis. As a student of international development, June 28, 2009, was one of the most educational days of my life.

That was the day that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had slated for a referendum on adding a fourth ballot to the upcoming election asking Hondurans if they supported the writing of a new constitution. For the 70 percent of Hondurans who live in poverty, this was an opportunity for unprecedented change. The professors, the indigenous people, the NGOs, the activists—at least the ones I heard from—were all voting yes. This was a day that everyone had been talking about, although the democratic system in Honduras had seldom inspired too much confidence: People thought that perhaps the referendum would be cancelled; that officials would record who voted in order to intimidate them; or that the results would be rigged.

What actually happened—Zelaya forced from his home by the army and exiled to Costa Rica in a midnight coup— hadn’t even been on the radar, but that’s exactly what happened. Immediately, thousands of Zelaya supporters took to the streets in the capital, calling it an act of terrorism, and condemning the coup as the work of Honduras’ rich and powerful ruling class.

Still half asleep and incredibly confused, I threw on some jeans and joined Luke on the eerily deserted street corner. We arrived at the park to find about 30 people wearing red T-shirts that read “Yes to the Fourth Ballot,” singing the national anthem, and passing around makeshift ballots for people to cast their mock votes. Four military guards cornered the park. Elsewhere, all of the stores were closed and the church service ended early so we could all return home in time for the 9 p.m. curfew the new president had enforced “for safety.” Or, argued my colleagues, to keep the protesters out of the big cities.

When I returned to my hotel the door was padlocked with chains. The hotel owner hastily shuffled me inside and told me that we must be careful, since no one knew exactly what to expect. Although it may be overwhelming, he told me with grim humour, I couldn’t be here at a more opportune time: “Ashley,” he told me, “You are going to leave this country with the highest understanding of politics and revolution.”

Sunday night I couldn’t get to sleep. Fantasizing about being back home, where I could get minute-by-minute news feeds sent to my phone, I eventually dozed off, only to wake up the following day faced with a curfew newly extended from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., no independent news channels, limited cellphone connections—and a glimpse of what real resistance looks like.

Our (totally made up, unofficial) Legalization Week continues today with Katie Addleman’s exploration of the drug trade, and the catastrophic effect prohibition has had on law enforcement, gang violence, addicts’ health, and community safety:

Ounce for ounce, marijuana is worth more than gold, and heroin more than uranium. Yet it’s only as a direct result of international policy that drugs are so valuable; if they weren’t illegal, they’d be worthless. Prohibition floats the drug trade by raising potential profits to astronomical levels, and the drug trade in turn floats the gangs who control it. “Because of … their illegality and associated criminal sanctions,” writes Chettleburgh, “those willing to trade in them—drug cartels, organized crime syndicates, so-called narco-terrorist groups and street gangs—can demand high prices and derive great profits.”

“You’re talking about a profession where people accept a risk of being murdered, execution-style, as an occupational hazard,” said Bratzer. “How is a mandatory minimum sentence going to deter a person who already accepts the risk of being shot and having their body dumped in a car?”

Read the article in full here. And be sure to vote in our poll on drug policy above, too.

Tomorrow: Rosemary Counter on raw milk.

[Editor’s note: This Magazine columns editor Eva Salinas will be reviewing films and rounding up news about the Toronto International Film Festival over the next week. Visit us online next week for more of her dispatches.]

And so it begins. This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival kicked-off last night, a little later in the year than usual. By doing so, it opened on the eve of September 11th, a day which many are marking for events not long past. But just a few blocks from Hollywood North, not far from where, already, celeb-gawkers gape, security personnel stand tall and Starbucks baristas break a sweat, Toronto’s Latin American community is commemorating a Sept. 11th many have forgotten — the 1973 military coup in Chile.

I have Chile on the brain, having just returned from the country and regretting that I will miss its public remembrance of lives lost, of rights violated and of expression stifled during Augusto Pinochet’s early reign.

In Toronto, it’s also the start to the Allende Arts Festival, a celebration of everything TIFF won’t be: mostly free, for the people.

During Chile’s coup, the elected Marxist President, Salvador Allende, was ousted and killed. But today, with the country’s first female leader Michelle Bachelet in her last months of presidency, Allende’s spirit is alive; art has been returned to the public.

The streets of Valparaiso, the country’s port city, are splashed with colour: detailed landscapes; romantic poetry; striking designs painted on every house or storefront. Art you can’t buy. Art for everyone.

TIFF may be its exact antithesis (or vice versa). Instead of the nameless painter, it has a famous face. Instead of stray dogs, pampered pets drink filtered water from dishes laid out for them on Yorkville Avenue. Instead of subtlety, extravagance.

I can’t decide whether I find TIFF unappealing simply because it is mostly an elitist event. I’m too young to know it any other way, to remember the “people’s festival.”  I assume, like me, most Torontonians have yet to attend a screening. Once, maybe three, four years ago, I waited in line for two hours, after which I gave up. (And, for context, I am a film lover: a Hot Docs volunteer, an attendee of festivals around the world, from Sudbury to West Africa, etc.)

Quirky Reg Hartt, the cinephile who runs the Cineforum screening series out of his home in Toronto, told community paper The Annex Gleaner last year that the film festival was bad for the city, as people will “save up” their film enthusiasm and spend it on the fest, thus killing business the rest of the year for smaller festival and cinemas.

I’m not convinced. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the upcoming Toronto Palestine Film Festival and Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Film Festival have a bit of trouble drumming up interest in its wake. But as a promoter of the latter told me: “Of course it’s all about TIFF! But we’re the bargain basement alternative to that!” I agree: different vibe, different audience, albeit one less celeb-obsessed and much poorer.

The festival may be for those with the time, commitment and ultimately, the cash (or star power, which supercedes all), but it’s hard not to feel the excitement in the city, even if we don’t make it to Edward Rogers’ backyard party with Bill Clinton and Matt Damon, Steve Nash’s rooftop soiree or bump into Oprah on Ossington (yeah, right).

And TIFF is, after all, a celebration of film (complete with excesses, controversy, promiscuity, and grotesque celeb worship – last year, I drew the line at Paris Hilton’s party.) And it is at home, making sure Canadian content is in front of eyeballs that wouldn’t see it at, say, Venice, Cannes or Sundance. (Alliance Films picked up Rob Stefaniuk’s Suck earlier this week). And, lastly but of note, the festival has made an attempt this year to make it more accessible to the public, with free screenings at Dundas Square.

So, for those indulging in the festival fit for kings, bon appeTIFF!

There’s nothing like an all-purpose label to bring comfort and order to an otherwise overwhelming world. But what’s comforting to one person can be downright offensive to another. When it comes to the language used to label the “non-Western” world, quotation marks just won’t cut it anymore. What’s really behind the terms we use and which ones should we be avoiding?

Third World

ORIGINS: Attributed to French economist Alfred Sauvy in the 1950s, it originally referred to countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia that were not aligned with either the capitalist (First World) or Communist (Second World) blocs.
STATUS: It’s dated—avoid using it. According to Shahidul Alam (see below), who coined the term “Majority World,” when used by the so-called West this phrase is hierarchical and reinforces “the stereotypes about poor communities and represents them as icons of poverty. It hides their histories of oppression and continued exploitation.”

Developing World

ORIGINS: The notion of “areas needing development” was introduced by U.S. President Harry Truman in his 1949 inaugural address. Originally a measure of income and wealth, the World Bank now defines developing in terms of quality of life, which includes economic growth and basic social services.
STATUS: Use with caution—the term has built-in problems. “Developing opens up a huge can of worms,” points out New Internationalist co-editor Dinyar Godrej. “Are we talking purely economic development or cultural development, and if the latter, isn’t such terminology blatantly prejudicial?”

Global South

ORIGINS: Credited to West German chancellor Willy Brandt, whose 1980 report, North-South: A Programme for Survival, divided the world into economic hemispheres: North and South, with exceptions like Australia and New Zealand. The term was taken up in academia in the 90s.
STATUS: The UN and other NGOs love this term and so can you. It “refers to those poorer nations that are not left out of development, but whose labor and lives pay for the affluence of the North,” writes Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. However, use it carefully. Matthew J.O. Scott, former head of World Vision International’s UN Office in New York, prefers it, but cautions, “It doesn’t describe the global poor who technically live north of the equator.” And, points out Sumita Dixit, a senior advisor with Canada’s department of foreign affairs, “While Global South has some resonance, this term ignores the incredible diversity among countries.”

Majority World

ORIGINS: Coined by writer and photographer Shahidul Alam in the early ’90s.
STATUS: While it’s a lesser-known phrase, feel free to get ahead of the trend and use it, because, says Alam, the term “highlights the fact that we are indeed the majority of humankind. It also brings to sharp attention the anomaly that the G8 countries—whose decisions affect the majority of the world’s peoples—represent a tiny fraction of humankind.”

A war broke out this month. A war not to the east but to the south, that has been little covered by the media. It comes complete with human rights violations, murder, and corruption caused by the exploitation of the Amazon. The blood of this war is on Canada’s hands.

On Friday, June 5, an estimated 600 Peruvian police officers opened fire on thousands of peaceful indigenous protesters blocking the destruction of their Amazon homeland on a road near Bagua in Peru. This joint police-military operation went awry when 30 protesters and 24 police offers were killed in one of the worst clashes in a decade, causing a war between the Peruvian government and Indigenous peoples.

For the past two months, over 30,000 Indigenous Peruvians have mounted fuel and transport blockades to disrupt the exploitation of the Amazon rainforest. They are working to block the advancement of free trade agreements that opens the Amazon and indigenous land for business with foreign investors. The trade agreement, specifically with Canada and America, seeks oil, minerals, timber, and agriculture, which will in effect devastate the greatest carbon sink on the planet, accelerating climate change.

Police attempting to forcefully remove indigenous protesters blocking a road outside Bagua, Peru, June 5, 2009. Photo by Thomas Quirynen.

“If anyone still had doubts about the true nature of these free trade agreements, the actions of the Peruvian government make it clear that they are really about putting foreign investment ahead of everything else, including the livelihoods — and even the lives — of indigenous people,” says Jamie Kneen, Communications and Outreach Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.

Earlier this month, Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, said the indigenous protesters were standing in the way of progress, modernity, and were part of an international conspiracy to keep Peru impoverished with their blockades.

“Garcia seemed to imply the Natives were a band of terrorists as he stood in front of hundreds of military officers in a nationally televised speech,” says Ben Powless, a reporter from the frontlines with Rabble.ca.  “He continued to decry the Indian barbarity and savagery, and called for all police and military to stand against savagery.”

There are conflicting stories on the accounts of what took place on the June 5 bloodbath. Police dispatches claim that when they arrived to physically remove protesters, many officers were disarmed, killed, or taken prisoner by the protesters.

But indigenous people and families of missing protesters say that the police came looking for a fight. Police and military acted in a violent sweep, searching local towns and houses for protesters, shooting to kill.

A human rights lawyer in the region told the BBC that while 30 protesters have been officially proclaimed dead, hundreds still remain unaccounted for. Locals are accusing police of burning bodies, throwing them in the river from helicopters, and removing the wounded from hospitals to hide the real number of casualties.

Powless reports that a curfew has been imposed on the local towns near the area of Bagua and these Amazonian towns have become militarized. The government has begun persecuting and threatening jail for local indigenous leaders. And fear is growing that the government is trying to build support in further repressing the protesters.

“This is not a path to peace and reconciliation,” says Powless.

One Canadian company that will benefit directly from this rollback of indigenous rights is the Alberta-based petrochemical firm Petrolifera. The Peruvian government recently signed an agreement with Petrolifera to explore land inhabited by one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes, a blatant human rights violation for the purposes of enriching the tar sands development.

“Canada is the largest investor in Peru’s mining sector. If people are being killed on behalf of Canadian investors, to promote and protect investment projects on Indigenous land, then their blood is on our hands,” says MiningWatch Canada’s Kneen.

Last Wednesday, the Canadian Senate passed Bill C-24, which furthered the Canada-Peru free trade agreement by implementing legislation protecting it. Despite this bloody civil war for the Amazon and indigenous rights, the first bilateral agreement Canada has signed for the Americas since 2001 was approved, by the Conservatives and the Liberals. Prompting the question once again: whose interests are being looked after?

Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine’s resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and is the eco-correspondent to MTV News Canada.