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In June 2004, Human Rights Watch published a 143-page report entitled Turning a Blind Eye: Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador's Sugarcane Cultivation, revealing Coca-Cola's use of sugarcane harvested by children as young as eight years old. Though national and international child labor authorities -- including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Protocol of San Salvador, the Minimum Age Convention and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention -- prohibit minors under the age of 18 from doing hazardous or harmful work, plantation owners circumvent these laws by classifying young children and teenagers who work with parents or older siblings as "helpers" rather than the employees they actually are.

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[ 25 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Cuban's have the right to see a doctor on a regular basis, and children in Cuba aren't rummaging through landfill sites riddled with human excrement and medical waste for trinkets to sell like Salvadoran children are reduced to today.

If democracy is such a good thing in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, then why is it such a hard sell in Cuba ?. We know why. The democratizers need to sell democracy where thirst for it wants quenching the most.

Viva la revolucion!

[ 26 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I always thought it just went:

Do-do do do do do do do do
Do-do do do do do do do do
Do-do do do do do do do do
Do-do do do do do do do do
Do-do do do do do do do do
Do-do do do do do do do do
Do-do do do do do do do do
Do-do do do do do do
Do the hustle!

(repeat as necessary or until vomiting)

I know that the reason I generally don't respond to threads about El Salvador and other countries I'm not familiar with is because, well, I'm not familiar with them. I read, absorb, but don't have much to say.

Unfortunately, people don't have every country in the world in their usual radar, and often the countries we hear about the most in the news tend to be the ones we know the most about. I think that's probably why you haven't had as many responses as you might have liked.

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because Cuba gets too much attention sometimes leading to neglect of the banana democracies as topics of interest

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I can say that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but a lot of people feel that it is (especially US foreign policy...), which is why there is so much more attention on Cuba.

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If democracy is such a good thing in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, then why is it such a hard sell in Cuba ?. We know why. The democratizers need to sell democracy where thirst for it wants quenching the most.

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I believe that healthy democracy is directly proportional to one's level of education. Of course, education is pretty good in Cuba, so why haven't they revolted? Because Cuba has a relatively well-run government and a good propaganda machine. I mean that's like asking why the Romans didn't overthrow Octavian or Corinth Cypselus.

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Originally posted by Odin:
All I know about from El Salvador is from a friend who immigrated from there. Apparently, al lot of their problems come from the Catholic Church having too much power.

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At risk of being disrespectful of your friend, the Catholic Church is the least of their problems in El Salvador. Their problems are still abject poverty, one of Latin America's most abysmal infant mortality rates, illiteracy, and a general feeling of unease in the air after a U.S. shadow government waged war on this tiny Central American country of six million for twelve years leading up to 1992. In short, El Salvador has been crucified by its humungous militant neighbor to the North for the sake of killing an idea - the same idea that Cuban revolutionaires fought tooth and nail for.

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I believe that healthy democracy is directly proportional to one's level of education. Of course, education is pretty good in Cuba, so why haven't they revolted? Because Cuba has a relatively well-run government and a good propaganda machine. I mean that's like asking why the Romans didn't overthrow Octavian or Corinth Cypselus.

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In fact, there is little comparison to be made between Cuba and the Roman empire. Julius Caesar was a benevolent dictator compared with the Nero, Caligula and the most brutal of Roman dictators. Too, there were clear consequences for breaking or even challenging Roman law. The people of conquered lands were literally terrorized by Roman soldiers. Heads were nailed on posts and people crucified as a show of force to would-be rebels as a way of saying, This is what happens to those who violate Roman laws, which were extensive and petty. And there eventually were slave revolts against corruption and diapidated empire when the rich refused to pay their taxes. There were two classes of people in Rome - the rich and slaves. Your fascist Rome comparison could be made more appropriately with Batista's Cuba, or Pinochet's Chile, Hitler's Germany, Duvalier's Haiti or Videla's Argentina - all U.S.-backed or corporate-sponsored military regimes.

Yes, literacy rates are high in Cuba, and the "propaganda" is social democracy!@

Viva la revolucion!

[ 28 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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At risk of being disrespectful of your friend, the Catholic Church is the least of their problems in El Salvador.

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Well, he is a religious minority and a native El Salvadoran, so I could understand why he would view things that way.

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Your fascist Rome comparison could be made more appropriately with Batista's Cuba, or Pinochet's Chile, Hitler's Germany or Videla's Argentina - all U.S.-backed military regimes.

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Chomsky notes some of the efforts of Archbishop Romero:

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In February 1980, the Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, sent a letter to President Carter in which he begged him not to send military aid to the junta that ran the country. He said such aid would be used to "sharpen injustice and repression against the people's organizations" which were struggling "for respect for their most basic human rights" (hardly news to Washington, needless to say).

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And the fate of some Jesuit intellectuals at the hands of US-trained soldiers was brutal as well:

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In November 1989, six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter, were murdered by the army. That same week, at least 28 other Salvadoran civilians were murdered, including the head of a major union, the leader of the organization of university women, nine members of an Indian farming cooperative and ten university students.

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