WERU SISTERING COMMITTEE UPDATE:
by Chris Stark, WERU Volunteer Coordinator
Part of WERU’s mission is to serve our diverse community with a wide variety of programs. WERU has a “sister” relationship with Radio Sumpul, a radio station in the province of Chalatenango in El Salvador that was started after a 12 year civil war that ended in 1992. Some of you may have heard reports from El Salvador over the last few years with WERU volunteer Reporter Meredith DeFrancesco. I had an opportunity to go to El Salvador with a PICA economic and human rights delegation with Meredith in 2005. WERU collaborates with Radio Sumpul to cover important issues, promote cultural awareness and support delegations of people from Maine and Chalatenango to strengthen sistering relationships.
The Sistering Committee wants to build community – to be a voice for Latinos living in Maine and to reach out to the listener areas to better inform and foster an interest in the diverse Latino cultures and issues throughout the Americas. On Columbus Day weekend (October 9th - 14th) PICA, MOFGA and WERU will be hosting a US/El Salvador Sister Cities gathering in Bangor. One Salvadoran will be at the event to address immigration issues while another will talk about the upcoming El Salvador elections. We need volunteers for that event and for the WERU Sistering Committee to work collaboratively with PICA and MOFGA and communicate with Radio Sumpul. For more information, please call the station at 469-6600 or send an e-mail to info@weru.org.
ALL ARE INVITED TO ATTEND & PARTICIPATE:
Discussion: "2008 Elections & Voting in El Salvador"
Thursday, October 9, 7:00 pm at PICA, 170 Park St., Bangor
" There are high hopes that free and fair elections will allow the public to vote in a new President with the political will to reverse policies that have militarized the country, threatened the environment, and widened the gap between rich and poor." -US/El Salvador Sister Cities
The United States? -- it could be, but this quote is actually about El Salvador, where national elections this winter offer a real hope for change.
You are invited to meet with two representatives of the Salvadoran popular movement, Bernardo Belloso and Heriberto Orellana, and hear from them about how we can we can build support for free and fair elections, generate respect for human and civil rights in El Salvador, and create local coalitions with Salvadoran immigrant groups in the U.S.
Bernardo is a member of the national board of CRIPDES, the organization of the networked Salvadoran communities with whom we are sistered. He's been centrally involved in the anti-mining struggles in El Salvador.
Plus, we are super-excited that Heriberto, from our Sister City of Carasque, will be the other half of this two-person Salvadoran delegation.
Bernardo and Heriberto are arriving in Bangor from El Salvador to participate in the US- El Salvador Sister Cities National Gathering, and to kick off a 2-week speaking and fundraising tour of the Northeastern U.S. Please help us welcome them to our community (that's the fiesta part).
Here's a little about them:
Bernardo Belloso is a National Directive Council Member of the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador, CRIPDES. CRIPDES is the largest rural grassroots movement in El Salvador which coordinates the organizing, education and mobilization of over 300 rural communities spread through seven provinces of El Salvador.
Jose Heriberto Orellana Franco is a Directive Council Member in the community of Carasque (the Sister City of Bangor), one of the strongest CRIPDES-organized communities in the department of Chalatenango.
Public is also invited to participate in further discussion
Saturday, October 11th from 9:00am - 12:00pm
at the Union Street Brick Church, 126 Union St., Bangor.
To RSVP, or for more information, contact PICA at 207-947-4203,or email: info@pica.ws
  
Recent WERU Adventures in El Salvador:
CHECK OUT THE LATEST MAY 2008 UPDATES!
EXERPT FROM WINTER 2008 SALT AIR by Adam W. Lacher:
Guarjila, El Salvador: In simple Spanish, the old woman explained that she was in the war for four years, that she shot down 10 planes with her rifle and was prized among her fellow guerillas for her talent. I smiled and nodded, showing her I understood. Sitting side-by-side, we were enjoying the cool air against the outside wall of her house, the remains of a rusted and broken automatic assault rifle lying just overhead on the lip of the roof. She looked from me to the calm yellow horizon and laughed a little to herself, her dark wrinkled face cracked wide and open with a wise eagerness, like the space between a drop of rain and dry tilled soil. Perhaps she wanted to tell me I was welcomed in her home even if I didn’t understand every word she said… It was morning in Guarjila.
Over the past two years, volunteers and staff from WERU have been working with our counterparts at Radio Sumpul, a community radio station in the small mountain village of Guarjila, El Salvador, building a relationship to exchange ideas and information while experiencing cross-cultural community radio solidarity. Working with the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities Network and our local partners PICA and MOFGA, WERU collaborates with Radio Sumpul to cover important issues, promote cultural awareness and support visiting Maine and El Salvador delegations to strengthen the sistering experience.
In early January, longtime WERU member and PICA organizer Dennis Chinnoy invited WERU to join a sistering delegation named The Human Rights Investigation Team. The delegation consisted of 10 members representing several U.S./El Salvador sistering organizations across the country. The delegation’s mission was to investigate reports of violent government suppression in July 2007 of several hundred civilian water privitization protestors in Suchitoto, El Salvador. The delegation was primarily focused on the unwarranted arrest, initial imprisonment and, at the time, the prospected prosecution of 13 protestors as terrorists under the new Legislative Decree #108 (Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism). The 13 protesters were identified as the “Suchitoto 13” in human rights reports from Amnesty International, Ombudsman for Human Rights, Reporters Without Borders and others...
CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE STORY AND THE WHOLE WINTER 2008 SALT AIR ISSUE
RADIO SUMPUL
OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, volunteers and staff from WERU have been working with counterparts at Radio Sumpul, a community radio station in Chalatenango, El Salvador to build a relationship for the exchange of information and ideas and for experiencing crosscultural community radio solidarity.
WITH ASSISTANCE FROM the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities Network, PICA and MOFGA, WERU collaborates with Radio Sumpul to cover important issues, promote cultural awareness and support delegations of people from Maine and Chalatenango to visit each other and strengthen sistering relationships.
RADIO SUMPUL IS A COMMUNITY RADIO STATION located in Guarjilla, El Salvador, in the northern province of Chalatenango. Radio Sumpul is a twelve year-old station that was started after the Salvadoran civil war (1980 – 1992), along with many other community radio stations around the country, to broadcast social and political issues and music relevant to people at the local level. While struggling to gain legal status in the mid ‘90s, all community stations were forcibly shut down by the government, except for Radio Sumpul.
The BACK STORY:
El Salvador- During the 1980s, state sanctioned military and paramilitary forces killed over 73,000 Salvadorans and displaced over a million more to Central America (notably impoverished Honduras), Mexico and the United States. In a consistent policy, supported militarily and financially by the United States, the Salvadoran government engaged in bombings, massacres, routine murders, rapes and the customary “disappearances” that targeted unarmed civilians, the campesino, labor and religious organizers, as well as the as the civilian guerilla fighters known as the FMLN. 
The FMLN engaged the government forces for 12 years in order to bring on economic and human rights reforms, but it was in the Honduran refugee camps where real progress began. Despite their lack of resources and the continued aggression directed towards them, the Salvadorian refugees in Honduras solidified their models of participatory democracy, collectivity, skill sharing and literacy, to form what is currently the admirable and well-organized Associations of Rural Communities. The unarmed camps dedicated themselves to returning to their lands to builds stability, peace and an alternative model of democracy. In 1987, one of the first towns to repopulate was the mountainous Guarjila.
Nestled within the northern department of Chalatenango, Guarjila is currently the home of WERU’s sister station, Radio Sumpul. After the civil war, community radio stations started forming all around the country but were not immediately accepted by the government. The Salvadorian State required these startup stations to apply for broadcasting licenses, but while the stations were in the process of doing so the government sent out several forces to raid and shut them down… all were closed except for Radio Sumpul.
The Sumpul staff and programmers barricaded the building and rang the church bells in anticipation of the advancing Salvadorian military. More than thousand people came in response to the bells and aided Radio Sumpul by blocking the raid with their bodies, their screams and several large boulders they unearthed from the mountain. Government forces retreated to the lowlands.
 Today Radio Sumpul is known as “The Voice and Free Song of Chalatenango” and broadcasts both music and news/public affairs on a variety of topics affecting the communities of Chalatenango. Radio Sumpul is one of many community stations in a network organized through the association ARPAS, whose members pay collectively for, and share, the frequency 92.1. The station has an all-volunteer staff with no paid personnel. The programmers are mostly between the ages of 14 and 21 and do three-hour shows. The community radio station runs on a shoestring budget and struggles to stay operating. Last year, their transmitter was damaged during a lightning storm. They were able to borrow another and get back on their feet after a couple months of dead air, but problems kept coming. Shortly after their transmitter repairs the station lost phone service because they simply couldn’t afford to pay their bill. Isolated in the mountains the station faces an uphill battle to maintain programming every day.
WERU Community Radio began their sistering with Radio Sumpul through US El Salvador Sister Cities, an organization started during the civil war to combat human rights atrocities. The organization has evolved over the past twenty years into a conduit of solidarity between communities in the US and organized rural communities in El Salvador. Today this “sistering” experience focuses on important issues such as: the damaging effects of free trade policies and related neoliberal initiatives, small-scale cooperative economic projects, and sharing community organizing models.
WERU is not alone in this operation. Bangor, Maine has had a long time sistering relationship with the village of Carasque, in the northern department of Chalatenago, through the organization Peace through Inter-American Community Action (PICA). The Maine Organic Farmers’ and Gardeners’ Association (MOFGA) now has an organizational sistering with CORDES, the grassroots development arm of the Chalatenango’s organized rural association known as CCR. Many delegations from Maine have visited communities and organizations in El Salvador, focusing on different issues. Maine has on occasion hosted Salvadoran visitors as well.
 WERU’s relationship with Radio Sumpul is growing stronger and beginning to define itself. A handful of WERU programmers have visited Radio Sumpul as members of delegations or on their own, and were welcomed with open arms. Back in Maine, the newly formed Radio Sumpul WERU Sister Station Committee has begun to produce a weekly five-minute segment reporting on our sister station every Friday at 6:30am. In addition, programming concerning Radio Sumpul or issues related to El Salvador can be heard on “RadioActive”, “Voices”, or on specials. Check for updates and archived programming about Radio Sumpul at weru.org.
This June, WERU will host two central members of Radio Sumpul. Blanca Miriam Ayala Mejia and Maria Rosa Dubon Orellana. Miriam received her communications training during the civil war as a guerilla radio operator and is an elected representative to the CCR. Roas helped establish Radio Sumpul as an alternative news source and urgent alert system to mobilize against the new incursion of gold mining activity in the area and is the current administrator of Radio Sumpul. The two women will be involved in several Maine events hosted by WERU, PICA and MOFGA, and will travel with WERU and USELSC staff member, and Maine’s own, Jesse Dyer Stewart to participate in the Grassroots Radio Conference June 21st-24th, in Lowell, MA. Miriam and Rosa describe this tour as a means to encourage grassroots alternative media and community organizing. They will discuss:1) How local participatory democracy and organizing intersect with community radio as the voice of the people. 2) Their communities’ struggle for their rights to land threatened by Canadian gold mining companies and foreign business interests. 3) Constructing local participatory democracy to create sustainable communities in the face of government repression and harassment. 4) The connections between the problems we face in the US and El Salvador and our common solutions. They are calling their tour's title "When We Control the Media."
Listen to WERU for information on dates and times of the sister station events. The Radio Sumpul WERU Sister Station Committee is wide open for volunteer participation! Contact the Station at 469-6600 if you are interested in volunteering!
WERU sister station Radio Sumpul needs your HELP:
Contribute to Radio Sumpul Support Fund:
Operating a Community Radio Station in rural El Salvador presents many challenges, including a variety of technical problems that must be overcome in order to serve the people. Radio Sumpul has no shortage of technical and equipment challenges, one of which has been the lack of a functioning satellite connection with San Salvador in order to get national news and information programming from the nation's capital city. In fact, they have been without this connection for a couple of years.
Radio Sumpul is part of a social movement working to empower rural people and all Salvadorans struggling against economic, environmental, cultural and political oppression, and it is difficult to provide the most timely national news and information to its community without such a satellite link.
At WERU we became aware of this equipment need during the Radio Sumpul Sister Station Tour to Maine in June, and have recently purchased the required replacement part, a “C-Band low noise block downconverter”. We sent it south with some nice folks from PICA and the US/El Salvador Sister Cities Network who traveled to San Salvador in July. The part will hopefully reach Radio Sumpul in Guarjilla, Chalatenango in the near future so that our Sister Station will once again have a functioning satellite link.
We invite listeners to help pay for this satellite component, which cost $280.00, to express solidarity with the wonderful people of Radio Sumpul and the communities it serves. If you are so inclined please send checks to: WERU, P.O. Box 170, East Orland, ME 04431, with “Attn. Radio Sumpul” on the envelope and in the memo line of the check.
WERU will periodically post a “wish list” of necessary items that we are helping our Sister Station to obtain, so please check this site every now and then to see how you may be able to help with a donation or by volunteering.
Click here to browse the WERU Audio Archives for
hours and hours of on-air Sister Station Material
   
Other Sister Station Related sites to check out!
www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org
www.us-elsalvador-sisters.org
www.cripdes.org
www.cispes.org
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