History
Since 1996, EcoViva – formerly the Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America or FSSCA – has supported local initiatives in Central America, primarily in the post-conflict landscape of rural El Salvador. We have always collaborated directly with local organizations that are working towards food security, environmental conservation, conflict transformation, and social justice.
The War in El Salvador
El Salvador is still recovering from a brutal civil war which raged from 1979 to 1992. At the root of this conflict is a deep-seated inequality within Salvadoran society, in which the vast majority of the population lives in poverty while a privileged few live in wealth and opulence. The elite maintained their power by installing military governments from the 1930s until the 1990s, with strong backing from the United States.
In the 1970s, a mass movement of peaceful protest rose up against the military regime, only to be violently killed by soldiers or by right-wing death squads linked to the government. Left-wing guerrilla movements rose up to challenge the military, and the government responded by burning down entire villages in an effort to destroy the families and communities of anyone suspected of sympathizing with the guerrillas. At least 75,000 people were killed, and over 700,000 people fled to exile.
Refugees Return, Violence Erupts
In the early 1990s, thousands of the Salvadorans who had fled to Panama, Honduras and Nicaragua returned to El Salvador during the peace negotiations. Most did not go back to their home villages in the remote and rocky highlands. Instead they settled on coastal lands that had been former cotton and sugar cane plantations. Here each family laid claim to agricultural plots which were finally granted to many of them as part of the 1992 Peace Accords.
During the peace negotiations, the government chose to resettle thousands of former army soldiers in the same area as refugees and former guerillas, setting up a tense situation in which former enemies were now forced to be neighbors. Conflicts soon arose, and violence erupted.
To compound these problems, the majority of these new communities were given virtually no basic services at all: roads, electricity, sanitation, water, schools or clinics. Many refugees never received land titles, and most found to their distress that the soils of their new lands were overtaxed and depleted from years of highly concentrated use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that had heavily contaminated the groundwater.
Tensions and violence grew further as refugee youths were deported from the United States: many had become involved in Los Angeles street gangs, and they brought the drugs and violence back with them. Poverty increased, deep-seated conflict persisted, and violence worsened.
Founding of the FSSCA
The Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America (FSSCA) – now called EcoViva – was formed in 1996 by Father José “Chencho” Alas, Father John “Juancho” Donahue and historian Harold Baron to support an emergent grassroots movement to build long-lasting peace in the Lower Lempa area. This local peace-building initiative was dubbed La Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa y Bahia de Jiquilisco (The Coordinating Network of the Lower Lempa River and Bay of Jiquilisco, or La Coordinadora).
La Coordinadora originally brought together people from fourteen local villages to address the flooding that each year would destroy countless homes and fields. Working alongside Chencho and the FSSCA, local leadership emerged to transform conflict into common action. They eventually created a disaster response program that became a model for the region. As La Coordinadora slowing evolved, it grew into a major grassroots social movement involving strong participation from members in 76 local communities of the Lower Lempa and neighboring Bay of Jiquilisco areas.
The Local Zone of Peace and the Gang Truce
In 1998, the communities affiliated with La Coordinadora committed themselves to ending the violence that has been endemic to the region since the end of El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992). They declared their communities to be a Local Zone of Peace and resolved to promote reconciliation, collaborative problem solving, and non-violent conflict resolution. Although the United Nations Regions of Peace served as a model, this would become the first Zone of Peace in the world built from the grassroots.
In 2000 and 2001, as part of the peace-building process, we worked with La Coordinadora to address an epidemic of gang-related violence. With guidance from our co-founder, visionary Salvadoran priest Chencho Alas, volunteers from the FSSCA provided training in conflict transformation to key community leaders, who in turn brought together key gang leaders. They negotiated a gang truce which holds to this day.
In return for laying down their arms, the gang leaders asked our local partners to create meaningful social and cultural programs. The most successful of these, the Rays of Light Youth Art Project, continued for 9 years and eventually was integrated into a variety of Youth Empowerment Programs that have, over time, included theater, community radio, visual arts and community organizing. In addition we are now providing high school and college scholarships to a new generation of youth leaders, with the goal of preventing gang violence and youth migration. We are working for a future in which the brightest young people of the Lower Lempa can use their skills locally to support sustainability and social justice.
The Peace Project
Another outgrowth of the gang violence prevention work is the MesoAmerican Peace Project, led by our founder José “Chencho” Alas. The Peace Project now brings together community leaders from six countries to exchange information on best practices in violence prevention, social justice and environmental sustainability. In 2009, it received its own independent status as the Foundation for Sustainability and Peacemaking in Mesoamerica.
The Mangrove Association
As we raised funds for disaster prevention and community development projects in the Lower Lempa, the leaders of La Coordinadora created a non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Mangrove Association, staffed by highly educated engineers and agronomists from San Salvador with the technical expertise to build water systems and train farmers in organic agriculture. Over time, with our support, local people received the education and training needed to fill many of those professional slots.
Community-Led Environmental Conservation
In 2005, a new threat to peace emerged when the Ministry of the Environment declared the Bay of Jiquilisco a National Protected Area and announced that all human settlements would be forcibly removed from the area. This brought back bitter memories of the 1980s, when many local people had been forced into exile for opposing the brutal military regime, only to march back from Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras in the early 1990s to start life over, with nothing.
People in local communities organized peacefully not just to protest the government’s plan, but to come up with a more effective alternative. They recognized the need to protect the threatened mangrove forests surrounding the Bay of Jiquilisco. But they also knew that wealthy land developers, many with major connections in the government, had been surveying the area in order to expand sugar cane plantations and build luxury hotels. Displacing local people would not ensure environmental protection, and might actually lead to major environmental devastation.
Our local partners formed alliances with university researchers and policymakers to lobby for a different plan. In April 2008, our partners reached an unprecedented agreement with the Salvadoran government. Not only do local villagers have the right to stay where they are, but they are now officially recognized as co-managers of the Protected Area. They are working with the government to create comprehensive environmental protection plans. And they are expanding sustainable community development programs which protect the natural habitat of the many species that live in the area.
A Growing Model
With our continual support, the Mangrove Association has now grown to support three community-based social movements: La Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa with 76 member communities, La Coordinadora de Puerto Parada (on the western side of the Bay of Jiquilisco) with 22 member communities, and the Association for the Sustainable Use of the Watershed of the Bay of Jiquilisco (ASUSCUBAJI), a coalition of 40 community organizations in 8 municipalities throughout the province of Usulután.
In addition to our ongoing work with the Mangrove Association and its member communities in the Lower Lempa and Bay of Jiquilisco area, for the last five years we have begun to channel funding to similar community-led initiatives in Honduras and Panama. Over time, we seek to grow those relationships into strong and successful partnerships that replicate the success of our work in El Salvador.
In 2010 we changed our name to EcoViva. We chose this name to reflect the life-sustaining and earth-sustaining nature of our work, and because it sounds like ¡Que Viva!, a phrase used in Latin America to cheer on leaders who are making a difference.
Learn about the results of our work
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