Saturday, March 14, 2009
VILLA OLÍMPICA
One day left 'til the Salvadoran presidential elections. Saturday. Saturday? Yes, today was Saturday. Slept five hours. No mate again. Straight to party headquarters at 1316 to be assigned either to a specific voting center or to be part of a response team that verifies the reports of fraud throughout Election Day. Carla had been complaining about feeling sick, something about her stomach.
Immediately upon arriving at 1316, we got a call that DUIs were being bought in front of a factory, a typical way of committing voter fraud. I had left my camcorder charger back at the hostel. We pilled into a truck and drove to the factory. Right next to the closed-off entrance was an ARENA booth advertising free taxi rides to your voting location. People would go up to the booth, present their DUI card and the three ARENA members would look on a list that would tell them where their corresponding voting center was, and then for some reason the ARENA members would retain a copy of each person's DUI number and name. Eyvin led the charge, questioning all three. I recorded video and Carla took pictures. We lingered around for a while and a lady approached us claiming that she was told that inside the factory non-Salvadoran people were being bussed in to stay and spend the night so that they can vote the next morning. We got a name and address of a first-hand witness of all this. On the way back to 1316, Carla was once again saying that she was feeling sick, this time nauseous. She stuck her head out the window but didn't throw up. When we returned, we were interviewed and our answers were recorded. Eyvin filled an incident report, something that is necessary anytime there is a possible case of fraud or irregularities.
We hung out for the remainder of the day there as "on call." Other observers were being sent out to investigate reported irregularities. Perla, Romél and Gaily were sent out to check out trucks that supposedly were transporting Nicaraguans and Hondurans to ARENA locations to vote tomorrow. A fight broke out. Perla was on TV. Next, we took off to the INDES (National Institute of the Sports) stadium. We walked around the bungalows to check for any people spending the night but didn't find anything.
And then came the Villa Olímpica call a little after 9:00 PM. Villa Olímpica is another huge sports stadium/center located close to the municipality of Ayutuxtepeque. It was reported that buses filled with Nicaraguans and Hondurans had just arrived. The ARENA members had locked the doors to the stadium and were refusing to let anyone in, saying that it was late and these people had to wake up early to vote. We said that we understood and sympathized but that the allegations were serious and we needed to verify that there weren't any voter irregularities or fraud taking place. Eyvin and a few others spent the next hours negotiating with the ARENA people to let the international observers in. The press began showing up and after a while, they agreed to let in a handful of observers.
Carla was in that group. When Carla was done, she said that there were a lot of beds, tons of empty space, a lot of underage kids. An official from the JED, the Departmental Electoral Board for El Salvador, arrived and we all followed around the back of the stadium to the side entrance. Inside, we immediately noticed a lot of empty beds. I interviewed a man named Victor who said he was from the department of Sonsonate. We were in the capital, San Salvador. Though no non-Salvadorans were documented, we did file reports of Salvadorans going to vote outside of their respective municipality (and department) like the case with Victor. We were then led into another room where the ARENA coordinators denied us entry into another hall within the stadium where the majority of the people were.
They let in a few news channels like Canal 21 but kept the observers separated. The crowd inside was being agitated by the ARENA coordinators into shouting the ARENA party anthem for the TV cameras.
At that point we were let in but only three or four at a time. The crowd was hostile but it never escalated into violence, just name calling and yelling.
There were a lot of underage kids ranging from seven years old to about fifteen. We all started leaving. Outside the state police was called and arrived in riot gear, armed to the teeth. There was a helicopter circling above. The FMLN supporters on the street were getting rowdy. As international observers we were allowed to go from behind the guard rail to either side.
We stayed there for a few hours, looked around the stadium and inside the buses, speaking with ARENA officials and other observers. After 2:00 AM we decided to leave. Walking to our truck FMLN supports kept asking us what we saw and what we were going to do. They were obviously upset and worried that we weren't treating the matter seriously. We assured them that we were treating it seriously, gave them the Denouncing Hotline number for them to call if anything else happens and then we took off back to the hostel.
Getting lost in El Salvador is easy, so much so that it has become an expected factor in the traveling process. After the first time getting lost in the early morning, we asked for directions. The second time getting lost we asked for more detailed directions and got lost again. After the third person's interpretation of directions we made it back to the hostel at around 3:00 AM. Perla, Gaily, Perish and Carla slept. Claudia and I stayed up. I finally made some mate. We left a little after 3:45 AM and got to 1316 just a little after 4:00 AM.
