Two stories: deportation and illiteracy in El Salvador

I don't know how much coverage they get, but IPS correspondents in Central America tend to produce some high quality reporting. Here are two more reports from Edgardo Ayala out of El Salvador.

From the American Dream to the Nightmare of Deportation

At least two flights from the United States and three buses from Mexico bring back around 150 deportees every day. The authorities are alarmed by the sheer numbers. In the first 11 months of 2014, a total of 47,943 deportees reached the immigration office – 43 percent more than in the same period in 2013.

The migration authorities project a total of 50,000 deportees for 2014 – a heavy burden for this impoverished Central American country of 6.2 million people, where unemployment stands at six percent and 65 percent of those who work do so in the informal sector of the economy.

The army of returning migrants does not have government support programmes to help with their reinsertion in the labour market, deportees and representatives of civil society organisations told IPS.

Many of them have put down roots in the United States, and they return to this country with no support network and with the stigma of having been deported, because the impression here is that most of those sent home are gang members or criminals.

I was surprised to read that many returned migrants are still viewed as potential gang members. That seemed to have been the case in the late 1990s and first half of the 2000s when I was there, but I would have thought that that perception had gone away.

It was also interesting to read about the need for returned migrants to have some evidence of the skills that they performed in the US. Many migrants appear to return to El Salvador after having lived and worked honorably in the US. They are very good workers who have gained valuable skills. However, they are unable to convince employers in El Salvador of their work experience. Given that 70 percent of those deported have never committed a crime, it doesn't help that the US government handcuffs them all for their flight back to San Salvador.

In his second report, Ayala writes that Illiteracy Wears a Woman’s Face in El Salvador.

The Salvadoran government’s National Literacy Programme has taught 200,000 people to read and write since 2009. That has brought the illiteracy rate among people over the age of 10 down from 17.9 percent in 2009 to 11.8 percent in 2013, according to the 2013 multi-purpose household survey.

Of that 11.8 percent, women represent 7.3 percentage points and men 4.5 points.

But in rural areas, the illiteracy rate stands at 18.9 percent, with women accounting for 11 percentage points and men 7.9.

The gender disparity “is due to the ‘machista’ culture. Dads used to say: boys should go to school and girls should do the housework,” the head of the Education Ministry’s literacy department, Angélica Paniagua, told IPS.

López remembers how, when she was a girl, her parents enrolled her in school, but she often missed class because they forced her to do housework.

Education has become much more of a priority since the 2009 election of Mauricio Funes. The emphasis on education will most likely continue under Salvadora Sanchez Ceren of the FMLN whose background has been in teaching.