Well, today has been an exciting, disappointing, frustrating, and more recently promising one.

My contact in San Salvador has been primarily Carmen Cruz. She has joined us as a translator on several trips and has always promised to help when she can. She knows lots of people in government. Today, her son Napolean called and did most of the communicating. We started on Skype about 10 am. While we were talking he had several calls from various people and gave me some information that Carmen had gathered earlier in the day.

Carmen had been told that the only way the containers would ever be released is to pay for a complete audit of the goods on the containers—every item. The audit had to be witnessed by a notary, which in El Salvador means a lawyer. There are literally tens of thousands of items in the trucks, and I knew that was very bad news. Then came the question: “Are you ready to abandon them and just let us get rid of the stuff”? My answer, of course, was “no”. I asked Napolean to please get the name and phone number of the person who was making those statements. He made some calls and came back with Carlos Cativo, Deputy Director of the Customs Storage Office in San Bartolo, a suburb of San Salvador.

Napolean then called Carlos and asked him some questions:
Is this persecution of the Church of Christ?
Are you ready to stand by this decision in the face of International news teams?
Are you ready to drive donations to the poor of your country to other countries by your actions which are in defiance of the President’s authorization to release the containers?
What is your party affiliation? We have been told that this is “payback” to the Arena Party for their actions when they were in power. (Note here: the shipping broker had heard a discussion between the boss of Carlos and Tito, the Mayor of La Palma in which it was stated that this was payback to Arena party. Napolean called Tito and verified that that had been said to him.)
Their conversation was quite long, and of course I could not understand most of it.
Napo told me that Carlos is a 4th layer beaurocrat who claims he has no party affiliation (Napo calls him a “Commie!) He said he was enforcing the law strictly and there would be no exceptions and he would never release the containers unless we did what he said as long as he held the position he was in. He said it was not persecution of the church but the church did not have the proper incorporation papers completed (they have been in process for quite a while) and the law allowed him to do it exactly his way.

About the time we finished that conversation someone called Carmen and told her to bring copies of the papers signed by the President to the customs office “immediately”. She complied. She had held the papers since Saturday because the customs people did not want them when she took them there earlier.

We visited some more and Carlos threatened to confiscate the goods and tax them as he had said he would earlier. Again, I asked what the basis of taxation was and he said the audit that we were going to pay for would determine that.

I then wrote a 2 page letter to the consulate in Chicago, as posted earlier, and faxed it to her, Patricia Maza, and to the consulate in Washington DC, Senator Bond, Senator McCaskill, Congressman Blunt, and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee who is on the foreign relations committee.


At 2:20 pm I got a call from Napo to read the last email from him. Here is what it said. One more piece of news:

I have just been informed that the containers were unloaded without our authorization in a very arbitrary act and decision taken by the officers at the customs facility. That particular facility is famous for the levels of corruption and disappearance of goods. Thieves operate at their will and the lack of security is well known. They claim that they were authorized to do so, Tito says he did not authorize it, Estela de Escobar (An assistant at Customs who has helped us before) says that she didn't authorize it either. By the way this is totally arbitrary and against the law. As stated in the customs norms, removing contents without authorization carries a fine to the person who did this anomaly.

As of this moment the contents are out on the open, Carlos Cativo says that they will put them in a safe place. God bless us if by the time the goods are picked up we find them in one piece!

Jose Napoleon Montano

I immediately faxed that email to Patricia and was ready to fax it to the others when Napo called back and said that it was a mistake—the containers were still sealed. Carmen was with him and he showed her that the trucks were sealed. (I believe this was a last ditch effort to get us to just give in and walk away from the whole thing.) I called Patricia and notified her of the mistake.

About 3 pm Patricia’s office called me and said that Patricia was on the phone with Carlos and he was apologizing for the inconvenience, that there was nothing political in any of his decisions, that the only delay was in the final processing, that he was sorry for any bad thoughts we might have about him, that he was ready to cooperate and help in any way, that he realizes we are good people trying to help his people, and that he is glad that arrangements have been made to keep us from having to pay extended storage costs. Patricia is to send me an email tonight or tomorrow morning and tell me what happened and what is going to happen.

It ain’t over till it’s over!