Down the Well

A Philadelphia documentarian gets sucked into a real El Salvadoran murder mystery.

by Isaiah Thompson

[ philly abroad ]

Julia Shields Jamie Moffett (center) in El Salvador. He went to work on a documentary about the country's civil war, and ended up making a film about the murder of an anti-mining activist.

A few weeks ago, Kensington-based independent filmmaker Jamie Moffett found himself in a remote village in El Salvador, staring into a deep hole in the earth from which a human body had recently been recovered, and wondering how deep, metaphorically anyway, he was about to get himself.

Moffett and his film crew had come to the country to continue working on a documentary, Return to El Salvador, about the legacy of the country's 12-year-long civil war, and the United States' role in it.

But the trip took an unexpected turn when Moffett began hearing about a teacher and anti-mining activist, Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno, who had recently gone missing from the tiny country town of San Isidro. "The term that was being used was he had been 'disappeared,'" Moffett recalls —"which holds pretty specific historical weight down there."

The police, according to various accounts, seemed reluctant to investigate Rivera's disappearance. So a group of his friends and family began scouring the countryside, looking for clues. They came across an abandoned shack in which they found some of Rivera's clothes. Then, nearby, they found the well. A local fireman was recruited to descend and look for a body. He found one. Later DNA testing revealed it was Rivera's. The cause of death was strangulation.

Forensics revealed that Rivera had also been tortured. His body, according to accounts from eyewitnesses, was bound in nylon cord. According to Claudia Rodriguez, who heads the D.C. office of Share El Salvador, a solidarity group which has a field office in the area, he was missing fingernails, his scalp had been cut off, and "he didn't have a nose or mouth."

"That's not a common crime, that's a death squad type of killing," Rodriguez says.

Rivera's family and supporters are sure his killing was politically motivated. And there's no doubt Rivera had enemies: He had openly accused the town's mayor of committing electoral fraud. And locally he led the charge against mining.

San Isidro is a poor community, but it has gold. Since 2002, the Canadian-based company Pacific Rim has sought to mine in an area near San Isidro that it has dubbed — apparently without intended irony— El Dorado. The company has faced widespread opposition based on environmental concerns and fears that residents' rights will be trampled. In April, it brought international legal action againstEl Salvador's government, saying permits had been delayed.

Rivera opposed Pacific Rim, and, in 1992, founded the Friends of San Isidro Association (ASIC), a local hub of anti-mining organizing. His opposition apparently put him further at odds with the mayor, Ignacio Bautista, whom anti-mining activists say is favorably disposed to Pacific Rim.

It was Rivera's activism, friends say, that got him killed. So far, however, authorities disagree. Five people, described as gang members, were taken into custody. A state prosecutor assigned to the case has claimed Rivera got into a drunken altercation with the men.

Family members counter that Rivera didn't drink, and that such a theory completely ignores the evidence that he was tortured, possibly for days.

Even though Rivera's death had no direct connection to Moffett's film project, the Philadelphian became increasingly interested and decided, more or less on a whim, to try to film Rivera's funeral.

Hundreds of people showed up, Moffett says. He met Rivera's family, who welcomed his presence, hoping a wider audience would "provide more security for [Rivera's] brothers, who are scared for their lives."

The event affected him profoundly.

"After I came home from the funeral, I had this pretty significant 'holy shit' moment," he recalls. He wanted to start working on the Rivera story.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

From a professional perspective, this was slightly nuts. But the crew, he says, agreed, and returned to San Isidro with him to interview the family.

News of Rivera's death has spread through the blogosphere, but few mainstream newspapers, even within El Salvador, are covering the story, and officials have not, so far, wavered from their position that Rivera was killed in a brawl. Share El Salvador recently sent the Attorney General of El Salvador a letter, signed by several human rights groups, demanding a full investigation.

Moffett, meanwhile, finds himself in an unusual position. Rivera's death happened in a tiny village, far away. But he just happens to have been there — with a movie camera. He figures he's got a responsibility to get the word out. Upon returning to the states, he and his crew began the frantic editing of a five-minute short about Marcelo Rivera, which should be online by press time at jamiemoffett.com.

"My interest in going forward is to find other like-minded folks to start hitting up our politicians and ask for the investigation. I can only hoot and holler so much," he admits. "My hope would be that through repeating my version of the story we can get an American audience to better understand what's going on."

(isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net)