McGinn to Discuss Details of Central Anterican Tour

The American governments should spend in money helping to improve the education system in EI Salvador rather than pouring in shore arms to the internally divided nation, a Graduate School of Education Professor said yesterday after returning from a two week tour of Central America.

Noel McGinn, a well-known Latin Central American educational reformer and social activist, will present his findings at a national press conference today along with the six other educators who travelled with him through El Salvador and Nicaragun.

McGinn and his colleagues toured the two countries under the auspices of Faculties for Human Rights in El Salvador and Central America (FACHRES-CA).

FACHRES-CA is a voluntary association of about 200 university professors and other educators which frequently sends small groups of its members to investigate human rights conditions in the Central American countries.

The association coordinates its trip with Congress' discussions about military aid to the countries "to provide an alternative source of information," McGinn added.

Though the group spent a week in both EI Salvador and its Nicaragua, McGinn said that he and his colleagues will focus on EI Salvador and what he termed the lack of improvement of human rights In EI Salvador during the past six months. According to McGinn's group, conditions in the war-torn country have deterionated since last January, when another group of educators sponsored by FACHRES-CA visited El Salvador. He added that the State Department claims that nothing has changed.

During their week-long stay in El Salvador, McGinn and his traveling companions met with the country's president, the minister of defense and other government and religious leaders along with political prisoners and refugees. "When you come from this empire, you find that all the doors are open," McGinn said, adding that both the prisoners and refugees openly described the reasons for their confinement.

As a result of the journey, McGinn said that he will discuss three major points today. First of all, he will recommend that the United States appropriate $30 million to help rebuild the national university which has been ravaged and destroyed ever since the army closed it down three years ago.

McGinn said that he will also recommend that the United States demand that the El Salvadoran government provide charges for all the political prisoners, many of whom have been in jail for several months without any charges being pressed.

Lastly, McGinn said that the group will request that the American government put pressure on the strife-torn country's government to improve living conditions for the more than 300,000 refugees who have been brutally displaced from their homes.

McGinn is no stranger to Latin or Central American politics or living conditions. During the past 20 years, he has spent most of his time professionally working on programs to help reform the educational systems in Central American countries. For six of those years he has lived in four different countries teaching and working on programs to help update educational reform.

McGinn added that he was last in El Salvador six years ago, when he worked on a two-year project designed to analyze an experiment on educational reform. Six years ago "there was a lot of ferment and hostility," McGinn said, adding that now "the climate has changed to outright oppression."

After the conference, McGinn said he will begin working on a plan to sponsor a conference on the quality of education in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras.