Hands off Lorena Peña

The members of Women in Struggle/Mujeres en Lucha, both in Puerto Rico and in the United States, stand in solidarity with our compañera Lorena Guadalupe Peña Mendoza, president of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF-FDIM), in the face of the outrageous attack by the government of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

We repudiate and denounce before the international community the political persecution of Lorena Peña at the hands of the Salvadoran government for alleged “embezzlement.” It is despicable that Bukele wants to submit her to a civil trial based on a rigged process against her.

The reason for this trial seems more like a vendetta against our compañera because of her long record in favor of true justice for the Salvadoran people and women and for being part of the opposition to the current government.

A leader of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) who participated in the peace negotiations that concluded with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992, Lorena Peña was the third woman in Salvadoran history to preside over the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 2015. Since 2016 she has been the president of the WIDF-FDIM, unanimously elected at our World Congress held in Bogotá, Colombia. 

We urge the international community to join this denunciation, endorsing it or writing their own messages with the hashtags #SolidaridadConLorena and #FdimAmericaConLorena.