The legacy of the martyrs

The democratic façade of the media

The suffering of Ignacio Ellacuría and the Jesuits, who were killed in 1989, is commemorated in this month. He elaborated an accurate analysis about the situation of the democracy in this country. His perspectives can be used now to study the facts about the performance of the most important news media. We could say, as he once did, that “in El Salvador there are democratic appearances, but not a real democracy; all of the democratic appearances are kept alive as long as they do not put at risk other structures”. Nowadays, the real structures of power go through the defense of the interests of a small elite, integrated by businessmen and their wish to continue shearing the Salvadoran population. The news media are an echo of these interests, wearing a democratic discourse.

These news media that belong to the right-wing boast about being the bastion of democracy. However, their democratic compromise is ignored when the present economic and political scheme of power is threatened by the political leading role of the left-wing, or by the important social movements that challenge the order desired by those who take advantage of their power. When this happens, the media that belong to the right wing take off their democratic masks without hesitating. Once they are without their masks, they attack their “enemies”, they manipulate the facts, they distort reality, and they create false images of people and situations. Of course, they insist that they do that to defend democracy, everything is allowed when it comes to fight their enemies. The authoritarian vocation of the media is evident when there are social or political crisis. It is then when they take off the democratic masks and they show their real authoritarian faces.

The behavior of the media, along the twelve years that separate us from the Peace Agreements, constitutes an irrefutable evidence of what has been said before. In the moments of a relative social and political calmness, the media have moderated their anticommunist perspective and their opposition to the social changes. During the most critical moments, they have aggressively shown their anti-left-wing attitude, and their resistance to any significant change in the way the country is administrated and how its resources are distributed. This has been the logic of the media during the post-war era. They have not made an actual compromise with democracy, it has been –and it is- a partial commitment, which is always attached to a more important objective: the conservation of one of the most questionable privileges of the voracious power of a small elite. The media have become a part of that objective, they are organically attached to it.

In the political field, the FMLN has been the main objective of the right-wing media’s attack. The aggressions against it are varied, accordingly to the demands of each situation. The last elections of mayors and congressmen shook the self-satisfaction of the right-wing groups; ever since then they realized that the power was not going to be in their hands forever. During the 1999 presidential elections the right-wing candidate won, but a leadership began to take shape inside the left-wing ranks –the leadership of hector Silva- with enormous possibilities of taking away the control of the Executive power from the right-wing.

Ever since the right-wing media became conscious of the challenge that Silva represented, they did not skimp on efforts to destroy his image. During this last year –a pre-electoral year from beginning to end- the attacks against the Mayor of San Salvador have been particularly virulent. Until the last week of October, Silva and his administration were subjected to a systematical campaign of denigration in which the most recurring issues were theft, fraud, and deception. The municipal administration of the city of San Salvador was accused of all of these acts by the right-wing press. The intention was clear: to make Silva look like a corrupt and an incompetent man.

As the masters of the public manipulation know, a lie has to be constantly repeated to be considered a fact, without leaving any room for doubts. That was the bet of the right-wing publicists: when their dirty campaign against Silva ended, thousands of Salvadorans would be convinced that he was an abominable administrator, a liar, and a thief. Silva was the villain. Contrasting with his “incompetence” and his “dirty maneuvers” there was –always as an advertising product- the diaphanous figure of the new candidate of ARENA, Evelyn Jacir. The right-wing media only spoke about her virtues, her capacity, and her skills.

The first week of November, a parenthesis was used along this road of attacks against Silva. His brief rapprochement with President Flores to try to resolve –being part of a commission promoted by the President- the crisis of the national system of health, gave Silva the opportunity to breath away from the media attack. However, this moment did not last long, because once Silva stepped away from the commission, the right-wing press started all over again with their game.

Once the rupture of Silva with the FMLN was almost a consummated fact –which means that he would abandon his candidacy – the right-wing media, specially the newspapers, have included in their information certain “interpretations” that make Silva look like a loser, as a failure who, by breaking his bonds with the FMLN, has nothing left to do in politics. The media elaborated his profile as a loser ever since he got close to President Flores to try to resolve the crisis of the health sector. According to some of the most brilliant minds of the right-wing journalism, Silva intended to mediate the conflict at the health sector because he realized that Jacir had reached a higher level in the electoral preferences, and he had to do something spectacular not to be left behind. His game –according to what the right-wing analysts say- did not turn out as he expected: that is, once again he was left behind. The expulsion from the FMLN is a lifesaver, because now he cannot be humiliated by Jacir anymore, a personality Silva fears.

It is evidently not necessary to say that such interpretation is frankly superficial. However, those who use such interpretations do not intend to get to the bottom of this whole situation, but to build a terrible image for a political figure they fear. Silva’s career has not ended, neither politically nor professionally, just because one or more parties do not want him in its ranks.

To end with his political career has been one of the most important goals for the right-wing and its allies inside the news media. That is what they tried to do when they accused him of being an incompetent a corrupt person with the dirty campaign about the sanitary filling. During these moments, to finish with his image, they want to make him look like a failure. To do this, they take advantage of the mistake that the FMLN made when it turned its back on its most qualified political figure. They keep attacking him because they still see him as a threat against their interests. The right-wing media keep showing their anti-democratic face.

What matters, in the end, for the largest national news media is to protect the interests of the business elite. To achieve such goal, they can use different tactics. Ellacuría used to say, in a prophetic tone: “the democratic appearance will be kept to assure those main objectives in the best way possible; however, those primary objectives can be also kept alive without a democratic appearance, and even with the use of anti-democratic structures”.

Some contributions made by Ellacuría to resolve the conflicts

When father Ignacio Ellacuría explained his interpretation about the “matter of the masses” in an editorial under the same name, he did not do this thinking about the ten years that would come after the end of the armed conflict in El Salvador. However, his perspectives still have a surprising way to help us understand the present reality. Without going too far, in his already mentioned editorial he begins by saying that “during the last months, the ‘matter of the masses’ has taken an even more critical turn, not as a theoretical discussion, but as a political interpretation and as a social action. The increasing strikes and their radicalization (…) bring up once again the subject of the masses and the role that the masses should play in the present moment.” (ECA, 465, page 402).

Presently, there are labor conflicts at the Salvadoran Institute of Social Security (ISSS, in Spanish), and at the Hydroelectric Executive Commission of the Lempa River. There is the risk that such conflicts reach higher levels of crisis because of the labor demands in the magisterial sector, as well as because of the demands made by the public transportation companies, which have their own agenda of vindication. To this we can add the growing presence of the social organizations and the civilian movements that refuse to accept the privatization process of El Salvador.

There is no doubt that the “matters of the masses” are still alive, and this suggests that, despite overcoming the armed conflict, we still have to face the same collective problems that gave the social movements the name of “facade organizations” of the revolutionary movement. This is an adequate moment to reflect over the social events that reveal the need to reform the economic and the social model, and the need to continue with a dialogue and a negotiation process between the social forces in dispute.

After the Peace Agreements, there is a growing tendency to think that the root of the conflicts will disappear by fulfilling the promises made with the agreements. Without overlooking the contribution that the Peace Agreements brought to the democratization process and to end with the armed conflict, it must be said that ever since those agreements were signed a new process of social polarization emerged. The clearest examples of this situation are the conflicts generated with the privatization of the basic services, particularly, the health services offered by the Social Security System.

This is an emblematic conflict that describes the social effervescence that prevails in El Salvador. The conflict has eventually expanded itself all over the different sectors of the society. We are not before a strike summoned by a group of farming laborers; we are facing a strike organized by a medical union. The reasons to go on with this strike go beyond the organizational field; they are also connected with the civilian participation in the formulation of the public policies.

This is not the case of a series of demands that do not affect the different ways to do politics. This is about demands that question the basic components of the governmental plans. The participation of the different social groups in this kind of movements shows that there is an important sector of the Salvadoran society that does not feel represented neither by the governments nor by the political parties, but it does have different reasons to remain active and defend its ideas.

At this point it is necessary to remember that the ARENA administrations, especially the one headed by Francisco Flores, have intended to govern turning their backs on the population. They assume that because they were chosen through a “clean” and an acceptable election process they are authorized to decide in the name of the majority without consulting their resolutions first.

This has been the style of the administrations throughout the nineties; however, little by little and because of the accumulation of the negative impacts, this scheme has generated antibodies, and it threatens to reduce the governmental performance to dangerous levels. We have reached a point where for the governmental party, even if it counts with the necessary correlation of forces to do it, it is almost impossible to launch its policies because of the organized civilian resistance.

Without a doubt, this situation should be a crucial subject to reflect upon for any government, especially a government that administrates an important pacification process. The possibility to control a situation with the absence of military conflicts is the result of a previous government that –by pragmatism or by conviction- decided to establish a negotiation process with the opposition. The problem emerges when the politicians think that the social arrangements were only useful to end with the civil war, when those arrangements are actually an every day practice to build a fair and a supportive society.

Once again it is surprising to see how clear the situation of the Salvadoran society was for Father Ellacuría. He was among the first ones that explained that the only solution for the armed conflict was a negotiation. He also explained that “the military factors have been and still are those that paradoxically force us to have a dialogue, a dialogue that evidently does not only end with the war, but that can also bring the peace, the social and the economic order that the country needs”. (ECA 432-433, page 733).

The present economic and social factors reflect Ellacuría’s observations. After a spiral of social conflicts, President Flores has decided to initiate a dialogue process with those who represent the medical union, one of the most active unions in the present social struggle and the political impact. This is, without a doubt, an important step forward to resolve the conflict of the health system, but it is only the beginning of a process that will not necessarily guide the society towards satisfactory and definitive results.

On the other hand, it is a process that does not only deal with the conflict and the actors related with the health system. This search for new agreements also intends to encourage the necessary flexibility of the governmental policies. The problems connected with the proliferation of the violence and the economic uncertainty have replaced the worries that the population had in the past because of the intensification of the armed conflict. That is why it is important to realize that even if the conflicts of the health system reach a satisfactory resolution that does not guarantee us that the future will not bring new conflicts (the free trade and the privatization issues, for example).

Until now the government has not faced to many obstacles to launch those process that affect most of the population in a negative way: a regressive tax reform, the privatization of the basic services, and the manipulation of the economic policy to favor a very small business elite. The disorganization of the largest sectors of the society –the masses- and the refusal to negotiate (such as at the Social and the Economic Settlement Forum, for example) explain this phenomenon.

In this context, the need to reach certain agreements emerges once again as a challenge.
The possibility to find solutions through a dialogue did not end with the Peace Agreements. The possibility to build a fair society, to legitimate the performance of the governments, and to keep an acceptable level of governance all depend on the possibility to establish a permanent dialogue.