The news media and the impoverishment of the public debate

About the local development concept

Lately, in the context of the next presidential elections, many initiatives have been presented with the objective to promote a positive influence on the lives of the citizenry. However, nothing has been said about the development of the society through a more participative democracy encouraged by the local areas. The existing publications speak in a rather unflattering manner about this issue. For instance, the document of the ENADE 2003, “A governance in democracy: everyone’s commitment”, shows a considerable fiscal deficit in the resources that go from the central government to the municipalities. This article will analyze several ideas about the local development issue.

Several conceptual precisions
To speak about the development needs of the countries has been a common subject since the second half of the 20th Century. Back then the Occidental leaders of the world understood that they had to take specific measures to stimulate not only the economic growth of the countries, but also a strategy that had both a controlled and a predictable impact over their way of life. In this line, they were not only concerned about the creation of wealth, but also about a fairer way to distribute it. That was how the idea to promote the development of the less fortunate countries was born.

However, this wish to reach a certain level of development has not taken a single path. From a unanimous vision to build this ideal state, people began to discuss the best alternative to achieve this goal. Gimeno and Monreal observe that “during the sixties and the seventies, there was an international discussion about the ways to reach development between the perspectives of modernization and the critics against that modernization through both the dependence and the unequal exchange theories. These perspectives, which were conceived as alternatives, had a considerable influence on the development policies of the countries –in the first case, they were oriented towards the market; and, in the second case, the action of the State was the priority-. In a parallel fashion, two societies seemed to be confronted: the Capitalist States, and the Socialist States. The confrontation between both perspectives and both models seemed so critical in the context of the Cold War that it was difficult to formulate the alternative theories of development and to create ways to organize the social and the political aspects of the countries of the Third World. It was also difficult to create strategies for the regional integration of the countries, especially in Latin America and Africa”.

Different ideas were formulated to discuss the development issue through the local, the community or the sustainability parameters. Local development, community development, sustainable development are the various names that different authors use to designate a group of activities aimed to guide the struggle to transform the quality of the people’s lives from a different environment. In other words, this is like going from a reality dominated by a centralized State that remains far from the citizens, jealous of the people’s participation, and not very receptive before the impact that the economic, the social or the political decisions have over the environment, to a completely opposite perspective that offers a new interpretation of the people’s welfare. According to Garide, to talk about local development is to talk about a different kind of development. “One that tries to base its proposals on aspects that are present in the every-day life, in each territory, and with solidarity, using their own potential and its rights in order to create the basic conditions that allow the human subsistence. A development that ultimately focuses its attention on the people more than it does on the economic variables, especially in those social contexts that define the priorities and the human needs (areas in crisis, emerging cities, rural societies, etc.)”.

On the other hand, the development concept that is seen from its local dimension intends to underline a methodological turn to face these problems. From this perspective, it is important to define the roles of specific people, acknowledged as the individuals of their own history and their communities. For Batten, “the local development of the communities (…) shows the features of a different identity, a conceptual, a theoretical, an innovative, and a methodological identity, based on an image of society that intends to build itself re-establishing the starring role of the local communities in the regulation of the regional, the national, and the international life”. The local development process can be understood as “a movement to promote a better life for a whole community, along with is active participation and, if possible, its initiative”.

The local development concept is in good health when it comes to talk about the strategies to face the different problems that trouble the communities. Especially in the so called “less developed world”, this issue gains more importance. However, the actors involved in this process have not agreed unanimously about what are the best strategies to reach the kind of development that the communities wish to find. In addition, in the present international context, such initiatives have to deal with a series of problems that question the identity of the communities.

In the following lines, this article will present several concepts about development in the world and about the local development. The objective is to review those concepts able to evaluate the importance of this issue for the Salvadoran case.

History and controversies about the concept of development
During the 19th Century, to speak about development was to refer to an organism’s process of evolution; and later, the word development referred to the evolution of the human personality. To understand, in this sense, the origin of these meanings we would have to use the evolutionist concepts based on the investigations that were made by Darwin, and later by Jean Piaget. However, during the 20th Century, the meaning of the concept changed radically. By the end of World War II, the President of the United States, Harry Truman, proclaimed what many consider as the early meaning of the term “development”. On January 20th, of 1949, Truman declared: “We have to become part of a new program in order that the benefits of our scientific advances and the technical progress are useful to improve the less developed areas. I think that we should share our technical knowledge with those who love peace, in order to help them realize what are their aspirations for a better life. We should cooperate with other nations to promote the investment of capital in the less developed areas”.

From that moment on, the less developed nations became part of an authentic race towards development, encouraged by Truman’s motivational discourse. “Ever since then, the concept of development has been used as a powerful metaphor about the capability and the possibilities to improve the conditions in which people live. It has been established as the axis that holds all of the guidelines of all the countries, seeing the situation of the occidental countries as a goal”.

To this date, the evaluation about what has been achieved in this race towards development does not show a unanimous set of opinions. Some think that the process has been deceiving, a complete failure for the emerging nations (which, instead of actually improving the lives of its inhabitants, are more concerned about copying the occidental models). That is why many people claim that it is time to end with this stage. A stage that created many expectations that never really came true, and which also encouraged the control and the depredation of the environment. “The idea of development raises from the ashes in the intellectual landscape. Disappointment and deception, failure and crime have been the permanent companions of development, and they tell the same story: It did not work. The historic conditions that launched the idea of development have disappeared: development has become an outdated term. However, most of all, the hopes and the wishes that gave wings to this idea are now dead: development has become an obsolete term”.

The pessimist tone against the concept of development should be part of the discussion about what is the route that the development of the countries has to follow. Despite the fact that both capitalists and communists moved away from the argument about the direction that development had to follow, many people think that they have more in common that they would be willing to admit. “In spite of the confrontation hereby indicated, (…) both perspectives shared a series of assumptions about the concept of development that is now outdated. These assumptions include the idea that speaks about how the concept of development should be something very similar to what the United States and the European countries were, including the USSR. It includes the presumption about the existence of an automatic relationship between the economic growth of a nation and its social redistribution; the idea that conceives development as a national aspect, neither regional nor local. These beliefs seem to indicate that if there were any obstacles, these ones would never be the result of natural causes; that sooner or later the countries would be at a similar level, and that once the expected development stage were reached, development itself would become both permanent and irreversible”.

Now we not only know that these presumptions were untrue, but there is also an idea about development that tries to enhance a development strategy able to consider, at the same time and among others, the local, the national, and the environmental dimensions of the stimulation process of development. Under this perception, “it is not necessary anymore to try to match the profiles of a well known, an obsolete, and a failed representation of development; however, it is still necessary and essential to imagine “a different kind of development”, an alternative development with global, endogenous, and integral characteristics”. This is how many people point at an enormous array of coordinates that have to be considered in order to promote the development of the countries. This idea gains more importance when the problems of the development model implemented in El Salvador come to mind, a model that overlooks the participation of the people, the limits of the environment, and the sustainability of the relation between man and nature.

The economic and the social strategy of FUSADES for the 2004-2009 period

In the middle of a controversial electoral context, the Salvadoran Foundation for the Social and the Economic Development (FUSADES, in Spanish) presented its new proposal for the economic and the social development of El Salvador, in a document titled “The Economic and the Social Strategy for the 2004-2009 period”.

This proposal was the object of high expectations because of different reasons. The presentation of the document has a very symbolic content. This is the presentation of a strategy that generally includes an economic policy that the ARENA administration will probably follow, if this party wins the next presidential elections in March. In fact, this is a vital academic ingredient that appears at the precise moment to replace and save the empty space left by ARENA and its governmental plan. That is if this party intends to be reelected and administrate the country for the next five years with a certain level of coherence as far as the economic and the social matters are concerned.

On the other hand, the symbolic contents of the document do not come to an end here. This is a revival of the weak Neoliberal economic model that ARENA has used during the last fifteen years. This model has had a series of negative consequences for the sustainable human development of most of the Salvadoran population.

“It’s show time!”, were the words used by the president of FUSADES, Antonio Cabrales, when he introduced the presentation of the strategy. The contents of the document were explained by Dr. Ricardo Haussman, a professor from Harvard University who coordinated the work of the foreign experts that participated in the preparation of the document.

During the presentation, no one could help but notice the presence of different personalities who work for the government, the diplomatic corps, both foreign and local representatives of the non-governmental organizations, business associations, and those willing to pay $35 dollars to get in. As in one of the ceremonies of the Academy Awards, the presentation began, and it was show time indeed.

U.S.A., FUSADES, and ARENA: the trio of the laissez faire
What is the programmatic content of the aforementioned strategy? What kind of model do they intend to consolidate? Do they intend to make structural changes to the present model? To understand the objective of the strategy, it would be convenient to remember the common denominator of the three plans that were formerly presented by FUSADES. The foundations of the strategy have to do with the same source of economic thought: Neoliberalism.

Why is so important to understand this? This is the typical trademark of the birth of FUSADES, in 1983. It seems interesting to remember that this institution was created as an area of the private sector financed by the United States, and inspired in the neoliberal discourse of the Reagan Administration. The capital that USAID grants to FUSADES contains the necessary funds for both a social and an economic investigation, and for the presentation of a new economic model able to represent the interests of the private sector. At the same time, this project builds a defined ideological line that becomes the perfect match for the capitalist model that prevails in the nation with the most powerful economy of the world.

This is how FUSADES, through its consolidation as “a fortress of thought” –that is, as “a collective organic intellectual”- of the private sector and with the support of the North American interests, rapidly became the academic foundation for ARENA. This political party arrived to the Executive Power in 1989, and adopted an ideological legacy –with natural satisfaction- to build the economic policies in order to create a new economic model for El Salvador.

In fact, the departure of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC, in Spanish) from the Executive Power in that same year, the arrival of ARENA, and its three consecutive administrative periods were the events that technically represented the ideological triumph of the neoliberal vision and its consolidation as an economic model for the nation. The plans created by FUSADES that were adopted in the past were influenced by the Neoliberal schools of though of the United States, such as the Chicago school, and people like Milton Friedman.

The relation between FUSADES, ARENA, and the governmental administrations of the United States have sketched the economic map of El Salvador following its own particular line of action to look for the same thing: to reanimate the pulse of the Salvadoran Capitalism by implementing a new model capable to open new grounds for the revalorization of the monetary resources. What did this mean? Less of a State and more of a market, less attention to the social security and the economy of the people, and more attention to the growth, the macroeconomic stability, productivity, and efficiency. The theory of the excess was enough to guarantee the social and the economic development of all.

In other words, the ultimate objective has always been to build an economic model based on a private initiative, on liberalization, and on privatization. Among the most important policies that have been suggested there are the following: the unification of the exchange rate and the adoption of a realistic monetary exchange policy, the elimination of the policies that control the prices, the liberalization of the interest rates, the reduction of the public sector in the economy, and the rationalization of the public expense.

The strategy of the Harvard Boys
With this background it is easier to understand the influence pattern that the economic and the social strategies created by FUSADES have had on the economic policies prepared by ARENA.

For this occasion, the doctors at Harvard showed their recipe to revive the economy. It is a five-year program with a strategy that rests in three pillars that shape it as its own name indicates:
1. To expand the opportunities offered by the society.
2. To increase the individual, the social and the economic levels of security that the people have at present.
3. To increase the level of legitimacy of the political system, the Judicial Power, and the economy of the market have.

These three pillars are supposed to blend into a “virtuous circle” of positive and active relations. The crucial aspects that the document evaluates are basically to keep following the line to promote growth, the social improvements, and the reduction of poverty. There are no revolutionary changes proposed for the structures, only for the process that has to be followed, the institutional performance behind it, and its influence on the efficiency of the economic policies.

To create opportunities it is necessary to have an integral “self-discovering” policy (that is, an internal policy of innovation in order to find new possibilities, new capacities, and new opportunities in the non-traditional productive areas, with a higher level of added value to neutralize the fall of the existing markets). It is also necessary to promote the economic integration process (the free trade agreements, such as the CAFTA, are seen as a positive choice). The encouragement of new activities to establish a close connection with the Salvadoran community that lives abroad is also seen as one of the leading strategies, because the country’s economy can take advantage of their purchasing power and the remittances that these people sent to their families. It is also important to promote the different levels of education and the people’s capacity to overcome the learning and the technical difficulties that prevent them from getting a job.

The second pillar of the strategy is to consolidate an economic, a social, and a personal level of security. The background of this aspect of the economic policy is to consolidate the country’s economic stability, since this is a definite condition to reach higher growth levels and the population’s welfare. This means that it is necessary to have a clear perspective about the fragility of the Salvadoran fiscal policy and its limits. According to this vision, the question is if the State is capable to administrate the expenses with discipline (in its own terms, it is not acceptable to increase the budget of the Judicial Organ and the one of the municipalities). This is about increasing the efficiency levels and about a good administration of the expense. For instance, according to this perspective, one of the proposals is to “level the retirement age for men and women (60 years of age) and request 30 years of contribution”.

Nevertheless, despite this painful fiscal discipline of the society, the document does not clearly explain how can the people make a higher level of income. Among other measures, the document proposes to “examine the rates and improve the tax collection system of the Value Added Tax (IVA, in Spanish)”. During the meeting, an increase of 15% was proposed, and this makes the taxes even more regressive than they already are. However, the doctors from Harvard justified this detail by saying that the additional revenue created by this increase could be assigned to the social expense area in order to create benefits for the poorest sectors of the population. According to them, “The gross effect of a combination between the revenue and the expense could be a progressive feature”. For the rest of the tax rates, they proposed an ordinary examination, but they did not give too many details about this. The taxes to consolidate the financial foundations of the municipalities, and the possibilities to create a tax for the financial transactions (taxing the debts and the credits of the regular accounts) were considered. This last initiative does present a regulatory feature, which had been absent in former plans due to the high and the growing vulnerability of the country to the external impact of the departure of capital.

On the other hand, they intend to increase the security standards of the economy with a more active banking system, willing to grant credit in conditions where there are higher risks. They also intend to increase the productivity level in areas such as the agricultural and the cattle-raising fields with, for instance, the transgenic implementation of seeds.

The third pillar of the strategy is based on the improvement of the institutional sector and the strengthening of “the empire of the law”, eliminating the bureaucracies and, most of all, legitimating the procedures. These procedures are based on the legitimacy of the judicial system, and on the legitimacy of the market. This last element presupposes clear competition policies, as well as more effective policies to protect the rights of the consumers, and a better regulation of the public services.

Because of the existing ambiguities in several passages of the document, the fear resides in how these proposals will be integrated in the governmental plan of ARENA. The precedents are not favorable enough to believe that the contribution of the document will turn into acceptable changes for a more efficient and a long-term plan. The frivolity used to refer to the possible impacts that might be caused by, for instance, the increase of the value added tax and the extremely open attitude towards the free trade agreements, among other things, is an expression of fear about placing the survival needs of the Salvadorans at the axis of the economic policies. In fact, people can no longer believe in social palliatives before the impact of the economic policies that have been implemented by the last governments.