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The
fragility of democracy: the social and the economic injustice
On April 21st, in Lima, Peru, the
Development Program of the United Nations (PNUD, in Spanish) presented a
report titled “Democracy in Latin America: a democracy for the citizenry”.
This report has come out in a very significant context, particularly for El
Salvador and for Latin America in General. To place the debate about
democracy in Latin America at the center of the stage has a controversial
connotation nowadays since the region has dramatically changed its political
configuration. A quarter of a century ago, only three countries (out of the
18 that form the region) were involved in the democratic game (Colombia,
Costa Rica, and Venezuela). Today, all of the countries reviewed through the
report meet the necessary requirements to be called, if not “democracies”,
at least “electoral democracies”. However, the nature of the democracy of
each one of the countries is different and it has different levels, since
most of them are standing on an extremely fragile foundation that could turn
a democratic State into a dictatorial one.
The report brandishes a critical study of democracy in Latin America. There
is an interesting correlation between the results of the report and the
reality of El Salvador. The political parties in Latin America are at the
lowest level of the public esteem, just as it was reported by the public
opinion polls in El Salvador. According to the information collected by the
Latinobarometro 2002 (mentioned in the report of the PNUD), only 14% of the
Latin American population trusts in the traditional political organizations.
In fact, 54.7% would be willing to accept an authoritarian government if it
were able to resolve the economic situation. The importance of the economic
structure is therefore an outstanding factor of the political puzzle of the
region.
And that is so because, for the PNUD, the construction process of democracy
in Latin America has stood by the struggle for the reconstruction of a
fairer and a more equitable society, even with its reversals and its
shortcomings. The fact that people intend to reach a democratic state is an
incendiary precedent, since, as the report intends to indicate, a true
democracy should at least look for four key features:
1. “Democracy envelopes a certain conception about what a human being is and
about the construction of the citizenry: this indicates that a human being
is a holder of rights, and that is why a person has independence and the
responsibility to be a political citizen”.
2. “Democracy is a way of organized power in society, and it includes the
existence and the qualified performance of a State”.
3. “The electoral regime is a basic and a fundamental component of democracy;
however, the elections do not wear out the meaning and the possibilities of
democracy”.
4. “The Latin American democracy is a distinctive and a singular historical
experience that should be acknowledged as such, as well as valuated,
evaluated, and developed as such”.
The Salvadoran and the Latin American triangle: democracy, poverty, and
inequality
The conception of democracy included in the study of the PNUD seems to claim
the attention of the hegemonic sector of the country, a sector that not only
has the economic control of the country, but the political one as well. It
is evident that when it comes to measure the Salvadoran democracy with the
parameter of the PNUD, that democracy remains small and sadly misshapen. El
Diario de Hoy used its editorial of April 26th to attack the arguments of
the report. In this paper’s own words “democracy is a political system to
choose and watch the government and the legislators, who have to fulfill the
demands of the law and the Order of Rights. But that is all. It is not valid
to talk about democracy as a system to provide services, to reduce the
levels of poverty, to grant bank loans, or to share the ‘income’, something
that the report of the PNUD indicates”.
The PNUD puts some salt on the deepest wounds of the Salvadoran reality: its
economic and its political structure is shaped in favor of the interests of
an elite that concentrates the power in just a few hands and excludes the
less fortunate: most of the population is poor and it is extremely difficult
for them to have a decent life. What kind of democracy is there in a country
or in an economic system where a minority gets wealthy on the account of the
population, where the capacity of decision of this population is practically
annulled by the status quo? What kind of democracy is there in a country
where the economic system helps to create a higher level of poverty, an
economic system that does not give any kind of support to the victims of
this order?
At present it is necessary to analyze and get into the depths of a debate
about democracy and the economic organization that sustains it. After all,
it has been precisely because of an unfair economic and political structure
that the armed conflict exploded in the eighties. Now in the new millennium
and after a decade and a half of an administration with Neoliberal policies,
and three failed intentions of the left wing to win the country’s presidency,
it is necessary to establish a serious debate about the face of democracy,
that is, if it can be called so, in El Salvador.
It is also necessary to observe another aspect of the present conjunction:
the refusal of the FMLN to participate in the President’s inauguration.
Independently from the assessments about the measures of the left wing, the
truth is that there is a problem of social and economic justice in the
bottom of it all, which questions the democratic face that has been shown as
the real “thing” before the eyes of the public opinion.
The bottom line of all this has to do with the same political campaign of
ARENA, which was a campaign of fear and coercion, a totally anti-democratic
campaign, since it used the fear to lose remittances, employment, and
salaries as the weapons to yield the free will of the population. The
evidences connected with this issue are many, and they go from the influence
of the news media, owned by the oligarchy, on the public opinion to the
interference of the United States when it made an emphasis on the idea that
the remittances would be in danger if the FMLN were to win the elections.
Ironically, the American Embassy waited for the results of those elections
to say that it was not true that the remittances were going to disappear if
the FMLN were to win the elections. Economic terrorism presents itself,
therefore, as a legitimate weapon to obtain the political power.
The cross of the victims: “Hail Caesar, those who will die salute you”
When life is at stake, in an economic terrorism the victim is the people and
not exactly the governments; however, this same tactic is the one that is
now being used by the United States as a political weapon against Cuba.
Recently, the Bush administration launched a series of measures aimed to
make pressure against the Cuban government leaded by Fidel Castro. Those
measures were gathered and called “Transition Program”. In summary, the
inhuman American blockage is being intensified with a twist: now it includes
a limit for the remittances that the Cubans who live abroad send to their
relatives.
It turns out that in the name of democracy, the Bush administration has
destined $59 million for investments, for the next couple of years, on a
counterattack of the media able to encourage the dissidents of the country
to promote “activities to build democracy”. Out of these $59 million, $36
will be destined to the dissident groups that live in Cuba so that they can
promote their “activities in favor of democracy”, $18 million will be
destined for the use of a C-130 plane able to circulate in the perimeter of
the international waters parallel to Cuba in order to broadcast a series of
programs through the Marti Radio and Television Stations. These media
companies are part of the work of the dissident groups. Another $4 million
will be destined for the propaganda against Castro, and for the information
about the situation of the human rights in the country.
At the same time, the Bush administration has reduced the yearly amount of
$1200 that the Cubans who live in the United States were allowed to send to
their relatives. These dispositions have also restricted the amount of
visits that can be made to Cuba, now the Cubans who live in the United
States will only be able to visit their native country every three years.
The questions easily emerge when the concept of democracy of the PNUD is
compared with the unfair and unequal reality of the Latin American countries
nationally dominated by an oligarchy that concentrates both the power and
the media, and internationally dominated by the United States and the
financial organizations such as the World’s Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. These institutions supported the Consensus of Washington
through the Structural Adjustment Programs, and later turned out to be a
total failure in all of Latin America.
Is it not evident that the economic democracy has not much to do with the
political democracy in countries such as El Salvador? What are the
possibilities to survive for the Salvadoran population if suddenly the
United States were to reduce the flow of remittances in the name of
democracy? What kind of moral standards do the national hegemonic groups and
the United States have to speak about democracy and justice? The
intervention and the tortures in Iraq are the evidence of all this. The
economic terrorism is a silent weapon and that is why it is necessary to
denounce it, because it corrupts the fragile democracy achieved so far. As
Father Jon Sobrino, the Director of the Monsignor Romero Center, puts it in
his article “To choose the cause of the poor”: to give and to receive. He
explains that in El Salvador “there is freedom of expression, so they say,
but there is no will to tell the truth, and that is why there are thousands
of ways to stop poverty from speaking, there are a thousand ways to shut the
voice of the victims”.
The conception of democracy is a polemic issue here as well as abroad. If,
according to the report, the most powerful sectors are leaded by the
economic groups, the businessmen, the financial sector (79.7% of 231 Latin
American leaders who participated in an opinion poll said this), and the
media (65.2%) over the executive power (36.4%) (and probably over all of the
others there are the United States, the World’s Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund), then the misery of democracy in the region is evident.
That is why the title of the historical discourse of the Cuban President
“Hail Caesar, those who will die salute you”, pronounced before the presence
of over one million people that gathered themselves to express their
rejection against these measures was more than stimulating. This discourse
was pronounced on Friday May 14th at the Breakwater in Havana, where the
Section of Affairs of the United States is located. When the life of the
people is in danger, the name of democracy cannot be prostituted to justify
death and the protection of the human rights.
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