ARENA shows signs of wearing down

Why such a scandal about the PAES aptitude tests?

The fiscal deficit problem

The laws exist... but we do not know about them

News Briefs

ARENA SHOWS SIGNS OF WEARING DOWN

ARENA is a party which has always been able to find, within its ranks, many good candidates with excellent abilities in public affairs administration. Nevertheless, it has not been easy to nominate a candidate for mayor of San Salvador. This time, the discussions and consultations were more prolonged than usual. Until recently, ARENA was considered invincible and, for this reason, rejected alliances with other parties; but on this occasion it did not hide its intention to join forces in San Salvador with its natural allies on the right because it has lost the aplomb it had demonstrated in recent election campaigns. This is explained by two closely-related reasons, the first of which are internal difficulties within the party and the second is the municipal administration which Hector Silva has maintained during his term as mayor.

The existence of feudal territories engaged in a power struggle inside ARENA has caused a situation in which not a few militants have distanced themselves from the party. These are militants who identified with its history and ideology and who, moreover, were interested in becoming involved in public life. But they did not desire to participate in the internal power struggles, either because they fled from conflict or because they considered it harmful for the solid unity of the party or simply because they thought such struggles did not make sense. The current ARENA leaders are getting old in their posts too rapidly and, at the same time, are holding back the coming to the fore of young, ambitious idealists who are better educated and who perhaps have a better understanding of politics and public ethics.

This distancing of young people with the capacity for renewal contributes, in great measure, to the growing unease among the high and medium high classes. This malaise has its origin in the voracious appetite of the banks and of big capital whose financial activities are growing at an accelerated rate while the commercial sector is growing at a slow pace and the industrial sector is experiencing a reduction in growth and the agricultural and livestock sector is sunk in a state of crisis. Extremely high rates of interest is an added ingredient which, for businesses indicates an elevated cost for the service of their debts, which places its financial balances in danger. Many businesses have fallen into delinquent debt status and are more and more those who are obligated to close or sell other bigger businesses —frequently multinationals.

It is normal, then, that businessmen who are threatened by the voracity of the banks and multinational capital would resist offering their continuing support to a party whose government administration would not think twice about abandoning them to their own luck and resources when, according to practice established for decades now, it ought to help them out of the crisis. Meanwhile, the ARENA administration has aligned itself with the financial sector whose more wealthy members, in turn, control the most powerful feudal domains which are engaged in a struggle among themselves for the leadership of the party. The alliance between the upper and upper-middle class sectors, upon whose shoulders rest some of ARENA’s most important support, are showing important indications of breakage. It is for this reason that ARENA does not have immediately at hand a candidate who could successfully challenge Mayor Silva in the upcoming March elections.

ARENA discourse, on the other hand, has become more and more impoverished. The party's aim to govern for the poorest of the poor, for whom it created opportunities, has fallen to the wayside. It now governs not even for the middle or upper-middle classes. ARENA lacks a solid and viable proposal for the sustainable development of the country. While it asks for resignation in the face of conditions imposed by big national and multinational capital, it hopes for foreign investment which does not come and a free/trade agreement beyond its reach, at least for now and which, should it come about, would not be disposed to pay ARENA’s political debts. ARENA hopes that, by some waving of a magic wand, foreign investment and the free trade agreement might resolve the country’s ills.

The lack of a platform and the emptiness of ARENA rhetoric leaves it no other alternative than the practice of insult and disdain in its discussions with its political adversary. Its dual vision of society and political practice, on the right and left, excluding the first for being the left and taking up with the second for the same reason, accentuates still more its lack of a platform and its lack of capacity, as well, to confront the current challenges facing El Salvador. That dualism, which produced good results during the war, is a useless tool in a context open to freedom of expression. If ARENA does not abandon its old anti-Communist and anti-democratic cold war views and does not open itself up to the new national, regional and world reality, its destiny has already been determined. Holding to extremism only accelerates its internal process of wearing away. Thus it is difficult for ARENA to find well-educated, brilliant and creative candidates. It is probable that the final unfolding will take some time, but it is not to be doubted that this process has begun.

Proof of the foregoing is that ARENA finds itself in serious difficulties when it seeks to find a candidate that might be able to dispute the re-election of Mayor Silva. That ARENA has not spared any device to obstruct Silva's municipal administration notwithstanding, even at the cost of the welfare of the people, sacrificed to electoral interests, Silva's administration is evaluated positively by the capital city residents, as opinion polls demonstrate. Silva has proved in practice that the left has the capacity to lead, administer and implement, thus throwing into doubt the myth sustained by the right that only it can do it. It has encouraged new solutions to old problems in the capital city, apparently not amenable to solution and has struggled against prejudices and interests such as those of the banks and other big businesses which resist the modification of regressive municipal taxes. Silva has, in short, all that ARENA lacks, trapped by its leadership in a non-existent past.

ARENA is not invincible and is even caught in a bind if it has to compete with a political force not only unified around a concrete program but which has a vision of the future, against a discourse which articulates the challenges of national reality and viable proposals for overcoming them, and against brilliant and well-educated candidates. There are too many "if’s", but there is a great deal of discontent with ARENA’s leadership and administration.

WHY SUCH A SCANDAL ABOUT THE PAES APTITUDE TESTS?

The news of the buying and selling of the Learning and Aptitude Examination (PAES) by non-identified students and sellers, has been received with evident concern. Last Saturday, a confused parent went to El Diario de Hoy to denounce the fraud; the following Monday, the Attorney General's Office was obliged to begin a minute investigation of the case; Tuesday, the editorial writer of that newspaper recommended locating printing presses which might offer more security and are less subject to diverse manipulations; Wednesday the president went before the media to pronounce a moralistic diatribe on the subject, at the same time as the Minister of Education announced administrative sanctions against the students and penal charges against the parents and teachers involved; on Thursday Salvador Samayoa took the opportunity to remind us of the responsibility of everyone in the matter.

But the question is, why such a scandal? It is true that the fact that some unscrupulous person took the exam to sell it to young people in their last year of high school is a reproachable act. And it is reproachable that those young people —no less at fault than the unscrupulous people— have cooperated in the scam, paying between 100 and 1,300 colones to obtain it. But what happened is not the first act of corruption in the country, nor is it the first time a student has sought an easy, if illicit, way of getting good results on an examination. It is not a question of trying to lessen the gravity of the act. But it is a question of evaluating and weighing it with justice. That the fraud and the copying are incorrect behavior no one doubts. That those who engaged in this activity ought to be sanctions is undeniable.

The problem is that in a country where corruption finds support in the most indulgent impunity, where so many public functionaries as well as business, journalists, sports leaders, so many drivers of public vehicles such as police, live by inventing a thousand and one sleights of hand to violate the law, to corrupt, to exercise corruption or cover up corruption, to erase from the collective memory the dark past of current national figures...where can the new generation find models for correct conduct?

When Enrique Altamirano proposes a change in the choice of printing press for the exams, he is focussing the question incorrectly. The buying and selling of the PAES was just one more fraudulent transaction, yes, but it was a transaction the objective of which was, governed by the simple economic law of supply and demand. If, in reality, it was an employee of the UCA printing press who took the exam in order to sell it —something which still has not been proven— is it not something that the employee of any other printing press would have done? Do not similar cases of corruption take place in all public and private businesses?

When Francisco Flores calls for morality, he is falling into the most shameless cynicism. According to his statements, "it is fundamental for the country that people graduate on the basis of merit and not on the basis of a sleight of hand". But, is not the "sleight of hand" in which a misuse of funds authorized by his Minister of the Interior for the ex-civil patrol agents of APROAS more serious? If ARENA calmly evaded the accusation of having bought votes in order to put Flores in the presidential office, without his having been concerned until now to move a finger in order to clear up the case, the following question might be asked: On what basis of what ethical consideration is a group of students accused of buying an exam? If the president affirms the need to "set a precedent" as a requisite for "building the country we want", should he not begin by making a precedent by expelling Mario Acosta Oertel from his cabinet after the suspicions of corruption; by electing a Director of the PNC not stained with blood and death in the past; by influencing the substitution of Eduardo Peñate Polanco for the leadership of the Ombudsman for Human Rights and by vetoing the Arms Law?

When Evelyn Jacir de Lovo and Salvador Samayoa coincide with the president on the need to sanction the parents, they are forgetting a fact of modern reality in family life: that parents rarely know what their sons and daughters do outside the house. The fact that some students went to the point of paying up to 1,300 colones in order to obtain an exam does not prove that the parents are involved in the fraud. Let us remember that it was precisely one of the parents who denounced the case to the media. And it is a fact that a 17-year old adolescent today enjoys a great deal of independence, not only to go out at night or be with such and such friends, but —in wealthy families— they handle considerable sums of money. The monthly tuition payments at an upper-middle-class school, in many cases, is greater than the price at which the exam was offered. In any case, the possibility of inventing a pretext for obtaining that amount of money from their parents is not remote.

None of these reactions, then, points to the heart of the problem. The first because it is simplistic, the second because it is cynical and the third because it is not on point. The culpability of some students for having bought the PAES from a clever and wily character who sold it to them saw, in this, an opportunity for making money does not lie in the printing press nor in the "tricks or sleights of hand" of the students nor of the parents. The culpability lies in the moral degeneracy of a country in which those who live here have completely turned the scale of values on its head. In El Salvador there is firm opposition to the opening and operating of the casinos, but not to carrying high-caliber arms is legal; Legislative Assembly deputies recognize themselves as "founding fathers of the country", even when several of them are evading their responsibility for child support payments to their children; where certain ex-military personnel against whom there are recent charges of homicide, but who are now political analysts in the prestigious media; where a whole society condemns delinquents such as "El Directo" without there existing a minimal critical spirit about the pathological family relationships which might have made his behavior possible... and we could multiply examples.

Salvador Samayoa is not mistaken when, in the introduction of his weekly analysis, he satirizes the message that young people perceive in society: that in adult institutions —even, and above all, in the most prestigious among them— one is admitted thanks to a trick, or, if necessary, a theft. Those who bought the exam by which the state aims to measure we are not sure what (whether it is the impact of the educational reform, or if it is the educational level of the country, or if it is the general knowledge level obtained in high school studies) they did nothing more than begin "their tortuous race towards the title of twisted citizens". In what does not appear to be right, the analyst is, in his affirmation of what was stolen, more than the exam, was young peoples’ "sense of decency". Decency is not something that is stolen or given, but something which is taught by example. And in a country where many behave themselves indecently and, moreover, illegally, or in a corrupt way, without anything happening, without their being punished in any way for it, what decency are we talking about?

The scandal arises from the fact —and this is clear— that the protagonists were from the new generation, the young people in whom the present, with all of its disgrace, sows expectations of a better world. It is a false pretence to believe that young people, in and of themselves, are going to change years, perhaps centuries, of moral degradation. It is in situations such as this when the double morality of the adults comes to the fore, in which hardened smokers roundly prohibit their children from smoking; in which proud alcoholics faint at the first instance of drunkenness in their adolescent son or daughter. A strange scale of values this which overlooks the simple fact that children learn and reproduce what they see. Neither more nor less.

THE FISCAL DEFICIT PROBLEM

Even before the distribution of categories in the general national budget was known, the single announcement of the amount of the fiscal deficit to be financed has unleashed the first objections. According to the Minister of the Treasury, Jose Luis Trigueros, the budget is some 2,300 million colones short of financing itself, and these funds, it is hoped, might be obtained in the following amounts: 1,000 million from the World Bank, 150 million from the InterAmerican Development Bank, 950 million from the issuance of bonds and 200 million in funds obtained from the sale of electricity generators and distributors and the savings which the government might obtain as a result of its austerity program.

Although everything is apparently calculated, political and business sectors have pointed out ahead of time the disadvantage in the deepening of the foreign debt and the need to adopt measures which might provide a permanent solution to the problem of the fiscal deficit. What is certain is that by examining public finances one might take note of the enormous gap between the income and the expenses, which shows that the problem of the fiscal deficit still has not found a solution. On the contrary, it has become even more serious during moments in which the production growth rates have been reduced, such as has happened at the present time.

According to data from the Treasury Ministry, during the period of January through August of 1999, tax income has increased to a rate lower than that observed in previous years, which has yielded, as a result, a situation in which the total income of the central government shrunk. According to this same data, the principal cause of the reduction in tax income might be the reduction of non-tax income, which was reduced from a figure of 1,279.8 million colones to 973.5 million colones between January and August of 1998 and the same months for the year 1999. A reduction in transfers from private enterprises was also experienced in the amounts represented by a fall from 141.5 million to 55 million colones for the same period.

Within the diversity of non-tax income are included income on active and fixed shares, the sale of products, materials and services, shares in government and private enterprises, transferences, rates, etc. Unfortunately, for more than three years now there have been no official data available on the behavior of these categories of income; nevertheless, it is probable that during recent years there has been a decrease as a result of the sale of public enterprises and the reduction of the state.

Faced with this panorama, the Treasury Ministry presents as options for financing the deficit the solution of applying for loans and placing bonds on the international market. In fact, the Treasury Ministry has already requested that the Legislative Assembly approve the issuance of bonds for 950 million colones and went the Washington, D.C. on October 24 to meet with representatives of the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank in order to request loans in the amount of 1,150 million colones.

In principle, the reaction of the Legislative Assembly deputies for the opposition party has been that of conditioning their vote on the issuance of the bonds. According to Gerson Martinez, FMLN deputy and member of the Treasury Commission of the Legislative Assembly, it is necessary that a justification for the costs incurred be presented and, moreover, that a study on the capability for payment currently in existence be carried out in order to deal with the new obligations which the state might confront.

During this decade there have been years in which the service on the foreign debt has represented a percentage of the budget of between 17% and 20% for a total of the budget —that is, one fifth of the budget— as happened between 1995 and 1998; when, at the same time, between 23% and 24% of the budget was earmarked for education and health (see Proceso, 680 and 776). For 1999, the service on the public debts diminished to only 15.5% of the total budget while the percentage dedicated to education represented 16.7% and for health 9.2%. It is significant that in some cases the service on the debt has come to represent a percentage of the budget higher than that allocated for education.

It seems clear, then, that increases in the public debt will also be translated into increases in the service on the debt and a diminution in the availability of resources for financing the national budget, or even for social spending. Even without the new issuance of bonds and the receiving of the projected loans, the foreign debt has increased between January and August of this year, from 2,650 to 2,814 million dollars, an increase of close to 8%. Should these projections of indebtedness come to pass, the foreign debt will be greater than 3,000 million dollars and might require higher allocations in the budget for servicing it.

Given this state of affairs, it is worth reflecting on the reasons why the last three ARENA administrations have not succeeded in eliminating the problem of the fiscal deficit. It has been previously pointed out that one of the principal explanations is to be found in the inability of the tax reform to increase income, which is also sharpened by the introduction of taxes which principally tax consumers (see Proceso, 862). But it should also be pointed out that another measure which has also not produced results is the privatization of public enterprises because, with this, what is observed is that state taxes coming from these enterprises have plummeted from 1,313.5 million colones in 1994 to a little more than 200 million colones for 1998, while for August, 1999 they hardly reached 55 million colones.

Even when the financial system, the distribution of electrical energy and the telephone company have been privatized, the fiscal deficit persists and has even generated greater pressures owing to the reduction of income coming from the profit in operations of public enterprises. This implies a reduction of close to 1,100 million colones between 1994 and 1998, a figure very close to the amount which the Treasury Ministry aims to obtain from the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank and which would practically cover half of the budget deficit which the government projects for the year 2000.

The strategy, which the government is following, of increasing the foreign debt, will imply an increase in the service on the public debt which will mean new budget pressures, for which reason this strategy cannot be used on a permanent basis as a mechanism for financing public spending. It is unfortunate that the general national budget confronts such limitations on its financing, especially because this limits the capacity to invest in the area of social spending and the capacity of the state to promote improvements in living conditions for the low-income population. Not even with the tax reforms recently approved (see Proceso, 871) will the fiscal deficit be covered, much less will there be greater resources to be dedicated to the financing of social spending. Evidently, this suggests that the government ought to define new ways of increasing tax income and or new ways of lowering its spending.

What is certain, though, is that the ARENA tax reform reduced possibilities for greater tax income when it eliminated or reduced taxes which directly affected the business sector and which should very soon be reconsidered.

THE LAWS EXIST... BUT WE DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM

Violence against women has different sources, varied types and diverse levels of seriousness. Moreover, reactions (be they rejection, silence or denunciation) by the victims depend on certain external and internal factors. To draw up a hypothesis or affirm a specific reasons for violence against women is so complicated that they may come to be superficial or reductionism. Each case is different and, therefore, in the generalization and classification of the problem one must to be careful not to be simplistic.

Nevertheless, there is a common thread which has served to analyze violence against women in such a way that it might be generalized and become "one of the principal disasters of Salvadoran society" —as one local newspaper called it. At first blush, it must be accepted that the problem responds to some cultural patterns established by past generations and reproduced by those generations which followed. Beginning from an analysis of those patterns, men and women have been classified according to certain roles and separate tasks and in determinate relationships between both members of the species. In other words: stereotypes and associations. From this women have been located in the lowest place, in every sense, with respect to men and dependent on them. The erroneous stereotypes of "weak and submissive women" and "macho men and leaders" will not be elaborated upon because public opinion has done quite a lot in this regard and because it is not the objective of this article. It is important, however, to examine their use and effectiveness in order to establish an existing link between them and the violence against women.

A derivative of these modes of behavior which contributes to a deepening of the problem is the economic dependence of many women. Even when a good number of them are paid for their work, others continue to be submerged in the workplace in a status which does not receive remuneration or is paid only negligibly. The International Labor Organization has pointed out that "women in developing countries spend between 31 and 40 hours a week in unpaid labor, compared with only 5 and 15 hours for men". On the other hand, it is a well-known fact that women make up an alarming number in the ranks of the unemployed "because of their preponderance in low level jobs and a preference for men in the highest and most specialized levels". The situation is practically the same for all women in the world. They occupy less than 6% of the jobs at a higher level and represent 70% of the total population of the poor. Such data point towards an explanation of why the female sex is economically dependent on men, a state of affairs which makes men the "heads of household" and, therefore, those who have multiple rights over women —rights which many women have accepted.

Dependent women permit and allow a situation of violence for fear of becoming economically without support. Above all, when there are minor children which they must support. From this arises another factor allied to violence against women: tolerance, the friend of the deafening silence which has for so long cloaked the physical, psychological and sexual mistreatment to which women have been subjected and about which they have remained silent.

On the other hand, the authorities, at various periods of time, have regarded the situation as natural and have done little to remedy it. So it is that tolerance exists because violence against women, the most alarming category of which is domestic violence, is considered by some to be something private, a "family affair", as it were, in which outsiders are not permitted to intervene. Nevertheless, this problem has currently become a topic for discussion, reflection and work by presenting what is public about it and which, therefore, merits and demands the participation of specific sectors of the society.

In El Salvador, the problem has been taken up by some organizations and by the government. Women who suffer mistreatment of any kind in their homes, work or on the street can go to various programs which have been created to advise and help victims. For example, the Organization of Salvadoran Women offers self-help training groups as a basis of prevention. The National Secretariat for the Family has clinics for aiding the victims of sexual aggression in San Salvador, Santa Ana and San Miguel.

The Salvadoran Institute for the Development of Women (ISDEMU), for its part, offers a program on violence in the family which seeks to aid the couples in the midst of this kind of crisis. Moreover, they take telephonic denunciations and offer counseling to those who call. According to ISDEMU, 30 or 40 of these denunciations are received on a daily basis. Equally beneficial is the department for the protection of the family of the National Civilian Police, which offers psychological and legal orientation tot he victims of violence. They even, if it is necessary, go to the place where help is needed. The PNC receives some 10 such phone calls daily.

These actions and programs are supported by legislation which, since April 1998, penalizes the crime of violence in the family. Article 200 of the Penal Code establishes that this crime may be punished by six months to a year in prison and ought to be applied with reference to the Law Against Violence in the Family. The Family and Justice of the Peace Courts, the Public Ministry and the Ministry of Public Security and the pertinent governmental institutions are those charged with applying this law. Finally, a broader and more specific instrument of support against these kinds of crimes is the InterAmerican Convention for the prevention, sanctioning and eradication of violence against women was ratified by El Salvador on August 16, 1995. This convention aims to guarantee the right of women "to a life free of violence in the public as well as the private sphere". It differs from other laws in that this law has a special characteristic: it typifies the different forms of violence against women beyond the restricted category of violence in the family.

All in all, the existence of these laws does not guarantee the elimination of the mistreatment of women. They are, nonetheless, a valuable kind of support for diminishing its most serious implication. With the entering into effect of Article 200, denunciations of violence in the family increased to 80%. But the lack of knowledge of these legal provisions continues to be a limiting factor. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) a women is beaten somewhere in the world every 15 minutes. In our country, 8 of every 100 women have been mistreated at least once, by her husband or partner and a good number of these do not denounce the situation for lack of knowledge of the ways and means of doing so. This is an evident obstacle not for the radical elimination of violence against women —something which will doubtless be a long and difficult process— but rather for diminishing and controlling its most pernicious effects.

ORDINANCE. The Ordinance governing Infractions which will regulate public order and harmonious coexistence was partially approved by the Council for the Capital City Mayor’s Office on September 22. Mayor Hector Silva explained that the Ordinance is a result of a series of discussions with social and judicial sectors of San Salvador and lay the foundations for establishing a modern judicial ordinance. "I am satisfied that it is a good document which has been fully discussed and which will permit [us] to be vigilant concerning the communities peace of mind with greater effectiveness", said Silva. The new regulatory instrument will have the power to annul any other ordinance which might contradict it and will take precedence over all other ordinances. This will be applied equally to all natural persons who at the moment have committed an infraction and who are more than 14 years of age. Judicial, public and private persons who act contrary to the ordinance will also be sanctions Residents who are foreigners will not escape being sanctioned. A fine of 100 to 10,000 colones must be paid should an infraction against the ordinance be committed. Some of the infractions to be sanctioned are those committed against the environment, against municipal peace and order relative to public municipal property and against public morality. The document was not approved in its entirety but Silva declared that the process will come to a conclusion during this coming week (El Diario de Hoy, September 23, p. 10).

ALERT. The National Emergency Committee (COEN) declared a yellow alert on September 26 as rains intensified as a result of a low pressure area originating in southern Guatemala. The rains increased on a national scale, above all in the western and central zones of the country. Diverse rescue agencies remained on emergency alert and it was necessary to evacuate families and patrol the different points of the national territory. The Meteorological Center in Miami reported that the presence of a tropical storm indicated that Central America would be affected. The phenomenon is an area of heavy and torrential rains which usually originate in the tropics. "The low pressure system has become more complicated owing to the presence of strong winds," declared an employee of the Meteorological Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock . Humidity and rains are expected to continue until September 30. Police and rescue crews began patrols of the high risk areas along the Bajo Lempa, the Paz River in Ahuachapán and the Jaltepeque estuary, among others. For today, flooding and material losses have occurred, especially in the populous neighborhoods and marginal zones of the Salvadoran coast (El Diario de Hoy, September 27, p. 2 and 3).

EVACUATIONS. At least 974 families have abandoned their homes throughout eight departments of the country given the announcement of a national red alert. On September 28 the National Emergency Committee (COEN) decreed a maximum alert as a preventive measure given the threat of a tropical storm currently located in Mexico. For September 29, the director of the Meteorological Service, Pablo Ayala, foresees that some 70 millimeters of rainwater could accumulate throughout the national territory —an equivalent of seven liters of water for every square meter. "This is a significant amount of water which could cause an increase in runoff drains and overflowing of rivers", stated Ayala. The COEN is attempting to raise the consciousness of the population about the importance of seeking a safe site for saving lives. Nevertheless, a goodly number of family are resisting being evacuated from their homes for fear of losing their material belongings. Those who have decided to leave their homes are taking refuge in churches and community centers. The COEN declared that on September 28 they began to distribute packages of foodstuffs in some refuges. According to the National Secretariat of the Family, close to 178 packages of foodstuffs were given out in the refuges in Jiquilisco, Usulután. On the other hand, the Minister of the Interior made public that security is being guaranteed by the Army and the National Civilian Police (El Diario de Hoy, September 29, p. 2 and La Prensa Gráfica, September 29, p. 4).

LOSSES. Preliminary data published by the General Leadership of the Agricultural and Livestock Economics Division (DGEA) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, reveal that crop losses might rise to 5.9 million colones. State dependency urged the sellers of basic grains not to hold back their products [i.e., not to engage in market forestalling] given that the losses up to and through September 24 do not represent even 1% of total production. The report includes damages occasioned by the rains which swept the country between September 9 and 24, for which reason losses could increase significantly after an evaluation of the effects of the current rainstorms. The report also does not include information concerning damage to infrastructure in the flooded agricultural zones. Spokespersons for DGEA explained that the crops most affected are basic grains, fruits and beans. Inundation in Usulután, San Vicente, La Paz and Ahuachapán, the departments most affected, include a total of 3,325 manzanas. Usulután is one of the areas most affected by flooding, with a report of 1.780 manzanas affected, while Ahuachapán reported 945 manzanas. Declarations also reveal that, in spite of the damage of almost 6 million colones, crop losses are considered to be minimal and that, although there may be more losses, they will not rise to the magnitude provoked by hurricane "Mitch" (La Prensa Gráfica, September 29, p. 8).

UN INTERVENTION. On September 25, President Francisco Flores, in his presentation to the 54^th General Assembly of the UN, upbraided developed countries and called for greater economic freedom for the countries of the Central American region. Moreover, he advocated for the rights of Salvadoran immigrants living in many countries throughout the world. Flores held that it is a contradiction which, while the country calls for an opening up, the developed nations respond with "protectionism", when they deal with aspirations to accede to greater economic freedoms. When El Salvador brings its products to the countries of the First World, they are often confronted with obstacles to protectionism such as trade and customs barriers and other quotas, the president complained. "My requirement is that this forum be more than a requirement, that it be a demand from my compatriots. We do not ask aid from the world based on an expression our poverty. We wish to build a worthy nation with the strength of our own work," he expressed. In the same way, the president called for understanding and respect for Salvadorans who live in the different countries of the world. He recalled that his countrymen have emigrated internationally because of the armed conflict which affected the country and because of "other difficult circumstances" (El Diario de Hoy, September 26, p. 2).

PENITENTIARIES. Three separate riots occurred on September 27 in the penitentiaries of Gotera, Quzaltepeque and the juvenile hall facility in Ahuachapán. The most serious incident took place in the Penitentiary of San Francisco Gotera in Morazán where two prisoners died. The conflict took place between members of two gangs, the "18" and "MS". In the Quezaltepeque Penitentiary the riots were the result of personal problems In the juvenile hall facility no deaths were reported, but there was one wounded, one person suffered burns and two escaped. There was considerable damage to the installations where employees stated that material damages came close to 50,000 colones. The riot in the juvenile hall facility lasted for five hours and authorities agreed to declare a state of emergency in order to avoid more disorder. Prisoners used homemade knives, bats and clubs, etc. The juvenile hall facility has only three guards who are not armed and who work in shifts and the facility had to be cordoned off by the National Civilian Police. It appears as if the minors sacked the clinic in order to drink the alcohol and take tranquilizers (diazepam). Likewise, they inhaled paint thinner which had been used in the reconstruction of the center. As a result, the young people became more violent and aggressive, according to Rosa Lidia tobar, director of the juvenile hall facility (La Prensa Gráfica, September 9 and 10, p. 10 and 11).