False expectations

El Diario de Hoy and the casinos

The city created by the media

Understanding from the perspective of gender

FALSE EXPECTATIONS

The drawing up of lists of candidates for deputies for the upcoming elections has awakened expectations in some circles. The press, with all of its power, has exaggerated these expectations to the point of giving the impression that the renovation or permanence of deputies depends on the improvement of legislative work and on the internal renovation of political parties. In general terms, this is what usually happens in developed democracies, but not in the case of El Salvador. The more or less extensive internal renovation process in the political parties may create a state of affairs in which its deputies will not change the profile of the Legislative Assembly very much —nor what the Assembly can offer for the good of the national community.

The expectations for change lack a foundation because the discussion of public affairs is not a free discussion, but takes place along the lines established by the leadership of each political party, which is true as much for the right as for the left and center. The deputies oppose or favor a specific piece of legislation or adopt a specific posture vis-a-vis national and international events according to what their respective leaderships indicate to them. They are also not free at the moment when they are called upon to vote. This means that there is no interest in men and women with a good understanding of national reality, but that there is interest in those who are docile and amenable to orders from their higher-ups. At most, it is important that they know how to speak and deal with the press, but always with the understanding that they will hold to the established party line in public.

Where there are various currents of thought or diverse positions, the discussion is greater, but this occurs almost invariably inside the party faction and very rarely in the commissions or in the legislative plenary. The deputies are not permitted to inform themselves in order to adopt a posture in accordance with their conscience; neither is it permitted for them to think for themselves and much less express what they really think in public. Rather, they are obliged to respond for the party which included them in its list of candidates, even when it runs contrary to their conscience or their interests. And if they act in any other way, they run the risk of being excluded from the list in the next elections, as is the case now with some of them.

For these reasons, anyone who might propose reducing legislative activity to a periodic meeting of the secretaries general of the political parties or of their delegates in order to decide among them what to do or what to approve. In this way, the society could get rid of 84 deputies, their substitutes, their advisors, technical personnel and all of the legislative bureaucracy. During this period of high fiscal deficit and party imposition in the extreme--which makes freedom of conscience, thought and expression null and void, this might not be a bad idea. There is a double advantage. The first is that it would lay bare the truth about legislative functioning and political party authoritarianism, unmasking, at one blow, one of the greatest hypocrisies of Salvadoran democracy today. The other is that it would allow for a saving of hundreds of millions of colones, which could be better used in health, education, housing and labor issues.

The ARENA deputies to whom the leadership of the party has denied permission to run for re-election can be seen to be complain, with more veracity that might be imagined, that their current legislative work has not been evaluated in an objective way. It would seem that they are not aware that their legislative work matters little at that point in time when the decision is made concerning their re-election or their elimination from the lists. What matters is their submission to orders from the party leadership and it is here where they have failed, given that they did not always follow orders received and, moreover, dared to make public their differences of opinion with their party leaders.

Why do the deputies concern themselves about not having been included in the list of candidates for the upcoming election, if to occupy a seat in the Legislative Assembly means simply following orders, without regard to what they might know or think about the matters upon which they are called to decide. Perhaps some of them, above all, those who, for the first time, aspire to hold a seat, honestly believe that what they have to say or their opinions will honestly be important a the moment when decisions are to be taken. But one period in the Legislative Assembly is more than sufficient to convince oneself that this is not the case.

To be included in a list of candidates or deputies is a public recognition of the party merits accrued by someone and it is for this reason that it hurts not to be taken into consideration. In this sense, to appear on that list is a great reward and these excluded have more that enough reason to feel that they are being laid to one side —more so if they have given a lot of their energy to their party, along with their time and money. For those who cultivate their image, to be a deputy is an opportunity to project oneself, even when it might be from the vantage point of the party platform, which might be used to voice their positions and opinions, in order to defend them and to attack those of the adversary.

All in all, it is not easy to evaluate what the deputies really think of themselves and of their seat in the legislative body, but what can be evaluated are the benefits which they might lose. To lose a seat in the assembly means to lose a big salary, which is very much higher than minimum and median salaries and way above their merits in terms of formation, experience and work might warrant. So it is, then, they earn much more than they offer. Moreover, with the legislative seat they lose a series of benefits and privileges such as a vehicle, driver, gasoline, an office with all manner of facilities, trips outside the country will all expenses paid, big per diems, an official passport and they enjoy diplomatic immunity even from common crimes such as causing a public scandal for being drunk, minor traffic infractions, irresponsibility to their family and even for rape.

The achievements of a deputy have very little to do with service for the common good and even less with the affection, which, through the years, might be earned for this service and the people they serve. In general, a deputy holds on tight to his power and privileges. The rest is secondary. There is, then, very little that can be expected from the deputies who will be elected next year, as long as there is no change in the conception that political parties have concerning the exercise of power and the development of legislative activity. The democratization of the parties ought not to limit itself solely to the selection of candidates for positions available through popular elections, but must also include the democratization of the exercise of power outside the strict limits of party discipline.

EL DIARIO DE HOY AND THE CASINOS

Salvadoran society is, without doubt, a society shaken by convulsions. But in recent months public opinion has been heavily peppered by certain irregular situations: denunciations of corruption directed against ARENA by the ex–Civil Patrol Agents in APROAS; reports concerning irregularities in the handling of funds and bribes to journalists in the National Federation of Football; hundreds of families affected by heavy rains in the areas most vulnerable to natural disasters; the scandal concerning the theft of the aptitude and Learning Test (PAES) and its subsequent sale to high school students; enormous, unjustifiable traffic accidents which produced dozens of victims.... All of which has once again made manifest how profound these situations are and how very nefarious are the consequences of these endemic ills which exist at the foundation of the social structure of the country.

To this sadly illustrative list might be added the scandal surrounding the casinos, provoked by exhaustive journalistic research on the proprietors and their doings. What is immediately noticeable among all of the unfortunate cases cited might be the last one, published in the El Diario de Hoy, one of the principal morning dailies of the country, which decided to give prominence to the issue and thereby provoke greater interest and concern. In fact, it was one the pages of one of its supplements (Vértice), on Sunday, October 10, where the thematic biographies of some of the owners of owners of the gaming houses who have, in recent years, come to establish themselves in El Salvador.

One could argue against the declaration that it is not true that El Diario de Hoy is giving prominence to this news over and above other news. It should be enough to remember the very broad coverage which this newspaper’s journalists gave to the most recent flooding or the detailed report about the drama of the most recent traffic accidents have presented in order to underline how unjust and unbearable it was. It is obvious that that newspaper —it is possible to allege a hypothetical detractor for this analysis— knows how correctly to frame each piece of news and give it its place according to the relevance it has for the country.

Nevertheless, a more detailed observation of the handling of the information in El Diario de Hoy would easily give the lie to such an assertion. Certain it is that during the most difficult period of the heavy rains, the newspaper dedicated several of its front pages to covering the evacuations and the difficult situation of the homeless. But these pages were mostly photographs. The text was limited almost exclusively to reproducing responses of the people to such tasteless and insipid questions as "How many animals did you lose during the flooding?" or "How do you feel after having given birth to a child in the midst of [such a] tragedy?" One of the few "serious" news articles on the rains dedicated a page to the fact that the cause of the flooding ought to be sought in the agrarian reform because lands were given to the peasants lacking in resources to finance the necessary infrastructure to eliminate flooding at the riverbanks.

Something similar happened with the coverage of the extraordinary bus accidents. The coverage was as broad as it was poor. It would seem that the photographers were not unable to resist a strong tendency towards sensationalism and were reduced to offering full-color exclusive photos of mutilated bodies at the site of the crash. That Dantesque spectacle was accompanied by many small interviews with the bystanders repeating their untiring condemnation of the busdrivers and exhortations to the transportation authorities to be firm in the regulation of public, collective transportation. This reportage cannot be considered to be professional. It is superficial, not very creative and, what is worse, it demonstrates a lack of respect for the victims of that drama.

The reportage in Vértice under discussion has nothing to do with this way of dealing with journalistic information. In it, an effort is made to take into consideration the background and provenance of the casino owners, basing themselves in the serious exercise of informative journalism. There is a photographic spread, to be sure, but the text takes precedence over the image. One does not perceive the need to compete with the television newscasters who customarily accompany news of this caliber. What is evident is a clear concern to establish the nexus between the owners of the Salvadoran gaming houses and the activities of organized crime and international terrorism.

This is one of the reasons why it might be said that the newspaper in question has given a special treatment to this case. But there have been other reports of national interest and of similar quality, and such reporting could be repeated. This is true. One such story published about the assassination of a group of religious women during the war would be a good example of this. The difference is that while in that reportage the problem of historical justice hung in the balance, a sense of honesty with the Salvadoran people with respect to what really happened in their past was to be seen and this, for a change, provides direct incidence over the present. The publication of this story, in effect, obliged the Attorney General’s Office to begin judicial investigations.

While other kinds of investigative reportage of this nature have not become more than "daily news" or, at most, have raised a passing shudder —such as was published about the presumed policy of the Ministry of Public Health prohibiting cesarean sections—, to this El Diario de Hoy dedicated more than an editorial per week and more than a page in the section on national news in order to summarize or broaden what was published in the supplement.

The spontaneous question concerning such an uproar is the following: Why is there so much interest in this matter which, examined objectively, is no more than a possible mechanism, among many others, for money laundering and financing of illicit activities. There are many and diverse institutions engaged in money laundering: hotels, car dealerships, restaurants, warehouses. Why now is such interest awakened in investigating the nefarious doings of the Mafia of the world and their connections in this country?

On the other hand, given cases of such gravity and such strict national interest as, for example, the fraudulent way in which Alfredo Cristiani and friends used the bank, links with Mauricio Vargas and Hugo Barrera to the murders of Lorena Saravia and Adrian Villanova, respectively, or, so as not to go overboard, the case of APROAS or the irregularities in the Comptroller’s Office. Is El Diario de Hoy not obliged to be equally exhaustive in its investigative reporting which is so enlightening and influential? Would it not have to do the same thing it did with the INTERPOL files and research on the files and national functionaries?

That it has not done so gives pause for thought concerning the real motivations for this insistence on the controversy surrounding the casinos. Such motivations are: the moralizing impetus of this newspaper and its interest in attacking the prestige of Hector Silva. Concerning the first, it is enough to say that not only its editorial writers, but also many of its reporters. It is also clear that those who write for El Diario de Hoy feel themselves to be the privileged carriers of the ideal of ethics based on how every Salvadoran should behave.

Dogmatic and intolerant attitudes which permeate the texts of this newspaper show its lack of willingness to discuss such a delicate and complex problem as public morality in an open and rational way. It would appear that they do not understand this and they perceive themselves as exemplary and spotless conduct, that one thing are the principles with which individuals decide to direct their lives and another, altogether different, are social values which, on the strength of their heterogeneous nature of human beings as a group, ought to be construed as the offerings of all, taking into account diverse realities.

Concerning the second, the bias against Silva is very clear. In spite of the supposed professionalism of the research and the objectivity with which many facts are published, the journalists did not let slip the opportunity to include in parenthesis the name of the capital city mayor each time that the recent existence of casinos in the country and who was responsible for authorizing it. As if Mario Valiente, the ex–mayor, was mentioned as well as the current mayor of Antiguo Cuscatlán would not have done the same by ignoring —as was the case of San Salvador’s mayor— possible links of the casino owners with the international Mafia. The intention of the newspaper to make us believe that Silva was tolerant and presumed high-level criminals who invest in the country. To repeat insistently that he authorized it, at the same time as the doubtful background of the owners was being published, can do no less than intend to send the message that the mayor supports criminals.

There is nothing farther from reality. In the first place, Silva expressed his disagreement with the gaming houses and explained in a convincing way that he decided to authorize the opening of more casinos in the capital city in order to avoid the monopoly of the one authorized by Valiente. In second place, the invitation to participate in the plebiscite, far from being the crass error that El Diario de Hoy wanted to see in it, was a call to the people to participate in making decisions about topics upon which no one could say the last word without erring on the side of subjectivism and partiality. It is clearly easier to appeal to the unilateral word of a functionary. Doubtless, if some of the ethical paragons of the newspaper were to occupy a position of power, we would see ourselves opened up to prohibitions of every kind which, appealing to morality which is always susceptible to being questioned, would limit individual freedom (Mario Acosta Oertel is the typical example of this authoritarian attitude).

In order to reinforce the hypothesis that El Diario de Hoy is interested in undermining the image of Silva it is enough to examine the coincidences between his public discourse and that of Luis Cardenal who, in his effort to achieve the objective of replacing the current mayor, has begun a campaign against him in which he is attacking Silva’s prestige. Cardenal has not only violated electoral regulations which prohibit proselytism outside the stipulated period, but which has, moreover, effectively annulled his declared intention to carry out a clean campaign.

The right wing is fearful of a new triumph by Silva and El Diario de Hoy is playing a decisive role in the effort to obstruct his re-election at all costs. The issue of the casinos is the only one they can use against him. And this is just what they are doing. From this vantage point comes the magnification of the case. It now appears that as in the casinos are to be found a concentration of all the moral vices of our society, the casinos are the cause of all of our ills. And, in this scheme of things, according to El Diario de Hoy, it turns out, as well, that Hector Silva —who, in reality, is one of the only functionaries who today enjoys the prestige arising from his honesty and his real concern for the problems of the people— he is the one held to be responsible for the invasion of these vices and ills into El Salvador. Playing political games is a curious way of defending morals. El Diario de Hoy has a curious way of contributing to the construction of democracy.

THE CITY CREATED BY THE MEDIA

The city of San Salvador is not what it was ten or twenty years ago. In the small space which characterizes it, a large number of social activists have had to find space to survive and develop, whether they were organized or not; some confronting various problems or threats; others, by their privileges and their benefits. Nevertheless, before —under the daily hail of bullets— now among stones and crime, the citizens of San Salvador at the end of the century have not left this space to its own devices, but have stayed tied firmly to it, feeding its collective imagination with histories, scenes on stage and, definitively, its own internal contradictions. In this way, in this complex space, the passing of the years, the needs of the people have varied as much as the times themselves. These needs are dealt with only in their material aspect (basic services, security, jobs), but also from the cultural dimension, as objective information, the unrestricted expression of opinions and egalitarian social participation.

In this sense, the city and its inhabitants require, at least, information processes which would help them to locate themselves in a better way within their daily comings and goings. The importance of the media in that task is, from all points of view, fundamental. In fact, from a point in time some months ago, at least in the case of the national newspapers (upon whom we will focus this analysis), this necessity has begun to gain certain spaces, reduced, however, to the diffusion of problems which affect certain communities. Other tools, such as those of the investigative journalist or the modalities of civic and local journalism, have been little used. Nevertheless, in recent days we have witnessed a problem which directly affects the general dynamics of the city (and not only the dynamics of San Salvador), that of the casinos, has served as a lever to a sustained and critical investigation of the possible acts of corruption for which these businesses are often the occasion.

The context in which these investigations are carried out serves to sow sufficient doubt about their recent intentions: the capital city mayor, Hector Silva, is at the point of carrying out the first referendum in the history of the metropolis in which the citizens might determine if it is convenient or not that casinos should operate within the city limits. ARENA, the governing party just named its candidate for mayor, by means of whom it aims to take back control of this strategic office, while its position inside the Legislative Assembly does everything in its power to undermine the legitimacy of the Silva initiative and, with it, the whole municipal administration. In what way does the city benefit, then, from the investigative journalism "projects" which, doubtless, do nothing more than follow the dictates emanating from the centers of political power? These projects benefit the city not at all.

Journalistic investigation oriented toward the city would have to present itself to the citizenry as an instrument for uncovering the causes of those phenomena which cause turbulence in the midst of their quiet living together in mutual respect and social inclusion. They would have to serve to awaken its conscience to change it , within the limits of its possibilities, into a critical and active subject of what happens in its environment. This presupposes that the media not only dedicate itself with more effort to the opening up of spaces for the radical exploration of the dynamics of the society as a whole, something which is already being supported by some newspapers. But which, in and of itself, is not sufficient. It also implies dedicating resources and spaces to the publishing its investigations of problems which touch the structure of that society, such as impunity, poverty, violence, corruption in the spheres of government...all of these daily manifestations of life in society should also be part of the media agenda which is offered to us on a daily basis.

In our country, all around our city, the massive news media does not intervene as an agent for making possible the participation of the citizens through the publishing of objective, minimally apolitical and inclusive information. And they do not do so in this way because their evolution has not advanced hand in hand with the changes which have been registered in our country during the last decade. The renewal of graphic design processes and their presentations do not constitute a significant bit of progress; much less is the pretension to nourish journalistic practice by hiring foreign reporters whose offering can rather be measured in terms of syntactic construction rather than by their independent politics or their capacity to open spaces for publishing those topics traditionally prescribed by the media agendas.

Far from this, the work of the media has been effective in deforming the conception of the city as well as the conception of the citizen might have of him or herself. In the first of these cases, the metropolis loses its character as such (that complex of interrelationships between individuals and institutions with different interests) and becomes the thin reflection of the ideological tendency of the municipal administration currently in office. Parting from this deformation, the city might well be the birthplace of the most reproachable errors and corruption or the manifestation of the most outrageous urban development and of the most praiseworthy struggle against the almost natural disorder of its inhabitants. It could be the hell created by bad leadership or the paradise under slow but sure construction. All in all, from this perspective, the city is either attacked or defended in function of its "closeness" or "distance" from the interests of the groups in power.

In the second of these cases, the citizen--as out of line as the analysis might seem to be —becomes an entity apt only for responding to the tacit designs of those powerful groups, which are manifest thanks to the unconditional collaboration of the media. The sources of information which are at the beck and call of the media become sources of power and substitutes for citizen participation, in the measure in which they put in the mouths of some few what should be multiple social manifestations coexisting in the city. In consequence, what is forgotten is that the success of any social, political, economic or cultural project (coming from whatever ideological nucleus) depends in great measure on the degree of involvement which is administered around it, not only of those who commune with the nature and content of these projects, but also of those who will be indistinctly affected by its implementation.

To ignore this multifacetical background implies, in some way, to opt for the way in which the life of the city and its citizens have traditionally been administered: attending exclusively the solution of its aesthetic defects; ignoring the prejudicial aspects of the disorderly expansion within its infraestructural limits; completely ignoring the need for a clean environment in terms of environmental, sound, visual pollution, etc; reducing to a minimum its needs for expression-communication-information of its inhabitants; submitting daily living to centralized political will.... It signifies, moreover, to assume as true the image which the media creates of our city, even in spite of the fact that in its implementation it would be difficult to take into account the fact that it is a repository of rights and obligations. We are, in the last analysis and within this very logic, a joint construct of individuals who, coins in hand, consume the media products which separate us more and more from what, paradoxically, is the scenario in which we live our daily life.

UNDERSTANDING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GENDER

During the last decade, an important interest in including "perspectives from the point of view of gender" has been highlighted in good part by the projects and actions of different kind —which are being implemented around the world. El Salvador is no exception. Here the topic of "gender" is recognized and taken up, although not in any special way, by some no-governmental organizations, by certain public arenas and by some few governmental projects. By "gender perspective" we are to understand the adoption of an open vision towards the needs of women, together with the participation and search for solutions to the diverse conflicts with which women live. But above all, what is sought is the construction of a state of "equality" between men and women in the diverse sectors of life in society.

What is being spoken of here is the whole socio-cultural phenomenon which could slowly but definitively change the tradition of the submission of women. In this sense, in order to understand the importance of what is being expressed here, it is necessary to clear up certain misunderstandings which come to the fore when the matter is spoken of. The concept "gender", applied to studies or topics about women, is a social construction which encompasses "the conjunct of norms and prescriptions which each society establishes over what is feminine and what is masculine" (Zoila de Inocenti, "Concerning a definition of gender", working paper for UNICEF, 1992). It is a category based upon which the "identity" of men and women is created, according to each specific culture or society. Gender is applied to human beings at the moment of their birth on the basis of their sex or physical appearance.

Here is where the first clarification arises. The biological qualities with which they are classified, such as feminine or masculine sex, are the only qualities humans innately possessed which are not, evidently, amenable to choice. Sex is a biological characteristic which gives to a person a determinate reproductive function. Now, from the time a human being is born, a process of "the socialization according to gender" begins and this continues throughout a person’s life. Society, beginning with the family, inculcates in the boy or girl guidelines for behavior related to what a man or a woman "ought to be". The rules are imposed and those who do not follow them suffer from discrimination and social ostracism.

Stereotypes play a basic role in the construction of gender. The traditional role of a woman is that of mother, wife, housewife, or, if she is a professional, she ought never abandon her role in the family, etc. The man, on the other hand, is the head of household and he ought to work and take care of the family expenses, he must make decisions and he is the one who has most to do with public life. Although these roles have changed in some way in society today, basically, men as much as women respond in some way to these stereotypes. Those who are outside of this social order, those who are "abnormal", are victims of a general marginalization.

It would be an error to assume that human behavior is a question of what is "natural". There is a common belief that there is a biological basis for the way people live their lives. "If sexual differences are the basis upon which a specific division of labor is determined and, therefore, a certain distribution of social roles, this distribution is not natural (Ibid.). A second point to be clarified is that neither is traditional masculine —domination and the resulting inequalities which arise from it— natural. From patriarchal history has arisen what, at the present time is still prevalent, although in a different way in each culture. For some authors, patriarchy is the precursor of the sexual division between sensibility and reason, between morality and intelligence. Once again, the stereotype. Women have been associated with sensibility, sentiments, passions and other spiritual and emotional rituals; while men were identified with a higher intellectual and conceptual rationality.

From this dichotomous schema, which counterpoises rationality with sensibility and typifies women and men respectively, arise all of the generic inequalities which are part of society today. To this "tradition" is owing the idea that women have had and continue to have so many difficulties in moving into public spaces, in order to obtain better jobs, in order to opt for not being mothers, in order to stop being victims of masculine domination, etc. In this way masculine and feminine genders were created throughout history, allotting to each human being, according to his or her sex responsibilities and behaviors required for them to be the adults which society requires. Men as well as women "have functioned throughout history on the basis of strategies of complicity and the reproduction of the system of gender, defined as the current supremacy of the male".

To understand that gender is not a natural condition, but a cultural one; to assimilate the idea that the concept of gender is a normative definition of masculine and feminine is the basis upon which there could be recognition that, just as it was created, gender can be re-structured, not simply by seeking "equality" but seeking equality between sexes. What is the consequence? If one begins from this premise it is easier to understand that the supposed inferiority of women is also a phenomenon constructed by society from the point in time at which patriarchy arose in history. The abilities of each human gender are imposed during the process of socialization and, therefore, neither reason nor sensibility are exclusive characteristics of one sex.

The perspective from the point of view of gender is effectively the way it was described at the beginning of this text. But, as a last point to clarify, when one speaks of gender, one must be very clear that one is not speaking only of women. One is speaking of the human gender. The "genders" are men and women and what can be changed with the "vision of gender" is, precisely the classical stereotypic labeling of both.

Paraphrasing Margarita Ortega, author of the article "History and Gender" one can see that the perspective of gender permits the establishment of guidelines for the integration of women in historic processes; it permits a change in the historic paradigm which would integrate women as agents and subjects of social transformation. It would, moreover, liberate men from rigid normative postures which robs them of sensibility and provides them with a stereotypic personality.

From this one might argue that gender is not only a question affecting what is feminine. Society as a whole must be "debriefed". Harmonizing the relationships between men and women depends in great measure upon the possibility that their roles might continue to evolve toward equality. It is for this reason that this topic is beginning to take on importance in El Salvador because, for many, the necessity is already clear. The perspective of gender is a category which opens up new and better possibilities for human relationships.