Proceso 902
May 17, 2000
ISSN 0259-9864
 
 
 

INDEX

Editorial The publicity campaign of the National Civilian Police
Politics Education: how politicians use it
Economy The integration of Central América and the question of Free Trade
Society Let the assignment of guilt fall where it must
 
 
 

EDITORIAL

    The National Civilian Police (PNC) seems to be driven more in the interest of publicity campaigns —in which the principal actor is the Chief of Police of the PNC— than in the interest of the professional rigor of a professional police force. The objective of these campaigns is to project the image of an efficient police force concerned for the security of the populace, so as to restore the peoples' confidence and obtain their collaboration thereby. The last two news items coming from the Chief of Police are the incorporation of police airborne units coordinated with their ground operations —the objective of which is to give the impression that they have a great deal of power in the fight against crime— and the offering of money for useful information for the investigation of crime. This first piece of news is simply playing with mirrors. The efficiency to be gained from the use of airborne units is relative because the fundamental problem facing the police is not that of equipment. The offering of monetary rewards for useful information is to admit a lack of confidence in the population and the absence of a witness protection program, which is a key element in a culture where the witness is mistreated, threatened and treated on not a few occasions as if the person were a criminal.

    The Chief of Police of the PNC calls upon the population for support and offers witness protection rewards, all the while assuring the public that crime has diminished. The Police Chief bases his declaration concerning the diminution of crime on statistics obtained from his own documentation, which, as they are very recent, do not allow for valid comparisons which, in turn, are used as part of the publicity campaign. According to the police chief, the number of kidnappings have diminished during the early months of the year when compared with those occurring during the early months of last year. But this data only serves to show that the number of denunciations of kidnappings is less than that of the year before and not that they have really been reduced. To this must be added the fact that even the police chief himself recognizes that only a little less than 30% of all crimes are denounced to the police.

    The efficiency of the U.S. police in the fight against crime committed by Salvadorans in that country provides for an illustrative comparison for those who wish to measure the difference between the profession police corps and the Salvadoran police force, led in a more informal, private and discriminatory way. U.S. police have all of the information necessary to identify Salvadorans accused of crimes committed in their jurisdiction and know how to obtain it when necessary. But not only that, they have followed them even into El Salvador where the accused have sought refuge. They have located them and some investigators have even spoken with them. If the U.S. investigators can do these things, why are Salvadorans not capable of doing the same thing here, without the necessity to move into another country with different customs and language?

    The first response is something that would occur to anyone: because Salvadoran police do not have the preparation nor the technical assistance nor the equipment that U.S. police have. This is true, but this is the case not because of a lack of budget nor because they do not have international assistance. The very government of the United States has not only offered to lend aid but has imposed it upon them, even pushing aside European governments. Even more, there are even those who assure us that U.S. police have taken over the PNC. Whether this is true or not, the presence of U.S. advisors in the Salvadoran police is evident as is the linkage with the State Intelligence Organism and, by means of this unit or directly, the influence of these advisors upon Salvadoran intelligence is evident. This “penetration” is disguised as aid and is complemented by the establishment of a U.S. base in the Compalapa International Air Port and with the constant advisory assistance to the Armed Forces, which has been presented as civic action and joint maneuvers.

    The evident efficiency of the PNC in the fight against organized and common crime responds to another reality, which is what its director tries to cover up in its publicity campaigns. One should not forget that the police chief is the owner of a publicity agency and has a great deal of experience in governmental propaganda. One of these realities is the kind of police which the National Academy for Public Security trains and which the PNC retains within its rank and file. The available data indicates that these are not the most ideal persons to carry out the delicate police function in a situation such as that of our country which is serious and complicated. A good number of police have open files as a result of serious and very serious infractions committed —simple infractions are not even considered— and a good many are to be found in jail under arrest warrants. This means that those who have to fight crime and delinquency are part of the problem. Although the individual is responsible for his or her acts, in this case, the institution which trained them and admitted them into its ranks cannot be absolved from responsibility.

    Another explanation which is no less important is the way in which criminal investigation is oriented and directed. In practice, the level of police investigation is very primitive, either for lack of capacity or because of the lack of interest in the investigation given that there are persons implicated who have the power to avail themselves of some species of impunity. A typical tactic is the contamination of the scene of the crime, the disappearance of proof and the presentation of false evidence and false witnesses. The law is not applied in the same way to everyone, but only to those who do not have the power or the godfathers to protect them. In any case, the result of such a police investigation is null and void. For some reason or another, impunity continues to exist as part of daily reality.

    The heavy U.S. presence in the police, the army and intelligence work offers no guarantee of any kind because their interest in fighting crime is highly selective and because it is more interested in cultivating contacts and establishing controls to be used at their convenience which can contribute positively to citizen security. The experience is not very encouraging. In the same way that the U.S. government protected and continues to protect those who, while they violate human rights, have been their collaborators, they will protect criminals and delinquents who are unconditionally faithful to them. This interest outweighs any other, even though truth and justice hangs in the balance.

    The PNC is more and more of a threat, in detriment to its role as an institution which should safeguard the security and tranquillity of the citizenry, which, for overwhelming and inscrutable reasons is kept at a distance. Not even the acts of which they are victims are denounced because they know that such a police report will create gratuitous problems. The police are not going to regain credibility and the confidence of the people by means of publicity campaigns. The people are wiser than the publicists know.

POLITICS

    The debate over the approval in the Legislative Assembly of a loan from the Inter American Development Bank for the Ministry of Education has raised its head these days. After the final date for the approval of the loans (May 7) passed, the Minister of Education, Evelyn Jacir de Lovo had to request an extension until May 31. Awaiting the bank's response to this request, several right-wing personalities, both businessmen and politicians, persist in making declarations to the press calling for “common sense” from among the parliamentarians, especially those of the left, and calling for their support and help in what they consider “a benefit for the people”. This situation, in addition to enlivening the old problem of the relation between the left and the government —President Francisco Flores considers that the left has never given its votes for initiatives which need a majority of votes— and this has given rise to situations in which people of humble origin have taken positions, specifically, parents, asking the FMLN to ratify the loan. Some of these parents have even visited the Legislative Assembly to pressure Shafick Handal to support the approval of the aid.

    The handling in the news media of this topic leaves no room for mistakes. The FMLN is openly accused of holding up the hiring of teachers for the poorest rural zones of the country not for approving the loans, and accused as well of obstructing curricular reform and holding up the transfer of technology to national institutes. So it is that one can read declarations of this kind in El Diario de Hoy: “the refusal to ratify the school loans in the last legislative session frustrated the hopes of many rural communities which had requested school infrastructure and a greater number of teachers” (El Diario de Hoy, Wednesday, May 3, p. 6). For her part the Minister of Education has indicated that, with the no vote of the FMLN deputies, “the construction of 18 schools and the rehabilitation of another 100 have remained in limbo”.

    In principle it is evident that the aforementioned projects would mean an advance and a strengthening of a weakened Salvadoran educational system. And, in this sense, any decision, deliberately taken which to deprives the Salvadoran people of such a very precious item cannot be more open to repudiation. This is the opinion of the columnists writing in the major dailies of the country. It is also the opinion of any citizen who is even half-way informed about the problems of the country.

    The foregoing notwithstanding, one must come to the realization that the topic of the education loans brings with it political implications which cannot simply be laid aside. The left is trying to condition its votes in exchange for certain concessions by the right on other legislative bills. The right, on the other hand, presents the FMLN as ill-intentioned politicians who defend their own agenda behind the back of the peoples' needs. For the left, it is not only a question of forcing the government to hear its voice, but also of influencing certain governmental decisions. And this is the product of another reality: the alliance between ARENA, the PCN and the PDC in the Legislative Assembly suppresses all debate and closes off any possibility for taking into account other political actors on other legislative decisions. That alliance had already been anticipated, just as the fact that this would lead the FMLN to a state of permanent squaring off and measuring of forces with the right-wing block just as anticipated.

    Evidently, those differences —the give and take between the political parties and the effort to manipulate public opinion in its favor— can be considered part of the political game. Each one tries to demonstrate that he is the true defender of the majority interests in order to flirt with the sympathies of the people. But beyond the rhetoric of each political group in order to justify their various postures concerning the approval or lack thereof of the loans, there is an undeniable fact: there is still no clear willingness to build a consensus on the topics which weigh upon the Salvadoran populace as a whole.

    No one in their right can deny the benefits of a good education as part of the well-being of the nation; and much less can one oppose the benefits of education for the most needy social groups. Nevertheless, the urgency to find a solution to the problem should not lead us to forget the importance of other topics: that of public indebtedness or the promotion of a sustained analysis so that possible corrections to a project which offers loans for such an important area as is education. So then, one of the most serious problems in the debate over loans for education is rooted not so much in the serious analysis and possible concrete offerings of benefit to those affected, but in the refusal to accept any review of the project. In this way, once again, the intransigence of the current government is made palpable and its refusal to dialogue and listen to what diverse sectors of national life can offer.

    On the other hand, the Minister of Education insists upon the urgency for ratifying the loans in order to deal with the most urgent educational problems. Nevertheless, one must ask oneself what is the true availability and willingness of the government to put national resources at the service of education. Currently, the Ministry of Education has been assigned 3% of the total GNP of the budget, an amount much below that of many developing countries, where an average of 4.5% to the GNP is earmarked for education. Given this, the Minister exhibits anxiety when she calls attention to the need for approval of some loans for a sector for which her government administration seems not to give too much importance because, were this the case, they would have produced, for example, some budget cuts to the Armed Forces in order to benefit education.

    In another sense, the real and true willingness of the FMLN to discuss and seriously review the educational loan project presented to the Presidency must be questioned It was not until Tuesday, May 16 that this left party announced the study of the loans, when the positions in favor and against had already been made public. From any point of view, it is irresponsible to declare oneself in favor of or against something when one is not familiar with it or does not understand it. For this reason, if the proposal were to assume a certain posture about the topic, the first thing would be to study the loan project in order, from what is known of it, to offer the appropriate criticisms. It is, perhaps, the absence of that study which explains why, up until now, there had been no questioning of the bases of the project by the left of the topic under discussion.

    From the foregoing premises one ought to be able to discern the true dimensions of the problem. The political parties, ignoring social demands, place their own agenda above the discussion, reflection and debate which ought to be awarded national themes and topics. While the right-wing block makes much of its own intransigence and its clear willingness to ignore the left in the debate and in the contribution to the resolution of the country's problems, the left continues to parade its lack of coherence and the betrayal of the principles which it claims to defend and this gives cause for the right to continue to accuse it and present it to public opinion as a party which takes up positions contrary to initiatives which would favor the people. Finally, the people continue to lack the support they need and show their rejection of politicians and politics and point out the serious defects in the possibility for political representation. In the current debate over the loans for education something very serious has happened: education has been used by “politicians” to serve the agendas of the political parties.

ECONOMY

    During the decade of the 1990's, the topic of integration and the liberalization of trade once again took on importance in the Central American government agendas. Between 1991 and 1999 more than 17 presidential summit conferences have been held and diverse treaties have been signed on diverse themes, among which is outstanding the Alliance for Sustainable Development and the liberalization of trade agreements signed between El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

    In addition to the movements toward regional integration there have also existed negotiations for the liberalization of trade with Mexico and, in the case of El Salvador, free trade agreements exist with the Dominican Republic, Chile and, more recently, with Mexico. Of these treaties the one which has implied the most difficulties has been, without doubt, the one signed with Mexico because it implied long negotiations which took up to eight years and which were finally resolved by excluding from the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) products considered to be “sensitive” and by adopting an asymmetrical policy which would dispense with all preferential treatment for countries with a relatively low level of development. On the other hand, the treaties with the Dominican Republic and Chile were signed without a systematic process of negotiations having to occur. Evidently, this is owing to the fact that the implications are very different for geographical reasons because of the structuring of the productive apparatus, but in practice the philosophy is much the same: the elimination of restrictions on trade.

    The Free Trade Agreements are the most outstanding elements in the trade policy of the government, which, doubtless, will contribute to defining the kind of insertion into the international economy which not only El Salvador, but also the other Central American countries will have. Other elements exist which impact foreign trade such as partial agreements and tariff preferences which some products in the Central American area enjoy. Among these are noteworthy those contemplated in the Caribbean Basin Initiative of the U.S. government, which was recently extended by the Congress of that country.

    The free trade agreements and the preferential tariff accords are elements which directly impact the foreign sector, production and employment. And they affect, as well, though indirectly, salaries and other fiscal and monetary variables. Given the foregoing, a brief review of the situation of Central American Integration, the Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and the Caribbean Basin Initiative becomes pertinent.

The dimensions of Central American integration

    Since the disintegration of the Central American Common Market at the end of the 1960's, the topic of Central American Integration fell into relative decay which was prolonged in the measure in which each country confronted its own political, economic, social and military crises. The decades of the 1970's and 1980's did not offer up any action which might have supported the taking up of integration policies once again. It was not until the beginning of the decade of the 1990's that a program of Central American Presidential summit conferences was begun and these gradually incorporated diverse topics such as the freeing up of regional trade, the search for harmony on the question of tariff policies and trade policies, environmental protection and the prevention of disasters.

    The process, however, has not been undertaken without difficulty, especially given the differences between the focus on trade policy in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, which have provoked, finally, a situation in which he Free Trade Agreement with Mexico had to be negotiated exclusively with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Costa Rica had already previously negotiated its own agreement with Mexico, while Nicaragua has decided not to negotiate for the time being.

NAFTA and the Caribbean Basin Initiative

    Negotiations with Mexico began in 1992, but lasted for more than eight years owing to the obstacles arising around the definition of the products which would be included in the treaty. Finally the discrepancies were reduced by limiting agreements to include only some specific products such as beer, steel and automobiles.

    Last May 11, representatives of the governments of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras agreed to sign a Free Trade Agreement which, although it did not entirely overcome the discrepancies on sensitive products, cleared the way for the initial approval by the governments in question. The adoption of the Free Trade Agreement will depend upon its ratification by the legislatures of each of the countries.

    Among the principle contents of the Free Trade Agreement figure the establishment of a maximum period for the opening up of the Central American market to Mexican products, which will include 11 years for industrial products, 12 years for agricultural and livestock products. In exchange, Mexico has fixed the limit at only 4 years for the opening up of its market and has accepted reductions and the elimination of tariffs and customs for a broad list of manufactured products. Nevertheless, excluded from the Free Trade Agreement are agricultural and livestock products such as citrus fruits, vegetables, meats and white corn. At the same time partial access was agreed upon for sensitive products such as beer and steel.

    Another trade agreement with broad impact was recently obtained with the extension of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), which permits exports of all of the countries located in the Caribbean Basin and in El Salvador to receive preferential tariff treatment and reduces restrictions. This agreement began in 1984 and has had significant impact on the countries which received its benefits, especially because by means of the CBI the conditions were created for the rise and proliferation of the controversial runaway textile factories (maquilas).

Openings for trade and development

    The perspectives opened up by the Free Trade Agreement and by the extension of the CBI are encouraging, although the final results depend upon the degree in which each country's economic policies adapt to the existing opportunities. As was mentioned above, the CBI came into existence in 1984 but it has not automatically been translated into a substantial increase in exportable production and exports. On the other hand, the cases of Free Trade Agreements between countries with uneven levels of development demonstrate that there could arise an accelerated process of substitution of national production for imported production and a consequent reduction of employment in the least developed of the countries.

    Unfortunately, many times governmental functionaries could come to make the free trade agreements absolute by assigning to them attributes which they do not have. For example, the Minister of the Economy of El Salvador, Miguel Lacayo, has the idea that the Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and the CBI will produce, in and of themselves, an increase in employment equivalent to 20,000 jobs and will provoke a situation in which “the textile and textile manufacturing sector may come to be more important than foreign remittances”.

    The success or failure of the efforts at Central American Integration and the opening up of trade depends upon the adoption of a coherent macroeconomic policy which will promote the activity of the productive sectors and the diversification of exports. In this sense, it is imperative that the Salvadoran government speed up the adoption of policies tending to promote industrial reconversion, modernization of the agricultural and livestock sector and scientific and technological innovation. At the same time, it must adopt a more conservative trade policy which will not leave national businessmen unprotected at one fell swoop. Should the contrary become the case, it could occur that the Free Trade Agreement with Mexico might become a threat to national producers once the time limits for complying with the agreements to open wide the Central American markets come to pass.

SOCIETY

    On May 10, at the wink of an eye, dozens of people almost lost their lives when a Military Police arsenal exploded in enormous flames in a suburban area of downtown San Salvador. The shock waves which the explosion produced left lesser structures destroyed together with some 750 homes, businesses and other buildings in the area. It also heaved a considerable number of explosives into the air and spread them over a radius of approximately 400 meters around the ammunition dump. There were dozens of wounded: people inside their homes were shaken by the explosion and rescue workers and military personnel went to the areas surrounding the arsenal. The surrounding streets were closed off, members of the PNC performed a minute process of combing the area to detect possibly active explosive artifacts. People were evacuated from their homes and the press contributed by writing a fulminating press report to decorate the next day's morning paper.

    This is, doubtless, a tremendously shocking picture. But what is even more difficult to assimilate is that this occurred in a densely populated area of the capital city. With no regard for the security the population —the civil war having long been over for more than a decade now— it is a fact that the Salvadoran people continue to be at the mercy of firearms and ordinance of all descriptions. On the one hand, common crime as well as organized crime daily sweep through the population with arms and equipment which much surpass those of the public security units and entities. On the other hand, police, private security agents and military personnel make of the security to which their mission is committed to the insecurity of every day. So it is that, without expressly proposing to do so, the state can become one more threat to the population.

    Other cities in the world live similar scenarios of insecurity, but with different characteristics: there are those who travel to their jobs or accompany their children to school watching airplanes take off just a few meters from their homes. In general, factories close by emit dangerous chemical products in the areas where they are located. Radiation of all kinds besiege us, arise from all around us even before we notice. In every one of these cases the population is submitted to determinate degrees of insecurity the persistence of which can become potential calamities such as the one taking place on May 10. Fortunately —and sooner or later— in this case the governmental authorities have taken a hand in the matter and have managed to take diverse actions for the well-being of the victims. The Ministry of the Defense has begun to collaborate in the reconstruction of the homes and other institutions affected by the blast, as well as the Municipality of San Salvador, which has also done its part. Meanwhile, President Francisco Flores justified himself by assure us that he had some time ago ordered the transfer of the ordinance in the arsenal to areas far from the suburbs.

    But in cases such as this one could point out a few criteria and offer the following, necessary, question: where does institutional responsibility begin and end when this kind of event occurs? Evidently, the government's attitude and that of the Defense Ministry has wanted to respond in some measure to this question, above all inspired by the social commotion which followed the explosion of the arsenal. But the very fact of the excessive mobilization of public functionaries, together with the media coverage has made of these visits —which the president has not attended— serve more to construct an image than to respond effectively and in an integral way to the problems generated by the explosion of the arsenal.

    In this sense, we must continue to await the terms under which the government will respond to this disaster are still awaited. There is still no firm position with respect to the kind of reparations will be provided to those affected by the explosion. The mobilization of resources which military and civilian authorities involved have offered have run short in dealing only with the material repair of the damages. “We will see” is the response given when the possibility is raised of assuming any other kind of damage suffered by those in the neighborhood. In this way, in partially assuming the responsibility for the destruction, the government would confirm its attitude in events of this kind. The government's response cannot reduce itself only to a material response, given that the presence of persons in the area was not accidental but it is absolutely clear who ordered the installation of the war arsenal in the urban zone and even clearer who allowed for the delay of its relocation in times of peace —and here the president himself is included.

    Moreover, at this writing, the weakest response by the government, precisely, is in the assigning of institutional responsibilities for what is discussed above. The Attorney General of the Republic is already investigating the case. Nevertheless, the only thing that has been spoken of is the possibility for determining penal responsibility for which justice ought to identify one or more persons in particular. The civil responsibility which might be assigned has remained occult behind the shadow of the procedures of the investigation themselves. This, more than calming the spirits, ought to be motive enough for concern for the Salvadoran state which is characterized by shying away from responsibility in any way possibly and from the seat of the accused, even though it merit being seated there. It is not possible to ignore the fact that the lack of interest deposited in the necessary mobilization of heavy ordnance —a legacy of the enormously inflated army which the armed conflict left us— was one of the motives which made possible the occurrence of this disaster.

    This state, as is the case with many others in the world, is a state which does not always operate in the name of prevention and forethought. We have seen it destroy and reconstruct millionaire highway projects, suspiciously modify budgets assigned to important governmental tasks, apply, in the name of interests far removed from those of the population, measures which dangerously rock economic stability and propose numberless measures which block, in the long run, the fundamental rights of the Salvadoran people. Now we find it preparing something which it wishes to present as a “contingency” plan, which, by any point of view, will go beyond material effects in order to reproduce schemes which symbolize the habitual way of doing things which characterize the authorities. And this is precisely where the serious nature of this case is to be located: once again we are dealing with a state which does not ask for pardon for its lack of capacity to act to avoid “future ills”. In what way, then, can we hope for an ideal solution to this and other problems, if there is no one who will do what is basic to the case: assume responsibility for it?

    Matters of this ilk we have had many. It is sufficient to see how the president of the Central Reserve Bank hid when the fraudulent financial scandals of FINSEPRO and INSEPRO broke. This, obviously, was an extreme case in which economic reparations for the victims were not even considered. But from this follows the intervention of the president in military promotions and discriminatory treatment of a minister towards certain foreign “types”. The common threat which runs through these cases is the activity which takes place behind the backs of public scrutiny, of the criticism oriented towards a better way of living together in the midst of differences. It is now time that those who hold high office begin to make what is just and necessary in the rendering of accounts a priority, even when this only implies opting to ask the public for pardon. Definitively speaking, the Salvadoran state will not proceed with all due justice if it begins to assign individual responsibilities in order to calm the wrath of public opinion. This would be to recognize, in some way, that the authorities involved never make mistakes by turning a blind eye to the presence of war ordnance around the corner from a residential zone.