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     Proceso is published weekly in Spanish by the Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI) of the Central American University (UCA) of El Salvador. Portions are sent in English to the *reg.elsalvador* conference of PeaceNet in the USA and may be forwarded or copied to other networks and electronic mailing lists. Please make sure to mention Proceso when quoting from this publication.
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Proceso 938
February 7, 2001
ISSN 0259-9864
 

INDEX

Editorial:  National unity
Economy:  Reconstruction or development?
 
 

EDITORIAL

     To politicize is a concept that politicians and public officials use frequently to discredit criticism and to keep their responsibilities secret. Politicians and public officials say in defence of themselves that a debate is being politicized when they are the ones being criticized and when the status quo is being questioned. On the contrary, their judgements and opinions are not supposed to be politicized just because of their power, which is seen as a magical artifice that frees them from that fault called ‘politicizing’. For this reason, when they want to avoid criticism, they require people not to politicize the discussions. In other words, people are not supposed to question the decisions and opinions coming from politicians and public officials, because in addition to their power and position within the government, they are the only ones who know what to do and say when local affairs are being discussed. Therefore, we are expected to accept the official decisions as they are. Apparently, public officials and politicians do not realize that all public issues affecting the general well being are, by nature, political and, hence, are to be treated politically.

     To politicize would be correctly understood only if we adopted a social and general perspective of discussion, as opposed to a particular perspective, that represents either one group and one organization, or specific interests. For example, it would be limited to see everything from a partisan or even governmental point of view. In fact, this is what politician and public officials do. Their narrow sight and the interests they serve prevent them from having a comprehensive perspective on the national problems and their potential solutions. Thus, nobody politicizes more than politicians and public officials.

     It is not surprising then that everything had been politicized after the January 13 earthquake. All the political parties have adopted a partisan and fractional standpoint; some of them have made this mistake more frequently than the others. The right wing has insisted on imposing its point of view, methodology and discourse. It also has the main responsibilities for having politicized everything in a negative way, because it controls the power and the institutions distributing the relief for the victims of the earthquake. The right wing, instead of promoting unity, instigated division and conflict. In the event that people criticize the government’s actions, the right wing should have the political maturity to set aside the provocations exerted by the opposition groups. The victims’ interests must be regarded as more important than the partisan ones.

     The first group that politicized the relief plan in a partisan way was the government, that is, President Francisco Flores, when he created the institutions that would work during the emergency and that would assist the victims. Instead of giving privileges to the social unity, and the rapid and efficient distribution of the aid, he favoured partisan loyalty to both ARENA and the government. This favouritism may explain the discomfort felt by some public officials when the Spanish embassy in San Salvador decided to give an important donation directly to a political party in the opposition, avoiding the governmental filter. Reality demonstrated how mistaken the government was and President Flores finally gave some participation to the municipalities in the distribution of the relief for the victims. However, this change of strategy did not improve the situation because the government tried to solve the problem from the top, giving confusing and contradictory instructions.

    This would not have happened if an honest and direct dialogue had taken place between the government and the municipal authorities. It did not help to see some public officials (well known for their extreme stances) showing off while delivering aid to the municipalities. Some Mayors have also contributed to politicize the relief delivery by taking partisan interests into consideration. The Congress keeps dealing with the national affairs in a narrow, partisan and somewhat uninformed way.

     Facing criticism and protests, the right wing offered national unity as a solution to the national problems. Within the current situation in El Salvador, national unity is crucial in order for the country to overcome the tragedy. However, that unity would not come neither from the willingness of the local elite groups nor from the public opinions’ creators, but from concrete facts. The right wing takes for granted that unity must be built around the president’s figure and leadership. Nevertheless, this is a fortuitous assumption. President’s Flores position is not a reason enough to consider him a ‘union factor’. President Flores, on the one hand, is a member of one of the most conflictive political parties in the country and represents powerful economic interests. On the other hand, he is administrating the country in a hesitant way and people do not trust him. Recently, in front of representatives of powerful groups and some ambassadors, president Flores proposed “solidarity for us to be united” and, at the same time, claimed that “the most valuable mechanism for us to rebuild the country is the individual”. In the same way, he suggested that we should “nationalize the tragedy, feeling part of the reconstruction process”, but he did not say how such reconstruction and nationalization might be concretely implemented. President Flores also offered to help the country “digest its pain”, but without the other tragic and nation-wide pain, that of the human rights violations.

     What El Salvador needs is an administration based on the truth, which implies the lack of explanations, because its message is clear and consistent. It also accomplishes what promises and, above all, sympathizes with the tragedy affecting the majority of the population. Those qualities might make the government’s administration reliable, and the national unity, feasible. However, President Flores and his cabinet are far from reaching such characteristics. They have not let the tragedy touch their hearts for the grief and abandonment felt by the earthquake victims. The government’s goal is to rebuild the country during the next three and a half years in the power, and leave El Salvador in the same conditions before the earthquake. The state is assuming that the former conditions granted well being and security for everybody. A statesman with a futuristic vision would not think in rebuilding the ruins, but in taking advantages from the tragedy in order for us to create a less vulnerable country, with more justice.

     Without national unity, El Salvador will barely progress. Without national unity, what may be rebuilt will be based on a divided society, where crimes committed by the people holding the power go unpunished. A construction like this is everything but solid and will always be exposed to hurricanes, floods and earthquakes.

     The most recent earthquake revealed a general ignorance among the population (and even among the government) about the relationship between development and disasters. Such ignorance appeared frequently in the past, when the state failed in adjusting its strategies for dealing with disasters, despite the droughts and floods in the last decade.

     However, many promises were made. In 1999, President Flores presented his governmental program, “The new alliance”, which included a number of mechanisms for the “security of the population in the event of a disaster”. The mechanisms included to localize the risk areas; to allocate more resources for monitoring warnings during an emergency; to promote the organization in the communities; to create the norms that “facilitate the prevention, control and reconstruction of communities in the event of a disaster”; and to design simulation and action plans to be executed during an emergency. Unfortunately, this was no more than a declaration of good intentions, backed by the **OEA. The initiative barely turned into a law proposal for the civil protection, presented by the Secretariat of Internal Affairs in the Congress, which has not discussed it. In addition, the government created a risk-mitigation plan to be applied along the southern area of the Lempa River.

     The most evident proof that the government lacks a strategy for the management of risks and disasters is the post earthquake action plan, presented by the national authorities. For this reason, the public policies implemented during the January 13 earthquake are going to be analyzed here. Such analysis is important not only to criticize but also to promote the discussion of some issues related to risks, disasters and sustainable development. The government should avoid the simple reconstruction of the prevailing vulnerability, which permeates its risk programs. Three weeks after the earthquake, the government suggested two types of reaction-proposals, the ones that presented hastily in the beginning, and the ones included in the president’s speech given on February 2.

The initial proposals

     The government did not define a clear policy to face the tragedy during the first weeks. For this reason, President Flores limited his proposal to reconsider his former program, “The new alliance”. According to him, the post earthquake situation was forcing us to “reinstate the conditions we had in January 12”, a day before the disaster. In adopting this goal, the government was trying to return to the same vulnerable situation that created the conditions for the earthquake to turn into a macro-disaster. Thus, Salvadoran society would again be exposed (or vulnerable) to earthquakes, floods and other disasters, which regularly affect the country. This is, from any point of view, unacceptable.

    Other statements came from the Public Works Ministry (MOP, in Spanish), which announced a mitigation plan with four elements: the evaluation of the damage; the constant monitoring of the seismologic, volcanic and hydroelectric conditions; the consolidation of the Committee of National Emergency (COEN, in Spanish); and the upgrading of the standards for the territorial settlement. What worries in this case is not the proposal itself, but the fact that, apparently, the one to develop it would be the MOP´s Minister, including the institutional reinforcement of the COEN and the standards for the territorial arrangement, even if this goes beyond the competence of the MOP. The elements of the mitigation plan include economic, social, educational, organisational, institutional and environmental dimensions. Before considering the COEN´s consolidation, it would be necessary to create a national system of risk and disaster planning.

Presidential speech

    The situation has turned even  more problematic after the last presidential speech on February 2. This speech has mistaken interpretations of the disaster  and, even worse,  presents development measures that, surprisingly, ignore the seismic, volcanic and hydroelectric risk issue. Consider the following statements of the President, taken from “The presentation of the plan Let´s Work Together for El Salvador” (in the newspaper La Prensa Gráfica, on  February 5).

    * “The national topography, with a chain of mountains in the center, is the result of this collision of the continental plaques (in the Pacific and the Caribbean). In these conditions, the whole country is vulnerable and there is no relation between the deceased and the types of house construction”.

    * “We are going to build a temporary road that goes from Santa Tecla through the San Salvador Volcano and San Juan los Planes, and ends in the road to Quezaltepeque…It is important to mention that this road is built with a vision of emergency, with a vision of the future, since this is what will allow the San Salvador Volcano area to have an important development of tourism. It will allow this area to be accessible for investments as well”.

    * “It is impossible to ask (the farmers) to invest within the current conditions”.

    * “We should get to a stage of employment, in which we look forward for activities such as the clothing factories, and a type of farming that has permanent possibilities in the affected areas”.

    Other statements, equally odd and alarming, could be added, but for now it is enough to comment on those three quotes to realise that in El Salvador it is much more necessary to polish the development strategies after the earthquake.

Official interpretations of vulnerability

     The first thing from the presidential speech that attracts one’s attention is the statement, which says “there is no relation between the number of deceased people and the types of construction”. This statement was explained through the comparison of two cases: the town of Tacuba, where there were no deceased but 3,250 houses collapsed in 2001, and the Rubén Darío building (in San Salvador), which during the 1986 earthquake collapsed killing 600.

     It is dangerous to use this two cases as an example, because this ignores important possible facts: if a building has been built with low quality materials or inadequate techniques, or if it has been damaged in previous earthquakes (as the case of the Rubén Darío, which was severely damaged during the 1965 earthquake), it is clear that in the next earthquake this type of construction has a higher risk of causing deaths than a house built from adobe (such as the ones in Tacuba) with roof tiles and lighter material than those of a concrete building. This does not mean, however, that no one was injured because of the collapsing of adobe house rooftops (by the way, adobe is a technique that with the proper specifications can be seismic resistant).

     Empirical studies of disasters show that concrete causes the death of many more people than adobe does, as the cases mentioned before have shown. More recently, on January 26, an earthquake with similar magnitude as the one in El Salvador (7.9 on the Richter Scale) caused the death of more than 25,000 people in India, when they where buried under concrete buildings defectively constructed or previously damaged . In El Salvador, the deaths caused by the collapsing of adobe houses have been minimal; the highest rate of deceased has been due to landslides in the Cordillera del Bálsamo, but also because of the location of human population in these fragile areas and by the alteration of their ecosystem as well.

Temporary road and permanent employment

     The proposal of a temporary road is another evidence of how governments ignore risk and disaster planning in their development programs. In addition to the road, t is intended to promote investments and tourism in the outskirts of an active crater (the Volcano of San Salvador), without considering that the volcano could increase its activity in the future and cause a disaster that would destroy the road, tourism and investment as well. If this does not seem enough, it does not make sense to plan the construction of a temporary road, nor to plan the encouragement of tourism and investment, such plans should have a permanent nature.

     On the other hand, the development of construction projects in the outskirts of this volcano may harm the natural environment of the area, since it will cause deforestation and impermeability of the ground. During the winter season, it could cause erosion, higher water currents on the surface, floods, landslides and disasters that might affect villages in the periphery of San Salvador (the 1982 landslide in Montebello, also located in the city, caused hundreds of deaths). From the perspective of risk and disasters planning, this measure makes no sense, specially with the recent tragedies of past earthquakes, which we do not seem to have learned from.

     Finally, one has to pay close attention to what, according to President Francisco Flores, are the options to generate permanent employment: clothing factories and farming activities. The first one is not a real choice to generate quality employment, since it depends on the investment decisions of foreign agents, and it can also be easily transferred to other countries of the region that have more advantages for the clothing industry. This idea is even stronger if it is considered that all Central American and Caribbean countries share the same privileges as El Salvador. Meanwhile, in Mexico they have the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, the main market of clothing industry of the area.

     The need of permanent farming is also noted, but at the same time it is indicated that “it is not possible to ask the farmers to invest in the current conditions”. This situation presents challenges that require a monetary policy that guide the distribution of resources in an effective post-earthquake perspective (which is not necessarily the same as reconstruction).  The technical and marketing assistance and the accumulation of human resources become important as well.

     The decision on how the credit and interest rates are going to be determined, are key choices that must be resolved by the monetary policy. Unfortunately, with the monetary integration we are about to lose the capability to develop a monetary policy destined to work on a post-earthquake development plan. In addition, the international dollar reserves are spent just to make internal transactions easier. Fortunately, full dollarization has not been consummated, and it can be considered either its reversion or the use of the international net reserves for the post-earthquake development.

Final considerations

     It is extremely necessary that the Salvadoran society discusses, formulate and adopt a development plan with a consideration of risks. This plan must be visualized beyond the geologic, seismic and meteorological perspective --as it has been the tendency in the last decades and even after the recent earthquake.  A wider perspective that incorporates the economic and social dimensions that intervene in the risk and disaster planning should be adopted. An unavoidable first step is that President Francisco Flores and his cabinet break out the silence they have kept ever since the earthquake, and seek for professional technical capacity advise in matters of disaster.

     To begin with, it can be said that it is definitively not advisable to build a temporary road, nor to accept assumptions such as the one that says that “there is no relation between the number of deceased and the types of construction”, or that the government goal must be to go back to the social conditions of January 12. These visions go against any development program after the disaster. Instead, we must see the post-earthquake stage as an opportunity to face the disaster from a development perspective, and not just from the emergency and reconstruction point of view.

     The first issue is the formulation, agreement and adoption of a development plan based on a  wide social agreement, which realizes the lessons from previous disasters and the open opportunities of the recent one. This plan must gather the main social actors involved in the mitigation of risks, and contemplate the design and an adoption of a sustainable disaster planning system as well.