Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI)
E-mail: cidai@cidai.uca.edu.sv

Central American University (UCA)
Apdo. Postal 01-168, Boulevard Los Próceres
San Salvador, El Salvador, Centro América
Tel: +(503) 210-6600 ext. 407
Fax: +(503) 210-6655
 

     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.

     Subscriptions to Proceso in Spanish can be obtained by sending a check for US$50.00 (Americas) or $75.00 (Europe) made out to 'Universidad Centroamericana' and sent to the above address. Or read it partially on the UCA’s Web Page: http://www.uca.edu.sv
     For the ones who are interested in sending donations, these would be welcome at Proceso. Apdo. Postal 01-168, San Salvador, El Salvador.

INDEX

EDITORIAL

    Those who only ten years ago spoke about peace and peace culture with plenty of enthusiasm, now speak about war; those who ever since then introduced themselves as a role model to resolve conflicts through dialogue and negotiation, are now in favor of the punishing military operations; those who spoke vehemently about forgiving and forgetting, now ask for revenge and support the massive and indiscriminate bombarding; those who spoke about democracy and democratization, now talk about increasing the control over the population and over security.

    Those who speak about those issues have both a bad memory and weak concepts; they do not come up with any ideas, and the few they have are inconsistent. This is what easily allows them to jump from one place to another, since they do not even remember their former position, they do not know exactly where they were before, and they are not certain where they are right now. Their coming and going attitude is possible because they do not have basic concepts, principles or judgements.

    They move according to their convenience, but are always after money and power. They do not miss a spot, even if they have to complain about the principles that they once defended with an apparent conviction, and even if they have to sacrifice the general well-being for the peace of a few. Despite of all this, they speak about solidarity and fraternity, transparency and honesty. They are the same ones who ten years ago easily spoke about a peace culture, democratization, and a new country.

    Ten years later, what predominates is a culture of violence with a tragic balance of murder, kidnapping, sexual assaults, aggression and impunity. Every time it is more clear what are the interests that actually affect the country's most important decisions. They are certainly not the great majorities’ decisions. Most people have to content themselves with a little more than a 3% of the GNP. Freedom is a thing of the past. Insecurity and suspicion came back. The crisis of the Salvadoran economy can no longer be hidden, because of the production, employment and the exportation's condition, as in the fiscal deficit's case. Ten years later, El Salvador is not a new nation, it is the same as always, only older, with less resources, with less energies, more disenchanted and frustrated.

    It is not the international terrorist attack they are afraid of, since that El Salvador is not a target in this case. They are not afraid of the drug dealers either, they know where to look for them, and where to find them, if they wanted to. They fear the population's generalized anger because of what they have not done during the last ten years, a period in which they have allowed that El Salvador goes backwards at a fast rhythm: the population's life standards have deteriorated because they dedicated themselves to promote both the unlimited accumulation of profits and the unrestricted freedom for a small sector. They are afraid that such discomfort turns into an explosion of street violence, as in the case of the former patrol members.

    In the end, they are afraid to lose their power over a state that they consider as their patrimony. That is why they want to control it before it is too late, before promises charged with false optimism are diluted, organized protests emerge, and they "have" to repress them, just like in the past. They want people to be afraid, in order to stop any organized action from the popular majority. They say they are here to serve this majority with all their hearts, while what they actually do is increase their bank accounts, their properties and their privileges. They do not fight the fear that terror creates, but they use terror to create more fear.

    Their lack of memory to remember the past and their ignorance allow them to go on, without questioning the rationality, or the morality of their lives and their actions. Although they are the first ones to proclaim their love for this country, their political perspicacity and their compromise with positive values, in fact they are blinded by ambition. Their forgetfulness and their ignorance are explained by the combination of the power and the money that surrounds them.

    That is why when they are reminded of their recent and their remote past, of what they have done and said, their memory turns subversive. Their memories prevent them from forgetting. Although they cannot be accused in front of a judge, to remember is to point them out for their injustice and their violence. That is why memory turns itself so uncomfortable when it remembers and celebrates with joy the legacy of the victims they once denied justice to. First, they took away their lives, and later they denied them their right to have justice. However, what they threw away, others have recollected and kept with love and admiration. In this way, the martyr’s tradition of the Salvadoran people  is deeper than their democratic tradition.

    The first one is true, the second one  has a lot of falseness in it. The first one is based on an unconditional generosity, the second one is not even believable. The first one knows about human and Christian values, about truth, justice, solidarity and compassion; while the second one knows only about power and money dressed up in false discourses.  The memory of the victims of injustice and violence, and the knowledge of their existence unmask their hypocrisy, and no one rests until finding out the truth.

    The November 16th commemoration of the UCA martyrs tends to be subversive because it does not forget and, therefore, it is reluctant to accept the official version of the facts that took place eleven years ago. In this sense, this is a reminder of the past that is still alive in El Salvador of today. That is why the earthquake victims cannot be left behind. Even if they are in different circumstances, they all are victims of injustice. Injustice unifies all the victims of humanity, including the ones of terrorism and war. It tends to be subversive because that resistance is active and does not give up its insistence to find the truth.

    Once the instances established by the law end, now it is ready to accuse because of the justice once denied to the victims at the national and international courts. It is convinced that there cannot be justice without truth, and that this is one of the most efficient barriers to stop the complicity of power and money and, therefore, to end with those changes from peace to war, from forgetfulness to revenge. They now demand revenge with the guns in hand, we ask for justice, based on the Salvadoran law and on the international right. The November 16th commemoration tends to be subversive because it is also a celebration. The memories have a tint of thankfulness and that awakens joy. It is the triumph of the victim over its executioners.  Before the enjoyment of the foolish ones the joyful celebration of life prevails, and this encourages a feeling of compromise and hope. In these circumstances, joy is also rebelliousness.

    The official terror, established as a way of social containment, before and during the armed conflict, ended with the lives of dozens of thousands of Salvadorans. These people murdered because of their conviction that another society, supportive, fair and equal was possible, are the martyrs of the civil war in our country.

    The politicians and the army members who made the decisions in those years of violent craze, appealed to the name of left-wingers or communists to legitimate the disappearance of the innocent ones. The left-wingers or guerrillas were a threat, an imminent danger against which the defenders of the civilized capitalist society had to react, even if it meant to use the physical elimination of the suspects. The condition of a left-winger was incompatible with the nation's reconstruction project. The simple presumption or suspicion that someone could be one of them was enough reason to lose a loved one. Something that was a bond between the victims of those who felt the responsibility to defend the "Freedoms of El Salvador" was the tag  —placed for a reason or without it— if they were sympathizers or militants of those who were called guerrillas back then.

    Nine years after the end of the war, many things have changed in El Salvador. The communists, enemies of the capitalism of those days, have incorporated themselves to the country's institutional political dynamic. They presently rub elbows with their former enemies. The politically institutionalized violence has opened the door to a society with a democratic vocation, the social energies insist on its consolidation. Many people will say, and they will be right, that the sacrifice of so many innocent lives  —even if it seems at times that it was unnecessary— at least was worth it to stop the spiral of political violence. In this sense, it is usually said that with the pact of peace, the victims did not die in vain. That would be, at last, the consolation for the family and friends of the disappeared ones: that their loved ones contributed with their lives to the pacification, and the establishment of the democracy that we are now enjoying.

    The present left-wing leaders usually adhere themselves to this discourse. They, the former guerrilla members, would be something like the political representatives of the disappeared ones. It is very probable that, for instance, with the celebration of the 12th anniversary of the UCA massacre, some leaders of that left-wing attend to this event to show their solidarity with the university’s community. That would be a symbol of a certain responsibility to go on with the victims fight for dignity, justice, and equality in El Salvador.

    The former aspects would be the political contribution of the ex-guerrilla, compromised with the new scenery. However, it will have to be interpreted as a continuation of the victim's vindication. Is this how the present left-wing leaders continue with the martyrs struggle? What would the victims say if they could see the performance and the political work of those who call themselves their political arms? Is the act of honoring the memory of the disappeared ones an important aspect of the present left-wing leaders agenda?

    It is very probable that the answer of the main opposition party leaders is affirmative. Convinced as they are of their combat in favor of the less fortunate ones, they would have no doubts about blaming their lack of results on the citizens' incomprehension, or in the worst of the cases, on the opposition, the right-wing that presently administrates the country. It would be this right-wing, with its resources and propaganda media, the one who is responsible for the discontent of a considerable part of the population, because of its party's performance.

    However, it is evident that no one buys that story. It is well known that the ex-guerrilla, who later turned into politicians, are moving far away from the martyrs' struggle for equality and justice in El Salvador. And it is not precisely because of their discourse  —very few of them would publicly accept it—, but among other things, because they do not renovate their political ideas, or their personal ambitions constantly; because of their ingenuity, their distance from the population, or even their insistence to be open to the economic elite.

    During last year, the attention was over a declaration of the FMLN on the events of the trial that the Company of Jesus started against the intellectual authors of the murders at the UCA. Back then the left-wing leaders stated their support to the Jesuit's justice demands, however, they also asked them to apologize themselves if the accused ones  were declared not guilty. It is evident that beyond their search for the elite's acceptance, that petition cannot be understood. Many members of the left-wing party move among that duality. On the one hand, they intend to legitimate themselves before the powerful ones; but, on the other hand, at least in their discourse, they have to talk about their sympathy for the victims. In the end, they betray the victims' cause. Therefore, they turn into accomplices of impunity and injustice.

    Something like that is palpable in the present fight for the decision structures' control inside the left-wing party. The closed dispute between certain characters, materialized in a tendencies' war, it is nothing but a blurry reflection of "the Martyrs' Cause". In this new phase of the political struggle, personal ambitions count even more, the control over the power is more important than a compromise with justice. At least that is not the logic that is at the top of the decisions and the strategies of the present left-wing leaders. That is why heroism, the capability to compromise with the struggle for other people's cause who cheered the revolutionary ones of that time, has vanished in the air.

    On the other hand, about the disagreements inside the left-wing, concerning the question for the viability of the alternative project to the present economic system, Ellacuria's words could be brought up to enlighten this issue. In one of his analysis about the possible solutions to the Salvadoran problems, Ellacuria said that the futile discussion about "principled approaches and pragmatism" had to be avoided. Because the first perspective tends to be intransigent and the other one is usually erratic. Both are negative aspects and an obstacle to resolve the social problems. The Renovators and the Orthodox should meditate about these words. A solution has to be found in order to resolve the problems in El Salvador, responding to its roots and its causes.

    In summary, because of the growing distance between the political left-wing and the martyrs' cause, the social left-wing has an important job ahead of it. The new generations not only have to be educated to remember those who were cowardly killed, but to appreciate their contributions and the solidarity example that they gave by compromising their own lives.

    Despite that the Salvadoran armed conflict was resolved through a dialogue and a negotiation, the society is still suffering fundamental contradictions that were not neutralized by the Peace Agreements, despite its good intentions. The transference of land, the social and economic arrangement forum, and the mitigation of the structural adjustment process, are some of the forgotten issues and, at the same time, some of the most important aspects of those historic documents.

    It cannot be denied that Ignacio Ellacuria's statement in favor of the negotiation and the social transformation was validated by history itself. The end of the hostilities back in 1992 and the later reconstruction project opened the door to a sudden period of vigorous economic growth, and to a wider political participation, showing the qualities of a peaceful environment.

    However —and in the context of the 12th. anniversary of the murder of the priests and two of their collaborators at the UCA— it is worth to reflect up to what point the fundamental ideas of the Jesuit martyrs Ignacio Ellacuria and Segundo Montes are still necessary to understand the national reality in the beginning of the 21st. century. The crisis' "internal" factors —as Ellacuria called them—, the problem of the concentration of the land in the hands of a few, and the important role that the immigrant population played and their remittances are three current issues in this country.

    In his 1986 writings, Ellacuria explained that the under development situation in Central America was due to the "economic regime that has prevailed during decades in this area, its relation with the international order, which, being unable to end with poverty, and making it grow instead, has caused the creation of a minority who has taken an unfair advantage of both the income's unequal distribution and the properties". Fifteen years after this statement was made, it cannot be denied that the situation has definitively changed, although not because the income's distribution is more equitable, but because poverty has been fought through both the immigration and the remittances. In fact, poverty has been reduced, but not because the economic regime has generated the employment and the necessary income to end with poverty, but because the population has ran away from it and looked for new horizons in other countries, specially the United States.

    The structural under development situation that El Salvador suffers, specially noticeable in the rural sector's deteriorated conditions, has been at the foundations of this immigration process. It is no coincidence that the land and the rural sector's issue has always been one of the major concerns of the UCA, as the organization of events of a wide social participation to discuss the rural issues of the early seventies has shown, as well as the different institutional ideas about the "agricultural transformation" project, made by the former president Arturo Molina, and the investigations made by Segundo Montes about the land, which he considered as the  "crisis’ nucleus". The Peace Agreements vindicated the importance of this problem with the inclusion of the Land Transference Program, which intended to distribute properties among the members of the FMLN as well as among the members of the Armed Forces.

    Although this program did not include an important amount of peasants who did not have a piece of land, it helped to take away some pressure from the agricultural difficulties, at least as far as the land distribution is concerned. Outside from some sporadic claims about continuing with the property transference process with an extension of over 245 hectares, there is very little to say about any conflicts related to the distributed properties. Still, it cannot be denied that the agricultural field continues to be the "crisis' nucleus". The downfall of the international prices of the coffee, and both the government and the coffee producers' indecision about the options to export, threaten to turn themselves into a source of conflict for the 21st. century.

    A clear and recent sample of this situation is the reduction of the coffee international prices (under $50.00 per quintal). This meant that the coffee-growing activities are not very profitable, since they have an influence over the employment and the salaries of the temporary workers. To alleviate the crisis and guarantee the recollection of the grain and the provisional sources of work that it creates, the government has already created a new line to finance the coffee-growing sector. Despite of it, the dependency of the employment generated by this exportation activity still represents a considerable weakness of the Salvadoran economic model, mostly because of the negative international conflict.

    However, from all of the Jesuit martyrs’ approaches, probably the most current one is the one that Father Segundo Montes developed about the growing importance that the immigration and the family remittances would gain. By the end of the eighties, Montes was already pointing out the growing importance of both issues. Close to 1.5 million of Salvadorans live abroad and annually send over $1,900 million in remittances that balance the country's damaged external sector, fight the poverty of the families who receive it, keep the currency exchange steady, control the inflation and, in general, sustain the widely advertised "macroeconomic stability".

    The economic regime that poverty produces, the agricultural sector as a generator of the crisis, and the remittances as the life savers of the regime are still very current factors of the present times, and are the issues that deserve most of the attention. Although during the nineties an important reduction of poverty was reached (from 59.7% in 1991-92 to 41.4% in 1999), nobody ignores that the Salvadoran economy fundamentally works thanks to the remittances and the international investments.

    The economy does not have the necessary strength to generate a self-sustained growth process and, therefore, it cannot be expected that it can overcome the challenges of poverty and the social exclusion. Nevertheless in a context where the agricultural field is knocked down not only by the crisis of the international prices of coffee (a problem derived from the "international order", as Ellacuria would say), but also by an intensification of the peasant economy's eternal crisis, increased by the products' low prices and the impact of the disasters caused by the dry seasons and the floods.

    Without a doubt, the country's pacification and the remittances' positive effect over the macroeconomic stability and the combat against poverty have made the economy more viable; however, that does not mean that the factors that in the past have contributed to generate critical situations are gone, such as: the concentration of land and economic resources in the hands of a few people, the excessive dependency of the "international order" and the stagnation of the development process at the industrial sector.

    Facing the future, the approach that both Montes and Ellacuria made about looking for a transformation in the Salvadoran reality is still valid. To pretend that everything is all right will only drive to deeper and longer economic, social and environmental crisis. It is better to find the answers in a dialogue, agreements, and the sustainability of development in relatively stable conditions, and not to wait for the social crisis to get worse to do so.