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Proceso 980
December 12, 2001
ISSN 0259-9864
 
 
 
 

INDEX

Editorial:  Celebration and tragedy
Politics:  The internationalization of the domestic policy
Economy:  The bet for the free trade
 
 
 
 

EDITORIAL

    The Ministry of Health has launched a campaign against tragedy during Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The campaign is shy and weak, when it should be completely the opposite, because this celebration period —that because of its nature it should be a time to think about the others and to wish them peace and welfare and to celebrate friendship and love—  can easily end up as a family tragedy. The most common causes of tragedy are three: bullets, gunpowder, and alcohol.

    Since a long time ago, people usually fire their guns to the air to show “happiness” —and also discontent. It is not strange that those shots, called “lost bullets”, injure a person, sometimes children, who have nothing to do with the motives that lead to this kind of extreme display of feelings.  These bullets are called “lost” because no one knows who shots them.  Those who fire their guns to the air do not seem to realize the damage that they can cause, and that in fact they do cause.  The proliferation of guns has caused that this practice —that attempts against the safety of the neighbors— becomes more general and also more harmful.

    That is why the Ministry of Health’s campaign should be more intense and aggressive. However it is not just a public health problem, but also an education and safety problem, even a cultural problem, because it is about changing a behavior pattern that has its roots in all of the social levels.  According to this pattern, this way to show the people’s feelings puts on great danger the lives of the others.  The bullets would not get lost if there was a general and a strict control of the munitions’ commerce.  There would not be any lost bullets, because if there was good will the person who fires his gun to the air could be identified.

    The other serious menace is the use of gunpowder.  To burn gunpowder is also a very much established custom.  If gunpowder were not burned, the party would not be happy enough.  To burn gunpowder is equivalent to burn money, making a lot of noise. This puts in great danger the lives of children, who often enough get burned, and even worse they get injured, and sometimes they even suffer amputations.

    It is paradoxical that it is their family who puts gunpowder in the children’s hands, this is a dangerous way to have fun and make the party even more joyful, without teaching them to use it safety and without supervising them; in addition, given the conditions in which most of the gunpowder is manufactured in the country, does not offer any guarantee.  The burns and the loss of body parts is very painful for children and for their families.  Actually, it is a very dangerous practice.  It is only human that happiness requires different ways to be made public, but gunpowder should not be the answer, at least not on the hands of children.  It is contradictory, on the other hand, to burn gunpowder when the family budget is so tight.

    The third threat is alcohol.  During these holidays people usually drink disproportioned amounts of alcohol, because it seems as if there could not be a party without getting intoxicated.  This way of celebrating by losing the sense of reality is also very odd.  The good thing about the party would be to get drunk.  However it seems that the true feelings are hiding inside the people who cannot express themselves if they do not lose the inhibition that stops them and they repress it by drinking alcohol heavily.

    Communication is only made possible by being senseless, which is contradictory.  Everything is even more complicated if the person intoxicated by alcohol has a gun or drives under the influence of it, because then the driver would be attempting against his own life and against the life of others.  Besides being harmful to health, getting drunk costs money as well as it causes great economic losses when it provokes a tragedy.

    Therefore, it seems as if in El Salvador there cannot be any party or any happiness without putting in great danger the lives of others.  It is paradoxical that a time that should be dedicated to celebrate and feel happiness for family and friends, is a time to prepare policemen, firemen and hospitals.  It is not a time of peace, as the Christmas music proclaims, but a time of danger.  That is why this Christmas and New Year’s party oblige the government to assign resources that it does not have to stop tragedy from becoming worse.

    Actually it is the same government who puts the population in danger, by allowing the free circulation of guns and munitions, by not controlling the gunpowder manufacturing process and its commercialization, and by expressly resigning to control the alcohol consumption.  This irresponsibility increases the expenses on public hospitals, which have to dedicate some resources (that they do not have to help the injured people by this irresponsibility). The government’s irresponsibility can therefore be added to the irresponsibility of the families.

    These threats that come upon the Salvadoran population during the Christmas and the New Year’s celebrations are a reflection of the every day social lack of safety. It could not be any different, given the irresponsibility of the government, the politicians, and generally, the irresponsibility of the public authorities. The families cannot be asked to assume responsibilities that modify their conduct patterns without a strong motivation and without any alternative.  That is how the party can become a tragedy, and happiness can turn into suffering.  There are unavoidable tragedies, but there are others, such as the ones caused by the bullets, the gunpowder, and the alcohol that could be reduced with a good amount of more responsibility from the government, the society, the families and the people.

    It seems odd that what should be a party is threatened by tragedy.  This is another dimension of the degradation that the Salvadorans society has reached.  Behind the existing discontent in the guns, gunpowder and alcohol there is the economic interest; although in the case of the gunpowder, it is about an income resource for hundreds of families obliged to risk their lives manufacturing it at unsafe conditions to make a few cents.  The dangers that these families suffer are one more manifestation of the society’s lack of humanity.  We are far away from solidarity, fraternity and peace, values that these festivities proclaim.  El Salvador is far away from reality and the Christmas spirit, and does not do much to get any closer to them.

    For those who still had their doubts, the recent terrorist attacks to The United States, and the subsequent response of the White House made an emphasis on the internationalization of the domestic policy.  For instance, the already famous division of the world imposed ever since the Texas cowboy era.  George W. Bush warned the world that who was not with the Americans was with the terrorists, that is, that they (the terrorists and the countries who are not on the side of the United States) have chosen evil over good and they have to confront the consequences.  Ever since the September 11th attack, almost every nation of the world has been on a line to express their support to the new anti-terrorist war headed by The United States.  Also, ever since then, and now more than ever, the internal political decisions of the countries are the object of a strict international surveillance.

    Many people will see this reality —in the external imposition of the conditions in a nation’s internal policy— as a confrontation with the countries’ sovereignty.  In fact, it is difficult to combine the independence and the self-determination principles of the countries with the constant guidelines of the International Community, emanated from Washington.  It is difficult to understand that the state, seen as the main point of the political action in the quest for a common national destiny, is separated from its most precious daughter: Its sovereignty.

    Some authors who have discussed the issue of the state’s sovereignty in the context of globalization would not express the same alarming voice before the growing international dimension of the domestic policy.  For Gina Zabludovsky (1995), talking about the essay of David Held on the state’s sovereignty in the present context says that “the international dimension of the political action in the modern world can restrict the autonomy of the different states.  However, its sovereignty can only be considered as broken if this one is conceived as a unlimited and indivisible way of political power”.

    To understand the former statement, the difference between sovereignty and autonomy has to be analyzed.  Following Held, it can be said that the concept of sovereignty refers to the fact that even in a globalized world, the states “keep having the legal control over the resources for the design and the execution of their political guidelines”.  The autonomy, instead, would include that, technically, the states have lost effectiveness and the power to carry on with their policies and guidelines.

    In this sense, the right answer for the social and political analysis of the present reality
—according to the formerly mentioned author—, is to understand that the states have lost autonomy, but that they are still sovereign.  “The different kinds of ‘superior authority’
—as Zabludovsky says— that have materialized the modern world, have had an influence on the state’s autonomy loss, however not on its sovereignty.  Despite that they operate in a international economy, with military alliance, etcetera, the nations and states still have in their hands the determination of the most important aspects of human life.  In a complex and interdependent world, ‘the sovereignty of jure’, continues to be a powerful force specially related with the capacity and the legitimacy of the state to administrate power”.

    With the formerly explained categories, the situation of the present world can be understood better, it is necessary to put into context the declarations and the demands of the United States government.  An efficient anti-terrorist fight can not be done without facing this global reality, which is interdependent.  The observers have underlined the perfect domain of the global bonds of the societies that those who planed and executed the horrible crimes of September attacked.  Therefore it would be absurd to pretend to give a local answer, framed in geographical frontiers, to a global problem.

    Consequentially, the fact that external forces are integrated in the configuration of the national policy can also be understood.  The national frontiers go beyond the political system’s boundaries.  An important advantage of this approach is that “it allows to go further and substitutes the question about the influence of the foreigners, for the question about how this influence is actually controlled inside the system”.

    If there can be a certain unanimity around the former idea and the new social and political categories that allow to understand it, what has to be discussed, however, is the unequal weight of the nations in this context of domestic policy internationalization.  The loss of autonomy is not the same in every part of the world.  There certainly are those who dominate the military and economic alliances and that impose the others its notion of the new relation.  In this way, it is not necessarily correct to refer to it in strict terms of interdependence to explain the loss of autonomy that the present world suffers.  There is an enormous asymmetry between the nations.

    Only by making a reference to the unequal importance of the countries in the globalized world, the arrogance that the Washington government has used to treat the other nations can be understood.  Conscious about the economic, military and political importance of The United States in the present world, Bush has made the world choose between good and evil, calling himself “the prince of justice”.  According to the former ideas for most countries the world’s interdependence not only means a loss of autonomy, but technically it also means a significant loss of their “sovereignty of jure”.

    From this standpoint, a better perspective can be opened to question the so called goodness, neutrality and the defenseless internationalization of the domestic policy.  From this point of view, the argument that says that there is no loss of sovereignty cannot be held any more, when it comes to participate in the interdependent international agreement.  In fact what this statement ignores is that the modern states, those who now are going overboard by the fact of globalization, are not only conceived to legitimate the monopoly of physical violence; they have also been conceived as elements for the cultural and economic development of the countries.

    On the other hand, those who make the state’s autonomy rest on the violence monopoly are not aware that to use violence to guarantee the coexistence of opulence and poverty —and make humiliation acceptable for a good part of the humanity—, is the sad role that certain states are playing.  However, obviously this does not happen to everyone.  There are some individuals who plan the economy, the politics and a dominant vision of the world.  Many analysis about the internationalization of the domestic policy need to include these elements.

    Ever since the arrival of the first ARENA government, a series of both economic stabilization and reorientation measures were employed. These measures have leaded the way of the economic policy during the nineties, and even the one of the beginning of the 21st century.  This was how many changes were made to the ways of doing politics at the exchange, tributary, monetary and commercial circles. The implementation of an economic reorientation program was announced.  This program looked —as its name indicates— to reorient the productive apparatus throughout programs such as the industrial conversion or the agricultural modernization.

    Twelve years after the reforms were initiated, noticeable changes can be detected in the macroeconomic field, which have had ambiguous impacts: the unification of the exchange rate (that was established by the “monetary integration”), an inclination of the taxes towards the indirect taxes (income tax and the value added tax), the control of the debts of the government with the Central Bank and the levy cut on tariffs. At the same time, it has also been possible to detect a certain economic reorientation of the economy, although not precisely thanks to an agricultural or an industrial modernization. Most of all, we are facing an economy with a growing dependency of external factors, such as the family remittances and the foreign investments on the maquila.

    A good number of the most sensible impacts over the Salvadoran productive sectors has come from the commercial policy practiced by the ARENA governments, especially due to the unnecessarily fast levy cut on tariffs that they implemented.  Even do when the business sectors can agree on the basic ideas of the free trade, the truth is that there has been a significant impact over the sectors sensible to the importations. The government considers that the free trade agreement negotiation is one of the main strategies that the Economy Ministry has to develop, in order to open new opportunities to the Salvadoran sectors of exportation.  This approach motivates us to reflect on how reasonable those agreements are, since it does not seem real that just by subscribing them this country will automatically achieve certain benefits, just like the government intends us to believe.

    Some of the countries that have free trade agreements with us or the countries that are possible candidates to negotiate with are: Canada, Chile, Dominican Republic, Belize, Mexico and The United States.  With the exception of these two last ones, there are very few expectations that the mentioned agreements can substantially change the situation of the Salvadoran commercial balance.  This is because El Salvador has had, and keeps having, very little commercial exchange with the first four countries mentioned, to the point that altogether they represent less than a 2.5% of the total of the commercial balance for the year 2000.

    For instance, if El Salvador would achieve to correct its commercial deficit with these countries, its commercial balance deficit would not be $1,997 million, but it would approximately be $1,949 million.  It is even more reasonable to try to improve the Salvadoran commercial balance with Guatemala —which represents an 8% from the total deficit of the commercial balance— than to compromise time and efforts in negotiations of doubtful importance.  What is true is that the exportations to the mentioned countries —except the ones to The United States— are definitively weak: From the total exportations of 2000, only 0.2% was exported to Belize, 0.2% to Canada, 0.05% to Chile, 0.4% to the Dominican Republic and,  0.36% to Mexico.

    These numbers would reflect two different situations: The Salvadoran productive apparatus does not generate an adequate offer to penetrate into those markets, and both the duty and non-duty barriers are too severe.  It is not necessary to explain much the fact the Salvadoran economy is not generating —except for the maquila exportations— enough exportable offers.

    The non traditional products have very little participation in the composition of the exportations, to the point that those leader sectors, such as the food industry, the chemical industry, paper and textile products (except for the maquila) only generated a 21% of the 2000 exportations. The textile maquila (which has The United States as a final destination) reported, instead, an overwhelming 54.5 from the total of the exportations for the same year. This situation would not be odd considering the lack of interest that the ARENA governments have shown to encourage the investment and the development of the new industrial process and, generally to develop a policy of industrial encouragement.

    On the other hand, the presence of both the duty and non-duty barriers established at the destination countries reflects the fact that in those places they take the “free trade” issue seriously. In fact, many of the expectations of the Salvadoran businessmen with the agreements lead to make more flexible the arrival of their products to those markets, since the truth is that here they already had advantages, however this treatment has not been reciprocal.

    Unfortunately it seems that the most serious problem is not the barriers of the international commerce, but the weakness of the Salvadoran productive apparatus. The case of the free trade agreement with Mexico is emblematic, since although with it an improvement in the commercial balance with that country was expected, the truth is that the tendencies for the year 2001 show that the commercial deficit will continue to grow as if there actually was not any free trade.

    The fact that there is an emphasis on the free trade negotiation is because El Salvador has opened its markets, but its commercial associates still have some objections to do the same with their economies.  This situation is symptomatic and it suggests that El Salvador has opened to quick its duty barriers, to the point that now it is in an uncomfortable position to negotiate: it has very little to offer to its associates because it already reduced its tariffs significantly.

    Despite that evidence, it seems that the government continues insisting on giving the free trade an importance that it does not actually have.  Alone, the commercial openness does not guarantee a successful entrance of El Salvador into the world economy. The conversion of the industry and the modernization of the agricultural field are tasks that remain to be done, and at the same time necessary aspects of any free trade agreement.  In addition, the different levels of a relative development are a factor that must not be underestimated by intending to negotiate with the free trade, since the exploitation of the advantages that are generated will depend on it.

    In Central America, the common market of the fifties and the sixties revealed that those who beneficiate the most with the opening of the markets are those countries with a more diversified and competitive productive structure.  That is why to intend to significantly improve our commercial balance through the free trade agreement with the countries that have a higher development, diversification of exports, and competitiveness (such as Mexico and Chile) or with the ones that we do not have much commercial exchange (such as the Dominican Republic or Belize), is nothing but a simple illusion.  What we really need is a support policy for the economic development, that stimulates the growth of the productive sectors, to provide the supplies for the internal market as well as to increase the exportation offer.