Abril 25, 2007
Proceso 1238 

Francisco Javier Ibisate was an exceptional man. His knowledge about the economy was impressive and solid. His writings are the best sample of his character. He was academically rigorous with his research activities and passionate about his knowledge. He was eager to know the general economic problems and more specifically those of El Salvador -his fundamental academic commitment-, and how those problems overlap with the political interests; he was also eager to read and to interpret the situation of the Salvadoran economy and its perspective in the light of a global context; he was always willing to learn the great lessons of recent world-wide history, mainly those connected with the collapse of the real socialism due to the frustrated reforms adopted by Mijail Gorbachov. These were the intellectual battlefields of Father Ibisate.

His persistence involved a wide perspective of the whole situation, a critical conception of the economic knowledge. He was conscientious that knowledge alone does not mean anything because knowledge must affect reality, must transform it, and humanize it. This is a key aspect of his prolific intellectual production. Those who read his analysis and want to learn from them will find a committed and a scientific legacy of knowledge.

A transforming academic work is not only a body of knowledge with a good foundation, but a shared, and a socialized knowledge. The works of father Ibisate respond to his interest to share his research projects. And the best expression of his knowledge was in his educational work. In fact, the one of the main tasks of Father Ibisate was teaching. So much energy and time dedicated to the field of education in the UCA will make people remember him basically as a professor. He had the capacity to communicate knowledge. If he had only communicated intellectual contents -concepts, theories, methods- he would have been what people call an excellent professor. But he was something more: teaching was his passion, and he knew how to communicate that passion those who listened to him. This is no easy task, and only true teachers can do this.
Francisco Javier Ibisate was a professor, in the most authentic sense of the expression. No one in his class could stay away from that enthusiasm. No one able to reads his writings can be indifferent to his formulations. He was passionate about knowledge, and passionate about education. And he was like this because he had an authentic vocation. His career was not just an acceptable option among many others, but the most important option. There is no other way to understand his dedication to the university, there is no other way to understand his persistence because his work in this University was among the best.

His vocation was fed by an unquestionable and an ethical commitment, a commitment with the victims of an unfair economic model. A model that had to be explained, understood, and transformed. As an intellectual, Father Ibisate was in the line of the great critical economists, because the economic science is more than a mere technique -or a mere set of neutral formulas. It is a knowledge that explains the conflicts of power connected with the particular interests of a group or a class. Knowledge can be at the service of an inhuman process or, on the contrary, to the service of transformations able to construct equitable societies. He was in this last horizon and he stayed in it, giving a lesson of decency to other professionals of the economic disciplines who, in the first opportunity they got, gave up the critical exercise of the educational field that shaped their education.

Father Ibisate was a true member of the academic community. The best of the UCA goes hand in hand with his intellectual and his moral contribution. His definitive departure has touched us. But his memory -all the good things that he did as man of knowledge-  is an incentive to continue with his work: to promote a knowledge                   -economic knowledge in his case- able to respond to the needs and the interests of the unprotected and the most vulnerable sectors of the society.

Father Ibisate was a noble person, a very spiritual priest and an economist concerned about human dignity. His students and his assistants were fond of him because of his very particular way to treat them, even those that he scolded because of their lack of attention in class or because they were "soft-spoken readers without a good diction", whenever he asked them to check some paragraph of his book called “Compared Economic Systems: study guides for the course”.

In the last decade, Ibisate was a professor, and he taught courses such as "Introduction to Economy (I and II)", "Compared Economic Systems", "World-wide Economic Surroundings" and "Economic History". His classes were singular because Father Ibisate would easily move between the economic theory and the sociopolitical reality with the purpose of explaining concepts and theories. His classes were not tedious courses in which people would just listen to theories and concepts; he gave his students many examples of the country’s reality.

That is why many students of economy yearned to be his assistants; and, those who worked as such had the experience to see again what they had learned in previous years, but applied now to new economic and social surroundings. Several students in their last years of their career in Economy were interested to attend to his classes, because it seemed as if Father Ibisate always had something new to say, even when he was explaining the same theories and concepts that they had learned years ago.

Through his academic excellence, Father Ibisate combined education and research tasks. Many of his works were read and used by his students. For instance, in a subject about the economic inter-sectional matrix, the document that guided the class was for several years his article "The Salvadoran Economic Model in the 1978 Supply-Product Matrix". He would always say that this article had the recipe to combine the production factors that were necessary to reactivate the economy. He explained that he and other colleagues had spent a long time working to make those "large sheets" so that later the government would just let them get dusty in the library of the Central Bank of Reserve.

In 1997, Father Ibisate was very busy because he was the Rector of the University and the Dean of the Economy and the Social Sciences Department. Back then many reporters wanted to get an interview with him and ask him to explain the economic situation of the country. He had a very busy schedule, but he always had time for the reporters. In one occasion when he was explaining the scientific nature of economy he said that, unlike natural sciences, reality itself was the laboratory of economy. That is why he told the reporters that if they wanted to know the country’s economic situation better, they also had to interview to the workers and the housewives ands ask them about the wages and the familiar economy.

The most interesting of all of his courses was "Compared economic Systems". This subject revealed his ample knowledge about the operation of both the real socialisms and Capitalism. He would explain how both systems disrespected the dignity of human beings, and that it was necessary to look for a "third approach", that is, an "economy with a human face". The people who inspired such a perspective were those who fought for the reforms that have to be adopted inside the socialist system. He referred mainly to Ota Sik and Mikhail Gorbachov. Both, he thought, criticized the socialist system, something that no one would see in the work of those who supported Capitalism.

The debate about the economic systems led him to write about the dilemma between the state planning process and the market. He went beyond the contradictions that others saw in the subject, saying that the vices of the State and those of the market disrespected the human dignity. For that reason, he would say that the economic theory had to go beyond that dilemma and place the people at the top of the list, since before worrying about the social institutions –the State or the market-, the economy must consider men and women the axis of its reflections.

During the Nineties, and after the Peace Accords were signed, Father Ibisate dedicated a considerable portion of his time to reflect more about the economic model adapted to reach growth and social cohesion in El Salvador. Within the framework of the Forum of Economic and Social Agreements, that concern was more intense, because he noticed that the economic reforms adopted in the beginning of the decade were not good for the poorest people of the country. In his subjects he explained the severe impact of the IVA on the sectors with limited resources, and how the reduction of the income tax rates, on the other hand, was good for the groups that made a higher income.

In the search for a different economic model, he would agree with the French indicative planning. He liked how the business sectors, the government and the representatives of the civil society agreed on the most important economic subjects. Ibisate said that such model could not be seen like a centralized planning economy because the economic order was not imposed by the State -"from upstairs"-, as he used to say -, but that it was the object of a consensus between the different social, economic and political sectors. Just like France, he indicated, the country needs the participation of all the sectors to outline the new course of the economy.

Due to his inclination to the indicative planning system, he was not happy when the MIPLAN (The Ministry of Planning) was closed, but he had his hopes with the documents of the Nation’s Plan. Similarly, he celebrated the first report of the PNUD for El Salvador, “The State of the Nation in Human Development”. However, eventually he saw that the economic policies were not connected with the results of these reports.

In the last years, perhaps because the country became involved in the globalization process and because of the fact that he was teaching a new subject             -"Economic Surroundings" -, he was dedicated to the investigation of the international economic policy. Most of his last writings speak of the Forum of Davos, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World’s Bank and the reform of the UN. His concern about the world’s economy also made him reflect on the problems of the environment. In 2001, his acceptance speech when the UCA granted him with the Honoris Causa Doctorate was about the international economic policy and the importance of believing that "another world is possible".

In this last stage, apparently Father Ibisate was more interested in the international economic policy than in the national one, but he knew that the country had given away, little by little, a portion of its economic policy to the international powers through the TLC and the dolarization process. For that reason, his writings were focused on demanding certain transformations not only at a national level, but also inside the coordinating organisms of the globalization process. His last writings reveal his capacity to establish a connection between the international economic policy and the country’s situation. He extended his fields of research because he saw how the poorest sectors were affected by the interests of several businessmen and international organizations.

The death of Father Ibisate has a particular level of importance at the present time. From the Nineties to this day, most of the Latin American economists have become "technocrats" who have forgotten the social dimension the economy. Concerned solely about the problems connected with efficiency and effectiveness, they have forgotten that discipline is also necessary to achieve a higher degree of human dignity. In reference to these changes in the present economic paradigm, Father Ibisate always placed human beings at the center of his reflections. Hopefully, the new generations of economists can recover this spirit, so that the economic knowledge contributes to the transformations that the country needs.

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