Junio 6, 2007
Proceso 1244

The cultural implications of globalization
Everyone knows that globalization is not just an economic phenomenon, but that it is also connected with social, political and cultural aspects. Globalization is a multidimensional concept, and it is important to pay attention if the intention is to understand its complexity. This article will focus on its cultural dimension not because it might be more significant than the other three, but because the cultural aspects of globalization involve the clues to understand the present Salvadoran society.
            Globalization generates a type of culture with the following characteristics. It is a culture for the masses, and an uncomplicated level of culture due to its simple symbolic contents. Therefore, it is easy to assimilate and to reproduce in the different circles of the social life. It is a culture that promotes a compulsive sense of consumption. The values and the lifestyles that it promotes tend to integrate the individuals into a circuit of the market as compulsive buyers. It is a culture of brands.
            A couple of decades ago, brands meant quality. Now brands have become the most important aspect of a product regardless of its quality. Brands have been associated –through efficient advertising mechanisms- with prestige, success, wealth, and whoever uses certain brands also owns these qualities. It is a culture through which it seems that it is easy to succeed. A global culture not only displays easily attainable brands but also the goods that come along with it (shoes, shirts, watches, cars), the individuals that have become successful by using them (jocks, singers, actors), and the institutions that are part of the everyday life of these individuals (football clubs, recording studios, movie sets). It is a visual culture. That world where success is easy attainable comes to people through their eyes. Anyone can see it every day, 24 hours on television, in the newspapers and in the enormous ads in the street.
            It can also be seen through the Internet. It is not a culture that requires analysis or reflections –it is not a culture associated with words- it is a culture associated with the eyes: images and colors show everything they possibly can, everything that can possibly be purchased to lead a successful life. This is a superficial culture that promotes whatever is light as a lifestyle. A life without complications, filled with fun and idleness. Certainly, not everybody can lead the “light” life, but anyone can dream about it and penetrate into the world of fantasies that it offers through the advertising campaigns, the magazines and the shopping malls. It is a culture of individualism in private spaces, a couple of features that walk hand in hand in the global culture. The individual self is more important than the society. An individual only concerned about his own success. For him, losing is every one else’s business but his own.
            The influence of such culture is also affecting El Salvador. El Salvador is already a society evidently invaded by different brands. What seems interesting is to explore how some of the global cultural values do blend with others that already existed in the symbolic universe of the Salvadorans.
            One of the most traditional values in El Salvador is being “street smart”. Roque Dalton, in his famous “Poem of Love” spoke about those characteristics. Being “street smart” is a value because, in the Salvadoran imagery, it is a positive and a distinctive personality factor that is considered the opposite of being “slow” and not being resourceful. Dalton knew how to see that such feature coexisted with a radical sense of sadness, because the Salvadoran people are the saddest people in the world.
The poet captured two of the most important aspects of the Salvadoran cultural identity: the wish to be always the quickest people accompanied by a sense of sadness that can be easily transformed into passivity and conformism. That street-smart kind of feeling has been brutally strengthened by the culture that promotes a life where is easy to succeed. The global culture has promoted the wish to own things that can symbolize prestige, comfort, and success.
The search for this kind of life knows no legal or ethical boundaries, because it promotes a sense of superiority. The Salvadoran population is frantically looking for the key to success. And some people are even stealing cell phones in order to have something that might get them closer to that kind of life. However, that frantic search for success –a success that is not as easily attainable as it seems to be on television or in magazine ads- coexists with values that encourage conformism, passivity, and the renunciation to collective duties.
That culture of an easy success –in an individualist and a private sort of environment- coexists with a strong deeply rooted sense of conformism, fed by religious beliefs and conservative political values. These are the two faces of the present Salvadoran self: on the one hand, a frantic search for success (and the goods that represent it); and, on the other hand, a political conformism and a passive acceptance of the situations established in the public circles.
Both of these dimensions of identity are sustained by values that affect the individual lives of people and that, in the end of the line, complete each other. After all, ARENA has become the political guarantee to achieve easy success. Through many advertising campaigns the most important media have helped ARENA to convince many of the society’s sectors that health, welfare, education, and employment are private matters that each person has to figure out because the State has nothing to do with that.
To face these cultural schemes is an enormous challenge. To promote an analytical attitude might contribute to reflect about the influence of the culture encouraged by globalization in a different manner.

In reference to Saca’s presidential speech
On June 1st, President Saca presented to the Legislative Assembly a report about his third year in the administration of the Executive power. However, what many see as the actual presentation of a report has always been in reality an advertising strategy for the presidents, a mere description of certain actions and nothing more.
            In that sense, the speech addressed by Saca to the congressmen that represent ARENA, the PDC, and the PCN –the FMLN did not attend to this act of protocol- was just a systematization , from his perspective, of the achievements obtained during his third year of administration. These actions do require a certain level of analysis. The President took advantage of this event to announce the plans that he will launch during the next year.
            That is why it would be convenient to critically evaluate the presidential speech to detect the tasks that have not been completed at this point. With that objective in mind, this article will reflect on the proposals described in that speech, and, most of all, on its implications for the country’s development strategy. On the other hand, the stance of the President approaches the different sceneries for the interaction of the political parties inside the legislative organ in the next couple of years.

Just words, not actions
The last issue of this publication presented an analysis about the country’s situation on the third year of the Saca administration. The result of such operation was a negative one, because the government still has to overcome several serious issues such as the improvement of the civilian security system, the plans to fight against delinquency, and the most crucial of all tasks, to reach an economic growth capable to narrow the social gaps between the different sectors of the population.
            The main challenge of the State is to be able to obtain enough resources to deal with the financial requirements of the public policies and the public debt, and this is a remote possibility due to the lack of aggressive tax reforms as the means to increase the public funds.
            In this context, the official balance overlooked many of these aspects, and it dilutes the responsibilities of the official party for those results, blaming the opposition for the present situation of the country. Saca’s discourse was not a rigorous report of the administrative situation. The President had an arrogant attitude when referring to his administration and to the political opposition.
            Saca adopted once again a harsh reaction against the criticism and ignored the opposition. He stated that the government will do everything “possible” to implement his measures, regardless of the approval of the Congress (even if this is not the right way to conduct the country). “I want to say to the people that if we are blocked, we will look for another way to do what we have to do. If they want to stop us, we will push harder. If they put any obstacles to us, we will jump over them in the name of the legitimate needs of our people”. This is what Saca stated. This kind of language goes against the widely advertised political will and negotiation skills that the government has spoken about. That is why a positive attitude is the last thing that should be expected from the President.
            With these words, Saca is practically blaming the opposition for the failure of several measures, because this opposition did not approve of the loans the government needed and because they refused to support the governmental social programs. However, it has been the government that has closed all of the possibilities to negotiate with the rest of the political parties, and it has refused to report the results of the projects that have been implemented and to give away any information about the plans and the distribution of the resources that were to be obtained through the loans that were not approved.
            The discourse used by Saca reveals the government’s growing need to get more loans and the lack of resources of the State, a State unwilling to collect the necessary amount of taxes to finance the programs and the national policies in order to face the problems of the population.
            As part of the initiatives that will be promoted during his fourth year of administration, Saca mentioned the implementation of a “special law to create a trust fund to finance education, social peace, and civilian security”. Through this regulation, the Executive power will issue bonds as a way to collect funds. These certificates would be available to business companies, citizens, and foreign people.

The future scenery
The announcement of Saca about the creation of a trust fund destined to finance education, health and security projects reveals several aspects of this administration. It shows the continuous tension between the opposition and the government. These measures simply tend to avoid the obligatory approval that, through a constitutional command, should get any measure implemented by the Executive power in relation to the financing of projects of the public administration system.
            At the moment, the members of the Executive power assure that these funds only intend to finance specific projects that belong to autonomous organizations, and that such action does not require of any serious commitments. In other words, the approval by a qualified majority of the Legislative Assembly would not be necessary. However, when examining the Constitution, especially Article 146, it is clear that any measure focused on the collection or the distribution of public funds should be approved by the Legislative Assembly.
            If the creation of this trust fund becomes a reality, the Saca administration would be overlooking one of the democratic mechanisms of this country. It is not only critical enough to use this kind of measures to obtain public financing, it is also terrible to see how the Executive is able to implement a measure connected with the use of public resources without considering the opinion of the rest of the political parties and ignoring the Constitution.
            As an excuse for adopting this sort of measures, the governmental officials have pointed at the fact that the FMLN is against the approval of loans. The governmental officials consider that these measures expand the Executive’s range of possibilities, and this is something that, according to their logic, would be a positive alternative.
            However, the governmental officials’ perspective is wrong, because the concept of governance does refer to at least a couple of factors: the character of the people and the actual capacity of a State to resolve the needs and the problems of the population. In this sense, in the presidential plans, the participation of the different political forces represented in the rest of the State’s powers is important for the administration actions of the Executive power. That is why the search for negotiated decisions should be considered as a fundamental step to achieve such a goal. In fact, in order to reach a consensus there should be disagreements, that is, a different perspective to conceive the problems and the alternatives to resolve them.
            In our country, the Saca administration blames the opposition for the lack of the necessary resources to promote the social programs; and, allegedly, that is why they design measures such as this trust fund. That is also why the official party understands governance in terms of an immediate acceptance of their measures, without any room for discussion. What Saca and his advisors manage to do is to avoid the participation of the rest of the powers, which are ignored when it comes to implement several measures. I addition, these ignored powers become, according to the Executive power, the main obstacle for the President.
            Therefore, the announced scenery for the next years indicates that the confrontation between the Executive Power and the opposition will go on and on: the governmental projects will be blocked and the government will refuse to accept other people’s decisions. This situation can only reveal that Antonio Saca has no skills to negotiate.

 Other articles featured in this issue of Proceso: