Junio 13, 2007.
Proceso 1245

Reality is stubborn

During the post-war period, one of the main objectives of the different ARENA administrations has been to build a country of fantasies; that is, a country absolutely different from the reality of most Salvadorans. To build this kind of country has meant to deny the image of the real country that we live in, along with its critical economic, social, cultural, and its environmental problems. ARENA (and its allies inside the most important mass media) has invested so much effort and so many resources in this “project” that its main leaders have become a specialized team of make-up artists trying to improve the look of reality and their own façade as well in order to sell themselves as something that they are not.
            In this game of images and manipulation, former Major Roberto d’Aubuisson –a person responsible for many crimes, including the murder of Monsignor Romero- is presented as a national hero and as a memory that has to be honored at all times. Alfredo Cristiani –the man responsible for increasing the fortunes of the families that have exploited the country in the last couple of decades- is called “The president of peace”. Francisco Flores –who was both incompetent and corrupt- was promoted as an exemplar official, and intended to become the Secretary General for the Organization of American States. Many other names of people from ARENA, from the right wing business elite, and from the Armed Forces can be added to this list because all of these people want to become national heroes or leaders, when they are actually either criminals, thieves or accomplices of murder, fraud, bribery, among other questionable alliances.
            ARENA is so interested –along with the right wing as a whole- to create a country of fantasy that they just had to top all of the previous efforts that they had made with a President whose field of “expertise” included cameras, images, and advertising campaigns. Who could be better than Antonio Saca to enhance the play that they had rehearsed so many times and that they were never able to finish in order to build that country of fantasy that they keep dreaming about, a country totally incompatible with today’s reality. This has been the main objective that Saca had ever since he took control of the Executive power. His public appearances in person and in television, as well as his travels… all of his presidential duties are motivated by the desire to convince people that El Salvador is a united country, and that, therefore, everything does make sense.
            He has taken his role so seriously that he has decided to create a brand called “impressive country”, a slogan that has become –according to the statements he made in the third presidential anniversary speech- “a trademark of ours to promote El Salvador in specialized fairs, in the international media, and among the tourism operators of the world”. This country is now, according to this administration, a brand that they expect becomes attractive for potential consumers. A brand that would betray itself if anybody mentioned the defects of the product it tags along with.
This is actually about accommodating such product to the demands of the brand. This is about accommodating El Salvador to that “Impressive country” slogan and that is exactly what Saca intended to do with his third presidential anniversary speech. He sets his mind in all those things that could impress the potential buyers of the brand he is promoting: hard-working Salvadorans whose living conditions keep improving, decreasing poverty levels, growing exportation rates, foreign companies that keep creating job opportunities for thousands of people, a reactivated agricultural sector, an international trade with new opportunities, a tourism project that keeps changing the life of many people, the best roads, a aggressive strategy to protect the rights of the consumers, an efficient combat against the organized crime and the common delinquency, a government that fulfills its promises, and the existence of brave hard-working people with a sense of warmth and happiness. All of these features describe a country of fantasies, a version that goes along with the new slogan the President has created in order to sell the image that he wants. All of the pieces are in its place, except for the most important one of all: reality.
However, reality is stubborn. It always breaks free and interrupts the dreams and the fantasies created by the government. People who defend this fantasy obviously do not like this sort of interruptions. Reality checks are always claiming to be noticed and do not get along with the goals of ARENA. In this context, there is a dimension of reality that refuses to be distorted by the marketing strategies of ARENA: violence, insecurity, impunity, and collective fear.
In the post-war period, the levels of violence did not stop growing, and that has deteriorated the social coexistence with socioeconomic exclusion, cultural marginalization, and weak welfare mechanisms, among other factors. This reveals that the project created and promoted by the ARENA administrations has failed. The State “captured” by the financial and the commercial elites has been incapable to guarantee an acceptable degree of security and welfare to the Salvadoran society.
The members of ARENA feel that it is really nerve-wracking to deal with the possibility of making these issues part of a public agenda -at an international or even at a national level. And when that possibility becomes a reality, their furious and visceral reactions immediately emerge. That is exactly what happened in 1997 when the UCA revealed the results of an investigation –sponsored by the BID (the International Development Bank, in Spanish)- about the magnitude of violence and its cost in El Salvador. The same thing is happening now with the report called “The police, the fiscal and the judicial system’s deficiencies in the investigation process and the trials of those who cause impunity”, prepared by Francisco Diaz and Sidney Blanco, for the PNUD.
The report prepared by these two lawyers reveals a substantial gap between the fantasy created by ARENA and the actual country that we have. This is where the ideological hysteria displayed by the Minister of Security and Justice, Rene Figueroa, came from. To his usual fanaticism, we can add an attitude that is definitively not at the height of a public official of his status.

Civilian security:
Ideologically charged answers before the presence of the right questions

Once the Peace Accords were signed, violence reached a different dimension with a notorious profile in this country. This is not an open armed conflict of a couple of organizations anymore, but the accelerated up-bringing of other types of mechanisms and better organized criminal actions with a higher impact on the population and more power.
            In matters of civilian security, El Salvador is not precisely the example to follow in Latin America; in fact, it is not a positive example at all for the world. The different dimensions of security are no longer a patrimony protected and guaranteed by the State, as it should be. Today, the population able to afford it usually hires private security companies in the best of the cases. In spite of all that, most Salvadorans, even those who can hire the service of a private security company, live in a permanent state of uncertainty and concern.
            Before the presence of such high levels of violence, it is definitively expected that the State responds with policies, plans, and projects aimed to reduce insecurity. However, in the case of El Salvador, the ARENA administrations have failed in the design of an adequate strategy to fight against criminality.
            When examining the actions and the decisions that, translated into a public policy, the State has designed to fight against democracy, the organized crime and insecurity, among other aspects, the first impression is that there does not seem to be a clear and a defined strategy.
            In this case, at this point they have only created isolated and deficient measures. It seems that the governmental strategy is just about filling up the penitentiary facilities, reforming the penal laws, making the judicial procedures more complicated, making the judges responsible for just about everything that goes wrong, displaying advertising campaigns in the media, developing an uncoordinated set of actions among the governmental institutions responsible for those tasks, counting with small budgets for the investigation of crimes, among other equally narrow-minded initiatives. All of these false moves have turned impunity into a law in a context of permanent violence. These actions only reveal the weak structural mechanisms of these institutions and the inoperative character of the government when it comes to deal with these issues.
            The government has organized an intersectional commission aimed to examine the civilian security and the social peace; however, this is a useless project. The contribution of such a commission is very valuable indeed, but the whole idea of it is just to make observations. On the other hand, the new Minister of Public Security and Justice would also be making the same kind of observations. Multiplying efforts of this kind reveals how unclear it is for the governmental authorities to understand how to deal with problems such as criminality and insecurity in this country.
            Therefore, in this context, the criticism against the governmental administration in reference to the civilian security system and the fight against criminality must be accepted by the people directly responsible for its design and its implementation. It is necessary to see an actual commitment of the authorities in order to find the immediate and the right answers to neutralize the generalized insecurity environment of the country. However, the public officials keep revealing that in matters of security, the answers actually depend on the political interests of the parties and not so much on the acceptance of the responsibilities before the presence of the most obvious deficiencies of the system.

The report of the PNUD
Last week, the public presentation of the report called “The police, the fiscal and the judicial system’s deficiencies in the investigation process and the trials of those who cause impunity”, prepared by lawyers Sidney Blanco and Francisco Diaz for the PNUD, created a controversial set of reactions among the officials who work at the Security Cabinet. For them, the results of this investigation are ideologically biased. However, the document itself clearly explains the methodology the authors followed as well as the criteria that guided them to select the sample cases –processes and files-, which were personally studied by them.
            Because of this methodological rigor, the government should be concerned about studying the results of this investigation –and also try to understand what this is about- instead of criticizing the work of the authors.
            When reading the results of the report, it becomes clear that there is an absence of efficiency and effectiveness in most of the judicial processes that were opened to follow homicide cases that took place in 2005. On this subject, the report indicated that “The public security scenery in El Salvador is a dramatic one: ineffective crime prevention systems, the deficient investigations of the police and the Attorney General’s Office, the lack of interest of the authorities to improve and modernize the investigation techniques, the fact that the wrong strategies are adopted to fight against delinquency (to increase the severity of the sentences, the creation of new penitentiary facilities, the excessive application of the provisional arrests, the reduction of the judges’ attributions, and the hostile criticism against the justice system, among other aspects), in addition to the frequent confrontations between the institutions in charge of prosecuting crime and judging the delinquents”.
            The report indicates the main reasons why the present judicial system is not a fair institution. They point at the deficiencies of the National Civilian Police and the Attorney General’s Office in matters of research, and the role of the Judicial power in the resolution of the cases they handle.
            On the other hand, the report presents a valuable contribution by revealing that the statistics on the homicide rates prepared by the governmental institutions are very different from those in this report. The first observation has to do with the lack of certainty when it comes to handle the numbers. The system does not count with an institution responsible to obtain and process this information in a consistent manner and handle it in the name of the three organizations responsible for this area.
            The judicial system lacks technical skills when it comes to classifying the files and following their development during a process, and this makes it very difficult if the intention is to count with sharp information. To design consistent indicators it is crucial to professionally examine the actions of the State’s apparatus in reference to the way they handle information as well as the investigation process of homicide cases.
            The report, in addition, indicates that the Attorney General’s Office follows a deficient work procedure because a considerable percentage of the reported homicide cases, during the authors’ research period, were not brought to a court. In other words, there is a high degree of impunity in this sense. The necessary errands have not been made to follow some of the processes identified in this report, the authorities have either omitted or disobeyed the orders of the Attorney General’s Office, and this sort of behavior damages the process and delays the service of justice for the victims.
            With all of these elements combined, it is clear that the governmental authorities have wanted to use this report in a political manner. However, the conclusions contained in this document are crucial because they reveal from a professional perspective that the system of justice in this country is an inefficient organization, especially when it comes to examine the procedures that are usually followed in a case. And this is the result of the incompetent attitude of those in charge to resolve the crimes committed in this country and to see that justice is served the right way.

Other articles featured in this issue of Proceso:

The completion of the Development Objectives of the Millennium in El Salvador
The IUDOP Report. The opinion polls: oracles, speakers or clues to find out about what the citizenry is thinking?
The IDHUCA Report. There is no punishment here
Saca’s presidential discourse in the third year of his administration (II)
A diagnosis about taxation in Latin America (II)