A share of the power

Non gratos immigrants

The leaders of the countries that belong to the European Union were reunited on June 21st and 22nd in Seville, Spain. Among the many issues that were discussed at the closing ceremony of the Spanish presidency (which belongs to a group called Europe’s Fifteen), was a proposal sponsored by both the First Minister of the Spanish Government, Jose Maria Aznar, and by the British First Minister, Tony Blair, about the critical problem of the illegal immigration to the countries of the Old Continent. It was the public opinion's number one issue. Aznar thinks that "the fight against the illegal immigration has to become one of the contents of the international cooperation between a third country and the European Union", which is the same as taking economic retaliations against the countries that do not control their immigrants.

A few weeks earlier, the Secretary of State, Collin Powel, had expressed himself in similar terms. He warned the countries that tolerated the traffic of illegal aliens about the economic sanctions that they could face. A report from the Department of State establishes three categories for the affected countries or for those who transgress the bounds of the law, according to its null, little or highly cooperative attitude to fight against the illegal traffic of immigrants. The sanctions are against those who, according to the developed countries, are not doing enough to stop such migratory flow to other territories.

The subterfuge that some people find to justify their threats and sanctions against the native countries of the immigrants is the humiliation that they go through because of the smugglers. The Department of State reveals, in its study about the situation, that the illegal immigrants suffer, that they are sexually abused and exploited, and that they are victims of those who organize the trips. The European Union reported the same problems at its borders and discovered that the smugglers are connected with both prostitution and drug traffic, among other violations of the law. That is the reason why they feel with enough authority to neutralize this problem, in the name of the alleged welfare of the victims.

Seen from the perspective of the powerful ones, it is evident that the solution to the immigrants’ suffering would consist on pressuring the controls of their native countries. They would have the responsibility to untie the knots of the smugglers’ underworld, who in addition sometimes cause so much pain among the immigrants' families. However, this perspective is nothing but a farce that does not help to understand the complexity of the problem. It does not allow to see the actual reasons why the people risk their lives, sell their properties or put themselves in the hands of the mafia organizations, known by their members' lack of scruples. The immigrants do not risk their lives because they do not have access to the proper information or because of the pressure made by the mafia, as the wealthy countries intend people to believe with their "famous" studies on this subject.

The economic poverty -many times connected with the bloodiest wars- is what pushes people to immigrate illegally. That is why any effort to stop the traffic of people seems as it was aimed to improve the life standards of those who are candidates to immigrate. That is what the developed countries are evidently not willing to do. They are incapable to keep even their most shy promise of assigning a 0.7% of their GNP to help the third world. Instead, they rather brandish the threat of the economic sanctions to frighten the countries that the immigrants come from, contributing to increase the pressure and the violence over the most vulnerable ones. These measures do not make any sense, and can be added to the list because they would increase the economic problems of certain countries, where the minimum attention to its population is based mostly on the international aid and the loans that they receive.

On the other hand, the countries where the immigrants come from do not count, in most of the cases, with a sufficiently organized structure inside the state to face the problem. In addition, if this issue is properly examined, -as crude and as insensible as it might sound- it would not be convenient to present a definitive solution to the problem. The illegal immigration is in most of the cases the only way to escape from the societies that have extremely fragile economic structures, and whose main "exportation product" is their immigrant population. That is the case of El Salvador, for example, with an economy cut down by the plunder of its elite, and sustained by the remittances sent by those who have illegally entered the foreign lands. It is extremely cynical not to accept this reality, as well as asking the countries to close the only escape valve, or that they act against to what seems to be their main source of income.

Another issue that has not been discussed yet by the representatives of the wealthiest countries, in their alleged desire to contribute with the end of the “repulsive” illegal immigration traffic, is xenophobia and racism. The case of the European Union is particularly relevant in this sense. With its 13 million of foreign individuals (non European), 3.5% of the Union’s total population, the citizens say that they feel worried about the presence of so many strangers. At least that is what can be understood because of the growth of the xenophobic who belong to the extreme right-wing in countries such as France, Holland, and Switzerland. It is in this way that the issue about the immigration control is now included in the agenda of the political parties.

The proposals of Jose Maria Aznar to punish the countries that do not collaborate with his fight against the illegal immigration have to be understood in these terms. In addition, Spain has characterized itself by being one of the European countries in which, lately, the immigrants have received the worst treatment. That is why it is not a surprise how this government has been the main author of the economic sanction proposal against the countries that tolerate the illegal immigration. In the past, the population of Spain was disperse between Europe and America, in search of economic improvements, and now it has become one of the most insensitive countries about the desperation that poverty causes.

In the end, there is not much of a difference between the claims of the ultra right-wing parties about the immigration issue and the measures encouraged by the politicians in Europe. With Aznar's proposal, dimmed by the intervention of the French President Jacques Chirac, it is now confirmed that the poor immigrants are non gratos in the first world. The leaders are not willing to coexist with those who seek to find a better life in other countries.

The aspects of the Salvadoran vulnerability
 

With the arrival of the rainy season, the debates about issues such as risks and disasters are revived. There is a fear either about the impact of a new dry season or because the city of San Salvador already suffered the first impact of the flood. This has been the case again in the present year. Since April 10th , the first damages caused by the floods in San Salvador were reported.

However, even before that date, there were speculations about the possible formation of a climatic phenomenon known as "El Niño". In the case of El Salvador and for the rest of the Central American countries, “El Niño” can cause a probable dry season that would be added to the ones suffered in the last two years. Different institutions that provide humanitarian assistance have revealed their concern about the growing nutritional problems that affect the Central American population, specially several areas of Nicaragua.

It is necessary to ask why such a precarious situation takes place in the rural as well as in the urban environment. In the first case, even the subsistence issue itself is threatened by the lack of the necessary amount of food, and there is also the risk of becoming more and more dependant on the massive nutritional aid -a very questionable type of contribution, by the way-. In the urban environment, the effects are not connected with the means of survival or with the supplying of food, but there are serious risks about the conditions in which people live.

The interpretations go beyond the simple explanations, which allege that the problem is created by the proliferation of human settlements at inadequate areas, or because of the frequent and intense cycles of the floods. There are critical reasons that reveal the situation, and they have to do with the historic and the present development models. This article will briefly present several elements that normally would not be used to discuss the problems that the "winter" disasters bring.

When it comes to asking questions about the causes of a disaster in the rural areas, the official circles have a narrow perspective that reduces the important problems either to factors that are eminently natural, such as hurricanes and the rain, or to more obvious ones, such as the existence of settlements at a plain prone to floods or at the shores of the rivers. By making a diagnosis of the situation, several proposals are presented: the relocation of the lower Lempa river villages, launched by President Flores in 1999, or certain approaches that are definitively out of the question such as the ones made by the former Minister of Internal Affairs, Mario Acosta, when he said that in order to prevent the disasters caused by the floods it would be necessary to put an enormous tent all over the country to stop the rain.

Very few public officials seem to question the human actions that are causing that the ecosystems lose its basic functions, such as capturing the rain, the control of the erosion and the currents, as well as the prevention of the floods. They sometimes overlook the specialization centered in the production of the basic grains (with none or very little investment on the materials), the present impact of the anti-agricultural bias of the economic policy, the constant fall in the production activities of the agricultural sector, and the collapse of both the international prices of coffee and the activity of the coffee-growing sector.
The crisis of the survival tasks in the country side -such as the temporary employment at coffee-growing haciendas or the subsistence cultivation- favor the increase of the poverty levels, the decadency of the production systems, the lack of diversification at the haciendas, a more intensive use of the natural resources (cutting the trees to make firewood and hunting animal species to sell them), higher levels of deforestation, the unbalanced conditions of the ecosystems, and an intensification of the disasters that occur more frequently than ever (detonated either by the floods or by the dry seasons). This is a vicious circle that unavoidably leads to an eternal process of underdevelopment, and to extremely critical situations such as the disasters that take place every year.

In the urban areas, and specially in San Salvador, the frequency of the disasters has been connected with the industrialization and the urbanization process that began back in the fifties, the later migration process to the cities (encouraged by the concentration of the "development" process), and the expansion of human settlements at highly dangerous zones promoted by poverty and the absence or the insufficiency of an affordable housing solution.

It is also important to consider that that the mid-class housing developments, as well as the infrastructure of the services that they use, are being expanded at the high areas located at the basin of the Acelhuate river. The grounds become permeable, increasing the superficial and the uncontrolled course of the water, and intensifying the floods in the lower parts of the city (Barrio la Vega, Candelaria, and San Jacinto, and the communities located at the ravine, the shores, and the sands of the Acelhuate).

Differently from the rural areas, at the urban areas the nutritional needs of most of the families are not at stake. The risks reveal themselves with an occasional loss of human lives, and the frequent theft of the personal belongings of some of the families that live in the formerly mentioned neighborhoods. This does not mean that that the potential risks at the urban areas are not considerable (there are thousands of families that could become victims of the floods that take place every 50 or every 100 years). However, in the urban areas the disasters do not affect the means of survival with the same intensity as in the rural areas.

The floods and the dry seasons are combined to produce a loss in the cultivations -and also in the homes- of numerous rural families that must endure these effects and face them practically every year. The dry season causes an extensive damage all over the national and the Central American territory, from the Eastern to the Southwest and the Northwest, generating a considerable loss that goes between 70 and 90% of the basic grains production (corn, for example). This phenomenon negatively affects, in a generalized way, the small farmers’ families, while the floods affect more intensively those settled at the numerous highly dangerous areas. Sometimes these families are also suffer the consequences of both the floods and the dry seasons.

The "winter" disasters are not exactly the result of the frequent rain. The weather crisis do not happen all of a sudden because "El Niño” appears (this has been going on for centuries). The "winter" disasters are intimately connected with the development systems that have been historically implemented and with the specific decisions that have been locally adopted. That is why the options to intervene in this problem are not too useful if they are only intended to resolve the problem with a humanitarian response.

The permanent planning of the development process, including the territorial arrangement and the improvement of the conditions in which the urban and the rural population live, are the indispensable items of a strategy that intends to prevent and mitigate disasters. The proliferation of such risks is indicating that the "development" process has not been sustainable, and that it has generated negative impacts, which increase the vulnerability of the population. Consequentially, a clear challenge is the elaboration of an objective analysis of the factors that generate the risks, the actions that intensify their effects, and the possible options that the government and the society in general have to take action and get involved in this problem.