An eloquent ending

 Political violence

On May 4th, the Attorney General’s Office presented a formal petition requesting the temporary arrest of the leader of the Syndicate of Workers of the Social Security Institute (STISSS), Ricardo Monge, and the rest of his co-workers, who were arrested during the public disorders that took place in the context of their demonstration against the governmental policy that prevails inside the aforementioned institution. About the nature of the request presented by the Attorney General’s Office, there is nothing new to comment about. All the representatives of this organization keep asking for is jail time for the accused, regardless of the nature and the brutality of the crimes that were actually committed.

There is nothing new either in the fact that the representatives of the Attorney General’s Office stated that they have a key witness, whose declarations would be enough to condemn the accused. Once again, this institution does not know how to conduct an investigation where there are no witnesses to carry with the validity of the evidence. That is why the allegations of the Attorney General’s Office are not a trustable pathway to have an idea about what happened that fatidic Thursday, when the police and the demonstrators struggled in the middle of the city, after several men wearing masks took over the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador.

It is necessary to say that what happened that day in downtown San Salvador is an unacceptable situation under any perspective, and that is something that definitively does not contribute to improve the Salvadoran political culture. However, the general considerations cannot go beyond this fact. No one can condemn what happened, the destruction of private property, and the attack against several reporters, without putting the whole situation into the context of a political confrontation that is taking place in the country and the arrogant attitude that is adopted when it comes to deal with the members of the society and the members of the political opposition.

About the performance of the police, there is one element that can be useful to understand what happened last week. Literally, it can be said that the political authorities, in this case, President Flores, sent the police to repress the actions of the demonstrators. There is no other explanation for the degree of violence that the police used on that day, and in order to do that they needed the political support of an official of a high rank. In this sense, the police was used by the maximum authority –or so to speak, because the President of this country is, according to the Constitution, mainly responsible for the police-, to injure the members of the syndicate.

The intervention of the Attorney General’s Office in this affair leads to see the objective that got the attention of the public authorities that intervened in this issue: to give a lesson of brute strength to the members of the syndicate, at the same time that they spent some time in jail as the punishment for what they did and because of their rebellious attitude against the government and because they had joined forces with the FMLN. The Attorney General’s Office followed the script closely. A day after the incidents, the Attorney General’s Office publicly stated that the behavior of the members of the syndicate was unacceptable and that it was an act of terrorism. This is a very serious accusation, and dangerous as well, it shows the levels of ridicule that they are willing to reach, those who have decided to silence any protest against the performance of the present government. The strategy of presenting the alleged witnesses –that were supposed to be a number of repented left-wing militants-, who claimed that they were present at the meetings that the members of the syndicate held with people from the FMLN to plan the public disorder, is an example of how the Attorney General’s Office is touching bottom, and how incapable this institution is to successfully fulfill its role in this society.

The decision to be part of a demonstration as well as the intervention of the police were both political actions. The fact that there are several news media (even if they might be victims of the popular demonstrations at some point) that refuse to admit it, there is a certain need to look for a solution wherever it is convenient for them. The news media and the reporters that were affected by the violent actions of that day have to admit that they were considered as direct actors in the dispute between them and the government. This does not mean that an adversary has to be destroyed, or that its property has to be torn down. However, we are not honoring the truth if we do not admit the fact that they are also an object of hate. For quite a long time, a sector of the news media has not been considered as a professional or as a neutral observer of the political life. This sector of the news media should realize what is going on here, instead of keep treating their adversaries in an inappropriate manner. In any case, if they are going to treat their adversaries like that they should be willing to face the consequences of their political choices.

There is a popular idea that circulates nowadays inside a certain number of the circles of power, according to which the best way to control the opposition is to demonize their actions. That is the reason why they said that what happened that day was an action of terrorism, and that is why both the police and the Attorney General’s Office intervened in the way that they did against the accused. They were handcuffed, as if they were thieves or rapists, in a logic that supports repression as the mechanism to resolve the political differences and the social problems.

The way in which the crisis of the public health system has been handled, especially inside the Salvadoran Institute of Social Security (ISSS, in Spanish), is an example of the political intransigency of Flores and his lack of capacity to come to an agreement with his adversaries. Some members of the commission (the mediators) have publicly admitted that the director of the ISSS has ignored of all of their recommendations, and that he has not followed the agreements that they made. This public official has dedicated himself to undermine the presence of the syndicate inside the institution.

That is why most of the responsibility for the violence displayed last week falls on the police, its directive board, and President Flores. The so called crimes, that is the public disorder for which the judicial authorities -after dropping other charges such as terrorism, destruction, and injures, among other things- intend to judge the members of the syndicate should not be the focal point of the analysis of what happened. A scream against impunity does not have to be taken so seriously. An objective analysis should stop and see the political irritation that this creates, and how unable the political actors really are when it comes to negotiate the solution of the social problems.

It is no secret that the members of the syndicate that were arrested count with the sympathy of certain sectors of the FMLN. It is also very probable that as long as the social agitation occupies a considerable part of the political agenda, the internal renovation process of the FMLN will follow a line very different from the one that many other actors (the renovators or those who criticize the present leaders) might have expected. When the identity of a party is at stake –an extremely problematic identity, by the way-, the social confrontations, repression, and the little democratic vocation of the rivals, in this case ARENA, intensify the growth of the most radical sectors –not necessarily the most lucid sectors- in the left wing.

In this context, when President Flores considers that repression is more important than negotiation, he strengthens the sectors of the FMLN that he claims to despise. Probably in the long-term his party might be able to take advantage of that situation, because that makes it easy for them to launch propaganda against Communism. However, in the short-term, this is not helpful for the new administration of ARENA. The configuration of forces in the present Legislative Assembly would advice to be more prudent and to have a better disposition to discuss with the left wing.

 The union of the great, the fragmentation of the small ones

On May 1st, the European Union expanded its frontiers, increasing its territory by 25%, and its population by 20%. A total of 450 million of people are now inside its borders, making it –in terms of population- in the world’s largest unique market. However, economically speaking, the most powerful block is the Free Trade Agreement of North America. Ten countries (the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, and Poland) have been added to the other fifteen that were already part of the European Union.

Therefore, the economic block of the European Union has increased its economic importance, its territorial extension, and its commercial volume. In addition, it could be turned into a sort of a Marshall Plan for the countries that have been recently added to it, since many of them have economies that are presently at a much inferior level (under average) than the countries that were part of the European Union before this historical agreement. In this sense, it is important to remember how the funds of the European Union have helped to improve the economies of the less resourceful members in a relatively successful manner, as in the case of Spain and Portugal.

It seems that the countries that have been able to become part of this “economic club” have plenty to win and very little to lose. After all, the average GNP per capita of the newest members of the European Union is 40% lower than the average GNP per capita of the 15 original members. Clearly, there are several exceptions, since some nations are wealthier than others. Cyprus and Slovenia are at the top of the list with 70% or more above the average of the GNP of the present European Union, while Lithuania barely reaches a 35%.

In any case, the “reunification” of Europe, as the French newspaper Le Monde calls it, because it is a historical event, has an enormous meaning inside the correlation of powers in the geopolitical and the economic scene, not only inside the Union, but in a global scale. It has become a sociopolitical and an economic partnership, and it is a paradigmatic initiative since it goes beyond the narrow vision of the “American mania” that some people have about becoming part of the free trade agreements. This mania reduces the conception of development to a mere exchange of merchandise, and it overlooks (and sometimes it even destroys) the social, the ecological, the cultural, and the political aspects, that is those aspects that apparently do not matter and that are not included in the negotiations of the free trade agreements. The perspective of the conception about a sustainable development itself is lost, as well as the true meaning of the economic solidarity.

The interesting aspect of this issue is that this behavior that Europe has is completely different from what is happening in Central America, and it shows the setback of both the economic strategies and the integral social strategies that Central America has in the long term. While Europe rebuilds its union of 25 countries, Central America has not been able to have a close relationship between its five countries, those countries economically depend on the United States, and that has led them to overlook the integration of the region.

While the European Union is thinking about consolidating a project for the integral development of its countries, Central America is basically thinking about what is the best way to please the United States. A sample of this attitude was the shameful departure of the Central American countries from the G-20, due to the pressure of the United States over the region. In this case, the United States practically forbade the participation of the region in that “syndicate of countries”, an institution created to vindicate the economic rights specifically in matters of commerce.

Another symbol of the power and the level of economic and political domination of the United States over this area has been the “turbo-agreement” of free trade with Central America (a treaty negotiated in less than a year). This agreement promotes the overwhelming advances of the United States towards the configuration of the Area of Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (ALCA, in Spanish), and the strategy to increase the range of the economic control that it has over Latin America, responding to the hunger for more markets that the American companies have. The economy of El Salvador depends on the United States, and the symbol that best represents this situation is dollarization and the growing amount of remittances. The lives of hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans depend on what the United States dictates in both economic and political matters.

Despite the initiatives such as the free trade agreement between the United States and Central America and the ALCA, the truth is that the economic strategies of the Central American region have been constricted. The Central American Association of Customs has been barely structured during the present year. The Central American actions to pursue an effort of integration have been unsuccessful. This strategy was first envisioned in 1958, when the Central American Free Trade Agreement Area was established. The integration process was left behind during the seventies and the eighties, as a result of the political and the civil conflicts of the time. However, after the Peace Accords were signed in El Salvador, during the early nineties, there was a revival of that integration process. The Treaty of Tegucigalpa (December of 1991) established the Central American Integration System (SICA, in Spanish); however, the political support for the unification process was deteriorated by the second half of the nineties.

The Neoliberal economic model, and the virtual “invisible hand” of the United States have given more importance to the free trade agreements by saying that this kind of negotiations will promote the integration efforts. However, the free trade agreement with Central America has had a completely opposite effect. The Central American countries, instead of negotiating as a block, made independent negotiations, and they seemed vulnerable to the interests of North America. What is important to see here is that a simple commercial liberalization cannot be equivalent to a process of economic, political or social integration.

Why is important to mention this sort of aspects? Is it worth it for Central America to look for, more than free trade agreements with the world, a true integration process among the countries of the region? To begin with, the truth is that the region only has an influence on certain issues when it acts as a block, because the population of Central America and its GNP are close to the double of the amounts that correspond to the same indicators for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and its foreign commercial area is about one third larger.

Central America is underestimating its own potential: to add the economies of the area and its strengths in different sorts of productive sectors, and its economic patrimony gives a certain amount of power to the region, the synergy of working together is evidently more powerful than any number of individual efforts. The lack of integration of these countries has many explanations, but the case here is that this barrier has to disappear if the region actually wants to accomplish a true sustainable form of development. One of the fears in Brussels is that, with 25 countries present at the negotiations, the meetings will take more time and it will be much harder to make any decisions. Central America only has five members, and that is why to negotiate and to build partnerships should be easier. Shouldn’t it?