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Proceso 1163
September 7 2005
ISSN 0259-9864
Editorial: The 40th Anniversary of the UCA
Politics: The University’s perspective about politics: the contribution of the UCA
Economy: The professionals
The 40th Anniversary of the UCA
For many people, to reach the 40 years of age has a
special meaning. Along with the physical conditions of each person –related with
the topic of health-, there are cultural and intellectual conditions as well. At
this age, a person already has a certain amount of symbolic representations,
which will determine the direction that individual should follow in life. At
this point, it is necessary to use all the knowledge acquired in those 40 years.
By the time people reach 40, they have a cultural baggage that becomes a
symbolic source to face life. The possibilities of achieving a positive sense of
that life depend on the quality of that cultural baggage. In the case of the
people that are closely connected with an academic life, science, or literature,
they have an intellectual production determined by the level of their symbolic
representations.
With the institutions that promote knowledge –particularly with universities-,
there is a similar situation. There are differences, of course: an institution
can live longer than a person; some institutions live for generations and face
all kinds of changes in a civilization. However, institutions do have a set of
symbolic representations as well; and according to the quality of that set of
representations, many doors can be opened, and others can be closed. This set of
representations allows an academic development, and enhances the cultural life
of society. This amount of symbolic representations takes years of effort; it
requires patience, hard work, and a steady rhythm. The men and women that run
these institutions assimilate, criticize, and recreate not only the knowledge
they have inherited from other generations of workers, but also their new
findings.
How many years does an institution with this profile need to accumulate a set of
symbolic representations? No one knows. What cannot be denied is that the
institutions that produce knowledge count with a symbolic capital, and that such
production depends on that symbolic capital.
In the case of the UCA, its 40 years have allowed it to accumulate an important
symbolic capital, which opens an array of possibilities in its internal field of
development, as well as a considerable amount of influence on the Salvadoran
society. The 40 years of the UCA have been full of patience, constantly working
every day to accumulate and recreate knowledge. The UCA has projected that
knowledge on the society, in order to transform reality in a positive manner,
with knowledge.
To the every day performance –sustained by a community committed with the ideals
of the University-, it is necessary to add key moments of the institutional
history of the UCA, which can be attached to its symbolic capital: the
definition of the UCA as a university at the service of liberation (1972); the
participation of key personalities of the UCA in the first Governmental
Revolutionary Board (1979); the murder of Ignacio Ellacuria, five Jesuit
priests, and both Elba and Celina Ramos, a couple of their collaborators (1989).
These events built the character of the University, and represent the best of an
institution that since 1975 was at the service of a nucleus that was not inside
the UCA, but outside this organization.
Perhaps for other institutions 40 years do not mean much, but for the UCA they
represent a rich process of experiences, definitions and responsibilities
clearly understood before the presence of the Salvadoran society. The UCA has
accumulated more than knowledge, it also has an ethical commitment. Both of
these aspects –with those that have less opportunities, with those that have
been abused, with those that are excluded from the society and from the economy-
are the symbolic capital that the UCA counts with to face its institutional life
after 40 years.
To wonder if the UCA is better now than it was before, or if it is not as good
as it was in the past is a doubt that overlooks the most important aspects. The
UCA is just different. And it is different because of its past, a past this
institution intends to keep because it nourishes its present identity as a
university that sees the national reality as the main ingredient of its actions.
Those that come to work to the UCA, the new employees, the professors, the
administration personnel; the students that come every year; those friends that
come to visit; the Salvadoran population that keeps in touch with the University
through the YSUCA, through the seminars and debates organized by the academic
departments, the social projection office, or the legal assistance office of the
Human Rights Institute of the UCA (IDHUCA, in Spanish)… All of them are part of
the symbolic capital of the UCA, and their call is to promote it and keep it
alive.
The University’s perspective about politics: the contribution of the UCA
Without a doubt, the perception of the Salvadoran society
about politics has considerably changed in the last 16 years. The year 1989
brought to the country a certain transformation in the way the political issues
are examined. The last portion of time of the civil war was the symbol of how
tired the people were already. The people were not interested in getting
involved anymore with the violent actions and strategies of the war. What did
get the people’s attention was a different kind of actions: the civilian
organizations that put pressure on finding a negotiated end to the war,
regardless of the objectives of one group or another.
Contrary to what could have been expected, the end of the war did not offer a
starring role to the population, on the contrary. The people’s exclusion from
the crucial decisions in the negotiation of peace and the reinforcement of the
system of parties –with the incorporation of the FMLN to the political life- set
it apart from the political sector. The political parties saw themselves as the
representation of the society’s will, given their roles as the representatives
of the society granted by the peoples’ votes. The structures of the parties
transformed the social and the economic demands into electoral platforms. The
result can be seen in a process of depoliticization of the Salvadoran society,
intensified by each and every electoral process.
The question that emerges in these 40 years of existence of the UCA is if it
makes any sense to talk about the political dimension of the University in a
society that becomes less and less involved with politics, where the public
opinion does not seem to favor the most important structural solutions, but the
solutions to specific problems. This article will approach some of the
considerations of Ignacio Ellacuria about the political sense of the everyday
life in the University and its duties.
The political dimension as the most important sense of the University
“The quintessential sense of the University and what it is in reality has to be
evaluated from a perspective of its incidence in the historical reality, in
which it is born to serve”.
These words written in a special issue of the ECA magazine dedicated to the 10th
Anniversary of the UCA (“Ten years later: Is it possible to have a different
University?”, ECA, 324-325, p.606), indicate that the most radical sense of a
university is its influence on the historical reality. This can be analyzed in
the present. Today there is merely a technological conception about the academic
education, while the theoretical approaches of reality are overlooked.
That is how the predominant profile of a professional is the one of an
specialist that dominates an operative knowledge about a certain field of
expertise, but that does not know how to connect that knowledge with the reality
of the country. This does not mean that the technical knowledge is a negative
factor. El Salvador needs to count with the presence of many technicians. The
fact that a country has to place itself in a situation of alert every time that
the rainy season begins shows that there is a lack of knowledge in several
specific areas of life. The problem is that the technical knowledge available in
the field of education does not actually turn itself into a solution for the
problems of the population. Year after year, there are zones in the country that
become disaster areas when the first rains come. Therefore, there is knowledge,
but this knowledge is not used to resolve the urgent and the crucial problems.
Back in the Dark Ages, the human knowledge was divided into liberal arts,
speculative knowledge, and mechanic arts, which was the field of technology,
that is, the applied knowledge. Somehow we have perpetuated the existence of
that divorce between theoretical knowledge and operative knowledge. This is
unforgivable in a country with so many needs as this one. If there are doctors
graduating from a university, why are there so many basic health problems then?
We could say there is a multiplicity of factors, but the diagnosis of Ellacuria
remains as a valid perspective. By putting away the need to transform reality,
universities are only educating technicians, experts on operative knowledge, but
totally uninterested in what is going on in society.
It is necessary to connect the theoretical with the technical fields. Ellacuria
indicated that “Just to do something does not always relate with the necessary
level of conscience, and without a processed conscience, culture is not what it
should be”.
The University before the presence of injustice
“The fundamental character of the academic activities that are immerse in a
reality of oppressed majorities cannot have a profile of conformism or
conciliation. It has to be a belligerent character. Belligerence is in our
situation an important characteristic of the way in which the University
fulfills its duties. The University is, in our situation, one of the few
institutions that can be truly belligerent. And it should be” (Ibid., p.612).
This statement made by Ellacuria can be read as an invitation to political
activism, something that he himself criticized for considering it too limited.
However, belligerence would be understood in his case more like a critical
attitude in an unfair society: “reason, in fact, is belligerent by itself before
the prevailing irrationality. Before a historical irrationality, that is, before
a structure of historical reality created in terms of a flagrant irrationality,
the University as a promoter of reason cannot be less than belligerent and feel
that way. Its belligerence, from this point of view, would be to denounce
irrationality and to make an effort to overcome that reality of the irrational”.
The Salvadoran society of the present is as irrational as it was 30 years ago,
when the belligerent conflict was still germinating. What failed? Why is El
Salvador, after 30 years, with the same load of irrationality? Possibly the
Salvadoran society as a whole has to blame itself and accept its responsibility
for having left the national decisions in the hands of professional politicians
–technicians of politics-. However, a sense of guilt does not resolve anything.
The truth is that the socioeconomic and the political structures are still
dominated by a sense of irrationality. This irrationality reveals itself in a
reign of terror and a lack of respect for life. Human beings are not, under this
perspective, a being on its own, as Kant demanded, but means to make money.
The necessary transformations and the project of the country
The fact that a university considers among its objectives to place itself at the
service of a majority and not only at the service the community that it
represents should not be considered as something extraordinary. Practically all
of the existing universities in the country claim that they have a vocation of
service towards a transcendental goal, call it “nation”, “people”, Salvadoran
society”, anything. A university only makes sense when it connects itself with
the needs of the society.
However, between the slogans and the actions there is usually a very wide breech
to overcome. “What would be the best service that a university can give to the
people, that can be defined in an abstract manner and forever. Because people is
not an abstract concept, but a concept with circumstances and determined
problems, with a dimension in time and in a geographical location, and with real
needs that can be altered as time goes by”. That is what the former rector of
the UCA, Roman Quiros, stated during the 10th Anniversary of the University.
What gives meaning to the actions of the University is not a slogan: what gives
meaning to the University is its vocation to serve the society, a specific
society.
The Salvadoran society of the present urgently needs the services that a
university can provide, but not in a sadly paternalist sense. It needs to count
with the tools that only the University can provide: a critical capacity and a
knowledge applied to its specific needs.
Evidently, the UCA is not the panacea of the problems of a society such as the
Salvadoran. But today, just like 40 years ago, it is meant to be a force from
the specificity of its actions without altering its identity –as Ellacuria
always insisted- it can make many necessary changes to turn El Salvador into a
place everyone can live at.
The words of Mayorga Quiros, who pointed at a strategic factor to achieve these
transformations: a nation’s project. There have been some important attempts to
reach these goals, but they have not worked; while some sectors have used this
project as the means to get immediate political profits and not with the
objective to follow or complete political actions.
“We definitively need in El Salvador the ‘Project of a Nation’ around which it
is possible to organize the national will, articulate the talents, the efforts,
and the potential energy of the Salvadoran population –stated Mayorga Quiros-.
And while there is not a project like that, able to become a tool for the
national cooperation, we will be exposed to a demagogy and to improvised
non-scientific solutions”.
To create the “project of a nation” is to involve the entire country and define
what are the goals that it intends to achieve in the future. This involvement
requires the nation to make a very accurate level of analysis of reality. This
is where the University enters, and where this one achieves an important
political role. Today, as 40 years ago, the University should not only educate
people. It also has to teach the society how to question the actions power, in
order to be alert. With different particularities, with a different emphasis,
and with a different interpretation, the political challenge of the UCA remains
open. The UCA has to help the society to recover its political roots, a society
that has left the field of politics behind.
On September 15th the UCA will celebrate its 40th Anniversary, 40 years
educating professionals for El Salvador. In a short period of time, the
University established fundamental careers to analyze the situation of the
society: Sociology, Social Psychology, and Economics: During the years of
academic education, the University has worked with different theories, concepts,
and research methods to analyze the Salvadoran society. With this effort, the
goal of the UCA is that its students are able to go beyond a mere socioeconomic
study in particular. The intention of the UCA is that, through the analysis of
specific phenomenon, the students are able to reflect about what causes the
problems the country is going through. In other words, the professional of the
UCA should not limit themselves to exclusively perform empirical investigations
about one phenomenon in particular. It should be able, in the light of the
concepts and in the light of the economic and the social theories, to reflect
about the different problems that overwhelm the country.
This vision of the University has materialized these objectives in different
ways and in different times. Some periods have been better than others,
realizing that the professionals educated in the UCA adopt a particular profile
once they are placed in a specific field of work. As far as the Economic
Sciences are concerned, the UCA was an University that dedicated itself to
educate economists that were at the top of the line. In this field, there have
been different lines of thought that have influenced the education of the
students during these 40 years. The students of Economy of the Seventies were
educated with Keynes, as one of the most important influences. The structural
economy was one of the strongest choices, many professionals sympathized back
then with the Latin American economic situation.
During the Eighties, given the civil war, the Marxist economic line of thought
had a strong impact on the social analysis. Back then, this theory was well
received due to the fact that it manages to explain this conjunction. The theory
of Keynes remains as well as one of the most important lines of thought of this
period. During the Nineties, many of the students of Economy wrote their
graduation thesis about the Structural Adjustment Programs, the Monetary
Stabilization Policies, and privatization. These studies were made under the
perspective of either the Marxist theory or the Neoclassic Synthesis. The first
ones intend to criticize the formerly indicated measures, while the second ones
intend to justify its importance. For those analysis, the students required a
technical knowledge. This kind of knowledge allows a higher level of analytical
degree of both the macroeconomic and the microeconomic components.
At this stage, there is an interesting turning point to achieve a technical
field of expertise: the economists stayed away from other social sciences.
Education only includes strictly economic considerations. There is not much room
for political or social perspectives, as in former decades. In this period, with
the strong presence of the established Neo-liberal economic model of the
country, education starts to leave behind the theory of Keynes.
In the last period, there is a stage in which education is focused on the impact
of the globalization process, exclusion, and poverty. In this last stage, the
education of the professionals of the economic sciences begin to concentrate on
the technical education with a certain dose of a business perspective: the
econometric studies proliferate, as well as the formulation of projects, and
subjects such as the financial accounting and the accounting of expenses.
In the present, there are financial studies connected with the banking
activities. This is the version of the new economist. But there are also
students and professionals in the field of Economy that try hard to find a
possible solution to the problems of exclusion and poverty developed during the
Nineties and consolidated in the new century. This is about the studies on
“supportive economy”, which intend to create an economic alternative for those
groups and individuals that have not been able to get themselves into the
globalization process.
The professionals
All of the formerly described ideas do not mean that the
professionals that were educated under a particular economic vision had an
inflexible perspective. It is important to acknowledge that the University has
always worked hard to transform its education programs according to the demands
of time. However, once an economist becomes a professional and starts working,
his job somehow models his knowledge and his experience in a particular way. A
former professor of the UCA once said: “Now that you have graduated, you have a
license to learn”. And this is because the definitive character of a profession
is determined by the place someone works at.
The professional economists educated in this university have occupied important
positions in governmental institutions, business companies, banks, and research
organizations. The first group of graduates occupied positions in the different
institutions of the State. Due to a very small offer of economists, it was not
hard for them to be accepted there. Their studies, based on the economy of
Keynes and on a structural perspective (planning and control), were useful to
get these jobs. Many of the economists of the eighties worked as public
officials; however, at the same time, some of them worked with research
institutions that were connected with the government –the former Ministry of
Planning (MIPLAN, in Spanish) and the General Direction of Census and Statistics
(DIGESTYC, in Spanish)- and at institutions that were not directly connected
with the governmental apparatus, such as the Center of Studies CENITEC.
In the Nineties, due to the new economic policy, the bond of the economists with
the government remains alive. However, they do not hold governmental positions.
They work at a medium level of importance, and in particular fields of
expertise. Some of them work at research institutions financed with private
resources, such as the Salvadoran Development Foundation (FUSADES, in Spanish).
Due to the privatization of the banking system, several economists start working
in this specific area. The sphere of economists that hold positions in the
banking system starts to consolidate itself in the new century. In all of the
formerly described periods it is possible to identify the economists that
dedicated themselves to work as consultants or as directors of certain
companies. Many of them, in addition to their jobs, also worked as professors.
The new professional
At present, the University keeps educating economists. The amount of students in
this career has increased, and it seems that those that choose this profession
conceive it as an alternative to the administration careers. When they graduate,
they have as an objective to establish themselves in business companies or in
the banking system. This segmentation is the result of their specialization in
several branches of the economy.
Due to the vision presented by the new schools of economy in the country – the
“José Matías Delgado” University, and the Superior Scholl of Business and
Economy (ESEN, in Spanish)-, many professionals concentrate their efforts to get
important positions in business companies and in the banking system. In most of
the cases, the acceptation in these circles is achieved by reducing the
possibilities of adopting a critical line of thought about the situation of the
country. It is evident that there are always exceptions. The efforts of the
Department of Economy of the UCA in that direction are relevant.
At present, both the student and the professional in this field of expertise are
considered as some of the most important people that know how to use the
instruments of the technical analysis (the use of math for the microeconomic,
the macroeconomic, and the financial analysis). However, their knowledge of the
social and the political problems is not actually a relevant feature.
That is why it is crucial to speak about the importance of the political economy
in the schools that follow an economic line of thought, since this is an area
where they reason beyond the economic perspective alone. Last but not least, it
would be necessary to say that every student of economy should reflect about a
phrase stated by a professor (referring to his students) by the end of the
Nineties: “I think that they are more concerned about competing among themselves
and getting good grades, than about trying to understand the problems of the
country”.
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