El Salvador Blog #1

 

Received Friday March 12, 2009

Reflection:

 

Today I learned that one of the presidential candidates was the chief of police for eight years. Under his watch the death squads once again took to the streets. Assassinations of political leaders and social movement activists skyrocketed and fear once again gripped a people. This is the candidate for the Arena party, the party that has held control of the nation since 1992.

I need to give you a bit of a background, or maybe I need to frame it myself. In 1992 El Salvador was a nation exhausted. They felt the weight of 70,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared during a 12 year brutal civil war. Today, 17 years after the signing of the Peace Accords and 15 years after disarmament, a different feeling of unrest stirs the people. They have not been allowed to move on, to heal. The forces that drove nation’s parents to pick up arms have not been addressed. Those that committed and authorized the atrocities are still in power.

So now there is a duality, a contradiction. This is a nation weary from war but its people are incapable of living in the conditions they face. Quality of life is lower now than during the civil war. The advent of free market capitalism and Free Trade agreements have left 60% of the nation struggling to survive in the informal sector, the black market.

Families are being ripped apart due to the necessity of economic emigration. Fraud and foreign intervention are so prominent in the electoral process that it is no wonder that tension is once again tangible. If there is no chance for change within the system, then change will happen outside of it. The Peace Accords are promises, but they are built of words and paper. They are not enough to hold back the collective need of a people to live in true peace.

 

Reflection:

 

On the floor of congress today five Republican representatives threatened the Salvadoran people*. They did not cloak their threats. They were direct and specific. They said that if the Salvadoran people elect the leftist party, voting for change and for hope, then the U.S. would deport those living in the U.S.

They stated that we would cut off the money that workers send home to support their families, that they would ensure that the U.S. government viewed the democratically elected government of a sovereign nation as a terrorist government. They stated on behalf of the U.S. people that we would cut of financial investments in the country and leave the Salvadoran people to deal with the consequences of their actions.

I’m not sure I can explain the impact these statements have. 20% of GDP (almost 4 billion a year) comes from remittances, monies sent home by those working abroad. Several million Salvadorans (about a third of the population) live in the U.S. They have no independent monetary policy, the national currency is the dollar.

They receive $461 million from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, have a military base less than 45 minutes from down town of the capital city, house the ILEA (School of the Americas style, but now International Law Enforcement Academy), and is host to the U.S. Navy’s Forward Operating Location. A threat to cut off investment, relations, immigration status, and remittances is a threat to let the Salvadorans starve. There is Fear, real fear, in the eyes of every person who picks up today’s paper.

Why would a campaign of terror be supported by the US government? Why aren’t people in the U.S. furious about this kind of intimidation? I am furious. Also, baffled. What kind of direct connection does the media have here that every statement appears front page center of the news paper? How can U.S. congress members call the Left Party here terrorists who want to become a satellite nation of Venezuela? How can a nation that just elected Obama be afraid of another nation who simply wants change?

They are even running pictures of Funes, the left’s candidate, with Muslims holding support signs, as though a Muslim person’s support is evidence that one is a terrorist. They run constant images of violence, running shots from the Venezuelan revolution over an image of a leftist flag.

The cynical side of me knows the answers. I am just hoping somehow that under Obama this kind of international bullying will come to a stop. That he will come out with a statement saying that he will respect the results of a democratic election. That he will act out a different relationship as global citizen and neighbor than Bush did.

*Trent Franks (R-AZ) Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) Dan Burton (R-IN) Connie Mack (R-FL) Paul Broun (R-GA) I will post all the transcripts from their speeches.

 

Reflection:

Tuesday night at dusk several of us take off on a walk, savoring the exercise and the evening light, the breeze and the full moon. We are members of a delegation in El Salvador. We will be international observers in a few days of an historic election process. An airplane suddenly interrupts the moment, dropping flyers that flutter to the ground covering several city blocks. We pick them up and see an advertisement for a documental.

 

The fierce image of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is stabbing his finger at the audience. “No Entreguemos El Salvador.” “Don’t let them take El Salvador.” When we tune for the show at 7:38, we get fifteen minutes of fear. Hugo Chavez, war footage, the Red Scare images that seem to be resurrected from the McCarthy era with the Soviet Union dusted off and replaced by Chavez and anyone who he has been seen with.

This is what the right wing in El Salvador is offering. It is similar to the refrains of fear used in the most recent U.S. presidential campaign; wild accusations of terrorism, of fear, of violence. Arena has refused to participate in the presidential debates. They don’t offer platforms or ideas. They can offer only an invasion of airspace, paid for with huge amounts of money that can rent airplanes and pilots, print two color flyers and buy airspace on a network to pretend that the choice in El Salvador is not about El Salvador’s future.