FROM the FIELD

In El Salvador a “Museum of Words and Images” has been created to avoid the “chaos of forgetfulness,” to preserve what its founders believe must never be forgotten in that country’s history. In its largest room, a line of rifles hovers in the air, suspended on all but invisible wires. Anonymous rifles, unattached to riflemen, all pointed in one direction, all carrying our eyes to a row of men and women who have just been shot, men and women still standing but dying, men and women represented by terribly torn and bloodied clothing.

The scene shifts slightly in the slowly moving air. It is brutally distinct and accurately indefinite. The image might come from 1932 when 10,000 or 15,000 or was it 20,000 peasants were murdered by unnamed riflemen ordered to kill unnamed but protesting peasants, mostly indigenous, by the clearly named and well known Dictator Hernandez Martinez who served the interests of wealthy landowners growing rich on coffee and cheap labor.

It might as easily be a scene from more recent times. In the 1970s, right wing vigilante groups killed thousands of peasants and in the civil war that raged between 1980 and 1992, 70,000 or 80,000 Salvadorans lost their lives. Long years in which no one was safe and executions were common. A time of messages scrawled on city walls, “Hace patria, mate un cura”, “Be a patriot, kill a priest” because religious sympathies were thought to be inclining too clearly, too dangerously toward the poor.

Romero was and remains the best known among the murdered priests. Archbisop Oscar Romero, assassinated in 1980 soon after calling from the cathedral pulpit for an end to the government’s savage repression of dissidents. His body lies today in a crypt in the expansive basement of the Cathedral of San Salvador, a devotional focus for the faithful, the site of a new congregation, the place where 600 or more Catholics gather each Sunday morning to worship while others participate in the mass above them on the main floor. I attended the basement service and asked new friends about the difference between the gatherings. “Down here we’re on the left,” they told me. “Upstairs they’re on the right.”

"Lorena Santillana, A Song for Peace, San Salvador, 1988": Steve Cagan, photographer

Deep rooted divisions trouble El Salvador, a nation officially committed to the peaceful resolution of its desperate problems. Six million people live there, some two million of them in the capital city San Salvador, a city swelling like cities everywhere as the population grows, agriculture fades, the economy sinks and people take off for whatever looks like higher ground. 72,000 Salvadorans move to the United States each year. 11,000 others graduate from local universities, fewer than 50% of whom will find employment. There is widespread agreement that the country is kept afloat by money sent home by Salvadorans in the United States, now 2 to 3 billion dollars annually.

In the last century, it was said that 14 families owned and ruled the country. The number is higher now but the point’s the same. The Secretary General of Salvador’s Independent Unions says that 1% of the country’s population owns most of the wealth. He places 20% of Salvadorans in the upper class (bankers, big businessmen, importers and exporters), 10-15% in the middle class (the majority government workers), and 70-75% in the lower class (workers, peasants, and the unemployed.

2,500,000 men and women are “economically active” in El Salvador but the unions estimate that only 25-30% are employed. 65-70% work in the “informal” sector: farming, providing services, selling in streets and markets, picking up a little here and there. Only 3.5% of the work force is represented by a union.

215 maquiladoras operate in the country. They hire 45,000 employees, 80% of whom are women. Only 1% are organized to protect themselves so conditions are bad and wages are abysmal. The average maquila salary is $151 dollars a month.

Given this level of economic insecurity, it’s no surprise that when the Universidad Tecnologica published the results of its year-long study of the Salvadoran population, it announced that 40% to 60% of the population felt nervous, tense, sad and tired and that “lack of opportunities, unemployment and crime are the principal causes of these problems.”

These are the issues concerning and dividing Salvadorans a few weeks before the March 21, 2004 election of a new President. Dividing because the solutions offered by the two major parties are fundamentally different. Five parties are involved in the election but the only contest is between two of them. The next President of El Salvador will be either Tony Saca of ARENA or Schafik Handal of the FMLN. At the beginning of March, 2004, some polls claimed the contest between the two was a “technical tie” and the outcome of the election could not be predicted.

Tony Saca, ARENA’s candidate, laid out his party’s central campaign themes when he expressed confidence that “Salvadorans will vote for security and not for instability, for openness and not for isolation, for peaceful coexistence and not for class hatred, for work and not for violence.” Free trade agreements signed with the United States will be implemented and expanded, the health system will be reformed, public spending will be reduced, small businesses will be assisted, and street gangs will be treated with a “super hard hand’.

An Op-ed carried by the newspaper La Prensa supported Saca and promised a dire future for the country if he’s not elected. “What’s coming is no ordinary presidential election but a referendum on proposals to maintain or radically change our system. The opposition will initiate radical changes. . . . Adios a democracy, farewell to liberty of expression and private property. (They) will change our country from being a friend of the United States to one suspected of collaborating with its enemies.”

Saca is the candidate clearly favored by the Bush administration. During a recent visit, Roger Noriega, the State Department’s man for Latin America, thanked the people of El Salvador for sending troops to Iraq, noted the great difference between the candidates for President and urged the people to choose a leader who shared the vision and the values of “Washington”.

The FMLN (Farabundo Marti Liberacion Nacional) was formed in 1980 by four different groups engaged in armed struggle against the repression of the government of that period. As a participant in the Peace Accords of 1992, the FMLN laid down its arms and became a socialist party committed to electoral politics. Since that year, the FMLN has elected the Mayor of San Salvador and holds approximately 45% of the seats in the national legislature. Its candidate for the Presidency is Shafik Handal, one of the five leaders of the FMLN throughout the civil war, The FMLN’s candidate for Vice-President is Guillermo Mata, a doctor and past President of the Medical College of El Salvador who led a successful nine month strike of health workers against ARENA’s plan to privatize the nation’s health services.

Schafik describes his party’s three priorities as 1)the fight against poverty, 2)the resolution of the economic crisis, and 3)the extension of democracy. His party will work toward assuring every family food, health, education and work. Agriculture will be reactivated, small businesses helped, privatizations of government functions ended, and because neo-liberal policies are largely responsible for the economic crisis of the country, all Free Trade Agreements will be reviewed and revised as necessary.

In response to the right’s claim that the FMLN opposes private property, Schafik assures Salvadorans that there will be no confiscations and that the rights of private property and investments will be fully protected.

Political analysts at the University of Central America in San Salvador, a respected Jesuit institution, argue that even if the FMLN should win the Presidency of the nation, the options for a major reordering of the economy are few. The FMLN will, however, attempt to reorder the priorities of an economy that under ARENA has followed the neoliberal mantra that the market is infallible and should be left unregulated.

These same University analysts also warn, "Without any regulations or changes in the way that wealth is accumulated, problems such as poverty, unemployment, delinquency, and emigration will be intensified in a way that, far from becoming another Cuba, the real danger is to become another Argentina (where) the neoliberal policies prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) produced an economic disaster.”