In an interview, Rodrigo José Cerritos Alfaro, social fighter, member of the National Secretariat of the Social and Popular Movement of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), narrates how, years ago, the closeness of the current president with the leftist organization occurred. . He also explains the mechanisms of the right-wing president to combat criminal gangs, generate expectations in the population and “sell smoke.” The steps that are proposed for the left to come forward and consolidate its positions in the population.
José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero. “Latin American Summary.” 10/2023. El Salvador is a small Central American country with a recent history marked by state violence, corruption, organized crime, exclusion and poverty. Currently, the nation is still marked by the aftermath of the violent civil war that shook it between 1980 and 1992.
The 30 years after the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Agreement were marked by the alternation between the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), heir to the old five political-guerrilla organizations. who participated in the civil war.
However, in 2019, this relative bipartisanship was broken, with a young politician little known at the regional level, Nayib Bukele Ortez, coming to power. With a skillful combination of network management and aggressive communication campaigns, the politician managed to gain the trust of the population. His government has been marked by a tough policy against organized criminal violence, particularly against the famous gangs, and an almost advertising projection of the achievements and projects of his administration.
This combination of publicity and populism has brought the figure of Bukele to an unprecedented international projection for the politics and reality of a country almost completely invisible in the regional and global media agenda, except for references to daily violence. Your project bitcoinizar the Salvadoran economy, its famous Bitcoin City, the construction of the largest prison in Latin America, its infrastructure projects, satellite, construction of hospitals and universities, its constant publications on networks about the decrease in the homicide rate in the country, its launch of El Salvador as the headquarters of the Miss Universe contest in 2023, are part of this aggressive media projection.
To delve into the ins and outs of the country’s reality, beyond advertising, but also to reflect on the errors, lessons and perspectives of the leftist forces in the country, particularly the FMLN, we spoke with Rodrigo José Cerritos Alfaro, social fighter , member of the National Secretariat of the Social and Popular Movement of the FMLN
El Salvador was a country that had very little media presence in the region. Except to talk about the gangs and all this pornoviolence that is also part of the way in which the mainstream media constructs the image of our countries. However, for four years now, with the rise of Bukele to the presidency and all the media coverage that Bukele has had, El Salvador has become the center of the news and Bukele himself has become the center of News. And there has been a whole display of presenting El Salvador as a nation that is on the path to prosperity, that the problem of violence has been resolved. But not only that, associated with that, a whole series of more or less significant projects that the current government has has also been disclosed. So I would like us to start by talking a little about how Nayib Bukele’s rise in Salvadoran politics occurs?
The FMLN is the main or only left-wing party. It is the conglomerate of the revolutionary forces that began in 1930. In 1970 the other four military political forces emerged and consolidated a war front. One of the most successful and heroic guerrillas in Latin America. In a territory of 20 thousand square kilometers. No rearguard. No jungles. And there the dispute for the battle takes place. The FMLN achieved an accumulation that took 40, 50, 60 years to consolidate itself into a guerrilla and then to consolidate itself as a political party already with the rules of the system.
Schafik Hándal (1) mentioned that we should go to the system not for the system to change us but to change the system. But it is clear that entering the system with traditional democracy or so-called representative democracy, imposed democracy, neoliberal democracy, took its toll on the FMLN. After having a significant number of mayoralties, reaching 35 deputies out of 84, we moved to a certain moment in which the extreme right had a lot of power, it controlled the three organs of the State, it controlled the media.
So, when we entered the logic of winning elections, we started looking for candidates. Many were unknown candidates, but the FMLN had prestige. The FMLN called on locals and strangers to want to be part of it or to join in. In 2014 there was a Bukele family, which had many ties to Palestinian capital, which had a very good relationship with the FMLN, especially with Schafik. In the Department of La Libertad, at that time, the departmental secretary was looking for Armando Bukele’s son, who is Nayib Bukele, for a very small mayor’s office in the department called Nuevo Cuscatlán.
That mayor’s office was practically a mayor’s office that did not appear on the communication radars, that did not have a greater presence. But with the arrival of Nayib, he promotes some actions that make him position himself. He deployed a globe from which a photo of the globe was taken. He also spoke that there was going to be an investment of one billion dollars in the mayor’s office.
I do not have the exact data on the economic level of that municipality, but it does not exceed a population of 30 thousand inhabitants, and economic activity in the middle class and upper sectors, because we are talking about the mountain range, a cool place, which one form or another has some degree of income from all economic activity. But he gives her a boom. And he is also a businessman who has worked in communication and media companies all his life. marketing political. Nayib was in charge of a company from which the party bought the services of marketing electoral. Nayib arrives through the FMLN to win the mayor’s office, he meets the FMLN, he provides it with services, and then, due to electoral logic, he seeks to transfer Nayib Bukele to the capital of San Salvador.
In the capital of San Salvador, with all the baggage, and with all the strength and all the experience of the FMLN, Nayib gains notoriety. It is the stage of the second FMLN government, where we made several errors, strategic errors, of not communicating, of disconnecting from our social bases, of believing that the arithmetic correlation in the legislative assembly is based on negotiation and not on the construction of another power. .
At that stage there was also an alliance in the country against the advance of the Salvadoran left. And that alliance is going to be based on the control of the public apparatus through the constitutional chamber, blocking everything, declaring everything unconstitutional. It is also based on exaggerated interference by the United States ambassador. The private company joins that, the newspapers join that, and there begins to be a systematic and profound attack day by day against the FMLN and its policies, coupled with a lack of courage, of firmness to make corrections.
Then a process of delegitimizing the FMLN began, of comparing it with those who did the same as the right. ARENA, which had been the traditional right-wing party since 1990, was compared to the FMLN, and it began to be discredited mainly at the request of the United States embassy.
Within the party there were several visions of wanting to put a candidate who was different, and there were others who said, just as the conditions are in our country, we need Bukele to become a candidate, which generates an internal debate in the party.
And Nayib obviously had the intention of continuing walking, because from the first day he arrived in the small municipality, he created a color, distanced himself from red, positioned a letter, put grafts in his hair, painted his gray hair, did makeup. of marketingbuilt an army of machinery on social networks, and he built that little by little.
One of his statements was that his heart was on the left, that the FMLN was a thousand times better than ARENA. But when the FMLN began in crisis, due to data, due to wrong decisions, and he realized that the leadership at that time was not going to give him even the slightest opportunity so that he could even dispute and enter into an internal struggle for a eventual candidacy, he begins to join the machinery of attacks that the right and the entire North American interference were carrying out.
In conclusion, Nayib Bukele is the result of political-electoral distrust, discredit, and disgrace of the FMLN. Nayib Bukele is the result of fed up. And Bukele began with central ideas: “I am neither left nor right,” “the same as always,” “ARENA is the same as the FMLN,” etc. And then he rode off. He called for a null vote, and with a systematic campaign of trolesthe ability to communicate on new platforms, knowing what words to use, what hashtag employ, it generated spectacular communication skills.
What do you think were the main errors in politics, in the practice of the party, that determined not only its own crisis, but the rise of a figure like Bukele, who you tell me was quite marginal in politics?
Non-existent. He did not exist in Salvadoran politics. The FMLN catapulted him and he took advantage.
If I had to make a summary of our main errors, deviations or mistakes, I would tell you that we did not communicate the successes and advances that the FMLN developed. We do not communicate it as it should be done. There was also a distancing from the sectors historically linked to the social sphere. There was a distancing from academia, from culture, from what makes us left-wing. And finally, there was a reading of the correlation of forces that considered it insufficient and, therefore, we could not continue advancing. And no attempt was made to construct another type of correlation. For me those are the main ones. Added, of course, to the strategy of the national and international right.
The jewel, the crown in the campaign, even in Bukele’s international projection, is his security policy. That she has been highly praised for concrete results of reducing violence in a country where the levels of violence were truly chilling. And at the same time it has been highly criticized by many social and political organizations. Because it implies governing in a permanent state of exception and violating important human rights of the population. From your perspective as a militant, as a Salvadoran, how do you value Bukele’s policy? What readings can be done? What implications? And above all, what perspective of future continuity does what has been achieved in terms of security in the country?
In the electoral campaign of Bukele’s victory in March 2019, the gangs, at least an important sector of them, decided to intimidate the FMLN to support Bukele. He won in a very important way, with a resounding victory in the first round.
In El Salvador, during the FMLN mandate, a comprehensive policy had been built that sought repression, reintegration and prevention. There was a percentage in the last months of the FMLN government, where we went from 12, 13, 14 murders a day, to 6, 7, 8 and thereabouts. But there was a tendency towards reduction, as part of a long process. But Bukele comes in, with the same police, with the same budget, with the same Army, with the same gangs and in one month, they reduce homicides. Bukele negotiated with the gangs for the first three years of his government. He twitter and it said, “Territorial Control Plan” from its first months. And there were days where there were zero homicides. And the police officers sometimes said that it was not true, because each police officer had an application on their cell phone that notified them where there were cases of violence, homicides.
But there was a trigger that was in March 2020, where there were 87 murders in less than 72 hours. For the pandemic, Bukele guaranteed food delivery and delivery of $300 to all gang members. There he had the first real database of gang members. But that changed as of March 2021.
And then the emergency regime enters, where procedural times were lengthened. Before they could detain you for three days. But if you didn’t have a trial, there was nothing, they had to release you. Then it happened that you could spend 15 days without defense, without trial, due to the emergency regime. They could capture you under the emergency regime. The concrete thing is that this exceptional regime has captured around 60 thousand people, of which the government itself has recognized that seven thousand are innocent.
From my position and from a sector of the Salvadoran left, Bukele has managed to dismantle and recover territory in El Salvador. The gangs, today, are dismantled in El Salvador. But we believe that only repression has had unimagined costs. The right to defense is nonexistent today. There has been torture, there have been deaths in prisons. They have been captured by anonymous calls. Some have been captured because they had a personal problem with the street police, with the municipality soldier. There have been arrests because there was an uncomfortable union leader. There have been arrests of employees who could not be fired because they had to compensate them. But the concrete thing is that today there is an important security environment in El Salvador that leads us to wonder if the problem of public security has been resolved.
From my point of view, if, along with a firm repression against criminal structures, there are no more health units, there are no more schools, the problem remains unresolved in the long term. One of his campaign promises was to create four universities, but instead what he has created is the largest prison in all of Latin America. And of course, that generates an impact. So, poverty and the neoliberal system of social inequalities are going to mean that today there will be 60 thousand prisoners and tomorrow 70 thousand and the day after tomorrow 80 thousand and so on. But if we do not seek to build a climate of violence prevention with more education, with better education, with cultural spaces, this is a time bomb that sooner or later can explode.
Of course, no one wants terrorist groups or armed groups to continue, but has drug trafficking and organized crime, beyond gangs, been eradicated in El Salvador? No. The drug corridor continues to function, with the difference that now it is no longer the gang members who control the drugs. Who then is in his place? That is to say, today the criminalized groups have mutated to other spaces.
Bukele has an incredible ability to sell smoke. He, for example, spoke of the Cuscatlán satellite. My God, El Salvador, with a Gross Domestic Product per year of 26 billion dollars, is going to have a satellite. That’s how he sold it and how he has players youtubers, influencers, not only national but international, the news spread quickly. Bukele spends more on advertising than on medicines, than on education, than on culture, than on sports, because everything, absolutely everything that contributes to positioning him in the media, he does.
In fact, when you search for Bukele, for example, on YouTube, most of the videos you will find are promotional videos for various projects of the current government. That includes mega hospitals, Bitcoin City, which connects to the famous politics of the bitcoinization of the Salvadoran economy. He talks about great sports and cultural development programs, and great transportation infrastructures. How much of that is really being executed today in El Salvador? And how much is pure electoral propaganda of an excellent influencer and an excellent salesperson or self-seller on social networks?
This opinion will be worth a lot if and only if it is objective and has no biases of any kind. I would dare to say that he does not complete even 30 percent of all this, being somewhat kind. Of course, selling an idea is not the same as making it and making it concrete. And the indicators speak for themselves. Has poverty increased in El Salvador? Yes. Product of the international crisis? Has to do. There is around a six percent increase in absolute poverty and a three percent increase in relative poverty, for a total of around half a million Salvadorans who are already in poverty. There is less agricultural production in El Salvador. There is a higher school dropout rate. There is less social investment in the general budget of the nation, although on paper it may appear that they have doubled it, in reality it is executed much, much, much less.
Although today we have a better business climate and the logic of neoliberalism says that we must create the conditions for foreign public investment, there is still very little foreign investment in El Salvador. So, does the Cuzcatlán satellite exist? No. Does Bitcoin City exist? No. The Bitcoin City only exists in a model, because what he has done is to one of the beautiful tourist beaches in the country, where a lot of foreigners come and where they surf, which is called Playa El Tunco, what he did is who changed the name of that beach and called it Surf City, because there were about two or three ATMs bitcoin before Bukele.
To the native name of our food, he already gives it another name cool, a more popular name, a more communicationally attractive name. And then he says, we are going to bring the Amazon company to El Salvador. There is no Amazon company in El Salvador. He said, we are going to create the economic program of the 10 economic points and for that we have Harvard University here to make us the economic plan for El Salvador. There is no such plan. We are going to build the Pacific train. And they put the photo of those trains that travel 300, 400 kilometers per hour. Bullet train. We are going to create the La Unión airport. We are going to create four universities. And we are going to make rooms where students stay to sleep, where there is technology. And then he begins to motivate, to praise. And that is multiplied by 10, by 15, by 20, by 30 on social networks with a spectacular network of troles and with always positive information players. And any voice that dares to contradict, to be critical or even dares to question, is savagely attacked in a disproportionate way. So, he pays for advertising in Honduras. He pays for advertising influencer from Costa Rica, from Panama, etc. He has built his own image of himself.
Given this scenario, what are the perspectives, the main challenges, the main horizons of the left in El Salvador with a view to the next elections and with a view to the most immediate future?
We are going and we are working on a new accumulation of the Salvadoran left. And to return to the path of accumulation, return to the hearts of the people, regain trust. That has to do with four vital tasks.
One is to articulate, link and connect with the historical social movement, but also with the new social and popular movement that is born as a product of a new dynamic.
The second is what type of democracy we intend to promote. Electoral democracy? That if we win we are in a good position and if we lose we are in a bad position. No, we have to overcome that logic. So that is an important path.
The third is a strong communication battle for our identity. They want to erase our memory. Those who must be known internationally, worldwide, must be Roque Dalton, Monseñor Romero, Farabundo Martí and colleagues like Mélida Anaya Montes, like Prudencia Ayala. Those must be the references. And we have to fight a communication battle because we are facing not only someone who is well positioned in national polls, but someone who, wherever you go in Latin America, the first thing they tell you if you are from El Salvador is Bukele. But they don’t know about Monsignor Romero, but they don’t know about Roque Dalton. That is a challenge for us.
And the fourth has to do with rebuilding critical thinking. Regenerate hope from the left. And that means re-articulating it with the academy, with organic and non-organic intellectuals, with students, with artists. Because singing sometimes produces better synergy than with a speech. Because even though we are living in a moment of liquidity and immediacy of needs, we must also take the time to believe that there must be thought. In the last survey of political humor in El Salvador, the people surveyed who identify with leftist thinking were only 5.8 percent of the Salvadoran population. That can’t be like that. People who were previously called leftist are now called neutral or rightist. The cultural battle for critical thinking must be transcendental. And for that the political and ideological training of the cadres, of the militancy, of the friends, of the intellectuals, must be a bet.
Electorally we do not see that we are going to have immediate progress. Probably the left should prepare for any scenario. The FMLN has been a valuable instrument that we have to defend, but we must also be aware of having the capacity to make changes that continue the Salvadoran revolutionary process. And have the humility to accept and recognize when an instrument gave what it had to give and when there is a need to create other bets. But that is not going to be the decision of a direction or a sector, but rather it has to be a process of historical development.
Today there are many problems within the left, fears, hatred, resentments, attacks, that take us back to the 70s. And there Cuba played a spectacular role in uniting the five forces. We’re going to have to get to that moment. But today my position is a path of at least 10 to 15 years.
(1) Salvadoran politician and guerrilla, son of Palestinian immigrants. Known as Commander Simón, he was one of the five members of the FMLN General Command during the civil war. Between 1997 and 2006 he was a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador and between 2003 and 2006 he was Secretary General of the FMLN.
2024-02-14 18:33:31
#Savior #Nayib #Bukele #emerge #position