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“People will keep going to the US despite massacres”

[Translation of an article from El País of Madrid, Spain, for September 12. See original article here.]

by Pablo Ordaz

Fifty-year-old Mauricio Funes speaks without holding back. He assails equally the Right that ruled his country for two decades and the radical Left that raised him to the presidency of El Salvador a year ago. Despite the fact that his country continues to be mired in the deepest poverty and inequality, 74 percent of Salvadorans still trust him. This interview was conducted Friday in Mexico City, where he had gone to secure from President Felipe Calderón a commitment to fight together against organized crime.

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Question: After the killings in Tamaulipas, in which 13 of the 72 murdered immigrants were Salvadoran, you sent a letter to the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón. What did you say?

Answer: I expressed my consternation over what had happened, but also my solidarity, because I cannot blame President Calderón for the murders of the 72 immigrants. I also invited him to join me in building a regional stategy to combat organized crime and also to give greater protection to the emigrant population, which by force has to go through Mexico to get to the Untied States or Canada. Once we have worked out that strategy, we will invite Honduras and Guatemala to join us.

Q: You say that the Calderón government is not directly responsible, but it is no less true that the absence of the Mexican state on the migrants’ route favors the activity of organized crime and even the complicity of the authorities…

A: I accept and am conscious that the Mexican state has not been present in the area nor has it guaranteed respect for the physical integrity of our emigrants, but that is a problem President Calderón inherited and that he is trying to solve. I have also inherited in El Salvador the indifference of the state toward people’s problems. Our emigrants come from very poor economic and social sectors and the state has been indifferent toward them.

Q: You say that there will be a before and an after in the Tamaulipas massacre. Why?

A: We have to involve the international community because Central America cannot do it alone. And here a key player is the government of the United States. Because the policies of the past have failed. We are not going to stop the flow of migrants by building walls and passing xenophobic laws. The only way is by promoting social policies in our countries that guarantee access to jobs, to opportunities for education and recreation for our young people. As long as that does not happen, people are going to continue going to the US regardlesas of how many Tamaulipas massacres there are. And it is not enough for the international community to express its consternation over what happened. What good does it do us for them to punish the Mexican state? Our problem is poverty, social exclusion. El Salvador is not the poorest country but it is the most unequal. Wealth is distributed in the most unfair way imaginable.

Q: I wanted to get to that. You in the region always look toward the United States but what about the responsibility of the wealthy classes in your own countries…

A: I don’t think that the wealthy classes see this problem clearly; on the contrary. The election I won last year represented specifically a point of departure in the uses of the state. For 20 years it had been used to satisfy powerful economic groups in El Salvador. It was a corporate state. When we came to power and began to deal with interests, the wealthy groups reacted. And they still haven’t realized that if they do not side with this government, their own survival as an entrepeneurial class is at stake. The crisis in El Salvador is so deep that we either wager all on a government of national harmony or the country collapses. But they still insist that this is a government by the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) that represents the interests and the vision of a radical group that wants to tie the country to the Cuban or the Venezuelan model…

Q: Well, Mr. President, there is some of that…

A: I don’t have any doubt that the FMLN has a clear project. And this project is more clearly aligned with an economic system like those of Venezuela and Cuba than what circumstances allow us to construct in El Salvador. I think it’s a wrong bet. What we have to do in El Salvador is make the institutions and democracy function by supporting respect for the rule of law, the stengthening of the insitutional fabric and the construction of an economic model that seeks to redistribute income without affecting the possibilities for the existence of an entrepeneurial group sufficiently dynamic that it can generate wealth. That’s what the leadership of the FMLN fails to see. That what is constructed in societies is not what is desired but what is possible. The FMLN is clinging to building socialism for the 21st century, which may work, if it has worked, in Venezuela, but does not necessarily work in El Salvador. We have to pull away from ideological alignments that do not allow us to solve the country’s problems.

Q: Speaking of problems, what real power do the maras or the gangs have?

A: They have a significant power to operate but it does now surpass the capacity of the state to counter them. I don’t subscribe to the thesis of those who claim we are on the brink of a failed state. They have the capacity to create instability, confusion, uncertainty, but not to bring about the collapse of the state. Although it depends a lot on the behavior of other political actors. I cite as an example what happened a few days ago when two of the five gangs that operate in the country announced a transportation stoppage. There were political and economic sectors who saw in this occurrence a climate favorable to gaining some benefits. In fact, I have not seen the ARENA party (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista), the Right that ruled in El Salvador for 20 years, declare opposition to the stoppage or to the violence… The gangs have become groups of agents, of paid assassins in the service of organized crime but also of political interests… And from the point of view of elections, the Right can be seen to benefit …

Q: That is a very serious accusation, Mr. President…

A: I am not saying that ARENA finances the gangs but that there are common purposes.

Tags: El Salvador, Felipe Calderon, gangs, immigration, maras, Mauricio Funes, Mexico, migrants, organized crime, Tamaulipas massacre, transportation stoppage

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