WikiLeaks and El Salvador
By Linda Garrett
The WikiLeaks El Salvador cables have provided few details to surprise the Salvadoran political class. Rather, they have corroborated public information, between-the-lines suppositions and rumors reported to the State Department through the optic of Robert Blau, a U.S. foreign service officer who served first as DCM, then Charge d’Affaires, at the Embassy in San Salvador.
Eight of a reported 1,119 cables from the U.S. Embassy to the State Department were released as part of a massive December document dump. Six of the cables cover events from the June 2009 inauguration of Mauricio Funes until February 2010. In late December, two additional documents from 2005 were released referring to requests for assistance in a legal matter from the McDonalds Corporation to the Embassy. The first six are most intriguing, providing a glimpse into the complexities of governance and the role of the Embassy in Salvadoran affairs.
The six cables focus on relations between President Funes and the FMLN during the first months of his administration as the FMLN pushed its agenda and the politically untested president asserted his authority and independence from the party. The Honduran coup d’etat which occurred just weeks after President Funes’ inauguration aggravated contradictions; according to the first cable (July 9, 2009) President Funes consulted with the U.S. Embassy to coordinate a “reasonable and responsible” response to the Honduran crisis with Washington. The FMLN, in contrast, strongly denounced the coup and met secretly with Venezuela’s foreign minister and later with Mel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran president, both of whom were in the country without the knowledge of President Funes.
By August 2009 the situation was so tense that Funes’ allies (from the campaign organization Amigos de Mauricio) met with Embassy officials to report that the president believed his phones were tapped, that he felt “spied on,” personally “threatened,” and “disappointed” by the lack of information from his intelligence chief, Eduardo Linares. The president, through his envoy, reportedly requested U.S. assistance to secure his communications and personal security, as well as security for his inner circle and around the perimeter of Casa Presidencial.
The name of the president’s envoy was redacted with 12 “x”s. According to FMLN leader José Luis Merino, the envoy represented “people who have always been and continue to be agents of the Right; from the first day they have tried to separate the party from the president.”
A cable written one week later described demonstrations by an environmental group opposed to dam construction as “part of a movement by hard-line elements of the FMLN to undermine President Funes.”
On December 15, 2009 the embassy reported a “rock concert atmosphere” at the FMLN national convention, noting the party’s support for Hugo Chávez’s 21st century socialism and Salvadoran vice-president Salvador Sanchez-Ceren’s denunciation of U.S. “imperialism.” The following day, three party leaders met with Blau to respond to Embassy concerns. FMLN deputy Sigfrido Reyes said the credibility of the U.S. had been damaged in the region due to its stance on the Honduras coup, but FMLN coordinator Medardo González added he “understood it was much easier for the FMLN to take a position on Honduras than it was for the Funes government.” Santa Tecla mayor Oscar Ortíz admitted the party is “slow to adapt to the new world of governing” and to “put aside long-time rhetoric.” All three insisted the party wanted a constructive relationship with Washington.
Cabinet selections were made in June 2009 following lengthy negotiations between President Funes and the party. This resulted in the president filling positions in the economic ministries and institutions with his choices and giving the FMLN control of the security apparatus.
While the Embassy approved of the president’s economic selections, the Minister of Defense, and other appointees, the cables reflect concern and distrust of the security cabinet, notably Minister of Justice and Security Manuel Melgar, implicated in an attack during El Salvador’s civil war that resulted in the deaths of four U.S. Marines.
As late as January 26, 2010 the embassy described the Salvadoran government as “schizophrenic,” with disputes between the “moderate, pragmatic” president and his appointees and the FMLN with its “implacable hostility” toward the United States. The final released document (February 23, 2010) suggested that tensions “could undermine governability and potentially damage the bilateral relationship with the U.S.,” and added that a “rejuvenated ARENA could serve as an important base of support” for the president “in his struggle with the far-left FMLN leadership.”
Response to the WikiLeaks cables was muted. After a ten-day silence, President Funes told reporters that the cables were “subjective” and “not the official position of Secretary of State Clinton.” Assistance in security matters had been requested, the president said, from the U.S. Secret Service and also from Brazil and Spain: “This doesn’t mean that I distrusted the FMLN or that I had information my phones were tapped. If I had doubted the party, I would have fired the director of intelligence.”
The president downplayed the embassy’s interpretation of tensions with the FMLN: “What a discovery! Who doesn’t know that in El Salvador there are differences of opinion, of criteria, of perception, of analysis between the president and the party of the government! I have admitted this. Certainly there are differences.” Finally, the president said, relations with the party are good “and when there are differences I have no problem in raising them.”
For its part, the FMLN insists early difficulties have been overcome, with a new pact between the party and president. “We are in a good relationship with the president now,” Medardo González said, “and we’re not going to get involved in this.” According to one analyst, the president and party have agreed on the terms of a mutually beneficial pact for the time being. Future relations will depend on the results of the 2012 Assembly and mayoral elections and the selection of the next presidential candidate.[1]
Brief statements from various officials insisted the cables will not affect the U.S.-El Salvador bilateral relationship, including:
- Salvadoran Ambassador to Washington Altschul: (“will not damage relations with the U.S.”);
- Foreign Minister Hugo Martínez: (“relations are strategic and at optimal levels”);
- FMLN deputy Roberto Lorenzano: (“relations with U.S. are intense, not tense);
- Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela : (“in no way will this affect the strength, quality and friendship of the relationship”)
- For his part, Robert Blau promised to send future reports “by carrier pigeon.”
The remaining 1,111 Salvadoran cables date back to the 1960s and human rights advocates hope they may include long-sought information on the Jesuit case and other historic war crimes.
Funes and Governance: National Policy and the Economy
“The government is no longer a prisoner to nor does it respond to a small business group in the country…A small group no longer determines economic policy.”
During a flurry of legislative activity in the final weeks of the year, salary increases for public sector employees were approved despite opposition from the business sector.
The president vetoed two bills supported by conservatives: one would have eliminated the requirement for wealthy individuals to report inheritance; another would have extended the time frame for gun registration.
After months of debate, the Law of Access to Public Information was passed on December 2 with 55 votes from the FMLN and ARENA. The two rival parties also voted to approve a controversial law permitting independent candidates to run for the legislature, but not without stiff registration requirements.
Meanwhile, much-disputed legislation to regulate the powerful pharmaceutical industry continues to flounder due to fierce opposition from ARENA and private enterprise organizations. Former president Alfredo Cristiani owns the largest firm, Droguerías Santa Lucía.
The Ministry of Education announced free uniforms and shoes will again be distributed in 2011 to all public school students, from kindergarten through the 9th grade. The ministry has also targeted a reduction in the country’s 17.9% illiteracy rate and reported that 10,000 volunteers had taught 52,542 people to read during 2010, with a goal to reduce illiteracy to 4% by 2012.
Despite continuing lack of confidence and investment from the private sector, the president’s Technical Secretary Alex Segovia insisted the economic crisis has been reversed with positive growth for the first time this year and reported a potential 2% increase in 2011. The president will continue to implement programs to benefit the population, Segovia said, and to push for a fiscal pact and fiscal reforms.
Funes and Governance: Security
“They [The cartels] are trying to establish a strategic rearguard in Central America.”
Minister of Defense David Mungía Payés
Security in all aspects – public, national and regional – continues to be of greatest concern to the administration, and was reflected in the major news stories of the year: the horrific deaths of 20 civilians in a gang-related bus burning; the executions of 72 migrants in Mexico by drug traffickers; prison violence; the fall-out from the Honduran coup d’etat; and in Guatemala the state of siege in cartel-controlled northern Alta Verapaz and the work of the UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).
El Salvador’s government is fighting a fierce battle for control at every level. They have attempted to purge and rebuild the security apparatus as well as the judicial and penal systems, and deployed the armed forces for public security and prison duty. The administration is considering a commission similar to CICIG to investigate organized crime, and serious efforts are underway to construct and coordinate an effective regional response to transnational criminal activity.
Control of communications is one essential tool for investigation and prosecution of gang-related and organized crime. U.S.-supported legislation authorizing the construction of a wiretapping center was approved months ago but lacked funding. The $14.5 million in “narco dollars” discovered buried in water barrels in September has been designated toward the $20 million cost of the center and during a brief visit on December 9, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela announced that the U.S. will contribute $5 million to the project.
Following mounting evidence that criminal activity – including homicides and extortions – was being organized by prison inmates via cell phone, the government prohibited phones, chips and chargers and installed signal-blocking mechanisms inside high-risk facilities. But five months ago, phone companies actually strengthened signal intensity to “neutralize” internal blocking measures. Following what was described as “intense negotiations,” the security cabinet and local phone companies finally reached an agreement to lower the intensity of signals around the country’s prison facilities.
Conditions in the country’s vastly overcrowded, corrupt, gang-controlled penal system are primitive and deplorable. The past two months have seen riots in several prisons, a fire in the Ilobasco facility that killed 20 inmates, and the discovery of eight clandestine tunnels. The government has taken dramatic steps during recent months to bring order to chaos; the army is now in charge of security in and around nine facilities, with responsibilities including full body searches of visitors, employees and prisoners.
Since 2009, Prison Director Douglas Morales has conducted extensive investigations into corruption inside the prisons. By early December he had fired or terminated the contracts of nearly 200 employees. On December 10th, in a major joint operation with prison officials, the police, and the army, all 95 security and administrative personnel of the highest security prison, dubbed “Zacatrás,” were fired “for complicity with prisoners” and replaced with 134 newly-trained personnel with new uniforms. Minister of Security Manuel Melgar described the situation of the prison before the operation as one of “absolute disorder, permissiveness, corruption, [and] collusion of personnel with prisoners.”
The full security cabinet met with the press days later and announced the firing of another 225 prison employees including two directors. Director Morales stated that organized crime had “infiltrated the prisons.” According to the director, until recently employees had been paid $2,500 per cell phone smuggled inside; the fee escalated to $5,000 per phone after the army occupied facilities and implemented strict search procedures.
In another move to control organized crime, the government is considering a proposal for the National Civilian Police (PNC) take control of the Comalapa Airport. This follows the firing of several customs officials for alleged collusion in drug trafficking.
While homicide and extortion rates are down since 2009, many urban areas continue to be ravaged by gang violence. According to a recent report, the community of El Guaje in Soyapango has been deserted by most residents and is considered “liberated territory” by gangs.
Funes and Governance: Foreign Policy
President Funes’ official visit to Cuba in October 2010 will be reciprocated by Cuba’s president Raúl Castro in 2011. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties in June 2009, the two nations have signed a plethora of agreements on trade, culture, tourism and health care. The only public opposition has come from the Salvadoran medical establishment opposed to Cuba’s program of medical diplomacy. The president of the Colegio Medico asserted that Cuban doctors and graduates of Cuba’s medical school, ELAM, will be replacing already underpaid Salvadoran professionals and depriving employment to graduates of Salvadoran institutions.
El Salvador and the Terror Network
Thirteen years after the Havana hotel bombings, a rapid-fire series of events is bringing all actors to the forefront, linking terrorist activities in Cuba, El Salvador and Venezuela. The arrest of Salvadoran Francisco Chávez Abarca in Caracas in July 2010 and his subsequent extradition to Cuba was followed by a televised confession in which he confirmed the leadership role of anti-Castro activist, Cuban Luís Posada Carriles in organizing terrorist actions since the 1970s.
In early December, Cuban authorities commuted the sentences of two of Posada Carriles’ Salvadoran recruits convicted for the 1997 hotel bombings. The men were reportedly recruited by Chávez Abarca under orders from Posada Carrilles and the Cuban-American National Foundation. In a two-day trial in Havana, Chavez-Abarca was convicted on December 22 and sentenced to 30 years for “recruiting, supplying, organizing and financing Guatemalans and Salvadorans who traveled to Cuba at the end of the 90s to install explosive artifacts…as the head of the armed wing built in Central America by Lúis Posada Carriles, NCAF and the rest of the anti-Cuban mafia.”
Meanwhile, the trial of Posada Carriles himself is finally scheduled to begin in El Paso on January 10. After years of delay, the 82-year old former CIA agent – who also spent years in El Salvador during the 1980s – is charged with immigration fraud and “obstruction of investigations of international terrorism.”
Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez paid his first formal visit to El Salvador just days after the commutation of Salvadoran Rene Cruz León’s death sentence to 30 years. President Funes met with Cuba’s Foreign Minister to discuss disaster prevention, health, education, trade and cultural agreements. According to press reports, Rodríguez expressed interest in learning about the “business development of the country, from the private sector.”
Human Rights
Central American migrants passing through Mexico have always faced hardships and danger; in 2009 the Mexican Human Rights Commission reported nearly 10,000 kidnappings of migrants for ransom. But in recent months cartel-related violence has spread to people-smuggling operations; 72 Central Americans were executed in Tamaulipas last August, allegedly by members of the Zetas cartel, and the fate of some 50 Salvadorans kidnapped on December 16 in Oaxaca is still unknown.
According to Padre Solalinde, who runs the “Hermanos en el Camino” shelter in Oaxaca, migrants not only face traditional threats from corrupt Mexican authorities, but now are victims of arrangements among local authorities, Salvadoran gangs relocated to Oaxaca, Zetas drug traffickers and human traffickers. Although another nine migrants were kidnapped on December 21, Mexican authorities have been less than cooperative, denying the massive kidnappings.
Padre Solalinde described the events of December 16 as “a calamity.” According to witnesses, the freight train with hundreds of migrants riding on top was stopped and “people ran everywhere.” Immigration agents detained 92 migrants, “but the rest escaped to a worse fate.” Three kilometers further on, men dressed in black blocked the train and pulled down fifty men, women and children, who are still unaccounted for.
The Legacy of War
November and December marked the thirty-year commemorations of historic crimes including the death-squad torture and executions of six leaders of the FDR (the political arm of the FMLN during the war), the murder of National University rector Felix Ulloa, and the murders of four American nuns on December 2, 1980. In recognition of Archbishop Romero, the United Nations declared March 24th the “International Day for the Right to the Truth.”
UCA Rector Father José Maria Tojeira announced his retirement as of January 8th. The highly respected Jesuit has held the post for 12 years, tirelessly promoting the legacy of the Jesuit martyrs and demanding justice for the war crime that compelled peace negotiations and, in his words, “was the reason the war ended.” Father Tojeira will take an eight-month sabbatical before returning to teach at the UCA in September 2011 and will be replaced by Father Andreu Oliva, currently vice-rector of social projects.
Politics
“The great dream of the FMLN is to build a country where everyone can live together.”
The coming year will be one of intense political activity in the run-up to March 2012 legislative and mayoral elections with seven parties currently active and two more in development.
President Funes announced that he will stay on the sidelines during the campaign period, “because this government of change will only be effective if it is a government of national unity.” And in a decision reported just before the Christmas holiday, the president prohibited high-ranking government officials (ministers, vice-ministers, presidents of autonomous institutions) from participating in election campaigns, insisting that his government “will be above party politics.”
Anyone who wants to participate can, he said, but “Resign! Resign! ...or I will have to fire them!”
Vice-President and Minister of Education Sanchez-Cerén responded that he supports the decision in principle but could resign as minister to participate in campaigning, “if asked by the FMLN.”
Meanwhile, the FMLN is open to coalitions and alliances and is said to be actively looking for a presidential candidate with broad appeal, possibly not a party member. Internal reforms have been ratified that aim to complete the long process of eliminating tendencies and consolidating a “single structure, with one political line and one program…a single democratic conception and a single ideology.” Party leader Medardo González is now “secretary-general” instead of “coordinator-general.”
Funes’ Popularity
Polls released during the final weeks of the year show the president continues to receive high approval ratings despite difficult economic and security challenges, making him “Latin America’s most popular leader” according to The Economist. The publication attributes his success to a “centrist approach,” winning over voters “tired of El Salvador’s polarized politics.”
A Mitofsky poll gave President Funes a 79% approval rating; the IUDOP polling institute of the UCA, a grade of 6.69 and a CS-Sondea survey reported 79.1% approval with 91.8% saying the president is “hardworking.” The IUDOP also reported the army as the “most trusted institution” in the country with 43.5%, and, according to Mitofsky, the FMLN enjoys the support of 33.3% of intended voters, ARENA just 17.2%.
And, finally, according to data released by the think tank FUNDE - which also serves as the local chapter of Transparency International - the political parties and the police are seen as the most corrupt institutions in the country. One in four of those interviewed reported paying bribes to basic services institutions, including the National Civilian Police (PCN).
Recommended Reading
Douglas Farah, Wilson Center
Contrapunto
Instituto Universitario de Opinion Publico, Universidad de Centroamerica (UCA)
Looking Ahead
- January 10: The trial of Cuban terrorist Luís Posada Carrilles is scheduled to begin in El Paso, TX.
- February: FMLN deputy Sigfrido Reyes assumes presidency of the National Assembly as a result of negotiations with the ARENA-offshoot party, GANA, in October 2009.
[1] Funes was elected to a five year term in 2009 and is subject to a one-term limit under El Salvador’s constitution.
Linda Garrett is a consultant specialist in El SAlvador Affairs - Source: Democracy for the Americas
The US is again fooling us.
ReplyDeleteThis pic says it all.