EL SALVADOR

EL SALVADOR
ing a Venezuela or Cuba-style country is
still real. What are the manifestations and
consequences of this continuity? And why
have there not been major changes?
With 103 homicides per 100,000 citizens,
in 2015 El Salvador became the most
violent country in the Western Hemisphere.
Almost 6,700 Salvadorans were
killed in 2015, and as I’m writing this
article in the first days of 2016, on average
24 people are being assassinated every day.
Our death toll is nowadays as high as it
was during the civil war years. Crime and
violence has become the theme that overshadows
all other topics: it is present in
every single public policy discussion in our
country and in our everyday life; it is considered
by almost everyone as the obstacle
that if not tackled, will erode any social or
economic investment. Moreover, violence
has probably become the main driver of
migration.
Despite escalating violence, the policies
implemented by the left have not been
substantially different from those carried
out by previous right-wing governments.
The FMLN government continues to prioritize
symbolic short-term actions with
no measurable long term impact. Moreover,
it has failed to articulate a strategy to
systematically address the root causes of
violence and other social problems. The
persistence of political polarization has
impeded reaching agreements with the
right-wing opposition—ARENA—in key
issues such as the security strategy.
The left’s most daring foray into controlling
violence was a truce with the gangs
initiated by the first FMLN government of
President Mauricio Funes in early 2012.
However, the country’s second FMLN
administration under President Salvador
Sánchez Cerén in January 2015 repudiated
the truce. The press had revealed that—
with the complicity of President Funes—
gang leaders secretly received concessions
during the truce in exchange for a covert
pact to curtail homicides, mainly among
gang members. To say the least, it was a
shady and unsustainable deal and one that
many believe only helped to strengthen
the gangs. Once the truce officially ended,
homicide rates immediately bounced back.
Since then, the government has reacted by
escalating repression and increasing taxes
for additional resources to combat crime
and violence.
Economic policy is another area where
little has changed. From the beginning,
the FMLN government announced it
would maintain dollarization, one of the
most emblematic economic legacies of the
ARENA administrations.
Although the government’s official discourse
is more supportive of small and
medium enterprises than large firms, the
government has tried to maintain close
relations with the most important businessmen
in the country. Nevertheless,
new taxes, public verbal scolding of the
private sector, the generalized perception
of increased bureaucracy that undermines
the business climate and rumors of
a potential reform to the private pension
system have created constant and increasing
frictions between the government and
the business community in El Salvador.
Although the government claims that it
has created dialogue spaces in which private
sector participation is encouraged,
a constant criticism is that thus far such
spaces have not brought tangible results.
These tensions—and crime and violence—may
have provoked a larger impact
on investment climate than the actual economic
policies implemented over the last
six years. Moreover, although ideologically
the FMLN government is aligned with
Venezuela and its Chavista revolution, in
practice—and for practical reasons—it has
kept close ties with the U.S. government.
In fact, El Salvador is one of the four countries
worldwide that belong to the first set
of the Obama administration’s Partnership
for Growth initiative. In 2014, El Salvador
entered into a second agreement with the
MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation)
aimed at reducing poverty through
economic growth.
One relevant economic change is that
over the last years the government has
gotten bigger. Since 2009, government
income has increased 40% and public sector
employment has grown by more than
33,000 people. Although government size
is not bad or good per se, and a fiscal analysis
is beyond the scope of this essay, there
is widespread and increasing concern
regarding the sustained increase in public
expenditure and public debt. The deterioration
of the fiscal situation has led to the
downgrade of El Salvador in the international
credit ratings.
The last ARENA administration introduced
transfer programs aimed at poor
households (free seed packages, lunch for
children at public schools and conditional
cash transfers). The FMLN government
has expanded those programs, although
they’re still modest, compared—for example—to
generalized subsidies. But besides
these unilateral transfers, there have not
been major changes in the implementation
of social policy. El Salvador continues
to be a country with very low levels of
human capital, far from the aspirational
discourse of equality of opportunities.
On average, Salvadorans have fewer than
seven years of schooling. Research on educational
quality shows that our country is
among the worst performers in international
standardized tests.
There have not been substantial efforts
to change this reality. Most poor Salvadorans
believe that migrating to the United
States is their only opportunity to escape
12 ReVista SPRING 2016 ALL PHOTOS IN THIS ARTICLE BY MAURO ARIAS @MAUROARIASFOTO