A month from yesterday marked the 50th birthday of El Salvador's relatively good-for-the-people president, Mauricio Funes. With 43 people murdered that same day, it also marked the "bloodiest day of the last decade," according to El Salvador's Policia National Civil (PNC). While it appears that the timing of Funes' birthday and the spike in murders is pretty much pure coincidence, it seems that the number hit a chord with the president. El Salvador has been notorious for its gang problems — which are often accused of being the root of gang issues in Mexico and Los Angeles — a fact that can be clearly seen in its annual homicide rates. Last year, gangs murdered 3,200 Salvadorans. No doubt this is a high number no matter the circumstance. But when we consider that the total population of El Salvador is around 5.8 million people (comparable to that of Houston, Texas), the number becomes all the more potent. Last month, the number of gang-related homicides this year reached 3,400 — 1,000 more than the number of deaths this time in 2008. It's hard not to sigh.
Just a few days after his birthday, Funes announced a plan concurrent with the United Nations Development Programme's report on Central American violence to deal with the problem. The plan seems simple: Funes called on the national military to work with the PNC to enforce current law to break up gangs and decrease the number of murders. But in a country with an incredibly brutal history of military involvement, this proclamation is causing more than just this guy to raise his eyebrows. If you've read this column in the last few weeks, you should already be somewhat aware of Central America's best kept civil war secret — indeed if you aren't, I've pretty much failed. From 1980 to1992, El Salvador was torn apart as the right-wing government used the army to combat leftist guerilla troops fighting on behalf of the rural poor for a legitimate voice in government. In a classic case of government oppression begetting resistance forces begetting more government violence, the Salvadoran Civil War didn't end until well after most of today's Tufts students were born.
With government-backed military massacres as recent as the day our parents brought us home from the hospital, is it too soon to start giving the military substantial power over its own people? I'd say yes. But when the directive comes from a leftist president who leads the politically legitimate arm of the former guerilla-fighting organization Frente Farabundo Marti Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), the irony of Funes' announcement seems even more pronounced. On the other hand, it isn't hard to see how difficult it is for the country to move past its scarred history with such high murder rates — and the political and economic fallout that comes with it. With such intense violence dominating the streets of San Salvador, it is little wonder that the country is facing tough economic times even by current standards of the Great Repression. As Hernando Gómez Buendía, the general coordinator of the U.N. report, said: "Without security, there is no investment. Without investment, there is no employment, and without employment, there is no human development. Security is an essential part of the development strategy of nations and cities."
Will cutting violence via the military be the silver bullet to cure El Salvador's economic woes? Probably not. But somewhere among the constitutional hurdles and the public outcry that Funes faces, there lies a nation struggling to deal with its past and present. This time though, let's hope the army only goes after the bad guys.
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Jacob Kreimer is a junior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at Jacob.Kreimer@tufts.edu.
