From: hrcoord@igc.org (Human Rights Coordinator)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: Proceso 524: Human Rights
Date: 27 Jul 92 18:26:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1473800108:000:11754
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!hrcoord    Jul 27 11:26:00 1992


From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: Proceso 524: Human Rights

/* Written  9:45 pm  Jul 26, 1992 by cidai@huracan.cr in cdp:reg.elsalvador */

Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI)
Central American University (UCA)
San Salvador, El Salvador

PROCESO 524
July 22, 1992

IDHUCA REPORT:
Democratization and human rights

     At the end of his book "Philosophy of Historical Reality,"
Ignacio Ellacuria stated the following: "The truth of reality is
not what has been done; that is only part of reality. If we do
not turn to what is being done, and what is yet to be done, we
cannot grasp the truth of reality." At the present moment, as we
find ourselves overwhelmed by the search for the truth, we must
insist that all Salvadorans committed to national reality take
this reflection seriously. The time is right, and wasting the
moment, regardless of the reason, could mean mortgaging the
future of El Salvador.
     El Salvador's recent past is only part of national reality.
We would fall into the error of partiality if, in an attempt to
expose the truth, we only looked toward the past. It would be
equally dangerous to pretend to "forget" just like that, and only
turn our gaze to the future, wasting a chance to examine a past
which, in some form or another, has had an impact on us all.
Without taking either extreme, which would prevent us from
"grasping reality," we must locate ourselves in the present
moment, and with an attitude of active concern in the context of
a reality which is enormously dynamic.
     That having been said, we must take issue with the highly
unsatisfactory nature of certain remarks made by the Minister of
Defense, Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce, during his annual report read
before the Legislative Assembly on July 14. His expression of the
need for "public recognition" and "eternal gratitude" toward the
Armed Forces call into question Ponce's possible contribution to
the current period of transition to democracy.
     In his determination to stand on the past, from which the
military did not emerge with entirely clean hands, Gen. Ponce
recalled that each Defense Minister since 1980 has agreed to read
their reports before the Legislative Assembly. According to
Ponce, these reports have revealed "the enormous sacrifice of the
Armed Forces in terms of human lives and material and financial
resources. [The Armed Forces] has constituted the only bulwark
against Marxist-Leninist aggression which, with enormous foreign
support, had the goal of taking political power through force of
arms." These short lines undoubtedly provide interesting grounds
to conclude that, unfortunately, Gen. Ponce remains bound by a
language belonging to a situation to which the majority of
Salvadorans do not wish to return.
     No one can dispute the victims of the Armed Forces lost to
the war. A total of more than 8,000 soldiers killed in action is
nothing to sniff at. On the contrary, and even more so if we
consider that the majority of those victims were the same as the
campesinos, the poor Salvadorans, who fought in the insurgent
forces and who were also killed in action. But what concerns us
is that, at a time like this, there is not the slightest
expression of remorse or a change in attitude regarding the more
than 70,000 individuals cut down by members of the military, the
security forces, and those "death squads" which were coordinated,
supported, or at least tolerated by the military authorities.
Since the beginning of the 1980s, when Ponce was second in
command of the now-dissolved Treasury Police, this situation was
confirmed by the Organization of American States (OAS). Concerned
about the countless and alarming extrajudicial executions, the
Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH) of the OAS
maintained that, in the majority of instances, the killings "were
committed by the security forces which act with impunity, outside
the law, as well as by paramilitary forces which act with the
acquiescence or tacit consent of the governments" (CIDH Annual
Report, 1981). Over ten years have passed. Ponce, now a general,
served in that sinister force to which countless human rights
violations have been attributed, and attained the post of Defense
Minister in the current cabinet. Nevertheless, the accusing
finger of the CIDH continues to point at the same mark.
     It is also significant to note that the Defense Minister
blithely simplifies the causes which gave rise to the war. To be
precise, for the past 12 years the Salvadoran people have been
engulfed in a war whose root causes lie in the living conditions
of the majority of our compatriots. This situation of objective
social conflict continues to prevail, and we therefore find it
peculiar that, with an apparently distorted vision, the Armed
Forces continues to display attitudes which lead it to baptize a
peactime operation with the suggestive, but dangerously
provocative, name of "Conquerors I" [Vencedores I]. In the
context of this immoderately triumphalist attitude, and in
contrast with the spirit of the peace accords, the military
speaks of neutralizing, "in all its modalities," the "war effort
of the subversion." In other words, they are talking about the
defeat of the insurgency.
     The factors mentioned by Ponce in his speech before the
Assembly are not sufficient to explain the outbreak of armed
violence anywhere. The total truth of our national reality, in
its extreme dynamics, can be arrived at by immersing oneself
decisively in the present, with the goal of transforming it,
beginning with the recovery of the past the moving toward
projecting the future. Seeking the truth of reality requires both
a retrospective view of the past and a projective view of the
future.
     The present moment is characterized by the rapid and
decisive implementation of the peace accords. The speed at which
this is taking place must not become an impossible obstacle which
prevents a sedate view of reality. It is the duty of all to make
a constructive contribution to the consolidation of a society
based upon respect for one another. Some say that the search for
the truth in El Salvador is a collective task. In this context,
individual or institutional reflection becomes a simple
contribution toward collective reflection on the part of the
national community. It is not necessary for all opinions to
converge, nor should they all diverge. But, above all, the
opinions expressed must do honor to reality. And even more, they
must be committed to the truth.
     The search for the truth in a murky past, as a way to
project the future, is not a path filled with clairvoyants, and
setting off on that path must not be the result of an order given
by military organizations of any stripe. The truth is something
that one finds latent in reality. The search for the truth is
filled with false leads, and finding it is a discovery. It is
found through small steps, through stubborn, successive and
repeated efforts. In El Salvador today there is a process
unfolding which aims to give us the tools for democratic
coexistence. There is no room for confrontational discourse or
conquering attitudes which subject the conquered and demand
recognition. We must learn to be humble and to understand -by
looking backward- that El Salvador has been suffering a crisis of
the State over the last decade.
     Since 1789, Article 16 of the French "Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizens" bluntly decreed that "all society in
which there is no assurance for the guarantee of rights, nor is
the separation of powers defined, lacks a constitution." This
phrase should be engraved on the portico of all republics. It
means that a society which does not guarantee the human rights of
its people and where state powers do not enjoy due independence
in their actions, does not have any organization of the State,
even if there is a formal constitution drawn up to that end. In
such a case, the republic as a form of State is truly in crisis,
even if constitutional legality remains on paper. In order to
guarantee these fundamental rights, as stated in Article 2 of the
1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States, "[m]en
institute governments which derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed; whenever a form of government tends to
destroy those ends, the people have the right to reform or
abolish it, to institute a new government founded on said
principles, and to organize its powers in such a way that, in
their opinion, better guarantees their security and happiness."
The validity of both texts, the French and the American, is
undeniable for our national reality, at least during the last 12
years.
     The document signed in Geneva on April 4, 1990, by the
Salvadoran government and the FMLN, constitutes the commitment
which prefaces the Salvadoran peace accords. Bringing the
conflict to a rapid close included: "promoting the
democratization of the nation, guaranteeing unrestricted respect
for human rights, and reuniting Salvadoran society." There is no
more extremely respectful, and at the same time decidedly
radical, way to diagnose the crisis which the State was
undergoing at the time.
     If there was a need to reunite Salvadoran society, it was
because it had fallen apart, because it was torn in two by
polarized conflicts. The State did not constitute the backbone of
society. It was a decadent State, against which the insurgency
represented an alternative for change, and attempted to structure
society from another perspective. The insurgency was, therefore,
an attempt at a State, an emerging State. For this reason,
reuniting Salvadoran society meant proposing to overcome a
bipolar situation between a decadent State and an emerging State.
     If there was a need to "promote the democratization of the
nation," it was because there was no democracy, or at least
because society was not sufficiently democratized. Finally, if
there was a need to "guarantee unrestricted respect for human
rights," it was because those rights had been and were being
systematically violated. In that context, impunity -the mainstay
of the violations- was proof of the magnitude of the
decomposition of the State, of the seriousness of its crisis.
     Effective guarantees for the respect for human rights are
only possible in a true democracy, not a contrived one. True
democracy is impossible without an effective -not fictitious or
apparent- separation of powers. An effective separation of powers
cannot occur anywhere but in an authentic republic, not a
presumed one. Without this, there is no republic, no democracy,
no respect for human dignity. There is only a crisis of the State
or a State in a critical condition.
     So it is from this acute crisis of the State that we
Salvadorans hope to emerge in an entirely innovative fashion. The
fact that two warring sides have agreed upon a process of
transition which assumes the task of solving the crisis of the
State, the fundamental cause of the armed conflict, under the
auspices, and with the mediation, of the United Nations,
constitutes a true political innovation and a world first. This
goal must be achieved, and we currently find ourselves immersed
in the attempt to do so, as part of an historical phase which
will be impossible to repeat. This is not the time for
belligerent speeches or threats. This is the time for an
objective and serious analysis of the past, in order to discover
the errors that were committed, in order to design a society in
which the full respect for the human rights of all Salvadorans
prevails as a fundamental condition. That is the utopia for which
tends of thousands of Salvadorans, mostly campesinos, shed their
blood during all those years.