El Salvador's 1992 Peace Accords -- To Forget Is Forbidden

Headline on signing of 1992 Peace Accords

Twenty-nine years ago yesterday, on January 16, 1992, Peace Accords brokered by the United Nations were signed to end El Salvador's bloody civil war and put in place a series of structural and constitutional reforms.  Today in El Salvador, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele is openly questioning the value of those accords.

At the Peace Accords signing ceremony, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali stated:

 The long night of El Salvador is drawing to an end...It is no exaggeration to say that, taken together, and given their breadth and scope, these [peace] agreements constitute a prescription for a revolution achieved by negotiation

In his introduction to The UN and El Salvador: 1990-1995, Boutros-Ghali wrote:

El Salvador in 1995 could confidently be called a nation transformed. Where once human rights were violated with impunity, a new framework to ensure the rights of citizens was being put into place, bolstered by new democratic institutions. Where for years social injustice, civil strife and politically motivated violence oppressed millions of people, Salvadorians were instead devoting their labours to reconciliation, reconstruction and long-term human development. 

Contrast that with remarks now made by Nayib Bukele on a visit to the village of El Mozote on December 17, site of the largest single massacre event in Latin America:

The war was a farce.  They killed 75,000 people between the two sides , including the 1,000 from El Mozote, and it was a farce just like the Peace Accords....

They were a farce [the Peace Accords]. A farce, a negotiation between two leaders, but what benefit did the Peace Accords bring to the Salvadoran people? they were signed on January 16, 1992, and what did they gain? what did the Salvadoran people gain? ... Do we have security, no. Do we have social development, justice, investment in education, health, or something? no.... They negotiated it for themselves.  Why, if they were so good, didn't it bring any benefits to the Salvadoran people?

One has to wonder at this politician who would choose to go to the site of a massacre where the Salvadoran armed forces killed around 1000 children, elderly women and others, including more than 400 children under age 12, and say the war was a a farce, a joke.   And he made these remarks just after the testimony of Sofía Romero, a woman who had been raped by those same soldiers and then lost most of her family in the massacre.

Bukele's trip to El Mozote was a campaign stop before the February 28 national elections.   While speaking at the opening of an academic center, Bukele slammed his political opponents, attacked the country's current human rights ombudsman and attacked the former ombudsman David Morales.   (Morales is currently the lead lawyer for the victims of the El Mozote massacre in the trial which seeks to hold former military leaders responsible for the atrocity).   

After Morales tweeted that the war and accords were no farce, Bukele doubled down on his position tweeting "tell that to the hundreds of thousands of persons killed and left disabled, by those who abandoned them and profited from the business of war and another business called the "peace accords."  

While Bukele was extolling his government's delivery of material goods to the residents of El Mozote, he has been an obstacle to bringing them justice for the massacre.   Bukele has refused to comply with a judicial order requiring the president and the military open military archives for inspection of records related to the massacre.   That stance drew condemnation from James McGovern, a US Congressman from Massachusetts:

If #NayibPresidente truly wants to demonstrate that he stands with the victims and for justice, he should give presiding Judge Guzman access to @DefensaSV Ministry archives, as he is required to do under law by court order.

That would be a meaningful act.

— Rep. Jim McGovern (@RepMcGovern) December 18, 2020

For second straight year, Bukele's government did not hold any events to commemorate the signing of the peace accords.  Ironically, however, his decision to denigrate the accords probably had the impact of increasing the number of events and people talking about their importance.

With the government not acknowledging the 1992 Peace Accords, yesterday civil society organized events to honor historic memory and the 29th anniversary.  Crowds gathered in the civic plaza in front of the San Salvador cathedral where multitudes had joyously celebrated 29 years earlier.   An event took place at the wall of memory at Cuscatlán Park where the names of some 25,000 of the more than 75,000 victims of the war are inscribed.  And historic memory was also celebrated in El Mozote in an event rejecting the words of the president from the month before.

#ProhibidoOlvidarSV se toma las redes nuevamente, y se tomó algunos espacios durante el día. Nuestra historia y memoria la conmemoramos y defendemos. La historia se escribió con lucha y esfuerzo, por gente valiente. Vamos a recordarla, porque no permitiremos que se repita. pic.twitter.com/k5LsaBjcTA

— Karla Castillo (@karlacastillobr) January 17, 2021

A broad coalition of a hundred academics and prominent Salvadoran and world figures signed an open letter to Bukele, rejecting his description of the Peace Accords. (English translation here).  Their letter ticked off a list of the achievements of the Peace Accords:

Without the Peace Accords, the conflict would have continued to destroy lives and sabotage the economy.

The Accords were not useless nor were they a sham. Among their most important achievements we can mention:

• Armed Forces removed from politics and subordinate to civil power.
• A reliable electoral system that enables alternate power without political violence.
• An environment of freedom in which civil society can debate, without fear, the country's problems.
• A free press that has contributed to unmasking corruption cases and sheds light on problems that need to be corrected.
• Guarantees of free access to information.
• Reforms to the judicial system that have contributed to the Supreme Court of Justice and judges trained in the Judicial Training School acting with the independence expected in a healthy political system.
• The creation of the Office of the Attorney for the Defense of Human Rights.
• The effective separation of the powers of the state.

Perhaps the broadest rejection of the president's words came on social media.   Using the hashtag #ProhibidoOlvidarSV -- To forget is forbidden -- a flood of tweets shared images and stories of those who had suffered and been the victims of El Salvador's internal conflict.  

Mi madre Carmen Sermeño Zelidón, mi padre Jorge Alberto Ramírez Vega, desaparecidos desde Agosto del 81. Sin una tumba, ni mausoleo, ni altar, ni nada en dónde depositar una flor, solo la memoria para honrar sus vidas y sacrificios; que perdure por siempre #ProhibidoOlvidarSV pic.twitter.com/IT80NfQYNQ

— Dipsómano (@jrsermeno) January 16, 2021

My mother Carmen Sermeño Zelidón, my father Jorge Alberto Ramírez Vega, disappeared since August 1981. Without a grave, no mausoleum, no altar, or anything to place a flower on, only the memory to honor their lives and sacrifices; may it last forever

Por el sufrimiento de mi abuela, mi mami, mi tíos y primos #ProhibidoOlvidarSV pic.twitter.com/vhJpx3KRlP

— ❤ Tia Ad Honorem ❤ (@caritovas3) January 17, 2021

For the suffering of my grandmother, my Mom, my uncles and cousins.

An online site has been set up to collect and share these memories in one place:  Espacio de Memorias y Derechos Humanos.

There is a difference between saying that the Peace Accords were a farce and saying that El Salvador has failed to achieve the fruits of the end of the war.  Salvadoran society continues to be plagued by high levels of violence.  Today the violence is frequently the product of gangs, an export from the US after the Peace Accords, and after the US stopped funding the violence of the war. El Salvador continues to suffer from gross levels of inequality and economic stagnation which governments on the right and the left failed to address while lining their own pockets.  By many measures, the promise of the Peace Accords still remains unfulfilled.

Yet Bukele scarcely acknowledges that the Peace Accords made his ascent to the presidency possible.  He rose as an FMLN politician in a party which could only exist as a result of the Accords.  He won democratic elections which were not stolen by the military.  He could create a political movement challenging those in power without having his followers locked up or disappeared.       

So why is Bukele attacking the Peace Accords?   To celebrate the Peace Accords and the reforms they instituted would be to celebrate many of the norms which Bukele has begun to trample.   He cares little for the institutions of constitutional democracy.   The separation of powers checks him from acting freely.   He attacks those who would champion human rights.   While the Peace Accords intended to remove the military from domestic affairs, Bukele sends the military out into the country with ever more frequency to perform all sorts of internal tasks from policing to delivering food packets, to capturing grasshoppers, to enforcing sanitary quarantines of entire towns.  

Moreover, one of Bukele's constant themes is to denounce his opposition as a corrupt pact between ARENA and the FMLN.  Because the Peace Accords are signed by the FMLN and the government then controlled by ARENA, he attacks the peace agreement as part of their supposed corrupt bargain.

These are the efforts of a president to deny and revise history so that the lessons of history cannot be learned by the current generations.    Yet there are still many committed to never forget and to seek justice and to implement the aspirations of the 1992 Peace Accords.    #ProhibidoOlvidarSV -- To Forget is Forbidden.