Caribbean & Central America - December 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

President Mauricio Funes appointed retired General David Munguía Payés as the new justice and public security minister on 23 November. Funes’ decision to move Munguía from the defence ministry was highly controversial. Civil society groups argued that not only did it violate the spirit of the 1992 Peace Accords which ended El Salvador’s civil war but it also confirmed their suspicions that Funes was determined to militarise public security. The new defence minister will be General José Atilio Benítez, who had served as Munguía’s deputy. Benítez commanded the Salvadorean contingent of troops sent to Iraq after the US-led invasion of the country until 2008.

President Funes is under huge pressure to address insecurity and violence in El Salvador. Indeed, earlier in November, El Salvador won the unwanted tag of “most violent country in the world”, just ahead of Iraq, in the second edition of the “Armed Violence and Development” report by the Secretariat from the Geneva Declaration on Violence and Development, with 60 deaths per 100,000 people. In fairness, the report covered the period from 2004 to 2009, the year Funes took office, but there has been no tangible improvement since then.

Munguía is a close ally of Funes, a founding member of the Amigos de Mauricio movement, which appealed to more moderate voters beyond the more radical left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) that brought him to power in 2009. He might be retired but ultimately he is also a military man. And it is this which has incensed the FMLN.

Former left-wing guerrillas who are now high-ranking officials in the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) have apparently threatened to resign over his appointment, and a number of FMLN politicians have joined civil society groups, chief among them the umbrella Coalición Centroamericana para la Prevención de la Violencia Juvenil (CCPVJ), in accusing Funes of violating the spirit of the 1992 Peace Accords by putting civilian law and order under the control of a military man. The US think tank Washington Office on Latin (Wola) also argued that the Accords were expressly designed to keep the military away from civilian posts.

“We consider that General Munguía Payés, despite having retired from the military is a person with military training who lacks the requisite training to carry out functions corresponding to a model of democratic public security,” the CCPVJ claimed in a statement. Munguía sought to allay concerns on 23 November by denying that he had any intention of militarising public security and guaranteed the civilian character of the PNC. The distinction between the military and the PNC has blurred in recent years as the military has been involved in joint patrols with the police to crack down on organised crime and reduce violence and insecurity, by far and away the public’s main concern in opinion polls.

FMLN politicians claimed that the appointment of Munguía had been agreed by Funes with the right-wing opposition Alianza Nacionalista Republicana (Arena) and the private business sector, and answered to US pressure. Funes insisted that he had not succumbed to external pressure “either from foreign governments or from national political forces.”

Funes made this assertion in response to claims by the FMLN that the previous justice and public security minister, Manuel Melgar, had been forced out of his job because he was persona non grata with the US. Melgar is a hard-line member of the FMLN. He is the object of suspicion by the US due to his alleged part in the killing of four off-duty marines in 1985 by gunmen dressed as Salvadorean soldiers in the Zona Rosa nightclub area of San Salvador, when he was an FMLN guerrilla. He never took part in any official meetings with US diplomats or officials and was conspicuous by his absence when US President Barack Obama visited El Salvador at the beginning of the year.

The orthodox wing of the FMLN is alleging that the US conditioned the approval of Obama’s ‘Partnership for Growth’ with El Salvador on Melgar’s replacement. The Funes administration formally signed up to the ‘Partnership for Growth’ on 3 November. At the time, Munguía was at pains to deny that the new accord would lead to an increased militarisation of public security.

The objective of the ‘Partnership for Growth’ is to identify barriers for improved growth to spur development and help to reduce poverty. It is a key initiative as far as Funes is concerned and he would not have allowed Melgar to provide an obstacle to its implementation. His government is desperately lacking in resources and prospects for economic growth are grim. GDP growth in 2011 has just been revised down to only 1.4%. This is the lowest rate of growth in the region. It leaves the government with insufficient funds to combat organised crime, at a time when Mexico’s drug-trafficking gangs are growing in power and extending their reach, and to invest in the social initiatives required to provide young Salvadoreans with opportunities to reduce the appeal of crime.

Whether Melgar was pushed or whether he jumped (on principle because he disagreed with the US accord), the fact that the security situation has not improved much since he held his position, despite the government’s determined efforts, had heaped pressure on him. This would have been a hot seat for anyone, but given his past it will be particularly hot for Munguía.

• Hacktivists

The websites of El Salvador’s presidency, the justice and labour ministries, the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) and the legislative assembly were hacked into by “Anonymous SV” on 6 November and forced to shut down. The economy ministry also admitted that it had come under a cyber attack but had held strong. “Anonymous SV” carried out the attacks under “Operation Justice El Salvador”. They coincided with the 22^nd anniversary of the brutal killings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter. The case received much more coverage this year as a Spanish judge opened an investigation into the killings, and issued indictments against 20 retired Salvadoran military officials.

• Partnership for Growth

President Funes has created a national council for growth comprising businessmen and government officials. The new council is one of the recommendations in the action plan of the new ‘Partnership for Growth’, which El Salvador signed with the US on 3 November.