Captured Peace. Christine J. Wade
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of the state provides a key resource to local actors,” and may ultimately diminish the influence of peacebuilders.46 Thus, incumbents (and those who support them) can use the state to wield significant influence over peace processes.
Argument and Structure of the Book
This is a book about politics—it shows how those in power seek to preserve their own interests at the expense of their professed commitment to peacebuilding, how an incumbent party wields this political advantage throughout the peace process (in terms of both negotiations and implementation), and the consequences of that advantage to the quality of peace that results.47 Incumbents may leverage such benefits as the control of state institutions and resources, perceptions of experience, access to resources (such as the media), and international recognition and legitimacy to obtain desired outcomes, namely protecting their own self-interest. Drawing on Labonte’s definition of capture, I use the term to describe the system by which elites controlled and manipulated institutions (whether formal or informal) and policy outcomes to preserve and advance their own interests.
The case of El Salvador presents a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of local actors, particularly incumbent elites, on peacebuilding. The incumbent party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), held the presidency for twenty years (1989–2009). Those twenty years spanned the final months of the war, peace negotiations, the implementation of the accords, and four presidential election cycles that culminated in ARENA’s loss of the presidency, in 2009. The structure of the Salvadoran political system, alliances with smaller parties, and U.S. assistance gave the party near complete dominance over policymaking during that period. I argue that ARENA’s incumbency gave it significant political advantages in determining the content of negotiations, overseeing the implementation of the peace accords, and directing economic policy. This control enabled ARENA to minimize its losses in the negotiated settlement—at least in the short term.
The primary goal of the Alfredo Cristiani administration (1989–94) was to end the war in order to restore economic stability without sacrificing political power. Unlike elites in other conflicts and even some factions among the Salvadoran right, ARENA did not need to be convinced of the benefits of democracy. Salvadoran elites had a long tradition of electoral politics, which it used to protect its own interests. Moreover, as Elizabeth Wood so convincingly argues, elites had determined that they could preserve and even promote their economic interests while supporting democratic reforms.48 Cristiani envisioned El Salvador as the financial capital of Latin America, something that could only be accomplished with the end of the war. To that end, his administration was willing to sacrifice the apparatus responsible for carrying out the violence and to agree to basic reforms that would create the minimal climate necessary for democratic elections. Cristiani made it clear to the FMLN at the beginning of negotiations that there would be no discussion of the neoliberal economic policies that ARENA was implementing. The FMLN, despite its opposition to the neoliberal model, accepted these terms as a price of the negotiated peace.49 Both Cristiani’s terms and the FMLN’s acquiescence diverged from popular opinion about the fundamental objectives of the peace process. In a 1991 poll, 30 percent of respondents said that the most important issue to be addressed in the peace negotiations was economic reform. Additionally, it was agreed that the 1983 constitution, written during the civil war without the participation of the full spectrum of Salvadoran political society, would serve as the basic political instrument for the new democracy. Any institutional reforms negotiated by the parties would be implemented by amending that constitution. These factors gave ARENA a significant political advantage by establishing the basic framework of the state and limiting the scope of possible reforms.
In addition to limiting the scope of negotiations, ARENA also leveraged significant control over the implementation process.50 The responsibility for key reforms that supported the peace accords was assigned to domestic authorities, most of which were highly politicized and controlled by ARENA. Not surprisingly, successive ARENA administrations either stalled or failed to implement necessary reforms or offer meaningful solutions to El Salvador’s most pressing problems because they conflicted with their own interests—often to the detriment of building peace. Little more than a year after the signing of the accords, David Holiday and William Stanley noted the lack of political will of the government to purge the officers’ corps, as well as delays and funding shortages in the start-up of the new National Civilian Police (PNC) and the human rights ombudsman’s office.51 According to Larry Ladutke, this lack of will “increased the ability of authoritarian forces within both state and society to take back the concessions which the government had made at the negotiating table.”52 The failure to fully support these new, accord-mandated structures has had a significant impact on the credibility of these institutions, as well as serious consequences for civilian security.53 The National Commission for the Consolidation of Peace (COPAZ) also suffered from serious deficiencies and lacked the ability to enforce compliance, even though it was the national body created to verify implementation of the accords.54 Other reforms that threatened elite interests stalled or were diluted under ARENA leadership. Having the ARENA-dominated Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) in charge of electoral reform set the foxes to guard the hen house. The tribunal failed to enact many reforms mandated by the accords, including depoliticization of the institution. The sole economic body created by the peace accords, the Forum for Economic and Social Consultation (Foro), failed due to a lack of support from ARENA and the business community. The Cristiani administration developed the National Reconstruction Plan (PRN) with very little input from either the FMLN or the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Finally, the very public rejection of the findings of the Truth Commission by President Cristiani and the sweeping amnesty law that passed mere days later were indicative of the impunity that long characterized Salvadoran politics. As stated by Antonio Cañas and Héctor Dada, “within the forces and authorities charged with leading state institutions, interests and powers persist that have found it more beneficial to operate by the old system of unwritten, undemocratic rules of the game than to cultivate respect for and adherence to the rule of law.”55 Such practices and thinking continued during the Armando Calderón Sol, Francisco Flores, and Antonio Saca administrations and, it would appear, influenced various aspects of the Mauricio Funes administration. The peace accords may have restructured some of the country’s most notorious institutions, but it did little to change the preferences or interests of elites.
The consequences of this incumbency can be felt throughout Salvadoran society and extend well beyond the implementation of the accords. For two decades, ARENA and its allies dominated the country’s political, economic, and social agenda. In the political sphere, institutions became highly politicized and limited the scope of representation. Political parties, not citizens, became the primary political actors in El Salvador’s new democracy. Moreover, the lack of reconciliation between the wartime adversaries limited prospects for societal reconciliation. Neoliberal economic reforms failed to generate long-term sustainable growth, and Salvadorans increasingly came to rely on remittances to sustain their households. The delays and difficulties associated with the restructuring of the armed forces and the creation of the new civilian police force resulted in a security gap that has had profound consequences for every aspect of Salvadoran society. This book investigates the political, economic, and social aftermath of the peace accords in an effort to illuminate the serious limitations of peacebuilding in what might otherwise be considered a successful peace process.
Chapter 1 identifies patterns of elite behavior and interests that have characterized the Salvadoran state, with the intention of identifying patterns and structures that made captured peacebuilding possible. As demonstrated herein, Salvadoran elites have historically used state resources to consolidate control and advance their own interests. This tendency is evident in the political and economic foundations of the independent Salvadoran state, as demonstrated by the consolidation of power by the Salvadoran oligarchy in the late nineteenth century. I seek to identify critical junctures in El Salvador’s past that underscored elite preferences and shaped the context of negotiations and implementation of the accords. As such, I examine the 1881 and 1882 land reforms; the resulting socioeconomic and political tensions of the early twentieth century sparked by the 1931 coup and 1932 peasant rebellion led by Farabundo