Jocelyn Viterna, Harvard Professor of Sociology and director of undergraduate studies in the sociology department, discusses the February 28 Salvadoran elections. The results of these elections for the legislative body and mayoral offices are likely to determine the course of the country for years to come. Viterna, the author of Women in War: The Micro-processes of Mobilization in El Salvador, has worked and researched in El Salvador for 25 years.
June:
Jocelyn Viterna is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and Director of Undergraduate Studies in a Sociology Department. She is also the author of "Women in War", and has been working in El Salvador for 25 years. Welcome, Jocelyn.
Jocelyn Viterna:
Thank you, June. It's a pleasure to be here.
June:
I've been doing interviews with people on other elections, on presidential elections. There's an election coming up in Salvador, which is only for Congress. Why should we care?
Jocelyn Viterna:
This is the election for a unicameral legislative assembly at the national level, but then also the mayors throughout the country, the [inaudible 00:00:56]. It's a remarkable election because we're seeing a huge power shift in who owns political power in El Salvador. At the last presidential election, a new candidate from a new party named Nayib Bukele, was elected, and he has been putting forward a number of changes and initiatives that many people worry are anti-democratic. The one thing holding him back right now is that he does not have a party presence in the legislative assembly, but with this upcoming election on Sunday, the 28th, he is putting forward a party and a list of candidates. And if his party were to gain power within the legislative assembly in El Salvador, then there would be nothing stopping him from pushing forward his agenda.
June:
I understand that despite these anti-democratic measures that Bukele is extremely popular.
Jocelyn Viterna:
Extraordinarily popular, yes.
June:
How do you account for that?
Jocelyn Viterna:
El Salvador, as you know, has a long history of polarization and violence that ended in the Civil War in 1992, or the Civil War ended in 1992, and by 1994, we'd really set up a system where there were two major political parties: the FMLN and ARENA. ARENA was a party of the right, the FMLN and was the party of the left. So people had really sort of fallen into those two camps with occasional additional parties popping up along the way. Over the years, there's been a huge disappointment with both those parties among the population on both sides, both parties were ended up being very corrupt. They ended up very hierarchical and didn't seem to deliver on their promises.
Jocelyn Viterna:
When Nayib Bukele first came on the scene, he was elected as the mayor of San Salvador for the FMLN, and there were a lot of reasons to be optimistic about his approach to politics. In that he seemed to be sort of apolitical. He was thinking about how to improve garbage pickup in the city. He was building new libraries or sort of community markets where people could go sell their goods and maybe get internet. And there was a sense that he was doing this based on who most needed the service, rather than who would get his party at the time the FMLN and elected.
Jocelyn Viterna:
At that time, there was some big kerfuffle, there's various stories about what happened, but the FMLN and voted to kick him out of the party. And that's when he started his new party, Nuevas Ideas. When he ran for president this last term, I actually know a number of people who were long-time members of the FMLN and who had family members who died in the war, fighting for the FMLN and who never, ever thought they would leave the FMLN who ended up voting for Nayib Bukele, instead of the FMLN, because they did feel like perhaps he was a promise of change and it was not so much a vote for Bukele as a vote to tell the FMLN, "You failed us. We are not delivering what you promised. We want something new".
Jocelyn Viterna:
Bukele was elected largely by saying, "I'm not those other two parties". That was actually his phrase, "No more of the same on the other parties, I'm something new". But he was very careful not to take any political positions. He wouldn't show up to debates. He wouldn't say I'm for or against this or that other. His whole idea was I'm not the same old, same old. And so a lot of people interpreted that at the time, as something optimistic, that maybe he was open to different ideas of how to do things, but over the last few years, it's become clear that he actually just doesn't have a real agenda on any of those issues. And so there's been a lot of concern by the same people who voted, at least among the people I know, who voted him in that he still hasn't come down on any particular political platform.
June:
Okay. So he doesn't have a real agenda, and you have people who are, you have 84 members of the national legislative assembly, you've got the local officials, I think you're almost 300 of them, and 20 members of the Central American parliament. So how do you see this election is shaping up?
Jocelyn Viterna:
If, Bukele's platform, I think he has 84 different candidates running for the deputies in the legislative assembly, and if they were to get, I believe it's 56, they would have a super majority in the legislative assembly. And so they could do a number of different things, including being able to appoint the new attorney general without any input from various parties, for example. Another thing that Bukele is trying to do is to revise the constitution, right? He's putting forward this notion that they need to look at the constitution and rethink it. And a lot of people are concerned that he's going to try to extend the presidential, the limits on a presidential term so that he can stay in office longer. So that would be another one of those things that he could do much more easily if, if he had control of the legislative assembly.
June:
And how likely does it look that he will gain control of the legislative assembly?
Jocelyn Viterna:
His popularity right now is in the upper 60%, 60 to 70%. And the indications, the various polls I've seen suggests that he's likely to gain a majority in the legislative assembly, if not the super majority. And so I don't think people have a real clear sense as to what's going to unfold and people don't vote for parties, they vote for individuals at this level. And so there certainly are people from other parties who are very popular as well, but it'll be interesting to see how it unfolds. And it'll be interesting to see how Bukele's theme plays out for the people running. The people running interestingly are the L Fido. One of the local newspapers has kind of put his candidates into three groups. One, they called "The same as always". And which is interesting because Bukele has sold himself as somebody who's different from what the two parties had been in the past. But many of the people running for his new party are people who were leaders and often corrupt leaders from the old parties in the past. And so it's the same people, just newly branded.
Jocelyn Viterna:
But there's also a number of people who are very young, who had posts within his administration. So people who had various ministerial posts or sub posted ministries are now running for office as well. And then there's a lot of people who just are fairly unknown. They don't have a history of politics, and it's not clear where they're coming from. So people are having a hard time predicting what will happen with some of these candidates. You asked earlier too, about why Bukele is so popular. And I said one thing, which is, "He's not the same old, same old", or he at least he's portraying himself as not the same old, same old, which I think is part of it.
Jocelyn Viterna:
The other part of it is Bukele, like some other populous leaders lately, have been very adept at using social media to portray himself as a very likable kind of person. So he's oftentimes, he tweets frequently, he's on Facebook frequently. He's very joking, jovial and joking with the population. And early on again, people were pretty optimistic about the fact that he did have, a large part of the public following along and involved in politics. And he hired younger people to go out and be parts of the ministry, to lead the various ministries, and to really be involved in the people. And there were stories that he would really tell people to get out there and sit on the floor, really meet the people. And so there was a sense early on that he was great at mobilizing people to be involved in politics.
Jocelyn Viterna:
I think a lot of people got excited about that early on, but over time again, it seems that this politics has become much more focused on keeping him and his friends in power and wealthy. There certainly are concerns of corruption and folding, and money and power to Bukele and his inner circle. And there's also real concerns that this jovial, joking nature has increasingly taken on a really misogynist and authoritarian tendency. He recently, I'm going to get this wrong, but he recently put forward a picture of himself. There's a movie called the dictator, I think. And he had put his face on the picture of the dictator and thought this was really funny, but he's joking about being a violent dictator of his own country. And a lot of people didn't find that very funny.
June:
You mentioned the word misogynist, I'm wondering in all these candidates, what is the gender breakdown? What does that look like?
Jocelyn Viterna:
In just among his deputies, I don't know what the level of the mayors positions, but I saw in this article that of the 86, I think, candidates that are running for a deputy in the Nuevas Ideas party, about two thirds of them are men, and one third are women. And so there's certainly more, it's more than that. It's like 60, 60 something to twenty-something. So it certainly is masculine in that aspect. I think a couple of other things that have come up one is Walter Araujo, who is a long time candidate in the ARENA party has now moved to the Nuevas Ideas Party and he's running against, or he was running against a woman named Bertha Deleónand. In his public media presence on Facebook and the like, he used extraordinarily derogatory words for women in his post to describe his female candidate.
Jocelyn Viterna:
She actually, she's a lawyer. She actually took him to the Supreme tribunal court in El Salvador and said, "Look, you're supposed to be a person of upstanding character to run for office. And if you're using these kinds of very, very derogatory words for women to describe your candidate in your social media posts, maybe you shouldn't be allowed to run". And they actually found in favor of her. And so they took away his candidacy. And so she's running against someone else now, which was a victory.
Jocelyn Viterna:
But I recently saw in another post, let me see, one of these less well-known candidates who's running for San Miguel, back in 2012, 2013, he was known for having a social media presentation that was very misogynist. And so he had things that people have captured in screen posts that said something like "If you want to expand a woman's horizon, renovate her kitchen, a woman without breasts is like clothing without pockets, you never know where to put your hands. Men, if you want to kill your wife and have it appear to be an accident, just give her a car and ask her to drive stick shift." Some things like that.
Jocelyn Viterna:
So some very sort of terrifying kinds of humorous misogyny that comes up that is sort of, I think making some of these candidates seem likable to a part of the population that sees them as not the same old, same old, but someone you could sort of have a beer with and joke with. And I think it's worth noting that when Bertha Deleónand did win this argument against Walter Araujo, excuse me. And he had to leave the candidacy because of the kinds of things he put on social media. Her social media page was immediately filled with people saying the same things and worse about her as well. So it is similar to the United States in that social media has become a huge part of this campaign. And it's been very vicious, the kinds of things that have been on social media. I think it's another one of those elements that doesn't feel very conducive to the kinds of democratic debate of issues and evidence, in with respect that we hope for in political elections
June:
Voters in El Salvador, don't have any obligation to go to the polls. What is being predicted in terms of turnout? Is this an election, which is exciting people, or is this election where people are just saying, "Well, it doesn't really matter."
Jocelyn Viterna:
I have not seen predictions on this. I'm sure they're out there, but I wouldn't want us to say. I don't know what the polls say. I do know from my own circles, that people are very, there are a number of people who are very pro Bukele and who will still go vote strictly for his party, regardless of whether or not they know people about his candidates. And there's still, this group of people seems to have a very strong, I'm just not voting for the old parties. We need something new, line. Then there's another group of people who are very concerned with the increasing authoritarian tendencies of Bukele, which I think the sort of emblematic examples that he called the military to come in and sort of force a vote in the legislative assembly when it was in session last February.
Jocelyn Viterna:
So some of these kinds of things have people very worried that if he is also able to gain the legislative power in the legislative assembly, that there won't be anything stopping him. And so those individuals are going out to vote, but there's not a clear, there's not a clear alternative, right? So they're voting for other people that they like, but oftentimes they're voting across the parties, not ARENA and the FMLN, but they're also voting for another new party called Nuevos Tiempos. That seems to have a whole new vibe that's much more feminist oriented. And so it's unclear to me how that will all unfold. It's such a new experience in El Salvador, after so many decades of having these two primary political parties to have one, two brand new parties that seem to be taking up a lot of the air time right now is really remarkable.
June:
And what sort of you say that Nevose Tempos is more feminists, but what other split of?
Jocelyn Viterna:
This is a crazy story too. Yeah. So there's a gentleman by the name of Johnny Wright Sol, who Johnny Wright was born in El Salvador. And when he was a young kid, he and his, I believe his dad was Salvadorian and his mom was from the United States. And he moved back to the United States with his mom. So he did, sort of elementary, high school and college in the United States. He worked in the United States for a while as a firefighter, before he got a degree in political science from Georgetown University, I believe. And then he went back to El Salvador where he ran for a deputy position and he was elected with the ARENA party. The party of the right, he comes from a family of old money, comes from a right wing family in El Salvador and his policies in terms of how he thinks about the economy certainly put him in the right wing camp.
Jocelyn Viterna:
However, he, and a group of other sort of people in his, I don't know, sort of that mid 30 age, I would guess are much more socially advanced or progressive than the older generation of these more right wing, old money families and El Salvador. And they have been pushing for LGBTQ rights. They've been pushing to see a change in how El Salvador thinks about sexual education, how it thinks about its extraordinarily strict anti-abortion legislation, some of the strictest in the world. And they have gotten increasingly frustrated with the ARENA party because of its unwillingness to move on these social issues. And so under Johnny Wright Sol, they have started another party as well that they're calling Nevose Tempos, right?
Jocelyn Viterna:
So we have Nevose Ideas, with Ukulele, we have Nevose Tempos, with Johnny Wright Sol, and it's an interesting partnership in many ways to see some of the more feminists progressive, the groups that are progressive on social issues in El Salvador are migrating towards because it's the only party that's willing to take on these more progressive, these more socialist issues, even though many people at the leadership of this party tend to be more right-wing when it comes to economic issues. And so, again, we're just seeing this huge realignment of El Salvador. It used to be sort of, you knew the family name, you knew the family history, you could put them on the political spectrum, but we're really seeing this move around a lot. And we're seeing these old two giant parties seem to be disintegrating in some way, and to these new parties moving in. And I think it will be really fascinating to see how it all unfolds next week in the elections.
June:
So some people will be listening to this before the election. And since this interview we'll stay in our faculty voices website, some people will be listening after the election. So what are the takeaways? If Ukulele wins the majority in this, what should we be looking for? How should we interpret the elections?
Jocelyn Viterna:
Absolutely. So Ukulele has overwhelmingly, he's been extraordinarily successful at staying popular and he's been extraordinarily successful at marketing his administration. And from what a lot of the reports are suggesting, enriching himself and enriching other people in his group. He's done this in part by sort of tying himself to president Trump, making El Salvador more open to Trump's plans of sort of limiting Central American migration and opening the doors to various asylum cases in El Salvador, and the like. I think the biggest fears, if Ukulele wins power, if his party wins power in the legislative assembly, is that he will change the constitution to allow himself to stay in power longer, that there will be increasing militarization of various sort of, dealing with criminals and gangs and various public services in El Salvador. And that there will continue to be tremendous amount of resources in El Salvador spent towards marketing and publicity aimed at keeping themselves in power rather than taking on real issues, right?
Jocelyn Viterna:
So for example, the Kelly administration has launched the state run newspaper and the state run newspaper spends millions of dollars basically celebrating the things that the state supposedly does, but an attacking the other media sources in El Salvador. Ukulele has made a big deal out of handing out however many packages of food to people during COVID. But it's very unclear that those packages are arriving to people who actually need them and not just his neighbors and the like as well. And so I think what we need is to really pay attention to questions of democratic freedoms in El Salvador. Freedom of the press, freedom to move, freedom to, keep the military separate from civilian life in El Salvador. And I would really like to see people push Ukulele too. Well, and there certainly needs to be a reckoning about corruption and investigations into corruption. But I would also like to make sure that there's some sort of push to have a platform, to have an agenda, to really have a thoughtful way forward, to think about how to address the very real problems that El Salvador is facing in terms of crime, in terms of economic development, in terms of the pandemic, which is ravaging, the whole world at this time, I'd like to see more proactive ways forward with that.
June:
And how significant are the mayoral elections? What will that tell us? What difference will that make?
Jocelyn Viterna:
I think the mayoral elections will really tell us how much power Naevus Ideas has to stay throughout the country. Whether or not this is really a broad coalition that that is even a trickling down to the local level or whether it really is just something about the sort of an understanding of the federal level as well.
June:
But it's just an indicator. It's not going to mean that Buckle's power goes more efficiently down to the grassroots or change in policy?
Jocelyn Viterna:
I'm not sure. A lot of local politics is done at the municipal level. Municipal governments don't have a lot of money to work with, and they typically have a mayor as well as a council of some sort to run the business. And so I suspect that there could be some concerns about how money is distributed variously to different municipalities. But yeah, for me, it would be more of an indication of whether or not the party, right now, it's very much a sense that Ukulele is the Naevus Ideas party, right? You ask what Naevus Ideas stands for and it's just, "We like Ukulele", that's the only response you'd get. And so it does feel to me like it's a federal level phenomenon, but I think it would be very interesting if this does move to the local level. I think there would have to be increasing census to what people are doing, right? What does this party stand for at all levels of government? You would anticipate that there would have to be some more actions associated with the party.
June:
Do you see Naevus Tempos as taking votes away from Ukulele or away from the FMLN or ARENA.
Jocelyn Viterna:
That's a really good question. Ironically, given that many of the people in Nevose Tempos originally came from ARENA, I don't, it feels like it's, it's hard. Oh, I honestly don't know. I don't think Nevose Tempos will get a lot of votes honestly. I think they'll win a few seats. I think there are a number of people who are disappointed with the left, that probably feel like Nevose Tempos is one of the few options that are available to them because at least they're sort of progressive on their social issues. Its hard for me to imagine anyone that votes for ARENA being comfortable with Nevose Tempos, not just because the progressive social issues, but the kinds of people that that's pulling into to support the party. But, I do think there is this new, younger generation, the second generation of ARENA, people who oftentimes were educated abroad, like Johnny Wright Sol himself, who really feel like the party needs to be modernized. And so, yeah, it could be pulling from ARENA as well. I'm sorry. I really don't know. I think that's, what's so interesting about this moment in El Salvador, is it really just feels like there's a massive shift going on in alignments and it's not clear yet whether and how those alignments match up with various platforms.
June:
So if we are assuming, and we may be wrong, we've been wrong before, that Ukulele will win the majority, what does that mean for U.S., Salvador relations?
Jocelyn Viterna:
I think regardless of whether or not Nevose Ideas wins, there's a real reckoning going on for Ukulele right now in relation with Biden. And he had, certainly aligned himself with Trump, Ukulele had also hired. There were a lot of several hundred thousand dollars being spent to hire a lobbyist for El Salvador in the United States, but that was working especially closely with Republican legislators in the United States. And it's unclear right now, whether or not that person's still getting paid from the last I've read. But recently Ukulele did try to come to the United States, and he's now saying that he didn't even try to get meetings with the Biden administration, but there are other reports, credible reports that he did try to get meetings with the Biden administration, the Biden Administration refused to meet with him.
Jocelyn Viterna:
This certainly had something to do with COVID right? Like there, the Biden administration is trying to avoid face-to-face meetings in general, especially with people who've just come in from another country and because of travel considerations. But there's also a real sense that this was a sign to Ukulele, that the Biden administration is paying attention to the sort of populous, anti-authoritarian actions that are going on in the country and that taking actions to assure the end of corruption, making sure that there's not deals moving on with criminal gang elements and making sure that the rule of law and democracy is at the forefront will be requirements to have a good relationship with the new regime in the United States.
June:
Is there anything that I have not asked you, which you would like to comment on Josselyn?
Jocelyn Viterna:
I think there are some interesting parallels between what's happening in El Salvador, what happened in the United States, and certainly what's happened with other populist leaders recently, say in Brazil, in that what people say, seems to carry more weight sometimes than what people do. And so a lot of people who are frustrated with Ukulele right now are pointing out the hypocrisy of saying, "I'm, I'm new, we're not to do it the same way. We've always done it." And then actually bringing people into the party who are the exact same people that he was critiquing before, but they've just given themselves a new party name, but they're the same old politicians. Another thing that Ukulele was very critical about when he was a candidate was the fact that former presidential administrations had made deals with the criminal gangs in El Salvador to lower the violent rates. And now there's quite a bit of evidence that the Ukulele has made similar kinds of deals with the MASAs in El Salvador as well.
Jocelyn Viterna:
So I think one of the really striking things is that it feels like it's more of the same in terms of corruption, enrichment, increasing militarization, making deals with the gangs. Instead of coming up with real long-term solutions, seeing people feeling like they're coming into power or staying in power, but it just has this new sort of branding that makes it feel new to some people. And so that feels like a new way of doing politics, that's not just happening in El Salvador, but that's happening more broadly. And I hope that, the social scientists of the world can really start to explore what this is and what this means for governance in the years ahead.
June:
Thank you very much. You've been listening to Jocelyn Viterna, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and Director of undergraduate studies and sociology. She's also the author of "Women in War", and has spent 25 years researching and investigating in El Salvador. Thank you very much.