El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, during a press conference last September in San Salvador.JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters
Human rights organizations, war victims, opposition groups, intellectuals and ex-guerrillas have spoken out against the recent attack by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele against the peace accords that 29 years ago and led by the United Nations put an end to the bloody civil war that left more than 75,000 dead in El Salvador, but for the controversial president they are a "farce", a "business" of elites and a "pact between the corrupt."
On Friday, a group of social organizations and victims of the armed confrontation demanded that Bukele respect the agreements and maintain the Government's commitment to human rights, while a hundred Salvadoran and foreign academics published a letter in which they reject the president's statements and ask for respect for truth and historical memory.
Indignation grew in the Central American country on January 16, when for the second year in a row the president refused to commemorate the signing of the peace accords, but also ordered a decree announced by Twitter that that date would become a day to remember the victims of the conflict.
“From now on, by presidential decree, January 16 will be the“ Day of the Victims of the Armed Conflict, ”Bukele wrote on the social network, his favorite medium to communicate his presidential decisions.
"We will stop commemorating those who ordered their deaths and we will begin to commemorate those who should be commemorated," he insisted.
For Bukele, "the signing of the peace accords did not represent any improvement for the population in their most basic rights", but rather translated into "the beginning of a stage of greater corruption and social exclusion and the fraudulent enrichment of them. sectors that signed the agreements ”, in reference to the members of the Government of the time and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which sealed the so-called Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992. That pact allowed to put an end to one of the the most bloody wars that America suffered, with terrible episodes such as the El Mozote massacre of 1981 when soldiers from the Atlácatl Battalion of the Salvadoran Army - many trained in the School of the Americas - murdered at least 986 people (552 children and 434 adults, including 12 pregnant women; all peasants) in an operation that aimed to destroy the leftist guerrillas.
It was precisely in El Mozote where Bukele expressed his greatest criticism of the peace accords at the end of December, in a public act in which victims of that massacre participated.
The president said the war was a sham, as was the UN-sponsored pact.
“Alas, it is besmirching the Peace Accords.
Yes, I mancillo them because they were a farce, a negotiation between two leaderships or what benefits did it bring to the Salvadoran people? ”He questioned.
Bukele had already unleashed a political crisis in El Salvador by preventing the military files related to the El Mozote massacre from being unlocked, after disobeying a court order issued by a judge to inspect the files as part of the judicial process that seeks to clarify what happened. in that poor Salvadoran community.
After Bukele's criticism, groups of human rights and victims of the conflict have protested in San Salvador.
On Friday, representatives of various social organizations read a statement demanding that the president comply with the "responsibilities" in terms of human rights left by the peace accords.
"There are fundamental responsibilities that the president must fulfill, fundamentally to stop protecting perpetrators, as happened in the refusal to comply with the judicial order for access to the military archives in the El Mozote case," said David Ortiz, a member of the Fundación de Estudios for the Application of Law (Fespad).
In addition, 107 historians, academics and personalities from El Salvador and other countries published a letter in which they “emphatically” reject Bukele's statements.
"We are concerned that in his capacity as president he treats such important issues lightly," they criticize and make a call to respect the truth and historical memory.
The document, published by the digital medium El Faro, is signed by personalities who participated in the pacification process that concluded with the signing of the pact in the castle of Chapultepec, in Mexico City.
Bukele has also been criticized by former members of the guerrillas, such as Ana Guadalupe Martínez, who represented the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), one of the groups close to the FMLN, in the agreements.
“Practically few families in this country have been left untouched, injured, or participated in that long-standing confrontation.
Therefore, it was not only a surprise but it caused me pain, because the president does not have empathy for the hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran victims, not only with those who died but also with those who are still alive.
And obviously it seemed to me not only irresponsible but totally outside what the mentality of a head of state could be.
I, I said, 'Well, that statement portrays exactly what he is, smoke.
She has nothing on her mind, "said the former guerrilla in statements to the Focos TV network.
Amanda Castro, daughter of war victims, says Bukele maintains a "denialist line" that undermines the historical memory of El Salvador.
"It is very serious, they are malicious and perverse narratives that stem from deep ignorance," Castro told EL PAÍS by telephone interview.
“The president takes advantage of this date [the commemoration of the agreements] to deny the story.
Although there are challenges, we cannot deny the progress made in relation to the agreements, because from them an institutionality arises in the country, the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman is created and the armed forces are subordinated to the civil powers ”, he adds.
For Castro, the Salvadoran president shows "clear authoritarian and dictatorial signs" that put human rights at risk in El Salvador.
“With his mocking, negotiating statements, the president once again places the country on the country's side, when the peace accords are achievements of the entire Salvadoran society, beyond political parties.
These agreements must be defended, which today Bukele's statements put in danger ”, the activist also concludes.