Central America: a bleak anniversary

Protest against the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, in San José, Costa Rica, on September 12.Jeffrey Arguedas / EFE

Almost inadvertently we arrived at the anniversary of the two centuries of Central American independence.

Official celebrations are scarce, and the governments of the old provinces that once constituted the federal republic have not programmed the traditional fireworks for the great date of September 15, nor showy military parades.

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Nor does it seem that the presidents of the Central American countries will see each other, even in a remote ceremonial meeting; If they have not yet been able to agree on appointing a new secretary general of SIECA, the regional integration body, it is because there are disagreements, some deep, that still affect the formal acts. Let us not expect, therefore, great official statements, which in any case would be the same as always, wrapped in occasional rhetoric.

The independence of the Central American provinces, proclaimed in 1821 in Guatemala, then the headquarters of the Captaincy General, fell like a ripe fruit after the great epics of liberation were culminating in the other Latin American countries, or were about to culminate. And those who proclaimed it immediately ran to annex the newly independent Central America, which then included Chiapas, to the Mexican empire of Agustín de Iturbide, which soon failed.

As stated in the act itself, independence was declared "to prevent the consequences, which would be fearsome if the people themselves proclaimed it in fact."

More clearly a rooster does not crow.

Since then we have learned the golden rule that between us everything changes so that nothing changes, according to the Gatopardeana rule.

Instead of heroes and revolutionaries, what we have almost always had are illusionists by trade.

The first thing that is needed is a balance of democracy after these 200 years of independent life.

By breaking with the colonial mold, what was written in the constitutions was a creed of freedom founded on the great examples that were in sight: the ideas of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

If there was a common denominator in the liberal proclamations, it was the conviction that all roads back to monarchical authoritarianism were closed.

The ideal was the formation of a federal republic founded on democratic forms of government, independence of powers, and free choice of authorities.

This political model had become unavoidable for those who gave the libertarian struggle in the American continent, from Bolívar to Sucre, to San Martín and to General Francisco Morazán, who, once the independence of Central America was achieved, fought for the survival of the federal republic, that project finally frustrated after long years of civil wars cost him his life.

The independent history of Central America thus starts from a great failure, that of the federal republic. The five countries were marked by the anger between caudillos, and the most narrow provincialism struggled for dispersion. Being united or separated became, unfortunately, a matter of political currency: the liberals were the federalists, and the conservatives the localists, longing for monarchical authority. And then the Central American union became a military matter, which had to be elucidated through wars. And so these countries continued to fail, already loose, amid the harassment of the great colonial and imperial powers.

Later, in the twentieth century, the century of the banana dictatorships, the issue of political unity became a mockery.

When old Somoza was asked about the Central American union, he responded with all cynicism that his resignation from the presidency was in order to facilitate that union.

A rogue, who like his fellow neighbors, offered what he knew was not at risk, his own power, because unity was but an empty proclamation.

He had become a farce.

Central America has a joint territory of more than half a million square kilometers, with a population of 50 million inhabitants, immensely young.

It is a great country, seen as a whole, and therefore a great potential market.

The 1960 Economic Integration Treaty was an increasingly battered attempt.

But what overwhelms Central America most, well into the 21st century, is the persistent weakness of its institutions, eaten away by authoritarianism, which continues as rampant as in the 19th century, when the warlords armed at war did not want to get off their horses, nor did they of the presidential chairs, which they enrolled as theirs forever.

Institutions eaten away by corruption, which contributes to the discrediting of democracy, under the permanent threat of drug trafficking that sneaks into the highest spheres of power, the justice system and the public security apparatus.

The young population of Central America, which is the majority, is called to take charge without delay of reviewing the past that is holding us back, with its anti-democratic and exclusionary obstacles, and its selfishness and perversities, to open the way to a common future.

The opportunities in this 21st century in which we are entering will be joint for the Central American countries, and there will not be them for small isolated plots, which are not viable by themselves.

And without democracy, without credible institutions, we are not going anywhere.

Sergio Ramírez

is a Nicaraguan writer and winner of the 2017 Cervantes Prize. His latest book is

Tongolele did not know how to dance

(Alfaguara).