The National Civil Police was the main institution to emerge from the 1992 peace accords, but its actions over the years have denatured the police force believed to ensure democracy in El Salvador, now it has been transformed into a political police according to the social researcher Jeannette Aguilar.
Jeannette Aguilar is a social researcher who closely follows safety issues; For years, it has been measuring the behavior of the National Civil Police and the “institutional decline”, as she calls it.
The researcher is concerned about the negative transformation of the institution that grew out of the peace accords, which this year mark the 29th anniversary of the signing of peace that ended in a bloody war that left more than 80,000 dead.
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Aguilar has faced political persecution from the police and the State Intelligence Agency in the Bukele government, but that hasn’t stopped her from further analyzing and commenting on the deterioration of the country’s police and rule of law .
El Diario de Hoy spoke to her about the history of the PNC, the deterioration of the police, which has now deteriorated and with Bukele threatens the democracy of El Salvador, sees no improvement in the short term until the arrival of a new government that is in reality a total purge and reform of the police is developing.
How do you, as a researcher, assess the peace agreements and the rise of the National Civil Police?
First, the peace agreements must be quoted in their proper context, it marked the end of the armed conflict through negotiated channels and the creation of a roadmap that would create the conditions for the democratization of the country; In this context, the creation of new institutions was essential, especially aimed at strengthening the consolidation of a new democratic state, a new state that respects the rule of law and human rights.
It is in this context that all public security reforms are taking place, the most important of which is, of course, the creation of the national civil police under the peace agreements.
From my perspective, the PNC issue is the central issue of political negotiations. Considering the various agreements in which this issue was discussed, it highlights the relevance that a new body with a civil, professional and democratic court would have in the creation of a new political regime, which in this case would be democracy.
There is a proposal that is still valid and has not been implemented, which has to do with a conception of a civilian, professional, democratic police, with a vocation to serve the citizens, to the community. That is the concept by which the PNC is founded and around which a series of complementary and follow-up appointments are generated. In this logic, the roadmap is valid from my perspective and I read it 29 years later, and it gives me more and more sense to the extent that this type of police, of course, in the context that fosters these democratization processes is the one that post changes in the circumstances conflict violence.
That was his founding philosophy, but what happened to the police over time we have seen it used to prosecute opponents, used by organized crime, extermination groups and now a political PNC. What happened?
Well, what happened in the police force, first obstructed in the spirit and letter, in relation to the initial conception by the same political actors who signed the peace, in context they viewed it with suspicion and concern, and it was conceived in that moment by the political, military and economic elites, as a threat to the extent that a professional and scientific police would be more efficient in the fight against crime, and especially against the organized crime that has prevailed in the Salvadoran state for decades.
In this context, it was essentially a deliberate attempt to avoid consolidating that original conception of a civilian, democratic and professional police force. So what happened was first, it was seen as a threat, it was stunted and then instrumentalized, and in this context it has been denatured almost since its inception and was reflected in the early signs of dissolution and corruption already in the first were noticed. Years of the police, it was first consolidated as a repressive police, with characteristics of authoritarianism, but also later and in this logic too, from the repressive reaction prevailing in the state, the anchoring of criminal structures was favored.
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During the past years?
This same police, already in the period of Sánchez Cerén and in a context of profound weakening of some of the internal controls, of outrage of the police function, it must be said, there is an explicit militarization of the National Civil Police, but it is also used for purposes of extermination and social cleansing, that was what we had in the government of Sánchez Cerén.
And now, recently, the transition from an extermination police to a political police, a police with these past characteristics used to undermine democracy, in this case to invade and threaten the Legislative Assembly; on February 9, which has fallen into disdain, with a clear call to serve the interests of the President (Bukele) on the part of the current director who will undoubtedly give the death blow to those elements or remnants left of that view original.
We have already seen this process of politicization, instrumentalization with the aim of prosecuting political opponents, dissenting voices, an attitude of disrespect to the law and disrespect to court orders, but not so plainly, so crudely, so clearly the present governance, and that has only happened in a context of impunity and a clear break with the law of the president and his council of ministers.
Can something be done with the police, or is everything already lost?
See, since the previous period, also in documenting some cases, the execution patterns, the use of deadly force, the problems with the extermination groups, I have raised the need for a new police reform, a new police reform that is rethinking the basics of this new organization presupposes a deep purification and the establishment of a new institution that will take over those original principles, but also that is aimed at professionalization, at technical-scientific research.
I believe that in the current context, especially of such complex and organized violence in the country, the police is a central tool to ensure security and stability in the country, and that this can only be achieved if there is a process of Institutional reform that almost always, almost all the countries we have seen in reform processes in Latin America, are also related in the political context, unfortunately we have an unfavorable political context, quite completely favorable to this process of institutional decline and dissolution .
Bukele needs a deteriorating, de-professionalized police, a violent police acting outside of the law, because it is that kind of institution that is functional for its own political interests, rather it would be a contradiction, especially in light of the characteristics of authoritarianism that we have seen in your government in the first 15 months that you are betting on a different police force or with a process of police reform, this can probably be done with the arrival of a new government that is really committed to almost re-establishing the country itself and these institutions.