ECUADOR: THE “BUKELE” MODEL, A CULT OF FASCISM

We publish an unofficial translation of a recent statement from the Front for the Defense of the Struggles of the People in Ecuador.

Bukele [the president of El Salvador] is a member of a generation that comes from the rubble of an internal conflict recreated by the revisionism of the FMLN [Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional – Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front]; the paramilitarism of ARENA [Alianza Republicana Nacionalista – Nationalist Republican Alliance] and the US mercenaries in the 80’s of the last century.

As expected, with the capitulation of the FMLN, many guerrillas and paramilitaries, without a political direction and bearers of an outdated ideology, began to form criminal gangs, either in the streets, like those who were absorbed and domesticated in the Assembly or in the struggle to take control of the old bureaucratic big-landlord State.

That is to say, the genesis of violence, internal gangs, hitmen, etc., responds to structural problems, but it also goes hand in hand with an entire failed political process that generated uncontrolled and at the same time functional violence, like what happened in Ecuador.

Obviously, the masses became disenchanted with the FMLN leadership that “took out its nails”, became bureaucratized and became another component of that bureaucratic bourgeoisie that longed to be close to the state apparatus to reproduce itself politically and economically. It was no different with ARENA and the far right, a bunch of thugs of the comprador bourgeoisie closely linked to the repressive and intelligence apparatuses of imperialism. In that scenario, any newcomer, regardless of his class origin but with a good political narrative refreshed by postmodernism and the needs of imperialism for that country and the region, was going to penetrate a society betrayed by the guerrillas and the bloodily beaten by the comprador bourgeoisie, and they created the conditions for a young man, with fascist pretensions, to assume the presidency, developed a political and economic program very close to fascism, which, alien to a classic format, adapts to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, conflictive, with deep contradictions, where any gainer who raises the story of “peace”, “freedom” outside of the weaknesses or bankruptcy of the structure, was going to have support.

Bukele has been shown to the world as the new model of ruler. Young, radical, informal, decisive, bossy, irreverent and, above all, he has managed very well the discourse of “peace”, of neutralizing the gangs, of annihilating violence and placing, as he points out, El Salvador, in ” a safe country to live in.”

The slogan of security, above all, of classes, of contradictions, of production relations, of misery, of unemployment and bureaucratic inefficiency (except for shooting or repressing the masses), has given rise to a fate of “light dictatorship” that oppresses the people, violated bourgeois democratic freedoms and institutions and handed over strong and consolidated power to the repressive apparatus of the State.

However, El Salvador, in economic terms, is a disaster. It has an annual growth that barely reaches 1%, one of the lowest in America; it has the highest poverty rate in America. It has an external and internal debt that reaches no less than 85% of GDP. It owes the huge amount of $10 billion to workers’ pensions. 50% of Salvadorian people has no employment or work in informal jobs.

The life expectancy of men in El Salvador is one of the lowest on the continent, 66 years, women: 75 years. It is the country with the slowest growth in the region. It has the highest incarceration rate in the world, incredibly 1.6% of the population is detained in prisons. The educational system at all levels is critical, lacking adequate infrastructure, but it has the most modern prisons in the region. Not only that, it “exports” its prison model to other countries, like ours.

El Salvador, like Ecuador, their States are parasites of remittances. The contribution made by the millions of Salvadorians who emigrated to the US is on the order of 26% in relation to GDP. A brutality, without a doubt.

That is to say, there is a crisis of bureaucratic capitalism and its old State, but they have an important sector of the population imprisoned; which, in addition to having been observed for the permanent violation of human rights, has given rise to a new generation of boys and girls who do not live with their parents, either because they are prisoners or have emigrated to the United States. Can we hope that this will not generate a new army of violent people in the short term?

In Ecuador they sell us the idea that the “bukele” model is the one we should follow; What’s more, they compare Daniel Noboa with Bukele; They compare him as his successor, or worse still, his “double.” In fact, Noboa tries to copy his irreverent style, and the first thing he did was go out to chase and imprison low-level criminals, but also tattooed boys, young people who pass by on the corners in poor neighborhoods; where being poor is already a stigma to be attacked, detained and prosecuted as a terrorist. Not only that, he wanted to go “live” by declaring war material as scrap metal and handing it over to the US, putting the country in an international crisis due to the responses issued by Russia.

It must be understood that all these government models aim at three specific objectives: strengthening the Yankee imperialist presence in our countries, currently weakened by the lack of response from their allies in Ukraine and, to some extent, in Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. Recover or strength bureaucratic capitalism in third world countries, mainly in America, its “backyard”, to avert the revolution and further corporatize the masses and people, putting presidents and servile lackey authorities in front to the US and that they can show themselves “firm”, “determinant”, regardless of whether they explore or engage in fascist behavior, in the end, the propaganda machinery of imperialism knows, to a great extent, how to manage and manipulate the consciousness of the masses.

Bukele and Noboa are parasites of the US; They are fascists on the rise and must be fought accordingly!

ONLY THROUGH STRUGGLE RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS ARE CONQUERED!

ORGANIZE, COMBAT AND RESIST!