Central America: A region “fragmented and without a common project”

In the framework of the 201st anniversary of the cry of Central American Independence, the former president of the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly Sigfrido Reyes spoke to Sputnik about the political project of Central American integration, weakened by the lack of common guidelines, leadership, and the influence of the US.

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, stated on August 22 that he advocates regional integration through the creation of the Central American Union, in the image and likeness of the European Union.

The Salvadoran Executive called on the different Central American sectors to establish objectives to “achieve the dream of regional integration” from an inclusive model with constitutionalism.

Such declarations are framed in the context of a new anniversary of the Independence of Central America, the emancipation process of the current countries of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, who signed the act of independence on September 15, 1821.

The new federal country, born after the rupture of ties with the Spanish Empire, died after 21 years following the advent of the U.S. Monroe Doctrine in the mid-nineteenth century.

Former president of the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly Sigfrido Reyes, currently living in Mexico, told Sputnik that the Central American integration project has been “virtually paralyzed” for several years.

According to Reyes, political differences, the lack of a joint project, and the negative influence of the US on the region “have been weakening the integration project in Central America”.

“The Central American integration system has spent two years without a head, without a secretary-general”, said Reyes about the Central American Integration System (SICA), formed by Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

This “decapitation” can be explained “because the governments could not agree. Bukele and another government of the region were opposed to Nicaragua assuming the general secretariat of this system,” he accused.

Central America “is still very fragmented” as a region, “there is no common project, no common plans for development, infrastructure, social policies, and even fewer coincidences among the countries as to the direction that can be given” to the unionist project.

UTOPIAN INTEGRATION AND THE ROLE OF BUKELE

Central American integration “is a rather utopian issue,” said the former president of the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly (2011-2015).

“There is no leadership for the region; there is no common vision, each country is subject to severe problems, some of poverty, others of violence, others of corruption, others facing natural phenomena, and some with all these problems together,” he lamented.

Regarding the unionist leadership advocated by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Reyes was emphatic and blunt: “Bukele is to unionist what Bolsonaro is to a leftist,” he said.

“He is a phony and a demagogue; he is a fascist in every word. He has no project, not even for El Salvador. He lives from improvisation to improvisation.

He came to power without even having a government plan. He has dismantled democratic institutions based on his dictatorial ambitions”, emphasized Reyes.

El Salvador “is a country with no independent justice system, a country where Congress became an office that makes laws to suit the Executive Power. A country that returned to the old years of militarization and repression,” emphasized the politician of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional).

President Bukele “does not have a plan for El Salvador, much less can he have a plan for Central America,” highlighted Reyes.

“He is at odds with practically all the leaders of the region. He is a character who lives in his own world, in his world of Narcissus seeing himself in the mirror every day.”

“I believe that he is not the prototype of leader that Central America needs to take a step and advance towards a common project. Quite the contrary,” he stressed.

THE INTERFERING ROLE OF THE US AND THE CHINESE “NEW AIRS”

For Reyes, US interference “continues to be a hefty burden for the region. I do not doubt that it is one of the powers most interested in keeping the region disunited and fragmented”.

According to Reyes, the leadership in Washington has never been sympathetic to Central American integration.

“They want republics that they can manage in the style of the banana republics, and they have been working on that project for two centuries,” he said.

On the other hand, China offers “a new opportunity for the region at a time when it is already a global economic and technological power”.

In recent years, “the region has emerged from the stagnation in which it was, maintaining relations with a Chinese province that proclaims its rebelliousness and its intention to be independent, as is the case of Taiwan,” said Reyes.

He pointed out that, in the last 15 years, “Costa Rica, then Panama, El Salvador, and last December Nicaragua took the historic step of normalizing relations with China and recognizing its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

In Reyes’ opinion, this scenario “has unleashed Washington’s fury, which is trying by all means to contain China”. However, “I believe that the Chinese presence is positive because it has brought new airs to the region, in the sense of cooperation, in development, infrastructure, technology, education, health”, he added.

LACK OF LEADERSHIP

In Central America, “there is no common vision and much less political leadership to conceive an integration project”.

Integration projects “require leaders with a political vision, not technocrats or bureaucrats. It seems to me that today the region has this enormous deficit.

To a large extent, with the passage of neoliberalism, the countries were brutally weakened in their economies, social fabric, and institutions,” he lamented.

“If there is no political consensus on the route to follow, on the strategy to put into practice, it seems to me that today Central America seems condemned to many more years of separation and disunity”, insisted Reyes.

“In the case of Nicaragua, it is clear to me that there is a national project; in other countries, this does not even exist. I am not optimistic in that sense”.

Central America has all the historical, human, and social conditions to be an integrated region, summarizes the former president of the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly:

“But the political leadership is far from being up to the task of leading a process that could give the region a sense of its own identity before the world”, he concluded.

With information from Sputnik