The National Civil Police was the main institution that emerged from the peace agreements of 1992, but its actions over the years have distorted the police force that was supposed to ensure democracy in El Salvador, now it has been transformed into a political police according to the researcher social Jeannette Aguilar.
Jeannette Aguilar is a social researcher who closely monitors security issues; for several years it has been measuring the behavior of the National Civil Police and its “institutional deterioration”, as it calls it.
The researcher is concerned about the negative transformation of the institution born of the Peace Accords, which this year marks 29 years since the signing of the peace that ended with a bloody war that left over 80,000 dead.
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Aguilar suffered political persecution from the police force and the State Intelligence Agency in the Bukele administration, but this did not stop her from continuing to analyze and comment on the deterioration of the police force and the rule of law in the country.
El Diario de Hoy spoke with her about the history of the PNC, the deterioration of the police force, which has now worsened and threatens democracy El Salvador with Bukele, does not see a short-term improvement until the arrival of a new Government that actually develops a purification and a reform of the Police.
What is your assessment as a researcher of peace agreements and the emergence of the National Civil Police?
First of all, the peace agreements must be cited in their proper context, meant the end of the armed conflict through negotiated channels and the establishment of a roadmap setting out the conditions for the democratization of the country; In this context, the creation of new courts has been essential, above all, to strengthen the consolidation of a new democratic state, a new state that respects the rule of law and human rights.
In this context, all the reforms related to the field of public security are taking place, obviously the most important being the creation of the National Civil Police in the context of the Peace Agreements.
From my perspective, the PNC issue is the central issue of political negotiations. When analyzing the various agreements in which this issue was discussed, the relevance that a new court with a civil, professional and democratic court would have in establishing a new political regime, which in this case would be democracy, is emphasized.
There is a proposal that continues to be valid and has not been implemented, which is linked to a conception of civil, professional, democratic police, with a vocation for service for citizens, for the community. This is the concept on which the PNC is created and around which a series of complementary and follow-up agreements are generated. In this logic, the roadmap is valid from my perspective and I read it 29 years later and it continues to give me more and more meaning insofar as this type of policing, obviously, in the context that favors these processes of democratization that would produce changes in the conditions of post-conflict violence.
This was his creative philosophy, but over time, what happened to the police force, I saw that he was used to persecute opponents, used by organized crime, extermination groups and now a political PNC. What happened?
Well, what happened in the Police, first hindered in spirit and letter, in relation to its initial conception by the same political actors who signed the peace, in context, looked at it with suspicion and concern and was conceived in that moment by the political, military and economic elites as a threat to the extent that professional and scientific policing would be more effective in the fight against crime and, in particular, against organized crime that has prevailed in the Salvadoran state for decades.
In this context, what took place was essentially a deliberate effort to prevent the consolidation of the original conception of a civil, democratic and professional Police. So what happened was first, it was seen as a threat, it was hindered and then instrumentalized, and in this context it was distorted almost from its inception and was expressed in the first signs of decomposition and corruption that have already been observed in the first years of policing, it was first consolidated as a repressive police, with features of authoritarianism, but also later, and in this logic also from the repressive response that prevailed in the state, was favored rooting criminal structures.
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In recent years?
The same police, already in the period of Sánchez Cerén and in a context of deep weakening of part of the internal controls, of indignation of the police function, it must be said, there is an express militarization of the national civil police, but it is also used for extermination purposes. and social cleansing, that’s what we had in the Sánchez Cerén administration.
And now, recently, the transition from an extermination police to a political police, a police force that, with these previous characteristics, is used to undermine democracy, in this case to invade and threaten the Legislative Assembly; on 9 February, who fell into contempt, with a clear vocation of service towards the interests of the President (Bukele) on behalf of the current director, who undoubtedly ends up giving the coup de grace to those elements or residues that remained from that original conception.
We have already seen this process of politicization, instrumentalization, in order to persecute political opponents, opposing voices, attitudes of non-compliance with the law and non-compliance with court orders, but not so obvious, so gross, so obvious the current administration and this took place only 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?
Look, from the previous period, and when I documented some cases, the execution patterns, the use of lethal force, the problems with the extermination groups, I raised the need for a new police reform, a new police reform to rethink the foundations of this new organization, this implies a deep purification and the creation of a new institution that will take over those original principles, but also that will be oriented towards professionalization, towards technical-scientific research.
I believe that in the current context, especially of the so complex and organized violence that has prevailed in the country, the Police is a central tool to ensure security and stability in the country and would be achieved only if there is a process of institutional reform that almost always, almost all the countries we have seen in the reform processes in Latin America are also linked in the political context, unfortunately we have an adverse political context, quite totally favorable to this process of deterioration and institutional decomposition.
Bukele needs a damaged, unprofessional police, an abusive police that acts outside the law, because it is that type of institution that operates its own political interests, rather it would be a contradiction, especially in the face of the features of authoritarianism that we have. seen in your Government in these 15 months in which you bet 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 re-founding the country in itself and these institutions.