Despite his loyalty to Nayib Bukele, on February 9, 2020, in front of the heavily armed army in Congress, the head of the GANA faction, Guadalupe Vásquez, considered taking over a coup.
On February 9, 2021, GANA MP Guadalupe Vásquez called ARENA and FMLN deputies who convened a plenary session on the occasion of the first anniversary of 9F, when Nayib Bukele ordered an armed takeover of the Legislative Palace, “useless”.
But a year before the event, as heavily armed soldiers entered the Blue Chamber and agreed to a coup attempt by President Nayib Bukele, Vásquez himself condemned the event.
“This is already a coup,” Vásquez said, while discussing with other GANA lawmakers, loyalists and the President of the Republic.
An eight-second video, made at the time by El Diario de Hoy and part of the documentary series “9F: The Return of the Rifles” co-produced with Factum magazine, reveals Vásquez’s words.
A dozen journalists reveal unpublished facts about 9F in a series of documentaries
“It’s serious,” Vásquez added at the time, before being interrupted by Mario Tenorio, also from GANA, who noticed that he was being recorded by a journalist from this environment, whom he asked to withdraw.
With these words, Vásquez joined the large choir of voices that saw an attempted coup in the military incursion.
However, in the course of a year, it has gone from condemning the “serious” fact to defending it, minimizing it and attacking those it considers serious in militarizing the Legislative Assembly.
Vasquez is not the only one who has changed his mind about the raid. Deputies Milena Mayorga and Felissa Cristales, both elected by ARENA but folded in the Bukele government, were in the Blue Chamber and at that moment condemned the taking, but then abandoned their words and stood in defense of the Executive.
Mayorga even said, a few days ago, in a virtual forum, that 9F did not subvert democracy in El Salvador.
Drastic “mental change”
Guadalupe Vásquez and GANA are loyal fans of President Bukele. In fact, they are partisans, because the president won the 2019 elections with that party flag.
The sentences with which 9F will be remembered
The day the president led the army to the legislative chamber, hours after intimidating the opposition with the police, he saw the serious events and interpreted them as a “coup d’etat”, but a year later he believed the exact opposite.
This militarization was accompanied by heated speeches by the president, such as when he said that “now it is very clear who controls the situation”, while there was a military siege in Congress and snipers in the surrounding buildings.
But for Vásquez, “it’s an action that people came for, the president didn’t come alone, people came with the president and they wanted to talk to the deputies.”
He speaks, but with rifles in his hands. Something that the president himself acknowledged, in a conversation with rapper Residente in March 2020, as pressure on deputies. The artist disapproved of these actions despite Bukele’s attempts to juggle excuses.
9F: A year with democracy under fire
Faced with this instrumentalization of the security forces, the Constitutional Chamber issued a precautionary measure in which it ordered Bukele not to abuse the police and the army.
However, for the rest of 2020, these armed forces folded at the behest of the president, even though his orders were illegal. In the pandemic, for example, he called on them to capture alleged home quarantine offenders without a law to support it.
“A match of convenience”
Analysts and MPs believe that the expressions of the head of GANA, Guadalupe Vásquez, show that this party shows more loyalty to the president as a person than to the Constitution, presumably motivated by obtaining electoral revenue through Bukele and favors from the Executive.
“It simply came to our notice then. They always knew what it was all about. The situation shows the incoherence and the disloyalty not only towards the population, but towards the Constitution itself, because they are called to respect the Constitution, but to give loyalty to a person “, explained the criminal lawyer Marcela Galeas.
“The way to prevent the repetition of 9F is to fight impunity,” MPs say
For lawyer Ruth Eleonora López, situations such as the vision with Vásquez in the 9F documentary published by El Diario de Hoy and Factum Magazine show how parties that have an alliance with the Executive try to minimize the negative acts committed by the current government.
“It seems so spontaneous and natural to me (Vásquez’s expression) that it is obvious what they thought and expressed, not only him, but all those who were there. It also shows an expression of concern about what is happening, “said López.
For opposition MPs, GANA has always been clear that 9F was a coup. “What is happening is that GANA is a party of convenience and black business, they do not care to hide the truth, but the funding and favors of the government, because it is a party that has no ideology or principles,” said René Portillo Cuadra, deputy of the ARENA.
PDC MP Rodolfo Parker strongly states that what happened on 9F cannot be hidden. “These are facts that cannot be hidden, minimized or qualified. Bread, bread; and the wine came, it was a coup d’etat, short-lived and therefore failed, but a coup d’etat! “