Helping democracy

More than coffee or the name-brand apparel that comes out of its free-trade zones, El Salvador’s most lucrative export is its emigrants to the United States. Hundreds of thousands Salvadorans have entered the United States in the last few years, mostly illegally, and they send back to their home country an estimated $1.7 billion annually. This made President George Bush’s decision to allow temporary visas while their country recovers from a recent series of earthquakes an important humanitarian decision. But the president can and should do more for a country Washington in the 1980s thought valuable enough to support a war over.

The president has already pledged $110 million to help a nation in which the three earthquakes and their aftershocks killed more than 1,200, injured 8,000 and left more than 1.5 million people homeless. (The money pledge, not surprisingly, is considerably less than the $6 billion spent by the United States on the war.) But he and members of Congress need to ensure the donated goes to build adequate homes and restart the local economies that were just beginning to grow after so many years of fighting.

There are reputable nongovernmental agencies and local relief organizations that can properly direct sufficient funds to rural areas. The government of El Salvador, however, is hoping to use some or most of the money to encourage not the local businesses that directly serve the people of that country but those corporations engaged in international trade, a strategy that so far has rewarded a few well-connected people in San Salvador and locked workers into below-poverty-level wages.

Next month, President Bush will attend the 34-nation Summit of the Americas in Quebec. A primary item on the agenda is the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which Latin American countries want to use to increase the flow of trade dollars. It also presents an excellent chance for the United States to strengthen democratic reforms in El Salvador by insisting that more relief money and more money generally make it to the local level to allow communities to invest in areas such as basic services, farming and education. It is the surest way of supporting stable and healthy local governments.

And it is a way to avoid calamities like the one currently visiting El Salvador. The earthquakes there were severe, but the damage – and the injury and death – could have been reduced if the country had adequate supplies to build better housing and improved infrastructure. That requires money and stability in local government. The United States is one among several nations that have supplied the first; The Bush is now in a good position to supply the second.

(Bangor-based PICA is raising money to help earthquake survivors through its Sister City Project with Carasque, El Salvador. Call 947-4203 for information.)