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Brian Oelberg

Paper presented at

NCA 2000 Convention

Seattle, Washington

Media Policy and Elections in a Less Developed Country

This paper is an attempt to identify elements of media policy in the 1999 presidential election strategies in El Salvador.  This election was the second that has occurred since the end of the civil war there in 1992, and so is an important indicator of the potential for growth and stability that El Salvador so desperately needs.  I locate the media use in these elections as part of a trend towards the 'Americanization' of politics, political contests with increased reliance on photogenic candidates, slick media productions, and a focus on the horse-race aspects of the campaign over concrete issues.  I tried to find the roots of this change within the context of the recent history of El Salvador.  Because this is a worldwide trend and also very much tied to US and corporate influence and control, identifying how the Salvadoran state uses specific media and cultural policies to maintain itself in this situation is useful in illuminating it on a global scale.  I examine the role of the US in this hemisphere and the events that lead to civil war in El Salvador, as well as the ways media were used in the elections leading up to the most recent, because this year I believe represents a shift from a history of strong-arm tactics to a greater reliance on the use of media and media policy to determine the outcome of the elections..

  

Production of various media assume a large and crucial role in a democracy, where participation in electoral politics assumes an informed citizenry.  Without access to broad and diverse sources of information, the public is rendered ignorant of the machinations of the state and decisions are made for them, not by them.  In many of Third World nations, this access has been coopted by existing oligarchies to control public opinion and influence political events.  Herman & McChesney write that "The media...are the preeminent vehicles of communication through which the public participates in the political process, and the quality of their contribution to the public sphere is an important determinant of the quality of democracy.  If their performance is poor, people will be ignorant, isolated, and depoliticized, demagoguery will thrive, and a small elite will easily capture and maintain control over decision making on society's most important political matters."  (1997:  p. 4)  Under the glare of global media scrutiny, the state has had to increasingly rely on this leverage of the media as a means of control, as international opinion and funds have been tied together, and violent state repression is more frowned upon than previously.   What state powers have resorted to is a redefinition of what a free society entails.   Stuart Hall talks about this in the UK, noting that

"...'freedom' was redefined.  It no longer meant 'free from the tyranny of established authority'.  Instead it came to mean that opinion was regulated exclusively by the laws of the market, free competition, private ownership and profitability.  Such a market is formally 'free', in the sense that the state or the law prohibits no one from owning or publishing a newpaper and expressing views and opinions - provided they have the capital...The vast majority of people are, basically, free only to consume the opinions which others provide."  (1986:  p. 35)

Hall goes on to locate this redefinition of the freedom of expression as rising from a change in class relations, and this is only exacerbated in the less-developed nations, where class is even more rigidly defined.  Hall says that "The leading social classes and their interests had to sustain their position of dominance - yet, somehow, within a state which claimed that political power had been equalised and 'democratised.'  The question, then, was how to contain democracy..."  (1986:  p. 39)  The possibilities for the development of free societies and flourishing democracies has by necessity been constrained by these "leading social classes" through state control and by influencing cultural production in order to perform this containment.

The Sociopolitical Environment.

The freedom from Spanish colonial power in Central America had not meant freedom from the economic yoke of imperialism.  As Spain withdrew, the US moved into the void, especially after the 1846 Mexican American War and the 1898 Spanish American War that saw the US take control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Phillipines, based in the racist assumptions of "Manifest Destiny" dating back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.  By the twentieth century this version of neocolonialism was in full swing and US administrations and troops were involved in running governments and supporting dictators, with troops landing in Nicaragua in 1910 and 1912.  Pundit Walter Lippmann had this to say of Nicaragua in 1926:  "...the direction of its domestic and foreign affairs are determined not in Nicaragua but in Wall Street...We continue to think of ourselves as a kind of great, peaceful Switzerland, whereas we are in fact a great expanding world power...Our imperialism is more or less unconscious."  (in New York World, quoted in Black:  p. 42)  Panama became a virtual US colony through the construction of the canal, while Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba saw direct occupation.  In El Salvador in the first months of 1932, the US Navy sat offshore offering support while General Maximiliano Hernandez slaughtered some 30,000 laborers in order to quell the threat of union activism.   

After World War II, the US continued to interfere in the affairs of these countries, and with a special flair for supporting military dictators:  Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba. Herman and McChesney (1997) note that

"...the United States sponsored the National Security State and military governments throughout its sphere of influence, and succeeded very well, as 'between 1960 and 1969, eighteen regimes in Latin America, of which eleven held office constitutionally, were overthrown by the military.'  The United States was an active or behind-the-scenes participant in many of these transfers of power.  The new regimes invariably attacked and decimated trade unions and other social democratic forces..."  (p. 155, quoting Jan Black.) 

The US used the CIA to overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954, tried to assassinate Castro and sponsored the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, US troops invaded Dominica in 1965, and the CIA helped catch and kill Ché Guevara in Bolivia in 1968 and overthrew the Allende government in Chile in 1973.  The debacle in Vietnam and the bombing of Cambodia moved public opinion against direct US troop involvement, but after the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979, Reagan was quick to sponsor the Contra reactionaries, and El Salvador became the test-piece in his determination to stop the perceived spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere.

As the social welfare of the general population deteriorated throughout Latin America in the 1960's thanks to mono-crop export economies and import substitution, labor and students organized, as did armed revolutionary groups inspired by Castro's victory in 1959, such as the Sandinistas, or FSLN, founded in 1961.  By the dawn of the 1970's El Salvador had several armed factions operating in the countryside and trade unions and teacher organizations shook the country with nationwide strikes.  The state responded with increased repression and terror.  By 1980 the infamous squadrons of death had been organized by Roberto D'Aubuisson and others, using brutal torture techniques and leaving body parts on city streets to intimidate the union and student movements. 

The elections in 1972 resulted in fraud, with "the army suspending the count after early returns showed a likely victory by the center-left opposition." (Black, p. 126).  The 1974 and 1977 elections were also deemed suspect, and  Mike Zielinski (1995) notes that the 1994 elections were the first in recent memory without a hit list of opposition candidates.  The press was intimidated as well:  as the 1982 elections approached, "an anonymous death list was circulated with the names of thirty-five foreign journalists,"  and the bodies of four Dutch journalists were exhibited for the media, and "their corpses had been mutilated, the pants pulled down to expose their bloodied genitals." (Black, p.152)  ABC correspondent Bill Stewart was summarily executed by a National Guardsman while his camera crew taped the event in Managua, Nicaragua in 1979, and set the tone for this type of intimidation.

It is interesting that throughout this tumultuous and violent period, a parody of free elections was maintained, even in 1982 at the height of the war, as the guerrilla groups took control of half of the national territory.  George Black quotes a US State Department press officer about the 1982 elections:  "It was a public relations triumph.  It got the reporters and the Europeans off all this other shit about human rights."  (p. 124)  Public relations work for authoritarian regimes and against progressives has a long history, with former CBS executive Edmund Auster doing PR for the Batista regime in Cuba, and Edward Bernays working for United Fruit to bring down Arbenz in Guatemala, when he persuaded New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger to report on the "Soviet wedge."  Bernays organized "a series of press junkets to Guatemala" in order to sway a US public "gripped by fear of the Soviet menace" into supporting action against Arbenz.  (Black:  pp. 96-98)  However, no amount of spin control could change what had happened in Cuba and Nicaragua, and El Salvador appeared to be about to follow suit.

Media and Cultural Production in El Salvador.

Salvadoran art and literature has an extensive history dating back to the colonial period, and all of the Central American nations celebrate great authors and artists.  Sor Juana Inez de La Cruz is considered one of the great philosophers of the 17th century, and by the 19th century, flourishing intellectual circles had produced substantial bodies of work throughout the region.  Ruben Darío is considered to be the founder of the Modernist movement in the region, and perhaps the greatest Central American author.  In El Salvador, his poem Azul inspired numerous poets and authors.  Alberto Masferrer, Salarrue and others created in the smallest country in Latin America a substantial body of work.  The fate of El Salvador's poets illustrates how much changed in the period leading up to the war.  By the 1970's, El Salvador had a long history of cultural production;  artists, poets, and writers who helped define what it meant to be Salvadoreno.  A number of poets had gained international fame:  Claribel Alegría, Claudia Lars, and Hugo Lindo, Manlio Argueta, Roberto Armijo and others.  Siebenmann notes that Armijo "had to write, above all, from exile, prison, and under persecution."  (p. 143) As social pressures increased, many fled the country.  These poets became part the Generacion Comprometida, the compromised generation.  Groups like the one formed at the National University, whose members included Roque Dalton, "the best-known poet of El Salvador" (Siebenmann, p. 143) and Argueta, fell apart.  Argueta fled to Costa Rica and Dalton was killed.  Another group, La Cebolla Púrpura, has only one surviving member, David Hernandez.  In 1980, José María Cuellar and Jaime Suarez disappeared, in 1982 they were followed by Rigoberta Gongora and Alfonso Hernandez.  One poet, Seren Millares, described it this way:  "the sociopolitical scene in the country rose to a hallucinatory horror and conditioned a militant attitude in the poetry."  (in Siebenmann, p. 143, my translation.) 

To call this kind of oppression "media policy" or "cultural policy" is a stretch, since no legislative policies sanctioned this.  But in many ways these tactics were official policy, although not written into law.  The actions were performed by agents of the state. Media or cultural policy needs to be defined rather broadly to encompass techniques like death-lists and torture, but Paul DiMaggio identifies it like this:  "Cultural policies, in brief, are those that regulate what has been called the marketplace of ideas.  (I use the term 'policy' loosely to include unintended but systematic consequences of government actions as well as action towards identified ends.)"  (1983:  p.242)  DiMaggio goes on to define two types of cultural policy, direct and indirect, as the state touches on certain actors directly to produce (or not produce) cultural products, while other forms of production are influenced without direct state action.

In the media arena in El Salvador in the 1970's, the forces in power did both.  Certain media outlets were left alone, including the two principal daily newspapers and many radio stations, a form of indirect cultural policy, while the climate of fear kept the content in line with the state.  Meanwhile, the left of center media were experiencing a more direct and negative type of cultural policy.  The intellectual left in general had been intimidated, silenced, or forced to flee the country.  The most prominent leftist intellectual and poet of the 1960's, Roque Dalton, had been murdered by his own Marxist comrades in the EPR (Ejercito Popular Revolucionario, led to the present by Joaquin Villalobos) in 1975, and others like Manlio Argueta and Roberto Armijo had been forced into exile.  Lopez Vigil quotes a guerrilla radio operator: 

"The truth is that in El Salvador, at the end of the 1970's, things had been turning the color of ants.  The repression was brutal.  The written media had become useless.  If you had a flier in your bag, this could cost you your life.  Was it worth it, then, to give fliers to people?  The possibilities of written diffusion of revolutionary ideas had become very risky for the sender and for the receiver also.  Maybe because of this, because the voice couldn't be requisited, the project of putting together a radio station was born. There was no space left.  The newspapers of the left had been closed.  La Cronica del Pueblo, El Independiente, had been dynamited.  They also began to dynamite the radio station of Monsenor Romero.  Journalists threatened, assassinated, martial law, nobody could inform anyone."(1999:  p. 13)

Under these conditions, then, a media policy of sorts emerged.  Broadcasters and newspapers sanctioned by the state continued to operate with limits on their autonomy, basically repeating the dictates of the military and their US advisors.  The opposition was forced underground.  The right had increased its use of terror and this was to push the country into open civil war.  Black says that "the entire leadership of the leftist alliance had been abducted and killed in November, 1980."  (p. 151)  On January 22, 1980, some 300,000 students, women, and workers marched on the Palacio Nacional in San Salvador, and were fired upon from the roof of that building, leaving hundreds dead.  The Archbishop of El Salvador, Monsenor Romero, had been delivering daily homilies in support of the masses since 1977, and had become known as "the voice of those with no voice."  The Catholic radio station, YSAX,  had been threatened and was dynamited on the 18th of January, but returned to the air on March 23.  The next day, D'Aubuisson ordered the execution of Monsenor Romero, and he was shot through the heart while he delivered mass in a cancer hospital.  (Lopez Vigil, p. 30)  The guerrilla movement had begun using radio in the mid-seventies, and on November 2, 1975, took over 19 radio stations simultaneously, accompanied by propaganda bombs which showered leaflets and political graffiti telling people to tune in.  Graffitti played a large roll in the propaganda efforts of the guerrilla movement, providing a space for expression and information when all others had been closed.  After YSAX was dynamited and Romero assassinated, the underground was the only space left for the voices in opposition to the military.  Beginning in 1980, the war escalated, as the various guerrilla groups formed a united front, the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional.)  The guerrilla movements created mouthpieces through guerrilla radio stations, and the Radio Farabundo Martí and Radio Venceremos began operating clandestinely, in Morazan and Chalatenango respectively.  These stations were not the first stations used by liberation movements:  Radio Algeria operated in Algeria in the 1950's, Radio Rebelde from Cuba and Radio Sandino in Nicaragua supported the movements in those countries.  (from Arreaza)  In El Salvador, the clandestine radio stations were to provide a voice for the guerrilla movements during a decade of civil war, and Dra. Arreaza (1995) locates a dual function in this:  they provided news and propaganda of the successes of the guerrilla movement, and they acted as a counterpoint to the official government propaganda, balancing the news for both the population of El Salvador, and for the international news sources as well.  Radio played this crucial role because, as mentioned above, the press was able to be effectively silenced or coopted and television was generally available only to the upper classes.  The masses used radio as their main source of information across the country.

The guerrilla movement, the FMLN, had come close to winning the war by 1983, but Reagan had decided to draw the line against communism and began subsidizing the war, sending in Green Beret advisors, and equipping the Salvadoran armed forces.  The School of the Americas trained some of the perpetrators of the most brutal crimes during the war, such as the massacre at El Mozote that left more than one thousand peasants dead, and a CIA/Contra torture manual caused an uproar in the US press when it surfaced.  Similar atrocities characterized what became a 'low-intensity conflict' and the army employed helicopter warfare that effectively pushed the guerrillas into a stalemate of attrition that dragged on into the 1990's.  The early attempts by the guerrillas at creating sustainable communities in their areas of control became impossible with helicopter warfare where no place in the country was more than forty-five minutes from the capitol.  The guerrillas turned to tactics of sabotage and destroyed major parts of the country's infrastructure, including the railroad and the main bridge linking the two halves of the country, and successfully enforced periodic highway closures.  The military and the right responded with more torture and terror:  in 1989, six Jesuit priests and two women, including philosopher Ignacio Ellacuria, were murdered on the lawn of the Universidad CentroAmericana.  Trade came to a standstill, capital fled the country by the millions of dollars, and the populace was caught between these opposing forces.  It is estimated that more than a million Salvadorans fled the country in a war that left as many as 100,000 dead and cost the US $6 billion dollars.  But in 1992, peace accords were signed in Mexico, the FMLN was allowed access to the political process as a party, and 1994 saw a new attempt at free elections.

The 1994 and 1999 Presidential Elections.

The 1994 elections were hailed as a triumph by the US media, (as the 1982 elections had been.)  However, Mike Zielinski noted a number of problems:  63% of the population abstained in 1988, and that number went down to 57% in 1994, (compared with about 70% in previous elections,) but he writes of a "preelection strategy of intimidating voters...a pattern of intimidation and exclusion"  accomplished through an "endurance test" in registering to vote and a complex and bureaucratic electoral system that was able to disenfranchise 300,000 voters, 10-15% of the electorate.  He reports that UN documents show the deaths of 15 candidates and campaign workers since 1992, and 32 FMLN members assassinated.  Army helicopters hovered over voting precincts in former rebel areas, and the computer center used to count the votes was closed to the opposition on the eve of the election, which Zielinski notes was the same technique used by the PRI to elect Salinas Gortari in Mexico.  These tactics constitute what he calls "technical fraud" and while the US and UN voiced approval of this "election of the century" the magazine El Proceso, published by the country's most prestigious university, the UCA,(Universidad CentroAmericana) called it the "fiasco of the century."  The elections led to a runoff between Rubén Zamora representing the FMLN and Armando Calderon Sol, crony of D'Aubuisson and founder of the ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista) party, who would go on to win the election, replacing Alfredo Christiani, also from ARENA.

The former guerrilla group, the FMLN, had failed to win the presidency but managed strong showings at both the federal and local level, winning several key mayoral positions.  The president is elected every five years in El Salvador, with no president allowed to serve more than one term, and so the 1999 elections were a new chance for the FMLN to take the presidency, but the seven years since the peace accords had seen various problems.  The party was split between the "orthodox" hardliners who continued to support their wartime constituency of peasants and labor, and the social democrats like Joaquín Villalobos, who embraced the business sector in an attempt to broaden their support.  The guerrilla radio stations had been legalized in 1992, and had gone commercial and at this point were just two among many broadcasting bland pop and news shows. 

The media in El Salvador had expanded considerably in the post-war period.  168 radio stations were operating, including the two mentioned above, as well as two government stations.  Twelve commercial television stations and one run by the government were operating with a much broader audience than during the war.  Two morning dailies, La Prensa Grafica and El Diario de Hoy and one afternoon paper, El Latino, are widely available.  Both of the morning papers maintain websites, but access is limited to the elites for the most part, with computer time running five US dollars an hour, a day's work at the minimum wage in El Salvador.  On television, several news programs covered national news:  El Noticiero on Channel 12; Channels 2, 4, and 6 each had their nightly news, although operated by a single corporation, Televisores Salvadorenos; and for the elections, Channel 33 came alive out of the ether to broadcast coverage of the elections.  While radio and newspapers received a great deal of advertising, I will focus mostly on the use of television in the elections.  El Salvador has an illiteracy rate of around 25%, with estimates of functional illiteracy approaching twice that, so all of these media except radio reach somewhat limited audiences, however, television now reaches a substantial number of households.. 

The political scene as the election approached consisted of five principal parties, as well as several more marginal ones that disappeared after the elections, failing to gain the 3% required to remain as parties.  The most obvious contest was between ARENA and the FMLN, followed by Rubén Zamora, running for a new party, the CDU, the Central Democratic Union.  These three leaders were followed by the PCN, Party of National Conciliation, founded in the 1960's by the military, and the PDC, Christian Democratic Party.  Behind these came LIDER, PUNTO, and the PDU, all of which failed to gain the 3% and will disappear.

The iconography of the elections was interesting, as parties relied heavily on "Pinta y Pega" (paint and glue) for free advertising on virtually all walls, roadsides, rocks, and buildings.  ARENA uses the colors red, white, and blue, befitting its ties with the US and the Harvard education of its young, Clintonesque candidate, Francisco Flores.  (his wife could also be described as very 'Hillaryesque', with a similar blonde haircut.)  The FMLN continues to use the color red, with all its associations, and their rallies were easy to identify by the red flags, hats, and bandanas.  On election day, buses around the country flew flags, generally of one of these two main parties.  Ruben Zamora's CDU used yellow, making their headquarters easy to identify, but they lacked broad popular support.  The PDC chose green, and used the Christian fish to identify itself with the growing Evangelical community in this mostly Catholic country.  Both the FMLN and ARENA identified themselves with change:  the FMLN's slogan was "Somos El Cambio" (we are the change,) while ARENA heralded a "Nueva Forma de Hacer Politica" (A new form of politics) despite the fact that they have ruled the country since Georgetown-educated Alfredo Christiani took over.  Former president Jose Napoleon Duarte was educated at Notre Dame, and the US educations of the most prominent leaders speaks to the broader ties between the elite, the government, and the United States. 

Television advertising was used most heavily by ARENA, which produced literally dozens of frequent ads, including one which featured a child singing a countdown to the elections every day during the last ten days.  The ARENA commercial spots had by far the highest production values, showing telegenic candidate Francisco Flores in hazy, feel-good auras, associating with farmworkers, laborers, campesinos, and workers (he probably met them while at Harvard,) and walking with his nuclear family.  The ARENA publicity team was also highly flexible, and produced responsive ads within hours of changing events.  A prime example of this was when the main parties decided to hold a televised debate, and Flores refused to participate, citing prior engagements.  Meanwhile, his press team developed ads to counter this absence.  The debate went on without him, but during the live event, ARENA ran their own ads, and organized a type of debate for Flores alone, with "canned" questions asked by a variety of people:  women, campesinos, businessmen, and athletes.  ARENA was able to effectively react to the debate and portray their candidate as a participant in the dialogue through their efficient media manipulation and huge advertising budget.

The other parties used television as well, just not as effectively.  The FMLN had three or four decent ads, relying on the name recognition of their two candidates, Facundo Guardado and Nidia Diaz, both ex-guerrilla commanders.  Diaz has been prominent on the left since the student strikes of the early 70's and was captured during the war by a Green Beret advisor.  Her release came seven months later through a prisoner exchange for the captured daughter of then-president Jose Napoleon Duarte, Inez.  Her book, Nunca Estuve Sola (I Was Never Alone) helped to propagandize the resistance effort.  She was nearly the victim of an assassination attempt leading up to the 1994 elections, and has held a seat in the legislative assembly since that time.  Rubén Zamora, arguably the most prominent leftist remaining in centrist politics, ran a single, poorly produced ad, apparently hoping to rely on his name recognition.  The ad showed him from a high camera angle which made him look diminutive and highlighted his baldness, and his appeal to a centrist union fell on deaf ears.  The PDC, which ruled El Salvador for most of the 1980's, fronted candidate Rudolfo Parker and ran ads showing him with his family, emphasizing his virtue and family values, but again they were not particularly effective, although he did beat out the PCN, who ran few TV ads and relied mostly on the newspapers.  The most annoying ad of the campaign belonged to the LIDER party, whose emblem is a rooster crowing.  Their ad was a bouncy clown speaking to a group of children, and ended with a shrill child's voice commanding people to vote.

As the election day of March 7 approached, all of the parties held rallies around the country, but ARENA and the FMLN especially worked the crowds, with meetings in all the major cities.  This wasn't that remarkable, since the country is only the size of Massachusetts, but what was remarkable was the amount of free stuff given away, especially by ARENA.  Thousands of free hats, t-shirts, cups, pins, pens, flags and banners were given away, and this actually led to a scandal when the head of ARENA's delegation in the legislative assembly delivered 25,000 shirts to the head of APROAS, the agricultural producer's association.  The scandal came about when APROAS charged ARENA with utilizing funds destined for victims of Hurricane Mitch to buy votes, giving some $1.15 million dollars, in addition to the t-shirts, to APROAS in February, just two weeks before the election.  According to El Salvador Watch, "APROAS asserted that the funds were given under the conditions that 1) APROAS tone down its campaign of protest against the ARENA government so close to the March 7 election, and 2) the 5,000 recipients of the money vote for the ARENA candidate, Francisco Flores, and that APROAS encourage its 40,000 other members to vote for Flores too."  (El Salvador Watch, Sept. 1999) 

The campaign officially came to close on March 4, leaving three days before the election with an official ban on advertising.  ARENA had held its final meeting the Sunday before, in a giant congregation in Parque Libertad in San Salvador, a made-for-TV event with bussed-in marchers converging on the park from the four corners of the city, covered with ARENA t-shirts, with ARENA hats and flags.  The Sunday afternoon event captured headlines of both newspapers and the nightly TV broadcasts.  Three jets zoomed across the city and a helicopter "captured images for the last 'spots' of the campaign."  (La Prensa Grafica, 3-1-99)  Channel 33 broadcast the entire event live, and the event began with the "nice" official ARENA dancers, after which former president Christiani spoke, concluding by saying "To all the beautiful ladies, don't kiss your boyfriend if he hasn't voted."  (ibid.)  Mariachis played, as did a rap singer, and an MC later led the crowd in a rousing chant of "Patria si, Communismo, no" (Country, yes, communism, no.)  The afternoon-long event was able to successfully dominate all forms of media on that critical Sunday, one week before the election.

The next Sunday, the voting took place without any major incidents.  The polling places were televised both from the air and at the sites, and what was most noticeable was a general emptiness.  The "technical fraud" was for the most part absent, with indelible die marking the fingers of those who had voted and the counting of votes done by observers from both parties as well as international NGO's.  The 8,132 voting places were watched by some 114,000 members of the various parties, with ARENA bringing in more than half that number, 60,000, all receiving free lunches, while 32,000 FMLN members also participated, and 22,000 from the PDC.  (La Prensa Grafica, 3-5-99)  La Prensa Grafica reported that the big winner was the no-vote, with the abstention of 40% of eligible voters.  (3-8-99)  ARENA was able to narrowly get the 50% needed to avoid a runoff with the second place FMLN, with 51.9%, followed by the FMLN with 29%, while Zamora and the CDU took 7.4%, the PDC got 5.7%, and the PCN received 3.8%.  LIDER and PUNTO received 1.6% and 0.4% respectively.  (from www.Cispes.org)  CISPES (The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) identified the FMLN's defeat as coming from a united right wing, saying that

"ARENA used its top down decision making and powerful promotion machine to mount a smooth campaign, long before the official campaign period.  ARENA spent so much money in election advertising that the party has refused to release figures, because, according to its own spokespeople, the amounts would be considered scandalous by many Salvadorans.  As the governing party, ARENA was also able to tap into state resources for campaign purposes.  Most egregious was its manipulation of international relief intended for victims of Hurricane Mitch to promote itself during the elections." (www.cispes.org/fmln)

CISPES attributed the FMLN's defeat to a number of reasons, but primarily "ARENA's overwhelming monetary advantage, including the use of state resources for their campaign...  ARENA resorted to old-fashioned fraud this year too.  The mayors of Villa Dolores and Jutiapa in the department of Cabanas were arrested by National Civil Police and charged with buying votes.  The Mission of International Observers also denounced examples of ballots not being counted, and a threat made against one of its members as she tried to investigate reports of vote-buying by ARENA."(www.cispes.org/fmln)

However, for the most part the campaign was peaceful and not fraudulent.  ARENA won, fair and square.  The use of media by the campaign thus constitutes the key to their success, and is emblematic of a trend in elections in the United States that began with Kennedy:  smooth, handsome candidates, an able group of handlers and media experts able to effect spin control as the campaign progresses, slick promotions, and lots of propaganda to establish a simplistic image for the party and candidate.  Francisco Flores provided the handsome face, and Rev. Jose Maria Tojeira, the Rector of the UCA, asked "Is this a transformation or is he a professional at the service of millionaires?"  (www.cispes.org/fmln)  Immediately after the elections, "Flores paid tribute to El Salvador's most notorious death squad leader:  'Let's remember the values of our founder.  Let's remember Roberto D'Aubuisson."  (ibid.)  A week later, President Clinton arrived to congratulate Flores and to put the US seal of approval on the election.  ARENA and its constituents seem to have found more subtle ways of influencing elections than dismembering the opposition with chainsaws and leaving them in the streets.  The blowtorch, D'Aubuisson's nickname, has been replaced by PR, as a means of preventing the political, economic and social change that could alleviate the poverty of most of the Salvadoran population.

Conclusion.

Media policy in the third world is mostly informal, except where media outlets are still controlled by the state.  Privatization in the media industries has led to increasingly foreign ownership which means that domestic elites must work in concert with international corporations to have their voices heard.  Herman & McChesney find that "For smaller and less economically developed countries, there is a further force of economies of scale and technical and promotional sophistication that greatly facilitates media and cultural penetration by great powers...Put otherwise, the globalizing media treat audiences as consumers, not as citizens, and they are most attentive to those with high incomes."  (p. 188) 

Policy, then, is mostly determined by the free market, which means that those with the most resources continue to be able to control what the voters see and hear.  The audiences may or may not be receptive to this manipulation, as the low voter turnout in El Salvador might suggest.  However, this change from violence and intimidation to using media policy to influence events creates a more insidious form of control than overt force and coercion, and one with far fewer political and social costs.  As the journalist increasingly becomes part of the sales and marketing effort, this manipulation is facilitated.  Croteau & Hoynes talk about the 'boundaryless' company, "...one without walls between News, Entertainment, Sales..."  (p. 41) and they note that "The process of using media to promote a political agenda is more complex than simply feeding people ideas and images that they passively accept.  Owners can use media sites to disseminate a specific position on a controversial issue or to help legitimize particular institutions or behaviors.  Just as important, owners can systematically exclude certain ideas from their media products."  (p. 43)  These 'boundaryless' corporations allow an unprecedented precision for influencing what is news, facilitating manipulation of events. The line between advertising and news becomes ambiguous.  Democracy becomes an exercise in public relations, world public opinion is sated, free elections are celebrated, and the status quo remains.  This perpetuates the inequality that led to revolution in the first place, and sets the stage for the next.  No amount of smooth ads and reassuring campaign slogans will fill the empty bellies of the third world, and neoliberal belt-tightening only exacerbates the situation.  Media policy in these countries is made by governments run by elites and by corporations.  Corporations will continue to squeeze out profits to the last drop, elites cooperate to maintain their position, and democracy loses its meaning when the voters get no real option for change.    

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arreaza-Camero, E.E.A.  1995.  Comunicacion, Derechos Humanos, y Democracia:  El Rol de Radio Venceremos en el Proceso de Democratizacion en El Salvador

1981-1994.  Paper presented at LASA 95.  www.lanic.utexas.edu/project/lasa95/arreaza1.html

Black, George.  1988.  The Good Neighbor:  How the United States Wrote the History of Central America and the Caribbean.  New York:  Pantheon.

CISPES website.  El Salvador Watch.  September, 1999.

'Scandal Envelopes President.'  www.cispes.org/eswatch.html

'The FMLN:  Elections Update.'  www.cispes.org/fmln.html

Croteau, D. & Hoynes, W.  1997.  Media/Society:  Industries, Images and Audiences.  Thousand Oaks:  Pine Forge Press.

DiMaggio, Paul.  1983.  'Cultural Policy Studies:  What They Are and Why We Need Them.'  Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society.  Vol. 13, No. 1.

Hall, Stuart.  1986.  'Popular Culture and the State.'  in Bennet, T., Mercer, C., & Woollacott, J. (eds.)  Popular Culture and Social Relations.  Milton Keynes:  Open University Press.

Herman, E.S. & McChesney, R.W.  1997.  The Global Media:  The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism.  London & Washington:  Cassell.

La Prensa Grafica Online.  www.laprensa.com.sv, archive.laprensa.com.sv

'Flores Cerro Gira con Mitin en Parque Libertad.'  March 1, 1999.

'Partidos Listos para Defender Voto.'  March 5, 1999.

Lopez Vigil, J.I.  1999.  Las Mil y Una Historias de  Radio Venceremos.  San Salvador:  UCA Editores. 

Siebenmann, G.  1997.  Poesía y Poeticas del Siglo XX en la America Hispana y el

Brasil.  Madrid:  Editorial Gredos.

Zielinski, M.  Latin America:  From Bullets to Ballots.  ZMag, May 1994.

www.zmag.org/may94zielinski.html 

Much of the information on media use came from my personal observations while living in El Salvador at the time of the elections.