Yearbook 2011
El Salvador. A constitutional dispute dominated the year in El Salvador. According to Countryaah official site, President Mauricio Funes and Congress were behind a decree, issued in early June, which forced the Supreme Court to just make decisions unanimously and not by majority. In practice, it would paralyze the court’s work. The popular opinion and grassroots organizations protested loudly against what they saw as a threat to democracy in the form of pressure on the judicial power of the two other branches of power. Only when the two largest parties in Congress, the right-wing party ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista) and the left-wing party FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional), withdrew from the proposal, it fell by a vote on July 27. Both parties tried to take credit for stopping the unpopular proposal but in turn were accused of conversion under the gallows. Visit ABBREVIATIONFINDER for the acronym of SLV that stands for the country of El Salvador.
Behind President Fune’s proposal lay his endeavor to change the constitution, among other things. to allow direct re-election of a sitting president. Many drew parallels with a similar constitutional crisis that took place in neighboring Honduras and which led to a military coup there in June 2009, but developments in El Salvador became considerably calmer. Instead, the government party’s efforts during the remainder of the year focused on the constitutional reforms as such and the creation of a constitutional court.
Otherwise, the security situation was the government’s major problem during the year. Although the murder rate fell slightly from 71 per 100,000 residents in 2009 to 66 the following year, it was still highest in Central America after Honduras. The opposition party ARENA even demanded a new peace agreement because, it was claimed, organized crime was waging a war against society and the 1992 peace agreement applied to something else. President Funes, in a speech to the nation, was forced to propose new measures on June 1. forced recruitment to the army of young people at risk to prevent them from becoming trapped in youth gangs.
Literature. – The literary panorama of the El Salvador is particularly poor. Only H. Lindo (1917-1985), a prominent figure in the cultural and political world of this country, managed to overcome the forms of regionalism not only through the psychological introspection of the characters in his works, but also thanks to a peculiar manipulation linguistics already evident in the 1957 collection of short stories Guaro y champaña ; Lindo also gained some notoriety outside the country with the novels Justicia Señor Gobernador! (1960), Cada día holds on afán (1965) and with Yo soy the memory (1983). However, we must not forget the production of some authors who, oscillating between the political essay and the autobiographical tale, have contributed to strengthening a genre that has deep roots in Latin America: testimonial literature. Among the most prominent works we remember: Cenizas de Izalco, written by the poet C. Alegría (b. 1924) in collaboration with her husband DJ Flakoll and published in Spain in 1966; Pobrecito poeta que era yo… (1976), autobiographical novel by the poet and essayist R. Dalton (1933-1975). Generally, Salvadoran writers have favored the story to describe the harsh political climate of the repression; between representatives of the most important is worth quoting A. Menen desleal (pseudonym A. Menéndez Leal, n. 1931), who built, with deep sense of humor and lucid disenchantment, a remarkable originality literary language. Of his rich narrative production we remember: Cuentos breves y maravillosos (1963), Una cuerda de nylón y de oro (1969), Revolución en el país que edificó un castillo de hadas y otros cuentos maravillosos (1971), Hacer el amor en el refugio atómico (1972) and La ilustre familia Androide, also from 1972. Author of short stories is also D. Escobar Galindo (b. 1943) who achieved some success with La tregua de los dioses (1981), with some syllogs of lyrics (Estraño mundo del almanecer, 1970; Sonetos penitenciales, 1979; Después de medianoche, 1987; Oración en la guerra y otros poemas, 1989; El guerrero descalzo, 1990) and a useful index antológico de la poesía Salvador (1972; new ed., 1987). Politics, the dominant theme of Salvadoran literature, also offers the pretext for a reflection on other Central American countries, as happens in Caperucita en la zona roja (1977) by M. Argueta (b. 1935), a novel in which the consequences of the guerrilla warfare and the repression connected to it are analyzed not as an exclusive problem of the country but as a tragedy that takes place throughout Latin America. A similar socio-political commitment, stylistic originality and notable lyrical inspiration also characterize Argueta’s two subsequent novels, Un día en la vida (1980, Premio nacional El Salvador; trad. It., 1992) and Cuzcatlàn (1987).
As often happens in countries subjected to authoritarian regimes, poetry becomes the highest expression of literature. All the previous authors have linked their name to poetic elaboration. La Alegría was awarded the Casa de las Américas prize in 1978 for his collection of poems Sobrevivo, while Argueta, founder together with Dalton of the Círculo Literario Universitario, won the Rubén Darío prize in 1968 – awarded in 1965 to R. Armijo for Elegías -with the collection El costado de la luz. Dalton, who also distinguishes himself as an essayist and anthropologist, three times Central American prize for poetry, owes his fame to numerous collections, including: La ventana en el rostro (1961), El turno del ofendido (1962), Los testimonios (1964), Taberna y otros lugares (1969), Los pequeños infiernos (1970); Las historias prohibidas del Pulgarcito (1974), Poemas clandestinos (1976).
Political repression has forced the theater to clandestinity, so that the dramatic production of some importance is very modest and most of the time it is due to the authors already mentioned as poets and storytellers; among these Armijo, author of Jugando a la gallina ciega (1970), and Menén Desleal, author of Luz negra (1967).
Cinema. – The cinema of the El Salvador has never reached a full development. Since 1924, when the first feature-length feature film, Aguilas civilizadas, by A. Massi, was made, film production has always encountered considerable problems. No significant works were produced until the end of the 1950s. Only in the following decade in Salvadoran cinema, thanks also to the special jury prize obtained in Berlin by El Rostro (“The face”, 1960) by A. Cotto, the traits of a late flowering can be traced. However, most of the filmmakers of the 1960s, including Cotto, will not be able to overcome the financial difficulties encountered in making difficult and above all non-commercial films, and will end up devoting themselves to advertising cinema. Although works of some importance were produced in the 1970s (e.g. El gran comienzo, 1976, and El negro, el indio, 1977, by B. Palio; Los peces fuera del agua, 1970, by JD Calderon), it will be necessary to wait for the institution of the Cinema Institute of the El Salvador (1980) for the necessary aid to reach the cinema. The Institute has favored the financing of films that were also a testimony of popular struggles against repression, such as El Salvador, el pueblo vencera, shot collectively, which in 1981 won the international critics’ prize at the Lille festival.