The continental repression of Central Americans: interview with Víctor Interiano
Lupita Romero interviews Víctor Interiano for Puntorojo magazine.
El Salvador has a long history of civil war but also of resistance, can you speak on this?
I feel that within the imagination of most people who are neither Salvadoran, of Salvadoran descent, or Central American, El Salvador as a nation, people, and culture is a blank book with only four bookmarks for reference: the civil war, present-day mass migration, MS-13, and pupusas.
One of the greatest misconceptions and purposeful misrepresentations that has been constructed around El Salvador (and in general, Guatemala and Honduras) is a perpetual and contradictory dichotomy of simultaneous victimhood and criminality.
In the United States we are either pitiable victims of war, political repression, or poverty as long as we remain within our lands. But the moment we migrate, we become MS-13 terrorists and invaders that merit no asylum.
What is known about Salvadoran history and culture, even among progressive or leftist circles in the U.S., is largely informed from solidarity work around the 1980s civil war and interactions (between mostly white college students) and representatives of various liberation fronts.
Today, at times, it feels like many of our friends and allies still don’t know us.
This characteristic of being unknowable is not of our choosing or making. It is an unfortunate side-effect of the willful ignorance that comes with being absorbed into and propagating the hegemonic white supremacist culture of the United States.
Which is unfortunate, because to know us is to understand that Salvadorans are born fighters. Resistance is in our blood, from the anticolonial rebellion led by Anastasio Aquino in the 19th century, to the 1932 Indigenous Uprising, to the 1944 National Strike that brought down a dictatorship; we are a people in continuous mobilization for justice.
Even as the United States spent a good chunk of the 20th century sending wave after wave of exploitative corporations, CIA coups, USAID funds meant to deter democratic movements, and military “advisors”; we responded in kind with student movements, worker strikes, radical actions, art and poetry collectives, and the Committed Generation, a collective of writers and poets that generated some of the greatest writing to come out of Central America. And all this happened before the civil war of 1979 even started.
Fuera Gringo by Víctor Interiano
How would you describe the current political situation in El Salvador?
I would consider the present situation in El Salvador quite dire. The disastrous combination of the fascist presidency of Donald Trump, and a right-wing populist government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, have laid the final bricks into what I would categorize as the ghettoization of Central America.
The closing-off of all borders between the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala; the dismantling of asylum processes in the U.S.; the exponential growth of a massive transnational security apparatus, have all made it almost impossible for Salvadorans to flee violence, poverty, and political repression. On top of that, the continued repatriation of migrants from the U.S. and Mexico back to a homeland that does not have the long-term plan, resources or the capacity to successfully re-integrate them into a functional society, is all but a guarantee that we will witness the same cycle of poverty, violence, and inequality that led up to the last civil war.
First and foremost, it needs to be stated that had the United States not intervened in El Salvador at the earliest stage in 1980, the conflict would have ended much, much earlier and in favor of the left-wing FMLN, resulting in a true Salvadoran Revolution.
Central America would have had a second leftist republic to accompany the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (which was also unfolding). But unfortunately, the U.S., unwilling to allow the further erosion of its regional hegemony, expanded its economic and military aid, extending the Salvadoran war to twelve years, at least 70,000 deaths, thousands of disappeared, and untold misery.
There is a false notion that following the 1992 Peace Accords, El Salvador somehow had the opportunity to heal and recuperate. But the sad truth is that despite 12 years of conflict against right-wing militarism, the right-wing political establishment and oligarchy remained cemented in power for another two decades. It was during this period of supposed nation-wide rebuilding and reconciliation that saw the dollarization of the Salvadoran economy and the implementation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) – both of which solely benefited American capitalists – but further impoverished the Salvadoran working class.
And to compound things further, from the late 1990s to mid-2000s, the United States arrested and repatriated thousands of members of La Mara Salvatrucha without giving Salvadoran authorities sufficient notification or the resources to reintegrate these individuals back into civil society, thereby creating the worst levels of insecurity El Salvador has ever experienced since the war.
U.S.capitalist interests have always made sure that El Salvador never has a chance to get back on its feet.
Some may argue that the left-wing FMLN as a political party had a chance to turn the country around once it held a considerable number of National Assembly seats and won the presidency in 2009.
The unfortunate reality is that it spent a decade deadlocked in a political stalemate with a right-wing that held a slight majority and used everything within its power (including a sizeable control of the media) to thwart whatever long-term plans the FMLN had for El Salvador. And as is tradition now, the Salvadoran right-wing has had, and continues to have, ample support from within the U.S. government and U.S.-based NGOs.
However, it must be acknowledged that during the decade that the FMLN held the presidency, there were also many issues, contradictions, and mistakes committed within the organization. These not only worked against the interests and reputation of the party, but also served as propagandistic fodder for the right-wing to capitalize on.
It should also be acknowledged that historically, it is unlikely for a Marxist-Leninist liberation front to leave behind its primary tool of armed struggle and successfully transition into a political party whose primary tools are now elections and negotiation within a still capitalist constitutional democracy.
This is particularly the case when “success” is contingent upon being able to navigate a system where corruption is an institutional fact. Despite a leftist rhetoric of militancy and purity politics, the FMLN operationally had to swim in the same dirty waters as everyone else.
After a decade’s worth of legislative head-butting between the FMLN and its primary right-wing opposition ARENA, and accusations of corruption on both sides, the Salvadoran press revealed that pretty much everyone had negotiated with the La Mara (including the current president, Nayib Bukele), which contributed to a hyper-polarized political climate in El Salvador.
It was also revealed that pretty much everyone had negotiated with the La Mara (including the current president, Nayib Bukele), fomented a hyper-polarized political climate in El Salvador.
This is the kind of climate which facilitated a young wealthy millennial outlyer like Nayib Bukele, who through opulent use of social media, announced himself to be a non-partisan belonging neither to the left or the right, declared that the FMLN and ARENA were both enemies of the people, and that he had been ordained by god with the Messianic task of cleaning up El Salvador.
Much of Bukele’s messianic personhood can be attributed to his meteoric rise in Salvadoran politics. The son of a wealthy business leader of Palestinian descent, Bukele began managing his first company at the age of 18, and would soon become the proprietor of Yamaha Motors of El Salvador and head of the family’s advertising company. In the early 2000s, the FMLN, in need of improving its public image, contracted the Bukele agency to handle all of the party’s future advertising.
In 2012, when Bukele was 31-years-old, he officially joined the FMLN and successfully campaigned to become the mayor of a small municipality called Nuevo Cuzcatlán. During his tenure as mayor, Bukele deployed multiple business-friendly, “urban renewal projects” including renovated parks, which garnered him immense popularity. Perhaps seeing the potential of a rising political star, the FMLN advanced Bukele in the ranks and by 2015, he had become the mayor of the nation’s capital, San Salvador – at which point there were already rumors of a potential presidential run in 2019.
Of course, given the fact that Bukele had never been a member of the FMLN, let alone originating from a working class experience, it was inevitable that irreconcilable ideological differences would emerge between Bukele and the party. In 2017, the FMLN ejected Bukele from the party on violation of ethics charges, but the damage had already been done. He had spent over a decade working with the FMLN and knew its weaknesses. As an advertising man, he knew how to magnify and broadcast those weaknesses. After attempting to create a new political party, he eventually affiliated with the conservative GANA party won the Salvadoran presidency in a landslide in February of 2019.
One year later, a new national narrative has taken hold among young Bukele followers, one where the civil war has been rendered ahistorical – as a pointless dispute between two equally reprehensible players vying for power that resulted in 70,000 deaths and the destruction of the nation.
Setting aside this ridiculous fantasy, the inconvenient truth is that despite obstacles and contradictions, during its decade in power the FMLN managed to implement numerous social programs that were of immense benefit to marginalized members of the Salvadoran population.
Among these were Ciudad Mujer, a nation-wide network of centers dedicated to the reproductive and mental health of women. Unfortunately, many of these programs were either decommissioned or scaled back within the first year of the Bukele regime.
The fact of the matter is that we as Salvadorans have to come to a sobering reality that El Salvador, like the rest of Central America, has been, and continues to be an unofficial colony and subject of U.S. imperialism. It doesn’t matter which party governs El Salvador, it has to answer to the gringos.
That being said, there is a clear distinction between a left-wing government that will try to navigate around the imposition of unfair foreign policies and unjust economic plans and try to negotiate for as many opportunities and resources for the people of El Salvador, and a right-wing boot-licking government that will simply lay out the carpet for North American interests to come and expropriate Salvadoran natural resources and cheap labor.
It has recently become very evident that the Bukele regime, despite his claims to be neither left nor right, is very much a right-wing wolf in a populist sheep coat.
¡Chinga la Migra Mexicana! by Víctor Interiano
Why are people fleeing El Salvador today?
The unfortunate narrative that we keep seeing repeated in mainstream media about El Salvador and much of Central America is that migrants are fleeing their homelands as a result of localized factors.
In other words, that poverty, inequality, lack of opportunities, and violence are all the fault of corrupt local governments that are incapable of providing for the needs of their own people.
What is completely missing from this narrative is that El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have never had the proper opportunity to develop economic independence and political stability because of continuous North American political, economic, and military interventionism that has endured for well over a century.
We have poverty and inequality because every single time we have elected a government with egalitarian promises, it gets labeled as communist by the U.S. and it subsequently gets toppled over by the CIA and replaced by a American-approved military junta.
We have diminishing land and natural resources because North American oil, mining, agricultural, and hydroelectric corporations have been expropriating our riches for decades, murdering countless indigenous activists in the process.
Our lands are drying and our ability to grow our food is disappearing because of capitalist driven climate-change, for which the global north, especially the wasteful, consumerist-centered United States is responsible.
Our people leave their homes quite simply because they are trying to survive conditions which they did not create for themselves.
Mexico has a special role in gatekeeping the entrance to the US because of the region landscape. What are the challenges Centro Americanxs face in Mexico?
Besides exhaustion, starvation, dehydration and a host of other physical ailments that can result from walking a thousand miles, there’s also the question of safety.
Migrants are especially vulnerable to the abuse and incarceration by Mexican authorities, as well as coercion and trafficking by cartels. There have been reports that a full 80% of all migrant women are sexually assaulted along the journey. And we have still never had an open conversation about the 100,000+ Central American migrants who have disappeared in Mexico over the last decade.
Here in the U.S. we focus so much of our outrage at the abuses that happen at the U.S.-Mexico border that we completely neglect how it’s ten times worse for migrants crossing through Mexico.
Víctor Interiano
What can MeXicanos (Mexican born and Xicanos) do to stand in Solidarity with Centro Americanxs?
Part of the frustration that we as Central Americans experience in trying to raise consciousness and dialogue about the Central American experience with the Mexican community is that while they are more than willing to denounce abuses committed by the U.S. government, that willingness does not usually extend towards also denouncing the Mexican government. When we bring up the atrocities happening to Central Americans, Caribbean, or African migrants in Mexico, most Mexican folks just clam up and keep silent.
At the core of the issue is that when we denounce the Mexican nation-state for its actions, Mexican folks unfortunately become defensive because they feel like they are personally being accused.
Or because of nationalist investment in Mexican identity, Mexican folks feel like they have to defend their nation from the critiques of “outsiders.” For me at least, solidarity from Mexican folks means that they have to do the internal work of coming to terms with the fact that their Mexico Lindo is doing some very terrible things to migrants, and also being able to fully critique how Mexican nationalism is presently being utilized as tool of division and oppression.
The US has spent years negotiating and finally signed the Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) on border security cooperation in Central America which directly trains and oversees border enforcement in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. Trump is imposing tariffs and taxes to the countries that do not cooperate. How do you think MeXicanos and CentroAmericanos can organize in the US to oppose it?
Within the Central American community, we need mass popular education within our own communities to build consciousness, because unfortunately, to a large sector of the population, more security and more U.S. involvement in Central American affairs are seen as a sign of progress.
And as a result of US acculturation, many Central Americans who have been living in the U.S. for decades are now victim-blaming Central American migrants for daring to leave their homelands. It’s sad to say, but over a century of domination by American marketing of whiteness has produced generations of Salvadorans who not only aspire for the comforts and privileges of first world capitalist socioeconomic mobility, but deep down yearn the very notion of becoming like the gringos.
That being said, there are also quite a few Central American-based organizations that have been working for decades to not only raise awareness, but also work on transnational projects of solidarity.
I must add that because so much of the history of Latin American migration to the U.S. has originated from Mexico, the Mexican narrative of migration has been universalized for almost all Latin American migration, particularly in the Southwest of the United States.
And so unfortunately, when it comes large-scale organizing for immigrant rights in the United States, the narrative and direction of movements is still dominated by immigrant groups who historically and culturally have only dealt with Mexican migration and have limited knowledge about the complexities of Central American migration – let alone its history.
Solidarity for us means Mexican folks stepping aside and allowing space for Central American leadership to decide and move forward with how to respond to U.S. policies that affect Central America. If a march and rally is required, we would love nothing more than to have our Mexican allies present in full support.
You’ve mentioned CISPES in the US and their recent efforts to organize, for those who don’t know, what is CISPES and what are y’all focused on right now?
CISPES, or the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, has been doing transnational solidarity work since the 1980s, at the time raising awareness about the U.S.-sponsored atrocities in Central America as well as gathering support among largely white liberals and radicals.
Presently, CISPES is one of the few openly anti-imperialist organizations that actively supports grassroots organizations, labor unions, indigenous groups, and LGBTQIA groups, among many others. The major campaign that CISPES is currently working on is against water privatization in El Salvador.
The issue of immigration has been touched in the elections, but only Bernie has a plan to address it. He’s proposed a hemispheric convening with Centro American countries to address immigration. How should it be different from the Trump’s approach today?
Any conversation or dialogue between any representative of the U.S. government and the government of Central America MUST begin by acknowledging the role that the United States has historically played in undermining the sovereignty of Central America, and its continued support for militarist regimes which has resulted in countless lost lives.
This acknowledgement must then be followed, not by the empty words of an apology, but some form of material reparation. They can’t give us back all the people we lost, but at the very least, the U.S. can offer economic aid to Central American nations – and not the kind that promotes further neoliberalization, co-dependence on foreign investment, or for state security. What our homelands need are resources for social programs, education, prison reform and abolition, and the kinds of solutions that can only be created from within. And most importantly, what we need is for the U.S. to recognize and respect the sovereignty of Central America. Respect our electoral processes, give us the tools to hold multi-national corporations accountable.
How do you think we can get this issue to be highlighted in the election?
Realistically speaking, the question of reparations and respect for Central American sovereignty are a bit of a pipe dream. But something than CAN and MUST be brought during the conversation about immigration is how U.S. foreign policies are the primary factors which lead people to leave their homes for all the reasons that have previously been enumerated here.
Lastly, who are the journalist, activists people should be following for analysis on the situation? Or any book. Resources on this issue?
- CISPES (U.S. based anti-imperialist org)
- CARECEN NY & LA (U.S. based migrant rights org)
- TPS Alliance (U.S. based migrant rights org)
- Leisy Abrego (scholar)
- Suyapa Portillo (scholar)
- María Inés Tacarena (journalist)
- Sandra Xinico Batz (Kaqchikel scholar)
- Pueblo Sin Fronteras (migrant organization)
- NACLA Report
- Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano (transnational migrant rights)
- Alianza Nacional contra la Privatización del Agua (Salvadoran water rights)
Víctor Interiano is a Los Angeles-based Salvadoran cartoonist and creator of Dichos de un bicho, a social media platform and blog that examines life as Salvadoran in the United States through an intersectional analysis on systems of power and popular culture. Thematically, Victor's artwork is both a loving affirmation of Salvadoran identity, but also a dark, sardonic, and self-deprecating journey into what it means to be a Salvadoran living in the present political environment. Victor and his work have been featured on Remezcla, Masq Magazine, The Racist Sandwich Podcast, and Feministing, Radio No Jodás Podcast, and Voyage L.A. Magazine. He routinely creates political artwork for various Central American organizations that focus on migrant rights and anti-imperialist campaigns.
Lupita Romero an undocumented Xicana of indigenous roots who resides in Queens, New York. She is a writer and self-taught mixed media artist. She works as a legal advocate for low income New Yorkers and is a proud union member with the Legal Services Staff Association.
