Castellanos Moya: "El Salvador is an authoritarian regime, like in the 1960s and 1970s."

Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya believes his country has become "an authoritarian regime" similar to that of the 1960s and 1970s, when the military ruled, as described in his latest novel , Cornamenta .
In an interview in Barcelona, the author said his country "has changed a lot" and recalled that the assassination of Monsignor Óscar Arnulfo Romero in 1980 gave rise to a civil war that ended in 1991 with an agreement between the two warring sides mediated by the UN.
That agreement allowed for "the construction of a democracy that lasted thirty years , which included the elements of a liberal democratic system, with separation of powers, alternation of power, freedom of expression, and freedom of political parties, but that lasted until 2020," he added.
In his opinion, now, with Nayib Bukele, there is "an authoritarian regime that has returned to El Salvador of the 60s and 70s , because there is no opposition, one party controls all the springs of the State, and it does so with the support of the population, because people are happy."
This positive popular response is explained, according to Castellanos Moya, because "during the 30-year period of democracy , there was a social sector that was rotting away through gangs , and the current government has put an end to crime, as a kind of exchange in which democracy was sacrificed in exchange for security."
Horacio Castellanos, a professor at the University of Iowa and a permanent resident of the United States , prefers not to discuss domestic politics out of prudence, but believes that "El Salvador has become a prison for the United States under Bukele."
File photo of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele. EFE/Rodrigo Sura
Cornamenta is the continuation of a saga of eight novels starring the Aragón family , a fictional Salvadoran family that allows them to evoke the history of their country.
On this occasion, the protagonist is Clemente Aragón , a married man with a good reputation in Salvadoran society, who founds a community of Alcoholics Anonymous, but who is "prone to adultery", and all this happens "in the 70s, at a particular political moment, with electoral fraud that prevented the opposition from governing for the first time after 40 years of military governments."
According to the author, electoral fraud spread throughout many sectors of Salvadoran society "the idea that the electoral path was not possible , and that was the start of the radicalization that led to the formation of the guerrilla and a parallel army and the civil war in 1980."
Clemente Aragón had already appeared in other novels as a supporting character . Now, the protagonist finds himself in a dangerous situation "having an affair with Blanca, the wife of a general and good friend of his, who is also the director of the police force."
Photograph of Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya. EFE/Toni Albir
Combining fictional characters with real ones offers writers many advantages : "The historical setting where the events take place is already established, so you don't have to build anything, but it gives you greater freedom when it comes to creating secondary characters."
The author doesn't know if Bukele is a symptom of the populist wave dominating the world : "I've been away from El Salvador for 27 years, and I haven't visited it for a while because it's not prudent to return to a country without constitutional guarantees, so my capacity for analysis is limited."
The writer is clear that he wouldn't use Bukele as a character in his novel . "No president has ever been a character of mine. I'm not interested in ordinary characters, and if they're mentioned, it's based on the needs of the people."
Castellanos Moya downplays the situation in his country because "Bukele is from a small and unimportant country, and what's happening in Europe, the Middle East, and what could happen in Asia is more serious . What's at risk is the future of humanity, not so much the whims of Latin American authoritarian leaders."
Clarin