When auto mechanic Pedro Pirir got fired from the repair shop where he’d worked for years, his reaction of outrage and shame made him want to complain to the authorities. He’d heard his colleagues discussing something about a new “democratic” era. There was a possibility of protesting injustices in these new times in which people were always talking about rights and equality, they said. For four days, Pedro Pirir tried to file his complaint at the Labor Court in Coatepeque in southwest Guatemala. He finally left, discouraged and disillusioned, convinced that democracy was basically useless. He didn’t understand why the Labor Court refused to hear his complaint. He didn’t have a lawyer. The Court claimed he couldn’t identify himself properly because he didn’t have his national identity card, which the repair shop owner had abusively kept. It didn’t matter to the court that he had been an excellent worker. It didn’t matter that his boss had never given a reason for firing him after he had served so well for so long. His voice could not be heard.

Many recent polls in Central America demonstrate that people have a basic but precise idea of democracy: they associate it with the notion of justice and equality resulting from the new existing state of lawfulness. The new citizen of Guatemala needs to know the answer to the basic question “What is democracy good for?” That’s what Pedro Pirir, and thousands of other citizens, ask when faced with situations in which basic civil and political rights are being tested.

Human rights activists and representatives of the numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating throughout the region have been actively publicizing the rights and obligations established in the new constitutions that have gone into effect in practically every Central American country. They emphasize the civil, social, and political rights of every citizen in the post-authoritarian era, especially at election time.

FREE AND CLEAN ELECTIONS

Elections are nothing new to Central America. During the 44-year dictatorship of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, there were at least eight presidential elections, none of them free or clean. In El Salvador, the military held power with direct control of the executive branch from 1932 until 1979; during this long period, many elections were held, but none of them could be considered democratic since the military never let the government out of its hands. And for a quarter of a century in Guatemala until 1985, there were periodic elections, but the military always won because most of the time the elections were fraudulent. Honduras has not been subject to as much military control, but it was only in 1980 that its traditional two-party system was reinstated. Only Costa Rica has held free and clean elections since 1948, a date considered to mark the beginning of modern democracy there.

The tradition of military-controlled and fraudulent elections has ended and the institution of competitive, free, and plural electoral processes has begun. Thus, it’s natural to assume that with this very basic change in political life, democracy has arrived. Central Americans (limiting Central America here to the experiences of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua) know from direct experience that a whole new period has opened in the national history of each country.

This is a new historical era that started in the ’80s and has continued until the present day. And the era is really distinct because of the end of civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. This peacetime environment resulting from the end of war and national reconstruction projects accompanying the Peace Accords gave important momentum to the development of democracies.

Democracy means electoral democracy: this is its basic definition. The act of electing a president and parliamentary or municipal authorities is the principal—although not the—activity of exerting citizenship. And voters can now cast their ballots in an atmosphere of relative liberty, without the fears or terrors of the authoritarian past, choosing among several parties, even though it’s a given fact that there’s not much difference between the options. But the most important thing is that people have some vague notion that those counting the votes are doing so quickly and honestly. The vote is free and elections are honest.

THE PROBLEMS OF ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY

However, electoral democracy has several problems, some of them quite serious. The experience of Pedro Pirir, who felt angry and disheartened when he could not obtain legal protection in this new climate of democracy after he lost his job, is the same as that of dozens of men and women who live in conditions of poverty. They too ask “What is democracy and what’s it good for?”

The democracy that is beginning to take hold in this time of transition in Central America adheres to a series of formalities and minimal but indispensable procedures. For example, it incorporates into the old electoral experience the novelty that there are genuinely competing parties. One now doesn’t know before an election who is going to win. That’s why people in Central America are accepting the notion that democracy is a system to choose one’s rulers freely. Candidates can win elections…but they can also lose.

However, after 18 general elections, at present only conservative parties and candidates representing big business and dominant economic sectors have won at the polls. That’s the case of the three successive victories by ARENA in El Salvador and the three defeats of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And, of course, it’s also the case of the electoral victories by a variety of rightist parties in Guatemala. Ideological pluralism doesn’t have much impact, but it does exist despite the fact that the left has not yet been able to win an electoral victory over the right in Central America. That’s why the litmus test for democracy still lies ahead.

Let’s not forget that the establishment of democracy in Central America is taking place in societies in which the majority of people live in serious poverty in a rural environment. Even more significant is the fact that very many do not even know how to read and write. That’s to say, they live in a socio-economic context in which there’s not much possibility of creating a significant middle class, which is the sociological condition of modernization that always stimulates the growth of democracy. In other words, electoral democracy is always being practiced against the grain, contradicting theory, in an adverse social milieu—where citizens are barely beginning to learn and act on their rights and where the Pedro Pirirs are an immense majority.

WHAT’S EXPECTED FROM DEMOCRACY?

When the exercise of democracy every four or five years in these countries is consumed by the red tape of legal and technical procedures to elect politicians whose faces are only known through television screens, people feel increasingly disillusioned. Why do people lose confidence in democracy and in political life? Extensive polls and research carried out in recent years point to a number of factors. First and perhaps foremost is that people have an ideal and naive vision of democracy, probably an incomplete or even false conception.

People expect democracy to supply everything they are lacking. After a long period of military dictatorships, in which nothing was done to improve the life of the majority of people, it is inevitable that the basic reasoning is that with democracy, everything is going to change. Democracy, people reason, will bring more jobs, better salaries and efficient public service, and social justice. When people vote for a candidate they don’t know or a party they have no idea about, they are making a bet for their own personal future. The Pedro Pirirs are certainly participating in politics, but it is a personalistic participation mitigated by their individual interests.

The perception that a democratic regime very easily favors economic growth fosters this individualist and extra-political notion of democracy. So does the nature of the electoral offerings, because they are filled with promises about change and offers of solutions to all the problems wearing out the common citizen. For example, former Nicaraguan president Arnoldo Alemán and the present governing party in Guatemala offered to end unemployment in the first 120 days of their government, knowing full well that the unemployment index had reached 45 percent.

Indeed, recent studies by the most well-known international financial organizations demonstrate that the field occupied by poverty in Central America has not decreased. When the hoped-for changes do not take place, and time and again, people vote for candidates who promise a lot and deliver little, the citizen response is vehement complaints and withdrawal from public participation. People stop voting and participating and become an apolitical public, an audience that feeds on finding fault with politics and rejecting politicians, who seem both distant and untrustworthy.

THE DEMOCRATIC TASKS AHEAD

Democracy, certainly, is not only an orderly procedure to elect governments. It is also a structure of rights and obligations inherent to the condition of being a citizen that can—and indeed is—useful in organizing the defense of the interests of workers to improve their labor and living conditions. And it is also a structure that makes it possible for justice in the courts, security on the streets, and confidence in the authorities.

Democracy goes beyond its electoral virtues. In order for democracy to become consolidated as a political regime, the institutions that make it up have to be buttressed. Thus, it is important to modernize the judicial system as an independent and efficient power. The worst legacy of the dictatorships in the Central American region is a weak, corrupt, and incompetent judicial branch. Justice system reform is lagging behind in many countries, particularly in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The consolidation of political parties and a national electoral tribunal is also important; political parties encourage citizen participation and the development of an independent and capable legislative branch. Political party organization is still very volatile in Guatemala, and somewhat so in Nicaragua. And Costa Rica is beginning to have problems along these lines.

A democratic regime ought to resolve the dilemma of the security forces (army, police, intelligence services), making them into technical and professional bodies under the control of civil authorities. Domestic order should be in the hands of a civilian national police force, and intelligence services should fall under civilian rather than military powers. The relations between civilian and military forces in Central America have not yet effectively found a comfortable balance; with the exception of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the military is still a powerful political actor. Security is a right and an opportunity to strengthen democracy, and yet security is still not guaranteed in Central America.

The existence of radio, television, newspapers, and magazines that are free and independent from control by the state and big business is decisive for democracy. The media can make?or not make?an extraordinary contribution to the regeneration of public life, to sparking pluralistic and tolerant debate, and can transform themselves into a force of control over the actions of the public sector. With the arrival of democracy, the media in Central America have begun to modernize and journalists are increasingly more professional. The media can provide the means for the “accountability” necessary for an effective democracy. Journalistic investigation has served over the years to carry out permanent denunciations of acts of corruption by public officials. The functions of control and monitoring of governmental actions, however, should not be carried out only by the press. The state has institutions specialized in exercising this control. The legislative branch should watch over the executive; the Constitutional Court, the Comptroller’s office, and the Attorney General for Human Rights are other examples of ongoing inspection of government actions. And, of course, there should also be horizontal control, the kind of control exerted by political parties and citizens who, as voters, vote against governments that have not carried out their duties well and in an honorable way.

Democracy in Central America still has many institutional and cultural deficiencies. It must be something more than an electoral mechanism, of course, and something more than a political regimen. Democracy is a national social condition; it is a way of organizing society. When it reaches that goal, Pedro Pirir will have less feeling of helplessness, more confidence in democracy, and will be satisfied with his right to work-place justice.