The political use of religion in the discourses of the presidents of El Salvador 1989- 2014

During the electoral campaign the different political parties and their candidates try to get the support of different social groups, including the religious people. According  UCA-El Salvador (Univerdad centroamericana) in its report No 122 (IUDOP) "Survey on religion for Salvadorans” only 8% of total Salvadorans do not profess any religion (p. 16). Additionally, the survey shows that currently most of the population considered themselves Christian, the research describes that the Catholic and Evangelical Churches are the most trusted organizations in the country. In contrast, political parties and the National congress are the most questioned institutions and most of the people do not believe in their structure and functioning.

For this reason, it is easy to think that political actors consider the religion as important, that is why elements of religious language seem to appear a lot in political discourses, but it is curious that these elements still appears when the presidents are not candidates anymore and take the power. For example, the president Cristiani (1989- 1994) in his inaugural speech said: "this morning, and as a personal promise, I commit myself to God and before the people to dedicate each day of my mandate to work for democracy". Subsequently Calderon Sol (1994-199) in his first speech to the Nation said: "Our social agenda is oriented, in one way or another, to protect the Salvadoran family, because in it, we learn the most beautiful lessons of life, such as loving God, your country and your neighbor”.

On the other hand, Francisco Flores (1999-2004) also in his inaugural speech said: "We put our faith in God, whom we ask wisdom, to undertake the task entrusted to us”. Then, the president Antonio Saca (2004- 2009) said, "Today I bow my head before Almighty God to ask the gifts of the Wisdom and humility ... the best begins today to be reality”. The first president of a left party, Mauricio Funes, declares: “the only privileged ones of my administration are those that our martyred bishop, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, defined as the poorest, as the most vulnerable, as those who were excluded from economic and social development”.  Then, the following president Salvador Sanchez Ceren states: “As Mauricio (Funes) has already stated, our martyred bishop Monsignor Romero, will guide the steps of this new government as he did in the previous one”.

As it can be seen, in El Salvador the religious language has been use for all presidents since the democracy was established. Then, what is the problem of the use of religious categories in political speeches? The real issue is that the religious behavior is very difficult to know if it is authentic or not, especially in the political scenario, for that reason anybody can take advantage of the collective religious imagery to instrumentalize “the name of God” with the objective of a particular political interests unrelated to democracy and religion as other authors have described like O’Connell, D. (2012).

Starting from this point, there are other questions that can be asked to the presidents to identify if their actions are as “Christians” as their words, for example:

There was transparency in the management of state funds? It has been clear whether the funds of the State projects have reached their target? Have the political parties contributed to investigate of acts corruption? Did the privatization policies of the Public services benefits the most of population?

The answers of this questions use of the elements of the religious language seems to project that the religious and political roles do not have greater distinctions and can be confused both types of Leaderships. The goal rather than communicate a religious message seems to be the persuasion of being a sensitive leader.

For the above, should not fall into the game of editorialists or politicians who disguise with arguments Religious fears, offenses and frustrations, since the true spirit of Christianity should not be part alone Of discourse but also of practice. And as another Christian religious rhetoric put forward in Matthew 7:21 " "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

References:

 - O’Connell, D. (2012). “God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion” (Doctoral dissertation, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY).

- IUDOP. (2009). “Encuesta sobre la religión para los y las salvadoreños” Inform #122 Recovered from: http://www.uca.edu.sv/publica/iudop/Web/2009/informe122.pdf

Left and Right in Politics. Are they religious believers?

The terms Right and Left refered to political affiliations were born with the French Revolution, these positions are useful to analize the political values of the politicians and the political parties, left-wing is historically oriented to equality and right-wing is oriented to freedom, however, there are not determinants refered to the position to religion. Tipically the left-wing is recognized like atheist and the left wing as religious conservative, but the reality is that you can identify a classification that can be organized like this:

Left-wing and religion

Secular Left: The traditional left-wing has principles such as separation of church and state, an extreme position could be an atheist-state (Adam Michnik).

Religious Left: It´s an attempt to build socialism from Christianity, can be approached from different perspectives like the theology of liberation (Frederick Maurice and others)

Right-wing and Religion

Secular or lay right: This position argued in favor of a free market and no state

intervention in economic affairs, but on social issues such as gay marriage, separation of church and state, abortion, public decency laws obscenity and regulation of drugs, the secular right tends to favor deregulation of some or all of these practices, though they are not necessarily agree (Heather Mac Donald)

Religious Right: Making reference to the Christian right, it is ultra-conservative groups that link their particular interpretation of the Bible, with the conservative and neoliberal discourse of right-wing parties, they seek to apply the teachings of Christianity to politics and public policies (Jerry Falwell)

Women are like apples on trees

Women are like apples on trees, the best ones are on the top of the tree. Men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and don't want to get hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples from the ground that aren't good but easy. So, the apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality they are amazing. They must simply wait for the right man to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top becuase they value quality.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race

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These are not my own writings but are important for me for that reason I decided to post them.

Critique to the life of the typical american.

On an average day the average american stands up and accommodates his pillow that was initially used by the upper class in ancient Egyptian tombs.

He goes to the bathroom and uses a soap that is a mixture of water, oil and vegetable waxes or animal whose formula was also used by the Greeks and Romans, who had known the formula through the Gauls that used it for personal hygiene.

If he is from a more privileged class at the end of his bath then he uses an exclusive perfume fashion created by a Spanish-French designer (Paco Rabanne). After that he approaches to his car which is Toyota ( a Japanese multinational company). Then He turns on the radio and listen the new song Shakira.

He Buys a newspaper and reads the news about what's happening in the Middle East. Arriving at his office he turns on his computer with a hard drive which was made in Malaysia, the screens are from China and were assembled in Argentina.

At noon he eats a hamburger whose recipe came from the cuisine of the Mongolian and Turkish tribes, and then it was developed in Germany, he also included in his lunch french fries.

Then he returns home and turns on the TV and watches a baseball game, eventhough that sport begins in modern United states, but many of its biggest stars are from countries like Dominican Republic, Venezuela, among others.

At night he orders China food for dinner.


Before going to bed, he brushes his teeth with a brush that was developed by traders who visited China and then introduced it to Europeans. At the end of the day he thanks to his God who was preached by a Jewish man.

The world has been built with a base of knowledge and the contribution of different cultures over time, you can not disparage any culture based on nationalism .

Some people are use to look down on other people from different cultures, we must remember that we are all important and although there is a predominance of an empire right now, we also need to remember that any empire have lasted forever.

What makes the farmville,cafeworld, petville, petsociety, frontierville and cityville so popular?

What makes the farmville,cafeworld, petville, petsociety, frontierville and cityville so popular?

Any person who has Facebook is aware of the applications of the company ZYNGA.

The games are very popular and addictive on the internet, and the phenomenon can not be missed either because you play it or because you receive the notifications. The games are free, but special applications have a price.

The games seem simply funny but a lot of examples show that these games could be adictive. The games: Farmville, cafeworld, petville, petsociety, frontierville and cityville are very popular applications. The players don´t require a lot of skills or experience but the games allow the beginners to get more experience and rewards as long as the game is played (therefore attract non-traditional players).

The traditional players decide which game to buy, and the game has an initial cost and this is paid only once.

These new games are found cassually and granted the opportunity to play them for free, the games don´t require to have an special console because only require to have a computer and internet access.

Another difference with traditional games is that these new games do not have an ending, the developers constantly innovate applications look and also create different games to avoid tedium of the repetition of processes.


The games catch the eye because require a range of time for waiting results.

These new games simple and with low budget are updated constantly and require less time to be created.

The developers maintain and create new applications in different seasons depending on the situation in the real world.


The game is not played individually because include the social component. Different users invite other contacts to be neighbors of the farm and send gifts to provide more value to the application, because you can check the progress of the other the game becomes more competitive.

The industry attracts many players at first but gradually many players lose the interest, there are some others that continue playing without buying any special features.

Farmville and other applications subsist for so-called "Whales of the industry "which spend large sums of money to keep their "farms" customized, they receive more benefits by lower prices for the large amounts of money spent in the games.

The games do not end when you close the window, because the players are tied to them, this is because users keep in mind what to did and the time when they must return to the application, in some way they are controlled by the game.


These games do not require a great effort to know what is happening because the goals are clear, and the progress is happening almost mechanically, all seem happy and people feel rewarded at set times, players want simple things that they are able to do, it seems to work under the premise of a rabbit following a carrot that never will be taken.

People seem to react with scheduled rewards (Classical Conditioning Ivan Pavlov) If you do a certain thing will get some reward. That makes boring activities are most entertaining, if offered a great reward means that the activity has no value in itself.

People need rewards because they need to fill their lives with something, we are so empty that we fill our lives with happiness in virtual places where there is no poverty, no thinking required, no age, no death, no thinking is required ... This is the Happy world that Aldous Huxley wrote.

What is the economic crisis?

Because I´ve been hearing about a global economic depression, and I lacked of elements which justify the origin and development of that economic crisis I decided to investigate and write something about it. I do not pretend to be exhaustive but I felt the necessity to share my vision about my investigation. What is the meaning of word Crisis?

Part of the financial profit in a postmodern stage of capitalism, allows banks (among others individuals and corporations) to accumulate exorbitant amounts of money, In order to have more revenue the corporations started to lend that capital because they are looking to increase the amount of benefits. These loans were granted to agents of different economic conditions:

•For those who have the capacity to pay.
•For those who don´t have the capacity to pay but have properties that can be mortgaged.
•Others who can not pay their debts and do not have any type of property or possession to support its debt.

In this scenario, banks presumed to get back that amount of money borrowed (that one could be received or not), and they were waiting for that capital that according with their dispositions would continue to grow. Meanwhile, they began to make business plans with these probable amounts of money (speculative capital).

Then, the owners of speculative capital continued doing business because they were selling these promeses to be paid, in that moment speculative capital was like money and generates profits for those who sold it and for those who bought it, because this last group were waiting to have profit in the future. However, crisis occurs when banks(that had acquired large amounts of speculative capital) want their money back, and they find that not everybody had the capacity to pay.

The big companies that bought and sold speculative capitals look for state intervention to recover the amount of capital which they hoped to have. However, this intervention has not been sufficient and has generated a number of consequences:

•Layoffs and Slowdown in the economy (prices can not rise and economies can not grow)

The nation's economic system is based on loans, those with the most money- which is concentrated in a few private hands - control the global banking system and turn it into a super individual state controlled at pleasure and provide loans for profit through interest. These are (the owners of banks) who are responsible for producing the money, that money is provided to the government or the private sector and expect it to be multiplied. That debt must be paid including two components: borrowed capital and interest.

In that case, the lender has that virtual amount, and the money that is supposed to be received must come from somewhere and if it´s not paid by the debtors, then the big corporations claim that the State by taxpayers, help them to maintain financial stability.

The economic crisis has been present in different sectors of society, but the system has presented the title of crisis at this time, because it has afected the large capital (minorities) and not those who have always been in permanent crisis (majority). In other words, the nature of crisis is selective, because it depends of who is affected. Those who now make us share the crisis, are the same that defends the private character of the profits when there is sucess in the free market.

Capitalism and the Bible/ Capitalismo y la Biblia.

Adam Smith's work is the "bible"of capitalism, then we should read his ideas to better understand how the capitalist system works.

In this case, I will discuss what the Bible has to say about capitalism.

In Luke 16: 19-31 the Bible speaks about the rich glutton who ate large banquets and dropped crumbs from his table. A beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table to satisfy his hunger, and even the dogs came and licked his sores. Ladies and Gentlemen this is the overflow theory of Adam Smith...

Adam Smith in a messianic version interpreted as the messiah of the end times, He brings us the "good news " to live in a place where everyone will have what it deserves.

His followers spread the news that from today we will be like Lazarus, from under the table waiting for what the neo-liberal capitalism and give us his grace.


Life continues today counting people discriminated, excluded and slaughtered who are waiting for the crumbs of capitalism.

The holy bible has something to say about capitalism...
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La obra de Adam Smith es la "biblia" del capitalismo, por lo que conviene leer sus ideas para conocer mejor cómo funciona el sistema capitalista. En este caso lo analizaré de otra manera ya que veré que tiene que decir la Biblia verdadera acerca del capitalismo.

En Lucas 16, 19-31 la Biblia habla del rico de Epulón que comía grandes banquetes y dejaba caer de la mesa las migajas de pan que comía y un mendigo llamado Lázaro, que estaba echado a la puerta de aquel, lleno de llagas, y ansiaba saciarse de las migajas que caían de la mesa del rico; y aun los perros venían y le lamían las llagas, eso señores es la teoría del rebalse...

Adam Smith en una versión mesíanica que lo interpretó como el mesías del fin de los tiempos, nos trae la "buena noticia" de que viviremos en el lugar donde cada quien tiene lo que le corresponde.

Sus seguidores expanden la noticia que desde hoy seremos como Lázaro, desde abajo de la mesa esperando lo que el capitalismo neoliberal y nos brinde en su gracia

Continúa la historia que hasta hoy nos han contado y sigue dando discriminados, excluídos y masacrados todavía esperando a que caiga algo desde la mesa de los Ricos de Epulón modernos.

La Biblia tiene algo que decir de economía aún en la actualidad...