Manuel Alcantara*

The path of digital propaganda since Barack Obama first used it in his presidential campaign three decades ago has seen an exponential evolution both in terms of the number of cases already using it and the mechanisms of its design. There is currently no electoral process that does not apply it liberally. Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia, the three Latin American countries where elections are held in the coming weeks, are immersed in processes where calls to vote through posters and printed bulletins have already fallen behind, and which, without ceasing to exist, are catching up with claims through social media and other means. to reach potential voters online.

Furthermore, the incorporation of artificial intelligence as an effective support to the advertising strategy meant a noticeable increase in the amount of disinformation, something that was always present, but whose scope was much more limited compared to his present-day hyperrealism. On the other hand, with the ability to design “a la carte” advertising for each individual, by segmenting the electorate by interest groups that receive personalized messages, greater efficiency is achieved, because the link between supply and demand, which it mediates, is narrowed.

However, in politics in the digital age, propaganda is not just an issue that happens at election events. Little by little, it got involved in everyday actions. It is used by various public institutions to inform citizens about the progress of the measures taken, and as is known, it is used by communication offices on behalf of the owner to bombard citizens with short messages in which, in addition to informing about the steps, he in relation to his agenda takes it as a polemic with representatives of the opposition and other leaders.

In this art, the president of El Salvador is undoubtedly the most prominent actor in the region. Originally a professional publicist, already at the time when he was mayor before the 2019 presidential elections, he distinguished himself by abundant use of social networks in perfectly designed campaigns to sell the product he represents to citizens. After arriving at the presidential palace, he surrounded himself with a group of communication experts of Venezuelan origin, which he completed with a team of half a thousand activists on the payroll who are frantically working to build a public image of himself and the project he intends to deliver.

In their work, they upload on average more than a hundred videos a day. His content is very diverse and he illustrates with passionate fervor what he wants to convey. Within its scope, the star product that achieved extraordinary global resonance was photographs of half-naked gang members, with shaved heads and prominent tattoos, detained together with other persons and lined up in symmetrical rows. The scenes created by the state’s own propaganda apparatus conveyed an unusual aesthetic of evil that eventually resulted in a morbid beauty and, consequently, evoked a sense of conformity.

This peculiar trivialization of evil, contextualized as an apparent solution to the dramatic problem of violence in the country, found its counterpart in classic similar actions under Nazism or Stalinism. However, the novelty was in the direct transmission of the alleged implementation of a simple action in the code “who works, pays” which hid many other very relevant aspects, ranging from previous negotiations with ringleaders, ignorance of the legal procedure to the meaning of the rule of law, as well as concealing how scale of the problem as well as its roots.

All this does not make it strange that in different media it is repeated again and again that Nayib Bukele is not only the most famous current president of Latin America, but also the most respected. Those who repeat this nonsense over and over again do not emphasize the impact of the fact that fifty members of their communication and propaganda team work exclusively to spread their image and the supposed welfare of their government when it comes to image building. in Latin America. They do not consider the effects of simple propaganda, since it is reductionist in extremely complex matters; effective, because it emphasizes the achievement of successes that are not such and, what can be worse in the end, the consolidation of the authoritarian path of power. A model ready to be exported to other countries in the region that have been tempted by the Salvadoran fake medicine with undoubtedly disastrous results. (OR)

* Manuel Alcántara is professor emeritus at the University of Salamanca and UPB (Medellín). Latest published books (2020): “The politician’s trade” (2nd edition, Tecnos, Madrid) and co-edited with Porfirio Cardona-Restrepa “Dilemas de la representationdemocrata” (Tirant lo Blanch, Colombia).