Salvadorans reject rightist party

To mass celebrations and fireworks, Mauricio Funes, candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), declared himself the winner of the presidential elections in El Salvador on March 15.

With approximately 51 percent of the vote, Funes’ win marks the first electoral defeat of the ultraright National Republican Alliance (ARENA) in two decades. It was accomplished despite a fierce media campaign against the FMLN—with the assistance of threatening statements by members of the U.S. Congress—and suspicious activities at the polls by ARENA forces.

From 1980 to 1992, the Marxist-led guerrillas of the FMLN bravely fought against right-wing death squads that terrorized the population of El Salvador. Some 75,000 people were killed over the 12-year period, while many others bear the scars of torture at the hands of the death squads—which Washington funded to the tune of billions of dollars. A U.N.-backed truth commission reported in 1993 that 85 percent of violence complaints they heard were attributable to agents of the El Salvador state, to paramilitary groups allied to them and to death squads. (www.usip.org)

ARENA was formed in the 1980s by death-squad commander Roberto D’Aubuisson, who was responsible for the infamous assassination of well-known liberation theologist Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980.

After an agreement to stop the civil war was reached in 1992, the FMLN became an electoral party. FMLN lawmaker Orestes Ortez, who participated in celebrations in the capital city of San Salvador, told Reuters, “This victory ... has cost years of fighting, sacrifice and blood.” (March 15)

Today, El Salvador has been hit hard by the economic crisis, in large part due to the pro-U.S., neoliberal policies enacted by ARENA during its reign over the country. As living costs have soared, poverty has forced about a quarter of all Salvadorans to emigrate to the U.S., where they work, like so many other immigrants, in order to send remittances back home.

El Salvador, under ARENA rule, was also one of four Latin American countries to send troops to help the U.S. occupy Iraq, and was the last of the four to remove these troops.

In elections held on Jan. 18, the FMLN had won the mayoral races in 82 of El Salvador’s cities, as well as a majority of legislative seats in the country’s 262 municipalities and a plurality in the national legislature. (Workers World, Jan. 25)

Dirty campaign to sway vote

The most powerful media outlets in El Salvador waged a serious offensive against the FMLN in the months preceding the presidential election. The Election Observer Mission of the European Union also reported “a disproportionate disequilibrium in the amount of time or space assigned to the parties” in the majority of the news media it monitored. (New American Media, March 15)

The same media spread bogus warnings that the Obama administration would deny remittances from and legal status to Salvadorans in the U.S. if the FMLN won. Washington appeared to back these allegations when on March 11 five Republican members of Congress gave speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives repeating them. Rep. Dan Burton said, “Those monies that are coming from here to there I am confident will be cut, and I hope the people of El Salvador are aware of that because it will have a tremendous impact on individuals and their economy.”

According to the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, “The Republican’s statements were on the front pages of the widest circulating daily newspapers on the morning of Thursday, March 12, the day after the presidential and vice-presidential campaigns legally closed, leaving the FMLN unable to respond to the threats.” (CISPES e-mail, March 14)

A flood of calls from people in the U.S. on March 12 protesting this propaganda offensive resulted in the State Department issuing a neutrality statement. The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador and Rep. Howard Berman, chairperson of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, then followed with similar neutrality statements.

The government reported that as many as 40,000 Salvadorans living abroad may have traveled back to El Salvador in order to participate in the elections. (Reuters, March 15)

El Salvador joins tilt to left

With the election of Mauricio Funes and the FMLN, many hope that El Salvador will become another of a growing number of Latin American countries whose administrations are now leaning to the left politically.

President-elect Funes was a journalist who reported on the country’s 12-year war, and hosted one of the few programs that was openly critical of the government at the time. During his celebratory speech he said, “Today, the citizenship that believed in hope and defeated fear has triumphed.” (Special Broadcasting Service, March 16)

While Funes has said that he will continue relations with the U.S.—including the implementation of trade agreements—he will face a people who are struggling for an end to the corruption and poverty that ARENA’s pro-U.S. policies engendered.

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