A Little Salvadoran History and Current Salvadoran Politics

In 1979, five Communist leaders from El Salvador flew in secret to Fidel Castro's Cuba, where they sat down in olive combat fatigues to negotiate the formation of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a paramilitary organisation dedicated to overthrowing the military junta in their homeland.

Little did the idealistic rebels realise, as they smoked cigars and performed perfunctory salutes, that they were pushing the button on a bloody civil war that would last 13 years, kill 75,000, including 35,000 civilians, and spawn a succession of atrocities, on both sides, that were unprecedented even by the standards of Latin America's murderous history.

Today, watching members of the same FMLN, which has now renounced the gun and become El Salvador's second biggest political party, gather beneath a tattered portrait of Che Guevara in the party's regional headquarters in the small town of Usulutan, two hours' drive east of San Salvador, you could be forgiven for wondering if the Cold War ever actually ended.

They wear red T-shirts and call each other "comrade". Some discuss land reform; others talk re-distribution of wealth. Many sport "Che Vive!" bracelets and Guevara-style berets. Most members of the party's regional council are veterans of the armed struggle who can still, if they so desire, insist on being addressed as "Commandant".

Yet these radicals are on the brink of power. Next month El Salvador goes to the polls to elect a new parliament. Two months later, it will elect a new president. Every indication is that El Frente (the Front), as the FMLN is widely known, will achieve the first victory in its history, propelling its charismatic candidate Mauricio Funes, a 49-year-old television presenter, into the presidential palace in San Salvador.

Recent polls put Mr Funes between 6 and 15 points clear of his rival Rodrigo Avila, an uninspiring former police chief representing the Arena party. Voters seem hungry for change, and after two decades of economic liberalisation, are swinging en masse behind Mr Funes.
On the face of it, an FMLN victory would represent the stuff of nightmares for the US: it would be yet another socialist triumph in a region that has in recent years seen the election of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, and Bolivia's Evo Morales.

But Mauricio Funes doesn't sit neatly in the category of left-wing firebrand. A Hispanic version of David Frost, he hosts a long-running morning chat show, and came to politics after growing increasingly critical of Arena, a party that was formed by army generals during the civil war, and has been in power since El Salvador's peace accords were signed in 1992. Mr Funes only joined the FMLN a few months ago, just before his presidential bid was announced. He preaches pragmatic democracy and responsible capitalism, and stands out at the party's campaign rallies like a sore thumb, in a well-cut suit and tie that provides a stark contrast to the Soviet-era combat uniforms that every other FMLN leader in history has chosen.

Crucially, unlike all of his predecessors, the Funes CV is untarnished by Communism. He never fought in the guerrilla war, but instead styles himself a creature of the centre-left with an Obama-style campaign slogan: "Nace la Esperanza, Viene el Cambio!" (Hope is born. Change is coming!)

El Salvador certainly needs change. A small, but crowded nation, it feels hopelessly divided. The capital, full of neon lights and small skyscrapers, resembles any other prosperous city where international corporations employ a growing middle class. But a short drive into the country, most rural communities are hopelessly impoverished, with millions living in mud shacks, down potholed dirt tracks, on a few dollars a day.

Mr Funes can take the rural poor's support for granted, but he is hoping to ride to power on the coat-tails of El Salvador's middle class. By pulling the FMLN subtly rightwards, and toning down the communist rhetoric, he seems to be succeeding.

Today, the party's distinctive red flag dominates the skyline above gritty urban barrios and rural towns, just as it always has done. But it also flutters in prosperous districts of San Salvador, where affluent professionals have been comforted by Mr Funes's promise to heal social divides that have led to rampant crime.

Aristides Valencia, the FMLN's regional leader in Usulutan, sums up the party's potential divide well. A former guerrilla leader, he has reluctantly decided to swap military fatigues for chinos and T-shirts for the duration of the campaign. But his rhetoric harks back to the old era. He explains that his priorities, should he be elected to office next month, as making sure that a constitutional amendment saying that no Salvadoran may own more than 245 hectares of land is rigidly enforced.

He promises to make sure that local peasant farmers, who produce the coffee and sugar that (aside from manual labour) make up the nation's biggest exports, are allowed to register legal claims to ownership of the fields where they work.

"The armed struggle is in the past, though," he adds. "The concept of Communism versus socialism, versus capitalism, belongs to another era. In a real democracy, in the democracy we are fighting to create, many points of view can be held together. People change, parties change."
El Salvador: Facts and figures

*One of Central America's smallest and most densely populated countries, with close to 7 million inhabitants, although 2 million Salvadorans live abroad.

*El Salvador's rich, volcanic soil is highly fertile, but a few rich landowners control a peasant population.

*The civil war, which ended in 1992, killed 70,000 people. Many citizens fled to the US.

*The capital, San Salvador, is infamous for its gang violence, with one of the highest murder
rates in the world. The two major gangs are Mara 18 and Mara Salvatrucha.

*El Salvador lies on a geological faultline which makes it vulnerable to earthquakes and volcanic activity. An earthquake in 2001 caused landslides, killing more than 800 people and damaging 130,000 homes.

*El Salvador, Spanish for "the saviour", dropped its own currency, the colon, in 2001 for the US dollar.

Local volunteers to observe elections in El Salvador

With the fear that it is a stolen election filled with decite and lies at least there are some people willing to stick there necks out to focus on what they can to make sure that the elections in there localities are fair to the best of there knowledge..

A small group of Halifax volunteers are heading to El Salvador next month to help observe the municipal elections. They will return for the presidential elections next March.

The Halifax Observers Project: El Salvador (HOPES) feels that being part of an international presence will help ensure that the country’s elections remain democratic.

Dr. Timothy Bood is one of six volunteers headed to San Salvador, the capital city, in January. HOPES was invited to observe the elections by the popular FMLN party. Bood says many Salvadorians see the coming elections as an opportunity for change.

“There’s a good chance that there’ll be a real choice for the people of El Salvador and a party that is very much interested in improving the health care — dedicated to the welfare of the people who are living in poverty — has a chance to win,” Bood said. “But there’s also a great fear that the election will be stolen.”

El Salvador has only been a democratic country since a 1992 peace accord ended a civil war that killed 90,000 people over 12 years. Around 80 per cent of these were civilian deaths.

El Salvador’s New Left

Has the new revolution finally come to el salvador with away to continue the support for the governemtn and work for the people at the same time. To change current policys towards a better el salvador for everyone.. ?

Ex-combatant communities: the FMLN’s voto duro

One voting bloc that doesn't want El Salvador's FMLN party to become political pragmatists is the ex-combatant community that spent much of the war in exile.

This group—the party's base—is known as the "voto duro" (or hard vote), and they received appropriated land from the government after the 1992 peace accords. For its members, a victory by the FMLN would help heal wounds inflicted by government repression, burned villages, and murdered family members. It would also mandate a path toward socialism.
The community of Ciudad Romero—in the Bajo Lempa region of Usulután province, where the Rio Lempa empties into the Pacific Ocean—was born from the war's ashes. It was named after El Salvador's martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a military assassin on March 24, 1980, for condemning the government's repression of the peasantry.

"Romero denounced everything we wanted to denounce but couldn't," says José Nohé Reyes Granados, 30, who is writing a book about his community's journey. "He was the voice for those without a voice. ... When they killed him, we realized that talking was futile. They killed the archbishop ... who could speak now? The only path was armed resistance."

Two months later, the military attacked the village where Reyes and his family lived in La Union—a province in eastern El Salvador—because many in the community were suspected of being active in the guerrilla movement. Some 600 villagers fled across the Lempa River to neighboring Honduras—under the cover of night because an equally repressive Honduran military was guarding the border.

The Organization of American States learned of the refugees' plight and gave them food and shelter for six months in Honduras, until the Panamanian government agreed to shelter them—under the condition that the Salvadorans would help clear roads through the thick jungle, from Panama City to the Atlantic Ocean.

But when Panama's leftist President Omar Torrijos was assassinated a year later, the Salvadorans found themselves politically isolated. They built a village deep in the jungle that they named Ciudad Romero, or Romero City. There, community members built homes and a church, in which they painted a mural of their beloved archbishop. They were able to pick up a radio signal from the FMLN rebels, which allowed them to follow events back home, as they lived in exile for a decade.

In November 1989, the FMLN launched a successful offensive in both San Salvador and in the countryside, proving to the military regime that it had the popular support to continue its resistance indefinitely. The offensive, coupled with the military's massacre of six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America, forced the government to negotiate with the FMLN.
The refugees took down the church wall, piece-by-piece, and returned to El Salvador with the mural in tow. The government granted land in Bajo Lempa to the approximately 220 families that represented Ciudad Romero, and there they arrived in March 1991 to build another community from scratch.

Approximately 1,000 people live today in Ciudad Romero, which operates under the umbrella of the Associacion Mangle, a nonprofit rural development organization that works with 70 communities to facilitate public projects, such as building homes or protecting the nearby endangered mangrove forests. The association also operates Radio Mangle, a radio station in nearby San Nicolas that broadcasts music, news and cultural programming.

Other communities in the Associacion Mangle share similarly dramatic war stories. The residents of San Hilario and Amando Lopez were originally from Morazán and La Union, provinces in eastern El Salvador where the guerrilla was based, because of their remoteness and access to the Honduran and Nicaraguan borders. Most joined the rebels or were active in the resistance. Like Ciudad Romero, many had to leave the country when the military arrived in their villages.

San Hilario resident Arnoldo Ortiz, who joined the guerrilla at age 14 in 1980, never thought he'd survive the war—and see the other side. "The transition from armed conflict to peace has been difficult because I grew up with the war," he says. "We arrived from a process where we didn't know much about civilian life. We had no idea about houses, land or economics.
"What we learned during the war was to live together like brothers. As combatants, we shared everything to survive... whether it was a tortilla, a cookie or a cigar."

Mariela Luciña Hernandez, 45, of Amando Lopez—a community named after one of the Jesuit priests the military murdered in 1989—was a doctor with the rebels. The military captured and tortured her in 1981, and she later escaped to Nicaragua.

Today, Hernandez directs an association of community women and works with war veterans. She says the most important thing she and her compañeros learned during that time is how to organize and work together.

"We work to organize on a local level for the party, to advance the cause through the community, through Radio Mangle," she says. "If we can plant corn, and harvest all the seeds we plant, the FMLN can buy them and feed the people. The country has to change, bit by bit."
In a striking turn of the political tide, Ciudad Romero's neighbors in Nuevo Amanecer now join them in wearing the red shirts of the FMLN. The military granted land to ex-soldiers, who named their community Nuevo Amanecer ("a new dawn"), and they have remained faithful to the ARENA-government, until little by little, Reyes says, they realized that ARENA was doing little to help their community. For 20 years, they've struggled with limited water access and agricultural projects.

In the 20 years of ARENA rule, El Salvador has suffered from neoliberal economic reforms that privatized social services and destroyed jobs, primarily in the agriculture sector. Paul D. Almeida, a professor of business at Georgetown University, writes in his 2006 book, Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador, 1925-2005, that the post-war generation of Salvadoran dissidents has fought not for land or to overthrow the government, but to oppose the privatization of key human needs like healthcare, education and water access. In return for the hundreds of millions of dollars the United States sent to the Salvadoran government during the war, Washington insisted on planting the seeds to liberalize the post-war economy.

The repression has continued. In July 2007, the Salvadoran police arrested 14 rural activists in the town of Suchitoto, who were protesting water privatization. They were tried under the government’s “Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism,” which was modeled after the U.S. Patriot Act.

Julia Evelyn Martinez, a progressive economist at the University of Central America, says that the privatization of social services, El Salvador’s adoption of the U.S. dollar in 2001, and free-trade agreements — such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) — have placed the country at the mercy of foreign corporations and made it too dependent on imports.
Remittances from Salvadorans living in the United States — which represent an astounding 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product — are keeping the economy afloat, and as many as one-third of all Salvadorans live abroad.

Meanwhile, food and fuel prices have skyrocketed in El Salvador. A can of beans that cost 30 cents a couple years ago now sells for over $1. Gasoline prices topped $5 a gallon in mid-October. Those staple products cost more in El Salvador than they do in parts of the United States. An estimated 100,000 Salvadorans — approximately one out of every 60 — fell below the poverty line between September 2007 and June 2008, according to the World Food Program.

Martinez says the first thing the new government must do is to tear down all the neoliberal policies that were implemented in El Salvador since 1989. She suggests the new president and parliament put their focus on developing markets within the country: “That would stimulate businesses to produce for internal markets, and not just for certain groups of the population,” Martinez says. “Instead, all the opportunities for development are directed outside of the country, in the form of remittances, maquiladoras [that export cheap clothing] or the need for foreign investments.”

The U.N. Development Program reported recently that 62.4 percent of Salvadoran youth are underemployed — lacking work sufficient to sustain a dignified life — compared to half of the general population.

The lack of sustainable markets within El Salvador leaves many youth with two options: Scrounge up $9,000 — reportedly the going rate for a coyote to traffic a person into the United States — or join a gang.

President Bush and Tony Saca meet again

The two leaders are meeting again.. what will the accomplish or not accomplish this time around. Every time they meet there is a great initiative on the table yet nothing is ever done to promote the bettering of either country in there relationships. sorry to fume but tired of the fluff these to spew..

President Bush will welcome President Elias Antonio Saca of El Salvador to the White House on December 16, 2008. El Salvador is an important ally of the United States, and this visit underscores the deep friendship between the United States and El Salvador. The two leaders will discuss a range of issues, including their shared commitment to strengthening democracy and advancing economic development.

Remittance at risk for families back home?

El Salvador continues to struggle along with the US because recent remittance payments have dropped. This will become worry some for families here and there loved ones back home. as the recession takes a hold of Latin America as well and spreads.


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INTIPUCA, El Salvador -- For almost two generations, residents of this rural community who emigrated to the United States have sent back tens of millions of dollars to support their families and bring prosperity to their once impoverished town.

Officials of Intipucá, 120 miles east of San Salvador, were so grateful for those remittances that they built a park to honor migrants, with a statue representing the first resident to leave for the United States back in 1967.

''Remittances have transformed Intipucá,'' said Omar Chávez, a town leader and himself the beneficiary of funds sent by his brother Pedro, who has lived in Maryland since 1979. Thanks to those remittances, the Chávez family was able to cover basic needs, like food and clothing, and educate its children.

Now, the slowdown in the growth of remittances caused by the U.S. economic crisis threatens the welfare of residents of this town of 10,000 and towns throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The 2008 Inter-American Development Bank survey of remittances from the United States to Latin America shows that remittances, flat for much of last year, might even begin to fall this year.

The survey added that while the total of remittances from the United States to Latin America will probably reach overall levels comparable to those of the past two years, the number of migrants sending remittances may fall by up to 25 percent during 2008, compared with 2006.
Such a slowdown ''would negatively impact the standards of living of millions of families in the region who depend on the remittances migrants send home,'' according to IDB officials.

CLOUDY OUTLOOK

In a report on the outlook of remittance flows from 2008 to 2010, the World Bank said that remittances to Latin America will remain flat next year in the best-case scenario, but that in the worst-case scenario, they will decline to $58 billion from $61 billion.

''The crisis is now in the advanced markets, and it will have an impact in the emerging markets,'' said Massimo Cirasino, a World Bank economist.

Cirasino said that all Latin American governments should be worried about a decrease in the flow of remittances, but that countries with weak economies will be more negatively affected. ''Some countries have a certain leeway,'' he said. ''In a country like Brazil, for example, there will be pressure on politicians to activate programs'' to stimulate the economy. But, he added, ''there are other countries that don't have the financial resources.'' Those countries, Cerasino said, will have to turn to the IDB or other international institutions for help.

In El Salvador, remittances account for 18 percent of the country's gross domestic product. They are the equivalent of 126 percent of El Salvador's total exports and of 242 percent of all direct foreign investment.

Last year, $70 of every $100 of El Salvador's income from abroad came from remittances, while only $5 of every $100 came from traditional agricultural exports, such as coffee and cotton. Back in 1978, $81 of every $100 of income from abroad came from agricultural exports.

Eighty percent of the remittance revenue comes from Salvadorans in the United States. The numerous roadside billboards advertising remittance-related businesses frequently feature stars and stripes or other red, white and blue themes.

FMLN Campaign...

The campaign today officially started with the FMLN they continue to be the favorite in the polls and people seem to be responding well.. this will be a historic move for El Salvador. with most people feeling that the Arena party has let them down and that a change in govenment is badly needed. i will continue to watch another historic election not to unlike americas.

article referanced from Here "http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44738"

SAN SALVADOR, Nov 17 (IPS) - As the campaign gets underway, the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the favourite in the polls for El Salvador’s March 2009 presidential elections.

A win for the FMLN would be historical in a country traditionally governed by the right, analysts point out. Since this Central American country declared its independence from Spain in the 19th century, it has been governed by conservatives, economic liberals or military dictatorships (from 1931 to 1979). And since 1989, it has been ruled by the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). Christian Democratic and Social

Democratic parties won the presidential elections in 1972 and 1977, but the military resorted to fraud and repression of opponents, forcing many of them into exile. In 1980, civil war broke out, with the leftist FMLN guerrillas fighting government forces. The insurgent group became a political party after a peace agreement was signed in 1992.

Today, the party’s presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, is leading the polls by a margin of two to 15 percentage points over his main rival, ARENA’s Rodrigo Ávila. Although the campaign did not actually begin until Friday, Nov. 14, political scientist Napoleón Campos told IPS that the Supreme Electoral Court has allowed the parties to informally campaign for nearly two years. Under the country’s electoral laws, campaigns can only last four months in the case of presidential elections, two months in the case of parliamentary elections, and one month for municipal elections.

For the first time ever, the FMLN -- the main opposition party -- stands a real chance of winning the presidency, after four unsuccessful attempts since 1994. But despite the natural wear and tear suffered by ARENA after nearly 20 years in power, and the impact of the current international financial crisis, Campos said the scenario could change from here to Mar. 15. Local media outlets have estimated that the country’s six political parties will spend a combined total of 30 million dollars in the campaign.

The parties taking part in the elections, besides the FMLN and ARENA, are the Christian Democratic Party, the National Reconciliation Party, Democratic Change and the Democratic Revolutionary Front.

The FMLN is also ahead in the polls for the Jan. 18 legislative and municipal elections. Nelson Zárate, director of the Centre for Research on Public Opinion (CIOP), whose latest poll found that Funes is 15 points ahead of Ávila, told IPS that the leftist candidate has generated "a wave of credibility that is drawing people to vote for the FMLN" at all levels, not only in the presidential elections. Funes, a popular journalist and talk-show host, did not even actually belong to the FMLN until August, which in the view of analysts puts him in a position to draw voters who would not have cast their ballots for one of the party’s long-time leaders. The FMLN kicked off its campaign with a caravan of hundreds of cars that set out from San Salvador on Saturday with Funes at its head. T

hey were joined by more and more cars until thousands were driving from city to city around the country. The aim of the caravan, said the head of the party, Medardo González, is to awaken people’s "confidence" in the change that the FMLN proposes to bring to the country. ARENA’s campaign opened, as always, in the western city of Izalco, which is a symbol for the governing party. In 1932, an estimated 30,000 indigenous peasants were slaughtered there by the anti-communist dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who took power in a January 1931 military coup. (END/2008)