Turning Left

WITH the victory of a left-wing candidate in the presidential election, El Salvador is the latest country in Latin America to be swept by the pink tide. It is counted among the staunchest allies of the United States. During most part of the 20th century, El Salvador was under brutal U.S.-backed dictatorships. Since 1989, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), a U.S.-backed party having strong links with the military and former vigilante groups, has been in power.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) began a guerilla war in the early 1980s to dislodge the military junta that was riding roughshod over the will of the people for more than five decades. The FMLN was formed after five guerilla armies merged in 1980. It signed a peace treaty in 1992, formally ending decades of fighting. It also agreed to an amnesty for the death squad killers and officials who were responsible for the death of thousands of Salvadoreans.

The FMLNs candidate, Mauricio Funes, won the presidential election held in the second week of March, defeating Rodrigo Avila, his rival from ARENA. Funes had to overcome overwhelming odds. In a society that is still polarised after decades of violence, the ARENA campaign used scare tactics to bully the electorate into submission. Funes was portrayed as a puppet of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Today, two of Americas foremost enemies, the FMLN and the Sandinistas in neighbouring Nicaragua, are in power. Salvador Sanchez Ceren, the newly elected Vice-President, was a leading FMLN commander during the civil war.

Right-wing U.S. politicians tried to lend a helping hand to the Salvadorean right wing. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican Congressman, described the FMLN as a terrorist organisation and an ally of Al Qaeda and Iran. Influential Republican Congressmen threatened to end the Temporary Protection Status that Washington has accorded to the 260,000 Salvadoreans in the U.S. who do not have proper immigration papers.

The countrys economy, which is in dire straits, depends heavily on the remittances of its citizens working in the U.S. As much as 17 per cent of the countrys gross domestic product depends on foreign remittances. It is estimated that one-fourth of the eight million people of the country is in the U.S. The government actively encouraged Salvadoreans to leave the country and seek employment outside. Citizens were issued passports within hours of applying.

Funes, who was chosen by the FMLN for his moderate image, was quick to reassure his countrymen that he accorded the highest priority to relations with the U.S. Nothing traumatising is going to happen here, he told a local television station after his victory. He also promised respect for private property, macroeconomic stability and a responsible fiscal policy. About 60 per cent of El Salvadors exports go to the U.S. and the U.S. dollar is the official currency. On the campaign trail, Funes had said that he was against joining the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the alternative trade bloc being promoted by Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

El Salvador was among the first countries to join the U.S.-promoted Central American Free Trade Association (CAFTA). A recent poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Salvadoreans hold CAFTA responsible for the collapse of their agricultural sector, the loss of domestic jobs, the rising cost of living and the growing crime graph. El Salvador is also not a member of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which strives for meaningful economic integration among the states of the region.

Funes has said that his role model is Brazils Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. At the same time, he has said that he admires other left-wing leaders in the region such as Chavez, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The Venezuelan government has been supplying highly subsidised fuel to many of the municipalities controlled by the FMLN.

It is well known that the FMLN as a party has great admiration for the socialist experiment being carried out in Venezuela under the leadership of Chavez. Though Funes has said that he has no plans to build socialism in his country, he may avail himself of the opportunity to steer El Salvador away from the embrace of the U.S. and opt for multipolarity in foreign policy.

Before plunging into the political fray, Funes was a popular broadcaster working for the Spanish language version of the CNN. One important factor for Funes moderate stance is that his party may have to depend on ARENA to conduct legislative business. El Salvador is in the throes of an economic crisis. Political cooperation between the two leading parties, the FMLN and ARENA, is needed to rescue the country from the impact of the recession. The country is witnessing an alarming drop in remittances from the U.S. Remittances are a lifeline for the large number of Salvadoreans living in extreme poverty.

The U.S. was keenly watching the FMLNs stance on regional issues, especially those pertaining to Venezuela and Cuba. It was only in the first week of March that the Barack Obama administration gave a categorical assurance that it would accept an FMLN victory. Late last year, Charles Glazer, the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador and a Bush administration appointee, described the FMLN as a supporter of terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and called on Salvadoreans to vote against the party in the general elections. He spoke in the presence of John Negroponte, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State. Glazer has since been recalled by the Obama administration.

It was only because of the intervention of the U.S. that the FMLN was kept out of power since the early 1990s. In 2004, the FMLN was deprived of a sure victory by machinations orchestrated with the help of Washington. The FMLNs goal during the days of the guerilla war was to end 50 years of rapacious rule by an elite that had turned the country into one of Latin Americas poorest and the most violent. Salvadorean society continues to be wracked by extreme violence. Ten homicides are reported every day one of the highest rates in the world.

The violence is a legacy of the brutal civil war. The U.S. aid funnelled to the Salvadorean army and the right-wing vigilante groups in the 1980s ran into millions of dollars. U.S. advisers and troops and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operators were stationed in the country to help the army suppress the people. During the course of the 12-year-long civil war, 70,000 Salvadoreans were killed and another 6,000 forcibly disappeared. Most of them were victims of right-wing vigilante groups whose leader was Major Roberto DAubisson.

The murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, while conducting an open-air mass, was a cause celebre in Latin America. Every Sunday, Romero used to conduct mass in front of the dozens of bodies found on the streets of the capital, San Salvador. Those carrying out these massacres were trained by the U.S. Special Forces and intelligence agencies.

Romero was a votary of liberation theology and was sympathetic to the FMLNs egalitarian goals. Before his killing by state-sponsored assassins, he had denounced from the pulpit the war of extermination and genocide against a defenceless civilian population.

Funes had pledged on the campaign trail that he would not repeal the amnesty law that was introduced as part of the 1992 peace pact. The law prevents the prosecution of all those involved in the killings and the torture that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the people who played an active role in the civil conflict held important posts in the outgoing government.

A United Nations-supported Truth Commission set up after the peace accord in El Salvador concluded that the order for Romeros killing and the separate killings of six Jesuit priests and four American churchwomen came from the highest echelons of the U.S.-backed government of the time. The U.S. had funnelled $6 billion at the height of the FMLN struggle to prop up the right-wing government.

According to an FMLN leader, El Salvador had become the Israel of the region. The Salvadorean elite has been showing its gratitude for all the help received. El Salvador was the only country in the region to send troops to Iraq in support of the U.S.-led invasion. Because the move has been very unpopular domestically, the government announced that it was withdrawing the last of its troops from Iraq before the presidential election.

El Salvador was also chosen by the George W. Bush administration to host the newly created International Law Enforcement Agency. This agency is said to be the replacement for the notorious School of the Americas, which trained military officers of the region in counter-insurgency and the use of dirty tricks against progressive governments and movements.

The government of El Salvador is also part of Plan Mexico a 2008 Bush administration initiative which seeks to replicate the failed multi-billion Plan Colombia, aimed at fighting narcotics smuggling and narco-terror groups.

Funes, who takes office on June 1, has a tough road ahead. He will have to run a country that has remained tied to the U.S. apron strings ever since it gained independence in the late 19th century.