El Salvador joins the left turn in Latin America

Story and photos by Theresa Wolfwood

forgive me for helping you understand
that you're not made of words alone. Roque Dalton

On March 15, 2009 in El Salvador, after a colourful and tumultuous election campaign, the FMLN, the party of resistance and socialism, formed after the 1991 Peace Accords by guerrillas who fought the USA-backed military dictatorship for more than decade, won the presidency of this small country with a long history of violence. The party that promotes peace and social democracy through elector politics also won a historic victory in January when it elected the most mayors and most seats in the congress, not an absolute majority; several small parties won a few seats.

Maurico Funes, a popular young journalist, was the candidate who appealed to a sufficient number of undecided voters who, with the experienced revolutionary intellectual, Sánchez Cerén as Vice-President, captured the close but decisive FMLN victory.  The streets and plazas of San Salvador were a sea of red and a roar of cheers as hundreds of thousands of joyful citizens poured out of their homes to celebrate the long awaited victory. 

 

 

Although the count was close, it was decisive, 51.3% for FMLN and 48.7% for the right-wing oligarchy and USA-backed ARENA party. In our polling station in San Salvador at the Albert Camus School, the count was complete for the 16 polls within an hour after the polls closing; as word spread that 15 polls had an FMLN majority, the word spread that the whole country was turning left. We soon saw a vanishing act; ARENA, the right wing party, whose supporters and workers dressed in the USA & ‘Pepsi’ colours of red, white and blue disappeared into the darkness. Red clothed FMLN supporters swarmed the entry, dancing and singing, hugging and laughing as the sealed ballot boxes were taken away.  The celebration went on long past our normal bedtime in all but the rich enclaves of the defeated elite.

Sánchez Cerén and his family celebrate
Tense moments as ballots are counted under many watchful eyes.

The left turn was recognized the next day with official greetings from representatives of other progressive governments and parties in Latin America from Mexico to Nicaragua to Paraguay. El Salvador was welcomed with more hugs, tears and laughter into the United States of Latin America.

Funes appealed to many younger, new voters; also some previous ARENA supporters – like the taxi drivers we had the next day- voted for change, an end to ‘regime’ politics. Many voted FMLN for the first time because its pledge of honesty and openness was a contrast to the secretive right wing. The usual threat by the USA, that it would deport almost a million guest workers there who provide a major income for El Salvador with their remittance payments, was muted this time, partly because the USA is being more cautious in Latin America but also because of the recession many workers are already coming home. And solidarity from other progressive governments and groups in Latin America gives a sense of security and community for those who felt previously isolated.

ARENA tried to make Venezuela’s President Chávez the boogie-man with implied threats that he would control El Salvador if the FMLN won; threats that did not work in a country where Venezuela is known mainly for providing free medical aid, cheap gas, and for creating a Latin America corporate-free media network and, most important a Latin American development bank that can replace the World Bank with its IMF conditions that always create more poverty for the poor, that El Salvador can now access.

This FMLN supporter is hoping for better health care & education opportunities for her family.

The FMLN leadership will be inaugurated on June 1 with its work laid out for it. El Salvador has a high unemployment rate, it imports food; many industries and land are still owned by a few powerful families. Funes in his acceptance speech acknowledged the problem of the global recession and its effect on El Salvador. The FMLN will have to work with other parties, like the Christian Democrats, to get bills passed in congress. But there are plans and promises; the secret presidential slush fund will go, squatters on many lands have been promised titles. At the municipal level there will be a much needed emphasis on job training and creation; new small local industries will need to be funded, tax reform is on the agenda and basic food prices may be controlled as agriculture redevelopment is encouraged with loans and credits for small producers. Resource development and control will be difficult as the Arena government signed on to CAFTA (the Central America Free Trade Agreement with USA) which grants rights to foreign corporations – and El Salvador has untapped mineral wealth as well as water for industry and human use and for hydro electricity.

One important part of Salvadorian life is the culture of memory; the art that remembers the oppression and violence of past times, the art that celebrates everyday life and traditions is an important part of social change and the struggle for a peaceful country. Salvador has a rich tradition of visual art and literature. This art helped sustain Salvadorians in their dark days. New publishing houses are producing novels, biography, history and poetry that have been ignored in the last 80 years.
The revolutionary poet, Roque Dalton, who died a violent death at a young age, is published and widely read. From his most famous poem, Like you, that I read at Handel’s grave side...I believe that the world is beautiful,/ that poetry - like bread - /is for everyone. /And that my veins don't end in me,/ But in the unanimous blood /of those who struggle for life, Love, /Simple things /landscape and bread, /The poetry of everyone.

 But, increasing we can also read wonderful women poets. Some like Nora Méndez wrote of the conflict of roles women acquired during the civil war, she wrote of Ana Maria, a composite of many Salvadorian women… Ana Maria puts the poetry on to boil/while her courage sews banners. …

Addressing a woman in the guerrilla forces, Blanca Mirana Benevides wrote…your uniform soaked/the cold seeping through to your bones/you devour distances/carrying the future of your country on your back…

These poems are powerfully echoed by a sculpture in a museum dedicated to the history of struggle in San Salvador; a woman made of an ironing board and machine gun parts.(see photo) At the same museum an installation of blood stained shirts and hats is lined up under a gun hanging from the ceiling, the story of a massacre of peasants in 1932.
It will be a long time before people forget their famous martyr, Archbishop Oscar Romero, his image and words are writ large on walls throughout the country. His image is on dozens of variations on Tshirts sold everywhere along with other (male) heroes of this country.                       Art of memory

In Parque Cuscatlan in San Salvador a 60 metre long Wall of Memory and Truth is engraved with over 30,000 names (and more to be added) of civilians who were killed or disappeared in the bloody civil war. The names of these non-combatants have been verified by impartial international investigators.

 

The wall of names with a bas relief of a dead body, giving life to corn, for the people of corn.

Salvadorians will continue their social movements to protect their land and resources. Violence by the ARENA government in 2007 used “terrorism” as an excuse to capture community leaders and residents at a demonstration against the privatization of El Salvador’s water supply and distribution systems. Close range shooting of rubber bullets and tear gas was used against community members for protesting the rising cost, and diminishing access and quality, of local water under privatization. Fourteen were arrested and charged with terrorism, a charge that can hold a sixty-year prison sentence, under El Salvador’s new “Anti-terrorism Law,” which is based on the USA PATRIOT Act.
One of El Salvador’s many beautiful lakes.
 At that time, the US government publicly supported the Salvadoran government and the passage of the draconian anti-terrorism law that took effect October 2006. Salvadorans, however, maintain that fighting for water is a right, not a crime. El Salvador’s water workers union (SETA) accuses the government of engaging in a plan to discredit the state agency in order to justify privatization. The public water agency, ANDA, had its budget slashed by 15 percent in 2005, falling to its lowest level in a decade, a perplexing reduction in a country where 40 percent of rural Salvadorans have no access to potable water.
One recent movement stopped the development plans of a USA-Canada company, Pacific Rim Mining, to exploit the El Dorado gold mine in December 2004. Almost four years later, the multinational miner has put its exploratory activities in the country on hold.  At the end of July, 2008, more than 1,000 protestors took to the streets in Cabañas province, home to Pacific Rim’s $66.9m proposed mine. According to the National Roundtable Against Metal Mining, a local coalition of more than 100 non-governmental organizations, the mining project “would generate more costs than benefits”. Anti-mining campaigners blame miners for exhausting local water supplies, pressuring government officials, failing to meet environment standards and generating local conflicts. In February, 2008, the recently appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, publicly stated his opposition to mineral mining in El Salvador, during the first homily after assuming his new role.
 For the majority of Salvadorians it is a time of optimism and expectation; a
time of connection with the growing left turn in our southern neighbours. The hard won victories of the FMLN are too slim to take for granted; people are hoping for great change from the new government; it is also an important time for the social movements to continue their work of informing and organizing at the grass roots.

Young people turned out to work and support the FMLN in its grass-roots and electronic campaign – seeing a real alternative to rightwing and neo-liberal power. It was an exciting and invigorating experience for us, coming from a country of political parties of various degrees of neoliberalism where people respond with apathy and growing individualism. If Canadian young people were offered a real alternative, who knows what might happen here in BC and Canada?

Celebrating for the future

************************************************************************************NOTE: For background for this article see those written in 2006 on www.bbcf.ca  Life and Elections in El Salvador  & Stories From the Rivers, El Salvador