Analysis: The meaning of El Salvador

El Salvador has just elected a new president representing a leftist political movement that fought a guerrilla war lasting over a decade. But the election of Mauricio Funes, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), is hardly a victory for radicalism.

What is unquestionable is that the FMLN victory is part of the growing political trend in Latin America that has brought avowed leftist governments to Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Argentina.

That’s a powerful trend, but there is a simpler, more elegant clue to the hope for moderation in the new Salvadoran government, despite its Marxist and guerrilla roots. It lies in one of the most remarkable and novel elements of recent Salvadoran politics: Both Funes and his predecessor, Antonio “Tony” Saca, are journalists.

Neither was of the fire-breathing, rabblerousing type. Saca was a popular sportscaster, and eventually owned a chain of radio stations. He once chaired the Freedom of Expression Committee of the International Radio Association.

Funes was a charismatic television personality whose political journalism was firmly in the mainstream. Funes has promised change, reconciliation, and a focus on the problems of the long-neglected poor. He used images of Barack Obama as part of his campaign (to the embarrassment of the U.S. embassy). Indeed, he had no open connection to the FMLN during the guerrilla campaign. Although a sympathizer, he did not affiliate with the movement until recent years.

For his opponents, that means that as president he will be a powerless front for irredentist militant elements, that the “old commanders” will be calling the shots behind the scenes. During the campaign, they warned that the election of the FMLN candidate would bring back instability and violence of the past, foment anti-Americanism and reverse the country’s open trade policies that have brought steady economic growth.

To the contrary, I think Funes, like Saca before him, is evidence of a country groping for a political center. Their status as journalists was far from irrelevant. Not only was El Salvador polarized by 12 years of civil war, in which more than 50,000 people died, but there was a concerted effort to eradicate — that is, assassinate — political leaders of the center.

Famously, the top leaders of the social democratic and social Christian parties were wiped out by the military or death squads run by the military in the early 1980s. Moderates who survived were discredited by association with the Christian Democratic president Napoleon Duarte, whose military allies carried out mass killings — including the rape and murder of four American nuns and church workers and several Jesuit priests.

The FMLN fought to a standstill, targeting U.S. military advisors for assassination in several cases. A peace deal in the early 1990s allowed the former guerrillas to enter into politics. But the move to occupy the center was blocked — until recently — by the FMLN’s patriarch, communist leader Schafik Handal. Handal was a communist in the old school, associated with Maoism and even the Cambodian wing of the world communist movement.

Handal was the candidate against Saca in 2004. Even though surrounded by an updated generation of the FMLN, he was easily painted as a throwback to the bad old days of polarization and violent revolution. Saca, the man who cried “Gooooaaaal” in the countries soccer matches, was familiar and unthreatening. In what was essentially a two-man race, he won easily, with 58 percent of the vote.

Arena, Saca’s rightwing party, had successfully severed its association with its founder and death squad leader, Army Maj. Roberto D’Aubuisson, who among other crimes organized the assassination of El Salvador’s saintly archbishop Oscar Romero. Arena became a modern rightwing party, meaning its platform emphasized recreating the economy along strict free-enterprise and free trade models.

Likewise in the current election. Funes is a known quantity, with an articulate message of hope and change, not by chance echoing Obama. His opponent was a former head of the national police whose promise was law and order. Again, in the absence of an organized political center, Salvadorans vote for the more convincing moderate. A candidate who once again turned out to be more of a media personality than a politician.

(Click here for more on the El Salvador election.)

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/the-americas/090317/analysis-the-meaning-el-salvador