Will the winds of change reach El Salvador?
The
prospect of progressive leadership coming to power in El Salvador’s
March 15 presidential elections should prompt new U.S. policy toward
Central America
By
Mark Engler Read Spanish Version
Foreign
Policy In Focus
A
desire for change isn’t a sentiment unique to voters in the United
States, and it’s not something that our country should fear when
embraced by our Southern neighbors. El Salvador, a country that will
hold presidential elections on March 15, is a case in point. It’s a
place where a single party has been in power for two decades. It has
long been mired in poverty, crime, and corruption. And its own
Cheneys and Rumsfelds remain in power. A victory by the progressive
frontrunner in the electoral contest — the first Latin American
presidential elections since President Barack Obama’s inauguration —
would give the new White House an opportunity to reject
fear-mongering about the rise of left-leaning governments in Latin
America and instead praise the regional wave of democratic
transformation.
In
recent months, Mauricio Funes of the progressive FMLN party (the
Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) has
consistently led in the polls. A February 20 poll reported Funes with
an 11% edge over Rodrigo Ávila, a private security mogul, former
director of the National Civil Police, and nominee of the right-wing
ARENA party (the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista). Funes is well
known in El Salvador as a television journalist who hosted one of the
few programs openly critical of the government. He has capitalized on
public support for new approaches to a crime epidemic and an economy
that has provided too few alternatives to destitution or migration to
the North. ARENA has held the presidency in El Salvador for the last
20 years, including the 17 years since the signing of the 1992 Peace
Accords that ended the country’s civil war.
A
key tactic of the Salvadoran right has been to paint Funes and his
party as tools of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Many U.S.
commentators have mirrored this position by caricaturing the Latin
American left as naively obedient to Chávez and encouraging Obama to
craft a tougher response. Within the context of El Salvador, the
accusation against Funes is baseless; in the United States, this
simplistic reading of Latin American politics invites a wholly
counterproductive approach to the region.
The
Obama administration’s policy toward Latin America should be based in
a more sophisticated understanding of regional politics, respect for
democratic processes, and acknowledgement of the profound failure of
past U.S. interventions. El Salvador provides a clear example of a
country in which both military and economic policies promoted by
Washington under previous administrations have had disastrous results
— and it now offers an opportunity for the United States to express
a new understanding of its national interest.
The
shadow of war
El
Salvador’s civil war still looms large both in the country’s domestic
politics and in its relations with the United States. Unfortunately,
the record of U.S. involvement was systematically distorted by the
Bush administration, creating a continued need for Americans to face
a difficult history.
In
the 1980s, El Salvador was the site of one of the United States’
largest Cold War interventions. Tragically, Washington sent $6
billion in aid to a Salvadoran government whose army and paramilitary
death squads were responsible for heinous crimes. Some 75,000 people
were killed in the country’s civil war during that decade. In 1993, a
United Nations-backed Truth Commission determined that the government
was responsible for 85% of human rights abuses and that the rebel
forces were responsible 5%, with the remaining 10% undetermined.
Among the most notorious acts of the right-wing counter-insurgency
included the massacre of at least 1,000 people in the village of El
Mozote in 1981 — an atrocity the Reagan administration tried hard to
obscure and deny — and the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
in 1980.
The
conservative ARENA party was formed in the 1980s by an infamous death
squad commander, Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, one of the figures
responsible for Romero’s killing. Nevertheless, as a conservative
pro-business party, ARENA has held executive power since 1989, and it
has won three successive presidential elections in the post-war
period.
If
eight years of Bush administration rule was enough for voters in the
United States, it’s easy to see why Salvadorans, too, would be ready
for change. ARENA was eager to join Bush’s "coalition of the
willing," making El Salvador the only country in Latin America
with troops in Iraq. The move won the country strong praise from
Washington’s neoconservatives. In 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld lauded El Salvador’s "human struggle for liberty and
democracy" and Vice President Dick Cheney held up El Salvador’s
1980s counter-insurgency as a model for the "War on Terror."
Each ignored the damning Truth Commission report naming U.S.-backed
forces as the central actors responsible for terrorizing the
country’s population. Similarly warping history, ARENA’s current
presidential candidate, Ávila, expressed his admiration for
D’Aubuisson’s "defense of liberty" in accepting his party’s
nomination.
Breaking
with tradition
The
FMLN also comes out of the civil war, formed by former guerilla
forces that fought to wrest control from the country’s traditional
oligarchy. The FMLN became a left political party after the Peace
Accords. Since then, it has served as the main opposition party in El
Salvador, with members ranging from more traditional socialists
(represented by vice presidential candidate Salvador Sánchez Cerén)
to moderate social democrats (represented by Funes). Over the years,
it has made steady gains at the mayoral level and in the National
Assembly. In the municipal and legislative elections that took place
in January, the FMLN became the predominant party in the Assembly.
Its deputies now outnumber ARENA’s 35 to 32. The FMLN also increased
the number of towns and cities it will govern by more than 50%, to a
total of 90 municipalities.
The
party sees these results as encouraging signs. However, it has
similarly entered past presidential contests with high hopes and
electoral momentum, only to see its candidates fall short.
Demonstrating that a lead in the polls doesn’t always translate into
an election-day victory, the FMLN’s incumbent mayor of San Salvador,
Violeta Menjívar, lost in January despite being favored to hold the
post.
That
said, there are several reasons why the results this presidential
election might be different than those of the past. These include
Funes’s own merits, the declining appeal of ARENA’s "law and
order" policies, a region-wide demand for a new economic vision,
and hope that the Obama White House won’t repeat Bush administration
interference in the Salvadoran electoral process.
Funes,
now 49, was one of many citizens who experienced personal loss during
the civil war. His older brother, a student leader, was kidnapped and
killed by police forces in 1980. Funes also studied at the Jesuit
Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA) in San
Salvador, where six priests, some of them his mentors, were murdered
in 1989. However, representing a break with party tradition, Funes is
the first FMLN presidential candidate who didn’t fight in the
conflict. This and his popularity as a well-known broadcaster have
made right-wing charges that an FMLN victory would "place our
nation in hands stained with blood" sound hollow.
ARENA
has also lost the advantage of positive public perception of its
anti-crime policies. Facing persistently alarming rates of homicide
and robbery, both presidential candidates have vowed to make
combating crime a priority of their administrations. However, only
Funes has pledged to purge the police force of corrupt elements
linked to organized crime. In polls released on February 20, 43.9% of
Salvadoran respondents believed Funes could better solve the problem
of insecurity, compared to 26.3% who trusted Ávila. Similar numbers
believed that the FMLN would be more effective in confronting
corruption.
CAFTA’s
record
That
leaves the economy. For the first time in recent election cycles, the
economy replaced crime as the issue identified by the most
Salvadorans as their greatest concern going into the elections. Few
in the country seem satisfied with business as usual. ARENA’s
economic management has largely failed to address entrenched poverty
and has maintained dramatic levels of inequality in the country.
Since the war, the party has pursued an aggressive program of
Washington Consensus economic policies, working to privatize social
services and public utilities like electricity and water. The
outgoing government of Antonio Saca led El Salvador into the Central
American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), promising jobs, investment,
and cheap imports.
The
results have been unimpressive, particularly for the 37% of
Salvadorans who still live in poverty, according to World Bank data
reported in September 2008. Real GDP growth languished well below 3%
annually for most of the past decade. In the last two years, the
economy as a whole has benefited from high commodity prices, and
growth rates have been uncharacteristically healthy. But high prices
have proved a double-edged sword for the poor, who have been forced
to confront the bleak reality of food crisis. The World Food Program
reported in February 2008 that "initial estimates are that as a
result of the recent skyrocketing market prices, the actual calorie
intake of an average meal in rural El Salvador is today roughly 60
percent of what it was in May of 2006."
In
the realm of trade, CAFTA hasn’t delivered on its promoters’
promises. Since the deal was implemented, El Salvador’s trade deficit
with the United States has soared, as have rates of rural
unemployment. This has fueled problems with crime, and it has left
migration to the North as the only viable economic option for many
Salvadorans. As a result, the country grows ever more dependent on
money sent back from immigrants in the United States. Such
remittances accounted for 18% of El Salvador’s GDP in 2007.
This
dependency, in addition to El Salvador’s reliance on the United
States to consume over half of its exports and the government’s
decision in 2001 to adopt the U.S. dollar as the national currency,
have left the country nakedly exposed to the international financial
crisis. More than for almost any other country, the downturn in the
world’s economic superpower will have dire consequences for El
Salvador. The looming crisis could prove crucial in the elections, as
elsewhere in the hemisphere economic woes have propelled progressive
governments into power.
A
new U.S. role
Hope
that the Obama White House will diverge from past administrations’
interventions on behalf of ARENA is a final key reason for expecting
change. The right in El Salvador has consistently charged that an
FMLN victory would mean retaliation from Washington. In the past,
U.S. officials have collaborated in affirming this impression,
spreading fear among Salvadoran voters.
In
advance of 2004 elections, several Republican members of Congress
issued threats that the vital flow of funds sent by Salvadoran
immigrants back to their home country would be disrupted if the
election results did not please Washington. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO)
bluntly stated: "If the FMLN controls the Salvadoran government
after the March 2004 presidential elections, it could mean a radical
change in U.S. policy regarding the essentially free flow of
remittances from Salvadorans living in the U.S. to El Salvador."
Bush administration officials such as Assistant Secretary of State
Roger Noriega and Special White House Assistant Otto Reich further
suggested that an FMLN election could jeopardize the immigration
status of Salvadorans allowed in the United States under the
Temporary Protected Status program.
In
December 2008, several dozen prominent North American academics
specializing in Latin America signed a letter expressing concern that
such interference in the Salvadoran electoral process might be
repeated. They cited statements in May 2008 by then-U.S. Ambassador
to El Salvador, Charles Glazer, who tried to tie the FMLN with the
violent FARC guerrilla organization of Colombia. Without
substantiating these ties, Glazer ominously said, "any group
that collaborates or expresses friendship with the FARC is not a
friend of the United States." Furthermore, U.S. Director of
Intelligence J. Michael McConnell claimed in February 2008, also
without substantiation, that the FMLN would be receiving "generous
financing" from Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in the elections. "Such
statements," the academics argued, "constitute unacceptable
outside interference in the electoral process."
Fortunately,
despite early warning signs, incidences of U.S. officials making such
threats over the past year have been limited, and the change in
government in Washington bodes well for non-interference. Thus far,
the new Obama administration appears resolved to remain on the
sidelines. Moreover, the decision of Nicaraguan voters in late 2006
to elect Daniel Ortega, a candidate who ran a populist campaign that
prompted its own round of Bush administration warnings, gave the FMLN
hope that the lingering impact of Washington’s threats may not be
decisive this time around.
Redefining
national interest
Given
a disastrous history of intervention, a form of benign neglect from
the Obama administration represents a significant improvement in U.S.
policy. Democratic critics faulted President Bush for not taking a
more energetic role in Latin American affairs. However, the last
eight years have been a period of robust democratic debate in the
region, which flourished in part because White House attentions were
focused on the Middle East. When the Bush administration did take an
active interest in Latin America, as in El Salvador in 2004, the
results were negative.
For
the Obama administration to do better, it must develop a new
understanding if U.S. national interest — one that repudiates not
only the military interventionism that fueled many "dirty wars"
like El Salvador’s, but also the Washington Consensus economic
policies that were forcefully promoted even under Democratic
administrations such as Bill Clinton’s. In September, Obama railed
against the doctrines of deregulation and trickle-down prosperity,
describing the financial crisis as "the final verdict on an
economic philosophy that has completely failed." Acknowledging
that market fundamentalist policies have wreaked havoc in North and
South America alike, the White House should applaud countries that
pursue economic alternatives.
Indeed,
it’s the failure of neoliberal economic policies throughout the
hemisphere, and not Chávez’s machinations that have led to a wave of
progressive governments winning elections in the past decade. Should
Funes prevail in El Salvador, he’ll have a wide range of peers from
whom to draw lessons — from Evo Morales in Bolivia, to Cristina
Kirchner in Argentina, to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, to
the newest progressive head of state, Fernando Lugo, an ex-cleric
known as the "Bishop of the Poor" who was sworn in as
Paraguay’s president last August.
Obama’s
own desire to break with Republican economics might make him
sympathetic to Funes’s vows for greater spending on social services
and money to stimulate the local economy. With regard to trade,
Funes’s criticisms of CAFTA have been subdued and generally vague,
perhaps as part of his effort to court support in the business
community. Nonetheless, the FMLN as a party has harshly condemned the
free-trade model. This, too, has a parallel in U.S. politics. On the
campaign trail, Obama’s literature presented him as a "consistent
opponent of NAFTA and other bad trade deals," criticizing their
lack of protections for workers’ rights and the environment. As a
senator, Obama voted against CAFTA, deriding "the White House’s
inattention to the losers from free trade."
Yet
even while the Democratic Party overwhelmingly opposed CAFTA, the
White House and media commentators routinely painted foreign
countries that opposed unjust "free trade" deals with the
United States as anti-American. President Obama is uniquely situated
to break this pattern and dismiss the ridiculous double standard.
In
describing the national interest of the United States, elected
leaders have regularly invoked a desire to promote democracy and
alleviate poverty in Latin America. As the history of El Salvador
vividly illustrates, these worthy goals have been ill-served by past
interventionism — military, economic, and electoral. But they are
goals shared by the progressive governments that are winning
elections and coming to power with mandates to find economic
alternatives. There could be few better reasons, on the eve of the
first presidential elections in the hemisphere since Obama’s
inauguration, for his administration to again embrace change and
adopt a new vision of the U.S. role in the Americas.
Mark
Engler, a writer based in New York City, is a Foreign Policy In
Focus senior analyst and
the author of How
to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation
Books, 2008). He
can be reached via the Web site http://www.DemocracyUprising.com.
Research assistance for this article provided by Sean Nortz.
