San Salvador, El Salvador – On Sunday, February 4, right-wing Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele illegally ran for reelection even though the country’s constitution doesn’t allow presidents to serve two consecutive terms. With extreme irregularities throughout the year leading up to the election and systemic chaos bringing ballot counting to a halt on election night, Bukele still declared himself the winner of the presidency, and his party the winner of 58 out 60 Legislative Assembly seats. Opposition parties stated that Bukele’s claim that his party had won 58 of 60 Legislative Assembly seats was wildly inaccurate.
Morazán, El Salvador – In an escalation of political repression against the left, on December 22 a Salvadoran judge in President Nayib Bukele’s government put out an arrest warrant against longtime progressive leader Rubén Zamora.
San Salvador, El Salvador – Los Cinco Héroes cubanos pasaron más de una década en las cárceles de los Estados Unidos, arrestados por el gobierno estadounidense a finales de los años 1990 por haber monitoreado grupos anticomunistas cubanos basados en Miami, Florida quienes han planificado actividades terroristas en contra de Cuba socialista. Los cinco recientemente ganaron su libertad de las cárceles de los Estados Unidos debido a una campaña mundial exigiendo su libertad. Regresaron a Cuba como héroes, todavía firmes en su dedicación a la revolución cubana. La decision del gobierno estadounidense para liberarlos fue uno de los primeros pasos en la restauración de las relaciones diplomáticas entre Cuba y los Estados Unidos.
San Salvador, El Salvador – The Cuban 5 spent well over a decade in U.S. prisons, arrested by the U.S. government in the late 1990s for monitoring anti-communist Cuban groups based in Miami, Florida that have planned terror activities against socialist Cuba. The five were recently released from U.S. prisons in the face of a worldwide movement demanding their freedom. They returned to a heroes welcome in Cuba, unbroken and firm in their dedication to the Cuban revolution. Their release by the U.S. government was an early move in the renewing of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the U.S.
Echoes of Venezuela, right wing cries fraud, vows to destabilize country
San Salvador, El Salvador – Salvador Sanchez Ceren, Marxist leader, former guerrilla commander, teacher and trade unionist, won the March 9 presidential run-off elections by a narrow 6634 votes of the nearly 3 million cast, over the right-wing candidate, Norman Quijano.
Minneapolis, MN – On April 26, 100 supporters of immigrant rights gathered at an emergency protest in downtown Minneapolis. They came together to voice outrage at the new anti-immigrant law passed in Arizona. Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the most extreme anti-immigrant legislation in the country, (SB-1070) on April 23, provoking large protests in Arizona and outrage around the country.
San Salvador, El Salvador – In an historic day here, June 1, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceren were sworn in as the new president and vice-president of El Salvador. Funes and Sanchez Ceren are members of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a leftist political party which was formerly a guerrilla movement that fought against the U.S.-backed right wing dictatorship in El Salvador in the 1980s. Funes and Sanchez Ceren won election on March 15, marking the first time there will be a leftist government in El Salvador’s history.
St. Paul, MN – The Salvadoran community and supporters gathered here on the evening of March 15 to watch election results and celebrate a historic victory for the left in El Salvador. On March 15, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez-Ceren were elected president and vice-president of the small Central American country. Funes and Sanchez-Ceren are from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the leftist political party that led an armed liberation struggle in the 1980s, and became an electoral political party after the Peace Accords ended El Salvador's civil war in 1992.
In recent months the U.S. Department of Justice has sent threatening letters to the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which works in solidarity with grassroots social justice movements and the left in El Salvador. The government is accusing CISPES of being an 'agent of a foreign power' – specifically of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the leftist political party in El Salvador. This echoes the FBI's groundless accusations against CISPES in the 1980s, which led to a seven-year campaign of illegal U.S. government harassment against CISPES that the FBI later had to apologize for.
Less than a week after the U.S. elections, labor leader Gilberto Soto was assassinated in Usulutan, El Salvador. Soto, a Salvadoran who emigrated to the U.S. in 1975, was a Teamster organizer in New Jersey, an activist with CISPES – the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador – and a long-time member of the FMLN, El Salvador’s left political party. The FMLN has actively opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, both in the legislature, where they hold a plurality of the seats, and in the streets, where they have led tens of thousands of people marching against CAFTA and against the war in Iraq.
