Despite Bukele’s declaration of victory, two days after the election almost all of the ballots cast for the Legislative Assembly still remained uncounted and a significant number of presidential ballots also remained uncounted. On election night, poll workers across the country started reporting in live videos on social media that the computer system for reporting results kept trying to double or triple the number of votes for Nayib Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, as they tried to transmit the results. Then the system crashed entirely, grinding ballot counting to a halt.

After the vote counting was stopped late Sunday night, the ballots from the country’s capital San Salvador were then “lost”’ for over a day, leaving open the possibility that they had been tampered with before they were “found” the next day.

On February 5, the day after the election, the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Block (BRP), a block of left-wing and progressive organizations in El Salvador, released a statement saying that they condemn:

“… the unconstitutional reelection of Nayib Bukele, imposed with the complicity of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). As an expression of the organized Salvadoran popular movement, the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Block DOES NOT recognize the illegal election results or the de facto regime surging from this electoral farce. We denounce the fact that to guarantee this fraud in favor of the governing party, the regime also illegally modified the electoral system and violated many legal dispositions during the electoral campaign. We positively appreciate the courage of hundreds of thousands of people who voted for the opposition in a context of illegalities, political persecution and the continuing State of Exception, which suppresses constitutional guarantees and which the government utilizes as a mechanism of social containment. In this context of rupture with the constitutional order, of repression and regression in the political, social and economic order, we reiterate our call to build a broad front of left, democratic, and progressive forces to impede the consolidation of the dictatorial regime that seeks to perpetuate itself in power. We call on the people to get organized and deepen the struggle against the Bukele clan’s dictatorship, which sustains itself with illegalities and which has the backing of the oligarchy and imperialism.”

In a press conference after the election, a spokesperson for the group of accredited international election observers from the Center for Interchange and Solidarity, which has observed every Salvadoran election since the 1992 Peace Accords, said, “We suspect that there was an attempt to modify the results by the system that completely failed in the final counting. There wasn’t a ‘Plan B’ and they haven’t given any explanation for why the internet went out, for why the Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s electoral reporting system failed, why the printers stopped working. Some reported that the boxes containing the technology arrived without being properly sealed. This has never happened before. So we don’t know if something happened with bad intentions, but the Attorney General must investigate. There were many irregularities and these were the most chaotic elections since 1994.”

Despite these flagrant and widely-reported problems observed by international election monitors, on the day after the election U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hastily recognized Bukele as the winner, saying, that the U.S. “looks forward to working with President-elect Bukele and Vice President-elect Felix Ulloa following their inauguration in June.”

Prominent right-wing political figures in the U.S. also quickly recognized Bukele as the election winner, including Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Bukele is popular with Republicans in the U.S., including Donald Trump. On the other hand, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar and several of the more progressive members of Congress sent a public letter to the Biden administration the week before the Salvadoran election raising alarms over President Bukele's state of emergency, unlawful arrests and detention, harassment of political opponents, restrictions on press freedoms, and other actions.

Bukele’s self-declared victory in this election, for which he was ineligible to run, which took place under a militarized State of Exception, brings to an end El Salvador’s period of political opening that began in 1992 with the end of the Salvadoran Civil War. The Peace Accords signed that year put in place reforms forced by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) during its period as a left-wing guerrilla movement, which allowed the left to openly participate in elections for the first time in the country’s history. The left in El Salvador was outlawed and excluded from elections through the 1980s; the elections that the left tried to participate in under the umbrella of broad coalitions in the 1970s were stolen from them through fraud and brutal repression, leading to the rise of the armed left-wing revolutionary movement of the 1980s.

The Salvadoran constitution’s prohibition against a president serving two consecutive terms was put in place because of repeated experiences of military dictatorship in the 20th century, to prevent the same thing from recurring. But after winning the presidency in 2019, President Bukele illegally sacked and replaced the country’s Supreme Court justices with his own supporters, who then “reinterpreted” the constitution to allow him to run again.

Throughout this year’s electoral campaign Bukele changed the rules and tilted the playing field to his party’s advantage while threatening and repressing opposition parties to assure he and his Nuevas Ideas party would win. Bukele’s maneuvers included reducing the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly and redrawing the map of the country, and combining cities where opposition parties like the left-wing FMLN have support with areas where he had more support in order to reduce opposition parties’ representation.

Bukele and his supporters’ had an explicit goal in this year’s election of forcing the left wing FMLN’s disappearance as a recognized political party, by keeping their vote totals under the limit that would allow them to continue as a legal electoral party. While the results are still unclear, the partial and provisional results that were reported before the system crashed seem to indicate that Bukele failed in his attempt to erase the FMLN out of existence. In the numbers released so far, the FMLN has the second highest vote totals, higher than all other opposition parties.

This election took place under restricted democratic rights, with the militarized State of Exception that has dragged on for two years now with no end in sight. The mass arrests of more than 76,000 people under the State of Exception has rocketed El Salvador to have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

While the mass arrests are said to be aimed at combating street gangs, the government itself has admitted that at least 10% of the people they’ve arrested and held without charges are innocent, with the actual number likely higher.

While Bukele’s targeting of violent street gangs has been popular, he has also used the “war on gangs” and the State of Exception as cover to attack his political enemies, principally the left-wing FMLN party. Both of the former presidents from the FMLN, Salvador Sanchez Ceren and Mauricio Funes, have been forced to flee the country to avoid political persecution, receiving political asylum from neighboring Nicaragua’s progressive government. Several other FMLN leaders have been jailed and dragged through trumped-up trials accusing them of corruption, and Bukele frequently accuses the FMLN of being terrorists.

Bukele’s government has also attacked progressive activists like the environmental movement leaders in the town of Santa Marta who helped win a ban on exploitative foreign mining operations in El Salvador, jailing five key leaders for over a year on bogus charges before being forced to release them after widespread international protests.

Bukele’s government also tried to jail Ruben Zamora on bogus charges. Zamora is an important figure in modern Salvadoran history, as a founder of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) in 1980 who survived capture and torture, and whose brother was assassinated by the U.S.-backed military during the Salvadoran Civil War. Zamora was also the FMLN’s presidential candidate in the first election after the civil war in 1994, an ambassador to the U.S. and the UN under FMLN presidents. In recent years he has been an outspoken critic of President Bukele, reminding Salvadorans that their constitution allows insurrection against an illegitimate government. International outcry forced the government to rescind their order of capture against Zamora.

While Bukele currently has a base of support in El Salvador – and even more so among Salvadorans living abroad, due to his highly-orchestrated self-promoting propaganda campaign and the perception that he has ended violence in the country – he seemingly wasn’t content to gamble that his personal popularity would transfer to his party’s candidates for the Legislative Assembly enough to keep their supermajority – a supermajority that allows him to push through whatever policies he wants without debate.

Bukele’s use of extralegal means to attack the left and to tighten his grip on power has politically catapulted El Salvador back 50 years, to the time when right-wing leaders aligned with the military and with U.S. imperialism ruled through open repression and tried to silence any left-wing or popular movement.

#International #LatinAmerica #CentralAmerica #ElSalvador #FMLN #Elections #Imperialism #RightWing #Feature

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.

This move was widely criticized as a flagrant case of political repression against a progressive critic of Bukele’s government. The nonsensical “reason” was in relation to the notorious 1981 El Mozote massacre carried out by the U.S.-backed right-wing military: Zamora was ordered to be arrested for supposedly having voted for and signed the 1993 Amnesty Bill that made it impossible to prosecute people for acts during the war like the El Mozote massacre. But in fact, Zamora very publicly opposed and refused to vote for or sign the 1993 Amnesty Bill.

It’s President Bukele himself who has provided cover and continued impunity to the military figures who carried out the El Mozote massacre; in September 2020 he blocked a judge from reviewing or allowing the public to see the military archives about the massacre.

1981 El Mozote Massacre by U.S.-backed right-wing military dictatorship

In December 1981, the right-wing military dictatorship of El Salvador carried out their largest of many massacres during the Salvadoran Civil War in the town of El Mozote, Morazán. The military’s Atlacatl Battalion murdered everyone in the town, more than 811 civilians. This was in the mountainous eastern part of El Salvador where the revolutionary movement led by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) was strong, though El Mozote was known to be neutral territory where the FMLN didn’t have a base. That didn’t matter to the right-wing military – they killed everyone anyway.

The U.S.-backed Salvadoran military acted with impunity in carrying out many massacres like this because they had a green light and endless funding flowing in from the Reagan administration in Washington to carry out a merciless ‘war on communism’ against the FMLN.

1992 Peace Accords and 1993 Amnesty Law

The Salvadoran Civil War ended in 1992 with the signing of Peace Accords and the conversion of the FMLN from a guerrilla movement into an electoral party. The FMLN made this move in the context of an extremely unfavorable international situation for revolutionary movements around the world, with the end of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Before the FMLN entered the electoral system, the Legislative Assembly, which was still controlled by the far-right ARENA party, passed the Amnesty Law in 1993 to prevent the prosecution of anyone for the many crimes committed by the right-wing military and death squads during the war.

The left in El Salvador, including the few progressives that were in the Legislative Assembly at the time, like Ruben Zamora, vigorously opposed the Amnesty Law precisely because it would make sure nobody was ever held accountable for terrible massacres like El Mozote. Zamora walked out in protest when the Assembly voted on the Amnesty Law, joining with the hundreds of grassroots activists who were there protesting. His opposition to the Amnesty Law was widely reported at the time, including in the New York Times.

Zamora had a long history of trying to work for social justice through the electoral system in El Salvador, going back to the 1970s and early 80s when many progressives were murdered for trying to run for office or participate in the government, including his brother. After his brother was murdered, Zamora formed the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) as a political front fighting for an end to the dictatorship. Zamora himself was tortured three times by the government during this period.

Zamora was among the first progressives who tried running for office again in the late 1980s while the Civil War was still going on, and he succeeded in getting elected to the Legislative Assembly.

Zamora an FMLN Leader in 1990s and 2000s, now a leading critic of President Nayib Bukele

When the FMLN ran in their first elections in 1994 after the Civil War ended, they chose Rubén Zamora as their presidential candidate, as one of the few people on the Salvadoran left who had electoral experience after decades of right-wing military dictatorship. He didn’t win, but the campaign began the FMLN’s electoral rise, until they finally won the presidency in 2009 and again in 2014. In those FMLN presidential administrations, Zamora served as ambassador to the U.S., to India and to the United Nations.

In 2019 the FMLN lost the presidency to Nayib Bukele. Bukele had been mayor of San Salvador for the FMLN, but he made a sharp turn to right-wing populism after the FMLN kicked him out of the party as it became clear he was mainly interested in amassing personal power.

Zamora’s willingness to take political risks at the cost of his personal safety has continued in the current period of Bukele’s right-wing government and its permanent militarized “state of exception.” Zamora has spoken out publicly in opposition to Bukele’s right-wing populism that is without political vision or program, Bukele’s illegal attempt to run for reelection in 2024, which is prohibited in six articles of the Salvadoran constitution, as well as other flagrantly illegal acts of his administration.

Zamora has gone further and publicly warned of the fact that the Salvadoran constitution authorizes the population to wage insurrection if a president tries to stay in office past one term. This was included in the Salvadoran constitution after repeated episodes in Salvadoran history of presidents consolidating power into a military dictatorship.

President Bukele has governed under a militarized “state of exception” for almost two years, has rocketed El Salvador to having the largest per capita prison population in the world, detaining tens of thousands of people without charges, and is now illegally running for reelection with political cover from judges his party put in place after illegally removing the country’s supreme court judges in 2021.

Since Bukele became president in 2019, he has waged a personal and political vendetta against the left and the leading figures of the FMLN. Both former presidents from the FMLN, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén, have gone into exile in Nicaragua to avoid political persecution. Many leading FMLN members have been imprisoned on bogus charges, and flimsy investigations orchestrated for the media have been carried out against leading FMLN members for trumped up allegations of corruption, including historic leaders like Lorena Peña and Eugenio Chicas. Leaders of social movements with a long history of social justice struggle who have challenged Bukele's economic agenda have also been prosecuted, like the Santa Marta 5, who were imprisoned because of their leadership in the environmental movement in opposition to reopening the country to exploitative and polluting foreign mining corporations.

The December 22 arrest warrant against Rubén Zamora is the latest escalation of political repression against the left in El Salvador.

Zamora was included in the arrest warrant issued for several former Salvadoran elected officials who were in the Legislative Assembly in 1992-93, when Peace Accords between the leftist insurgent FMLN and the right-wing government ended the Salvadoran Civil War. Their alleged role in passing the 1993 Amnesty Law is given as the reason. But as previously stated, Zamora opposed the Amnesty Law which was passed only with the votes of the right-wing parties, as it was overwhelmingly the right-wing government and military that were responsible for the massacres and human rights atrocities during the war.

A broad range of Salvadoran people and organizations including the Popular Rebellion and Resistance Block (BRP), a coalition of progressive organizations in El Salvador, have denounced the arrest warrant against Zamora as another example of growing political repression under the Bukele administration.

#ElSalvador #ElMozote #FMLN #RubenZamora

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.

Los cinco – René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández y Fernando González – están visitando varios países para dar las gracias a los pueblos que les apoyaron y que apoyan a Cuba. Como parte de eso, realizaron una visita histórica a El Salvador el pasado 21 de julio. Con una apretada agenda realizaron varios actos de homenaje al arzobispo salvadoreño Óscar Arnulfo Romero, asesinado por los escuadrones de la muerte de la derecha durante la guerra civil; y al patriota cubano José Martí; sostuvieron también una entrevista privada con el Presidente de la República Salvador Sánchez Cerén, un líder histórico del Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), y concluyeron su visita en un acto popular celebrado en la Universidad de El Salvador (UES), primera y única casa de estudios pública en ese país, institución académica con una larga historia de lucha y pensamiento crítico.

Los 5 héroes fueron recibidos calurosamente en la UES, con el clásico grito universitario ¡Esta es la U! Mientras los cubanos dirigieron un emotivo discurso a la multitud que desbordó el Cine-Teatro.

Cerraron su participación con una condecoración por parte de la Comisión Política del FMLN, el liderazgo del partido de izquierda que actualmente gobierna el país, quien les consignó una medalla al mérito; así también la Comunidad Salvadoreña Palestina les obsequiaron unas hermosas Kufiyas blancas y negras los cuales los cinco orgullosamente mostraron en la tarima.

Antes de visitar El Salvador los Cinco Héroes cubanos visitaron Nicaragua en el aniversario de la revolución sandinista de 1979, y también pasaron por Sudáfrica. Los movimientos revolucionarios en esto tres países tienen vínculos profundos históricamente con la revolución cubana.

#SanSalvadorElSalvador #SanSalvador #Cuba #ElSalvador #FMLN #SalvadorSanchezCeren #Cuban5 #UniversityOfElSalvador #Americas

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.

The five – René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández y Fernando González – are now visiting several countries to give thanks to the people that supported them and support Cuba. As part of that, they made a historic visit to El Salvador on July 21. They had a packed agenda, including paying homage to slain Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero who was assassinated by a right wing death squad during the Salvadoran Civil War, and Cuban patriot Jose Martí. They met with Salvadoran President Salvador Sánchez Ceren, who is a historic leader of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). They closed their visit with a packed mass meeting at the amphitheatre of the University of El Salvador (UES), the only public university in El Salvador. UES is an institution with a long and historic tradition of revolutionary thinking and struggle.

The 5 Cuban heroes were warmly welcomed at the UES with the traditional chant of the universitary students, “esta es la U!” (“This is the U!”). They gave a very emotional speech to the crowd that packed the facility.

They were also given a recognition by the FMLN Political Commission, the leadership of the leftist party that governs El Salvador, and by the Salvadoran Palestinian community who gifted them with beautiful black and white keffiyehs, which they proudly put on while on stage.

Before visiting El Salvador, the Cuban 5 also visited Nicaragua on the anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution there, and visited South Africa. The revolutionary movements in all three countries have deep historic ties to the Cuban revolution.

#SanSalvadorElSalvador #SanSalvador #Cuba #ElSalvador #FMLN #SalvadorSanchezCeren #Cuban5 #UniversityOfElSalvador #Americas

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.

Voters turned out in record numbers. 63% of the eligible population voted, and though the margin was narrow, Ceren’s 1.4 million votes were greater than any other president received in the history of the country. Sanchez Ceren is a leader of the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), while Quijano is the candidate of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party. El Salvador is still deeply polarized 22 years after the end of the country’s civil war that pitted FMLN rebels against ARENA’s right-wing military rule.

As the Salvadoran National Electoral Authority (TSE) worked to verify the final vote count that showed the FMLN winning, members of ARENA took a slew of actions to delay the process and ultimately tried to nullify the process as a whole. Charging the TSE with fraud on election day but not publicizing any evidence, ARENA walked out halfway through the final count, only returning after the TSE said they would continue the count with or without ARENA’s participation. This followed inflammatory remarks issued by ARENA candidate Norman Quijano late on election day, in which he declared victory before the initial vote count was even completed, implored his party faithful to not “allow this victory to be stolen from us like it was in Venezuela” and to “prepare for war.” He further called upon the Salvadoran army to intervene in the nation’s politics and impose him as victor in spite of the official vote count showing him losing. This would have basically amounted to a coup.

Quijano’s call for the military to intervene and impose his victory resulted in a tense situation for a country still recovering from the ravages of a bloody civil war that ended in 1992, in which the army was used as a brutal repressive force against popular movements and the left. Given the history of military repression in the country, many breathed a sigh of relief when the defense minister and military leaders held a press conference midweek to affirm their chain of command and to denounce efforts to manipulate the armed forces.

Reports from thousands of national and international observers contradicted ARENA’s claims of fraud and instead congratulated Salvadoran voters and electoral authorities for conducting a transparent and efficient process. The United Nations, the Organization of American States and the U.S. State Department all echoed observers’ assessment of the elections as clean and fair. Many organizations that have observed all the Salvadoran elections since the 1992 peace accords stated that this was the most transparent election they have seen here, with several new anti-fraud and transparency measures implemented for the first time. Late on Sunday, March 16, the TSE certified the elections and officially declared Salvador Sanchez Ceren the president-elect.

On Saturday, March 15, a week after the election, hundreds of thousands of FMLN supporters rallied to celebrate and defend the FMLN election victory. Meanwhile ARENA party faithful continue to protest the election results and call for the elections to be annulled. Their actions appear to be taking a page out of the Venezuelan right wing’s destabilization playbook. It comes as no surprise that JJ Rendon, former campaign manager for Venezuelan right-wing opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, was hired by ARENA to run their flagging electoral campaign last year. The cries of fraud in El Salvador echoed Capriles’s cries of fraud when he lost last year’s election in Venezuela against leftist Nicolas Maduro, despite international observers certifying the election as clean in both cases.

ARENA’s campaign focused on fomenting fear that if the FMLN won, El Salvador would become the “next Venezuela.” This drumbeat of fear was ramped up to a fevered pitch in the last few weeks before the March 9 runoff election. The right wing used their control of mass media to bombard people with the message that Venezuela means “chaos and violence.” They saturated the media with ads from the Nationalist Republican Youth playing ominous music over footage of snipers and street violence. This has an impact in a country like El Salvador with a recent civil war and high rates of ongoing street violence.

Fear mongering and a massive infusion of campaign funds from ANEP, the National Association of Private Enterprise, raised the turnout for ARENA in the second round runoff election, but it was not enough to deliver the victory that the right wing hoped for. Instead. the Salvadoran people elected a left-wing former guerrilla commander who is openly allied with Venezuela, Cuba and socialists around the world, to be the commander in chief of El Salvador.

The close results in the March 9 runoff election were a surprise for many, as Sanchez Ceren beat Quijano by 10 points in the first round election in February, but fell just short of the 50%-plus-1 needed to win without a runoff between the top two parties. In polls right before the March 9 runoff election, Sanchez Ceren held a commanding 10 to 15% lead over Quijano. However, in the first round, the right wing was divided between two candidates, ARENA’s Quijano and the Grand Alliance for National Unity’s (GANA) Tony Saca. GANA was formed in a recent acrimonious split from ARENA. Their candidate Tony Saca was president of El Salvador for ARENA from 2004-2009. GANA received nearly 10% of the vote in the first round election in February.

Some assumed, incorrectly, that because GANA split so recently from ARENA that their supporters may lean toward the FMLN in the runoff election. But El Salvador is a country deeply polarized between left and right with virtually no political center. It seems likely that people who voted for GANA in the first round shifted their vote to the other right-wing party, ARENA, in the second round, contributing to the runoff election being closer than most had predicted.

ARENA ruled El Salvador from 1989 to 2009, and its roots are in the right-wing death squads during El Salvador’s civil war. Its founder was Roberto D’Aubuisson, responsible for ordering Archbishop Romero’s assassination in 1980, and founder of the notorious right-wing death squads. In 20 years of governance, they implemented devastating neoliberal programs, including privatization of key services and the conversion of the economy to the U.S. dollar, which leaves the country tied to the ebbs and flows of the U.S. economy. During their terms in office, ARENA was also wracked with multiple corruption scandals. For example Francisco Flores, El Salvador’s president from 1999-2004 is being investigated by numerous agencies, including the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for the disappearance of over $10 million of Taiwanese development funds during his administration.

The FMLN, on the other hand, voices their commitment to a socialist vision for El Salvador, though their ability to implement that vision has been and will continue to be limited by severe resistance from the rich and the right wing of the country, the lack of productive and natural resources, and pressure from international funding sources.

The FMLN has held the presidency of El Salvador since 2009, but the current president, Mauricio Funes, is not a party member and the FMLN has had to govern in a sort of coalition, dividing up positions with Funes’s more moderate forces. So since 2009 the FMLN has focused their efforts on smaller social reforms that have been widely popular, and were largely responsible for the FMLN winning the rural vote that had been voting for ARENA for the past decade. They brought free health care to neglected areas of the countryside; eliminated the ‘voluntary’ fees for health care and schools; and issued land titles to small farmers that were first promised during the 1992 peace accords.

FMLN President-elect Sanchez Ceren served as the Minister of Education in the Funes administration and oversaw the most popular of the programs, the Paquete Escolar, or School Packet, program that provides every public school student with supplies, uniforms and a daily meal, all for free. The health and education programs have had a particularly profound impact on women and girls, who are often left behind when families are forced to pay for education. The FMLN also instituted a number of significant labor policies, including full legal recognition of public sector unions and granting full protection to domestic workers, which benefits upwards of 80,000 women housekeepers, nannies and cooks who have often been working in slave-like conditions.

Polarization and the belligerence of the Salvadoran right wing will be a challenge for the FMLN as they work to deepen their modest social and economic programs and further their vision for Salvadoran society. As Roger Blandino Nerio, Social Movement Secretary for the FMLN, stated, “We can only implement as much socialism as the population will allow.”

The Salvadoran right-wing is hell-bent on preventing even modest reforms from being instituted and will continue its destabilization efforts. The U.S. government has stated that they will work with an FMLN government, but history has shown that they will work to undermine and prevent real reforms that alter existing relations of power from moving forward. The need for solidarity with the FMLN, the labor and social movement and the Salvadoran people will be great in the coming period as they build an alternative vision – one that isn’t based on capitalism – for their country.

Cherrene Horazuk is the president of AFSCME Local 3800, the union of clerical workers at the University of Minnesota, and the former Executive Director of CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. She was an accredited observer of the March 9 presidential elections, and has been observing El Salvador’s elections since 1994.

#SanSalvadorElSalvador #SanSalvador #ElSalvador #FMLN #ARENA #Elections #Americas

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.

The organizers of the April 26 protest in Minneapolis are building toward the May 1 protest for immigrant and workers’ rights, which will start at 2:00 p.m. at Martin Luther King Park at Nicollet Avenue and 41st Street in south Minneapolis. Organizers anticipate that the outrage produced by Arizona's new law will cause many more people to come out and march on May 1.

The April 26 protest responded to the new law in Arizona by targeting Minnesota's Governor Pawlenty, who has proposed many anti-immigrant laws. Pawlenty was speaking at the downtown Hilton hotel, at an event organized by the right-wing religious group, the Minnesota Family Council. The event was attended by national level Republican politicians like former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who was also anti-immigrant during his campaign.

Speakers at the protest included Nick Espinosa of MIRAc, Greg Nammacher of SEIU Local 26, Antonia Alvarez and Pablo Tapia from Asamblea de Derechos Civiles (Civil Rights Assembly), and the Reverends Loren McGrail and Luis Alvarenga of the Interfaith Coalition on Immigration.

The new Arizona law institutionalizes racial profiling, by mandating local law enforcement to check proof of citizenship of anyone they encounter who they think might be undocumented. So anyone who the police might think looks Latino must now carry their identity documents with them at all times or be immediately suspect and subject to police harassment and arrest. Many people have compared Arizona's new law to the Pass Laws in South Africa under apartheid. Those laws required Black South Africans to carry their pass books with them whenever they left their ‘designated’ areas. If they didn't produce a pass, they were subject to immediate arrest.

Ten other states are currently considering laws like the one passed in Arizona.

In his talk at the protest, Nick Espinosa of MIRAc said, “We cannot wait any longer for immigration reform. It's time for Obama to make good on his promises. With racist demagogues like Joe Arpaio terrorizing families and communities every day, we cannot wait. With John Morton of ICE asking for quotas to increase the numbers of deportations every day, we cannot wait...When states like Arizona pass unconstitutional laws reminiscent of Jim Crow, we need the community to come together and stand side by side, immigrants and citizens together, to demand the justice that's been denied to immigrants for so many years...In this moment of national outrage we can push for real, just reform. Not more repression, but legalization and equal rights for all human beings.”

The Minneapolis protest was organized by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition (MIRAc), SEIU Local 26, Asamblea de Derechos Civiles, FMLN Committee and Workers Interfaith Network.

#MinneapolisMN #FMLN #SEIULocal26 #MIRAc #TimPawlenty #SB1070 #Arizona #AsambleaDeDerechosCiviles #WorkersInterfaithNetwork #JanBrewer

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.

Long ruled by brutal U.S.-backed right-wing military dictatorships and ultra-right-wing political parties, Salvadorans overcame a blistering fear campaign by the right and voted in record numbers for the FMLN. The FMLN’s election removes the ARENA party from power, which had been the Bush administration’s strongest ally in the region.

President Funes was a long-time television journalist in El Salvador. He was one of the few Salvadoran TV reporters who challenged right-wing government officials, which made him very popular and respected. Sanchez Ceren was one of the FMLN’s top political and military commanders during the civil war period.

In his inauguration speech, Funes quoted from assassinated progressive Archbishop Monsignor Arnulfo Romero, saying that the FMLN would govern with a “preferential option for the poor.” One of his first policy announcements was that El Salvador’s new government will open relations with socialist Cuba. Other programs were announced to immediately begin to address the effects of the worldwide capitalist economic crisis on El Salvador’s workers and peasants and to attack the corruption that characterized the right-wing ARENA government.

In addition to the official inauguration ceremony on June 1, the FMLN also organized a massive rally in the country’s largest stadium, Estadio Cuzcatlan. As many as 70,000 people began filling the stadium early Monday morning, coming in from around the country to be part of this historic moment. Almost everyone in the stadium was wearing red (the FMLN’s color) and waving red flags. There were musical performances from longtime pro-revolutionary groups such as Los Guaraguao, Cutumay Camones, Lloviznando Cantos and Los Torogozes de Morazan. Speakers at the rally included the new president Mauricio Funes, FMLN coordinator Medardo Gonzales (Milton), as well as other progressive figures from Latin America such as a representative of Hugo Chavez from the Venezuelan government, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador and others.

The weight of history was heavy in the air at the stadium, as those in attendance remembered the tens of thousands of people who gave their lives fighting for change in El Salvador.

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The FMLN election victory ends decades of military dictatorship and 20 years of rule by the extreme right-wing ARENA party that was founded by Roberto D'Aubuisson, the mastermind of the right wing death squads during El Salvador's civil war. The FMLN victory brought an unprecedented wave of elation and celebration into the streets of El Salvador and to Salvadoran communities in the U.S. and around the world.

In Minnesota, more than 150 people gathered at First Lutheran Church in Saint Paul at a celebration sponsored by the FMLN Committee of Minnesota. The gathering was mostly Salvadorans but also included activists who have worked in solidarity with the FMLN and the revolutionary movement in El Salvador since the 1980s.

At the event there were live television and internet broadcasts from El Salvador to hear election results as they came in, then there was music by Juanito Figueroa, Revolucion Guanaka and DJ Mastervision.

The Minnesota FMLN Committee organized for the past two years to support the FMLN campaign in El Salvador, including educational events, parties and many fundraisers. The election night celebration brought out a large number of Salvadorans to share this historic victory.

The Salvadoran right wing tried to win the election with crude anti-communist propaganda, outright threats – backed up by menacing statements against the FMLN from Republican congress people in the U.S. – and by trying to tarnish the image of Mauricio Funes. But Funes is a well-known, respected journalist in El Salvador. Despite a blistering non-stop propaganda campaign against Funes and the FMLN, the right wing was not able to win with these scare tactics this time around, as they have been able to in past elections.

Cherrene Horazuk, former national director of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) who has been involved in solidarity work with the FMLN since the 1980s, spoke at the Minnesota FMLN event about the importance of international solidarity in counteracting the right wing fear campaign. Horazuk emphasized that CISPES has always fought against U.S. intervention in El Salvador so that the Salvadoran people can decide their own fate without fear of U.S. war or manipulation. She said, “We had a significant victory the week before the election when CISPES helped force the U.S. State Department to officially declare their neutrality in the election, to counteract threats made by Republican congressmen who were trying to scare Salvadorans into voting for the right-wing ARENA party again. Defeating this fear campaign was a real contribution to Salvadoran self-determination. When the Salvadoran people were allowed to choose with less fear of U.S. intervention, they chose the FMLN.”

The election of the FMLN in El Salvador continues a shift to the left throughout Latin America and removes the far right wing ARENA party, one of the former Bush administration’s closest allies in the region, from power.

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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.

CISPES works to build solidarity in the U.S. with the Salvadoran popular movement and with the FMLN. CISPES has done this work since 1980, when it was formed at the start of the civil war in El Salvador, during which the FMLN led an armed struggle for liberation against the brutal U.S.-backed right wing Salvadoran military dictatorship.

The following is an interview with Cherrene Horazuk, who was Executive Director of CISPES from 1993 to 2003. She talks about the current government attack on CISPES, the history of such attacks, and some thoughts on why this is happening now.

Fight Back!: What is going on now with the U.S. Department of Justice harassing CISPES?

Cherrene Horazuk: The U.S. Department of Justice sent threatening communications to CISPES in January saying that they thought that CISPES was contracted by the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) to run the FMLN's electoral campaign and to fundraise for the FMLN presidential campaign in the U.S. There are presidential elections in March 2009 in El Salvador and the FMLN slate of Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceren has a good chance to win. The Department of Justice said they read in the Washington Post and on web pages that the FMLN had contracted CISPES to do this, so they insisted that CISPES turn in all documents relating to a contract with the FMLN or presidential candidate Mauricio Funes. They wanted documentation because they said CISPES would be required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938.

Of course there is no such documentation because CISPES hasn't signed any contractual agreements or taken orders to do the solidarity work that CISPES does. CISPES organizes solidarity in the U.S. based on shared values with the Salvadoran social justice movement and the FMLN. It's a relationship of solidarity.

Fight Back!: What is the history of FBI and U.S. government harassment of CISPES and of the Latin America solidarity movement? Tell us about what happened with CISPES in the 1980s.

Horazuk: From 1981 to 1987 the FBI carried out one of the largest domestic spying endeavors in recent U.S. history. They investigated more than 100,000 individuals and more than 3000 groups. That included CISPES committees, Central America solidarity groups, church groups, student groups, social justice organizations and anyone that in any way shape or form was speaking out against human rights abuses in El Salvador and Central America. Anyone speaking out in support of grassroots progressive human rights groups and revolutionary organizations was investigated.

I think 52 out of the 59 FBI bureau offices in the U.S. were involved in the investigation. They started the investigation within months of CISPES's founding in 1980. It included surveillance, harassment, intimidation, break-ins to offices and houses. Some people lost their jobs as a result. The worst impact is that some Salvadorans were investigated that were then deported back to El Salvador, and the U.S. government turned their names over to the brutal Salvadoran military and those people were never heard from again.

In 1987 CISPES filed a lawsuit against the FBI because we got some files under the Freedom of Information Act. Congressional hearings were held, and ultimately the FBI was found to have carried out a completely illegal investigation, in which they found no proof of any wrongdoing on CISPES's part. All the wrongdoing was by the FBI in their illegal spying and harassment. As a result the FBI was ordered to cease and desist. That case also led to some law changes that curtailed domestic surveillance, made it harder for the FBI to do spying. Of course that was then later reversed under the Patriot Act. At the end of the lawsuit the FBI actually had to issue a statement saying they were wrong.

Fight Back!: Why was CISPES specifically targeted?

Horazuk: We were the largest solidarity organization in the U.S. We took a clear position against the U.S. government support for the right-wing death squad regime in El Salvador and we stood strongly in solidarity with the people of El Salvador fighting back against that regime. We were supportive not just of the grassroots movement, but also the revolutionary movement and the FMLN. The FMLN was fighting against a brutal right-wing death squad government that was propped up by millions of dollars of U.S. military aid. The right-wing government was shown to be responsible for countless massacres and torture and for the vast majority of the 75,000 deaths during the Salvadoran civil war.

CISPES stands up for the Salvadoran people's right to self-determination, and I think because of that the U.S. government saw the solidarity movement and CISPES particularly as a threat to U.S. policy in Latin America. This was in the early 1980s in the context of newly-elected President Reagan saying he was going to ‘draw the line’ in El Salvador to prevent a revolution there, after the left-wing Sandinistas had just overthrown the pro-U.S. military dictatorship in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration thought El Salvador would be next and were providing millions of dollars a day in military aid to stop a progressive victory in El Salvador.

CISPES organized delegations to El Salvador throughout the war for people from the U.S. to go see for themselves what our government was doing there. Thousands of people from the U.S. went with CISPES to El Salvador during the war and saw what was really going on. President Reagan was saying there were no massacres, no bombings, but people went and talked to survivors of bombings and massacres. People saw that our government was lying, it was a huge learning experience for a whole generation of activists.

In addition, people who went on CISPES delegations also saw that there was a resistance movement fighting back, an alternative. People traveled to the FMLN's liberated territories and saw a different vision of a better society. People came back to the U.S. and rededicated themselves to the fight against injustice and oppression, to the fight for fundamental change in El Salvador and here at home.

This is some of the context of the FBI's harassment of CISPES in the 1980s.

Fight Back!: Why do you think this harassment is happening again now? There's not an armed struggle or a war going on in El Salvador now – why do you think they're interested in CISPES again all the sudden?

Horazuk: I think what the Department of Justice is doing is a clear attempt to intimidate El Salvador and Latin America solidarity activists, who know very well the history of the FBI investigation into CISPES in the 1980s.

There's not an armed struggle in El Salvador right now, but there's a growing wave of left-wing governments in Latin America and a growing wave of support for leftist policies in the region by the people.

The Salvadoran presidential elections are coming up in March 2009 and the FMLN has a good chance of winning. The U.S. did a lot to try to manipulate the last Salvadoran elections in 2004, using scare tactics and misinformation. The U.S. told Salvadoran voters that if the FMLN won then the U.S. would cut off Salvadorans living in the U.S. from sending money back to their families in El Salvador. These 'remittances' that Salvadorans in the U.S. send to their families in El Salvador are the only thing keeping many Salvadoran families from starvation and keep the Salvadoran economy from total collapse. I think this harassment of CISPES is part of the U.S. government trying again to prevent support and visibility in the U.S. for the people's movement in El Salvador.

It's important to understand that the right wing ARENA government in El Salvador isn't just any old government. It is one of the U.S. government's closest allies in Latin America, and does whatever the U.S. government tells it to do. El Salvador is the only country in Latin America that still has troops in Iraq as part of the U.S. occupation forces, even though over 70% of the Salvadoran people oppose their troops being there. El Salvador is used as an experiment for U.S. foreign policy. The implementation of free trade, privatization, dollarization, all these policy initiatives, they use El Salvador as a testing ground.

The U.S. is opening up an international ‘police training school’ called ILEA in El Salvador. ILEA is just like the School of the Americas but for training police forces instead of military forces. The ARENA government maintains El Salvador as a subservient U.S. puppet in the region. The U.S. administration doesn't want to lose that. So they are trying to create a situation where they can guarantee that El Salvador will remain a U.S. ally. They really don't want to see a grassroots popular opposition to that, and they don't want to see a government elected in El Salvador that will put people before profits.

The FMLN is committed to creating a different society. It's a society that does not say that there should be a race to the bottom. Instead it's about making sure people have adequate food, health care, education, housing, that people in the countryside have land to grow crops on, that labor policy would not be to just open more free trade zones and pay people pennies to manufacture good to ship to the U.S. The U.S. government considers it a huge threat for people to see there's an alternative. And people in El Salvador want that alternative.

Fight Back!: What can people do?

Horazuk: I think people should follow closely what's happening in El Salvador. Presidential elections are coming up in March 2009 and the right forces are likely to commit fraud and possible violence to try to hold on to power. The ARENA party is run by the richest people in El Salvador and has been in power 19 years now. The founder of the ARENA party, Roberto D'Aubuisson, is the founder of the death squads in El Salvador and was the mastermind of the assassination in 1980 of Archbishop Romero, which sparked 12 years of civil war. ARENA is not likely to give up power willingly. And unfortunately until now they have been able to count on the full support of the U.S. government.

But the Salvadoran people are ready for a change. In the election itself there will be a need for people to be aware of right-wing fraud and violence and to denounce that. There will be a call for international election observers before and during the elections.

People should do what you can to support CISPES and to support progressive movements in El Salvador. The CISPES website, www.cispes.org, has the latest campaigns and action alerts that you can help with.

Throughout Latin America the people are showing that another model is possible besides the U.S.-imposed model. Those of us here in the U.S. have a responsibility to oppose the oppressive things our government does in our name with our tax dollars in Latin America. And we should also learn from and support those that are fighting back.

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Soto was in El Salvador to help organize container cargo truck drivers, an economic sector that is critical in the free trade model. Truck drivers and port workers in Central America are frequently prevented from organizing unions and have almost no protections for their rights as workers. This keeps wages down, which gives the companies producing and transporting cheap clothing, food and other products from Central America to the U.S. even bigger profits. Every attempt to organize within the trucking sector has been met with mass firings and repression. Soto was in El Salvador to lend his support to an organizing effort by drivers for the Maersk Corporation, one of the largest container cargo companies in the world.

Soto was shot in the back by masked gunmen while he was making a cell phone call on the steps of his mother’s house. Nobody has been apprehended. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the AFL-CIO have offered a $75,000 reward for information on the killing. Several days after Soto’s assassination, the offices of CEAL, the Center for the Study of Labor, were ransacked. It’s clear that death-squad elements in El Salvador, who have been largely quiet since the war ended in 1992, believe that they also have a mandate from the U.S. elections: that they can do whatever they deem necessary to ensure the crushing of opposition to pro-corporate economic policies.

However, Francisco Soto has vowed to continue the organizing effort begun by his brother Gilberto. Santiago Flores, director of the progressive FUNDASPAD organization in El Salvador, says that Salvadorans will persist in their own popular struggles and alternatives, while resisting U.S. intervention. Once again, the Salvadoran and U.S. right wing have underestimated the will and resolve of the people in determining their own path forward.

The elites throughout Central America, who are scrambling to destroy popular opposition to their economic policies, are thrilled with the Bush victory. Nowhere was it more blatant than in El Salvador. Just days before the U.S. presidential elections, both major papers published full-page ads calling Bush “a friend of our country” and asking Salvadorans to call family members in the U.S. and urge them to vote for Bush. Salvadorian President Tony Saca called the elections “a victory for democracy and freedom and a defeat for populism” and promised the rapid approval of CAFTA. The Salvadoran ruling class has a friend in the White House for another four years and believe they can once again get away with murder.

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