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 #FML