On 15 March, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front’s (FMLN) Mauricio Funes won El Salvador’s presidential election by 51.3% against 48.7% for the right-wing Arena candidate, Rodrigo Avila. Whilst Funes ran on a very moderate programme, his election still spells a significant step forward for the people of El Salvador and Central America.
In the 1980s, 75,000 people died in the FMLN-led struggle for national liberation, 90% of them victims of the El Salvadorean army and its paramilitary death squad auxiliaries led by Major Roberto d’Aubuisson. It was d’Aubuisson who set up Arena in 1981, speaking of the need to kill hundreds of thousands of El Salvadoreans ‘to restore peace to El Salvador’. Arena has ruled El Salvador since peace accords were signed in 1992, and still dominates the municipalities, even if it is now the second largest party in Congress after the FMLN.
The advent of peace brought no economic benefits to the poor of El Salvador; death squads still operated with impunity against trade unionists and local FMLN organisers. The economy of El Salvador remained completely dependent on that of the US. Although 5.7 million live in El Salvador, 2.9 million have had to go abroad to find employment, more than 90% in the US, most of them as undocumented workers. Remittances from these workers amounted to $3.8bn in 2008, and made up 17% of GDP. More than a quarter of El Salvadorean families received remittances; for many it is the main source of income. However, such remittances started to fall in the latter part of the year as unemployment in the US rose. In 2005 the proportion of El Salvadoreans living in extreme poverty was 20%; without such remittances it would rise to 37%, according to a UN report. The dollarisation of the economy in 2001 and El Salvador’s subsequent affiliation to the Central American Free Trade Association in 2004 merely tightened its dependency on the US.
Funes has promised to increase taxes on the rich – at present the tax burden at 10% is amongst the lowest in Latin America – to pay for better social programmes, including rural health care and crime prevention, and to give subsidised credit to farmers and small businesses. But he is also committed to keeping the US dollar as El Salvador’s currency, and has recently reiterated his respect for property rights, economic stability and fiscal discipline. Along with neighbouring Costa Rica, and after an interval of 48 years, Funes has restored El Salvador’s diplomatic relations with Cuba, the last two countries in Latin America to do so.
Robert Clough
