NEWS & LETTERS, June - July 2009
World in View
Latin American Notes
El Salvador--Will the election and inauguration of Mauricio Funes, representing the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), herald a new social beginning? Or will it stall at the defeat of the right-wing corrupt ARENA party with its origins in death squads, its decades-long military and then civilian repression, and its present-day crony capitalism?
A 12-year-long civil war with deep Reagan-led U.S. involvement left 75,000 dead and thousands and thousands more disappeared. It was followed by the 1992 "Peace Accords," the "truth squads," and attempts at reconciliation. Everything had to be carried out in the context of a blood-soaked ARENA rule until this presidential election.
Funes and the FMLN inherit a country of enormous inequality where the top 10% of the population has a share of income 57 times greater than the bottom 10%, with out-of-control crime, much of it imported from the U.S., with Los Angeles-based El Salvadoran youth gangs returning to the country.
The question now is will the initiative come from the social movements which brought Funes and the FMLN to the fore, or will it be stymied by the joint hand of U.S. and El Salvadoran capital, or by the decidedly mixed heritage of the FMLN itself? A new social beginning needs to be rooted in the movements from below and in working out theoretical and practical points of departure for Latin America today.
--Eugene Walker
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