[Marxism] Time for Change in El Salvador (Granma on FMLN)

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

GRANMA
December 28, 2007

Time for Change in El Salvador 

FMLN finding ways to prevent the reoccurrence of electoral fraud, says 
parliament member Jorge Alberto Jimenez.

ARNALDO MUSA
musa.amp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) may be closer than ever 
from taking over the leadership of El Salvador, seized by the extreme 
rightwing. Recent polls give the candidates of the former guerrilla movement an 
eight to ten point advantage over the National Republican Alliance (ARENA), in 
power for the last 18 years and lead for the last 3 by current President Elias 
Antonio Saca.

âThe rightwing hasnât just governed for 18 years, but in fact 182, ever 
since the Republic was founded,â said FMLN parliament member Jorge Alberto 
Jimenez who is in Havana as part of a visiting Salvadoran legislative 
delegation made up of representatives from four political parties.

Jimenez explained that the neoliberal model implemented by ARENA has brought 
poverty, massive emigration, and a higher cost of living and citizen 
insecurity. âIn our country there are 13 murders every day and more than 500 
Salvadorans leave every 24 hours for the United States, despite the risk of 
deportation.â

âOur people are tired of this situation and see the FMLN and its presidential 
candidate, Mauricio Funes, as an opportunity for change and profound 
transformations in the 2009 presidential elections.â Funes is running along 
with vice presidential candidate, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, head of the FMLN 
bench in the legislature and a follower of the ideas of the late FMLN leader 
Shafik Handal.

Granma asked Jimenez about the main problems facing El Salvador.

âUnemployment, itâs above 40 percent, leading to an increase in the 
insecurity of the population; the health and education systems, which, in 
addition to not being free, are inadequate. The infant mortality rate is 32 
deaths per each thousand live births; there is a 32 percent illiteracy rate; of 
each 100 kids that go to primary school only one makes it to university. We 
donât have lots of natural resources, or industries, and agriculture is a 
disaster. The productive capacity has been lost. All these things have taken 
peopleâs patience beyond the boiling point.â

EL SALVADOR IS THE ONLY LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRY 
THAT MAINTAINS TROOPS IN IRAQ.

El Salvador has 5.8 million inhabitants and 2.2 million emigrants living in the 
United States which contribute US $3.5 billion in family remittances each year, 
the countryâs leading source of revenue. But this situation has brought with 
it a high social and cultural cost, as well as political blackmail used by 
Washington.   

âInsecurity is fed by unemployment and the excessive influence of US culture. 
From it certain reverberations have been felt in our society. For example, the 
âMaraâ gangs are a product of the emigration of Salvadorans to the United 
States, where they were founded. âMara 18â is named after 18th Street in 
Los Angeles. To defend themselves, the Salvadorans created the Mara Salvatrucha 
gang.â 

âThe other negative aspect of emigration is that it separates families. The 
father and mother go to the US and the children stay in El Salvador under the 
care of a grandmother or other relative or someone else. The concept of a 
nuclear family is lost. They begin to depend on remittances and donât want to 
work, creating a terrible culture, another type of Mara.

âTo that can be added the general discontent of the youth and the penetration 
of drug trafficking, because our country is a drug corridor between Colombia 
and the United States. Some drug cartels employ teenagers to commit murders.

âOfficials of the US government have threatened to cut the family remittances 
and end the emigration if the FMLN wins the presidential elections. That had an 
effect on the 2004 elections when the rightwing was expected to lose,â said 
Jimenez.

The FMLN legislator notes that ARENA controls the media which carries out 
aggressive campaigns to spread fear and terror among the population.

Nonetheless, and despite electoral fraud in 2004, Jimenez recalls that the 
popular mobilization impeded ARENA from seizing the mayorâs office of the 
capital San Salvador. In addition, the FMLN governs in 62 of the countryâs 
202 municipalities âincluding 12 of the 19 in the capitalâ and has 32 of 
the 84 members of parliament.  

âWe have learned the lesson. We are adequately prepared, not only to obtain 
the votes, but to defend them. We have allied with parties with progressive 
ideas, mainly labor groups, to throw out this servile government that makes us 
the only Latin American country that participates in imperialist wars, and that 
has people who helped and sheltered the criminal Luis Posada Carriles and sent 
terrorists to Cuba,â said the FMLN legislator before concluding, âThe 
people have lost their patience, itâs time for change.â


====================================
Walter Lippmann
Havana, Cuba
"Un paraÃso bajo el bloqueo"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
====================================

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