Latin Pulse: April 30, 2009) The Latin Pulse Team brings you a special report on the historic election in Latin America. El Salvador, a tiny Central American country of 7 million inhabitants, recently elected Mauricio Funes, its first leftist president. Not unlike the evening Barack Obama was elected as President of the United States, the crowds in the capital city of San Salvador were chanting "Sí se pudo" - "Yes we did!"
The Funes party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, defeated the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance, the ARENA party, who has ruled the country for 20 years. In the 1980s, the FMLN, a coalition of former Marxist guerillas, fought a bitter war against the U.S. backed Salvadoran government. Thousands were killed, tortured, and disappeared. Salvadoran voters were voting for the FMLN candidate because they wanted change. They were worried about poverty, unemployment, and raging crime, and were not impressed by the right wing's well-financed media campaign, which stressed the dangers of communism.
The U.S. government has always had a presence in Salvador's electoral process. For that reason, the FMLN publicly asked the American leadership to stay out of the 2009 election more than a year ago. It appears that they did. The next day, President Barack Obama called Funes to congratulate him on his victory.
For a long time, El Salvador has been a staunch U.S. ally. Now, the smallest country in Central America has joined the increasing number of Latino American countries that have chosen to explore a change to the left. However, with a new U.S. president warmly shaking hands with Funes, Brazils Lula, and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, many are hopeful about the future of Latin American-US relations.
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