What's Driving El Salvador's Left Turn?

[subsuelo]

After more than 15 years since the end of El Salvador's civil war, the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) is poised to accomplish what its guerrilla predecessors never did: Takeover the national government. A recent poll by the University of Central America shows FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes with a 15-point lead over his main opponent, Rodrigo Ávila of the right-wing ARENA party.

With FMLN candidates also ahead in polls for municipal and congressional elections, the party appears on the verge of a resounding victory in the March 2009 presidential elections. If the FMLN holds its lead, El Salvador could become the next country in Latin America making a turn to the left.
Boosting the FMLN's poll numbers is a broad rejection of failed free market policies and fear of the related global economic crisis. The Salvadoran economy, which the Wall Street Journal ranks as the second-most open market in Latin America (after Chile's), grew at a rate of five percent last year. But the benefits of this expansion have not reached the country's impoverished majority, and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Making matters worse, the economic crisis in the United States will likely cause a precipitous drop in the hundreds of millions of dollars Salvadoran immigrants send home to help their families in El Salvador.

A New Politics

The FMLN's success at the polls is also tied to a series of political innovations that have helped broaden the party's appeal and boost its inclusiveness—both at home and abroad. The candidacy of Mauricio Funes, a popular and well-respected journalist seen as something of an outsider to the party, has helped attract support beyond the party faithful. But even before Funes became the candidate, the FMLN was already making significant strides incorporating civil society, particularly sectors traditionally excluded from direct participation in politics and people not affiliated with the FMLN. Finally, the campaign has also elevated its political strategy to a transnational level, recognizing the importance of El Salvador's sizeable diaspora in the United States and Canada.

Encompassing all these innovations is the FMLN's initiative, announced in September 2007, for a “diálogo social abierto” (an open social dialogue). The FMLN set up the dialogue process with the intention of generating a set of proposals that would provide the foundations for a governing platform should the party emerge victorious in 2009. Officials explained the process would include thematic workshops, town hall meetings, general assemblies, proposal collection boxes, and discussions with specific social sectors in various geographic locations. The FMLN established some 32 itinerant “mesas,” literally tables, but really committees, to focus on a range of specific issues, including themes such as immigration, the economy, and culture.

Any ambitious political process is bound to have its imperfections, but the experience of the diálogo social in Los Angeles and the mesa assigned to culture are two examples of how the FMLN's outreach strategy has created new forms of political participation. In the process, dialogue participants are pushing the party toward an extension of the diálogo social and more vibrant debates, particularly when it comes to engaging El Salvador's citizens abroad.

http://nacla.org/node/5238">NACLA - read more