"When the United States sneezes, Mexico comes down with a cold, and Central America contracts pneumonia," or so the adage goes. Well, the financial meltdown and economic collapse in the United States is a bit more than just a sneeze, and the negative repercussions south of the border are going to get much worse before they get any better. Yes, Americans are hurting, especially those that have recently become unemployed, but most are simply forgoing a new car, putting off a vacation, or cutting conspicuous consumption.

However, people in one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the Western Hemisphere, El Salvador, are truly suffering. Parents now feel blessed if they can put one daily meal of beans and tortillas on the table for their children. According to the 2007/2008 Human Development Report, 40.6 percent of Salvadorans live on less than $2 a day and the GDP per capita ($US PPP) is $5,255, but these statistics were gathered long before the global economic crisis took effect. Of course, rising poverty and unemployment rates are contributing to more crime, insecurity and violence. So far this year, El Salvador has averaged 11 murders a day in a country with the population of a large U.S. city (nearly 7 million). Out of desperation, at least 300 Salvadorans leave the country every 24 hours, and the most efficient Salvadoran government agency is the passport office.

The United States has an obligation to care about the plight of poor Salvadorans in the Pulgarcito (the Tom Thumb) of Latin America.

In The History of El Salvador (Greenwood Press, 2009), Historian Christopher M. White explored the factors that make El Salvador a microcosm for understanding so many of the problems facing small, developing countries. I would go further: El Salvador is a real-world, social science laboratory for analyzing how an extremely polarized nation-state—locked in an asymmetrical complex interdependent relationship with the United States —can recover from a long internal conflict, reconcile extreme ideological positions, and become more politically moderate and democratic. Nonetheless, I largely concur with White:

El Salvador holds a special place in Latin American history. Its national motto of “God, Union, Liberty” speaks volumes of the people’s desires and of the problems they have faced since the days of the first Spanish arrivals in 1522. That is to say that the search for these three elements is of the utmost importance to all Salvadorans, but in such conflicting ways that it has led to endless problems. Salvadorans have desperately sought a course to stability and peace for nearly 500 years and though they have not suffered war in the past 15, even the post-civil war era has witnessed violence and desperation on a level most Latin American nations would never accept. The Salvadorans only accept it because they have to in light of their recent as well as long-term past.

Salvadorans tend to be superstitious and fatalistic, but they are not necessarily resigned to “violence and desperation” nor are they totally resistant to change, as evidenced by this year’s historic election results.

On June 01, for the first time in El Salvador’s long, tragic, and turbulent history of corruption, military rule, and violence, a president from a leftist opposition political party will assume the highest executive office in the land as the result of a peaceful, legitimate, and democratic process. While there has been much debate as to who truly won the March 15 presidential election—the candidate Mauricio Funes or the former Marxist guerrilla movement turned political party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front—everyone agrees the biggest winners were the Salvadoran people and the democratic process itself. Expressing civic responsibility and commitment to democracy, more than 60 percent of nearly 4.3 million registered voters participated in this year’s second national election. In the end, voters chose the FMLN candidate, Mauricio Funes, over the ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) candidate, Rodrigo Ávila, 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent.

However, the results indicate a still-divided country. ARENA won eight departments and 160 municipalities while the FMLN won six departments and 102 municipalities. ARENA had more success in the less populated areas while the FMLN did better in the larger cities, particularly within the San Salvador metropolitan area, where the FMLN won 55 percent of the vote.
 
Overall, the election proceeded peacefully and without major incident. In fact, every national and international observer delegation, including the European Union, Organization of American States, and Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), certified the election as free and fair. More importantly, El Salvador did not descend into the chaos and violence so many pessimistic observers expected.

Of course, democracy can be a messy game, especially when so many policies and procedures are needed to ensure fairness. Voting in the United States is a comparatively painless, efficient, and apolitical affair, but with at least six people from opposing parties assigned to perform different roles at each voting table, it is not surprising there were minor irregularities. However, there was no evidence of systemic fraud, at least on Election Day. The Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía General de la República) received 82 complaints during the weekend of the election, but only 18 could be considered cases of electoral fraud. The remaining were complaints of voter intimidation or procedural irregularities.

My team of credentialed international observers with the Center for Exchange and Solidarity in Usulután, arguably the hottest place in Central America, was led by Justin Riley, a photojournalist.

In the capital city of Usulután (same name as the department), 131 voting tables stretched for at least a kilometer and generated a great deal of pedestrian congestion as people from one end tried to get to their polling place at the other end.  Of course, everyone came out to vote in the morning. Street vendors, extended families, lingering voters, international and national observers, and the media mixed to make for a carnival-like atmosphere. By mid-afternoon, however, all election observers were hard-pressed to find a single voter crazy enough to brave the broiling heat and stifling humidity. When the polls closed at 5 PM both sides were convinced of victory, but it became apparent within two hours that the FMLN had won in Usulután.

This wasn’t my first election in Latin America. I conducted an independent assessment of voting in Oaxaca, Mexico in the midst of a teacher’s strike in 2006. Surprisingly, I witnessed more violence and more severe procedural problems in Mexico than in El Salvador.

In Usulután, I observed poorly-trained poll workers following improper procedures, fanatical party supporters arguing and scuffling, and voting table volunteers accepting mutilated, potentially fraudulent, identification cards. Lax or absent finger inspections for indelible ink, which is used to prove a voter has already voted, was the most consistent problem I noticed. Apparently, my observations were not unique. For example, the Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública’s (IUDOP’s) team of UCA student observers noted similar problems and irregularities at 29 percent of the voting tables they monitored.

Furthermore, I did observe one party sympathizer intentionally misinforming a voter looking for his polling place. This incident resulted in a very heated argument between the FMLN party supervisor and an ARENA poll worker, but several National Civilian Police (PNC) officers quickly defused the situation. It should be noted that the PNC’s performance was exemplary on Election Day. Since uniformed military personnel are barred from polling sites, the PNC was charged with providing security, including guaranteeing the safety of observers.

Aside from children participating with their parents or grandparents, the most heartening scenario I witnessed was a deaf-mute who needed to be instructed on how to vote but whose vote preference was in no way influenced by poll workers, party supporters, or friends and family members at or near the voting table I was closely monitoring.

Arguably, democracy in El Salvador became consolidated the moment the losing candidate, Rodrigo Ávila, publicly conceded victory to Mauricio Funes. However, questions linger as to why Ávila so quickly accepted defeat in such a tight race. No electoral process is perfect, and most candidates trailing as closely probably would have waited until at least the following day to concede. Several explanations point to possible systemic fraud and institutional corruption occurring long before Election Day, but Ávila may have simply wanted to avoid any possibility of violence.

I see at least four reasons to believe popular support for the FMLN, and particularly for Funes, is much greater than was expressed by voters on March 15th, and had the ARENA candidate won by the same margin of victory, the FMLN’s reaction would have been forceful or even ugly, to say the least. In fact, rumors circulated that the FMLN had a plan to hijack the election night press conference, if evidence emerged that ARENA had stolen the election.

First, every legitimate public opinion poll predicted a slim to landslide victory for Funes. Moreover, these surveys indicated much higher approval ratings for Funes than for Ávila.
For example, a survey conducted in early February by IUDOP at the UCA indicated 49.3 percent of the respondents intended to vote for the FMLN and 31.7 percent for ARENA, while the remaining respondents expressed a preference for other parties or for no party at all, or they simply refused to respond. However, when the respondents were pressed to express their specific choice between only Rodrigo Ávila or Mauricio Funes, the results indicated a strong preference for Funes (56.6 percent) over Ávila (35.3 percent), with the remaining respondents indicating no preference at all or for someone else, or a lack of knowledge of either candidate.

Second, the vast majority of those who did not or could not participate in the election were likely Funes or FMLN supporters. The FMLN draws its base from the poor and the working classes but also from students and old revolutionaries. The vast majority of Salvadorans working in the United States are, in a sense, economic refugees. They would be natural FMLN supporters. However, no mechanism was put in place for them to cast their vote, short of returning to El Salvador. One polling place, the “Mágico” González Stadium, was set up to receive Salvadoran migrants who had obtained their documento único de identidad (DUI) outside of El Salvador, and as many as 4,000 voters out of nearly 40,000 eligible Salvadoran migrants were expected on Election Day. Disappointingly, less than 300 actually returned to cast their vote. Of course, undocumented Salvadorans in the United States did not even consider returning, for obvious reasons.

Assuredly, the lack of an absentee voting system also affected the many Salvadorans who had moved from small towns or rural areas to San Salvador, the capital, to work in maquiladoras (light manufacturing plants) or as street vendors. Many of these people simply could not afford to return to their hometowns to vote on March 15th.

Third, there was evidence of institutionalized corruption within the ARENA government. For example, the FMLN was prevented from participating in the creation of the National Registry of Naturalized People, the electoral registry, and the national IDs (DUIs), which Salvadorans need to prove their eligibility to vote. This raised the specter of non-nationals—that is, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Nicaraguans—fraudulently participating in the election for money, a job, or Salvadoran citizenship. Apparently, there were documented cases of non-Salvadorans being bussed into the country to vote, and it is somewhat curious that Ávila won in nearly every municipality and department on the border with Guatemala and Honduras. Moreover, some evidence of vote buying and pressure on workers to vote for ARENA did emerge, and a few factory bosses instructed employees to photograph ballots with their cell phones to prove how they had voted. Finally, an unconfirmed rumor was widely circulated that ARENA would pay $60 to anyone who could prove they had voted for Ávila.

Remarkably, there is no way to efficiently track address changes in El Salvador, and the national registry still lists thousands of deceased individuals as eligible voters. This opened the possibility of someone assuming the identity of a dead individual and voting in his or her place. More than once I heard a Salvadoran comment after seeing a long-dead relative’s name on the voter verification sheet. One woman even asked: “Why are there so many dead people listed on the registry?” And of course, ARENA’s refusal to support campaign financing laws smelled fishy throughout the campaign, but this worked both ways. There was nothing to prevent conservative groups in the United States, wealthy foreign magnates, Hugo Chávez, the Castro brothers, or Bono from contributing to the coffers of any candidate (There is indeed a movement to bring U2 to El Salvador for a concert).   

It should also be noted that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) was created and largely controlled by the ARENA government. While its magistrates were lauded for their performance, had the election results been challenged or had there been a significant number of contested ballots, El Salvador would have experienced a United States 2000 or a Mexico 2006 scenario. Most Salvadorans would have never been comfortable with the  TSE determining the winner.

Fourth, the fear factor. ARENA political ads and a few nut-job U.S. legislators attempted to manipulate voters with unfounded threats of communist revolution, seizure of private property, disappearance of foreign direct investment, expulsion of Salvadorans in the United States, withdrawal of Official Development Assistance, and/or interception or cessation of remittances. El Salvador is so dependent upon the United States that inane and inappropriate comments in the press or on the floor of the House and Senate can easily make the front pages in El Salvador. That is, stupid comments or even rumors become big news in a country with a population the size of a large U.S. city. More than once I was asked by pro-FMLN and even independent-minded Salvadorans if the United States was really going to send all the Salvadoran migrants home or cut off remittances, if the left won. In response, the Obama administration and the U.S Embassy issued public statements that the United States would work with whomever the winner might be. 

The campaign was a drawn-out, dirty affair, and both sides adopted tactics that would have been unacceptable in the United States. And Salvadorans evidently took notice, as 79.4 percent of the respondents in the February IUDOP survey agreed that the political parties were engaging in dirty, fear-mongering tactics, and 44.2 percent of those surveyed actually expected some measure of fraud in the elections. Surely, the most appalling fear tactic was directed at the Funes family, which received numerous anonymous threats. In fact, one threat was so severe that future first-lady and Brazilian lawyer, Vanda Pignato, sent a letter to the Brazilian Ambassador in El Salvador. The couple also agreed to send their daughter, Gabriel, to Brazil during the last stages of the campaign.

For me, one ARENA campaign ad stood out. It compared the FMLN vice-presidential candidate to four convicted homicidal-maniac gang members, saying that Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former FMLN guerrilla commander, was an even bigger mass murderer than all four gang members combined. Of course, fears that Funes would align with Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela to advance Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution and his vision of 21st Century Socialism were also played up in the media, which is, by the way, largely controlled by the right in El Salvador. However, the IUDOP survey demonstrated that only 32 percent of Salvadorans surveyed actually believed an FMLN government would become another Cuba or be strongly influenced by Venezuela. Nonetheless, the suggestion that Funes was a puppet or a façade for radical elements within the FMLN was advanced by ARENA supporters.

So, in the face of all these challenges and irregularities why did Salvadorans choose change, Funes, and the FMLN over Ávila and ARENA? Funes quite bluntly attributed his victory to the failures of four consecutive ARENA governments and to too many years of too many unfulfilled promises. In fact, much of Funes’ support came from a non-partisan social movement that came together for the election: Movimiento Ciudadano Amigos de Mauricio.  Indeed ARENA had become a complacent and stagnant party perceived to only represent the interests of the traditional oligarchy. I even met ARENA supporters who said they could tolerate a Funes term because it would force ARENA to clean house, reenergize, and work harder to fulfill expectations. After their loss, my ARENA informants even compared their situation to that of the Republican Party in the United States. 

President-elect Funes also said he probably wouldn’t be involved in leftist politics had it not been for ARENA. Put simply, Salvadorans were ready for change, and Funes was the right man at the right moment, an historical serendipity for El Salvador. Christopher M. White noted El Salvador’s persistent problems with political leadership:

Political leadership has always presented a dilemma for El Salvador for several reasons. The nation has sought strong executives to control the country. This has caused many leaders to rely on military rather than civil political strength. The chaos surrounding the initial years of Central American independence led straight to this problem, and the country is only recently beginning to settle into a normal political flow, relatively untainted by military strength.

In fact, all the great leaders in El Salvador’s history have met violent ends. Nonetheless, Funes’ life experiences, leadership qualities, charisma, and intelligence set him apart from nearly all of El Salvador’s contemporary politicians. Interestingly, the Funes campaign team intentionally made positive comparisons with

President Barack Obama, much to the chagrin of the White House.
But there are some very specific reasons why voters rejected the ARENA candidate, Rodrigo Ávila. For starters, Ávila did not run a vibrant campaign, and he personally lacked charisma. It was also exceedingly difficult for him to represent change when his party was responsible for the current, sad plight of so many Salvadorans today. More than a decade of failed neoliberal policies—the privatization of public services, free-trade agreements, dollarization of the economy, and vulgar capitalism—in fact exacerbated unemployment and poverty. Of course, El Salvador’s current crime and security threats are directly linked to the country’s “pneumonia”—that is, its severe economic problems.

Furthermore, outgoing president “Tony” Saca was just too cozy with the Bush administration. In fact, his administration supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq and even retained Salvadoran troops in Iraq until February 2009. After 12 years of civil war and the signing of the 1992 Peace Accords, most Salvadorans found the deaths of 5 their compatriots in Iraq difficult to stomach. They could not fathom why their soldiers were involved in an illegal war on the other side of the world.

But now that El Salvador will soon swear in a leftist president, will the country’s ideological pendulum swing too far to the left? Will Funes align with the authoritarian, populist leftist regimes of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela or with the more moderate social-democratic regimes of Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay? 

Importantly, Funes has publicly stated that his leftist policies will follow Brazilian president Lula da Silva’s more moderate socialist model, and I am confident that Funes can resist and control the more militant elements of the FMLN. In fact, the FMLN itself issued a manifesto saying it is behind its president and will support the new government’s policies (see: www.fmln.org.sv/).

Moreover, El Salvador is so deeply embedded in an asymmetrical complex interdependent relationship with the United States that it would be economic suicide to align with the anti-U.S.A. Latin American leftist axis. El Salvador’s currency is the U.S. dollar, and the country is deeply dependent on trade, foreign direct investment, and remittances from the United States. As such, Funes cannot afford to frighten the national and international business communities in a time of economic crisis. Finally, the FMLN will have to learn to reach compromise with the parties of the right in the Legislative Assembly. It will have to eschew its radical, dogmatic ideological roots to solve practical problems.

Salvadorans will have much to celebrate on June 1st when Funes takes office. However, social expectations are running very high, and the Funes regime’s capabilities are not great. The Bush and Saca administrations have left Funes with quite a mess. So far, I think most Salvadorans are willing to give Funes their support and take him on his word, but the current global economic crisis will hamstring his reform efforts. Moreover, he is definitely going to have to rely on his charm, charisma, and leadership skills because all Salvadorans and the international community will be scrutinizing his performance. Hopefully, the left’s cure for El Salvador’s “pneumonia” won’t be worse than the disease.

Vincent T. Gawronski is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Birmingham-Southern College. He will soon be returning to El Salvador to conduct a follow-up study of the elections and of Funes’ leadership style. He can be reached at vgawrons@bsc.edu.