The Tribune Magazine

In a sea of red T-shirts, flags and balloons, a voice breaks through the waves: “Change is coming. Let us all participate in the great party of hope.” The young man in glasses addressing the crowd looks more like a business-school academic than Che Guevara, yet he is mobbed by thousands of enthusiastic young supporters.

He is Mauricio Funes, who is likely to be the next president of El Salvador and join the ranks of radical social democratic leaders in Latin America. Funes’ party, the left-wing FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation front), is currently running a vociferous media campaign designed to appeal to younger voters in its struggle to wrest power away from the extreme right, which has controlled the country’s politics and resources for decades.

Funes, who was a journalist during the civil war, hopes to position himself as leader of the post-war generation by reaching out to the 400,000 young Salvadorans who are eligible to vote for the first time. Many of them had not been born when FMLN fighters battled for justice against government troops and right-wing paramilitaries who, according to Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, were responsible for the majority of atrocities that characterised the war.

Considering just how entrenched the right wing has become in El Salvador, Funes’ political rise is truly remarkable. Public support for him is soaring. According to an opinion poll conducted by Universidad Francisco Gavidia, almost 50 per cent of respondents intend to vote for Funes in next year’s presidential election. Rodrigo Avila of the governing right-wing Arena is a distant second with 23.8 per cent support. Less than 5 per cent of respondents would vote for other candidates and roughly one in four are undecided.

Ever since 1992, the year El Salvador’s horrific civil war ended, Arena (or Nationalist Republican Alliance) has secured victory in election after election. The party was founded by death squad leader Roberto d’Aubuisson, suspected of being one of the intellectual authors behind the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980.

Arena’s party colours are red, white and blue. It is modelled on the Republican Party in the United States, but it has even stronger nationalist overtones. The party anthem describes El Salvador as the land where “the reds will die”.

But Funes is seen as the man to topple Arena. A former talk-show host, he is actually a political outsider and a newcomer to the FMLN. He is admired by many Salvadorans for his tough questioning and sharp criticism of the Arena government on his daily current affairs programme, The Interview. Funes denounces Arena as dominated by out-of-touch fat cats who have enriched themselves while much of the country suffers. In a recent speech, Funes attacked as “immoral” a new four-cents-a-minute tax on international phone calls. The issue is sensitive, as around a million Salvadorans have migrated to the US but keep close ties with family members at home.

Funes wants to turn the FMLN into a pragmatic political party. At rallies, he doesn’t adopt the FMLN’s traditional red colours, preferring to campaign in a fashionable white guayabera shirt. It’s a symbolic move designed to contrast himself with many in the party who still wear their old guerrilla fatigues and wave flags of Che Guevara at campaign events.

President Antonio Saca of Arena, whose term ends next year, has mocked the FMLN’s supposed change, asserting: “If it flies like a duck, swims like a duck and eats like a duck, it’s a duck. The FMLN is a communist party. Its ideas haven’t changed.”

But, despite this dismissive rhetoric, Arena is genuinely worried that Funes might win. Facing the possibility of a humiliating defeat in March 2009, the Salvadoran right and its backers in Washington have gone into overdrive, trying to damage Funes by linking him with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. Arena has accused Funes of being a “little Chávez” and obtaining secret finance from the Venezuelan leader.

Funes has strongly denied having any financial links to the Venezuelan government and Chávez has also ridiculed the claim, adding that the FMLN did not need extra financial support, as it was a “solid” and “well-organised” party with popular backing. Chávez denounced the “gringo” allegations as another US attempt to discredit him and cause division in the region. “It’s a lie. We don’t need to do that and they don’t need it.”

Funes has said that he would seek a close working relationship with Venezuela and, indeed, the FMLN has been developing its relations with Chávez for several years. At the local level, FMLN mayors set up ENEPASA, a joint venture energy company which signed a deal with Venezuela in 2006. The initiative is designed to provide cheaper fuel to El Salvador’s transport workers.

The FMLN has made it clear that it will abandon Arena’s neo-liberal policies. With more than 37 percent of El Salvador’s seven million people living in poverty and with one of the highest per-capita murder rates in the world, these have clearly failed and its people desperately need a more just and equitable economic system.

One approach will be through integration into ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas. This aims to counteract the big business-driven US Free Trade Area of the Americas. ALBA promotes exchange trade and solidarity among progressive Latin American countries. FMLN mayors have used the money the municipalities saved on the Venezuelan energy deal to subsidise food prices for the poor.

Meanwhile, the campaign has been scarred by violence. On September 4, FMLN activists were assaulted in San Salvador and four people had to be taken to hospital. The attack was carried out against members of the FMLN’s communications brigade and Otilia Matamoros, assistant co-ordinator of the FMLN women’s secretariat was among the injured. The incident was blamed on armed supporters of Norman Quijano, Arena’s candidate for the San Salvador mayoralty.

At a press conference the following day, FMLN campaign co-ordinator Lorena Pena accused Quijano of being responsible for the violence. He later confirmed that activists associated with his campaign are routinely armed and therefore “dangerous”. In response to this, human rights ombudsman Oscar Luna called for all El Salvador’s political parties to sign up to a non-violence accord.

Funes has shocked El Salvador’s elite by taking a sizable lead in the presidential race. As well as continuing the leftward trend in Latin America, his victory would represent an historic breakthrough for the FMLN and for a nation where memories of the horrific civil war are still fresh.

“El Salvador needs a democratic, realistic and responsible left”, Funes said during a recent interview. He argues that as wider economic forces now favour inequality, the need for a strong state, egalitarian, interventionist and socialist in outlook, is greater than ever. This resonates well in a country crippled by hunger, poverty and corruption. Arena thugs who think violence will win might be advised to reflect on that old dictum: “It’s the economy, stupid.”