Finally, nearly two decades later, El Salvador has fully emerged from its U.S.-sponsored descent into Boschean nightmare:
Salvadorans on Sunday elected a former TV reporter as the country's first leftist president, unseating a conservative party that ruled for two decades and choosing a government that will be dominated by former guerrillas.
Mauricio Funes, an affable political moderate running on behalf of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, claimed victory after nearly complete returns gave him a lead that experts said was insurmountable.
"This is the happiest night of my life, and I also want it to be the night of greatest hope for El Salvador," an emotional Funes said in a crowded hotel conference room, as cameras flashed and supporters cheered. "Thank you for choosing the path of hope and for overcoming fear."
To appreciate the tremendous significance of this victory, consider that the U.S.-trained and -backed military forces and death squads in El Salvador spent twelve years torturing, raping, murdering and massacring those who wanted to see it happen.
Roberto Lovato offered a perfect summary of what this moment means:
I’ll just quote a song that says, "Y que venga la alegria a lavar el sufrimiento"—"Let the joy come and wash away the suffering." It’s something on an order I’ve never seen in my life. As a child of Salvadoran immigrants and as someone who’s spent time here and as someone who saw the Obama experience, I really can’t tell you what this is like, when you’re talking about ending not just the ARENA party’s rule, but you’re talking about 130 years of oligarchy and military dictatorship, by and large, that’s just ended last night. You’re talking about $6 billion that the United States used to defeat the FMLN, as you mentioned earlier. You’re talking about one of the most formidable—a formerly political military, now political forces, in the hemisphere, showing the utter failure of not just the ARENA party but of somebody in particular, too, who has a special place in many of our hearts: Ronald Reagan. This is the defeat of Ronald Reagan, nothing less.
And more generally, the defeat of the United States and its resort to terror and oppression throughout the hemisphere.
So congratulations to the people of El Salvador, and thank you for following millions of other people in Latin America in giving us yet another illustration of what real democracy looks like. I only hope that some day we'll be wise enough and brave enough to follow your example.
ON A RELATED NOTE: A few weeks ago I watched Innocent Voices, an excellent film based on the life of screenwriter Oscar Torres about the Salvadoran civil war in general and the abuse of child soldiers by the Salvadoran government in particular. As dark as the subject matter was, it was handled beautifully, and the ultimate message—especially now—was one of hope. Highly recommended.
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