Why the left won in El Salvador

Mauricio Funes, a television journalist turned politician, became the symbol of another turn to the left in Latin American politics when he won El Salvador's presidential election March 15. Funes, who took 51 percent of the vote, was the candidate of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), which led an armed struggle against a conservative government from 1980 to 1992. While Funes didn't participate in the fighting, he was accused by the incumbent ARENA party of involvement with "terrorism."

In fact, it is the U.S.-backed ARENA party--which contains fascist elements and right-wing death squads--that is steeped in blood. Following a 1992 peace deal between ARENA and the FMLN, a UN-sponsored truth commission found that of the 75,000 people killed during the civil war, the government was responsible for 85 percent of human rights violations. The most infamous examples of the far right's violence include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 and the massacre of 1,000 people in the village of El Mozote the following year.

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