el candidato comes to town

Today the ARENA party's candidate, Rodrigo Avila, came to the little town of Dolores, one of the advantages to living in a tiny country is that politicians can make it out to the little places, though of course they will only go to towns where the mayor's office is of their party. ARENA is the right-wing party in El Salvador, and has been in power in San Salvador ever since the end of the civil war (as it has been in my town). After the civil war, the two sides of the conflict more or less morphed into the two political parties (ARENA and FMLN), which has been a huge success in the sense that the country has transformed into a democracy, but also has left a profound legacy of division in the country, with party allegiances running deep and bitter.

Elections in El Salvador for president run every 5 years and for mayor, every 3 years, so they only coincide every 15 years, which happens to be this coming year, 2009. The other special thing about this election is that for the first time ever, FMLN, the left-wing party and former guerrilla force during the civil war, has a chance of winning. Frustration with ARENA is high due to a combination of high food prices, unemployment and general fatigue after so many years in power, not to mention the re-emergence of the Latin Left.

Interestingly, Hugo Chavez is not very popular here. This country tends to run conservative and despite the tarnished history of the U.S. during the Civil War people are very pro-American. Many people here have family in "el norte", any thought of jeopardizing U.S.-Salvadoran relations is unwelcome. In fact, one of the reasons why the FMLN's candidate (Mauricio Funes) has been doing so well is that he is decidedly less radical than previous presidential-hopefuls from the party. For example, whereas the former FMLN candidate was a guerrilla commander during the war, Funes was/is a journalist and was actually not even a member of the FMLN. As he is more centrist, the ARENA attacks on him have been more generally directed towards the party, trying to paint them as Chavez-lovers and showing video of angry Nicaraguans yelling about the "disaster of the Ortega presidency." It'll be interesting (and hopefully not violent and scary) to see what happens, as it will be one of the most important moments in El Salvador's post-conflict history.