elecciones!

Yesterday came an event I have been anticipating since my first day in site - the mayoral elections. This year is especially important because the current mayor, who has been in charge for the past 18 years, has finally decided to step down. There were two major candidates, one from the right wing ARENA party (the woman pictures above), which has been in power basically since the end of the Civil War, and one from the left wing, FMLN party, who were the former guerrillas. FMLN's strong showing in this election was an interesting sign of the times, since this municipality has always been a stronghold of the right wing, owing to the fact that they suffered greatly at the hands of the guerrillas during the war, being situated as it was on the border of the army controlled-area and as such it was a frequent battleground during the war. Significantly, a lot of the FMLN supporters in the town were under 25, meaning that they themselves had not lived through the war. My host mother, who is now in her 70s, made it very clear to me that she could never vote for FMLN after what she had survived. I find this perspective very interesting as it's quite the opposite of what I was expecting to hear before I had come down here, since most of the history I had learned about El Salvador referred to the atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed military, not by the guerrillas.
To return to the elections, the candidate running for ARENA was unique for several reasons. First of all, she is a woman, which is quite unusual for a mayor in El Salvador. I remember hearing somewhere that of out of over 200 municipalities or so, only about 20 have female mayors. Secondly, she was actually the candidate in the previous election for PCN, which is a minor right wing party in this country, and lost by only 8 votes (which of course aroused suspicion). This time round, the ARENA party, who were her previous rivals, asked her to run on their ticket, which she agreed to do.
Anyways, I know you're all dying to know what happened, so the exciting news is that she in fact won. I am happy because I will be working with her come May 1st when she swears in as mayor and I think she will be an excellent counterpart. First of all, she has committed to including many women in her municipal council and furthermore, she seems like she has a lot of energy and excitement about working to improve the municipality, just like me :).
A word on the elections themselves: Above I've posted a few photos from the elections. You can see what the ballots look like - they're quite different from those in the U.S. as they don't have words, just the party symbol. This is to help people who are illiterate and helps explain why the parties here put so much effort into advertising their emblems. As Ben, my brother, noted when he was here, the three biggest "brands" in El Salvador are ARENA, FMLN, and Tigo (which is the biggest cell phone company); you see their symbols on every lamp post, car, and house.
Also, I have a picture of the election monitors, there is one of each different party in every voting room. Additionally, the table is manned by people from every party. Initially, I thought it was quite strange that the people handling the election were out-right partisans, but having one from every party does seem to balance itself out in some strange way. Besides, I don't think it would be possible to find enough dedicated, local volunteers who weren't involved in one political party or another, everyone seems to be caught up in it here.
Lastly, I wanted to say how smooth and uncorrupted the elections here were in comparison to what I saw in Guatemala last year when I was there with Charlie Clemens on the election observing trip. To be fair, I did hear of some scandals in neighboring towns, and the losing side was grumbling about vote-buying, but generally speaking, there was very little of that going on. The candidates did spend enormous amounts of money giving away food and paying for discos on the campaign trail, but the day of things were quite subdued, a huge change from the long food lines and craziness of Guatemala. So that I think is a good sign.
Oh and that last picture is of the voting center (AKA the local school), with some oxen passing in front of it, just to give you a little taste of the campo :).