Interpreting History - Getting it Right

Unnoticed by most of the US citizenry was the January election victory of the former FMLN rebels in parliamentary and municipal elections in El Salvador. This could lead to the first FMLN victory in presidential elections in March as their candidate, former CNN reporter Mauricio Funes, holds as much as a 14% lead in some of the current polls.

Bernard Aronson, President H.W. Bush's assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs from 1989 to 1993 stated that this victory is "the ultimate fruition of the peace accords we backed." A UN sponsored peace treaty was signed in 1992.

Robert Pastor, Latin America national security advisser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s sees a slightly different, if equally perverted, lesson in the victory: this should show Americans that revolutionary and guerilla groups that have a political agenda can evolve to be democratic."

For someone who knows the history of Central America and lived there during three of the civil wars - Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala - these "lessons" are not the ones that should be drawn from the FMLN victory which is part of a larger Latin America move from rule by Conservative elites to more democratically elected leftist governments (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador in recent years).

In the 1960s and early 70s there was a move toward democratic reform of the Central American countries which eminated from the universities, labor unions and progressive political elements. This movement was repressed in aweful dimensions by death squads, national guards, national police and armies in the service of the economic elite and backed by military aid from the US government as part of the Cold War. What the reformist elements were asking for was democratic process, progressive labor laws, fair wages, land reform.

The result of the peace processes in El Salvador and Guatemala was exactly what these reformist elements had asked for: democratic process, land reform, access to edcuation, fair labor laws and economic opportunity. Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s when the Peace accords were signed, hundreds of thousands were killed (mostly civilians); tens of thousands made refugees; and billions of dollars spent on military weapons and training instead of invested in economic development.

The lesson should be that the cost of using violence on behalf of entrenched economic and political intereststo to resist reasonable, humane and democratic movements for change,is unacceptable to the human community. The lesson is that the US was wrong to support the military dictatorships and the economic elite in their immoral and destructive attempts to repress reform which, logically and reasonably will eventually have to be accepted because they are, in fact, logical and reasonable (and we could add, ethically superior to rule by a few). That the current political reality shows is that when democratic process is allowed to operate, people eventually choose governmente that are more concerned with human progress in health, education and protection of human rights over right-wing governments that want to create greater wealth for themselves. All that killing, destruction and lost opportunity for human development when, in the end, the result is exactly what the US and the Central American elite resisted.

Nevertheless, if Larry Birns, director the nonprofit Council on Hemispheric Affairs, is correct in his response to this democratic opening in Latin America and the possibility of an FMLN victory in El Salvador, the Washington elite have not learned any such lessson. "There's another possibility that yet another country will join the pink tide and go leftist," Birns said. "What Washington worries about is momentum building up behind one election after another for leftist candidates."

Well, we cannot be sure that the FMLN wins the presidential elections in El Salvador. The Right will unite behind the ARENA candidate and they have mighty tools at their disposal. Hopefully, this time the US Embassy in El Salvador will not give out notice that if FMLN wins, the US will cut off money coming from Salvadorans in the US back to their families in El Salvador as they did in the last presidential elections. These remittances continue to be the economic lifeline of many Salvadoran families. Hopefully, this time, the US will listen to people who get history right and welcome the opportunity to develop good relations and fair treatment of our neighbors to the south. It will be interesting to see who Obama/Clinton choose as their emissaries to the south.