The FARC and the FMLN

On March 1 of this year, Colombian armed forces raided a camp of the rebel FARC guerilla group in Ecuador. The computers captured in that raid have produced information having ramifications in El Salvador.

As The Economist reports:
They represent only one side of a story, and most of their claims have yet to be independently corroborated. But Interpol has now concluded that the huge cache of e-mails and other documents recovered from the computers of Raúl Reyes, a senior leader of the FARC guerrillas killed in a Colombian bombing raid on his camp in Ecuador on March 1st, are authentic and undoctored. The documents throw new light on the inner workings of the FARC.

According to the Spanish newspaper, El Pais, which claims to have been provided with access to some of the electronic documents, there is evidence in the documents of a link between the FARC rebels and at least one senior FMLN official in El Salvador. Luis Merino is a top leader of the former guerrilla force FMLN and is now a member of the Central American parliament. The El Pais report cites a document stating that Merino put the FARC rebels into contact with Australian arms dealers who met with the FARC in the fall of 2007.

For his part, president Tony Saca condemned the FARC as a terrorist group and stated that his government would send investigators to Columbia to attempt to gain more information about any links between the FARC and parties in El Salvador.

I will write more about the impact of this story on Mauricio Funes' presidential campaign in an upcoming post.

Comments

El-Visitador said…
«there is evidence in the documents of a link between the FARC rebels and at least one senior FMLN official in El Salvador»

Dude, the laptop documents are the least of the FMLN's troubles:

1. Chávez confessed on camera recently that Schafik Handal personally invited him several years after the Peace Agreements to San Salvador, where he met now dead narco-terrorist Raúl Reyes, then and now terrorist #2 of Colombia. I have Chávez's video statement in my website.

2. Folha de São Paulo, a major Brazilian daily, has printed an interview with #2 terrorist Reyes where he also confessed to his participation in the event in San Salvador. In fact, narco Reyes admitted he was a Co-President of the event, hosted and organized by FMLN. I have a link to the Folha interview in my website.

3. Last week, FMLN itself confessed to "a relationship" with FARC.

Let there be no doubt. Several years after the Peace Agreements were signed, FMLN has kept close relationships with a terrorist narco-trafficking organization that has several U.S. citizens kidnapped today in Colombia.

The laptop files simply confirm that the relationship extended to plotting to kidnap civilians in Panama, war weaponry trafficking, and illegal interference with the Salvadorean electoral process.

But I could have told you that. What else would a bunch of bloody Communists meet in "workshops" for, if not for terrorist activities?
Unknown said…
"I will write more about the impact of this story on Mauricio Funes' presidential campaign in an upcoming post".

I sincerely doubt there will be any significant fall out from this story on Funes' opportunity to become President, because:

1-The campaign in El Salavdor is not centred around the relationship of FMLN-FARC, or even cold war fears and former cold war lovers or even IRAK and our presence there. It seems certain that as clinton's headquarters put it so well: "Its the economy, Stupid", and we could say the same thing for El Salvador, adding to it a need for a reawakened SOCIAL CONSCIENCE, whatever that means in practice.

2-The contents of the FARC computers have created very little stir in El Salvador, and incidentally in the world at large.

3-The contents of the FARC computers are so vast, that by the time they make sense of it all, voting time will have come and gone.

Regards,
Anonymous said…
Sad as it may seem, the people of El Salvador give so little credence to what CaSaca and Arena say that even if it all were true,FARC/FMLN, they still wouldn't change viewpoints politically. It is all politics. One of my conocidos (a member of the PNC) was relating that the recent arrest of the car dealer in San Miguel and his supposed ties to organized crime were in retribution for the passing of information to organized crime in Guate that led to the deaths of the PARLACEN representatives who were "dirty" members of ARENA carrying money and drugs. Corruption is so endemic here that the people will follow whoever seems to have the edge in making life better for them. It is not a matter of black and white but shades of grey. Right now the FMLN seems to be a lighter shade of grey than Saca and his cronies and that is why support is sliding to the Frente. As much as Saca wants to sidetrack the spotlight from ARENA's lack of effort to really change government and help the poor, I think it is wasted effort.
Anonymous said…
B.S. and that's all i have to say about that.
El-Visitador said…
«B.S. and that's all i have to say about that»

Denial. Not just a river in Egypt.
Anonymous said…
I recently visited El Salvador for the first time with my wife who grew up there. (I am learning alot from this blog, thanks Tim.) I am a wasp (wht anglo-saxon protestant) and even this whitie could sense the leftist spirit of FMLN, especially in little towns visited like Ataco and Suchitoto.

It saddens me to see the cultural indifference to the sufferings of the poor there (even from our friends, even to some extent, my wife). As has been better stated by many of those who write on this blog, there is corruption on both sides. That is not to say that FMLN propaganda is not an empty, even deceptive promise...clearly from history's evidence, communism/socialism is a lie.

But, apart from real heart change, even (especially?) from those with Arena, your beautiful country is destined for continued poverty and corruption. No polical force on the right or left made America great. Only the power of the living God, through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ (alone, not with the false trappings of Roman Catholicism) working through a unique sub-set of people, in a unique time in history, could make a country as great and free as the United States. Honestly, I doubt it will ever be repeated again. But, should the beautiful Salvadorian people turn to the true fountain of freedom itself, He will bless you as a nation. This is not due to some mystical power that comes through faith in Protestantism's Christ. But through the power of God to change the hearts of evil men, making them lovers of equality, peace and empowering them to selflessness. We were heartened to see splinters of this light everywhere we went. Slogans on mountain sides, church and homes, and freeway overpasses declaring "salvation in Christ alone", etc... were scattered about. El Salvador has many great things going for it, but it will not rise above the glass ceiling of oppression who's twin pillars are false religion and human depravity.

Now, let me tell you a more far reaching possibility; America has lost it's Christ. It is only a matter of time before our greatness fades into the fog of history and there will be no Ronald Reagans with the guts to intervene when a bigger bully than sophomoric leftist groups steps in and declares it's diety upon your free land.
Bordersushi said…
I'm going to jump in on the Salvi band wagon. I'm not a WASP, but I'm a WCC (West coast chinaman). Grew up in So Calif in Los Angeles. I'm 45 yrs old now. I married a Salvi lady and bought a house in San Vicente, El Salvador. I live both stateside and in El Salvi---been doing it for about 8 yrs now. Corruption is evident in El Salvador and the USA. I'm more disgusted with the corruption in USA politics because we should present a good example for the rest of the world; but career politicians here will go to Washington DC as lobbyists and "do-nothing" politicos to make money in insider trading and investments. Many congressman come in with humble salaries and come out as multi-millionaires.

So it's not fair to criticize El Salvador's corrupt system because we're bad also. My 2 cents...El Salvi is stuck in the mud of mediocrity with no progress being made because of a high dependence on foreign remittances, very high drop out rates in school, no focus on education and a societal apathy to improve itself.

Go to any tiny canton or pueblo and you'll see the same shit. People waiting around for the end of the month to get some money from Western Union from their relatives working abroad in USA or Canada. The IV injection of easy cash does nothing to motivate ingenuity.

Kids have textbooks that show illegal migration to the USA as their duty and the best way to succeed. I've seen it with my own eyes in a textbook in San Lorenzo.

Whether it's the FMLN or ARENA, the focus needs to shift on changing a societal gestalt; I think that it can never happen. Some roots are so deep that you can pull the weed out but the problem will just grow back.

For now, I'll stay with the ARENA party since they seem to share more conservative and free capital trade theories than the FMLN. I also agree with the other bloggers that socialism and communism are fun as theory but always fail and not realistic.