A view from the left of Funes' victory
A video essay about Mauricio Funes' victory in El Salvador is worth watching as a discussion starter. The video states that the victory of Funes and the left should be "understood as the culmination of decades of struggle against neoliberal economics and government repression." The essay starts with the inspiration of Oscar Romero and continues to portray a fairly binary view of the good forces of the left struggling against the dark forces of ARENA on the right. Ultimately it is too simplistic, and loses credibility in places, such as when the narrator seems to imply that the murder of the son of Mauricio Funes in Paris was part of political violence in El Salvador.
Comments
"
-Tim, why would the mentioning of his son being murdered make it lose credibility? the right threatened Mauricio numerous times before and after he announced his candidacy.
He had lived behind the U.S. Embajada in santa TEcla and it was a strategic sitting duck of a place to be assassinated.
If Salvador Sanchez Ceren is like Hitler than so was Dick Cheney.
Continuing with the above: If the author also refutes the historical fact that Hitler grabbed power in Germany when Von Hindenburg passed away, then he clearly doesn't know his history and he has no real credibility. Someone so lacking in basic knowledge simply falls into the category of "useless fool."
The FMLN extremist radicals who cleverly used Mauricio Funes to gain political power in El Salvador, also realize that only Funes now stands in the way of their long-held dream of wearing Castro style fatigues, a la Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. The core elements of the FMLN geriatric leadership must also surely recognize that Funes could very well be their last viable opportunity, and like "zopes" circling the blue Salvadoran skies they are just watching and waiting.
Funes used the the FMLN organization, but the flip side of that coin is that the FMLN also used him. And now, when all is said and done, perhaps Funes will realize the danger he has placed placed himself in. I personally support Mauricio Funes and have high hopes for his leadership. Hopefully he will not defraud either me, nor the Salvadoran populous.
First of all, it's rather obvious that you need to expand your choice of words and your vocabulary. You can start by learning the meaning of "Strategic, and Tactical." Another thing, your political and survival instincts really stink, no one who is going to take the kind of action you refer to would be so stupid and to project their intentions. Comprende camarada.
From: "no one who is going to take the kind of action you refer to would be so stupid and to project their intentions."
Should read: "no one who is going to take the kind of action you refer to would be so stupid AS to project their intentions."
Sorry Jackie.
Listen pal, get real. In a country as lawless and violent as El Salvador, that is right up there with the top murder capitals of the world, if someone wants to take you out and do you in, believe me that the will. No problemo. Comprede. All this talk about so-called rightist threats, is obviously BS, complete and unadulterated BS. One the one hand the lefties talk about right wing death squads running around shooting everyone in sight, and on the other hand they talk of threats and Funes. Think, if there were right wing death squad running wild, would they publish in newspapers who there next target will be. Com'on.
I also have doubts, which I have raised at various times over the years, that every murder that left wing activists call a "political murder." In a country as violent as El Salvador, the fact that you are an FMLN partisan and were murdered does not necessarily mean that your murder was politically motivated.
Not being able to convince anyone, not even yourself, must be the very essence of frustration!
Cheney has upward of half-a-million Iraqi deaths through 2006 (excess mortality) to account for, according to Johns Hopkins UNiversity epidemiologists who studied the conflict.
Sanchez Ceren, on the other hand, held a leadership positon in a politically representative force (FMLN) whose violence was unleashed principally on the despised elements of the former Salvadoran National Guard, Treasury Police, National Police, and BIRI's.
Got that!
It's clear that combating crime together with protecting the environment, constitute the essential core projects necessary for a better and brighter future for the country. Once these basic issues are normalized and under control, confidence will be able to return to the country, and everything else in its order of selection will fall into place. These are simply first steps that Funes should put high on his list of things to do.
Another point of contention is the fact that El Salvador's main source of hard currency and it's most profitable export has shamefully become its own people who come to the U.S. to work and send "remesas" back home to their families. One very negative outcome of these remesas has been the phenomenon that now most Salvadorans who rely on this easy money no longer feel the need to work, but rather they simply sit back and await the monthly remesa.
Up to now, Salvadoran governments have been missing out on this windfall from "El Norte" and a suggestion to Funes would be that he emulate Cuba and change a ten percent levy on each and every dollar that enters the country in the form of a remesa. If we consider that the Castro brothers in Cuba can levy this tax on the remesas from Miami without condemnation, it's only logical that our own local leftists join-in on the windfall too. I'm sure that the Funes government could find a better use for this money than those who simply sit-around waiting for their remesa so they can run out and buy a "radiola" or some other soon to be junk.
We all know that the FMLN can do things in the country that ARENA would dare not do.
Listen carefully now, Dick Cheney is a career and self-serving politician who has dedicated his life and become wealthy by serving the financial and industrial complexes' worldwide interests. It's common knowledge that Cheney was "on loan" to the Bush administration to serve as puppet master and as his handler to oversee and protect the economic interests of the financial and industrial complexes such the well documented Haliburton interests in Iraq, Etc. Although Cheney is a SOB in any ones book (excluding perhaps his mother), the only shooting he has ever been credited with is that of a bird hunting buddy whom Cheney shot accidentally with a couple 7.5 inch bird shot pellets. Cheney clearly has nasty violent streak, and he openly supports torture and human rights abuses, that's why we got rid of that entire Bush/Cheney cabal. The consequences of the Bush/Cheney warmongering policies have indeed led to needless deaths and suffering which we continue to endure today. In my opinion, Cheney is the personification of evil, and he reminds me of a huge snake laying in the underbrush digesting it's meal.
As for Salvador Sanchez Ceren, he went from a backwater sixth grade school teacher to becoming "Comandante" of one of the five principle insurgent groups in the 1979-1992 Salvadoran conflict, where he acquired the notorious nickname "Machete" need more be said.
In my view, violence is violence, but in this specific case we are attempting to compare direct violence with indirect and consequential violence, and in which case Cheney comes out smelling like a rose.
Ah Hah.. Ya lo va hechar del pais el chafarrote, Hugo Chavez.
Boy oh boy, you make it sound like this guy, Sanchez Ceren, alias "Machete" was just organizing the "Daughters of Mary".
Reality is that Sanchez Cernen, from a backwater sixth grade school teacher, took over as "comander" of one of the most violent of the five principle terrorist organizations that comprised the FMLN. These thugs excelled in and were best known for systematic extorsion, bank robberies, kidnappings, murder and terrorizing the population in general.
Sanchez Ceren's Popular Forces of Liberation specialized in providing self-defense to landless laborers, and seasonal harvesters from the human rights violating depradatons of the now disbanded, disreputable, National Guard and Treasury Police, among other "cuerpos de inseguridad Salvadorena."
And, when will the full accounting come for the fate of the 6000 Salvadorans disappeared during the 1970s and 1980s by the Salvadoran military and their paramilitary thugs? The above poster apparently doesn't give a damn about them. What hypocrisy?
Bank robberies? How about El Salvador's "Protection Racket State" fixing the banking and financial system to avoid taxation adequate enough to meet social needs! That's rich people's bank robbery, kind of like what we've been seeing in the good ol' USA with CITIGROUP, BAM, and Wells Fargo.
OK, I know, the above poster is fixated on a historical interpretation similar to 1930's apologists for the Salvadoran military's 1932 mass marder (8-30,000 dead): Jorge Schlesinger's, "Revolucion comunista: Guatemala en Peligro."
I suggest the above poster do a little reading in the works of U.S. historians, Jeffrey Paige, Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Charles Brockett, Paul Almeida, or Jeffrey Gould, to understand the more recent history and life conditions of most of the Salvadoran people--and that prompted their uprising--and not just fixate on the lives of the rich, the wealthy, and the powerful.
Of course, the rich are the ones who pay the salaries for ideological mercenaries like the above poster--as well as salaries of the death squad killer--(intellectual equivalents).
Ha sido un placer!
How very banal and stupid! The above (all of them) haven't realized that most Salvadorans don't know anything about civil wars or conflicts of the past. Not even President Funes was a combatant in that useless war. All the talk of past envies and hatred is as boring as listening to some Italian jabbering on about the Punic Wars, or an old timer recollecting Iturbide invading Guatemala and Salvador.
Funes, in his inaugural speech didn't once mention anything about that stupid and long past civil war, nor did he make any reference or mention of the FMLN as an insurgent organization. Entiendalo, que toda esa historia es mas vieja y hedionda que el tufo. Stop wallowing in long gone past "historietas."
Democracy is here and now, it's alive and well in El Salvador, and Funes has organized a 2009 style government, un gabinete "de lujo."
Proculo Zepeda
Oh really now! What a sick and cynical joke. Tell it to Melida Anaya Montes "Ana Maria" or the the hundreds of poor families who's sons and daughters were murdered by the infamous FPL. You are on sick individual.
And probably worse of all, now Salvador has a VP who's a renown murderer, kidnapper, extorsionist, bank robber, cattle rustler and who know what other terrible crimes he's committed in the name of some failed doctrine.
El Salvador continues it's history of suffering and helplessness.
Oh, and ready to go to bat to track down the FAES torturers, murderers of Salvadoran activist (CDHES)Marianella Garcia Villas, who was killed the same year as Melida Anaya Montes? Probably not, since protecting human rights for you seems to be only protecting the "freedoms" of the rich to exploit and violate the human rights of the poor.
All this after he, Sanchez Ceren, visited the US Embassy to sign the condolence book and shed his reptilian tears.
Funes beware!
Jesus Rojas
Goce su ignorancia porque a mi en lo particular me vale un colmino. No entiended que no estas domando a nadie, unicamente a usted mismo. Y ni cuenta se da que usted no le importa a nadie, eres de nacimiento un don nadie.
CNN: MISTREATMENT AND DEATH OF EMPLOYEES
Salvadoran journalist Mario Vela passes away 12 days after being dismissed by CNN. The organization AGACAMT denounces the hostile attitude of CNN towards ill employees. Jose Ramon Cotti, Puerto Rican journalist dismissed by CNN, remains in a hospital after months of pain.
Atlanta (23 March 2009). – Salvadoran journalist Mario Vela passed away 12 days after CNN dismissed him. The company fired this worker despite the knowledge of the seriousness of his illness. Mr. Vela had been several months agonizing in Washington after his doctors declared there was no hope to save his life.
Mario Vela and his family underwent the pressure imposed by CNN in his last days when receiving a document in which their rights of denunciation were questioned and conditioned to the signing of a humiliating severance package.
CNN served notice to Mr. Vela via mail explaining that he no longer was to have his disability benefits and the medical insurance from the company.
Eva Ventín, president of AGACAMT, the Galician Association Against Moral Harassment at the Workplace, denounces the hypocritical attitude of CNN, that, after putting Mr. Vela in the street, sent the Vice-president of CNN Spanish, Cristopher Crommett, to this employee’s funeral to sing a song and to deliver a pitiful donation.
Relatives and friends of Mario Vela were themselves forced to organize a fundraising concert to collect money to pay for his medical treatment.
It is difficult to think that a powerful and multi-millionaire company like CNN, that in spite of the world’s economy crisis have announced economic gains, gets to mistreat its professionals and families”.
Mario Vela who passed away at age 34, was named by the mayor of Washington DC “the journalist of the year of 2007” recognition who was emphasized by his support to the Hispanic community and towards the under-privileged.
With more than 10 years of experience Mario Vela was news director of Mega Communications and Radio Capital 730 in DC. Vela worked for Channel 30 of Univisión and Radio World in Maryland.
AGACAMT wants to bring to the world’s attention other serious cases of labor harassment at CNN as in 2003 the local press of Atlanta related this network with the depression of a journalist who committed suicide. (see original editorial of the Mundo Hispanico about former news director Abel Dimant).
The complaints of labor abuses and irregularities had been communicated to Mr. Jim Walton, the President of CNN, but there are no answers neither solutions that protect the victims.
AGACAMT denounces that “this it is not the unique case of a journalist dismissed by CNN in a serious condition”. News anchor Jose Ramon Cotti remains in a hospital in Georgia after several months of pain.
The Puerto Rican journalist also was dismissed by CNN while on disability awaiting a delicate heart operation.
CNN brought Mr. Cotti and his wife to Atlanta from New York 9 years ago and the company has now totally forgotten this family, not even making a phone call to inquire about its employee’s condition after double bypass surgery and leg amputation and also after Mrs. Cotti’s hospitalization with health problems including stress related condition.
We communicated Mr. Walton of the above again with no responses.
This prestigious New York radio journalist, recipient of Several prizes including two awards from ACE. (Award of creative excellence) is just another one of the numerous victims of the dramatic crisis that shakes CNN.
It's time to grow-up and start taking a little responsibility for your own stupidity instead of always blaming others.
Besides, I like CNN from the start and Tim Turner is a real visionary.
Orville H. Gilliman
Atlanta
Why should these people be getting a free ride. I like the Cuban idea of placing a 10% tax on all family remitances.
If the FMLN wants to spend money, this is the windfall they have at hand to pay for it all.
Besides, a tax like this only the FMLN could get away with it. Let's follow the Cuban example.
Billy Martin
San Jose CR