Abstract
In this chapter, I examine the unfolding of El Salvador’s 2009 municipal, legislative, and presidential elections in order to show how the archetypal democratic practice of participating in electoral campaigns and voting has been, to some degree, an expression of political cleavages, conflicts, and violence rooted in wartime. The chapter suggests that El Salvador’s 2009 presidential elections amounted to a reenactment of the country’s civil war, with the two main political parties equivalent to the opposing sides during wartime. The elections were won by the FMLN, the country’s guerrilla-turned-leftwing party, because its presidential candidate spoke to the socio-economic problems of ordinary Salvadorans. The chapter also elucidates the very different dynamics of El Salvador’s municipal elections, in which clientelism and factional disputes trumped political allegiance.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The PCN and the PDC, the other two major parties, had presented a presidential candidate initially. In the 18 January 2009 municipal and legislative elections, the FMLN increased its share of the electoral vote and edged past ARENA despite losing in the capital city, thus demonstrating its ability to win the presidential elections. In light of these results, ARENA negotiated with PCN and PDC leaders a strategic removal of these parties’ presidential candidates so as to concentrate the rightwing vote.
- 3.
Even though the 2004 presidential election was highly disputed, ARENA won by a large margin over the FMLN, with 57.71 percent of the vote share in a first round. The result of this election can be consulted at Georgetown University’s Political Database of the Americas: http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Elecdata/ElSal/pre04.html.
- 4.
Decreto Legislativo No. 486, Diario Oficial, 22 March 1993.
- 5.
Article 247 of El Salvador’s Electoral Code stipulates that any foreigner who participates directly or indirectly in political activities will be immediately expelled from El Salvador.
- 6.
‘ARENA denuncia a alcalde viroleño’, La Prensa Gráfica, 3 March 1999. The most notable case of inter-party violence occurred during the 2004 presidential elections, when two ARENA members were killed while mounting party propaganda throughout the Costal Road that crosses Santiago. In hindsight, ARENA members have interpreted this as a PCN attack, which adds a new layer to the understanding of political cleavages in El Salvador, as I will show in the last section of this chapter. See ‘Un muerto durante cierre de campaña’, La Prensa Gráfica, 19 March 2004; ‘Entierran activista arenero’, La Prensa Gráfica, 20 March 2004.
- 7.
Chencho Beltrán was well known in Santiago for having led a local paramilitary group (civil defense ) and orchestrated numerous assassinations during the early 1980s, until guerrillas attacked his group in 1985.
- 8.
In their first few years of existence, the organizations that would later comprise the FMLN recruited large numbers among the PCS , Christian Democrat sectors, university organizations, and later unions (Martín Álvarez 2006, 2010; Sprenkels 2014: 83–84). Yet the success of these organizations was due to their ability to obtain the support of rural populations that, influenced by liberation theology, organized in peasant organizations and, as early as in the 1970s, joined or supported revolutionary struggle (Sprenkels 2014: 87–95).
- 9.
Despite being the party with most seats in the Legislative Assembly during those years, the rightwing ARENA, PCN , and PDC, despite their historical differences, together amassed a majority and therefore were able to control legislative reform and marginalize any FMLN initiative.
- 10.
For a discussion of ARENA’s clientelistic practices, see Chap. 7.
- 11.
The latter threat was indeed reinforced by the public declarations of several United States civil servants along those lines (Garibay 2005: 40).
- 12.
The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a program that grants legal residency in the United States to victims of natural disasters or civil wars . In March 2001, after the two earthquakes that devastated El Salvador, the United States granted the TPS status to 260,000 Salvadorans, and has since successively extended it (PNUD 2005b: 432–433). Yet the TPS has amounted to a sort of ‘legal limbo’ given that those benefiting from it could not leave the United States or reunite with their kin and have lived with the uncertainty that stems from an unresolved status (PNUD 2005b: 432–433). The temporary nature and economic ponderance of the TPS explain why ARENA has been able to deploy it as a threat during presidential elections.
- 13.
See, for instance, the documentaries ‘Hugo Chávez: Una amenaza real’ and ‘No entreguemos El Salvador’, which are available at: http://fuerzasolidaria.org/?p=583 and http://fuerzasolidaria.org/?p=723. These documentaries were shown on Salvadoran television and at ARENA’s political rallies.
- 14.
‘Defensa indaga existencia de grupos armados’, La Prensa Gráfica, 13 December 2008.
- 15.
‘Fiscalía pide ayuda al FBI y a Interpol’, El Diario de Hoy, 16 December 2008.
- 16.
‘Saca llevará a ONU pruebas sobre armas’, La Prensa Gráfica, 17 December 2008.
- 17.
For instance, the 2009 coup in Honduras against the government of President Manuel Zelaya is illustrative of how the Left/Right divide was at the time expressed on the basis of an alignment with or against Venezuela’s regime.
- 18.
FPL commander Mayo Sibrián’s execution of hundreds of guerrillas suspected of treason and infiltration until the organization’s leadership ordered his execution in 1991 is one of the most renowned episodes of FMLN’s human rights violations (Sprenkels 2005: 71). FPL excombatants who witnessed the purge have suggested that Sánchez Cerén as then-head of the FPL political commission was aware of it and even authorized it (see Galeas and Ayala 2008).
- 19.
‘Ávila firma convenio con veteranos militares’, Diario Colatino , 8 September 2008.
- 20.
The 2007 census revealed that the country’s overall population, and specifically its voting age population, was substantially smaller than had been reflected in the 1992 census (Wade 2016: 77), potentially presenting a large margin of opportunity for electoral fraud.
- 21.
Communal Development Associations (ADESCOs) are formal organizations based in both rural and urban sectors of Salvadoran municipalities that facilitate citizens’ participation in the discussion of local development needs with the municipality council.
- 22.
See, for instance, ‘ARENA y PCN se enfrentan en Santiago Nonualco ’, La Prensa Gráfica, 13 December 2005.
- 23.
The FMLN obtained only 6364 votes more than ARENA, winning with a vote share of 50.11 percent.
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Montoya, A. (2018). War Reenactment Through Elections. In: The Violence of Democracy. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76330-9_5
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