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The FMLN’s Electoral Implosion in El September

2018

Salvador: A Fiasco Foretold? May 2018

April 15, 2019 0 comments

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Supporters of the Great National Alliance (GANA) celebrate their candidate Nayib Bukele’s victory in the
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‘The ‘Terrible Paradox’ of
Salvador, claimed victory on February 3 in the Central American country’s presidential elections. (Photo by Utopia / Dystopia and
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Contamination: the Aegean Islands
Conferencing in the Wake
By Ralph Sprenkels
of the “Refugee Crisis” Between Utopia and
Capitalism: Launching
El Salvador’s 2019 presidential elections FLOATS, Venturing
wreaked havoc on the party in government. Beyond Terracentrism

The Frente Farabundo Martí para la

Authority, Confinement,
Liberación Nacional (FMLN) suffered its Solidarity, and Dissent
worst electoral defeat ever, a 70% decline in Part III

votes with respect to the previous presidential ballot. Ten years earlier, the FMLN
became Latin America’s first non-triumphant former guerrilla movement to take
power by the ballot. After FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes defeated the long-time Teaching Tools
governing anti-communists from the Alianza Republicana Nacionalist (ARENA),
scholars of Salvadoran politics viewed his first-ever left-wing government as the ^

dawning of a new democratic era, echoing the Salvadoran left’s high hopes that change
was afoot. Hence, foremost among the questions raised by the FMLN’s electoral
implosion is: what went wrong?

In 2009-10 I conducted ethnographic research on former Salvadoran rebels, The Role of Anthropology in Brenneis on Translating

documenting part of what in retrospect foreshadowed problems to come. My first Public Debates on Value and Emergent

observation was that different FMLN offices were flooded with people looking for Climate Transformations Academic Futures

work. Job seekers waited around for hours to buttonhole one of the leaders entering or
leaving the office, hoping the party now in government would reward them for
previous service. Many had been guerrilla fighters before and believed the FMLN owed
them.

This pattern of ‘clientelization’ of relations between leadership and rank-and-file was

also prominent in FMLN meetings I attended. Representatives of the FMLN war
veterans’ sector implemented a weekly agenda to lobby ministers and other
government officials for an employment quota. Each meeting featured a progress v
report and extensive discussions about whom to send where. Veterans presented their
representatives with arguments and pleas for work. They claimed they would
outperform non-FMLN government employees, whom they viewed as potential
saboteurs. Most emphatically, they told them to remind the leadership of the people
they had to thank for their present position of power. The veterans had put their lives
on the line for the FMLN, so were they not entitled to their share?

Embed from Getty Images

Getty Images News | Alex Peña

General view during the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional Party event at Cuscatlan
Stadium on September 09, 2018 in San Salvador, El Salvador. Hugo Martinez and Karina Sosa were
proclaimed on Sunday as candidates for the presidency and vice presidency of the Republic of El Salvador
by the Frente Farabundo Marti para Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), in the XXXVI National Ordinary
Convention. (Photo by Alex Peña / Getty Images)

The veterans’ representatives in turn emphasized that those who obtained a job
contract had a moral obligation to continue participating in the FMLN meetings.
Furthermore, all employed veterans were required to pay the “party quota”–a monthly
fee recollected by a designated FMLN representative. Ainhoa Montoya (2018)
identified similar interactions when researching political activism in one of El
Salvador’s smaller cities. Echoing the well-known Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton,
FMLN supporters repeatedly argued that after decades of state capture by ARENA,
now ‘the turn of those offended’ had finally come.

Beyond clientelism, the FMLN’s internal political culture was also laden with distrust
and authoritarianism. “The price for treason is blood!” I read on the bathroom door
inside a FMLN office. Many FMLN supporters combined a profound distrust for their
right-wing ‘enemies’ with suspicion regarding alleged ‘traitors’ in their ranks. Sectarian
strife, internal purges, and other grim experiences of clandestine armed struggle had
left deep marks within the FMLN. The post-war implementation of democratic debate
and procedures had proven tumultuous. In a controversial 2005 move, the leadership
reined in factional strife by replacing democratic procedures with Leninist ‘democratic
centralism’, the same principle of unity and control used during armed struggle
(Sprenkels 2018, 257). Two decades after the war, a tiny group of former ‘comandantes’
rotated through key leadership positions, popularly known as the ‘merry-go-round’.
Paradoxically, firm hierarchical control strengthened the FMLN’s electoral chances at
first, as it allowed the party leadership to negotiate electoral pacts and other trade-offs.
The comandantes also benefitted from Venezuela’s generous sponsorship–which eased
competing with ARENA, traditionally a much better-funded party.

Unsurprisingly, many critical activists abandoned the FMLN. During the 1990s,
movement participants already commonly expressed disenchantment, both with party
affairs as well as with what they viewed as the limited gains of democratic transition
(Silber 2011). While revolutionary ties were closely-knit during the harsh years of the
war, the peace process had accentuated the differences between leaders and rank-and-
file, between urbanites and peasants, between men and women, and among the
different guerrilla groups. These divides placed pressures on the movement’s internal
solidarity and gradually fueled more utilitarian forms of interaction. Longtime
revolutionaries explained to me they had disengaged from party activities because the
atmosphere was “insufferable.” The problem–as explained to me by an experienced
FMLN organizer–was that the leadership, rather than adopting democratic practices,
had internalized the vices of traditional politics: caudillismo, compadrazgo (a form of
nepotism), and the appropriation of state resources.

Embed from Getty Images

AFP | OSCAR RIVERA

Some of the accused in the case of former Salvadoran president (2009-2014), Mauricio Funes’ graft
scandal, await under custody, at the court in San Salvador on June 8, 2018. El Salvador called for the arrest
of ex-president Mauricio Funes, accusing his administration of the ‘outrageous’ embezzlement of $351
million before he was granted asylum in Nicaragua. Attorney General Douglas Melendez said he had also
ordered the arrest of around 30 former Funes cabinet officials and other close associates, though he
admitted that some, like Funes, were abroad. (Photo by Oscar Rivera / AFP / Getty Images)

During Funes’s tenure, a stream of scandals revealed extensive corruption in previous

ARENA administrations. ARENA’s damaged reputation helped FMLN candidate
Sánchez Cerén, a former comandante, obtain a narrow victory in the 2014 presidential
elections. Shortly thereafter, Funes himself fled to Ortega’s Nicaragua to avoid
imprisonment for corruption. Subsequent revelations indicated part of the FMLN
leadership had succumbed to similar schemes as their ARENA predecessors, turning
Sánchez Cerén into a lame duck president.

Emulating Jimmy Morales in Guatemala and AMLO in Mexico, Nayib Bukele’s

campaign for the 2019 elections consisted of rubbing in the establishment’s
malfeasance. It made him the first Salvadoran president-elect unaffiliated to either the
sitting government or the main opposition party. But considering the political dealings
of his associates and allies, fending off corruption will not be easy for Bukele.
Ironically, and perhaps tragically, Latin American anti-corruption candidates often
quickly become tainted themselves.
With hindsight it is easy to identify the origins of the FMLN’s 2019 fiasco. The FMLN’s
post-war adjustments turned it into an effective electoral machine, but an
impoverished political party. In a sense, the FMLN’s faith is similar to that of many
political parties discredited and exhausted after serving in government. The left in El
Salvador now stands before the challenge of reinventing itself. The proven
permeability of Latin America’s left-wing politicians to corruption indicates that
reinvention should include fundamental changes in prevalent political practices.

Ralph Sprenkels is a lecturer in Conflict Studies at

Utrecht University. His anthropological and historical
research focuses on Central American armed conflicts
and their legacies. Besides his academic career, he also
holds ample experience in human rights work in El
Salvador and Guatemala. His latest book is titled After
Insurgency. Revolution and Electoral Politics in El Salvador
(University of Notre Dame Press, 2018).

WORKS CITED

Montoya, Ainhoa. 2018. The Violence of Democracy: Political Life in Postwar El Salvador.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Silber, Irina Carlota. 2011. Everyday Revolutionaries. Gender, Violence and Disillusionment
in )Postwar El Salvador. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Sprenkels, Ralph. 2018. After Insurgency. Revolution and Electoral Politics in El Salvador.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

About Jennifer Curtis

Jennifer Curtis is an Honorary Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh:
http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/social_anthropology/curtis_jennifer.
View all posts by Jennifer Curtis →

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