El Salvador: rise of the left

The ENEPASA agreement between El Salvador and Venezuela stands in sharp contrast to the neoliberal trade deals Washington and former Salvadorian governments have pursued, including scarping of the national currency in exchange for the US dollar in 2004.

In fact, since the end of the civil war in 1992, the ARENA party has had few accomplishments. Although a 1993 Truth Commission by the United Nations found that 95 per cent of the killings investigated were committed by government-supported death squads, the country's judicial system has been slow to put anyone on trial. During the civil war, a total of 75,000 people were killed.

On the economic front, in recent years the country has witnessed mass migrations abroad with some $US4 billion in remittances sent home by Salvadorians living in the US - about 17 per cent of the country's GDP.

With cheap US goods flooding local agricultural markets, countless farmers have sold off their lands and become unemployed. According to Raúl Gutiérrez, writing for the Inter Press Service, the last official statistics published in 2006 put unemployment at 6.6 per cent with more than 40 per cent of the population classified as poor.

Add to these problems El Salvador's situation with street gangs - more than 14,000 people were killed during the last four years of Antonio Saca's government - and Funes will certainly face huge challenges as president.

A few days before the election, a political storm broke out in El Salvador. Forty-six Republican congressmen lobbied US President Barack Obama to enforce restrictions on financial remittances being forwarded home by Salvadoran nationals living in the United States should the FMLN triumph.

To its credit, the Obama administration so far has taken no such actions and in fact congratulated the FMLN on its victory. Time will tell if such good will from Washington will continue.