06-06-2005 21:16									#31
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San Diego Tribune (editorial)

'The lazy journalistic description for Saca's Arena Party is "right wing," as if the president-elect represents oligarchs and death squads. But, in fact, Arena has won each of El Salvador's presidential elections since 1989 on a platform of free-market economics and opposition to El Salvador's hard-core left. Salvadorans understand how best to serve their interests at the ballot box.

The dollarized Salvadoran economy (the U.S. dollar is now El Salvador's official currency) keeps inflation low and prices stable. El Salvador's modernizing economic reforms and pro-market policies are delivering steady growth, an expanding middle class and a visible sense of prosperity.

Saca offered more of the same plus support for a Central American Free Trade Agreement that would give El Salvador greater access to the U.S. market.

Handal opposed CAFTA and pledged to repeal dollarization. He also stood for a militantly anti-U.S. brand of politics that would have put El Salvador in loose league with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Fidel Castro's Cuba. '

	06-06-2005 21:16									#32
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Wasn't Reich a supplier of the death squads in the 80s? Anyway, like the united opposition in Nicaragua, ARENA has been a beneficiarcy of the NED for decades. It's hardly surprising they continue to win in elections in which they can massively outspend their opponents, level serious threats to the economy, etc.

I like how the article simply says that 75,000 people died in the civil war, without mentioning that the government killed 70,000 of them.

	06-06-2005 21:18									#33
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark IIRC when the Sandinistas were in power in the '80s , Nicaraguans were granted asylum. Thats the last leftist dictatorship in Central America.

The Sandanistas weren't a dictatorship. Everyone in the world but the U.S. recognized that Nicargaua had free and fair elections, with the notable exception of the massive influence of the U.S. via war and funding the opposition.

	06-06-2005 21:21									#34
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In any event I was in San Salvador's airport two days ago and it sucks. It's in the tropics and they won't even spring for AC.

	06-06-2005 21:25									#35
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Probably not enough tourists use it yet.

	06-06-2005 21:26									#36
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara The Sandanistas weren't a dictatorship. Everyone in the world but the U.S. recognized that Nicargaua had free and fair elections, with the notable exception of the massive influence of the U.S. via war and funding the opposition.

IF thats so, it makes my point all the stronger. The US l gave asylum to folks who came from Nicaragua, even though (per Guev) it was NOT a dictatorship.

	06-06-2005 21:28									#37
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Wasn't Reich a supplier of the death squads in the 80s? Anyway, like the united opposition in Nicaragua, ARENA has been a beneficiarcy of the NED for decades. It's hardly surprising they continue to win in elections in which they can massively outspend their opponents, level serious threats to the economy, etc..

Given how limited NED funding is, if they were able to outspend their opponents, the bucks probably came from elsewhere. Cite on outspending?

Given that the economy of El Salvador has been growing its hardly surprising that they would keep winning.

	06-06-2005 21:34									#38
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quote: 1. A couple of right wing congressmen is not credible. Changing the law would be difficult. 2. The comments from Reich, etc, saying an FMLN victory would effect relations with the US are frankly true. One didnt need to hear them say it to know it. Just as the ARENA victory probably hasnt helped relations with Cuba and Venezuala. 3. Of course people who wanted ARENA said he would help relations with the US. Just as advocates for Kerry said that his election would improve US relations with the rest of the world. Nonetheless ARENA was winning elections in El Salvador back when Clinton was President in the US, and Otto Reich was in the private sector.

Let's go over this again. A vital part of ARENA's campaign was to scare folks into saying that remittances, which make up an enormous part of the economy, would be cut off. The media played into this sentiment. Two Congressmen, fairly powerful, explicitly said that. The Administration never specifically disabused the Salvadorans of that notion, and even said that there would be substantial negative changes in diplomatic relaitons in the event of an FMLN victory.

I'm not arguing that opposition that revulsion to d'Aubisson et al.'s death squads is a fundamental driver of politics in that society, but it certainly pissed a lot of people off. And to imbue ARENA's extorted victory in '03 with democratic will is absurd.

	06-06-2005 21:35									#39
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark The US l gave asylum to folks who came from Nicaragua, even though (per Guev) it was NOT a dictatorship.

Yep, and they denied asylum to Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Guatelmalans during that same period, despite that two of those countries were dictatorships and the Salvadoran government was a puppet for the military. If the FLMN came to power in El Salvador, it's very likely the U.S. would start allowing asylum seekers, but also crack down on other immigrants.

	06-06-2005 21:46									#40
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quote: IIRC when the Sandinistas were in power in the '80s , Nicaraguans were granted asylum. Thats the last leftist dictatorship in Central America.

In Nicaragua, there was a severe refugee crisis largely due to the Contras that we were funding. Are you implying that the Bush Admin. would've introduced terrorist paramilitaries to ES in the event of an FMLN victory?

	06-06-2005 22:56									#41
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Costa Rica seems to have escaped all the problems the rest of Central America has had. They had a short civil war in 1948 but they disbanded their military after the war was over to prevent any more military coups. That plan seems to have worked since the money which would have been spent on the military was instead spent on education and development. Costa Rica has a great highway system and a wonderfully developed national park system because of it.

The roads were even better then Panama's who recieves a fair amount of aid from the US.

	07-06-2005 00:07									#42
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara The Sandanistas weren't a dictatorship. Everyone in the world but the U.S. recognized that Nicargaua had free and fair elections,

and some folks who actually lived there at the time

Violetta Chammoro:

"On June 26, 1986, in a note just two lines long, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua notified me that our newspaper, El Diario La Prensa, was closed down indefinitely.

With this action, Nicaraguan authorities institutionalized the state’s contempt for freedom of thought, speech, private property, religion and all norms of democratic government. La Prensa had already experienced four consecutive years of brutal censorship, in which 80 percent of the material submitted for publication was suppressed every day by order of the Sandinista military censors.

I tell of this, not as a long complaint of melancholy, but rather as testimony for all democracies to take notice.

II

The case of La Prensa is evidence of the worst sort of tyranny of our time, hidden by the workings of a Sandinista propaganda network that deceives many people of goodwill in the United States and throughout the world. The extensive and suffocating daily censorship of the press is sometimes excused by world public opinion as a logical consequence, given Nicaragua’s state of war. These justifications are unfair to the Nicaraguan people, who are thereby denied their right to be informed.

The excesses of the censorship department at the Ministry of the Interior have not been clearly recognized. They are measures aimed not at national security, but at the systematic destruction of an independent newspaper such as ours, and of Nicaraguan freedoms.

At root there always has been a determination on the part of the Sandinista commanders to impose total dictatorship and prevent the most minimal expression of free thought. Just like General Anastasio Somoza, who despised anyone who contradicted him, the Sandinistas cannot tolerate a dissenting voice or the expression of a contrary political idea.

No one is indifferent to the tragedy in Central America or to Sandinista repression, but I am concerned that Nicaragua’s case has been viewed outside our country through two prisms which ultimately distort the reasons behind our struggle for a free press.

Some assert that we oppose the Sandinista regime because we want to return to Somocism. Others say we oppose the Sandinistas because we support the declared policy of the President of the United States against the Sandinista regime. But the foreign policy of the Reagan Administration is obviously concerned with its own national security interests, and Nicaraguan opinion does not count for much in the decisions made in Washington.

No one can suppose that we of La Prensa are nostalgic for the Somoza period, when we struggled with our lives to defeat the Somoza dictatorship. My late husband and editor of La Prensa, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, was one who gave his life for this cause, in January 1978. Since the time of the Somoza dictatorship, when La Prensa opposed that government’s policies, our only aspiration has been to achieve democracy in Nicaragua. Later, when La Prensa denounced the repression and abuses of the Sandinista government, its totalitarianism, its Marxist-Leninist impositions, we did so not from a desire to retreat into a past that nobody wishes to remember, but to realize the goals that had . . . "

	07-06-2005 04:42									#43
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quote: The case of La Prensa is evidence of the worst sort of tyranny of our time...

Let's step back a minute... The Sandinista's were a worse kind of tyranny then the Somoza one? You have a revolutionary government that broke the power of one of the worst regimes in Middle-America. The next minute Reagan falls asleep and the US is doing everything in its power to destabilize your just formed government (Contra's anyone? Ollie North?) And instead of going all the way Stalinist you organize democratic elections and turn over power to the winners and people still have the nerves to call you the "worst sort of tyranny of our time"?

I was afraid I was getting more right-winged with age but posts like that make me wake up again. Thanks

	07-06-2005 06:02									#44
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark and some folks who actually lived there at the time Violetta Chammoro:

Who was a member of the opposition, and thus can be considered just a little biased. While her paper was periodically closed down, it was generally after the printed overt lies about the government or something that would help the armed opposition. I think the longest the paper was closed was two weeks, maybe less.

In the Contra terror war, 40,000 people were killed. That's more than one percent of the population. Imagine if we were attacked by terrorists who killed more than three million Americans. Do you think we would be so gentle with newspapers that printed lies about the government and aided the terrorists?