Leah Wilson and Alexis Stoumbelis : El Salvador's Funes Apologizes for El Mozote Massacre

Memorial to the massacre of the people of El Mozote, El Salvador. Image from No Fixed Address.
‘Removing the veil’:
El Salvador apologizes for State violence
on 20th anniversary of Peace Accords

By Leah Wilson and Alexis Stoumbelis / The Rag Blog / January 31, 2012

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- On Monday morning, January 16, crowds gathered in the small community of El Mozote to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Peace Accords that ended El Salvador´s 12-year-long civil war.

El Mozote, in the rural department of Morazán, is the site of a 1981 massacre of more than 1,000 civilians, primarily children, carried out by the Salvadoran Armed Forces. At the solemn event, El Salvador’s first leftist president, Mauricio Funes, named the military officers implicated in the horrific massacre, stating, we must “remove the veil that has blinded us for three decades.”

Funes asked for forgiveness from the victims and the Salvadoran people on behalf of the State and then announced a series of reparations for the victims and their families. In addition to physical and mental health services and an economic development plan for El Mozote, the government has promised to declare the community a protected historic site and has committed to updating public school curricula as well as police and military training materials to acknowledge the history of human rights violations by the armed forces.

Funes is the first president in Salvadoran history who has acknowledged the crimes against humanity committed by the government during the civil war that resulted in 75,000 deaths, in their majority civilians. However, the prosecution of the responsible actors is prohibited by an amnesty law approved in 1994 by the right-wing parties five days after the release of the U.N. Truth Commission report, which attributed 85% of civilian deaths to the armed forces and 5% to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The Peace Accords, the result of negotiations between the Salvadoran government and the leadership of the FMLN guerrilla army, were signed in 1992 in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Castle. The accords ended the war, allowed the FMLN to become a formal political party, and included a series of agreements to address the social, political, and economic causes of the Civil War.

To commemorate the historic date, the FMLN held a massive Festival for Peace with tens of thousands of supporters in San Salvador. President Funes participated in a summit with ex-guerrilla combatants, where he unveiled a new government program to ensure that veterans of both the FMLN and the armed forces receive the benefits that correspond to them -- one of the agreements of the Peace Accords that was largely sidelined by the right-wing administrations that held power from 1994 to 2009.

Funes’s announcement of reparations for the families of victims and ex-combatants is one of several steps being taken by the new government to fulfill outstanding commitments of the Peace Accords. Addressing the crowds at the FMLN’s commemoration march, Vice-President and long-time FMLN leader Salvador Sánchez-Cerén, who is one of the signers of the Peace Accords, explained that the FMLN’s guiding objectives in its first period of government (2009-2014) were “the consolidation of the democratic transition initiated during the Peace Accords and the construction of a new economic and social model.”

Perhaps the most popularly recognized victories of the Peace Accords include the end of over 60 years of military dictatorship and the opportunity to create a viable democracy.

“The Peace Accords created a new political process, one in which all would have a chance to participate,” said FMLN member Jose Nuñez during a community celebration in Washington, DC. The presidential victory of the FMLN in 2009, and the fact that the FMLN currently holds the largest number of seats in the Legislative Assembly, is a testament to the effective implementation of this pillar of the Peace Accords.

Many major agreements were successfully implemented in the days, months, and years following January 16, 1992. The sprawling Salvadoran armed forces were dramatically reduced and several of its most repressive wings, including the National Guard and the Treasury Police, were disbanded completely. The role of the armed forces was strictly limited to the defense of national territory and sovereignty.

According to the Accords, the “broader concept” of security, including “economic, political and social aspects which go beyond the constitutional sphere of competence of the armed forces,” became the “responsibility of other sectors of society and of the State." To this end, the Peace Accords created a new institution, the National Civilian Police (PNC), to be composed of former soldiers, demobilized FMLN combatants, and civilians.

However, in the past five years, the strict lines between the armed forces and public security have started to blur. Former president Antonio Saca (2004–09) was the first president to send soldiers to the streets to assist the PNC, a protocol that Funes has continued. Recent changes in Funes’s security cabinet threaten to undermine the ideological separation between the military and the police, as does the influence of increasing U.S. security aid to Central America.

Mauricio Fumes, President of El Salvador. Image from Todanoticia.com.
In November, David Mungía Payés, a recently retired military general who had previously served as Funes’s Minister of Defense, replaced Manuel Melgar, a former FMLN commander, as Minister of Public Security. This is the first time that a military officer will hold this position. Funes’s defense of his decision underscored the very concerns raised by the FMLN and many in the population.

“The designation of David Munguía Payés doesn’t constitute any violation of the spirit of the Peace Accords, nor a step backwards in the consolidation of the democratic process, much less a violation of constitutional order,” he said.

At the end of December, Eduardo Linares was removed from his position as head of the State Intelligence Agency, thus effectively removing the FMLN leadership from the security cabinet in less than two months. Many have speculated that the cabinet shakeup was influenced by the United States in light of two new agreements: the Partnership for Growth and the Central America Regional Security Initiative, an expansion of the Mérida Initiative to which the United States has designated $260 million.

High-ranking members of the Ministry of Public Security told the online newspaper El Faro that Melgar’s removal was a U.S. condition for implementing the Partnership for Growth, a series of economic and security agreements, which was signed by both countries just four days prior to his resignation. The FMLN has expressed concern that the partnership may “be inclined toward increased military participation."

Military influence seems to be re-emerging in those Central American countries where the United States has concentrated its security aid under the banner of the “War on Drugs,” namely El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

In December, Honduran president Porfirio Lobo presented a constitutional amendment to the Honduran Congress to grant police power to the armed forces at the same level of authority and independence as the National Police. On January 14, former general Otto Pérez Molina, who has been accused of genocide due to his participation in “scorched earth” operations in the 1980s, was inaugurated as President in Guatemala, the first military officer to be elected since the end of the civil war.

“It’s no coincidence that Guatemala’s new president is a general accused of genocide, El Salvador’s new minister of security is a former general, and a military officer who masterminded the coup d´état [Romeo Vásquez] is running for president in Honduras,” said Adalberto Elias, FMLN Youth Coordinator for El Salvador’s capital city of San Salvador.

Beyond the challenges of organized crime and impunity, the new government in El Salvador must contend with abiding social and economic inequality, ironically, the very conditions which led to the popular struggle in the 1970s that resulted in the war. The economic agreements of the Peace Accords, by far the most limited, were effectively ignored over the last 20 years. Though Funes and the FMLN have taken several steps to fulfill these long-overdue commitments -- for example, legalizing the transfer of over 17,000 land titles to campesinos -- only recently has the new government been able to initiate any structural economic change.

In December, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly approved the FMLN’s proposed tax reform, which will eliminate income taxes on those earning less than $500 per month, increase taxes on high-earning individuals and business, and close loopholes that currently contribute to nearly $600 million per year in corporate tax evasion. The progressive reform is arguably the first action to redistribute wealth since land reform acts were signed during the war.

The upcoming March legislative and municipal elections in March will in part determine the possibility for passing more expansive legislation and, as Vice-President Sánchez-Cerén explained during the commemoration, the country’s ability “to realize the people’s hope to build a better and more dignified life.”

[Austin native Leah Wilson is a journalist and CISPES volunteer based in San Salvador. Her work has previously appeared in Z Magazine, Labor Notes, and The Rag Blog. Alexis Stoumbelis is the Executive Director of CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. This article was first published at NACLA: Knowledge Beyond Borders. Find more articles by Leah Wilson on The Rag Blog.]

• Also see the November/December 2009 NACLA Report on the Americas, "A New Day in El Salvador: The FMLN Victory and the Road Ahead."
• And listen to Thorne Dreyer's May 4, 2010, Rag Radio interview with Leah Wilson of CISPES and Bob Cash of the Texas Fair Trade Coalition.

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Leah Wilson : Imperialist Uses of WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks cables were used by corporate media to defame the government of Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes. Photo from ESAhora.
Wikileaks, El Salvador, and imperialist interests

How corporate media turned a diplomatic crisis into a political advantage for the U.S.

By Leah Wilson / The Rag Blog / December 14, 2010

SAN SALVADOR -- Since the “Cablegate” leaks were first announced, I have been championing Wikileaks and Julian Assange as at the forefront of the struggle for government transparency. I considered the release of these cables a major blow to the Empire, exposing the unsavory practices of U.S. foreign policy and its arrogant, hegemonic worldview.

The cables I was reading were mostly just providing proof that the U.S. was consciously doing what we already knew it was doing: legitimizing the Honduran coup despite being fully aware it was an illegal coup d’état, trying to isolate Venezuela and Cuba, pressuring foreign governments to not investigate war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying on heads of state and foreign functionaries, etc.

And then the first cables that mention El Salvador were published by the Spanish online news source ElPais.com. I was in a San Salvador pizzeria Tuesday night when the TV that had only been background noise up until that point grabbed my attention: “Breaking News: Wikileaks cables call President Funes’ government schizophrenic.”

At the end of November Salvadoran newspapers began reporting that 1,119 of the more than 250,000 cables leaked as part of Cablegate mentioned El Salvador. My friends and I were waiting for the first ones to be published so we could see plain and simple what dirty deeds the U.S. Embassy had been up to in El Salvador.

On Tuesday night, we got our wish, but we should have known to be careful what we wish for. What I saw on the TV news and read in the newspapers was not about the dirty deeds of the U.S. Embassy, but rather outright defamation of the government of President Mauricio Funes and the leftist party that brought him to power, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The first five cables that were released by ElPais.com, which apparently also has in its hands the other 1,114 cables mentioning El Salvador, are basically political updates sent to the U.S. by Robert Blau, who was the Charge d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador at the time. In September 2010 President Obama named the new U.S. Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte and Blau became the Deputy Chief of Mission, continuing as one of the Ambassador’s close advisors.

His memos contain a barrage of false accusations and distortions about the FMLN and its leaders as well as exaggerated declarations about conflict and tensions between President Funes and the FMLN members that are part of his cabinet. To read more analysis about the actual content of the San Salvador cables and their impact, I suggest you read the communiqué put together by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

Overall, the release of the documents has done nothing more than give more ammunition to the Salvadoran right wing in its ongoing attempt to discredit and undermine the Funes administration and the FMLN. As I said to a friend after reading the initial coverage, “Imperialism sure is astute. It managed to transform a major diplomatic crisis into a political advantage.”

Argentine Marxist Néstor Kohan explains in his book Approaches to Marxism that capitalism is incredibly adaptable. It is constantly entering into crises but these crises in themselves never mark the death of capitalism, it simply adapts and bounces back even more voraciously. The same can be said for U.S. imperialism, currently capitalism’s main tool for global expansion.

[While this falls outside the scope of this article, I would like to point out that Kohan isn’t a fatalist but goes on to explain that organized, mass resistance with an alternative proposal (socialism) is the only thing capable of taking capitalism down.]

Imperialism proved adaptable and the major corporate media sources of the world found a way to avert focus from all the information in the cables that incriminates the U.S. -- both the Obama administration and past administrations -- and channel public attention towards the information that makes the U.S.’s declared and undeclared “enemies” look bad.

To understand how they did this, I will point you to five words that I learned on my first day as a Communications major: “The medium is the message.” What Marshall McLuhan meant when he wrote this phrase that would begin advertising, public relations, and journalism textbooks for decades to come, is that the form in which one presents an idea has more impact than the idea itself. This brings us to how Wikileaks decided to present the more than 250,000 diplomatic leaked cables from around the world.

Wikileaks selected four major international corporate news agencies as the filter for the leaked cables: France’s Le Monde, Spain’s El País, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Britain’s The Guardian. The Guardian then shared cables with The New York Times, bringing the total number of news agencies to five.

Wikileaks chose not to publish everything on their website so that all the information is transparently available and journalists of all types -- independent, establishment, right leaning, left leaning, etc. -- could then drudge through it, analyze it, and determine what should be reported on.

Instead, five major newspapers are deciding which cables they want us to see and also formulating the first analysis the public receives about what the content of the chosen cables means, perpetuating corporate media’s domination of information.

Let’s return to the San Salvador cables as an example. El País journalist Maite Rico, who wrote the article about the first five released cables, is well known for using her journalistic platform to undermine the Latin American Left. When she’s not omitting information to make Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez look bad, she’s busy fabricating information about the death of Raúl Reyes, a leader of Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC).

Her false reporting on the Colombian military attack on a FARC encampment in which Reyes was killed was later used to sully the names of leftist leaders throughout Latin America as guilty by association with the FARC. She also published a book called Marcos: the great imposter that does nothing more than defame the leader of the Mexican Zapatista movement.

The examples of her hostility towards Latin America’s leftist leaders go on and on. And this is the person apparently deciding which leaked U.S. Embassy cables about El Salvador we get to see. No wonder the first five released cables contain opinions of the U.S. Embassy that could potentially damage President Funes and the FMLN’s credibility.

I would like to see the cables sent by the U.S. Embassy during the 2004 Salvadoran presidential campaign, when overt intervention by the Ambassador and the U.S. State Department helped turn a close race between the FMLN’s Shafick Handal and the far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) candidate Tony Saca into a decisive victory for the latter. But I have to wait until El País decides they are worthy of reporting.

I would also like to see the cables sent in 2007, when Salvadoran police trained at the U.S.-run International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) violently attacked a peaceful protest against water privatization.

And, of course, it would be informative to read the cables sent during the Salvadoran armed conflict, when the U.S. was “advising” and equipping the repressive Salvadoran military as it carried out civilian massacres. I guess I’ll have to wait for those too. I’m not holding my breath.

As long as Wikileaks is letting mainstream corporate media sources decide which cables we get to see and what we should glean from them, those sources are going to publish information in the interest of maintaining the thing that has served their pocketbooks so well up until now -- the status quo.

As David de Ugarte wrote in his editorial for Sociedad de Las indias Electrónicas, "From a state of panic to Wikileaks and why Assange doesn’t make us freer," “At this moment Assange and WikiLeaks occupy a central role in representing the confluence of interests of media corporations and States. It is true that both groups of power briefly enter in friction... but it is precisely because they converge, not because they diverge.”

It is no surprise that five corporate news agencies would serve imperialist interests. So, why would Assange entrust only them with information that has the potential to undermine those interests? I don’t know. We can all speculate on the answer to that question. I just know that it’s the duty of those of us who support alternative media as a method to emancipate ourselves from corporate control of information to speak up and also examine the cables and analysis coming out with a critical eye.

[Austin native Leah Wilson is a solidarity activist and collaborator with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). She lives in El Salvador.]

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Spain to Consider Charges Against Former Salvadoran President Christiani in Jesuit Killings

Former president of El Salvador Alfredo Cristiani Burkard, photographed in 1989 in London.
Spanish human rights organization files suit against Alfredo Cristiani and 14 others for involvement in Jesuit massacre of 1989.
By Leah Wilson / The Rag Blog / November 17, 2008

SAN SALVADOR -- The Association for Human Rights in Spain (APDHE, its initials in Spanish), with the support of the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), has filed a criminal complaint with the Spanish High Court against former president of El Salvador Alfredo Cristiani Burkard and 14 former members of El Salvador’s armed forces for the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter on November 16, 1989 by the US-trained and equipped Atlacatl Battalion.

The news comes just as Salvadorans commemorate the 19th anniversary of the massacre. The complaint will now go before the Spanish High Court who will decide whether to press charges against and seek the extradition of Cristiani and the 14 former military officials and soldiers for trial.

Spanish courts made history in 1998 by securing the arrest in England of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, following a Spanish legal principle that crimes against humanity may be prosecuted in any country. Cristiani, member of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance party (ARENA) and president of El Salvador from 1989-94, is being charged with aiding in the cover-up of a crime against humanity. General René Emilio Ponce, who as army chief ordered the murder of one of the priests and any witnesses to the crime, is being charged along with 13 other military officials and soldiers for crimes against humanity, murder, and state-sponsored terrorism. The APDHE and CJA confirm that there is sufficient proof including eyewitness accounts and government documents to prove the guilt of those charged.

Regarding the charges against Cristiani, current president of El Salvador Tony Saca of the ARENA party said, “Definitively, president Cristiani had absolutely nothing to do with this,” and added, “we are with him and support him, and we will support him until the last moment because he is an historic man for our country.”

The 1991 trials and convictions in El Salvador of two military officers for the massacre of the Jesuits was followed up by a 1993 Amnesty Law -- granting amnesty to crimes committed during the Civil War -- and the officers’ release. The Spanish criminal complaint brings hope that justice will be brought to the victims of the murders, massacres and human-rights abuses committed by the US-backed and US-funded Salvadoran military and death squads. It also brings hope that a renewed effort to do away with the Amnesty Law could bring justice to the countless victims of crimes and human rights abuses here in El Salvador.

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Politics in El Salvador : Echos of Nicaragua

Special to The Rag Blog

'The Salvadoran Right has capitalized on the chaos in Nicaragua to further their negative campaign to defame the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party.'

By Leah Wilson / The Rag Blog / December 11, 2008

See 'Open Letter to Nicaragua Solidarity Activists' by Chuck Kaufman, Below.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- The results of Nicaragua’s municipal elections on November 9, 2008, and the post-election violence and calls of fraud have saturated El Salvador’s newspapers throughout November.

The Salvadoran Right has capitalized on the chaos in Nicaragua to further their negative campaign to defame the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party and its presidential candidate Mauricio Funes and vice-presidential candidate Salvador Sánchez Cerén who have a 13 point lead over the governing right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party. As ARENA -- which has had an openly close relationship with the Bush administration and implemented neoliberal and repressive policies under the Bush camp’s guidance -- realizes the likelihood of El Salvador taking a left turn in the presidential elections in March 2009, they have stepped up the efforts of their campaign.

Fuerza Solidaria is doing much of the dirty work. It's an organization that was founded by right wing Venezuelan Alejandro Peña Esclusa with the sole purpose of stopping the leftward turn that many Latin American countries have decided to take. The primary message of their print, TV, and pamphlet campaign is the same US-interventionist rhetoric seen in every Salvadoran election: if the FMLN wins, your relatives living in the US will be deported and remittances sent home from the US (which amount to over $3 billion dollars a year and sustain the Salvadoran economy) will come to an end. So far, the US government has made no attempts to clarify the lies being propagated using their name, despite declarations of neutrality for the 2009 elections.

The violence, chaos and accusations of fraud that followed Nicaragua’s November elections, along with the United States’ freezing of Millennium Fund social project money for Nicaragua after the elections, has added a new dimension to the campaign against the FMLN. While Fuerza Solidaria has played a part in this new effort, it is primarily the right-wing owned media that have taken the lead. I am including an open letter from the US-based solidarity organization Nicaragua Network that contains more information on the Nicaraguan government and the actual events of November 9 and the aftermath — something you will not find in the mainstream media.

La Prensa Gráfica and the Diario de Hoy (unaffectionately known as the Diablo de Hoy by many Salvadorans) are two of the most widely circulated dailies in El Salvador. They are also owned by right-wing businessmen who consistently do the work of the ARENA party in their coverage of national and international events. Throughout the month of November, articles highlighting the violence in Nicaragua were combined with references to the FMLN’s historic ties to Nicaragua’s governing Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) party. Accusations of FMLN participation in the post-election violence were rampant, often substantiated by photos of one person wearing an FMLN T-shirt in a group of masked Sandinistas and testimonies of journalists who supposedly saw cars with Salvadoran license plates. The story of the freezing of Millennium Fund money, of which El Salvador is currently a recipient, was also front-page news.

So, currently in El Salvador I found myself thinking a lot about Nicaragua. I knew that the Salvadoran Right’s use of the chaos there was just part of their campaign tactics (which judging by the polls have proved mostly ineffective in swaying the opinions of the people of El Salvador); however, I wanted a better analysis of Nicaragua outside of the El Salvador lens. In my efforts to make sense of the Nicaragua elections and better understand the very complex political situation there, I read lots of materials; but the open letter pasted below from the Nicaragua Network not only gave me that clarity that cannot be found in the mainstream media, but it helped me better understand the nature of international solidarity in general and Central American solidarity specifically.

Open Letter to Nicaragua Solidarity Activists
By Chuck Kaufman / December 9, 2008

[Chuck Kaufman is national co-coordinator of the Nicaragua Network.]

The Nicaragua Network has received many notes and emails about our coverage of Nicaragua in recent months. Some think we’re too supportive of the government of President Daniel Ortega, while others think we are too critical. Still others have written to thank us for what they consider to be balanced information in a highly polarized situation. We welcome the dialogue and constructive criticism and are encouraged that so many people are still paying attention to Nicaragua and the US role in that small, poor country.

In my more than 21 years on the national staff of the Nicaragua Network, it has never been more difficult to determine the best way to present the information and analysis we provide to solidarity activists in the United States. In the 1980s we saw our mission to be to explain to the US solidarity community the actions of the Sandinista government in the context of the brutal US-manufactured contra war and economic sabotage. That resulted in the appearance of uncritical support of the Sandinistas on our part.

In the era of the neoliberal governments, news and analysis was easy. We opposed neoliberalism, US domination, and the efforts to wipe out the gains of the Sandinista revolution. Today our work is more difficult because there are both positive and negative aspects of the current government’s political project, and there are divisions within Sandinismo about how to move forward. Our staff and board have had many long phone and email conversations in an effort to sharpen and balance our analysis.

Many people came to their love of Nicaragua after the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinistas, and thus have no experience with the Sandinista revolutionary period. This is especially true in the Sister City movement which began in the 1980’s but it is the only sector of Nicaragua solidarity to add significant new members after the 1990 electoral defeat. I have the greatest respect for the sister city groups; they are the ones who have stuck with their partners in Nicaragua through thick and thin while many of those whose solidarity was motivated primarily by ideology have long since moved on to other progressive causes. I am not for a moment implying that people in sister city groups are apolitical; a conversation with our board, most of whom represent sister city groups, would dispel that error quickly.

Still, it is hard for anyone who joined the solidarity movement after 1990 to understand the historical importance of the FSLN to those of us who traveled to – and supported – Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. After 1990, the neoliberal Nicaraguan governments worked hard to eradicate the memory of the Sandinista revolution and the Sandinista struggles to protect the Nicaraguan people from attacks by the US-sponsored contras. Our government and corporate media worked equally hard to eradicate those memories in the United States. However, many of us in the Nicaragua Network haven’t forgotten.

I think it would be useful, both for new and older solidarity activists, if we review the roots of the Nicaragua Network to better understand the context in which we develop our current information and analysis.

The Nicaragua Network was born 30 years ago this coming February 24 at a conference in Washington, DC. A number of major cities already had solidarity committees working to support the Sandinista armed liberation movement. They decided they needed national coordination to make their work more effective. So, the Nicaragua Network was formed first and foremost to provide solidarity support to the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) and its struggle to overthrow, by force of arms, the brutal US-backed Somoza dictatorship.

The Sandinista triumph on July 19,1979 was met with joy not only in Nicaragua but here in the United States as well. The wedding of the Sandinista socialist program with liberation theology's "preferential option for the poor" created what Oxfam-Great Britain later called "the threat of a good example." The Empire was quick to strike back. I don't need to go into the whole history of the illegal and immoral contra war and the relentless efforts by the US government and the corporate media to vilify and delegitimize the Sandinista government, both before and after it became a duly elected representative democracy in 1984.

The campaign of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies was enthusiastically waged by the US corporate media, led by the Washington Post and New York Times. I was surprised when someone referred us to an article in the New York Times to demonstrate the Nicaragua Network's bias. When have we ever been able to believe a word about Nicaragua that was printed in the New York Times? When reporters like Raymond Bonner tried to report factually and impartially from Central America, they were demoted or fired. Bonner eventually received an apology, but the New York Times bias never changed.

So yes, there is no question that the Nicaragua Network has its own bias. Our bias is in favor of democratic socialism (not to be confused with social democracy) and a preferential option for the poor. We don't hide it, and we make no apologies. While the government of President Daniel Ortega may fall short in the area of democratic socialism, it is our judgment that it is demonstrating a proven preferential option for the poor. We view the mission of the Nicaragua Network to be to stop the US government from once again denying Nicaraguans the opportunity to achieve greater economic and social justice. The most fundamental mission of the Nicaragua Network is to stop our government from intervening in Nicaragua’s internal affairs.

As evidence of the Ortega government’s preferential option for the poor, I would cite as an example that it will have eliminated illiteracy by July 2009 and the majority of municipalities have already been declared free of illiteracy. That is due, in part, to the fact that the first action of the new government was to eliminate school fees. This bold action enabled more than 100,000 additional children to attend school. During the neoliberal years, many parents weren’t able to send their kids to school because of school fee policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank. For adult literacy the Sandinista government has implemented the Cuban literacy program “Yes, I Can!” and even extended it to the Miskito and Mayagna (Sumo) indigenous languages.

That is just one example. The free health clinics are once again staffed and stocked with medicine so that patients receive medicine, rather than prescriptions they couldn’t afford to fill under the right-wing governments of 1990-2007. Cooperation with Cuba and Venezuela has given several thousand people back their sight after cataract surgery, and free operations in the hospitals have saved uncounted lives. The Sandinista government has also resurrected the small and medium farming sector, the historic backbone of Nicaragua’s economy, which wasn’t even in the National Development Plan Ortega inherited from his predecessor Enrique Bolaños.

The Zero Hunger program has provided 32,709 poor families with animals, seeds, fertilizer, etc. so they could become food self-sufficient and sell their surplus. Zero Usury has provided low interest loans to small farmers and merchants so they can earn a livelihood and feed their families. Houses for the People is putting roofs over the heads of families that previously lived in shacks built of anything they could find. Project Love is working to eliminate the tragedy of child labor. The subsidized food distribution centers are all that stand between some families and malnutrition. The Sandinista government is taking steps to feed, clothe and house its people despite skyrocketing food costs and the greatest crisis in capitalism in 80 years. I think these programs mean something; and what they mean for the lives of real people is more important than the howls and outrage among the political class in Nicaragua and abroad.

Do we think the Ortega government is perfect? No, and even a casual reading of the information and analysis we have produced over the nearly two years of his presidency will demonstrate that fact. We continue to criticize Sandinista support for criminalizing therapeutic abortion. We have criticized violent excesses of Sandinista supporters during the recent electoral process. And we have cautioned that the effort to monitor foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations not be used as an excuse to persecute women’s rights groups.

But, do we think the Ortega government is better than another right-wing, neoliberal government beholden to US masters? Absolutely. Just imagine how much worse the people of Nicaragua would be suffering in the current economic crisis if US-favored Eduardo Montealegre had become president in January 2007 instead of Daniel Ortega. How much worse off in the current economic crisis would poor Nicaraguans be in the absence of the anti-poverty programs of the current Sandinista government? The answer should be self evident.

I personally find it hard to get excited about the claims by the right-wing of fraud in the recent municipal elections. I think the claims are much greater than the reality. Of course, the US advisers and funders of the right-wing parties know all about stealing elections. Maybe they assume that all elections are as crooked as the ones in Florida and Ohio. My analysis is that the FSLN received more votes than the opposition. The biggest stink was made about the mayoral election in Managua, but an independent poll right before the election showed FSLN candidate Alexis Arguello with a 5 point lead, and that’s what he won by. Frankly, I think the supporters of Ivy League trained oligarch Eduardo Montealegre just can’t believe that a barrio born former boxer beat him. I’m delighted, and I can’t imagine why any U.S. solidarity activist would want to see Montealegre, the corrupt banking buddy of the Bush regime, as mayor of Nicaragua’s capital city.

The FSLN played by the European-US "liberal democracy" rules in 1984, 1990, 1996, 2001, and 2006. In 1984 the US forced the major opposition candidate out of the race, when it was obvious he would lose, so they could claim the election was not legitimate. In 1990, the US spent more per voter on the Nicaraguan election than Democrats and Republicans combined spent per voter on the 1988 US presidential election.

In 1996 the election was blatantly stolen by the Constitutional Liberal Party with US technological assistance as well as funding. Jimmy Carter and Oscar Arias told Ortega he had to accept the fraudulent results to prevent a civil war. He did, just as he accepted the 1990 returns resulting in the first peaceful turnover of power from one political party to another in Nicaragua’s history. The result of the 1990 election doomed Nicaraguans to 17 years of hunger, poverty, and the loss of nearly everything they had gained from ousting the Somoza dictatorship.

Is it any wonder if some in the FSLN might have been determined not to suffer losses in this year's municipal election, or that certain international election observers, who had certified previous fraudulent elections as “free and fair,” were not invited to observe this one? (There were other certified international observers, however, and the political parties had poll watchers just like in US elections.) I find it hard to fault the logic even if I don't approve of all the methods. And if the fraud was as blatant as the charges claim, why won’t the Constitutional Liberal Party present its “evidence” to the Supreme Electoral Commission where they hold an equal number of seats as the Sandinistas? Sure, some of the media events were impressive and disturbing, but that’s not the same as following the constitutionally mandated mechanisms for proving fraud.

The FSLN won the majority of municipalities in the previous election and, by all account; most of the Sandinista mayors did a good job. With the additional boost of the Ortega government's anti-poverty programs over the last two years, I don't find it surprising at all that they made further gains this year. The surprise would be if they hadn't.

One of the tried and true tactics of the so-called democracy building programs of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) is to manipulate polls, quick counts, and the corporate media to cast doubts on the legitimacy of elections. Look at the Ukraine election of 2003, where they succeeded, and the Venezuelan recount vote of 2004, where they failed, to see similarities to the reactions to the Nicaraguan municipal elections of 2008.

What does surprise me is that some people in the US continue to fail to recognize the treachery of our government and credulously read and listen to the US corporate media. How many times must it be proven that the US government and corporate media lack any commitment to democracy when the outcome doesn't conform with their perceived "interests” before some people learn to read the propaganda?

So the Nicaragua Network will continue to expose and oppose US intervention in Nicaragua and elsewhere. We will continue to support governments that show a preferential option for the poor. And we'll continue to oppose right-wing neoliberalism wherever it rears its ugly head. We'll continue to fight disinformation by putting out true information about the Sandinista government's anti-poverty programs, and we'll continue to criticize its excesses of authoritarianism.

We won't get the balance right in each and every case, but I firmly believe that if you examine the body of our work from the perspective of our historical mission, on the whole we are right where we should be. We welcome constructive criticism when solidarity activists believe we are off the mark and we always welcome dialogue.

The Rag Blog

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