The forthcoming elections in El Salvador promise to be the freest in the country’s history, according to observers, and a step toward the construction of democracy—despite a campaign of intimidation and terror by the ruling ARENA party and right-wing death squads.
"We’ll be making a serious error if we see these elections as the final test of the peace accords," longtime peace activist Jennifer Casolo told Sojourners. "They’re an important step in the process and they’re one more way of strengthening the foundation of the accords. But there’s a lot that still needs to be done."
Documents released last November by the U.S. government demonstrated the link between ARENA and the death squads, including the involvement of current Vice President Francisco Merino and San Salvador’s mayor, Armando Calderon Sol—ARENA’s candidate for president in the March 20 elections. Among the 12,000 documents declassified by the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon, there was evidence of U.S. support for death squad activities—including the training of those linked to political killings—as recently as 1990.
While the Archdiocese of San Salvador documented 82 death-squad killings in 1993—including the assassination of several prominent FMLN candidates—efforts continue to ensure as free an election as possible as Salvadorans go to the polls to elect a president, vice president, members of the legislative assembly, and the mayors of several cities. Thousands of international observers—organized by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and many other non-governmental organizations—will serve as election monitors.
"We’re going there because we think [the elections] are really important and that our presence can make a difference in how free and fair they are," Van Gosse, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, told Sojourners. Gosse, who helped organize the U.S. Citizens Elections Observer Mission—a coalition of more than 20 religious and human rights groups that will send 500 election observers—said, "The elections could be a serious step forward toward democratization and demilitarization, if the results are respected by all parties."
Jennifer Johnson and Jill Carroll Lafferty assisted with research.
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