[R-G] Operation Disrupt Democracy in El Salvador

[Anthony Fenton]

Operation Disrupt Democracy in El Salvador
January 2009 By Erica Thompson
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/20127

International observers have denounced recent activities of the U.S.  
Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National  
Endowment for Democracy (NED) as designed to overthrow democratically  
elected presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of  
Venezuela. A similar strategy is underway to undermine the electoral  
process in El Salvador by striking fear and confusion into voters  
before legislative and presidential elections in 2009.

Since November 2007, El Salvador's leftist party, the FMLN (Farabundo  
Martí National Liberation Front), has been consistently polling at a  
12-14 point advantage for upcoming legislative, municipal, and  
presidential elections—ahead of the right-wing ARENA (National  
Republican Alliance) party's presidential candidate and former  
national civilian police director, Rodrigo Avila, who has peaked at  
around 38 percent by conservative estimates. Because an FMLN victory  
could deal a profound loss to Washington and Wall Street by countering  
attempts to increase the corporate privatization of land and public  
services, business media and government officials have stepped up  
attempts to defeat them in the press and behind the scenes.

In a recent address to the American Enterprise Institute, Salvadoran  
Foreign Minister Marisol Argueta implored the U.S. government to  
intervene in the elections on ARENA's behalf. In addition,  
international press reports have propagated ridiculous claims of a  
mounting "terrorist conspiracy" between the FMLN, the FARC in  
Colombia, and Hugo Chavez. Wall Street Journal editor Mary Anastasía  
O'Grady has complained that if the FMLN wins, foreign investors will  
suffer. Indeed, several countries that participated in the 18th IBERO- 
American Summit in October agreed that corporate privatization has  
failed the majority of people in Latin America. Presidents in Brazil,  
Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Guatemala are  
proposing increased regulation and oversight of corporate expansion.  
An FMLN victory in El Salvador promises further movement in this  
direction.

FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes has said that an FMLN administration  
would work to oppose biofuel production and the current profit  
structure for mining projects in favor of spurring agricultural  
development. "We have to improve agricultural production. Over the  
past 19 years of ARENA government, the infrastructure for food  
production has been neglected and dismantled. It is essential and a  
priority to allot land use for food production and the harvesting of  
vegetables and staple grains. This is what the people need. We cannot  
allow ourselves the luxury of allotting areas of land for biofuel  
production because we are not going to work to feed machines; we have  
to work to feed human beings."

In its attempt to confuse and ultimately sabotage the FMLN's campaign,  
right-wing Venezuelan-based pro-U.S. media organization Fuerza  
Solidaria has released a set of television ads and door-to-door  
leaflets that assail potential voters with the usual dose of  
misinformation and scare tactics that accompany every electoral  
campaign in El Salvador. Designed to suppress votes for the FMLN, one  
of the ads portrays Funes and the FMLN party as an out-of-touch,  
antiquated relic rather than a political manifestation of the  
Salvadoran peoples' historic, and ongoing, broad-based resistance to  
foreign exploitation. Simplistic "flow chart" arrows on the ad imply  
that an FMLN-led government would sacrifice remittance money from the  
U.S. to be a puppet for Chavez's "anti-American expansion project."  
The intended message is clear and has been the preferred threat of the  
immigrant-bashing Bush administration to Salvadorans on both sides of  
the border: those who support the FMLN are against the U.S. If the  
FMLN wins the election, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)  
will begin massively deporting Salvadorans and the U.S. will cut off  
remittances.


USAID, NED, and Fuerza Solidaria—with the help of corporate-owned  
media and the U.S. government—have been a major motor behind anti- 
democratic political strategies in Venezuela and Bolivia since 2001.  
In April 2002, the United States utilized the NED to channel funds to  
private organizations that were running covert propaganda campaigns in  
support of a failed coup in Venezuela, which detained President Chavez  
and recognized the short-lived, pro-U.S. government. According to the  
New York Times, the NED "funneled more than $877,000 into Venezuelan  
opposition groups in the weeks and months before the unsuccessful coup  
attempt."

In the wake of the failed coup, the NED channeled another $53,400 to  
help create a U.S. backed organization called Sumate, a group designed  
to unite, strengthen, and mobilize opposition to the popularly elected  
Chavez government, and which supported Sumate's efforts to disseminate  
disinformation. In 2004 the group published fake exit polls that  
claimed Chavez lost the referendum recall vote. While their strategies  
have mostly failed, the actions of Sumate and NED have effectively  
cast doubt on the legitimacy and democratic goals of the Chavez  
government, weakening its image internationally.

In Bolivia, investigative journalists Jeremy Bigwood and Benjamin  
Dangl's inquiries through the Freedom of Information Act and one-on- 
one interviews showed that the former U.S. embassy there—through USAID  
and NED—had maintained close relationships with right-wing opposition  
groups to "promote democracy" by undermining President Morales as  
well. Through these connections and a USAID Political Party Reform  
Project, the U.S. has supported forces that could "serve as a  
counterweight" to Morales's MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) party. In  
response, Morales recently kicked the U.S. ambassador out of Bolivia.  
USAID and Fuerza Solidaria were also exposed for their attempts to  
influence Bolivia's referendum in August 2008.


In November 2007, another NED recipient, the International Republican  
Institute (IRI), presented Salvadoran President Tony Saca of the ARENA  
party with the "Freedom Award" for promoting U.S. values in El  
Salvador such as "linking economic growth with democratic governance  
and vigorously defending freedom at home and abroad." Never mind the  
re-emergence of death squads, unsuccessful attempts to convict  
protestors and vendors as "terrorists," and an unprecedented post-war  
increase in Salvadoran migration to, and deportations from, the U.S.  
during his term. This exercise in elite back-patting not only unveils  
the biases of the IRI, which is chaired by Republican Senator John  
McCain, but also underscores the U.S. government's explicit  
endorsement of the right-wing ARENA party, another act of intervention  
and electoral manipulation.

In January 2008 U.S.-based CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the  
People of El Salvador) received a familiar warning from the Department  
of Justice accusing the group of "acting as a foreign agent" of the  
FMLN party, presumably as backlash for its political connections with  
the leftist social movement in El Salvador. An identical letter 14  
years ago signaled the beginning of a massive three-year FBI  
infiltration project aimed at destroying the organization. When asked  
to name CISPES's "conspiratorial allies" past and present, Executive  
Director Burke Stansbury responded: "People and popular movements  
organized to challenge U.S. sponsored political, economic, and  
electoral violence are the ones that get our attention and our  
commitments. Our government has designed and rewarded the brutal  
repression of countless uprisings in El Salvador, and is still very  
active in this way." Is the FMLN a CISPES ally? "Absolutely. We have  
always maintained political solidarity with the FMLN and will continue  
to do so. What is more, we are committed in every way to challenging  
U.S. attempts to deny El Salvador its basic rights as a sovereign  
country. Elections are only the tip of the iceberg."

In June the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Charles Glazer, told a  
CISPES delegation that the U.S. government's days of interfering in El  
Salvador's elections are over. He said that although they did  
intervene in the 2004 presidential election, they would not do so  
again in 2009. His aide then explained that the delegation "wouldn't  
have to worry about fraud this time because the NDI and IRI will be  
training [Salvadorans] how to conduct a quick count." One has to  
wonder what the embassy's definition of intervention is.

To make the U.S. government and ARENA party alliance even more  
transparent, Ambassador Glazer appeared publicly in early November  
with the outgoing Salvadoran president at the Ronald Reagan Building  
in Washington, DC. President Saca was on the campaign trail again—with  
Salvadoran taxpayer money—to raise the profile of ARENA with the  
ironically titled "Peace and Prosperity" conference. Glazer was at his  
side, ready to field questions and concerns.

There is no doubt that major changes underfoot in the Latin American  
region have put Washington on edge. Country after country is electing  
governments who represent the majority of people instead of the  
financial interests of a few. El Salvador's left appears destined for  
both an historic victory at the polls and a new phase of struggle  
against U.S. dominance, as USAID and NED have become the faltering  
empire's new "diplomatic weapons" of choice.

Z



Erica Thompson works with CISPES in San Salvador.