After decades of undue influence by the fascist corporatists in our government, starting with Ronald Reagan’s support for the Death Squads that terrorized the people who were fighting for social justice in the 1980’s, Democracy has finally prevailed in El Salvador, and the leftist FMLN party has won the presidency. Mauricio Funes was never one of the rebel fighters, but a strong philosophical supporter of the cause. He is reportedly a very smart man who had a popular talk show on TV, which represents a freedom of speech that only became possible after the FMNL negotiated peace accords with the ruling ARENA party, along with their ally, the United States, and he says that he wants to retain good relations with the United States, even after all the death and destruction our nation has caused there.
I believe that this is a direct result of Barack Obama becoming President of the United States of America, that the people of El Salvador were inspired and emboldened by his rise to that position, and they voted for the leftist candidate, despite threats from Congressmen Trent Franks of Arizona and Dan Burton of Indiana that El Salvadoran citizens would lose their immigration status here in the United States as well as their right to send remittances home, despite all the government propaganda by the ruling party, and despite the memories of violent U.S. backed suppression that haunt their recent history. Although he himself never came out with a strong statement of neutrality in these elections, the Obama administration did put out a quiet statement to that effect – as I keep pointing out, President Barack Hussein Obama is trying very hard not to appear too socialistical, to present his agenda of “change” as a matter of practicality, not as a radical social revolution.
As the Latin American movement toward true democracy creeps closer and closer to our southern border, this could be an opportunity to prove the point that socialism is not the enemy of the United States. Mexico is also beginning to move toward a rejection of financial tyranny by the United States, cleverly billed as “free trade,” but which has only repressed the vast majority of people of this hemisphere to the benefit of the corporatists here in the States and their wealthy allies in the governments to the south. Mexico has retaliated to the United States’ decision to end the policy of allowing their trucks on our highways, citing some kind of “danger” under protectionist pressure from the Teamsters, by imposing tariffs on items from the U.S. NAFTA has not been good for the people of Mexico, as their farmers could not compete with the corn that is subsidized by our Department of Agriculture and sold to Mexico at bulk prices, much of which is genetically altered, which is in turn ending up infecting what remains of their beautiful and diverse local varieties, developed over thousands of years to be best suited to their unique climates, and which, after the local farmers threw in the towel and sent their kids north to try to support their families, has been susceptible to rises in the price of oil for transporting it from far away, not to mention the further skyrocketing price of corn because the United States decided to divert food crops into our big, gas-guzzling, All-American trucks in a despicable corn ethanol greenwashing campaign.
Perhaps this marks the beginning of the end of the myth of “free trade” and the pretense that the subjugation of the people of the Americas by U.S. corporate powers is the spreading of democracy and freedom. Freedom does not march, it is passed from on human being to another, as shackles are removed, one by one, as ideas are spread, as families are reunited, as fears are dissipated, as participation is widened, as voices are heard, as human rights are respected, as illusions are dispelled, as dreams are realized. Trade is not “free” when one partner strong-arms another, forcing them to adhere to policies that the bully party did not itself adhere to when it was a developing power, that it insists on only now that it has the upper hand. And democracy is not defined by the absence of socialism. In fact, real democracy logically tends toward socialism, if the population is truly informed, the government is truly transparent, and everyone is truly allowed to participate. Doesn’t “government by the people, for the people” mean exactly that the government should work for the people?
Meanwhile, capitalism naturally tends toward fascism, as it seeks more and more money and power through influence of government policy, the spreading of propaganda, and the convincing of the population that they are furthering their own freedom and dignity when the reality is the exact opposite, that the workers have enslaved themselves through debt and the fear that they will not have access to health care; enslaved themselves to the illusion that the products that are pushed onto the marketplace are somehow magically inspired by their wants and needs, like big trucks and I-phones; enslaved themselves to a system that cannot sustain itself without massive consumption of resources; enslaved themselves to the double speak that capitalism is the noblest form of humanity, that it is all about individual rights and personal responsibility, when its dark underbelly is anti-democratic, duplicitous, murderous, insipid fascism, the true face of which appears in developing countries that are under the shadow of the United States and at the mercy of our IMS and World Bank.
Latin America has had no choice but to reject the United States – blow-back is a bitch, and the venom with which Salvadorans utter the words “Ronald Reagan” shows that his legacy lives on there. But the increasing tendency of governments in the western hemisphere to enact socialism, to nationalize their utilities and services so that everyone will have access to them, as a matter of human rights, and to turn away from unfair policies that only serve to delegate the masses to lives of despair and poverty does not mean that these nations are our enemies. In this nascent century, with this new kind of world leader, and with changing political atmospheres around the globe, there is much work to be done to convince the people of the United States of America that our faith in capitalism has led us astray, has been the downfall of the entire world financial system, and that only by joining together with other human beings, learning that the raising up of the weakest among us raises us all up, and ensuring that everyone understands that the benefits that people enjoy in the wealthier nations are intimately linked to how people are treated in the poorest nations - only by these means will we build an international system that benefits everybody and represses none. That is the promise of socialism, linked with democracy, and it is fair-minded and egalitarian, not a scary monster to use as an excuse to kill and terrorize people in the name of corporate profits.
see:
Democracy Now! March 16, 2009 "Leftist FMLN Candidate Mauricio Funes Wins El Salvador Presidential Election, Ending Two Decades of Conservative Rule
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