FMLN comes under attack in El Salvador
El Salvador's ARENA, PDC and PCN are threatening to bring charges against members of the FMLN for crimes that they committed during the war if the government violates the pact of reconciliation signed following the Peace Accords. I think that they are referring to the amnesty that the government passed in 1993 prior to the FMLN winning any legislative seats.
COENA Prsident Jorge Velado claims that the FMLN is going along with the investigations in order to throw up a "smoke screen" at a time when the FMLN is discussing pension reform and that there are indications that San Salvador Mayor Nayib Bukele is involved in cyber attacks.
The PDC Secretary General Rodolfo Parker has threatened to pursue charges against the FMLN for their murders of PDC mayors, civilians, during the war. From what I understand, the ERP took the fall for the murders of mayors. It's not entirely clear that they did so because they killed mayors more so than the other groups that comprised the FMLN or because they were more forthcoming with the investigations that led to the Truth Commission.
PCN General Secretary Manuel RodrÃguez comes across matter-of-factly in the Contrapunto article. He warns that the capture of the four soldiers not only endangers the soldiers, but FMLN members in government. RodrÃguez gives the impression that the FMLN could have responded to the Interpol alert by engaging in dialogue with the other political parties. Historically, the PCN was referred to as the party of the military and of the rural elites.
In Guatemala, the former guerrillas have had little success as a political party. Many human rights activists who had some connection to the guerrillas in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, left the organization to compete in a revitalized civil society that emerged with the return to civilian rule in 1985. The poor electoral showing of the URNG and the weak ties that it had with civil society, led those human rights advocates to pursue charges against former military officials in the postwar. They were not very connected to the URNG during or after the war.
In El Salvador, on the other hand, the FMLN turned itself into one of the country's two largest parties. It won plurality of seats in the congress and many of the country's most important municipalities beginning around the turn of the century before the presidency in 2009. The FMLN also had much stronger ties with civil society groups and human rights activists. The FMLN therefore had a lot to lose compared to the URNG. The FMLN also had deeper ties to those people and groups who would have pushed to overturn the amnesty.
As a result of these conditions, efforts at overturning the amnesty (a blanket one in El Salvador versus a more limited one in Guatemala) and pursuing charges against alleged human rights violators have been less pressing. No one wanted to threaten the privileged position that the FMLN had gained for itself. I'm talking about the leadership rather than the one-third of the population that identifies with the FMLN.
And if the left wasn't going to tear down the amnesty, there was no way that the right was going to. While there are some crimes that the left committed during the 1970s and 1980s that fell out of the mandate of the truth commission or that just weren't shared with them, the evidence remains overwhelmingly that the right was responsible for the vast majority of human rights violations.
COENA Prsident Jorge Velado claims that the FMLN is going along with the investigations in order to throw up a "smoke screen" at a time when the FMLN is discussing pension reform and that there are indications that San Salvador Mayor Nayib Bukele is involved in cyber attacks.
The PDC Secretary General Rodolfo Parker has threatened to pursue charges against the FMLN for their murders of PDC mayors, civilians, during the war. From what I understand, the ERP took the fall for the murders of mayors. It's not entirely clear that they did so because they killed mayors more so than the other groups that comprised the FMLN or because they were more forthcoming with the investigations that led to the Truth Commission.
PCN General Secretary Manuel RodrÃguez comes across matter-of-factly in the Contrapunto article. He warns that the capture of the four soldiers not only endangers the soldiers, but FMLN members in government. RodrÃguez gives the impression that the FMLN could have responded to the Interpol alert by engaging in dialogue with the other political parties. Historically, the PCN was referred to as the party of the military and of the rural elites.
In Guatemala, the former guerrillas have had little success as a political party. Many human rights activists who had some connection to the guerrillas in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, left the organization to compete in a revitalized civil society that emerged with the return to civilian rule in 1985. The poor electoral showing of the URNG and the weak ties that it had with civil society, led those human rights advocates to pursue charges against former military officials in the postwar. They were not very connected to the URNG during or after the war.
In El Salvador, on the other hand, the FMLN turned itself into one of the country's two largest parties. It won plurality of seats in the congress and many of the country's most important municipalities beginning around the turn of the century before the presidency in 2009. The FMLN also had much stronger ties with civil society groups and human rights activists. The FMLN therefore had a lot to lose compared to the URNG. The FMLN also had deeper ties to those people and groups who would have pushed to overturn the amnesty.
As a result of these conditions, efforts at overturning the amnesty (a blanket one in El Salvador versus a more limited one in Guatemala) and pursuing charges against alleged human rights violators have been less pressing. No one wanted to threaten the privileged position that the FMLN had gained for itself. I'm talking about the leadership rather than the one-third of the population that identifies with the FMLN.
And if the left wasn't going to tear down the amnesty, there was no way that the right was going to. While there are some crimes that the left committed during the 1970s and 1980s that fell out of the mandate of the truth commission or that just weren't shared with them, the evidence remains overwhelmingly that the right was responsible for the vast majority of human rights violations.
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