The vice president and the drug kingpin

One month ago and shortly after Berta Caceres' murder in Honduras, I asked What about El Salvador?

US policies towards Honduras and El Salvador do not need to be identical. However, if we are going to try and cut off assistance to the Honduran government because of their shady track record, we need to at least consider doing the same for El Salvador. I am a pro-engagement type of guy so I don't think that we should cut off assistance to either country. However, if we are asking that question for one country, we might as well ask it for both.

Unfortunately, here is another reason why the US needs to re-evaluate how it engages with El Salvador. While I originally read the news in El Faro, here is Hector Silva addressing Vice President Oscar Ortiz' business relationship with drug kingpin Chepe Diablo in Insight Crime.

On May 4, 2014, it looked like rain in Metapán. The heavy clouds and a few drops did not manage to disrupt the soccer match being played in the local Jorge "Calero" Suárez stadium, between the Isidro Metapán Sports Association and the Santa Tecla teams. In the audience, Óscar Ortiz -- vice president elect of El Salvador at the time and director of the Tecla soccer club -- and Juan Umaña Samayoa, the mayor of Metapán and president of the local club, were watching the game.

That day, the other strongman of Metapán -- the team and the city -- was not at the stadium: José Adán Salazar Umaña, known as "Chepe Diablo," who was listed by the United States as an international drug trafficking kingpin in the final days of May 2014. Both Salazar Umaña and Umaña Samayoa have been linked by police investigations to the Texis Cartel, one of the main drug trafficking and money laundering organizations in El Salvador, according to a United Nations report from 2012.

Salazar Umaña's and Ortiz's names have appeared together since 2000, when both men set up, in collaboration with a third associate, a company dedicated to buying and selling property: the Montecristo Development Society (Desarrollos Montecristo). The society was established at noon on June 20, 2000. Ortiz had been sworn in as mayor of Santa Tecla for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional - FMLN) political party a few weeks earlier, on June 1.

Those days were, for Ortiz, the beginning of a political career that led him to be re-elected four times as Santa Tecla's mayor and eventually become one of the most important figures in the leftist party. In 2014, he became the vice president of the Republic of El Salvador.

It's unbelievably disappointing. For over a decade, many of us have supported Oscar Ortiz as the "new," more moderate face of the FMLN. Ortiz served in the Legislative Assembly and then for several terms as mayor of Santa Tecla. He was able to transform the city he governed. He challenged Schafik Handal for the presidency in 2004, but the FMLN preferred to remain true to its principles and select the candidate most likely to lose. Before selecting Mauricio Funes (who has his own set of problems) and Salvador Sanchez Ceren (who?) as its 2009 and 2014 presidential candidates, Ortiz was always on the public short list of candidates.

The alleged corruption goes back fifteen years but Ortiz seems not to be that worried about it. He is bothered more by the questions than the actual allegation. Ortiz has answered that his business relationship with the alleged drug trafficker is inactive. He has also asked what's the big deal - Chepe Luna has never been convicted of anything illegal.

I'm not the type of academic to petition to the US government to cut off relations with another country as a result of alleged crimes committed by high profile individuals, so I'll just have to wait for others to do so. In the meantime, I would expect President Sanchez Ceren and the attorney general to launch full-scale investigations into Ortiz's business partnership with a drug trafficker. Ortiz, on the other hand, should be preparing his letter of resignation for the good of the party and the country.