Why Splinter? Parties that Split from the FSLN, FMLN and URNG

While there has been a good amount written about the transitions of the FSLN, FMLN, and URNG to political parties, we have not seen much written on what happened to those groups that splintered from the original revolutionary coalitions to follow their own political projects. That is, until now.

I have a new paper at the Journal of Latin American Studies on Why Splinter? Parties that Split from the FSLN, FMLN and URNG.

Following the ends to the civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, the revolutionary coalitions that had led the fight against authoritarian regimes began to fracture. However, none of the splinter parties that broke from the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, and Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit has succeeded on their own as political parties.

In this article, I argue that there is no single reason to explain the poor performances of the Democratic Party (PD), the Renovating Movement (MR), and the Democratic Front Party (FDR) in El Salvador, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (Renovate-MRS) and the Movement to Rescue Sandinismo (Rescue-MRS) in Nicaragua, and the New Nation Alliance (ANN) in Guatemala.

However, their limited financial resources, alliances with non-revolutionary centrist and centre-right parties, and voter tendency to overlook internal ideological and personal debates within the original political parties, especially the FSLN and FMLN, have not helped.

The paper was a challenge. I probably wrote the first drafts in 2011 and 2012 before submitting it for the first time in March 2013. It was one of the first things that I accomplished on my Fulbright to Guatemala that year so I remember it. I went back and forth with the reviewers and editors for nearly three years before it was finally accepted. The team at JLAS were great but it was still a struggle.

As we went through the process, I had to respond to reviewers' questions about ongoing, events such as the elections in El Salvador (2014 and 2015) and Guatemala (2015) and the rise of GANA in El Salvador.

One reviewer claimed that GANA was another failed political party and therefore that I should include some discussion of that party in the paper as well. I won the argument that GANA has actually been a successful political party but it took awhile and I had to include a few paragraphs in the paper. A long three-year process.

If you'd like a copy of the article, shoot me an email and I can forward one to you.