Victory in El Salvador

I happily found myself having a celebratory meal of pupusas and platanos on Monday in honor of the results of the El Salvadoran elections. After 20 years of right-wing rule, leftist party FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberacion Nacional) have finally won the presidency. Mauricio Funes became the first leftist president of El Salvador on Sunday, following the trend of several other Latin American countries who have also elected leftist governments this decade. According to the NY Times, and echoed by many fair trade advocates indicate that,

[T]he left’s success is a response to disappointment with the failure of free-market policies promoted by Washington in the 1990s to generate economic growth and reduce the region’s yawning inequality.

Mauricio Funes and the FMLN are seen as a fair trade party who have been staunch opponents of the Central American Free Trade Agreement or CAFTA. The victory of FMLN in El Salvador is a victory for fair trade policies as we will see the voice of those who have been negatively affected by free trade policies finally speak up and see to it that the economic and trading system starts to benefit the people and the environment. According to the Stop CAFTA Coalition, which include several Latin American countries have voiced their concern toward the new Obama Administration and Democratic Congress and what they hope to accomplish together,

Not only should the Democratic Congress reject pending agreements such as the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, but the party in power should take this opportunity to introduce a new trade policy based on human rights, and economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Elliott Jones at the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, who has been investigating the negative effects of CAFTA has stated,

The articles included in the report show that the negative impacts of CAFTA in these countries are not simply ‘growing pains,’ or the inevitable transitional problems associated with altering a country’s economic system; they are fundamental flaws in the economic theory that drives CAFTA and will likely not improve.

Let us hope that the victory in El Salvador will start to see an end to CAFTA policies and the US government can work with Latin American governments to institute a trade policy that will see growth in a fair and healthy way. As Mauricio Funes' campaign slogan said, 'hope is born' and this can be the beginning of a new era.