In These Times: More U.S. Meddling in El Salvador?

[marmar]

News > October 2, 2008
More U.S. Meddling in El Salvador?
By Jacob Wheeler


As El Salvador prepares to hold its presidential and parliamentary elections early next year, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) worries the Bush administration might be drumming up fear to sway results.

During a June visit to El Salvador, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte expressed concern over alleged links between the populist opposition FMLN party — Farabundo Mart’ National Liberation Front — and rebels in Colombia’s FARC — Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

After Colombian troops raided a FARC camp on March 1, the Colombian government alleged it had seized a laptop computer that tied FARC and FMLN. (The FMLN has denied the allegations.)

“Any group that collaborates or expresses friendship with the FARC is not a friend of the United States,” said U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Charles Glazer, echoing Negroponte’s remarks.

On June 27, Glazer told a delegation of 12 Americans traveling to El Salvador with CISPES that the United States would not interfere with the country’s January parliamentary elections and its March presidential elections. However, CISPES alleges that Glazer also said that the United States had meddled in El Salvador’s 2004 elections. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3926/more_us_meddling_in_el_salvador

[Judi Lynn]

1. This just gets worse and worse! What absurd lies they're pulling out now to cover their tracks.

From the article:

The United States has played a nefarious role in Salvadoran history, funding and training the right-wing military and death squads that murdered and disappeared 85 percent of the approximately 80,000 victims during the country’s 12-year civil war.

In the run-up to El Salvador’s 2004 election, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) threatened that the United States would stop Salvadoran immigrants from sending remittances to their families if the FLMN party won. Remittances from the United States make up nearly 20 percent of El Salvador’s gross domestic product, and nearly a quarter of all Salvadoran families receive them.

~snip~
“The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador never countered this absurd threat or clarified the impossibility of such legislation being passed,” says Rosa Lozano, a Washington, D.C., delegate who attended the CISPES meeting with Glazer. “Ultimately, such intervention helped turn a close race for the presidency into a decisive victory for the right-wing ARENA party.”

To help assuage CISPES’s concern about the upcoming elections, the U.S. embassy’s labor attaché Jami Thompson told the delegation that the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) will monitor the races.

These groups have done almost irreperable harm in their dishonest attempts to overthrow governments in other countries. No doubt you'll recall IRI's undeniable unpardonable meddling and interferance in Haiti, as one quick example:

In early 2004, chaos overwhelmed Haiti. In January, a rebellion erupted against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former slum priest who had frequently angered the United States with his leftist rhetoric. Aristide had twice been elected, but he had alienated many Haitians with his increasing demagoguery and use of violence against the opposition. Yet polls showed that Aristide remained relatively popular, so even experienced Haiti watchers were surprised when, in late February, armed militias marched on the nation’s capital while demonstrators shut down the streets. In the violence, some 100 Haitians were killed. At dawn on February 29, with the militias closing in, Aristide left Haiti on a U.S. government plane.

But did the rebellion really spring from nowhere? Maybe not. Several leaders of the demonstrations -- some of whom also had links to the armed rebels -- had been getting organizational help and training from a U.S. government-financed organization. The group, the International Republican Institute (IRI), is supposed to focus on nonpartisan, grassroots democratization efforts overseas. But in Haiti and other countries, such as Venezuela and Cambodia, the institute -- which, though not formally affiliated with the GOP, is run by prominent Republicans and staffed by party insiders -- has increasingly sided with groups seeking the overthrow of elected but flawed leaders who are disliked in Washington.

More:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2004/11/11_401.html