From the Bullet to the Ballot

After twelve years of war followed by twelve years of peace, Salvadorans go to the polls on March 21 to elect a new president. A lot is at stake. For the first time in the postwar era, the guerrilla group that laid down its weapons in 1992 and became a political party has a serious chance to take the presidency. And the political elite that has ruled El Salvador for centuries, either directly or indirectly, faces the possibility of losing its grip on the political structures of this tiny Central American nation.

I return to El Salvador in January for the first time in a decade. I was in San Salvador's Plaza Civica on February 1, 1992, when 30,000 Salvadorans celebrated the first day of the ceasefire between the government and the FMLN (the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front). I was also there when the 1994 presidential campaign was just getting under way.

But with the FMLN almost neck and neck in the polls with the ruling, rightwing ARENA (National Republican Alliance) party, I want to find out what had changed since the peace accords were signed. Did the civil war achieve anything but the deaths of tens of thousands? How have people fared under ARENA? And how likely was it that the FMLN could win the presidency?

With his round face and dimples, Tony Saca, who used to head the National Private Business Association, is the youngest presidential candidate ARENA has ever run. The charismatic thirty-seven-year-old former sports announcer knows how to win a crowd over.

I catch up with the Saca campaign during a stop in Quetzaltepeque, a small town an hour northwest of the capital. It is impossible to miss the red, white, and blue stage a block off of the town's main square. A young, handsome ARENA rep warms up the crowd. He sees me with my big camera and asks if I am a journalist. When I say yes, he finds me an escort to assist me to the press area. It takes me some time to figure out that the helpful person is none other than Roberto D'Aubuisson Jr., the son of the notorious founder of the ARENA party.

Major Roberto D'Aubuisson headed the White Warrior Union, an ultra-right death squad that assassinated many people, including Rutilio Grande, one of the first priests to be killed for working with the poor, in 1977. The United Nations Truth Commission found that D'Aubuisson also ordered the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. D'Aubuisson's death squads, run from his office in the Legislative Assembly while he was president of the legislature, had close ties to the Salvadoran and U.S. intelligence services. The Reagan and Bush Administrations condoned D'Aubuisson's activities and lavished funds on El Salvador's military throughout the civil war.

D'Aubuisson died of cancer in 1992. But his political legacy lives on. His image hangs in every ARENA party office I visit, from the headquarters in San Salvador to the local party offices in places like Quetzatepeque. Between a performance by ARENA cheerleaders, dressed in boots and skirts, and Tony Saca's talk, the campaign organizers here play a scratchy recording of an old D'Aubuisson speech.

I speak with D'Aubuisson Jr., now a deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He is tossing out T-shirts, hats, aprons, and sweatbands to throngs of young people. "I'm going skiing tomorrow in Estes Park, Colorado," he tells me in his perfect English, "so why don't you ask me a few questions now?"

I ask him what it is like to be the son of such a significant man in Salvadoran history. "It is a great responsibility, but it also gives me great satisfaction," he tells me. "The great legacy of my father was for Salvadorans to live in a free country. And to his sons, his legacy is this enormous family of nationalists that love liberty and love El Salvador."