Salvador Sánchez Cerén
Salvador Sánchez Cerén (born June 18, 1944) is a Salvadoran politician and former teacher. Following the 2009 presidential election, he is the Vice President of El Salvador.
| Salvador Sánchez Cerén | |
|---|---|
| Vice President of El Salvador | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office June 1, 2009 |
|
| President | Mauricio Funes |
| Preceded by | Ana Vilma Albanez de Escobar |
| Personal details | |
| Born | June 18, 1944 Quezaltepeque, El Salvador |
| Political party | Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional |
Early life
Sánchez was born in Quezaltepeque, located in the department of La Libertad in Quezaltepeque. After graduating from Alberto Masferrer—a school for teachers—with a degree in primary education, he taught for ten years in public and rural schools in his hometown. He became politically active in the late 1960s as a member of ANDES 21 de Junio, a teachers union, and the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS), participating in several demonstrations against El Salvador's military dictatorship.[1] In the 1970s he joined the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación "Farabundo Martí" (FPL), one of the five left-wing organizations, all of differing Marxist-Leninist tendencies, that later merged to form the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN).
Political ideology
The ANDES union was opposed to free trade unions, and openly supported the establishment of a one-party Communist regime in El Salvador. ANDES did not affiliate with mainstream international unions like the AFL-CIO, but was a member of the World Federation of Teachers Unions (FISE), an international Soviet front organization that was part of the Czechoslovakia-based World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU).
The FPL spun off from the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS) in 1970 when PCS Secretary General Salvador Cayetano Carpio broke with his loyalty to Brezhnev's USSR in favor of North Vietnam's style of "prolonged people's war of liberation." Sánchez Cerén became FPL leader after a power struggle between Carpio and the FPL second-in-command, Melinda Anaya Montes (aka Comandante Ana Maria, who co-founded ANDES), in Managua, Nicaragua. According to a US Embassy cable, Carpio arranged for the murder of Anaya Montes. A few days later, after being confronted by Sánchez Cerén and two other FMLN commanders who went to investigate murder, Carpio died violently. The official story, never independently verified, was that Carpio committed suicide. Sánchez Cerén then became head of the FPL. Under his leadership the FMLN became the most astute FMLN faction at waging political warfare internally and abroad. The FPL ran dozens of political and social front organizations inside El Salvador to give an appearance of broad-based support. [2]
With the start of the Salvadoran Civil War in 1980, Sánchez Cerén adopted the pseudonym Commander Leonel González, as he was also appointed to the position of "comandante" or commander. A US Embassy cable describes the FMLN at the time as follows: "During the 12 year Salvadoran civil war (1980-92), the FMLN attempted to overthrow the government utilizing a strategy that included armed struggle, terrorism, and socialist/communist political indoctrination.... The group also received monetary support and arms from the Soviet Bloc and Cuba."[3]
In 1984 Sánchez Cerén became a Commanding General of the FMLN, until the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992, when the guerrillas surrendered their weapons and became a legal political party.[1] Under the leadership of Sánchez Cerén, the FMLN conducted itself in the following manner, according to US Ambassador Charles Glazer in a classified diplomatic cable: "In May 1987, the FMLN issued a list of conditions for peace including the establishment of a transitional government without election, the imposition of a socialist economy, and ongoing government support for FMLN guerrilla forces. In 1988 and 1989, the FMLN went on a killing spree that included several democratically-elected mayors, Attorney General Roberto Garcia, Minister of the Presidency Jose Antonio Rodriguez Porth, Supreme Court President Francisco Guerrero, and other high profile victims. In November 1989 the FMLN launched the 'Final Offensive' on San Salvador which resulted in more than 2,000 civilian deaths."[4]
As a condition of abiding by the peace accords, Sánchez Cerén was never brought to trial for murder, political assassination or war crimes. He, as with all parties to the Salvadoran civil war, became protected under the Salvadoran government's amnesty law of 1993.[5]
The FMLN leadership described its ideology during the war in a document called "Fundamental Programs for the Salvadoran Revolution," a guerrilla manifesto captured from FMLN Commander Nidia Diaz (who would join Sánchez Cerén as an FMLN politician in the Salvadoran legislature) in April 1985. The FMLN's "fundamental programs" included the following points:
- "To establish economic, political, military, cultural, technical and social bases to build the construction of socialism."
- "The construction of socialism and communism."
- "Our organization is a working class party. Our ideology is Marxism-Leninism. . . ."
- "Our revolution and the national and international practice of our militancy forms part of and is squared inside the gigantic force of humanity to achieve . . . the building of socialism and communism in the world."
- "We recognize the World Socialist Camp, in the struggle of the proletariat and peoples of capitalist and imperialist countries for Social Revolution, as in the struggle for National Liberation, the three fundamental watersheds of the World Revolution."
- "The World Socialist Camp is the Vanguard of the World Revolution and constitutes our friend and fundamental ally. In the first stage embodying the USSR, Cuba and Vietnam as the strongest pillars in a concrete strategic sense."[6]
When he entered mainstream politics, Sánchez Cerén de-emphasized his ideological Communist doctrine, re-casting himself as a "socialist" but never publicly renouncing Marxism-Leninism. His official FMLN biographies avoid explicit mention of his professed ideology or the alleged war crimes for which he received amnesty.
In 2000, Sánchez Cerén was elected deputy for the FMLN in the Legislative Assembly and was re-elected in 2003 and 2006.[7] Between 2001 and 2004 he served as the general coordinator of his party. In 2006, following the death of Salvadoran Communist Party leader and FMLN Commander Schafik Handal, he succeeded Handal as head of the legislative portion of the FMLN. In April 2007 he was chosen as the running mate of Mauricio Funes in the 2009 presidential election. On March 15, Funes and Sánchez Cerén defeated the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), ending two decades of conservative rule in El Salvador.
References
- ^ a b (Spanish) "Sánchez Cerén (Biography)". Mauricio Funes: Un cambio seguro. Retrieved 16 March 2009.[dead link]
- ^ J. Michael Waller, The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the 'North American Front' of El Salvador's Guerrilla War (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), p. 15.
- ^ Ambassador Charles L. Glazer, "A Pragmatic Shift or Merely a Tactical Move to Win? How the FMLN's History Is Influencing Its Actions Today," classified diplomatic cable, June 2008 [1].
- ^ Ambassador Charles L. Glazer, "A Pragmatic Shift or Merely a Tactical Move to Win? How the FMLN's History Is Influencing Its Actions Today," classified diplomatic cable, June 2008 [2].
- ^ Ambassador Charles L. Glazer, "A Pragmatic Shift or Merely a Tactical Move to Win? How the FMLN's History Is Influencing Its Actions Today," classified diplomatic cable, June 2008 [3].
- ^ As cited from the original in J. Michael Waller, The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the 'North American Front' of El Salvador's Guerrilla War (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), p. 19.
- ^ (Spanish) "Salvador Sánchez Cerén". Asamblea Legislativa de la República de El Salvador. Archived from the original on 2008-02-07. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
