San Salvador, El Salvador ––– Imagine caring about an election so much, you’d be willing to go a long way to participate. Come election time, many Americans have a tough time making it to a local community center, or fire department to vote. Imagine traveling 7,500 miles and paying upwards of $400 during America’s economic slump–––to make a vote happen. That’s love for democracy.

Last night, that sentiment was exactly what my flight from San Francisco to El Salvador was full of –– times four hundred; myself, and 399 other people (mostly Salvadoran-Americans) packed into a 747 headed for the motherland to vote on presidential elections that will be decisive in the tiny country’s future as well as a testament to its’ legacy.

Jorge Romero, takes the charge of his role in El Salvador’s democracy seriously, “It’s our duty” he says as he hands his children Burger King chicken tenders from his isle seat during the American Airlines red-eye flight.

After a 12 year civil war El Salvador’s Leftist party, The Farabundo Martí Liberacion Nacional, or the FMLN are on the cusp of achieving an unlikely “first” in the country’s history: the journey from popular armed struggle to popular political party.

Their candidate, Mauricio Funes––journalist turned politician, has criticized the right, and the left, for most of his career. He is the presidential candidate who was not also a combatant in the war. Funes identifies as center-left, holds a place of integrity with Salvadorans.

To Romero, bringing Salvadoran politics to this point was the purpose of the 1992 peace accords, which were authored to ensure the end of a civil war that challenged ______. The two opposing factions have put down guns and have picked up the ballot, going head-to-head in the political arena.

To Romero, the elections are something he’d wish many of his peers were alive to see, “Those who survived should vote.” He said, that finally, in a situation were the left and right are placed in equal standing “without the use of violence to begin with” is where we need. Jorge Romero, a union organizer in Oakland told me on the plane. “We should be farther along than where we are.”

Yet, all this effort to strengthen democracy, may be being undermined by some of the US’. Arizona Congressman Trent Franks said Wednesday that if the FMLN party, which he calls “pro-terrorist” somehow win and “replace the current government in El Salvador” the United States “would be required to reevaluate our policy toward El Salvador, including cash remittance and immigration policies.”

Also Wednesday a similar comment by Indiana Congressman Dan Burton, as he stated that he’s confident that remittances from Salvadorans in the US, “will be cut, and I hope the people of El Salvador are aware of that because it will have a tremendous impact on individuals and their economy.”

Threats. Fear. Terror. Comments like this are readily exploitable by the right. They were duing the last elections. Really spit on the peace accords, the budding democracy of El Salvador, as well as fill voters with fear.

I’m not sure folks came all this way for that.
—Josue Rojas