Call on Congress to reject manipulation of Salvadoran elections.

[roody]

Call on Congress to reject manipulation of U.S. foreign policy and defend
free and fair elections in El Salvador!



U.S. Representatives Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) are
circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter to encourage other Representatives to
sign on to a letter to President Barack Obama calling for the U.S.
government to remain neutral in El Salvador's March 15 presidential race,
respect the election results, and work toward a positive relationship with
whichever party is elected. With less than a month remaining before election
day, this urgent letter is now open for all Members of Congress to sign.
(The deadline for signers is March 3; see below for the text of the letter
to Obama and the “Dear Colleague”.)



Call your U.S. Representative TODAY to insist that s/he add his or her name
to statement in defense of democracy in El Salvador by Rep. Grijalva and Rep
Kaptur! Call the Congressional switchboard to be connected to your
Representative's office: [phone]. *Call script at the end of this
alert.



BACKGROUND

Public statements made by high level U.S. officials in the weeks leading up
to El Salvador's last presidential election, in 2004, threatened Salvadoran
voters into re-electing the right wing ARENA party. Undersecretary of State
Roger Noriega traveled to El Salvador a month before the election to
publicly endorse ARENA candidate Antonio Saca and warn that relations with
the U.S. would deteriorate if the opposition FMLN party were elected. The
week before the election, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) threatened that
the U.S. would stop the flow of remittances sent home by Salvadorans living
in the U.S. in the case of an FMLN victory.



The threats made in 2004 were widely reported by the Salvadoran media as
accurate statements of U.S. policy, and contributed to Saca's victory at the
polls. In recent months, right-wing campaign advertisements have sought to
resurrect these threats, claiming that the 2.5 million Salvadorans living in
the U.S., and the billions of dollars they send home every year, will be
placed in danger if the FMLN's candidate, Mauricio Funes, is elected in
March.



With a new administration in the White House, Salvadoran voters are awaiting
assurance that the U.S. will respect their right to elect their own
president, free from outside manipulation. Call on your Congressperson to
assert that the U.S. must respect the democratic will of the Salvadoran
people.



TAKE ACTION NOW!



1) Call the Congressional switchboard to be transferred to your
Representative's office:

[phone]



2) Ask to speak to the staff person in charge of foreign policy. If that
person is not available, leave a voicemail.



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Call Script for support to Grijalva’s Dear Colleague letter on El Salvador
elections



You can use the following script to talk with the congressional aid of your
representative. If at any point you get cut off, be sure to make the final
statement – “I encourage Representative _____ to sign on to this important
letter in support of free and fair elections in El Salvador!



Here's what to say (the first two paragraphs are the most important):

* “My name is I am calling as a constituent to ask that
sign on to a Congressional letter to President Obama
that has been initiated by Representative Raúl Grijalva .
This letter calls for U.S. neutrality with respect to the upcoming
presidential election in El Salvador, and pledges that Members of Congress
will seek a positive relationship with whichever party is elected.”
* “To sign on to this letter, please contact Daniel Brito at
Representative Grijalva's office. His phone number is [phone].”
* “This statement is urgently important. During El Salvador's 2004
presidential campaign, Bush Administration officials and some Members of
Congress threatened to punish the people of El Salvador if they elected the
opposition party's candidate. Campaign ads being aired in El Salvador right
now are resurrecting those threats. President Obama and his administration
need to be made aware of this unfortunate precedent so they can chart a more
responsible, respectful foreign policy.”
* “Furthermore, Salvadorans need to hear a clear message from Congress
that assures them they can vote according to their own free will, rather
than in response to threats and manipulation from the U.S. government.”
* “Thank you for your time, and I encourage to
sign on to this important statement in support of free and fair elections in
El Salvador.”



For more information on the upcoming elections in El Salvador:



- CISPES elections blog: www.cispes.org/09electionsblog

- January 2009 elections report: El Salvador Election Observation
Report, January 18 elections

- The 2009 Salvadoran elections: Between Crisis and Change:
http://nacla.org/node/5445





Foreign Affairs, Immigration: Dear Colleague: Respect Salvadoran Elections

From: The Honorable Raul M. Grijalva
Sent By: [e-mail]
<mailto:[e-mail]?subject=RE:%20Foreign%20Affairs,%20Immig
ration:%20Dear%20Colleague:%20Respect%20Salvadoran%20Elections>
Date: 2/23/2009



Respect Democracy in El Salvador:

Letter to President Obama Calling for Non-intervention in Presidential
Election



Dear Colleague:



Please join us in writing to President Obama to encourage him to fulfill a
historic opportunity to build a new relationship with our neighbors in the
Americas based on mutual respect.



The upcoming Presidential election in El Salvador, the first in the Americas
since President Obama was elected, is a chance for the United States to
demonstrate that it will respect the results of our neighbors’ elections,
and will not intervene in support of one party or candidate over another.



Before El Salvador’s 2004 presidential election, US officials attempted to
sway the vote by suggesting that in the event of a victory by the opposition
party, the legal status of Salvadoran immigrants living in the U.S. would be
jeopardized and remittances sent to El Salvador by family members in the
U.S. could be outlawed.



Remittances are believed to comprise roughly 20% of El Salvador’s GDP, and
consequently these threats were widely covered in the Salvadoran press and
had an enormous impact that lingers to this day.



We believe that the proper position of the U.S. Congress and government is
one of neutrality and respect for El Salvador’s independent democratic
process, allowing the Salvadoran people to make a free choice of personal
conscience, a choice which can only be done in the absence of coercion and
threats.



Please join us in calling on President Obama to affirm this position,
prevent a recurrence of the events of 2004, and bring real change to our
relationship with Latin America.



Sincerely,



/s /s

Raul M. Grijalva Marcy Kaptur

Member of Congress Member of Congress





Dear President Obama:



As Members of Congress who have been disappointed by many of our nation's
foreign policy decisions over the past eight years, we write to extend our
support for your vision of a more respectful, less confrontational
relationship with our neighbors in the Americas. We also believe that the
March 2009 presidential election in El Salvador – the first such contest in
the Western Hemisphere since your election in November, will provide a
critical opportunity to realize this vision.



We wish to express our support for free and fair elections in El Salvador.
To that end, we request your assurance that your administration will join us
in honoring and respecting the will of the Salvadoran people when they go to
the polls on March 15. Furthermore, we call upon all U.S. government
officials and Members of Congress to refrain from any attempt, at any point
during the campaign, to influence the decision of Salvadoran voters.



Intervention in the El Salvador's 2004 election took the form of public
statements, made in the days and weeks leading up to the election,
suggesting that U.S.-Salvadoran relations would be severely damaged in the
event of a victory by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN),
the opposition party whose candidate is now leading in the polls for 2009.
Specific threats made by U.S. officials in 2004 alleged that the legal
status of Salvadoran immigrants living in the U.S. would be jeopardized and
remittances sent to El Salvador by family members in the U.S. could be
outlawed if ARENA's candidate were not elected.



Documentation attached as an addendum to this letter highlights many of
statements made by U.S. officials during El Salvador's 2004 campaign, and
the coverage they received in the Salvadoran press.



El Salvador uses the U.S. dollar as its official currency, and the U.S. is
by far the country's most important trade partner. Nearly 25% of El
Salvador’s population lives in the United States, and the remittances that
these immigrants send home comprise roughly 20% of El Salvador’s GDP.



In light of these facts and circumstances, threats made by US officials are
widely covered in the Salvadoran press and can have an impact that is hard
to overstate.



El Salvador uses the U.S. dollar as its official currency, and the U.S. is
by far the country's most important trade partner. Nearly 25% of El
Salvador’s population lives in the United States, and the remittances that
these immigrants send home comprise roughly 20% of El Salvador’s GDP.



The interventionist statements and actions of 2004 had a serious, coercive
effect on the choices made by the Salvadoran electorate and, even today
linger in the minds of Salvadoran voters, as US Embassy staff in San
Salvador admitted to a visiting delegation.



The governing party has encouraged the U.S. government to repeat its
intervention in the 2009 campaign. I a September 2008 speech in Washington,
Salvadoran Foreign Minister Marisol Argueta, called for the U.S. government
to again tip the scales toward ARENA.



Pro-ARENA television advertisements recapitulating the claim that an
opposition victory at the polls will cause the U.S. government to outlaw
remittances from Salvadoran immigrants are nearly ubiquitous. Similar
advertisements and television reports have made use of statements by an
adviser to the Obama campaign, Dan Restrepo, identifying him as an actual
official in the Obama Administration, to suggest that your administration is
averse to an election result favoring the FMLN.



These claims and distortions will continue to resonate until they are
refuted by words and actions.



As Members of Congress, we reject the threats of 2004 and any effort to
instigate another US intervention in Salvadoran politics. We feel that U.S.
immigration policy should not be made into a political instrument used to
influence foreign elections. Similarly, we reject the suggestion that the US
government would seek to financially punish Salvadorans, in this country or
in El Salvador, for exercising their right to elect a government of their
choosing. As members of Congress, we will not support any such measure.



We believe that the proper position of the U.S. Congress and government is
one of neutrality and respect for El Salvador’s independent democratic
process, thus allowing the Salvadoran people to make a free choice of
personal conscience, a choice which can only be done in the absence of
coercion and threats.



We believe it is essential that the United States seize this quickly
approaching opportunity to demonstrate that we will not seek to undermine
democracy in El Salvador and Latin America. This is an invaluable, historic
opportunity to make a clean break with the past and move with our neighbors
into a relationship based on mutual respect.



No matter the results of El Salvador's 2009 elections, we look forward to
working with the Salvadoran people and their elected representatives to seek
a future that holds peace and shared prosperity for both of our countries.
We trust that your administration will join us in these efforts.



Sincerely,

[rabs]

1. Thanks for posting this

I was not aware that the ARENAistas are running ads catering to the fear factor as it did in 2004.

Latest I had read was that Funes is favored to win over Avila by a comfortable margin. Another indication of the "pink tide" sweeping throughout Latin America.

Funes has the support of the Christian Democrats (traditional foes of ARENA) plus the moderate PCN. That, along with the backing of the campesino organizations, should put Funes in office.

However, did see where the minister of defense attended an ARENA political rally the other day, in violation of Salvadoran law. That, plus the return of the Cuscatlan Battalion from Iraq couple/three weeks ago could be reason for some concern.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Things will never be right until we learn ALL of the human filth placed in the State Department by

_{George W. Bush} has been removed COMPLETELY, starting with the guy named in your first link, smelly little bully Roger Noriega.

http://www.borev.net.nyud.net:8090/roger_noriega.jpg http://www.grupoese.com.ni.nyud.net:8090/2005/05/06/fotos/roger-noriega3.jpg
_Bush gave him a chance to torment, terrorize and breath down the necks of government people all over Latin America and the Caribbean. He's a dirty little sadistic cheap shot artist, which is perfect for fascist Presidents, but not what the U.S. needs.

Obama hasn't been off to a glorious start, but here's hoping he's going to refine his qualifications for service to this country, once he's had a chance to get a long hard squint at what the hell has wormed its way into jobs which require the presence of human beings to function as respectable parts of the President's policy operation.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Here's a reminder of what the procedure has been in the last 8 years, which seems to be repeating

itself this year. I hope once they clear out the riff-raff left over from _{George W. Bush} things will be more honorable.

Do you recall_{Jeb Bush} went there to threaten them, too?

~snip~
U.S. intervention in Salvadoran electoral politics began early, long before the official start of the presidential campaign season. Last June, outgoing Ambassador Rose Likins in interviews with the Salvadoran press, publicly denounced the leadership of the FMLN and threatened that U.S. investment in the country could pull-out in the event of an FMLN victory. As the campaign season heated-up at the beginning of this year and polls indicated that the FMLN was closing on ARENA the U.S. turned up the interventionist heat. In early February Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs Roger Noriega visited El Salvador to meet with the presidential candidates but at the last minute canceled his meeting with Handal and then in an afternoon press conference made statements warning the Salvadoran people against voting for a candidate who does not share a common economic vision with the U.S. At the end of February Florida Governor Jeb Bush visited El Salvador while on a five-day tour in Central America touting the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and in interviews with the press touted capitalism as the true economic partner of democracy. He met only with Saca and current ARENA President Francisco Flores.

March 14th's news headlines displayed ostensibly independent reporters ensconced at the ARENA party headquarters, conducting phone interviews with Bush's Special Envoy to Latin America Otto Reich (a familiar name to Latin America solidarity activists). Reich warned Salvadorans "to choose a government that they know will have good relations with the United States and which shares the values of private initiative and the war against terror." And late last week three Republican Congressional representatives in a press conference made perhaps the most outrageous statements of all, with anti-immigration stalwart Rep. Thomas Tancredo from Colorado explicitly warning the Salvadoran people that a vote for the FMLN could well lead to changes in the Temporary Protected Status for Salvadoran immigrants-threatening the remittances (money) that the estimated 1.5 million Salvadorans living in the U.S. send back to their families. Remittances are the biggest source of revenue for the Salvadoran economy (over $2 billion per year).

It is clear that ARENA was able to effectively take advantage of the climate of fear that such intervention generated and will continue to push the prescribed economic agenda of free trade and privatization for the Salvadoran people. While none of this is surprising as the legacy of U.S. intervention in its "backyard" Latin America is well-documented, what happened in El Salvador is yet another indication of the limits of "democracy" as conceived by U.S. global empire.

As it attempts to facilitate the development of a government to its liking in Iraq the Bush Administration is re-asserting itself in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the recent ouster of President Aristide in Haiti perhaps being an indication of things to come. Democracy for developing nations as conceived by Bush foreign policy has stipulations that are central to its real concerns: regimes that bend over backwards to accommodate American business interests and that tow the line in the "War on Terror". Self-determination is OK as long as you vote for the candidate of the empire 's choosing. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0324-10.htm

rabs is tuned into these underhanded actions, too, as he indicated in his remarks. A large, powerful country is only defiled by allowing such nasty, crude, spiteful actions to represent it. They only represent the human garbage in our country, not the country itself.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Thanks for this info, Roody! I will do it today.

And thanks to rabs and Judi for the info on Bushwhack interference in El Salvador's elections.

I read some pretty hairy stories about ARENA election fraud in the legislative and local elections that took place a few months ago. There were busloads of foreign workers showing up at polling stations, with bags full of voter registration forms. An FLMN spokewoman warned about many election fraud tactics, and said that these would need to be eliminated if El Salvador's presidential election was to honest and aboveboard.

SO MUCH DEPENDS ON HONEST, TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS. Everything, really--here and there. I don't know what the status of international monitoring of El Salvador's election is. In countries like Venezuela where the winner of the most votes obviously gets the office, various election monitoring groups--the Carter Center, the OAS, the EU--have been very active over the years, insuring a good setup of the election system to begin with, and then crawling all over the country before, during and after elections, to monitor what takes place and write reports about it. I simply don't know if this has been done in El Salvador, but it sure sounded like they have serious problems and the need for such monitoring.

On the other hand, the trend in South America is so overwhelmingly democratic and leftist, that it would be a great boon to El Salvador to join forces with the continent-wide leftist movement, and further economic/political integration by joining UNASUR (the new South American 'common market'), and other institutions such as the Chavez inspired Bank of the South. It's interesting that the rightwing Colorado Party which ruled Paraguay for 61 years, including a heinous dictatorship, saw the "handwriting on the wall" even before Paraguay elected a leftist president--the former "bishop of the poor," Fernando Lugo--and joined the Bank of the South; and, also, rescinded their obnoxious non-extradition law (which had made Paraguay a haven for retired fascist criminals) and their law immunizing the U.S. military. Paraguay's Colorado Party leadership could see that prosperity lay with countries like Venezuela and Bolivia and (Bolivarian ally) Brazil. And this leftist trend is not limited to South America. A leftist Bolivarian government has been elected in Nicaragua, and a progressive center-left government in Guatemala (in sympathy with Bolivarians' social justice goals), and a leftist came within a hairsbreadth (0.05%) of winning the presidency of Mexico in 2005 (in an election that is held in suspicion by many Mexicans); also, all Latin American leaders seem to be preparing for the U.S. to lift the embargo on Cuba and possible normalization of relations. (Cuba is a member of UNASUR.)

So-o-o, if the ARENA Party steals the election, and stays attached to the corrupt, bankrupt U.S. empire, it will likely hurt everyone not just the poor; whereas, if they back off from such plans, and yield to majority rule, they stand to benefit, just as even the Coloradians in Paraguay are benefiting from Venezuelan, Brazilian and other help, and from improved relations with their neighbors.

As Evo Morales has said, "The time of the people has come."

It sure feels that way.

However, I have little doubt that there is a U.S. plan to "circle the wagons" in the Caribbean, and I am certain that the Bushwhacks were devising a war plan, to that end, mostly aimed at stealing Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil, by fascist insurrections in the northern provinces. We saw a tag end of that war plan unfold in Bolivia in September (which UNASUR helped defeat). At least I hope that was the end of it. We should never forget that Rumsfeld & brethren have billions of dollars stolen from our coffers, private military forces developed at our expense, and paid operatives in many countries. So the question is, to what extent does Obama and his administration agree with Bushwhack planning for Latin America--whether by covert interference (millions funneled to fascist parties such as ARENA through the USAID and other budgets), or war, or some other means such as economic coercion? I don't know. I don't think we can tell yet. Obama may consider the Caribbean/Central America as a "buffer" against UNASUR, which would make El Salvador even more vulnerable to U.S. interference (such as pouring money into rightwing opposition) and this may mean that plots to grab Venezuela's oil fields (on the Caribbean) are still "on the table."

ARENA supporters certainly see it that way. They are downright hysterical at the prospect of a leftist victory and more sovereignty for their own country. Paraguay is landlocked, surrounded by mostly leftist countries. El Salvador is open to the sea, but also has a progressive center-left country to the north (Guatemala), leftist Nicaragua to the south, and left-leaning Honduras to the east. And it is also a very small country, like Paraguay. It cannot "go it alone." I know the ARENA Party has been playing on fears about remittances from the U.S., no small part of this small country's economy. And it will be interesting to see how the U.S. arrest of the former fascist Defense Minister in Miami, on an old passport charge, and the simultaneous U.S. DofJ imminent arrest of an El Salvadoran immigrant for the murder of Chandra Levy, play in El Salvador. (It's hard to figure those two items out.) I'm thinking that the rightwing in El Salvador is not as smart as the rightwing in Paraguay, but I hope either that I'm wrong, or the FMLN has it together to achieve a fair election.

[EFerrari]

5. A little OT but, roody, are you familiar with Mark Danner's account

of El Mozote?

(Or, is anyone?)

I ask because in talking to a source last night, I was told that while El Mozote was very bad, it has been exaggerated to overshadow a much worse "limpieza" in Pequin. Yet, I find nothing about Pequin at all when I search it. So strange.

I was also asking last night about the ex Defense Minister Garcia. My source says he was (is) a "clown" and that it was people directly under him that effected most of the horrors that he is charged with. In other words, he's evil as hell but was mostly a figurehead, a "patsy".

Disturbingly, I learned that one of the most active of those involved in those very crimes is living in Fresno and that two of his former drivers lived a few blocks away from this table. One is still here, one burned down his house and split with the insurance money. And that all of these people were involved in trafficking cocaine in some form and not retail, either.

[Judi Lynn]

6. It's rough sledding trying to find out anything about Perquin. So far I've read it was the center

of the rebels, in the Morazán Mountains, and also in the area near El Mozote.

I'm going to have to look some more for this. I've seen a few photos and it looks as if it had been bombed to kingdom come back then. (The countryside itself, however, is fantastically beautiful.)

I did find the Mark Danner article which I'm going to have to read later today, but I wanted to thank you for bringing it up. It looks indispensable.

The Truth of El Mozote
In a remote corner of El Salvador, investigators uncovered the remains of a horrible crime -- a crime that Washington had long denied. The villagers of El Mozote had the misfortune to find themselves in the path of the Salvadoran Army's anti-Communist crusade. The story of the massacre at El Mozote -- how it came about, and why it had to be denied -- stands as a central parable of the Cold War.

by Mark Danner

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Danner/1993/truthelmoz01.html