Burke Stansbury from Washington. He has just returned from a fact finding mission to El Salvador with CISPES where he had an interesting conversation with the US Ambassador there. While the Ambassador admitted that there was political intervention on the side of the ARENA party by the US to influence the results of the last Salvadoran elections, the Ambassador claims that the US State Department has no intention of influencing upcoming elections of 2009. Burke is skeptical, and in these interv
Burke Stansbury Warwick Fry CISPES The People of El Salvador
pt 2. CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador was established in the USA in the 1980s when US trained Death Squads were systematically killing opposition to the US backed military regime in ritual terrorist assassinations. When US citizens organize themselves to resist the brutality of US foreign policy they came under scrutiny by the US police and intelligence services. It seems that old habits die hard. Current members of the CISPES have been investigated and harassed by the FBI because they have brought to public attention the return of Death Squad tactics in El Salvador, to break down opposition to the US backed government there with overtly terroristic tactics. In a previous interview Burke Stansbury gained an admission from the US Ambassador in El Salvador that the US had actively intervened in the 2004 elections.
It remains to be seen whether the US is trying to influence the results of next year's elections, but the fingerprints are all over the return of the Death Squads and the more recent harassment of CISPES.
Pt 3 Burke tells us why the governing ARENA party is pulling out all the stops in its effort to continue in power in El Salvador. With the 2009 elections coming up early next year the opposition FMLN is showing a twenty point lead in all the polls. The FMLN is not rushing into a radical makeover of the economy - decades of conservative and reactionary rule have made neo-conservative policy institutional structures. Next year's FMLN presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes is proposing moderate reforsm. But in the Latin American context it will mean that El Salvador will join the growing number of Latin American countries liberating themselves from US hegemomy and intervention, with the ability to develop themselves freely away from the the influence and impositions of the IMF the World Bank, and Washington.
El Salvador, Human Rights in the election campaign
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