El Salvador’s New Left: A Model for Latin America : Elections: Ruben Zamora, facing increased death-squad activities, delivers an unexpected message aimed at national reconciliation.

These are heady times for the Salvadoran left as the March, 1994, presidential elections draw nearer. For Ruben Zamora, they are times of personal and political vindication. Like so many Salvadorans, the founder of the Social Christian Popular Movement and long-time leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Front lived the conflict. His brother was killed by death squads in 1980, and he lived in exile until 1987, when he returned to help found the Democratic Convergence. Today, he openly campaigns on themes of social and economic justice. As recently as a few years ago, such activities would have meant death or exile.

But there are tremendous risks and challenges as well. For one, death-squad-style killings are on the rise. Last Monday, Francisco Velis, a congressional candidate representing the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, was assassinated while taking his daughter to a day-care center. And a recently released United Nations report said serious human-rights violations appear to be mounting as campaigning intensifies.

For Zamora, there’s the political task of unifying the left--no small feat--and, most important, reaching out to those Salvadorans who identify themselves as politically neutral or are cynical after 12 years during which politics meant nothing but death and suffering.

Zamora didn’t exactly win his party’s nomination by acclamation. Several guerrilla commanders were known to covet the ticket’s top spot. But the discovery earlier this year of a guerrilla arms cache in Managua, well after the deadline mandated by the U.N.-brokered peace accords for rebels to turn in their weapons, severely weakened the guerrilla-turned-civilian image the FMLN leadership had been carefully cultivating. Zamora, himself never a Marxist, offered the party a candidate with moderate credentials. He must now hold together a coalition--the FMLN-CD--of Marxists, former Marxists, social democrats and liberal centrists.

So far, Zamora seems up to the task. His campaign’s political language is a welcome breeze in the discourse of Salvadoran politics--and, curiously, sounds a lot like that offered by many politicians in Los Angeles. It emphasizes small- and mid-sized business growth, modernization and decentralization of the state’s inefficient bureaucracy, environmental cleanup and water conservation. Because El Salvador ranks near last in Latin America in social-service spending, Zamora advocates a healthy boost in education and health-care budgets. And he is pushing for an expansion of women’s rights. In a country about as macho as they come, this is of no small significance.

But public safety has become the central Zamora issue. In postwar El Salvador, banditry has exploded, and the specter of organized crime looms. Zamora unequivocally supports the new civilian national police force and recommends a pay raise and new equipment as the best ways to ensure quality public safety. Interestingly, the FMLN-CD coalition seeks to make a traditionally right-wing issue--public safety--one of its own.

One Zamora consultant says that 20% of the campaign’s projected $600,000 budget will be raised from wealthy and modest donors--mostly connected to the Hollywood left--in the United States.

Some analysts discount the Salvadoran left’s electoral chances. They contend the mainstream population is tired of both political extremes. Also, many FMLN sympathizers, after witnessing decades of brutal repression of anything remotely resembling progressive politics, may fear openly declaring their support for Zamora. Finally, the party will have a difficult time shaking off the arms-cache debacle.

Nonetheless, early polling suggests that Salvadorans are responding to Zamora’s message. One poll, by the Technological University of El Salvador, showed rightist candidate Armando Caledron Sol with 31%; Zamora, 21%, and Christian Democrat Fidel Chavez Mena, 14%; 35% said they were undecided. Zamora needs only to hold on to second place to make the runoff.

El Salvador’s political battles have underscored both the great and the terrible in its colonial and post-colonial history. The Salvadoran left’s own history is a prime example. It has served as a critical conscience--even during times when democratic discourse was practically impossible--for a society bitterly divided between a rich few and impoverished masses. It has also committed its share of atrocities and has fallen prey on more than one occasion to fratricidal infighting.

Now the Salvadoran left, through Zamora, may offer a new model for progressive movements throughout Latin America as they adjust to still fragile but strengthening democratic electoral politics. The issues raised by the Zamora campaign were suppressed by 12 years of civil war and decades of dictatorship. Win or lose next March, Zamora’s message is a necessary ingredient for the new El Salvador, both to expand its political vocabulary and to enter its postwar future with creative and flexible strategies of national reconciliation.

That is Zamora’s most important theme, and the overarching theme of the entire ’94 election. In his stump speech, he refers to this challenge of reuniting his country in the most personal terms. “If reconciliation means having to offer my hand to the man who ordered the assassination of my brother, I will do it.”

Should Zamora and the left triumph, the United States will, once again, have the opportunity to support a democratically elected, progressive regime in Latin America. Historically, it has done all it can to topple such movements. Yet, a complete and sustained reconciliation in El Salvador means the United States must reach out its hand as well--since it used the Salvadoran army as a proxy to fight the left for a dozen years.

More than a century ago, the histories of the United States and El Salvador became entwined. Most of their relationship has been tragic, based on the arrogance and greed of a big power bent on policing its “back yard” and protecting its “interests.” Just ask the Salvadoran student, the Salvadoran maid or professor or electrician in our midst about the relationship between their country and the United States. You will hear tales of a human inferno that could have been avoided. It is a history, hopefully, that we can avoid in the future. If Zamora can reach out his hand, so can we.