Who Will Pay for the Financial Crisis?

Interview with Dagoberto Gutierrez

One of ARENA’s campaign strategies has been to emphasize its good political and economic relationship with the United States, while painting Mauricio Funes as the puppet of a radical communist FMLN whose goal is to implement a Chavez-style economy in El Salvador. When our delegation met with Dagoberto Gutierrez, one of the signers of the 1992 Peace Accords and a political analyst at the Universidad Luterano (Lutheran University), he offered a very different view of the nation’s two largest parties.

Gutierrez described the FMLN as drifting towards the center in order to court voters, and in the process giving up several of the more radical planks of its platform. According to Gutierrez, neither candidate would threaten El Salvador’s relationship with the US, or challenge the nation’s oligarchy in any significant way.

However, Gutierrez stressed that this election is nevertheless very important. He believes the difference between the parties is in how the financial crisis will be handled. He says “if ARENA wins, the poor will be the ones to pay for the crisis. But if the FMLN wins, then there is a chance that the poor won’t be the ones [to pay for the crisis.]”