A third factor that weighs in the balance in analyzing what sort of government the FMLN may deliver is the economic crisis that is battering Latin America. For the moment, it is impossible to ascertain whether the recession will provoke a radicalization of the left in the region, which Chavez seems to be promoting, or induce moderation through resignation — that is, a postponement of revolutionary goals owing to inauspicious economic conditions. We will know soon.
But the most important consequence of the FMLN’s victory may lie in its effect on the rest of Central America and Mexico. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, more out of convenience and demagogy than conviction, has moved into the Chavez orbit. Nicaragua’s Ortega was always part of that orbit, as are people close to Alvaro Colom in Guatemala. If too we add El Salvador to this list, only Costa Rica and Panama to the south remain out of the loop, leaving Mexico to the north increasingly exposed.
Of course, the Central American nations do not wield huge influence in Mexico — if anything, it is the other way around. But the Mexican left, while no longer as weak as it was after its defeat in 2006, has always needed foreign role models. It sympathizes far more with Chavez, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Cuba, the Sandinistas and now the FMLN than with the moderate left elected in Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Peru. They will read Funes’ victory as one more notch on the barrel of “the people’s” rifle and one more hair plucked from Uncle Sam’s beard. To dismiss the FMLN’s historical achievement as simply an act of justice or a foreseeable event in a tiny backwater would be reckless.
Jorge Castaneda, former Mexican foreign minister, is professor of politics and Latin American studies at New York University.
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