25 years ago you couldn't utter that acronym in Los Angeles without looking over your shoulder. L.A. was a Marxist hotbed, created in large part by the Reagan administration's support for right-leaning Central America governments. Those governments were waging a bloody war against leftists rebels, many fighting under the umbrella Farabundo Marti Liberacion Nacional. Government death squads pushed millions of refugees from cities and the countryside north to the United States. Hundreds of thousands arrived in L.A.
In his 1992 book The Other Side, Ruben Martinez refers to "cadres-in-exile" who from their new Southern California homes continued to dream of a leftist guerrilla triumph that would allow the return of exiles to Central America. Once there they'd help children wield a pen and help campesinos swing their machetes. The Marxists didn't win. A couple of weeks ago, the centrist, Obama-like presidential candidate in El Salvador fielded by the remnants of the FMLN guerrilla did.
Instead of soccer-style victory parties in L.A. streets by all Salvadorans in the Southland, the FMLN victory prompted bittersweet satisfaction and hand wringing.
There's a strip mall on Vermont and 11th Street where you can buy blue and white flags for a dollar, consult an "abogado Salvadoreño" for significantly more and send hard-earned U.S. cash to your Central American relatives. A day after the election Samuel Martinez sported a bright red t-shirt with an image of the suit clad FMLN-backed, Salvadoran president elect, Mauricio Funes. Samuel left El Salvador decades ago. He was conscripted, he said, when government soldiers boarded a bus and told him he was now a government soldier. Samuel's brother stayed behind because he wanted to serve in the army and supports the right-leaning ARENA party.
Jorge Palacios yelled at me from his car in the parking lot that Funes will prove to be a leftists in the style of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. That's the brush ARENA used unsuccessfully against Funes. Palacios and Samuel Martinez both left El Salavador at around the same time. Juan Jose Zepeda of South L.A. said Mauricio Funes will be good for Southern California. How so, I asked. He'll create jobs so that Salvadorans can stay in their country, he said.
Two twenty-something immigrants, Edwin Lazo and Mauricio Ernesto Guevara can attest to that. They've been in this country for several years. They've worked in stores and restaurants and share a room in an apartment to save money and send more cash to their parents and relatives. They've decided to become music entrepreneurs. They plied homemade CDs for $5 each to anyone they could approach at the Vermont strip mall. The music was cheesy, cookie-cutter raggaeton but their marketing is unique. They're positioning themselves as straight-edge style musicians who reject the gangsta elements of a lot of reggaeton these days. They've given some thought to the FMLN victory but it's origins are fuzzy to them. What's clear is everyday survival. For now it's not about dodging bullets as it was for their kin a quarter century ago, it's about pushing their beats.
Subscribe to Movie Miento's feed.
Its really interesting to see the different reactions Salvadorians have had to the recent elections. With its guerilla history, the FMLN is going to have to work hard to present its new political positions not only to the citizens in El Salvador, but to the Salvadorian who are here because of the civil war.