by Ollie Ruth Jefferson, Attorney at Law

This article was first published by The Fort Worth Star-Telegram Tuesday, 3/31/09

Joined by other members of the National Lawyers Guild, I was part of a delegation of international election observers who went to El Salvador to witness its March 15 presidential elections.

The delegation was sponsored by the SHARE Foundation, which has programs in El Salvador designed to meet basic human needs and build long-term solutions to poverty and social injustice.

Our participation, independent of the U.S. government, was an effort to see whether the elections were fair. While I have had hundreds of Salvadorans as clients and empathize with what they have suffered, my participation as a certified presidential electoral observer required objectivity.

At 5 a.m. election day, our group and the poll workers arrived to set up for what was a long-awaited event: the presidential elections in this Central American country. Their procedures are numerous and highly bureaucratic, developed over time to prevent fraud.

The first voter at my table was no more than 5 feet tall, minute, rather stooped over - an old woman coming to have her say.

She went through the process smoothly and left with her thumb inked, a sign that she had voted, a mark that would prevent duplicate voting. As I looked on, I wondered what had she experienced or whether she had lost any relatives during the country's civil war.

In the 1980s, thousands of El Salvadorans were killed during the war, which ended with the peace accords of 1992.

The combatants reshaped themselves into political parties with differing philosophies and continued their struggle in a more peaceful manner.

Since the accords, and up until March 15's historic win, El Salvador had been ruled from the right by the Arena Party, which has its foundation in the death squads of the '80s. FMLN was founded by the Guerrilla Freedom Fighters and was named for Farabundo Marti, a martyred organizer of farm workers.

Its candidate - and the new president of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes - is a respected journalist with a centrist agenda and hopes of creating a government of change.

Before the elections, some U.S. lawmakers, including Reps. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., tried to influence the outcome in favor of the Arena Party candidate by suggesting that if the FMLN won, the U.S. would end a program that allows certain Salvadorans to live and work legally in the U.S.

The Temporary Protected Status program allows nationals from designated countries to remain in the U.S. and work legally for determinate periods. It has been used by Liberians, Angolans, Somalis, Central Americans and nationals of other countries in crisis. It is not permanent asylum and typically is granted in increments of 12 to 18 months.

A simple but important question was raised in an orientation session with Father Dean, a resident Jesuit Priest at the University of Central America - where two Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, her daughter and four American women were killed during the conflict.

Asked why the U.S. is interested in El Salvador, Father Dean answered that the U.S. intervenes in Latin America to protect its allies as a matter of national security.

A threat to them is a threat to the U.S.

FMLN has been accused of being a Populist Socialist Party and had been accused in election propaganda as being aligned with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Funes' platform was not radical and may be more moderate and to the center.

Maybe it is time for the U.S. to shake off its Cold War mentality toward Latin America, realize that the Communists really are not coming, and that much of the world views such a form of government for what it is: a failed experiment.

Funes' government has three broad objectives: bring El Salvador out of an economic and social crisis, promote development, and build and consolidate democracy and the rule of law.

Latin American struggles with what President Barack Obama has inherited: a poor economy rife with unemployment.

As these two new administrations interact with each other, we need to acknowledge our shared experiences and not get bogged down in past perceptions.