El Salvador President Mauricio Funes

SAN LUIS TALPA, El Salvador, Sept. 5 – Certainly, the FMLN, the ruling party of El Salvador today, has not been popular among some.

It has not been popular among members of the Salvadoran Armed Forces and the National Police of this Central American republic during the years of civil war that was particularly fierce during the decade of the 1980s.

The long war that killed tens of thousands was resolved through an unusual process—the insurgent forces were allowed to form a political party that initially won election for several city halls and ultimately the presidency of El Salvador when ARENA president Elias Antonio Saca Hernandez passed the torch to a victorious Mauricio Funes on March 15, 2009.

Having struggled for years as a soldier in the Army of El Salvador and for 13 years as an officer in the now disbanded National Police or Policia Nacional, Jose Rodas was no fan of the leftist guerrilla forces of a mostly Marxist orientation that ultimately banded together to form the Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front.

The FMLN (el Frente) has since become a legitimate political force that now holds the presidency of El Salvador and a large block of seats in the National Congress.

“They have had to change their tune since they are now governing the country,” Rodas told the Guardian. “It is one thing to promise jobs, promise to control inflation, promise to restore law and order, and another to actually deliver on those promises.”

According to the retired officer and now security director at a hotel resort in the village of San Luis Talpa close to the international airport, the FMLN is failing on all fronts and will pay the price at the polls during the 2012 elections.

“They promised more jobs; instead we have lost over 50,000 just in the manufacturing sector during their reign. Electricity rates are up, water prices are up, food is going up and our currency is not even ours own (El Salvador is on the U.S. dollar),” Rodas continued, incredulous that prices could go up when the currency is foreign, not subject to manipulation at the local level.

Rodas feels the lack of true governing experience on the part of the former guerrilla force that he faced in often lethal encounters prior to the Treaty of 1992, shows that it is easier to promise results than to deliver them.

“If I have five children and aspire to send them all to college, it doesn’t mean that I will be able to do it, even if I promise each one of them individually and personally, as much as I would really like to do it. Promising is one thing. Keeping your word is another,” said Rodas in making an analogy to campaigning versus governing a country.

“They haven’t been able to keep their word on maintaining order. With so much unemployment, crime is a logical result. They had good intentions with wanting to insist on greater wages and benefits for Salvadoran workers, the reality have been the closure of many factories and the exportation of jobs in those sectors to Asia,” continued the security director.

Indeed security issues are apparent in the smallest of the Central American republics. Security guards with a shotgun in hand are seen in front of practically every hotel in the country, as well as at shopping malls and gasoline stations. At the small rural resort where Rodas works, security cameras are installed throughout the compound that includes a small hotel, a restaurant and a swimming pool. The cameras and the 24 hour shotgun bearing seem out of place in a very rural and serene facility that herding cattle walk in front of, and peaceful country folk walk past, ride in the bed of pickup trucks, or pass by on bicycles en route to their jobs at the airport, or in maquiladoras of the region or in the national capital some 25 minutes away.

“I am really glad the FMLN won the elections,” said Rodas in conclusion. “Now they see what it’s really like to govern. It’s not the same as carrying a rifle or protesting in a rally. The people are going to push them out in the next elections. The same people that elected them are going to be their undoing. I live here in this village with these people. Just watch.”

Bill Rovira is a prolific writer on border and Latin America issues. His Roving Rovira column appears regularly in the Guardian.

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