The Foreign Service Journal, September 2012

mouth campaigning by both sides. In January of that year, ARENA’s Norman Quijano won the mayoral race in San Salvador, giving a substantial boost to that party’s hopes. But ARENA was burdened by the worldwide recession, which had hit El Salvador hard, due to its tight linkage to the U.S. economy. In addition, it had governed for 20 straight years and lost some of its luster after the postwar reconstruction boom had worn off. The FMLN’s campaign theme was one of change, which meshed well with its candidate’s personal popularity and charismatic campaign style. Even though ARENA had a good record of sustaining economic growth and re- ducing poverty, it had trouble answer- ing the question: “What have you done for me lately?” So the party went on the offensive, linking Funes and the FMLN to Hugo Chavez and leftist radicalism. (Funes would joke afterward that he ran against both Avila and Chavez, as footage of Chavez’s ranting became a regular feature of ARENA’s televised campaign ads.) Staying Above the Fray The U.S. embassy made a con- certed effort to stay out of the cam- paign, a policy helped by the fact that both Funes and Avila campaigned as America-friendly candidates. Funes even ran a TV ad giving the impres- sion that he had President Barack Obama’s endorsement, forcing me as chargé d’affaires to clarify publicly that the U.S. government was not tak- ing sides. That clarification angered FMLN supporters in the United States, who wanted me to protest against dirty campaigning by ARENA. Reflecting on the mudslinging in American elec- tion campaigns, I did not think a U.S. representative had any standing to make such a protest. The embassy did respond near the end of the campaign to a newspaper article trashing Funes’ economic ad- viser, Alex Segovia, based on a pur- ported internal USAIDmemo (Segovia was once a USAID contractor). I called Funes to explain that we could not authenticate the memo and were not the source of the story, and then called the editor of the newspaper to ask that he print a correction, which he did. Back in Washington, a group of House Democrats signed a public pe- tition in favor of free and fair elections that was widely interpreted in El Sal- vador as an endorsement of the FMLN. A similar number of Repub- licans put out a rejoinder worrying about the possibility of El Salvador falling into the Chavez orbit if the FMLN were to win. U.S. embassy officials met with each candidate a few days before the election to reiterate our faith in the S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43