Diarmuid Peavoy reports from El Salvador on another victory for the left in Latin America
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The owner of La Palma Hotel, in the mountains of El Salvador, is a quiet and modest man. But he’s nonetheless very proud of his hotel, the oldest still in existence in this tiny Central American state.
Salvador is his name – the same as his country. And the hotel is named after its location – in the village of La Palma.
Salvador is proud that his hotel has survived a vicious 12-year civil war, in which 75,000 of his compatriots died, including Archbishop Romero – gunned down by a death squad while saying Mass. Salvador points to a spot in his courtyard where a soldier was killed and to a cluster of trees where a guerrilla met his end. This wooded highland region was a guerrilla stronghold. 
He mentions with a hint of irony that his hotel was sometimes occupied by left-wing guerrillas and at other times by the military. But that neither ever paid. We’re interrupted by the roar of trucks going by, straining on the mountain road to the Honduran border, just a few minutes drive away.
These trucks kept rolling across the border – and past his gate - throughout the war. Their drivers sometimes stayed - and paid - and that just about kept the hotel going.
Miraculously, Salvador and his hotel are still here, 17 years after the peace agreement between the guerrillas and the government; and he takes pride in the role his village played in the long peace process.
The place is known as Cuna de la Paz – the Cradle of Peace – as it was here 25 years ago that left-wing guerrillas, Government and military, came face to face for the first time, meeting in the local Catholic church.
The President is said to have quipped that the guerrilla negotiators sat with their backs to the altar and to God. But they quickly answered that the President was sitting with his back to the people.
On Saturday 14 March 2008, on the eve of the recent Presidential election, Salvador was in a sombre mood as he feared that if the left’s candidate didn’t win, that blood would flow again.
He had reason to fear. In the nearby town of Tejutla, for instance, tracts had been handed out urging armed struggle and civil disobedience in the event of another left-wing defeat. Left-wing groups were also patrolling the roads at night in efforts to stop cars that they believed were bringing Hondurans across the border to vote illegally – and for money.
It was not that the left were anti-democratic; it was just that they’d lost faith in the fairness of a political system dominated by the right since the 1992 peace agreement.
As it happened, the left won the following day – Sunday the 15th of March – by a narrow margin. They will take power for the first time in their country’s history. The right has accepted defeat. The country can breathe again as the left rejoice in their victory. 
But prior to the deceptive quiet and efficiency of polling day, the victorious left-wing FMLN party – formed by five former guerrilla groups – had accused the right-wing ARENA party of fraud.
The left had lost confidence in the register of voters and the grossly biased media coverage was dominated by the right.
There were disputes too over the financing of the parties – the list goes on. Observer missions, including the European Union’s, have called for new laws to regulate the elections.
But remarkably, this flawed democratic framework has been able to deliver a change of regime; and El Salvador can now join the rising tide of left-wing Latin American governments that includes Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador.
The President-elect, 49-year old former TV journalist Mauricio Funes, is not as left-wing as the FMLN party that supported him. He’s more attracted to moderate Brazil than radical Venezuela, but he may have to tussle with his own party over this.
There are interesting times ahead in a country that has at last given parity of esteem and a turn at the helm to those who had long felt disenfranchised and oppressed.
A country known for the death squads that murdered Archbishop Romero – and for its volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and violent youth gangs – may now one day be celebrated for its success in moving from inequality, war and repression, into stable democracy.
And Salvador, up there in La Palma Hotel in the highlands, may even feel that this election has at last opened the final chapter of a peace process born in the cradle of his own village, a quarter of century earlier.
