The new Oliver Stone documentary South of the Border israisingawareness of the often shabby U.S. media treatment of Latin America.
A recent example is a June 24L.A. Times piece by Alex Renderos headlined “El Salvador President Under Fire.”
The president is former FMLN leader Mauricio Funes, who waselected last year. According to the Times, things are going poorly for him: Crime and corruption are still problems, he is facing an”avalanche of criticism,” and “Salvadorans are growing impatient.”
The paperadds:
Funes’ failures have hit the poor and working class especially hard. After two decades of one-party right-wing rule, they greeted the rise of the left with great hope. Today they are deeply disillusioned.
When the evidence of public discontent–especially in Latin America–is at least in part based on a newspaper editorial, one should be cautious.
The paper cites recent poll results concerning how Salvadorans feel about crime and corruption. But what about how they feel about their president?The same poll the Times is citing to show discontent asked direct questions about Funes, and he’s actually still very popular, according to this summary:
A full year into his presidency, the 50-year-old Funes remains a popular figure. Respondents in a recent poll by the Universidad Centroamericana’s Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP) gave the president a grade of 6.8 out of 10, down somewhat from the 7.16 score he earned last September but still a sign of continued support. Figures released in April by the polling firm Mitofsky put Funes’ approval rating at 83 percent, the highest of any Latin America leader.
For years U.S. coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told readers that he was highly unpopular, based on dubious polling data. In this case, there are certainly polls relevant to the question of whether Funes is popular–but they undermine the premise of the article, and thus aren’t mentioned.
Castro has won the contest, 51 years after he came into power. The Left would have taken over all of Latin America if the US had not backed every anti-democratic coup in the region, and managed to kill off hundreds of thousands of the poor who backed the democratic cause. These were great crimes! (9/11 down there means the overthrow and death of Allende.
The worst is, all this was done, starting in 1954 in Guatama, against democracy.
Yes, the US loves South and Central American dictators. Why? Simply because US corporations love dictators! It’s the old story – follow the money!
Let’s go back to the Allende / our-man-Pinochet story. I don’t, for a minute, stand still for the crap our media puts out about any “left” candidate in S.A. And as a “freedom writer” (years ago) for Amnesty International, I wrote a letter to Castro asking him not to jail those who opposed him. However I am still a bit of a fan of Fidele and am sure that those who opposed him were mostly supported by U.S. intervention / money. // Jean Clelland-Morin
“… failures have hit the poor and working class especially hard. After two decades of one-party right-wing rule, they greeted the rise of the left with great hope. Today they are deeply disillusioned.”
Hmmm, somehow that sounds very familiar.