El Salvador and US

Update(sort of) 4:45 PM 3/15/2009 I didn't realize that Jane Hamsher over at Firedoglake covered the election in El Salvador yesterday also.

Presidential election tomorrow El Salvador.

In El Salvador, Cautious Optimism On What a Progressive Win Would Mean for U.S. Relations
By Roberto Lovato, New America Media. Posted March 14, 2009.

...The policies of post-World War II presidents in the United States, both Republican and Democratic , make many Salvadorans wary of Obama, even though they give him high popularity ratings, says Edgardo Herrera, an international relations expert at the university.

“If it is truly committed to improving relations with El Salvador and the rest of Latin America, the Obama Administration should remember what we say about justice here,” said Herrera. “Justice is like a snake. It only bites the barefoot poor, not the rich who have shoes.” He thinks the United States is not in sync with ideas about justice on the Salvadoran street. He cites an annual opinion poll conducted by Central American University since 2003. “Every year Salvadorans are telling the United States they do not like its policies, including the Iraq war, the CAFTA and the dollarization of the country’s currency,” Herrera said. “Rejection of these policies has turned the Salvadoran electorate against the ARENA government-and the United States.”..
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..“Although the country may be small and its economy heavily dependent on remittances from the United States," White said, "it is still important for that country to demonstrate its policy independence. Many questions have been raised by some of the Salvadoran government’s past actions.”..


I understand that the constant meddling in El Salvadoran politics (and what the US considered it's sphere of influence, all of Latin America )that people are fed up, but sometimes I wonder if they know that the meddling has had some pretty nasty blowback here.

Like Mara Salvatrucha.

Evil, rotten little bastards.

In the last two years have been arrested 57 thousand Maras in Mexico.

Mara Salvatrucha, Social War and the Decline of the Revolutionary Movements in Central America