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A group of USF students, faculty, and staff acted as election observers in El Salvador Mar. 21.
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Students Help Ensure El Salvador’s Democracy
USF students, faculty, and staff used spring break to take a close look at presidential candidates who attacked their opponents’ records, used the fear of terrorism to shore up support, and relied on economic anxiety to persuade voters. It was an American-style election with a key geographical difference: it took place in El Salvador.
“(The Salvadoran political parties) play on the same types of emotions,” said senior Laura Grace, who traveled to El Salvador. “But in El Salvador, the stakes are much higher.”
Grace was one of six students, accompanied by Theology Professor Lois Lorentzen and Mike Duffy, associate director of University Ministry, to travel to San Salvador, the country’s capitol, as an election observer. They were part of a 2,500-member international presence in the small country to ensure no fraud occurred during only its third democratic election since 1992. That year, a peace accord ended the country’s 12-year civil war. Although the students didn’t observe ballot stuffing or intimidation techniques at the polls, they said an oppressive atmosphere was still palpable as the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) party battled neck and neck with its Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) opponents.
“The amount of (political) advertising was an overload,” said Daniela Bazan, a sophomore Spanish and Latin America Studies major who attended the trip. “Some of them were extreme in how they attacked the FMLN candidate.”
The students arrived four days before the election to be trained and accredited by the government. On the day of the election, they were split into two teams to supervise separate polling places, watching the booths set up and the ballots arrive. After the polls closed, students filled out government-issued reports on what they had seen.
What they witnessed in the fledgling democracy was a strenuous, at times manipulative process. “The ARENA party was passing out food outside the polls and some of the poll workers were wearing party colors when they weren’t supposed to,” Bazan said. She also said the sight of thousands of voters waiting in long lines at overcrowded polling places, some of them traveling many miles to get to where they were registered, impressed her.
“It made us realize how many privileges we exercise in the states, with absentee ballots and plenty of polls open on election day,” Bazan said.
Lorentzen said she organized the trip after a brief visit on her own to meet with Salvadoran politicians. Their suggestion that her students act as election observers was enthusiastically received by the USF group, all of whom traveled to El Salvador last summer with Lorentzen on an immersion trip. On that trip, students studied the country’s history, the role of the Jesuits there, and the present political and social realities.
“Our (summer) trip played a big part in our lives and we felt this trip acknowledged their problems and showed that we cared,” Grace said.
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