FMLN links its own candidate to Chavez, Castro, Morales, Ortega

An FMLN student group has publicly linked its presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, to Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega.

The students carried a banner featuring a montage of Funes with the Venezuelan and Cuban dictators, and the left-wing leaders of other Latin American countries.

AP photographer Esteban Felix snapped the photo at an FMLN student rally in San Salvador on October 31, 2008. From left to right, the figures on the banner are: Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, the FMLN's Mauricio Funes, Bolivian coca grower-turned-President Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo and Nicaraguan Sandinista Comandante Daniel Ortega.

The slogan at the bottom shows the intended domino effect of the Chavez-backed Bolivarian revolution and of Farabundo Marti, founder of the Salvadoran Communist Party. The slogan says, "El Salvador will be the next sovereign country of the great fatherland of Marti and Bolivar."

Chavez propaganda echoes FMLN fraud line

The FMLN says that if it loses Sunday's presidential election it will denounce El Salvador's democratic process as a fraud.

The effort to discredit any loss is being echoed by FMLN supporters in other countries. Today, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's satellite TV propaganda channel is echoing the FMLN call.

Telesur, the Chavez TV channel modeled after Al Jazeera, is issuing reports denouncing a "dirty campaign" against FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes - this just days after Funes' vice presidential running mate, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, made an identical allegation in an interview with La Prensa Grafica.

Click here for a link to the Chavez channel to follow the line.

US fears El Salvador alliance with Hugo Chavez

"US Fears Alliance of FMLN and Hugo Chavez." That's the front-page headline of El Salvador's leading newspaper, El Diario de Hoy.

True enough.

Which is why the US should make sure the FMLN never is in a position to threaten democracy and freedom in the region.

Salvadorans voting the FMLN into power will be making a costly mistake. They will provoke the US into enforcing its own counterterrorism interests, and this means de-funding economies whose governments support terrorists.

El Salvador and the United States have a great partnership. It will be a terrible mistake for the Salvadoran voters to mess with it, since our countries have become so interdependent.

Chavez states support for FMLN victory

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez meets with two FMLN leaders and pledges his support for the guerrilla party's political campaign to take power in El Salvador. The FMLN delegates visited Venezuela in September 2008 to engineer a deal with Venezuela's state-run PDVSA oil company as a means of financing the FMLN's campaign. They arrived in Venezuela aboard a PDVSA-owned executive jet.

Chavez says he's promoting "21st century socialism" in El Salvador and elsewhere in the hemisphere.