Salvador Sánchez Cerén
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Salvador Sánchez Cerén (; born 18 June 1944) is a Salvadoran politician who served as the 42nd
President of El Salvador The president of El Salvador ( es, Presidente de El Salvador), officially known as the President of the Republic of El Salvador ( es, Presidente de la República de El Salvador), is the Head of State, head of state and Head of Government, head ...
between 1 June 2014 and 1 June 2019. He took office on 1 June 2014, after winning the 2014 presidential election as the candidate of the left-wing
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN) is a left-wing political party in El Salvador. The FMLN was formed as an umbrella group on 10 October 1980, from five leftist gu ...
(FMLN). He previously served as
Vice President A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on t ...
under President
Mauricio Funes Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena (born 18 October 1959) is a Salvadoran politician and former journalist who served as President of El Salvador from 2009 to 2014. Funes won the 2009 Salvadoran presidential election, 2009 presidential election as ...
from 2009 to 2014. He was also a guerrilla leader in the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
and is the first and only ex-rebel to serve as president.


Early life

Sánchez Cerén was born in Quezaltepeque in the department of La Libertad, and was the ninth of twelve children, three of his siblings died at young age. His parents struggled to raise nine children. His father, Antonio Alfonso Sánchez was a carpenter and his mother, Dolores Hernández was a merchant. Salvador Sánchez Cerén at a young age had to work with his family to help the family survive. At a young age he was exposed to collective work. His working-class background has always characterized Salvador Sánchez Cerén as a man of communal living, anti-free trade, and redistribution of wealth. He attended Escuela de Varones José Dolores La Reynaga for his middle school education. He attended Alberto Masferrer School in San Salvador and it was there where his political consciousness and participation developed. After graduating as a teacher, he taught for ten years in public and rural schools.


Political ideology

His political ideology derives from the various revolutionary left-wing organizations of which he was a member. He became politically active in the late 1960s when he was a student at Alberto Masferrer School, but he was not part of any political organization until he was introduced to the
Unified Popular Action Front Unified Popular Action Front (in Spanish: ''Frente de Acción Popular Unificada'') was a revolutionary mass front in El Salvador, linked to the Fuerzas Armadas de la Resistencia Nacional. FAPU was formed in 1974. It consisted of trade union, studen ...
(FUAR or Frente Unido de Accion Revolucionaria). The FUAR exposed him for the first time to the political arena and allowed his involvement in the student movement. He was a member of the PRAM (Partido Revolucionario Abril y Mayo), a political party that was against the dictatorship and advocated anti-imperialism. Then he joined (UDN) Union Democratic Nacionalista and PAR (Partido Accion Renovadora). He was also a participant of the (UNO) Union Nacional Oppositora as a member of the UDN. In essence his experience and the things he learned in San Salvador at Masferrer school from his peers he took back to his town and began to implement it. He was an active member of the ANDES 21 de Junio, a teachers union that practiced and believed in the ideas of
Paulo Freire Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work ''Pedagogy of the Oppressed'' is generally considered one of the foundat ...
and his analysis on pedagogy. In the 1970s he joined the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación "Farabundo Martí" (FPL), one of the five left-wing organizations, all of differing
Marxist–Leninist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialect ...
tendencies, that later merged to form the
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN) is a left-wing political party in El Salvador. The FMLN was formed as an umbrella group on 10 October 1980, from five leftist gu ...
(FMLN).


Commander Leonel González

With the start of the
Salvadoran Civil War The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ...
in 1980, Sánchez Cerén adopted the pseudonym Commander Leonel González, as he was also appointed to the position of "comandante" or commander. In 1984 Sánchez Cerén became a Commanding General of the FMLN, until the signing of the
Chapultepec Peace Accords The Chapultepec Peace Accords were a set of Peace treaty, peace agreements signed on January 16, 1992, the day in which the Salvadoran Civil War ended. The treaty established peace between the El Salvador, Salvadoran government and the Farabund ...
in 1992, when the guerrillas surrendered their weapons and became a legal political party. Under the leadership of Sánchez Cerén, the FMLN conducted itself in the following manner, according to US Ambassador
Charles Glazer Charles Louis Glazer (born June 21, 1943) is a United States diplomat. He was sworn in as United States Ambassador to El Salvador on January 16, 2007. Mr. Glazer tendered his resignation, effective Tuesday, January 20, 2009, following an order b ...
in a classified diplomatic cable: The FMLN leadership described its ideology during the war in a document called "Fundamental Programs for the Salvadoran Revolution," a guerrilla manifesto captured from FMLN Commander Nidia Diaz (who would join Sánchez Cerén as an FMLN politician in the Salvadoran legislature) in April 1985. The FMLN's "fundamental programs" included the following points in 1991: * "To establish economic, political, cultural, technical and social bases to build the construction of socialism." * "The construction of democracy and socialism." * "Our organization is a working class party. Our ideology is Marxism-Leninism."


Political career

In 2000, Sánchez Cerén was elected as a deputy for the FMLN in the Legislative Assembly and was re-elected in 2003 and 2006. Between 2001 and 2004 he served as the general coordinator of his party. In 2006, following the death of Salvadoran Communist Party leader and FMLN Commander Schafik Handal, he succeeded Handal as head of the legislative portion of the FMLN. In April 2007 he was chosen as the running mate of
Mauricio Funes Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena (born 18 October 1959) is a Salvadoran politician and former journalist who served as President of El Salvador from 2009 to 2014. Funes won the 2009 Salvadoran presidential election, 2009 presidential election as ...
in the 2009 presidential election. Funes and Sánchez Cerén defeated the ruling
Nationalist Republican Alliance The Nationalist Republican Alliance ( es, Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, ARENA) is a conservative, right-wing political party of El Salvador. It was founded on 30 September 1981 by retired Salvadoran Army Major Roberto D'Aubuisson. It defines ...
(ARENA).


President of El Salvador

Salvador Sánchez Cerén was sworn in as president. El Salvador held presidential elections. Sánchez Cerén was the FMLN's presidential candidate, and gained support. According to Salvadoran law, a candidate must obtain 50% + 1 vote in order to win presidential elections. Sánchez Cerén attained the leading votes in the elections on 2 February but not the majority enough to win, so he and
Norman Quijano Norman Noel Quijano González (born 2 November 1946) is a Salvadoran politician and former Mayor of San Salvador, under the Nationalist Republican Alliance ticket, serving from 1 May 2009 until his resignation on 15 August 2013 in order to ru ...
competed in the second round. Sánchez Cerén received 50.11% of the vote, compared with 49.89% for Quijano in an election contested as fraudulent by the opposing candidate. Since October 2016, his government and the FMLN have defended a project of partial legalization of abortion (in case of rape or of danger for the life of the mother) but have had to contend with the right-wing opposition which has blocked the reforms in parliament. In April 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to forbid the mining of metal on its territory, for environmental and public health reasons. In August 2018, his government decided to establish diplomatic relationship with the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. The United States denounced this as an "interference in the internal affairs of the American continent" and announced a forthcoming review of its relations with El Salvador.


References


External links

*
Biography by CIDOB
(in Spanish) , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Sanchez Ceren, Salvador 1944 births Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front politicians Living people Members of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador People from Quezaltepeque People of the Salvadoran Civil War Presidents of El Salvador Presidents pro tempore of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Salvadoran Roman Catholics Vice presidents of El Salvador Education ministers of El Salvador