International

Communists Realize Power In El Salvador

By Jason Beaubien

Published March 21, 2009 at 5:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

This week the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, won the presidential election in El Salvador.

The former Marxist rebels, who fought a guerilla war from 1980-1992, are the first leftist party to come to power in the country's history. Though the party is a coalition of left-wing groups, it's dominated by the Communist Party.

One of the biggest questions after the FMLN victory is how far to the left President Elect Mauricio Funes will move El Salvador.

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International

Jason Beaubien

Jason Beaubien is a Peabody award-winning journalist. He's filed stories from more than 60 countries around the world. His reporting tends to focus on issues in lower-income countries. Often his reports highlight inequities, injustices and abuses of power. He also regularly writes about natural disasters, wars and human conflict. Over the last two decades he's covered hurricanes in the Caribbean, typhoons in the Philippines, multiple earthquakes in Haiti, the Arab Spring, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the drug war in Mexico.

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