Our friend Danny Burridge from the Volunteer Missionary Movement shared with us this article he wrote on the outlook and challenges of Funes's presidency for the future of El Salvador:
El Salvador: Promises, Perils and Reality

On June 1, 2009, Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) was sworn in as the first leftist president of El Salvador. Funes rode a wave of popular will for change after 20 years of devastating neoliberal policies implemented by successive Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) governments. His victorious candidacy was also helped along by its novelty: Funes is a widely respected former journalist and a progressive political outsider.

Funes overcame both a ruthless smear campaign engineered by the right wing and the institutionalized fraud endemic to the Salvadoran elections that favor ARENA. Massive voter turnout prevailed over both obstacles, handing him a slight majority at the ballot box – though recent opinion polls show he enjoys the support of around 80 percent of the public.

In his inauguration speech, Funes promised the social and economic reconstruction of El Salvador under a “government of national unity.” He twice invoked the legacy of the martyred bishop Óscar Romero, assuring that the only sector privileged by his government would be the poor. Funes promised to fight corruption and tax evasion, to streamline government institutions, and to maintain an independent foreign policy. In fact, one of his first acts as president was to re-establish diplomatic and commercial relations with Cuba, leaving the United States as the only country in the hemisphere with out formal ties to Havana...

One of Funes' boldest announcements was the creation of an 18-month "Anti-Crisis Plan" to be backed by the creation of a State Development Bank. The new bank would seek to reactivate agriculture and other vital, yet struggling, economic sectors. Other promises include the creation of 100,000 new jobs, the provision of free uniforms and school supplies to a million primary students, the construction of 25,000 low-income homes, and the delivery of necessary medicines to all public hospitals and health clinics...

Funes has generated trust and hope among the public like no other Salvadoran president, the first vital step in “reinventing” El Salvador, as he proposes. Indeed, El Salvador urgently needs radical transformations, but Funes has not specifically promised these types of structural changes and would not be capable of delivering them. Nor will he be able to construct a government of national unity. He will perhaps be able to nominally increase social investment to benefit the poor, but the structural veto power that global capitalism wields over change in El Salvador, along with opposition of the domestic right wing, will make the implementation of meaningful reforms exceedingly difficult.

In assembling a team to carry out these badly needed reforms, Funes has brought together a highly capable and respected cabinet of economists, technocrats, social leaders, and FMLN functionaries. But it is outside of his administration where his plans will face difficulty.
Continue reading his article here.