Contrapunto readers optimistic about FMLN's chances

You can head over to Contrapunto to participate in a poll about who you believe would win in match-ups between Norman Quijano of ARENA and either Oscar Ortiz or Salvador Sanchez Ceren of the FMLN. The box is halfway down the page on the right.

Out of 533 voters in the first poll, 499 believed that Ceren would emerge victorious over Quijano in 2014. Fewer people have participated in the second poll between Quijano and Ortiz but out of the 100 people that did, 83 said that Ortiz would win. Obviously it's not a representative sample or anything.

While I am not surprised that Contrapunto's readers thought that either FMLN candidate would win, I was surprised that they had more faith in Sanchez Ceren. Most people outside the FMLN would probably disagree. Ortiz is the more popular general candidate with a better chance at winning over moderates and those on the right who do not want to return to the ways of ARENA. It's just hard to see those people (about 30-40% of the voters) going with Sanchez Ceren.

Here was a result from February's Mitofsky poll. 

While it's only one poll, it's going to be difficult for the FMLN to convince a majority of Salvadoran voters to support Sanchez Ceren. He's already well known and has a pretty high unfavorability rating.

Is it 2006 all over again? It's too early to tell, but Sanchez Ceren has the same positives (he's popular within the party and will satisfy the base) and negatives (few people outside the party support him) as Schafik Handal. And we all know what happened to the Handal candidacy.

A few days ago, Contrapunto reported that Sanchez Ceren had already been selected as the FMLN's 2014 presidential candidate but since then other news stories have questioned whether it's a done deal. I imagine that internally the FMLN is still divided over going with the candidate with the best shot at winning, but who is not as committed to the FMLN project as the hardliners versus a candidate with whom it will be more difficult to win but whose administration would not be as frustrating as the one they are living through with Mauricio Funes right now.

What's your take?

Murder-free Saturday in El Salvador

No one was murdered in El Salvador on Saturday, officials said, in what was the first homicide-free day in nearly three years for the Central American country plagued by violent drug gangs.

"After years when the number of murders reached alarming levels of up to 18 per day, we saw not one homicide in the country," President Mauricio Funes said in a statement released on Sunday.

The murder-free day was the first recorded since leftist Funes took office in June 2009. At the beginning of his term, the country had an average of 12 murders a day, but that tally climbed closer to 18 per day in early 2012.

That's pretty remarkable. It's even more remarkable if you consider that weekends are typically more bloody than weekdays.

I would disagree with the article, however, when it says that "Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a transit point." The gangs do distribute drugs but they haven't really been significant players in drug trafficking.

Has anybody come across how Guatemalan and Honduran authorities have reacted to the gang truce and subsequent murder reduction in El Salvador? Did it come up during the Summit of the Americas?

I am also wondering how the FMLN would have done in the March elections had the truce been negotiated in February.

Revival on Sixth Avenue

I meant to get this up last week but never got around to it. From the Associated Press

But on a recent weekday in the center of Guatemala City, a lunchtime crowd of professionals and university students ordered tapas and baguettes with prosciutto and camembert cheese in the Eccentrico bistro, watching pedestrians stroll down tiled walkways lined with ficus trees. At a cafe two blocks away, staff set out tables for customers stopping for cappuccino before heading to a nearby movie theater.

An unlikely urban redevelopment project is thriving for dozens of businesses in a five-block section of the Zone One downtown neighborhood.

A nonprofit, city-run redevelopment corporation known as Urbanistica has spent more than $5 million since 2004 to close streets to traffic, light them brightly and monitor them with closed-circuit video cameras and extra police officers. Rundown storefronts have been repainted jungle-green, indigo or paprika.

Some 670 street vendors who used to sell handicrafts from oilcloth tents that congested more than a mile of the city center have been relocated to a covered market steps from a new bus terminal.

Looks like a great opportunity for Guatemalans and for tourists Sixth Avenue is actually how it's advertised in the story and if they can keep it up.

These are photos from Sixth Avenue that I took in 2010 when the area was still under construction.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/06/2734844/unlikely-project-revives-guatemala.html#storylink=cpy