SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Of the 40,000 Salvadorans living outside this nation of seven million who were eligible to vote in its presidential election March 15, only 221 did so, according to El Salvador’s Supreme Tribunal Electorate. Of those, 122 cast ballots for former CNN newsman Mauricio Funes, the candidate for the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), while 99 went to the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) candidate, Rodrigo Avila.

   Funes won, 51%-49%.

   The preference of those living abroad reflected the rest of the electorate in the first FMLN victory in history, which ended the 20-year rule of its right-wing government.

   Unlike Mexico and Peru, the Salvadoran government requires nationals who live outside the country to obtain an identification card and vote in person.

   While ARENA’s Avila had opposed allowing those Salvadorans living abroad to vote as too difficult and costly, FMLN Vice President-elect Salvador Sánchez Cerén argued they should not be denied that right. He promised to “work hard…with initiative” to allow them to participate in choosing the country’s elected officials in the future. There are now an estimated 2.5-3 million Salvadorans living in the United States, most from refugee families who fled its civil war during the ’80s and ’90s. 

   Gisela Edith Bustamante, who flew home to cast her ballot this month, agrees. “In a moment such as this, we have an opportunity to change the country’s history,” she says. The San Salvador native has lived for eight years in Washington, D.C. By Census count, 200,000 Salvadorans reside in the capital and surrounding suburbs, making it the second largest U.S. conclave of Salvadoran immigrants after Los Angeles, which has 350,000.

   She added, “Not all of us have permission or time to come here.”

   Like other Salvadorans living in the exterior, Bustamante was assigned to vote in San Salvador’s Mágico González Stadium. 

   To cast his vote, Benito García, dressed in the red, white and blue colors of the ARENA party, had traveled from Bethesda, Maryland, where he has lived for 25 years. “If we could vote from there, we wouldn’t lose more time off from work,” he said.   This was also the feeling in Ana Gladys Rubio’s family. She flew in from California to vote. Her husband stayed home.  “Someone had to work,” said Rubio who lived in Arlington Virginia for 18 years before moving to Los Angeles, where more than 350,000 Salvadorans reside.

   A survey conducted at the Central American Research and Policy Institute at California State University-Northridge showed that 87% of the Salvadorans living in the Los Angeles area would have liked to voted from their U.S. city of residence, if allowed. Some 300 people participated in a March 8 symbolic election in Los Angeles’ McArthur Park, a haven for recently arrived Central American immigrants. 

   CARPI director Douglas Carranza noted that the results of El Salvador’s election clearly mimic those of the survey, which showed that while there was a will to vote, most people could not do so because of immigration status, cost or time constraints.

    TSE president Walter Araujo, who visited the stadium on election-day morning, emphasized the importance of being able to vote outside the country, stating, “Salvadorans want to participate in their democracy, even when they are far away. The state should revise the Constitution, and that can be done by the national assembly.”

   (Cindy Von Quednow, of Los Angeles, traveled to San Salvador to cover the election for Hispanic Link News Service and El Nuevo Sol elnuevosol.net. Email her at: [email protected].)

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