El Salvador’s former leftist strongholds contemplate party’s demise

By MARCOS ALEMÁN
Associated Press

SAN JOSÉ LAS FLORES, El Salvador (AP) — San José Las Flores, a town nestled in the mountains of northern El Salvador, near the Honduras border, has been a bastion of leftist resistance for decades. Now its residents, many veterans of the country’s civil war, fret over the seemingly imminent demise of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the party born of the conflict and a powerful national political force for three decades. The party’s bright red flags still flutter from light poles along this town’s sloping streets, but the FMLN is on its last leg, devastated politically by its own ineptness in governing, shameful corruption and the scorched earth politics of President Nayib Bukele, the millennial force of nature it initially launched.