El Salvador's ex-guerrilla poised to win presidency in runoff election

[Comrade Grumpy]

6. I was there and wrote about the war for the Guardian (defunct US leftie rag, not the UK one).

I was doing research on a master's thesis on revolutionary trade unionism in El Salvador, visited the country several times during the 1980s, and wrote a few pieces for the Guardian and other lefty rags.

I had dinner with trade unionists who were later assassinated in a bomb attack on their headquarters.

I saw death squad victims dumped at the dump. I think they called it "the Devil's gate," or something like that.

I met D'Aubuisson while he was campaigning for the presidency. His fucking eyes creeped me out.

Ronald Reagan and the US Congress spent about $4 billion to ensure that the revolution didn't succeed there. I suppose it was half a success: the FMLN and the Salvadoran people got bourgeois democracy, but not socialism.