Quezaltepeque (El Salvador), 1944

By Fernanda Gdynia Morotti

One of the founders of the National Association of Salvadoran Educators (Andes) in 1965, he participated in 1970 in the creation of the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL), the first leftist armed organization in El Salvador. He was also the main leader of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which became a political party after the Peace Accords of 1992. He served as a deputy in the parliament of El Salvador and was elected vice president on the ticket with Maurício Funes in 2009, a position he held for five years, along with his role as Minister of Education.

Cerén is the fourth Latin American ex-guerrilla member to reach government through free elections. The others are Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, José Mujica in Uruguay, and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. Married to Margarita Villalta since 1968, he is a simple man with modest habits. For example, he declined to live in the presidential residence and conducts his television program, Governing with the People, always in popular neighborhoods.

His goal as president is to continue and deepen the social programs initiated by his predecessor, Maurício Funes. He created the Secretariat for Social Participation and Transparency to strengthen the integrity of public institutions. He has also been betting on the Central American integration system as one of the avenues to implement his projects. He negotiated El Salvador’s entry into Petrocaribe, a regional alliance that allows for the purchase of petroleum derivatives at subsidized prices, and reached an agreement with the Guatemalan government to implement the PAP plan—Alliance for the Prosperity of the Northern Triangle.

Data from the 2014 Human Development Report (UNDP) shows several indicators of improvement in the living conditions of the Salvadoran population. In the region, the country is one of the most advanced in human development in recent years.

Cerén has published the books With Dreams, Life is Written: Autobiography of a Salvadoran Revolutionary (2009), FMLN in Government (2011), The War We Didn’t Want, 1980-1992 (2012), and The Country I Want: 2014 Presidential Elections in El Salvador, all published by Ocean Sur.