Oscar Ortiz is the Secretary-General of the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation, FMLN. Ortiz served as vice president of El Salvador from 2014 to 2019. Previously, he was the city mayor of Santa Tecla from 2000 to 2014.
During the civil war of the 1980s, Oscar Ortiz was part of the Popular Liberation Forces, FPL, which is one of the five armed fractions that created the political party FMLN.
Ortiz, as a guerilla fighter, was known as Commander Guillermo Rodriguez or Memito. He was wounded in combat in 1983 and was taken to Nicaragua to receive medical treatment. He rejoined the armed conflict in 1987.
After the armed conflict ended, the FMLN demobilized its militias and became a political party. In 1994, Ortiz was elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly for the department of La Libertad; he was subsequently reelected for a second term in 1997.
Secretary-General of the FMLN.
After the 2019 presidential elections, Ortiz was elected to run the left-wing political party as Secretary-General. He will have his position until after the 2021 elections.
The 2021 elections will be the first ones directed by Ortiz. As of today, and based on recent pooling, the FMLN and Ortiz will not have a good result in the elections. According to political experts, the FMLN will be the 4th political force after the elections.
Santa Tecla city mayor, Oscar Ortiz.
After serving two legislative terms in the Salvadoran Congress, Ortiz was appointed by the FMLN to become the candidate for the city mayor of Santa Tecla. In March 2020, Ortiz was elected mayor of the municipality and took office on May 1 of that year.
He won reelection as city mayor four times, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2012. During his tenure as mayor of the fourth most populous city in El Salvador, Ortiz became one of the prominent FMLN leaders. In 2013, the FMLN chose Oscar Ortiz as their vice president’s candidate in the upcoming 2014 elections.
Oscar Ortiz. Vice president of El Salvador.
In March 2014, Oscar Ortiz won the Vice Presidency of El Salvador, alongside Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who became president. The candidates won the election by a small margin in the second round of the presidential elections.
In the 2014 election, Ortiz and Sanchez Veren defeated the ARENA candidates Norman Quijano and Rene Portillo Cuadra. The FMLN candidates received a total of 1,495,815 votes, equivalent to 50.11%.
The 2014 presidential campaign ran by both parties has been marked with controversy. Both political parties have been accused of paying gans, MS-13 and 18th street, cash for support during the campaign.
Years later, videos of Ernesto Muyshondt surfaced. In one of the videos, Muyshondt is heard negotiating with gans. In the other video, he is seeing giving them money.
During his term as vice president of the republic, both the FMLN and Oscar Ortiz lost popularity due to the allegations against the previous president Mauricio Funes Cartagena and allegations of corruption against the Ortiz’s government. The FMLN suffered the worst defeat in the 2019 presidential elections to Nayib Bukele.
Oscar Ortiz.
In summary, Ortiz was born in 1961. During El Salvador’s civil war, Ortiz was a combatant with the Popular Liberation Forces, FPL. Ortiz was mayor of Santa Tecla for 13 years; he is considered one of the most thriving Salvadoran mayors.
His tenure as vice-president is marked with low approval rates and signs of corruption by the Salvador Sanchez Ceren administration.
