Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes Died
Former Salvadorean President Mauricio Funes. X/ @JoseLuCristales
January 23, 2025 Hour: 2:46 pm
He passed away at 65 on Tuesday night in Nicaragua, where he had been living in asylum.
On Thursday, the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Block (BRP), which brings together around 30 social organizations in El Salvador, mourned the passing of former President Mauricio Funes (2009–2014).
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He died at the age of 65 on Tuesday night in Managua, Nicaragua—where he had been living in asylum—due to a severe chronic illness, according to the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health.
“We acknowledge Funes’ historical legacy as a journalist and as a head of state serving the popular sectors and the population excluded and impoverished for decades by right-wing governments,” the BRP stated.
“Funes governed in favor of the majority of the population, exposed the corruption of the governments of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), and achieved the imprisonment of former President Francisco Flores.”
“He was persecuted by a judicial system corrupted and serving the oligarchy. His legacy is there and will be recognized by current and future generations,” the BRP added.
In 2009, in a historic event for El Salvador, Funes—a journalist by profession—became president, accompanied by his then-wife, Brazilian Vanda Pignato, who was a representative of Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party in Central America.
In May 2024, the leftist former president was sentenced in El Salvador to 14 years in prison for alleged crimes committed between 2012 and 2014 during a gang truce. Due to a legal reform, he was tried in absentia, becoming the second president of El Salvador’s democratic era to receive a prison sentence. In 2019, Nicaragua granted Funes citizenship to protect him from political persecution.
teleSUR/ JF Source: BRP – EFE
