Salvador Sánchez Cerén (born June 18, 1944, in Quezaltepeque, department of La Libertad) is a Salvadoran politician and former teacher. Following the 2009 presidential election, he is the Vice President of El Salvador.
| Salvador Sánchez Cerén | |
|---|---|
| Vice President of El Salvador | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office June 1, 2009 |
|
| President | Mauricio Funes |
| Preceded by | Ana Vilma Albanez de Escobar |
| Personal details | |
| Born | June 10, 1944 Quezaltepeque, El Salvador |
| Political party | Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional |
After graduating from Alberto Masferrer—a school for teachers—with a degree in primary education, he taught for ten years in public and rural schools in his hometown. He became politically active in the late 1960s as a member of ANDES 21 de Junio, the national teachers union, participating in several demonstrations against El Salvador's military dictatorship.[1] In the 1970s he joined the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación "Farabundo Martí" (FPL), one of the five left-wing organizations that later merged to form the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN).
With the start of the Salvadoran Civil War in 1980, Sánchez Cerén adopted the pseudonym Commander Leonel González, as he was also appointed to the position. In 1984 he became a Commanding General of the FMLN, until the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992, when the guerrillas surrendered their weapons and became a legal political party.[1]
In 2000, Sánchez Cerén was elected deputy for the FMLN in the Legislative Assembly and was re-elected in 2003 and 2006.[2] Between 2001 and 2004 he served as the general coordinator of his party. In 2006, he succeeded the late politician Schafik Handal as head of the legislative portion of the FMLN. In April 2007 he was chosen as the running mate of Mauricio Funes in the 2009 presidential election. On March 15, Funes and Sánchez Cerén defeated the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), ending two decades of conservative rule in El Salvador.