Things to be grateful for - Norman Quijano is not the president of El Salvador

d'Aubuisson in ARENA legislative offices (2004)

San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano has announced that San Antonio Abad will be renamed this week in honor of ARENA party founder Major Roberto d'Aubuisson. The road stretches from Los Héroes in front of the Universidad de El Salvador to 75 avenida norte.

I thought that it was idiotic that the FMLN had renamed a street after Hugo Chavez a few years ago, but this just seems so much worse. Yes, he presided over the Constituent Assembly that wrote the country's Constitution and he was influential in supporting the end to the civil war, but that in no way makes up for why he has been referred to as Blowtorch Bob.

It looks like El Salvador's right-wing is getting ahead of any decision from the Vatican on beatifying the man d'Aubuisson had assassinated - Monsenor Oscar Romero - and from the US and Spain on extradition officials implicated in the 1989 Jesuit murders.

The Salvadoran civil war is alive and well.