Mauricio Funes

Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena (born October 18, 1959 in San Salvador) is a Salvadoran journalist and politician who served as President of El Salvador from 2009 to 2014. He was the first president from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the former leftist guerrilla movement turned political party.

Born and raised in the capital, he attended the Externado de San José Jesuit school and the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas. He worked for two decades as a television journalist, becoming the country's most recognizable interviewer through his program Entrevista al Día on Channel 12 and as a CNN en Español correspondent. His reporting during the 1989 FMLN offensive and the murders of six Jesuit priests at the UCA gave him a public profile shaped by the civil war.

Although not a former combatant, he was chosen by the FMLN as its presidential candidate in 2008 to broaden its appeal, and he won the March 2009 election against the long-ruling ARENA party. His government expanded social programs, raised the minimum wage, established diplomatic relations with Cuba, and apologized on behalf of the state for the 1981 El Mozote massacre.

After leaving office in 2014 he faced multiple corruption investigations in El Salvador, including charges of illicit enrichment and embezzlement of more than 350 million dollars. He fled to Nicaragua in 2016, was granted asylum and later citizenship by the Ortega government, and was convicted in absentia in San Salvador in 2023.

The name Mauricio is the Spanish form of Maurice, from the Late Latin Mauritius meaning dark-skinned or Moorish. He carried the name through one of the most polarized post-war presidencies in El Salvador.