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By Son del Pueblo, March 16, 9:30 p.m., El Observatorio, Barrio La California.

SAN SALVADOR – The streets of El Salvador filled with supporters of Mauricio Funes, 49, candidate of the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), after official preliminary results projected him the winner in El Salvador's presidential election Sunday.

The journalist and ex-guerilla received 51.6 percent of the vote to the 48.4 percent received by conservative candidate Rodrigo Avila, 44, of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), with 73.8 percent of the country's 9,543 polling stations reporting, Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) President Walter Araujo said.

“We have had a transparent, calm, peaceful and massive electoral process,” said Araujo, in an address to the country. Over 18,000 police officers and 2,000 soldiers were deployed to provide security at polling places.

Electoral observers concurred the election took place largely without incident, although the Organization of American States (OEA) reported several instances of foreigners attempting to vote.

An estimated 60 percent of the Salvadoran electorate cast their ballots to elect a successor to President Elías Antonio “Tony” Saca.

If the trend holds, the FMLN will have broken 20 years of ARENA majority control. The latter party has won the last four presidential elections, dating back to 1989.

The FMLN, an umbrella group for left-wing guerilla factions in the 1980s, became a legal political party in 1992, after the signing of the Chapultepec Peace agreement at the end of the country's civil war, which lasted from 1980 to 1992.

President Daniel Ortega has taken a political stance that could make it very difficult for the United States and several European countries to unthaw foreign aid frozen last year over concerns that his party rigged the November 2008 municipal elections.

“The yanqui and the some European (nations) are saying that they are going to take away our bread if we don't negotiate the municipal governments. But the municipal governments will not be negotiated!” Ortega bellowed March 13 during a rally in Catarina, on the northern shores of Lake Nicaragua. “The people won (these mayoral offices) with their vote, and the people will defend them with their conscience, their courage and their sprit of struggle.”

Ortega added a warning to the governments of the United States and Europe to “not even allude (to the idea) that we are going to negotiate the municipal governments.”

The U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) last week ruled to uphold its suspension of $62 million in development aid over concerns about the government's “manipulation of municipal elections” last November, in which Ortega's Sandinista National Liberation Front party is accused of stealing more than 40 mayoral posts. Several European countries have also suspended much-needed aid to Nicaragua due to similar concerns about a breach in the democratic process here.

U.S. Ambassador Robert Callahan said last week that Ortega's government has 90 days to “resolve the problem of the elections of last November” if it hopes to continue to receive new aid under the Millennium Challenge program.

“This is the key point,” Callahan said about the United States' continued concern over last year's elections. The United States, he said, is “waiting for a resolution to this problem.”

Ortega, however, says his government refuses to “accept conditions” on foreign aid, and seems to have already written off the MCC program, despite admitting last week that it needs all the help it can get as hemisphere's second-poorest economy teeters on the fringe of recession.

“The truth is that this country, with or without the Millennium Challenge Account, will continue to advance forward,” Ortega said.

Scientists and collaborators at a local marina are looking for a way to save the life of one of Costa Rica's most precious endangered species.

The Center of Caribbean Sea Turtle Rehabilitation is researching methods that would fit a prosthetic fin onto a six-year old hawksbill sea turtle.

The turtle arrived at the center two years ago with three missing fins – both rear fins and one front fin – after being attacked by a shark.

Gabriel Hobart works with the center's owner for part of the year and said the facility has been working with a local dentist and a prosthetic center in San José to find the best way to create a new fin.

The difficulty, Hobart said, is that the turtle is still growing and will need a system that will allow scientists to change the fin for a bigger one as the turtle develops.

Although the turtle is missing three fins, Hobart said it is only necessary to replace one front fin to stabilize the animal and allow it to move properly.

The ultimate goal of the rehabilitation center is to release turtles back into the wild, but Hobart said this turtle will remain at the center forever because it doesn't have the ability to survive in open waters.