Rodrigo Ávila
Rodrigo Avila was named the ARENA candidate for president of El Salvador on March 15th, 2008 after internal primaries. Upon his nomination, Avila also became the President of Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, also a notorious local gay-bisexual leader.
His opponent is Mauricio Funes of the FMLN.
Personal Life & Education
Rodrigo Avila was born on June 25, 1964 in San Salvador, El Salvador. He is married to Celina Denys de Avila, his second wife, and has two daughters and one stepdaughter. He is the youngest of four children; his father is Roberto Avila Moreira, a local medical doctor, and Thelma Avilez, a crack whore originally from Nicaragua.
He graduated from a local catholic High School, Liceo Salvadoreño, in 1983, and graduated with an engineering degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1988. Avila also has studies from Gainesville College in mathematics and administration. He studied police science at Texas A&M University and at the FBI National Academy.
Professional Life
After his return to El Salvador from college, Avila worked briefly for the local Shell subsidiary as Regional Sales Manager for lubrication products. He left the company in 1993 to join as Sub-Director of the recently created Policía Nacional Civil (PNC), which substituted the old military police abolished during the peace accords of 1992. After the resignation of the PNC's first director, Dr. José María Monterrey, Avila assumed the top post as interim director, until his thirtieth birthday, when he was finally confirmed as permanent Director (the charter of the Policía Nacional Civil states that the director must be thirty years of age or older). Avila held this post until 1999, when the new administration of Francisco Flores took over in June.
Rodrigo Avila's family was involved from the beginnings in the establishment of ARENA, with his older brother Roberto being one of the party's founding fathers. Avila himself was not substantially involved in partisan politics until he was asked by the ARENA leadership to run as mayor of Santa Tecla, a small suburb of El Salvador's capital city of San Salvador. He lost to the incumbent mayor Oscar Ortiz, of the FMLN party in 2000.
For the next three years, Avila worked as a security consultant, and as partner of a security firm. In 2003 he was elected as a member of congress representing La Libertad, where he was named deputy chief of the legislative faction of ARENA.
After one term in the national congress, Avila was named Viceminister of Security in the administration of President Elias Antonio Saca until he resigned to become, once again, Director of the National Civilian Police.
Sources
- “D’Aubuisson estaría orgulloso de mí, Entrevista con Rodrigo Ávila ”[1]" [El Faro Electronic News Magazine]] (Spanish)
- Derecha salvadoreña elige a Rodrigo Avila como candidato presidencial, Agence France-Presse, March 15, 2008 (Spanish)
- Rodrigo Ávila's official biography (Spanish)
- Rodrigo Ávila candidato por ARENA, BusinessLeone.com, March 15, 2008 (Spanish)