------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Nov. 14, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
200,000 MARCH IN SAN SALVADOR: LARGEST-EVEN PROTEST HITS PRIVATIZATION By Leslie Feinberg It was the largest march in the history of the country. At least 200,000 Salvadorans shut down the capital city of San Salvador tight as a drum on Oct. 23, filling the streets in their second march to support a health care strike in its 34th day. In virtually one voice, the massive demonstration demanded the scrapping of the voucher privatization plan that the country's president, Francisco Flores, has vowed to set in motion. Marchers also demanded that Flores sign progressive legislation outlawing the privatization of health care. The health care workers' unions, together with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Movement (FMLN), drafted the proposed law that would establish the state's responsibility to make quality health treatment accessible to all Salvadorans near their homes, regardless of ability to pay. Under the weight of popular pressure, the Legislative Assembly buckled and approved the bill. But Flores has balked, threatening to veto the progressive legislation. The huge Oct. 23 protest against privatization of the industries that labor built and that working people and peasants need in order to live--including health care and electricity--drew 4 percent of the population. The equivalent in the United States would be about 11 million people. Privatization's broad impact on many layers of the population was evidenced by who took to the streets on Oct. 23. The turnout included doctors, nurses and other health care workers, patients, students and teachers, public-sector workers and women vendors, retirees and bus drivers, sugarcane and coffee workers, peasants and church groups, FMLN legislators and the communities they represent, and groups from the wide-ranging Salvadoran progressive movement, according to an Oct. 24 account by the New York Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). A unified contingent of students and professors marching together was so immense that it shut down an estimated 80 percent of classes at the University of El Salvador. Reports came in from satellite campuses in the country's interior that it wasn't possible to rent enough vehicles to bus all the students who wanted to protest in to the capital. HEALTH CARE WORKERS MARCH WITH PATIENTS So many health care workers poured out of their jobs, and so many of their patients joined them to take part in the manifestation of anger, that whole hospitals were shut down. But when marchers tried to converge on the affluent neighborhood where the president lives, they were met by riot police armed with automatic weapons. Police had barricaded the route forward into the wealthy residential area with razor wire, two armored cars and a water cannon. An army helicopter hovered above and the smell of tear gas preparation wafted in the air. Not everyone who set out to march in the capital that day made it that far. Three police roadblocks in other parts of El Salvador reportedly detained many bus caravans. When cops turned back 12 busloads of potential marchers at the Puente de Oro, the people took over the bridge in protest. At the same time, thousands of peasants blocked three of the major transportation arteries into the capital and shut down the highway to the airport. They were protesting privatization as well as the U.S./Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)--imperialist-brokered agreements that benefit Yankee capitalist globalizers at the expense of workers and peasants throughout the hemisphere. EVEN SOME SCABS JOIN STRIKE Flores plans to allow transnational corporations, much like the dreaded HMO's in the U.S., to drain profits from the public hospitals while leaving them without funding. According to the CISPES report, "Union leaders refer to the plan as 'Pay or Die,' as it would make health care a luxury for the privileged few with the capacity to pay for it." In response, labor unions of doctors and other workers at the Salvadoran Institute of Social Security (ISSS) hospital network have shut down the entire health network across the country. The government withheld paychecks from workers after winning a court decision that ruled the strike illegal. But because many striking employees clocked in but refused to work, the administration stopped paying everyone--including scabs who had crossed the picket lines. The starvation measure reportedly resulted in dozens of scabs walking off the job and joining the protest marchers. The first march to support striking workers, on Oct. 16, brought more than 50,000 health care providers, their patients and supporters into the streets against privatization. But police blockades stopped marchers from reaching the Presidential Manor. On Oct. 12, an estimated 28,000 Salvadorans had barricaded highways, bridges and border crossings at 11 strategic points across the country to protest privatization of the ISSS as well as CAFTA and the Plan Puebla Panama. At the heart of the PPP is privatizing the infrastructure-- particularly the generation and distribution of electricity-- in a mega-deal whose profits will be funneled to U.S. vaults. On Oct. 22, the government illegally fired Alirio Romero-- the secretary-general of the electricity workers' union, STSEL--and four other labor union activists. The STSEL has been on the frontlines of battles against privatization and the PPP. Since March, 29 STSEL union members have been fired. Union leaders are demanding that the government halt the firings, rehire all the illegally terminated workers, end plans to privatize electricity and sign the law banning privatization of health care. If the government refuses to meet these demands, union leaders vow to join striking health care workers by calling a national electricity workers' strike. In the words of Romero, the workers will "shut off the lights in all of El Salvador." - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
