200,000 march in San Salvador
Largest-ever 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."
Reprinted from the Nov. 14, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Donate to
support pro-labor, anti-war news.
Email
this article
Printable
page