Protests

Protesters are making their voices heard in El Salvador and elsewhere:

• The October 12 Popular Resistance Movement, a coalition of organizations blocked highways in several parts of the country on Wednesday, November 16:
  

  The rural communities, labor unions, agricultural cooperatives, urban slums, and general population organized by the Popular Resistance Movement-October 12 (MPR-12), mobilized this Wednesday, November 16, in 7 of the 14 provinces of El Salvador. Thousands of Salvadorans gathered to take over principal highways, intersections and bridges in 6 strategic points across the country, protesting against the imposition of infrastructure projects in their communities without their consent, against the total lack of support and reconstruction for the flooded communities from Tropical Storm Stan and the severe political manipulation of international and official donations by the central government, and against new anti-union activities by the legislative assembly and government officials, especially the Ministry of Labor. [From an e-mail dispatch].
  

  
  
• Protesters continue to close the University of El Salvador because of concern that a proposed loan from the Interamerican Development Bank will lead to privatization of the university and a loss of academic freedom.
  
  
• In the United States, thousands are rallying in Georgia for the annual protest calling for the closure of the School of the Americas. In the past, Latin American military officers were trained by the US at the school, and those same officers returned to their home countries to brutalize and violate the human rights of local citizens.