After an energetic 1,000 person march against CAFTA was met with violent police repression last Thursday, the El Salvadoran Interior Minister Rene Figueroa has condoned police violence against anti-CAFTA demonstrators. The Thursday protest was met with roadblocks and a police attack in which rubber bullets and tear gas were used. The right-wing ARENA party, which strongly supports CAFTA, has released a new commercial that uses footage from the protest in order to convey an anti-CAFTA message and to associate protestors with terrorists. The commercial includes a series of images of protestors yanking on the police barricades and defending themselves from the police attack (the actual attack is absent from the commercial.) Later, the ad shows slow-motion, close-up shots of protestors wearing red T-shirts and FMLN headbands. The final messages of the commercial -- "the protestors should get jobs" and "say no to a return to the violence of the past" -- combined with the selected images, are clearly meant to work public opinion against the FMLN as the country nears the 2006 local elections.
Roberto Pineda, of the Popular Social Bloc, denounced Thursday's repression. "We hold President Saca responsible for this new attack on civil liberties in this country. Our space for peaceful expression and protest is being further reduced as the government becomes more authoritarian and repressive," said Pineda. "It is not a coincidence that this march against CAFTA is repressed - the police did the same thing to us in December. We know that the government needs these free trade agreements to guarantee their control of the population," said Pineda. President Saca and the rest of El Salvador's rightwing elites imposed the CAFTA approval upon El Salvador, despite the majority of the population not supporting the deal. The BPS, the FMLN, and a wide representation of social movement organizations have vociferously opposed CAFTA from the outset, pointing out the multitude of ways that the agreement will bring more poverty to El Salvador's already struggling poor and middle classes, while further concentrating wealth and power in the hands of few.
