On Saturday September 6th, hundreds of labor, community, faith and environmental organizers came together in San Salvador to inaugurate the United Social Movement and Union Coordinating Committee (CUSS), a powerful new popular mobilization vehicle founded by nine of the nation’s leading social movement and labor coalitions.

In El Salvador, social movement groups have historically united at key moments of struggle to challenge inequality and state repression. Calling on this legacy, the CUSS is unique in that it emerges as an instrument of defense and accompaniment for the new process of social change and popular participation driven by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) government. As Wilfredo Berrios of the Salvadoran Social and Union Front (FSS) explained on Saturday, ¨the role of CUSS will be to defend the expansion of rights for the working class and attempt to halt right wing attacks.¨FMLN Secretary General  Medardo Gonzales reiterated the need for the working class to ¨organize themselves and create their own vanguard” to mobilize against the ongoing destabilization efforts by the right-wing opposition that threaten recent advances toward social and economic justice.

Additional speakers at the inauguration included Marta Sandalia from the Federation of Associations and Independent Unions of El Salvador (FEASIES), Victor Mejia from the October 12th Popular Resistance Movement (MPR12), FMLN Social Movement Secretary Roger Blandino Nerio, Cuban Ambassador Iliana Teresa Fonseca and representatives from the Salvadoran Palestinian Association.

(More photos of the activity here)