Protesters Demand Just Laws for Immigrant Workers

At least 50,000 Salvadorans took to the streets of San Salvador on Monday, May 1st, to celebrate International Workers' Day, denounce CAFTA and support the immigrant rights struggle in the United States. The massive march was made up of people from labor unions, the national movement of "pirated" CD-DVD vendors, religious groups, women's organizations, campesinos, students, market vendors, and the FMLN.

Minutes before the march kicked-off, Lutheran Bishop Medardo Gomez swore the 32 elected FMLN deputies into office in front of the thousands of people that had assembled to participate in the May Day March. The newly elected deputies - who started their terms on Monday - promised to continue legislating in the interest of the popular majorities.

The march began at 9:00 AM and was led by the public sector labor federations and unions rejecting privatization, demanding an end to the criminalization of immigrants in the United States, and demanding government ratification of ILO agreements 87 and 98, which guarantee freedom of association and protection of the right to organize and bargain collectively. "Because Immigrants are not Criminals, from El Salvador we Demand Just Laws," read the main banner of the FESTRASPES public union federation. A thousand university students - loudly rejecting capitalism and US imperialism - marched from the National University and met up with the main march at Boulevard de Los Heroes. Other banners rejected the increasing repression of organizing in El Salvador and the International Law Enforcement Academy, or the ILEA. A couple of hours later, as the front of the march reached San Salvador's Central Plaza, protestors at the end of the march were just stepping off, and it is estimated that the march covered at least 30 blocks.

For days the government had attempted to intimidate and scare Salvadorans from participating in the march by publishing articles in El Salvador's main newspapers that portrayed the May Day celebration as violent and by publishing and broadcasting ads warning that the police would intervene in the case of rioting and/or property destruction. On May Day, there were reports that buses with protestors coming in from outside San Salvador were stopped and turned back. Hundreds of police were deployed to "protect" US and Salvadoran corporate stores and restaurants. There was also a police helicopter that followed the march and circled over the Central Plaza clearly to take video recordings of march participants.

The immense march ended in the Central Plaza with speakers denouncing the neoliberal economic model as the cause of deterioration in the quality of life of Salvadorans. A leader of the Salvadoran Union Front (FSS) Ricardo Calderon said, "This government responds to the US's economic interests," and he called for continued struggle for social change.

At the same time, the immigrant rights marches across the U.S. saw another massive turnout, with an estimated 2 million people in the streets. Like in previous protest actions in March and April, some of the most massively attended marches were in places like Los Angeles and Chicago. But equally significant was the massive turnout of protestors in smaller towns across the country. In Watsonville, California, a rural town with a major immigrant farmworker population, there were an estimated 10,000 people marching through the town which has a total population of only 40,000. In many cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, CISPES activists were in the streets adding their voices to the calls for legalization for all immigrants and an end to the U.S.'s free trade policies that create poverty and global migration.