LARGE PROTEST CAUSES "CHANGE OF ROUTE" FOR SALVADOR'S RIGHT-WING PRESIDENT
more info and photos here: http://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/04/216560.php
by CISPES-L.A.
LOSANGELES April 6, 2008 The large and loud mid-Wilshire protestdemonstration against Antonio "Tony" Saca, right-wing president of ElSalvador, in front of the Wilshire Ebell Theater this afternoon,apparently brought about a change in the President's arrival plans.
As a bevy of LAPD motorcycle officers, leading his motorcade, arrivedat the box office entrance to the theater, demonstrators "went intohigh gear" and the bike officers all reversed their route and themotorcade was taken to a parking lot side entrance. It appeared bothL.A.P.D. and Salvadoran security forces, traveling with the president,wanted to spare him the agitated anti-ARENA scenario.
An L.A.P.D.officer, who related well to a National Lawyers' Guild legal observer,commented, "They're taking him around to the side; he won't beappearing in this area."
Every large vehicle, including a giantwhite limo, created a frenzy of chants calling the ARENA president "anassassin," "an enemy of the poor and workers," and "a Bush puppet withtroops in Iraq."
President Saca is visiting Los Angeles todaywith four events including one with wealthy Cuban-Americans, organizedby the owner of the Liborio Supermarket chain. The invitation to the"ranch picnic" in Moorpark, California, copies of which were obtainedby protest organizers earlier this week, asks for donations of$10,000, but going down to $5000 and $1000, with checks to be madepayable to ARENA.
A protest yesterday in front of a LiborioMarket in the mid-Vermont Avenue area prompted a Spanish-languagereporter to ask the President at a news event today whether it wasappropriate for Los Angeles contributors to make out checks to apolitical party in El Salvador. The President responded by saying hewas on a formal visit to the city as President, not a fundraising trip.
At the theater today, people were lining up to enter the theater beforethe ARENA benefit concert began and got to see a large collection ofbanners almost immediately in front of them. Two huge banners, withbeautiful images of Archbishop Oscar Romero, read: Monsenor Romero,asesinado por orden de Roberto D'Buisson, fundador del partido ARENA."
A CISPES banner read, "SACA & AVILA MEANS MORE POVERTY AND MORE REPRESSION."
Reactionfrom theater-goers was not hostile. They stared and a few walked overto talk with protesters. Clearly it was not totally a militant ARENAcrowd but some who had come, at $50 a ticket, to hear singer AlvaroTorres, a well-known right-wing entertainer.
Television and still photographers covered the protest well. Later tonight we expect the Los Angeles page of Indymedia
tohave photos of the protest. Indymedia sent a highly respectedphotographer to the event who took scores of photos. We will post thewebsite for those pictures later tonight.
The protest was calledby, and well-attended by, a large cross-section of Salvadoran groups aswell as solidarity organizations and peace activists.
April 5
A loud and militant crowd of protesters dominated all four corners of the Vermont Avenue and Ninth Street intersection at noon today in Los Angeles, focusing their chants and outrage