On Saturday students at the University of El Salvador (UES) participated in a commemorization of the July 30, 1975, massacre.  Students have demonstrated every year on this date since 1975.  Twelve students were killed and more than twenty disappeared when the now disbanded National Guard put down a demostration in 1975.

 

 

Archbishop Fernando Sáenz stated today that he was oppsed to sending the fifth contingent of Salvadoran troops to Iraq.  On Thursday the Legislative Assembly approved sending a fifth contingent of 380 soldiers.  Two soldiers have laready died in Iraq.

 

The archbishop also challenged the government to improve employment opportunities in El Salvador in the face of the just approved CAFTA.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement early this morning, overcoming objections by unions, sugar producers and textile makers in what was the most contentious trade fight in Congress in more than a decade. The vote was 217-215 in favor of Cafta, Bloomberg notes. And with only a minor procedural step in the Senate ahead, it effectively completes a yearlong battle for U.S. ratification of the pact. Only 15 of the 202 Democrats in the House voted for the measure, a record low for a trade agreement. While Democrats objected to Cafta because of what they characterized as weak labor provisions, many in the party used the legislation to show dissatisfaction with President Bush's trade policies, Bloomberg says.

With Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appealing personally to holdout Republicans, the House argued over the pact late into the night. It is aimed at reducing trade barriers among the U.S. and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. The White House's difficulty in selling Cafta -- a deal with six countries that collectively export to the U.S. in a year roughly what Mexico exports every five weeks -- reflected not just Democratic opposition but what The Wall Street Journal calls broader trepidation about globalization among politicians and their constituents.

By NEIL KING JR. in Washington, SCOTT MILLER in Geneva and JOHN LYONS in Mexico City
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 29, 2005; Page A1

Congressional approval of a trade pact with six small Central American countries nudged forward the Bush administration's free-trade agenda. But the close vote and bitter fight underscored anxiety about the pace of globalization and clouded prospects for approval of future deals.

The 217-215 House approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement early yesterday was a clear relief to proponents of continuing the post-World War II trend toward lower trade barriers...

With scant progress in those areas, the close call with Cafta raised doubts around the world about the willingness of the U.S. Congress to take the politically painful steps that are sure to be part of any future trade deals. It may also encourage the move in other countries, particularly in Asia, to form free-trade zones that exclude the U.S.

After all, the six Cafta countries -- Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic -- are economically insignificant in a global sense, exporting to the U.S. in a year what China exports to the U.S. in a month.

 By MIRIAM JORDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 20, 2005; Page A1

LOS ANGELES -- In the late 1960s, Mexican peasant Hector Lara successfully crossed the U.S. border on his third try and arrived here as a penniless illegal immigrant. Mr. Lara worked long hours at a variety of jobs -- from manufacturing to yard work -- to support the wife and four children who later joined him from Mexico's Jalisco state. Like millions of immigrants before and since, the Lara family took its place on the bottom rung of the U.S. economy.

More than 35 years later, each of the Lara children -- including a fifth child born in the U.S. -- has earned a degree from a higher-education institution in the U.S. Three earn six-figure salaries.

"We're all very comfortable," says Alejandro Lara, a 33-year-old investment banker who drives a BMW. He has a college degree from the University of California, Berkeley, a master's from Harvard and an M.B.A. from UCLA. Even his parents have joined the middle class: They bought two houses, now worth $800,000, with money earned during the 1970s when the senior Mr. Lara operated a forklift at a record factory and his wife, Elvira, stitched hems at a drapery maker.

The Laras' rise may be more typical than many people imagine when they see the flood of Mexican immigrants arriving here to take menial jobs. A growing body of research suggests that the children of these immigrants have made big strides in education, the ticket to upward mobility, and have often moved beyond the poverty of their parents. "The success of immigrants' children is key to measuring the long-term costs and benefits of immigration," says David Card, an economist at UC Berkeley. He published a paper in January that concludes children of even the least-educated immigrant groups close most of the education gap with natives.

 

 

The ambassador and Mrs. Barclay at the Fourth

of July party he threw for 200 close friends.

 

The guests enjoy some fireworks.