[act-ma] 7/13: El Salvador Victory Tour comes to Boston! 7pm @ Encuentro5

[boscispes at speakeasy.net]

The People¹s Triumph in El Salvador is REAL!

 In honor of this historic shift, Boston CISPES invites you to a very
special event of the 2009 Victory Tour...


Platform, Strategy & Challenges of the New Left Government in El Salvador

Featuring Breny Massiel Herrera
-Representative of the new FMLN government (Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front) & Leader of the FMLN¹s Women¹s Secretariat

Monday, July 13th at 7:00pm
Encuentro5: 33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor
Chinatown (Boston), 02111
[near Chinatown & Downtown Crossing T-stops]
For more event information, contact Boston CISPES: (617) 576-1709 /
boscispes at speakeasy.net

Celebrate the Triumph of Democracy in El Salvador!
After centuries of violent inequality and repression, a dozen years of armed
struggle against a brutal, U.S.-backed military, and two decades of rule by
the right-wing ARENA party, the Salvadoran people elected the first leftist
president in their country¹s history on March 15th, 2009.
    President Mauricio Funes of the FMLN took office on June 1st, bringing
El Salvador into a growing community of Latin American nations seeking to
chart their own, independent economic and political course.  Join CISPES to
learn about the platform, plans, and strategy of the new FMLN government...

...And what WE can do in the U.S. to support the strengthening of REAL
democracy in El Salvador!

Speakers  Bio:
In 2005, Ms Herrera worked in the area of communications for the San
Salvador mayoral campaign of Dr. Violeta Menjívar.  She was named Chief of
Gender Policy in Dr. Menjívar¹s municipal government and served in this
position from 2006-2009.

Breny Massiel Herrera became active in the FMLN¹s National Women¹s
Secretariat in 2006 and is now part of the coordination.  The Women's
Secretariat has the primary objective of developing and strengthening female
leadership within the party.  The FMLN is the only political party in the
country with a gender policy and the Women's Secretariat advises on the
content and implementation of the policy.  As part of the coordination, Ms.
Herrera organizes and conducts workshops for women holding office and
organizing for the FMLN.

The Women's Secretariat also played an instrumental role in the 2009
legislative, municipal, and presidential elections in El Salvador.   Ms.
Herrera organized Women's Brigades that went door to door and visited
maquilas (sweatshop textile factories) to educate women on election issues
and the 20 years of failed policy towards women that the right-wing ARENA
party had carried out.  Ms. Herrera was also the sub-Chief of a Voting
Center in San Salvador, organizing all of the FMLN poll workers at the
center.

She also founded a feminist organization named for her mother Norma Virginia
Guirola de Herrera, who was murdered by the Salvadoran Army on November 11,
1989, and is a member of the Women¹s Institute for Training, Research, and
Development (IMU), which her mother founded in 1986.  Ms. Herrera is
currently coordinating a project for the United Nation's UNIFEM to implement
a program of prevention of violence against women and children in El
Salvador.

Ms. Herrera will be touring the East Coast and Midwest of the United States
from July 5-19 (visiting Boston, New York, Washington DC, Chicago, and
Minneapolis) to share the story of the FMLN's victory in the 2009
presidential elections.  She will speak about the broad coalition of unions,
feminists, and students that came together with the FMLN to oust 20 years of
extreme right-wing rule in El Salvador.  She will provide a first hand
account of how the people mobilized and organized to overcome a dirty fear
campaign backed up by the threats of US Republican Congressional
Representatives and defend their votes against an institutionalized system
of electoral fraud.