Salvadoran Students Hurl Rocks, Insults at Duarte

SAN SALVADOR —  Students and university employees on Tuesday threw rocks and yelled “Assassin!” as cars carried President Jose Napoleon Duarte and his aides through the University of El Salvador campus.

The cars were undamaged. Duarte said the students have a long tradition of protest and that “one must be tolerant.”

The demonstration began as Duarte, a civil engineer, was concluding an inspection of damage from the earthquake that rocked the capital on Oct. 10. Twenty-one university buildings were damaged and will need repairs expected to cost about $1 million.

Some signs, hung at the campus gates before the president arrived, demanded that the university’s budget be increased.

Message to President

Another sign read: “Engineer Duarte, the workers of the university repudiate your visit to the campus, because you are responsible for the repression against the university.”

A crowd of about 500 students and workers gathered as Duarte began speaking to university officials at a brief outdoor meeting.

“I have come here as I have gone all over, to see the condition of each building with the goal of personally understanding,” Duarte said.

Then, hearing the shouts of some of the protesters, Duarte said: “One must understand the expressions and wishes of the students. . . . One must be tolerant.”

Then he told the demonstrators: “I respect you, and you have the right to express yourselves. If you have been doing this in the streets for 50 years to fight against dictatorship, I think you have the right to express yourselves in the university.”

Troops Occupied Campus

Soldiers occupied the university for four years, beginning in 1980, after the government accused it of being “a sanctuary of subversion.” The troops were removed in 1984, the year Duarte was elected president.

Some of the protesters on Tuesday said that Duarte’s visit was a propaganda effort. One student said that Duarte and his government “have shown themselves incapable of solving the country’s socioeconomic problems, especially the problem of the war.”

More than 60,000 people, most of them civilians, have died in nearly seven years of civil war between leftist rebels and the government.