Making life miserable

I've learned a lot about El Salvador customs and traditions. For example when a group or organization has an agenda, they have very unique ways of expressing their opinions. Generally, the idea is to cause as much ruckus as possible in order to make everyone's life a living h-e-double-hockey-sticks. Thus, affecting as many people as possible and eventually making it onto the evening news.

A few months ago, a law was passed that allowed the police to arrest people with gang tattoos and keep them locked up for five eyars. Obviously, the gang members reacted negatively to this. As a result, they contacted all the bus companies and told them they weren't allowed to operate for 72 hours. The gangs told the bus companies that if they did operate during those 72 hours, they would kill the drivers. Of course, this strategy did exactly what the gangs wanted...it caused chaos and terror to the point of alerting the government. But, the government obviously wasn't going to bow down to the gangs and their demands. After 72 hours, the buses started running again and life went on. But for those three days, the country virtually shut down.

Today...more chaos. The bus companies have always received a subsidy from the government. This has kept the buses functioning at a rate the citizens can afford (25 cents a ride). Recently, the government announced that they plan to cut the subsidy. The bus companies got angry and said they were going to raise the rates (to 50 cents a ride). The government told the companies this was unacceptable. Today, the bus companies decided to show the government just how serious they are. All the city buses went on strike. Not only were they refusing to take on passengers (leaving millions of people without transporation), but they decided to congest traffic for those who dared to venture out with other means of transportation. The one and only highway connecting the suburbs to the center has three lanes of traffic. Today, the buses parked bumper to bumper in the right lane for miles and miles...severly afffecting the morning commute. Hugo's commute to work is usally about an hour. Today, it was over two hours. It wouldn't surprise me if the bus drivers moved their buses and parked them on the other side of the highway to affect the evening commute too. How ridiculous. I think the thing that irritated me the most was...the police just stood on the sidewalk, chatting. Like they were protecting the buses from vanals. Excuse me...I'm pretty sure the highway is a no parking zone. I got a $50 parking ticket and lost my license plates because we parked in a no parking zone for like thirty minutes. Why were the police just standing around?! Start towing those darn buses out of there!!