The protests, strikes and road blocks in South America are too much!

I get frustrated living here because there are too many strikes, road blocks and protests. I fully believe people should exercise their right to protest and voice their dissent and opinions freely, but there are so many ways to voice an opinion and make yourself heard. In South America there is very little creativity in this regard. It's just the same protest after protest after protest.

The marches are ho-hum. Strikes and roadblocks are the worst. That's when I feel their opinions are being imposed on me. Because they shut down the whole city, nothing opens, there is no transportation, and I'm forced to stay home from work and "be on strike" like everyone else, even if I don't agree with their point of view. To me, a protest should not be imposed upon the general public because that's NOT DEMOCRATIC.

The same goes for the incessant road blocks. This disrupts everyone, causes companies to lose millions when their trucks full of produce are stuck on the roads, causes prices to rise in the markets and stores because food and other products don't arrive to the cities, affects innocent travelers, gives tourists something negative to talk about the country when they return home, scares investors away, etc.

What I really don't understand about the roadblocks is why they destroy the roads. They burn tires and spew horrible poisonous smoke into the environment, chop down trees, and destroy portions of the roads. So my thought on that is that the governments will have to spend a ton of money fixing the roads - instead of using that money on programs for the poor. Who did they think would pay for all the damage they cause?

The governments don't fine them when they damage the roads, no one pays the travelers who lose their money and and whose travel plans were destroyed (and they sometimes have no food to eat), no one pays the companies that lose millions when their produce rots (maybe they just haven't considered that they could sue the protesters for that?) Who pays for all the damage they cause?

My gosh, you can't plan anything in these countries. It's no wonder they don't advance. The very people who are constantly protesting their poverty in these ways are helping to cause it.

The other problem is that they don't realize that doing the same thing over and over again is just not effective. Protests and marches happen so often we're bored of them and no longer even stop to ask what they are about, much less support them. The governments don't even take them seriously any more half the time.

Really, you just can't get the public to support you if you inconvenience them and annoy them all the time. There must be other more peaceful, less damaging, less annoying, and more creative ways to voice an opinion.