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Latin American trade unionists tour in Boston

In the first stop of a two-week tour that will take them to 12 cities from coast to coast, Colombian Oscar Gustavo Penagos Ortiz and Nicaraguan Fredy Franco, both trade union leaders, met with unionists and community leaders in Brockton, Chelsea, Charlestown and Boston.

Progressive prelate and school bus driver union officials greet unionists from Colombia, Nicaragua. WW photos: Stevan Kirshbaum

Penagos Ortiz is a sociologist and a lawyer and a union director with the Bogotá, Colombia, Sintratelefonos telephone workers union. He has defended people whose human rights have been grossly violated through massive detentions.

Fredy Franco is a sociologist and historian and is the general secretary of the Federation of Educational Professionals of Higher Education of Nicaragua. (FEPDES).

The delegation was welcomed Sept. 30 at the Saint Martin de Porres Church in Brockton—a center of the movement for immigrant rights and social justice—by Bishop Felipe Teixeira OFSJC, a delegation of USW 8751 officials and International Action Center (IAC) members.

An 8:30 a.m. meeting at the Chelsea Collaborative, an immigrant organizing project in the community with the largest immigrant population in the Boston area, kicked off the next day’s tour. The meeting was facilitated by Tony Hernandez, organizer for District 65, Painters and Allied Trades, AFL-CIO and chaired by Gladys Vega, director of the Chelsea Collaborative.

City Councilor Chuck Turner second from left.

Vega described efforts of the Chelsea Collaborative for immigrant rights and against police brutality, including organizing May Day demonstrations. The two visitors called for workers’ solidarity from Alaska to Argentina. Franco spoke of the progressive political direction developing in Latin America from Cuba to Venezuela to Bolivia and including Ecuador, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile. He called for workers, unionized, unorganized, and in community organizations to unite, “look to the South” and stand united against imperialism, neoliberalism and colonialism in the Americas.

Penagos discussed the failure of the neoliberal ALCA project of U.S. imperialism for a “Free Trade Agreement of the Americas” and of the success of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America spearheaded from Venezuela. Under ALBA, progressive regional cooperation and collaboration is promoting social justice and equality and upholding sovereignty against the onslaughts of imperialist neoliberal globalization.

At the Charlestown School Bus Yard, the delegation joined a yard meeting with the USW 8751 workers. Union President Frantz Mendes and Charlestown Chief Steward Andre Francois facilitated the meeting, which de-facto took over the company’s bus yard. As bosses scurried away to hide in their offices, the delegation addressed the rank-and-file drivers in front of a Workers World Party banner reading in English and Spanish, “Globalize workers’ solidarity.”

To an attentive audience of drivers, the guests described the progressive collaboration among Latin American nations in a project spearheaded by Cuban doctors to provide eyesight-saving surgery for tens of thousands of workers throughout the continent. They discussed the economic collapse of capitalism and how the progressive governments of Latin America are working toward a different model focusing on the needs of working people. Penagos called for workers’ solidarity against the assassinations of trade union leaders in Colombia.

Later the Team Unity—Boston’s city councilors of color—hosted a reception for the tour at City Hall. City councilors Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey and Councilor Sam Yoon’s staff plus other staff members were there. The unionists spoke of the exciting social progress being made in Latin America. They also described the human-rights challenges caused as U.S. imperialism and the local reactionary oligarchies try to defeat and turn back that progress through attempted coups and the murders of trade union leaders in Colombia, including 45 so far this year alone.

Penagos Ortiz described the attack on his union, the telephone workers union, through the Colombian government’s efforts to privatize phone service. This was an effort, he said, to throw the gains and protections of the unionized workers out the window. The councilors agreed to develop a resolution condemning both the killings of trade unionists and the effort to privatize the phone service and submit it to the Boston City Council for approval.

Later that afternoon, the delegation observed a local rally for immigrant rights calling for an end to ICE raids.

That evening the delegation participated in an IAC organizers’ meeting and forum in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Members of the July 26 Coalition and of the New England Human Rights for Haiti group also participated in the meeting. The unionists shared information and strategies with activists engaged in the struggle against the bailout of the banks and the call for a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.

Accompanying the tour were Detroit activists Ignacio Meneses of the UAW and Cheryl LaBash, co-coordinators of the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, the tour organizer.