Labor activists of many countries meet to discuss economic crisis

The Sixth Cuba/Venezuela/Mexico/North America Labor Conference opened here on Dec. 4 with an evening of solidarity with the Cuban Five, defenders of Cuba who are serving long sentences in U.S. jails.

The weekend conference, which brought together union militants and social justice activists from Latin America, the Philippines, Canada and the U.S., focused on how the international capitalist crisis is affecting workers, including those forced to migrate to imperialist countries for survival after their local economies are destroyed.

Panel on Freedom for the Cuban Five: Ignacio Meneses, Ramiro Hernandez, Alicia Jrapko, Silvia Garcia, Carmen Godinez, Judge Claudia Morcom. WW photo: Bob McCubbin

Ignacio Meneses from the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange opened the Saturday morning session with a reflection on revolutionary Cuba’s success, even during the darkest hours of the “special period” following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in maintaining its cordial relations with workers’ organizations all over the world and refusing to reduce the many beneficial social programs enjoyed by its people.

U.S., Puerto Rico

There was great interest in the challenges facing workers in the U.S. The first speaker on the morning panel was Larry Holmes, a leader of the Bail Out the People Movement, which is mobilizing unions and social activists to demand a real jobs or income program.

Holmes stressed the contributions of revolutionary Cuba to people of African descent in the U.S. and around the world. “No other people have played a stronger role in supporting Black people in the U.S.,” he noted. Holmes emphasized the seriousness of the economic crisis in the U.S. and stressed the need to be in the streets, to push the unions into action and to embrace the unemployed, immigrant workers and the poor.

Some of the international participants gather for a group picture. WW photo

José Rivera of the Frente Amplio de Solidaridad y Lucha of Puerto Rico reported with pride that Puerto Rican workers had expressed their solidarity with the Mexican electrical workers recently fired by Mexican President Vicente Calderón by holding a huge protest at the Mexican consulate in San Juan.

He also described attempts by Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortuño to impose neoliberal solutions for the economic crisis that include firing 30,000 workers. Some 50 organizations, including 18 unions, have responded to the call to fight back. Dramatic mass actions have included marches and the mass takeover of the San Juan banking district. “We are being called terrorists and they are threatening to use the Patriot Act against us,” Rivera said. The workers’ response, he suggested, must be a general strike.

Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia

Raymundo Navarro, director of foreign relations of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC), estimated that the U.S.-imposed blockade has cost Cuba $96 billion. Fierce hurricanes have caused $10 billion in damages. A third difficulty is the world economic crisis. Navarro said that Cubans appreciate the difference in tone of the new U.S. administration, but it still demands concessions on Cuba’s part. “We reject that,” he emphasized.

He enumerated six Cuban demands: the U.S. must lift the blockade, free the Cuban Five, eliminate Radio and TV Martí, stop financing internal subversion, return Guantánamo to Cuban control and repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act.

World market prices for nickel and sugar, important Cuban exports, are way down, while the prices of foods that Cuba must import are up. Nevertheless, “We graduated 186,000 students this year. We openly invite the imperialists and their bootlickers to find one student who didn’t get a job,” he concluded. Unemployment in Cuba is 1.8 percent despite the world economic crisis.

Representing the Venezuelan workers’ movement was union leader Rolando Semprún. He presented five Venezuelan baseball caps to Alicia Jrapko, director of the International Committee to Free the Five, asking that she pass them on to the five imprisoned Cuban heroes.

Semprún spoke of Venezuela’s countrywide literacy program undertaken with Cuba’s assistance, the national health program, also undertaken with Cuban help, the national agenda in favor of women, and the strong solidarity between the people and the military. He reminded the audience that the overriding U.S. goal is seizure of Venezuelan oil and other natural resources. He cited the U.S. military presence in neighboring Colombia and internal subversion financed by the U.S. as major threats.

A further problem is the continuing capitalist control of the major media. To get around this, there is strong government support for local, community-based media, mass use of inexpensive cell phones and a government-supported mass organization called Madres del Barrio of women in the working-class communities who do security and other community-based work.

Two Colombian labor leaders with the country’s national telephone union, Óscar Penagos Ortiz and Segundo Hernández Cañón, opened the next session. More than 3,800 union leaders and labor activists have been assassinated in Colombia since the mid 1980s.

Penagos explained how Colombian society is presently ruled by criminals. President Álvaro Uribe has been an open promoter of paramilitarism. The former chief of intelligence, now in prison, provided the paramilitaries with lists of progressives to kill. Drug trafficking and money laundering continue to be big business.

The present U.S./Colombia military treaty is an agreement between the world’s biggest drug producer and its biggest drug consumer. In addition to the use of seven new military bases, the treaty gives the U.S. control of Colombia’s telecommunications network. The Colombian military has, in fact, become an appendage of the Pentagon. One of the new airbases under the control of the U.S. is so huge that three aircraft can lift off at the same time.

Penagos proposed a May Day solidarity action by Venezuela and Ecuador on the border with Colombia where the imperialist puppets killed comandante Raúl Reyes. He asked for a conference resolution rejecting the new military bases.

Mexico, Honduras, Philippines

Representing the Frente Amplia de Izquierda Social de México, Gabriela Santos Romero stressed the need for national and international unity in support of the fired Mexican electrical workers.

The moderator for the third session on Saturday was Cheryl LaBash, a key organizer with the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange.

Carlos Mejía of the Frente Resistencia Hondureña pointed out that a mere 21 percent of Honduran voters participated in the recent sham election on Nov. 29. At least 661 people had been murdered before the election, and four of his comrades were seized and disappeared on election day. Mejía called for unity of all the anti-coup forces.

Celina Benítez of the Coalición por la Paz en Honduras witnessed the Honduran election at first hand. “We were in Honduras, in part, to report human rights violations. I was also there to speak with the people. My life and the lives of my comrades were threatened.” Benítez continued: “In the ‘80s I heard stories about El Salvador. Now I’ve seen it in Honduras.”

Kuusela Hilo, just returned from the Philippines, represented BAYAN-USA. She said that a Katrina-like situation exists there due to recent terrible natural disasters that have displaced more than 1 million people. Increased repression is being funded by U.S. imperialism, which views the Philippines, just as it does Colombia, as a strategic area and has poured in over $1 billion in military aid in the last 10 years. It also has troops permanently based there, in direct violation of Philippine sovereignty.

Hilo also spoke of a recent massacre in Maguindanao, in the south of the country, where 64 civilians including 30 journalists were killed, and urged organizations present at the conference to send statements to the Arroyo government demanding justice for the victims.

Clarence Thomas, speaking on behalf of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 and the Million Worker March Movement, urged that special attention be paid to the most oppressed workers, people of color and immigrants. He pointed out that support for May Day in the U.S. was reawakened by the most exploited sector of the working class, the immigrant workers. Labor, he insisted, must look beyond the scope of business unionism. The way forward for the working class, he emphasized, is for labor to become part of the vanguard for social justice.

Service Employees International Union Local 721 activist Luz Díaz noted that a Tijuana union leader had been kidnapped that very morning.

Cristina Vázquez of Workers United, which affiliated this year with SEIU, gave special acknowledgment to the unionists who had come to the conference from other countries at great expense and sacrifice and often danger.

Carmen Godinez of the CTC offered a short lesson on the history of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which aims to increase the independence of its member countries from the imperialist financial system. Created through the initiative of Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, it now counts nine nations of Latin America and the Caribbean as members.

The Mexican labor-community front FAIS submitted two resolutions that were signed by attendees, one supporting electrical workers expelled from the utility by the current government so it could privatize electrical generation, and another protesting the abduction of a member of the health care union affiliated with FAIS that was mentioned earlier by Luz Díaz.

Immigrant workers

The conference’s Sunday session focused on issues pertaining to immigrant workers and their struggles. Ben Prado, a leader of Unión del Barrio, asserted the right of Indigenous people, in particular the Mexican people, to retake the land now known as the U.S. Southwest. He denounced the racist U.S. policy of Manifest Destiny that was used to wrest total control of the North American continent from its former inhabitants.

Prado denounced the Democratic/Republican consensus in Washington, D.C., for super-exploitation of the most vulnerable workers. Migrating workers do the hardest work for the lowest pay.

Prado described the horrific character of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, where families are broken up and children become wards of the state. “This is state terrorism,” he emphasized. “The change that’s happening in Latin America will be our guide. The re-election of Evo Morales in Bolivia is cause for great optimism.”

Gloria Salcedo of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional paid tribute to Bert Corona, a great labor leader and organizer of immigrant workers, as someone who taught workers how to struggle. She asserted the urgent need for legalization of undocumented workers and urged organizing for May 1.

Teresa Gutierrez, representing the New York May 1 Coalition and the International Migrants’ Alliance, noted the worldwide character of the migration nightmare: an estimated 350,000,000 working class people have been forced to leave their homes, due both to economic pressures and the environmental changes that are producing what is coming to be known as “climate migration.”

“The only thing we can count on is mobilizing in the streets. We need to organize in a new way because there is a crisis and they are trying to divide us, get us to fight each other. We have to raise the war and the sham election in Honduras. Threats against Cuba and Venezuela must be raised as well as the potential destruction of the planet. One day May Day will be a worldwide strike!”

Joy de Guzman, representing the Global Council for International Migrants and the International League of Peoples Struggle, observed that, in common with all the peoples of Latin America, the Filipino people have a terrible historic legacy of colonization. “But really, it’s imperialism,” she noted. Filipino immigrant workers are scattered in 196 other countries and the remittances they send home constitute a very important part of the Filipino economy. “These workers face long hours, low wages, sexual abuse and all the other common features of super-exploitation. They need our help to challenge their exploitation.”

Martín López Ortiz, speaking for the Frente Amplia de Izquierda Social, announced an ambitious project, already underway, for a Latin American sanctuary for workers in the Mexican state of Michoacán. The sanctuary will run on an economy based on sharing rather than private profit. The workers of Michoacán will no longer have to cross borders to survive and the sanctuary will welcome all migrant workers as an alternative to forced immigration.

John Parker, Los Angeles organizer of the Bail Out the People Movement, spoke on the pressing issue of Black/Brown unity. “Superexploitation is an important basis for unity. Most immigrant workers maintain ties with family and friends in their home countries. Suppose the Spanish plans of colonial conquest had been revealed in advance to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. With modern communication, the situation for cooperation among workers of different nationalities is much more favorable today.

“Right now, U.S. imperialism has its eyes on Africa, in particular the newly discovered oil deposits off the coast of Ghana and around the Horn of Africa. Already under Obama there is more U.S. military activity in Africa, sometimes involving 30 nations at a time. So we need unity with Native, Asian, Latino/a and white workers.”

José González, representing the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, observed, “I am a stranger in my own land.” He came to the U.S. from Oaxaca, Mexico, out of necessity and was a farm worker for seven years. He recounted how hard crossing the border was. Referring to his co-panelist Ben Prado, he said, “I took Ben last month to meet my brothers living in a canyon.” He observed that what goes on in the agricultural fields is modern slavery. “We have a common enemy,” he concluded. “Capitalism!”

Sabrina Green of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal spoke on the very dangerous legal situation facing this globally recognized political prisoner.

It was a politically intense weekend. These profoundly serious deliberations set in many ways a minimum standard for the development of international workers’ councils, which are needed more with every day that global capitalism wreaks its havoc.