WORLD WORLDWIDE URUGUAY News Journal Update - (en) Uruguay, FAU: Opinion letter / May of struggle 2023 - THE FIGHT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND OTHER WATERS (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Second post-pandemic march, the Uruguayan people take to the streets to demand

the truth, concrete actions with all the repressors who participated in the
savage human rights violations, and point to an institution -the Armed Forces- as
responsible for State terrorism. Also point out the civilians who participated in
the dictatorship and those who sheltered impunity throughout this period. Point
out the parties that claim what was done in the dictatorship and the repressors.
Cabildo Abierto, the centers of ex-officers of the Armed Forces, the Sanguinetti,
those who kept silent all this time, those who helped the rise of the Tenientes
de Artigas and Manini Lodge in not so distant dates.... All of them have
safeguarded impunity. Everyone, for one reason or another, defended oblivion,
defended atrocious repressive methods. They defend the rapists, kidnappers of
children, those who murdered our compañeros and compañeras. They defend those who
murdered the best sons of the town.

It is also a time to vindicate our colleagues and their militancy. Union,
neighborhood, and student militants participated in direct action at all levels,
participated in hundreds of conflicts and solidarity actions of various kinds.
They risked their lives for a better world, for Socialism and Freedom. All of
them, beyond their ideological conceptions and the political organizations they
were part of, are an example of unyielding struggle, resistance and life.

The coup leaders and their accomplices continue to disappear them, hiding the
facts and information. They elude and block any attempt to make judicial
progress, no matter how tepid it may be. The pact of silence that they maintain
is still impenetrable. That is what that hateful institution that is the Armed
Forces produces: murderers with impunity and concealers for their "comrades in
arms." Those armed forces can only make war on the people, that's what they are
for. They are the reinsurance of bourgeois power. And the bourgeoisie used those
armed forces when the people took the leading role in the fight for a different
society. They disappeared, tortured, imprisoned, kidnapped children, raped,
forced thousands into exile.

The consequences of the civic-military dictatorship

What happened during the dictatorship is in force as long as there is impunity
and the armed forces remain in this country. Armed Forces that are not necessary
or serve to defend the territory, only to take large resources from the people.
Between its budget and the Military Fund, they take well over 1000 million
dollars a year (the equivalent of approximately 20,000 homes and would allow
solving the water problem, for example).

Impunity is State policy and it is not touched. Except for some investigated
cases, some remains that have appeared - all of which is important in many ways -
hardly any progress has been made and some of the most notorious repressors have
been persecuted more vigorously by the judiciary of foreign countries than by the
Uruguayan state.

Pact of the Naval Club, Sanguinetti's first government, impunity law and from
then on silence, broken only by the persistent struggle of human rights and
popular organizations in general. As of today, there are hundreds of
demonstrations to rescue life and the struggle of compañeras and compañeros in
different spheres and hundreds of tributes travel the country, rescuing from
oblivion the struggle of those who were taken away by the class enemy and his
devices.

"The theory of the two demons" returns to the table, in the voice of Manini Ríos,
but also of Sanguinetti, a true builder of impunity and the model of the country
we live in today. There was no war here, in any case, the war of the armed forces
was against the people, as our Organization denounced before the coup d'état of 1973.

But the consequences not only refer to the field of human rights and impunity, to
State terrorism. Also to the "white glove thieves" who became rich during the
dictatorship with fat businesses. It includes all the fascists who continued
their activities in "democracy", as well as many torturers. But we also see the
consequences and we live today in conceptions that are gaining strength again:
anti-left or "anti-communist" speeches, clearly fascist speeches and calling for
order, a heavy hand and accusing the "left" of destabilizing...

The dictatorship also disciplined a good part of the left. He convinced her to
follow the legal, parliamentary paths, move "the fight" there, gradually
abandoning the streets and popular organizations. This has a very high cost
today, with the growth of the right and of more extreme groups and all their
discourse, which begins to populate public debates and generate a certain
dangerous "common sense", since these ideas are circulating at a social level in
a more espacious.

The system has worked for that. It has installed a strong "anti-poor" discourse
based on police chronicles. A long job that takes close to 30 years of patient
work on a daily basis, generating a climate of constant insecurity, creating a
"monstrous enemy": the poor who steal or violate the same illegalities as the
bourgeoisie on a daily basis, but in a very small proportion compared to the
ruling classes.

At the same time, prisons are overcrowded with people who are not going to be
"rehabilitated", since prisons are not centers for rehabilitation but for the
generation of higher levels of illegality. 15 thousand prisoners saturate the
prisons and there are no real solutions to this problem.

Without a doubt, one of the main consequences of the dictatorship is the
implementation of this economic model, which generates misery and hunger. The
wage loss that has not been recovered to this day -since before the
dictatorship-, the growth in extension and in the number of cantegriles and
settlements, of children below the poverty line, the reduction of the education
budget, the dismantling of the industrial apparatus and the consequent loss of
jobs. We are experiencing all these effects today.

salt water

This May 20 is framed in another set of issues, of a whole policy that is
advancing at a steady pace, some of them are long-term, and of which we are
already experiencing their effects. At the beginning of May the water situation
broke out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area. The OSE board of directors
approved by majority that the water from the Santa Lucía River would be taken
from a place closer to the Río de la Plata, thus doubling the amount of sodium in
the water and of chloride. This is harmful to the human organism. It is not
drinking water that is coming out of the Montevidean taps. This situation is the
product of the productive model that has been deployed for more than 35 years.
Since the approval of the Forest Law in 1987, more than 1 million hectares have
been forested in the country, with the consequent consumption of water by the
trees, absorption of rainwater and even groundwater. Trees that are raw material
for the cellulose industry, which has recently inaugurated its third mega plant
in the country. The start-up of UPM 2 coincides in time with the lack of water in
Montevideo.

Something similar can be said of soybean crops (another million hectares) and the
use of pesticides, contaminating the soil and water. The implementation of the
irrigation law has generated a large number of private reservoirs that are drying
up rivers or reducing their flow, added to all of the above.

It is that the productive model has placed natural resources or goods at the
service of large producers and multinational companies. Big capital is plundering
resources -for free- but earning millions with exported products (soybeans, pulp,
meat). Drinking water, a fundamental good for life, is being denied to the
population, since OSE supplies today it is water that is not in a condition to be
consumed by the population. "It is not potable, but it is drinkable and
consumable" as the Minister of the Environment said, it is nonsense or mockery.

The constitutional reform approved in 2004, which places water as a fundamental
human resource and the protection of the environment, is not only being violated,
but has never been implemented.

The truth is that this policy contrary to the "natural country" that they so
often proclaimed can lead us to a catastrophe of unthinkable social and
ecological dimensions. Those from above are ecocidal, they endanger human life
and they have no qualms about it, since they live in private neighborhoods, far
from the town and with all the resources to have a good life.

You have to think about the medium and long term, in addition to solving the
drinking water supply immediately. It is necessary to rethink the productive
model - which also excludes workers since it uses little labor - and contaminates
the entire territory. The debate on food sovereignty must be placed at the
center; Today Uruguay produces soybeans to feed pigs in China, when here there
are more than 350,000 Uruguayans who do not have food insured on a daily basis. A
model of total inequality. In three years (between 2019 and 2022), 1 billion
dollars went from the popular sectors to the ruling classes, through a pandemic.

It is the water and it is the land, it is the possibility or not of a decent life
that is at stake. It is the deployment of the capitalist system at this stage in
Uruguay, it is not just a bad policy of OSE -which it is-, but the issue is
deeper. It is the development of big capital at the expense of people's lives.

It is necessary to mobilize in an organized way, that all social organizations
take up the issue and call to go to the streets, to different types of
demonstrations and activities in defense of water and life, against the system of
death and its looting.

other waters

This government has stepped on the accelerator this year. He approved the
Education Reform and has already put it into practice, he approved the Social
Security Reform with the financial disaster that it will mean for the BPS, the
enormous number of people who will never be able to retire, the cut in retirement
calculations and the expansion of the profit of the multinational capital with
the AFAP., maintenance of the privileges to the military (when the 50 years of
the Coup d'état are fulfilled), among other situations.

As if that were not enough, in the same week several acts of violence occur in
study centers -some of them at least in a somewhat strange way- and without such
a hot climate in their surroundings. The press, in turn, did not amplify these
events as it does on other occasions, which is striking.

The government coalition is leaking everywhere. In addition to the discomfort
generated by the direct negotiation of the National Party with the Cabildo
Abierto on several of its proposals for the pension reform law, which had
generated a mini crisis because CA was not willing to vote on the law just like
that, was added the kick of the Colorado Party and also managed to place some
points of his own in the law. Approved by Deputies, it passed expressly for the
second time to the Senate and was approved. Everything goes into the bag as long
as the Reform is approved and the coalition maintains it. The negotiating power
of the National Party has already been demonstrated with the LUC, where it
included all the proposals, including those of the FA.

But in the first week of May, the government coalition suffered a strong shock:
the President asks the Cabildo Abierto for the resignation of Irene Moreira from
the Ministry of Housing for the delivery of homes at discretion. Corruption, of
the cheapest. CA held several meetings and two press conferences on the same day,
one to ask the President to review his decision - something he did not do - and
in the second to state that Moreira was going to Parliament. At no time did Irene
Moreira indicate that she accepted her resignation, ignoring the authority of the
President of the Republic within the bourgeois legal system, an authority to
which the ministers in this framework owe themselves. On the contrary, they made
it clear what lobbyists really are: coup plotters. Soul hitters.

Among lobbying ranks, the discussion involves whether or not to leave the
coalition. He succeeded in staying, for the moment, but stomping. It is probable
that in a short time they will withdraw from it. CA is not going to fight on two
fronts, it prioritizes attacking the FA and then it will see how it solves the
problems with its allies. But the coalition has been largely damaged. But the
truth is that CA now has a political centrality that it has struggled to achieve
throughout the period; for better or for worse we talk about them. And that is
propaganda.

If they remain within the coalition, they will do so with a more independent
profile. It is not surprising that this resignation request leaves resentment and
accounts receivable in the future. In any case, the coalition has already voted
everything it needed to in this period, practically. The law is missing to free
the "old men" murderers, a priority of CA.

The model deepens

Environmental looting is a deepening of the model, but also of the capitalist
system. It is the expression of said system at this stage. But it -and the
prevailing economic model- have been displaying a great economic adjustment,
similar to the one experienced in the '90s. New factory closures, now Ricard
(acquired a few years ago by the multinational Bimbo) and layoffs in the gas
sector, with the companies Acodike and Riogas, are added. There is also a
significant number of layoffs in private health. The policy of cuts is general
with the consequent increase in poverty and misery of the people.

As if that were not enough, Parliament approved the repeal of the ultraactivity
of collective agreements, therefore, the gains made are lost. With this, in fact,
it is the end of collective bargaining at this stage, except for some sectors
such as construction and some others. Times of widespread misery are coming and
of an immense loss of rights.

This is perhaps the icing on the cake of a series of strong bosses' advances.
They try to dismantle the conquered and the popular organizations, they attack
the interests of those below with a clear class bias. They exude hate to the
world below.

In the face of so much quietism...

The 50th anniversary of the coup d'état and the General Strike, with which the
trade union and popular movement responded to it, is being fulfilled. For fifteen
days the entire country was paralyzed. Not without controversy with the reformist
and conciliatory conceptions, but a long accumulation of experiences, knowledge
and struggles that had been in the country for more than a century was displayed
there. It was an extremely important event and it was the work of the people
themselves, woven for years, achieving massive participation. "If there is a
coup, there is a strike", it was said since 1964, since the founding of the CNT.
This decision of the unions, discussed and taken in thousands of assemblies
throughout the country, is one of the most emblematic processes of our class and
we must draw lessons from that period and from the firmness with which the coup
was faced. State,

The Uruguayan people were not quiet before 1973. Strikes, conflicts,
mobilizations, confrontations with repression, Prompt Security Measures in
various periods, murdered by that same repression, prisoners, generated an
important experience at the popular level. Each militant took his fighting
position, where he understood that he should be. Political militancy took on a
fundamental role because it was understood that a general strategy had to be
provided for the struggles of the moment. The fight was for a different society
and the Political Organization was central.

A long experience and journey that is important to rescue, because it can provide
us with clues for action at this time where despair and apathy reign, and the
lack of drive to fight the most conciliatory conceptions of the trade union movement.

Roll back the reforms that have been imposed, solve the problem of water and the
environment -at least in the most urgent-, achieve a certain distribution of
wealth that reduces hunger and misery; Let's say medium-term objectives, but they
can only be achieved with struggle and organization from below. The organized
people, with their accumulated experience, are the only ones that can stop this
dispossession and can build a different life.

It has been demonstrated that there is no possible shortcut, that through
institutional channels there is compromise and possibility, to govern for those
above. That is why it is necessary to get out of this moment of quietism and a
certain stupor before the steamroller on the right. Strengthen the popular
organizations, strengthen ourselves ideologically, go out into the streets and
take the necessary measures to fight. You have to move the gears and start moving
forward.

The disappeared are not just memory, they are a thorough fight and fight against
this system.

Cheers Pocho Mechoso, Adalberto Soba, Gerardo Gatti, Elena Quinteros and in their
name to so many who live in the people's struggle!!

PEOPLE IN THE STREET, GUARANTEE OF COMBAT AND ADVANCE!!

TO DEFEAT THE REGRESSIVE POLITICS OF THOSE FROM ABOVE!!

NEITHER FORGET NOR FORGIVENESS!!

URUGUAYAN ANARCHIST FEDERATION

http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/carta-opinion-mayo-de-lucha-2023/
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