The General Strike of 1973 ---- 51 years ago thousands of factories,
workplaces, construction sites, were massively occupied by workers,students and the people as a whole before the consummation of the Coup
d'état, which had been brewing since 1968 step by step, even since the
coup rumors of 1964. The workers had a clear definition since the
founding of the CNT in that year: "if there is a coup, there is a
strike." This was what made it possible for, in a few hours on the cold
morning of June 27, countless workplaces to be occupied, even some
without prior union organization.
15 days of resistance, with factories occupied on several occasions,
evictions with brutal repression, decrees for mass dismissals and
arrests, lists of persecuted people, illegalization and closure of media
outlets. The dictatorship was greeted by the business chambers, the
banking association, the Rural Association and Federation and the
complacent press that was the official mouthpiece of the coup plotters
throughout the dictatorship.
Then came the repressive articulation in the region with Plan Condor,
under the aegis and coordination of the United States. Tens of thousands
of people disappeared, thousands of murders, children and babies
kidnapped. Horror at its finest. Prisons and barracks full of imprisoned
comrades. The myth of Uruguayan liberal democracy was definitively
destroyed, that "there is no Uruguay like" and the "country of
exception". Uruguay was just another country in the Latin American
concert, with its own characteristics and history, but it was not an
exception in the framework of the regional military dictatorships
orchestrated by the United States under the foreign policy of Henry
Kissinger and Richard Nixon.
12 years of civil-military dictatorship (because several civilians were
an important part of the dictatorial cast) shaped a country with
increasing poverty, unpayable foreign debt, factory closures,
deteriorating public health and education, and the gradual installation
of the neoliberal model that began to deepen in the 1990s.
Today: Lacalle Pou's government deepens the model and goes out to repress
Since Lacalle Pou took office, the focus of government measures has been
on the LUC. The main neoliberal and repressive reforms that were to be
implemented in this period were set out there. Social Security was left
out for separate and rapid treatment. But it was a large package, open
to negotiation with all parties.
The only thing that was not modified was the repressive chapter of the
LUC, there was no negotiation there. New "crimes" (illegalities, we
should say) and fields of police action were classified and thus the
repressive possibilities were increased.
In fact, in the last demonstrations, and as a result of this, the police
have been intervening and repressing. A notable case was the repression
of the workers of the Maritime Union, who were repressed at the doors of
the Ministry of Labour while they were negotiating a solution to a long
conflict. They have been unable to work for six months due to the
refusal of the Chamber of Fishing Shipowners to allow them to go out
fishing. The police repressed, beat and wounded more than 20 workers
with rubber bullets. The police are part of the armed apparatus of the
State; repression is their function.
Sea workers continue to fight with dignity. They maintain the conflict
and demand immediate solutions to be able to put food on their table.
Conflict that has as its background,
a fishing fleet that urgently needs to be renewed so that the sector can
continue to operate and work in adequate safety and hygiene conditions.
The demands are more than fair: to be able to work - and to lift the
employer lockout -, unemployment insurance for workers, a collective
agreement with decent wages, against seasonality and the concentration
of companies, subsidized retirement and for a salary increase. These
demands are what "warranted" the police repression.
This struggle continues, as no solutions have been found to this
conflict. The crux of the matter lies in the employers' determination
not to go fishing to defeat the union. But the union is not one to beat
the union with a poncho; organized workers defend their interests with
the measures they consider pertinent and remain firm in the fight.
The repression of sea workers is not an isolated incident. On May 1, the
police tried to repress the Cerro-Teja Column while it was marching to
the Workers' Convention, as it has done since 1983. There were several
police provocations and they even deployed a water cannon to intimidate
and try to disperse the mobilization. They were unable to repress it,
but it was the first intervention in recent times in mobilizations.
Days earlier, they repressed a protest by residents in the Santa
Catalina neighborhood following the arrests of two young men accused of
a crime that the entire neighborhood knows they did not commit. They
repressed with rubber bullets and water cannons. The next day, they
dispersed hundreds of young people in the Nuevo Centro with water
cannons and horses.
Activists were then arrested while putting up stickers for May 20 and in
preparation for other demonstrations. The police also mounted
intimidating operations to evict high schools occupied by students.
Let us recall the repression of the truckers' mobilization at the
entrance to the Port of Montevideo and the transport strike at the Tres
Cruces Terminal. The government has wanted to install repression and a
police climate of heavier patrols, more visible and present in the
streets. The pandemic got in the way of their plans in some sense and
they were unable to do so fully, although the presence was greater,
especially in the "agglomerations" during that period. But the truth is
that the strong police presence in the streets was noticeable since the
Lacalle Pou government took office, generalizing patrols, something that
the previous government carried out by saturating certain areas (the
"mega-operations").
Now, just a few months before the elections, they are playing this
repressive card and trying to consolidate it within the social dynamics.
The hypotheses can be varied: to show a heavy hand in the face of the
elections, to repress because there is a possibility that this
government will lose the elections, because of the campaign to collect
signatures and to succeed in putting a constitutional reform to a
plebiscite that endangers speculative capital in some way, or whatever
the reason(s) may be. But it would seem to be a longer-term policy and
not something merely temporary, taking into account also that no party
or candidate has declared that they will repeal the LUC, which enables
the greater deployment of this fetid institution. Something like,
installing repression as a political variable and in the social
functioning with greater firmness for this new stage of the capitalist
system in the Uruguayan social formation.
For all this, it is more than clear that no one from the popular field
can maintain that the police personnel should be organized in a union
and within the Convention, of the PITCNT. It is shameful to have the
repressors in the largest social and class organization in the country,
forged in the heat of hard struggles and controversies by the generation
of militants who later suffered the consequences of State Terrorism and
today many of them remain missing. Would that generation of militants
who suffered the harsh police repression in the streets have been
organized and sheltered in the CNT?
This institution cannot be reformed. It produces violence and violent
people towards those below. It is the same institution that murdered
Líber Arce, Susana Pintos, Heber Nieto (militant of FAU and ROE) and
many students and workers during the Pachecato. It is the same institution
which today produces many of the femicides, in a clear display of
violence throughout the social capillarity.
As if that were not enough, his "union" publicly supports the repression
of sea workers. Let us remember that his legal advisor was Andrés Ojeda,
currently a presidential candidate in the Colorado Party primaries.
They should never have been in the PITCNT, it's time to kick them out.
The economic situation
There is a lot of talk about salary levels, that they are in a similar
situation to 2019. The government presents this as an achievement, but
we must say that it is the consummation of a robbery and they justify
it. Salaries did not grow, they remained the same in real terms. That is
what the global indicators say, but if we study by income sectors or
each of the groups of salary councils, we will see that there are many
sectors of activity that do not even match the real salary of 2019.
There are more than 2 billion dollars of transfer from workers to
employers in this period.
But there is one piece of data that has been little discussed, it has
been hidden, and it is an important indicator of the economy: the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP). It has grown like never before, today it stands
at more than 77 billion dollars annually, after it fell during the
pandemic, but had an exponential recovery afterwards. In other words,
those at the top not only kept the transfer of wealth by way of
non-recovery of wages and increases lower than inflation, but they have
also pocketed more than 17 billion dollars in these last two years.
Where are those millions?
They are in the bank accounts of the country's largest companies and
multinationals: agro-exporters (slaughterhouses, livestock producers,
soybean producers and storage companies, agrochemicals, rice companies
and producers, forestry companies, etc.), banks, AFAPs, shipping
agencies, cellulose companies, among others.
However, for those at the bottom, there have been cuts in public health
and education, and there are no serious employment policies. On the
contrary, a large number of sources of work have closed, including
important companies. There are also no housing policies that address the
need for decent shelter. Rents are sky-high, equivalent to a salary, and
the number of homeless people is increasing. The night shelters are full
and countless people sleep night after night on the streets.
All of the above, which requires further analysis, is the responsibility
of all the governments that have passed: none of them have implemented
active policies to address these distressing problems of the population.
Therefore, they are systemic policies: there is a consensus that these
situations will not improve substantially; only as a mere palliative, as
a "relaxation" of these dramatic situations, but the structural aspects
are not addressed.
We therefore have a country with economic growth but concentrated in the
dominant sectors, with increasing poverty and marginalization. A country
where social distances are increasingly greater and we are not only
referring to the gap in income.
Social Security Plebiscite
In this context, in October the approval or not of a constitutional
reform promoted by the union movement, in which our militancy played an
essential role from the beginning, will be considered. This reform
defends Social Security as a benefit for workers, proposes maintaining
the retirement age at 60 years, equalizing minimum pensions to the
National Minimum Wage and eliminating the AFAPs.
Big capital is using all means to say that this reform is harmful to the
interests of workers, they brandish a battery of "studies" that
They affirm their statements. Even the Stock Market has come to the
fore. All of them are concerned with defending the "savings" that
workers have in the AFAPs. What they do not say is that the AFAPs
"gamble" away those "savings" in the investments they make, that when
the worker retires through the AFAP he receives ridiculous amounts (less
than 4 thousand pesos in many cases) and therefore, less than the
pension received through the BPS, that all that mass of "savings" is in
total a third of the country's GDP and is not invested in social
security or in other activities that benefit the population, only in
speculation that benefits big capital.
That is why there is work to be done in this area in the months that
remain. The proposal of the popular and union movement must triumph and
it is the task of all the militants. It is the necessary basis to be
able to continue reforming social security in a popular sense,
increasing employer contributions and equalizing them with those of the
worker and eliminating the Military Fund.
Because this is what the "consultants" and their thoughtful "analyses"
do not say. If the Military Fund is eliminated with all its privileges,
the BPS will no longer be "underfunded" as these bourgeois "analysts"
point out, and we will stop paying million-dollar pensions to the high
military command (Uruguay also has a number of military officers
disproportionate to the size of our country). It is sweeping away an
important legacy of the dictatorship, it is doing justice.
Needless to say, the fact that everything "contributed" to the AFAPs
from now on will go to the BPS will have a great impact and eliminate
this "underfunding" of the BPS. On the other hand, as established by the
reform, the amounts of the workers' accounts in the AFAPs will not be
touched, they will go to a trust that would manage them; what is
eliminated are the AFAPs and the profit.
In this struggle against big capital, in defence of decent pensions, to
avoid working ourselves to death, an effort is required from everyone:
workers, cooperative members, retirees, students, unemployed. We must
stop the plundering of those at the top. This, of course, cannot be
stopped with a plebiscite alone, but it is an important point at that
moment. If it succeeds, we must support what is resolved there with the
people in the streets. And if it is not approved, the struggle continues
and we will have to win it as the Uruguayan popular movement already
knows how to do.
Therefore, the only alternative is popular struggle, in the streets and
independently of class.
The coup plotters of yesterday want to continue the plundering today.
They want to step on the accelerator to impose their neoliberal policies
and that is why they are going out to repress. They have made a lot of
progress in this period, unfortunately. It is time to put on the brakes
and that brake is put on by fighting. It is time for those of us at the
bottom to take to the streets again and begin to discuss how we can go
deeper and go after what is ours, what belongs to us.
Therefore, 51 years after the business chambers and the US imposed a
fierce military dictatorship in our country, memory is necessary, but
also concrete action to defeat those at the top.
For all our fallen comrades, for all our missing comrades, for Gerardo
Gatti, Elena Quinteros, León Duarte, Alberto "Pocho" Mechoso, Telba
Juárez, Eduardo Chizzola, Adalberto "Plomito" Soba, Victoria Grisonas,
Roger Julien and so many others, we remain standing, fighting for a
different society.
NEITHER FORGET NOR FORGIVE!
LET'S STRENGTHEN THE POPULAR MOVEMENT!
UP WITH THOSE WHO FIGHT!
URUGUAYAN ANARCHIST FEDERATION
http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/carta-opinion-fau-junio-2024/
_________________________________________
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