UNITY IS STRENGHT

INTRODUCTION

This book has been produced in response to requests from trade unionists and others engaged in solidarity work with Latin America who felt that there was no adequate general survey of trade unions in Latin America to help them campaign within the British labour movement. In the future we hope to produce more detailed studies on unions in specific sectors but here the main aim is to explain why British workers should be concerned about the condition of the Latin American labour movement as a whole.

Why Latin America?

Why Latin America? It is, after all, thousands of miles away; it does not appear to suffer from starvation as badly as do the Horn of Africa, Kampuchea or the Indian subcontinent; there are no major wars nor well-publicised boatloads of refugees; and there are no obvious ties with Britain.

From time to time natural disasters, such as major earthquakes in Guatemala and Nicaragua, or events such as the Chilean coup or the World Cup in Argentina attract the interest of the media. But in general Latin America receives little attention and European workers are left with a vague and distorted picture. Not surprisingly, this lack of awareness has meant that, with the exception of Chile, there has been little interest in or action on Latin America. However, there are very good reasons why British trade unionists should show solidarity with Latin American workers.

Poverty

There is no doubt that workers and peasants in Latin America live in extreme poverty. Unemployment is chronic, wages are low and rates of inflation high. As a result malnutrition, high mortality rates, disease and all the features of severe impoverishment are widespread. Chapter One shows that natural causes have very little to do with this state of affairs. It is the direct result of a global economic system in which wealth and power have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of multinational corporations in alliance with local capitalists at the expense of working people. The social cost of this system is most acute in underdeveloped or neo-colonial countries but it is by no means confined to them. Workers in North America, Europe and Britain are exploited by the system too.

British Links

Multinational corporations exist precisely because capital must grow and move to wherever it can make the highest profits: production and investment are shifted to the neo-colonial countries where labour is cheap and often kept so at the point of a gun.

Many such corporations operate in Britain and a substantial number are based here. There are at least a hundred British firms in Brazil, half that number in both Argentina and Chile and many more throughout the rest of Latin America. These include major companies such as EMI, ICI, Brooke Bond, Dunlop, Lucas, BP, Pilkington, Rank Hovis MacDougall, Bowaters, Plessey and Lloyds. The number of companies based in Japan, Europe and the USA that operate in both Britain and Latin America is very much higher. Ford, for instance, which we associate with Dagenham and Halewood, has plants in Venezuela, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. In these cases British and Latin American workers are struggling against the same employer. Furthermore, British economic links with Latin America are growing, particularly in manufacturing industry, the sector which affects workers here most directly.

Repression and Chile

In September 1979 some 5,000 people turned out on the TUC demonstration in London in solidarity with the Chilean people on the sixth anniversary of General Pinochet's extreme right wing coup. They were demanding that the Conservative government, despite its obvious sympathies with the policies of the Pinochet regime, should not send an ambassador back to Santiago because of continuing repression in Chile. Many British trade unionists have been asked in branch meetings to aid fellow workers in Chile and in many cases this has gone beyond donations and messages of support. It has also included the 'adoption' of political prisoners, assistance for refugees, blacking and boycotting of goods and even the sending of union delegations to Chile to investigate conditions there.

The violent overthrow of President Allende's democratically elected socialist government in 1973 and the brutality of the repression that followed made such an impact on the European working class that it responded in a way not seen since the Spanish Civil War. No class conscious worker could fail to see the significance of the Chilean tragedy in which thousands died in order that the interests of big business be restored.

Every day basic human, democratic and trade union rights are violated throughout Latin America on a massive scale — workers' organisations and progressive forces are under constant attack. The Chilean coup was not an isolated event but part of a continuing offensive against the working class which began in earnest with the military takeover in Brazil in 1964 and continued with coups in Bolivia (1971), Uruguay (1973) and Argentina (1976). Military regimes also still prevail in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay, and although the seven-year dictatorship in Bolivia was brought to an end with elections in 1978 the threat of another coup in that country remains strong.

A Tradition of Struggle

The present bitter struggle of the Latin American working class against dictatorship and exploitation is not new. Although the history of this struggle differs from that of the European or North American working class, the Latin American labour movement has a long tradition.

In Argentina, for example, the origins of trade unionism stretch back to the days of the British Chartists in the mid-19th century. By the turn of the century trade union organisations of some sort had been established in many countries and, as in Europe, the years following the Russian Revolution saw widespread militancy in Latin America and a spate of strikes in the more industrialised countries of the subcontinent. Thus, gains similar to those made by workers in Europe and North America were being fought for by workers in Latin America at the same time; most have still to be won. Part Two outlines the history of these struggles for each country.

International Organisation

The development of international trade union organisations has done little to remedy this...