Workers' Liberty

How on Earth would today's ultralefts react to this document by Trotsky. He advises a Bonapartist regime in Mexico how to best go about creating state capitalism! He argues for a toned down version of their proposals. He argues for the government to establish compromises with international capital, to establish joint ventures, not to cancel the Public Debt for fear of frighening of capitalist investors in the country, argues for compensation for expropraited capitalists on the same basis and so on.

Augusto Pinochet, the butcher of Chile is dead. Good. He overthrew an elected reformist government, murdered thousands of revolutionaries and militants and pioneered neoliberal austerity on the backs of Chilean workers.

By Rachel Ward

Last week Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega swept to victory in Nicaragua’s presidential elections, just days after a referendum banning all abortion in the country. Part of the reason for Ortega’s unequivocal opposition to all abortion has been his shift from a “communist” ideology towards the Catholic centre of Nicaraguan politics.

By Paul Hampton

Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) leader was re-elected president last week. But for all the flag waving, it’s clear that this is hardly a victory for the Nicaraguan working class.

Review of Tariq Ali, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pluto 2006

Tariq Ali is a prominent man of the left who long ago gave up on the working class movement and on socialism. As he expresses it in this book, it is no longer possible to be “a man of 1917” (p.3)

Brazil
By Michael Löwy
Brazil is one of the countries with the highest level of social inequality in the world. The country has been described as a sort of “Swiss India”, where the rich live as though in Switzerland, while the lives of the poor are similar to those of their counterparts in India.

By Mickey Conn

Over the last month, Chile has entered the stage of the social struggles sweeping Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of secondary students striking and occupying their schools.

The election of leftish governments in Latin America continues with the recent Presidential victories of Morales in Bolivia and Bachelet in Chile. Other left candidates are likely to win in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela this year.

Ricardo, Montevideo, Uraguay

I am 16, but not for much longer. My birthday is soon, although I have never received a birthday present in my life. I’ve been living on the street for the last six years.

Banana workers in Ecuador are continuing with strike action to defend their right to organise, in the teeth of repression.

David Broder reviews Machuca

Machuca is a Chilean film, on limited release in the UK, therefore I’ll depart with convention and tell you what happens at the end.

Thousands of Nicaraguan rural workers have been camping in front of the National Assembly for over two months to demand job security and justice for the victims of the pesticide Nemagon.

Evangelina Argueta comes from the Central General de Trabajadores in Honduras and co-ordinates a project to organise the workers in the maquilas — factories which assemble goods for export. The maquilas are found in Mexico and Central America. They offer cheap labour, few labour or environmental regulations and low taxes. Products include clothes, electronic products and car parts. In Honduras 127,000 workers are employed in this sector.

By Peter Tatchell*

Has the left lost the plot? On a number of issues sections of the left have abandoned the principles of universal human rights and social justice.

Over a number of years I have done solidarity work with Zimbabweans struggling for democracy, socialism and human rights. They have not had much support from the mainstream left.

Cathy Nugent reviews “Cocaine”, Channel Four, and “If… drugs were legal”, 12 January, BBC2

A round-up of international class struggle news

Bruce Robinson reviews The Motorcycle Diaries.

Washington Orellana, leader of the new port workers' association at Puerto Bolívar in Southern Ecuador, has been sentenced by a corrupt local judge to four months in prison.

His crime? To have been quoted in a local press article denouncing the unfair treatment by contracting companies in the port which failed to pay benefits due to workers!

By Rosalind Robson

On 11 September 1973 a bloody military coup in Chile ousted the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende. Allende was killed defending the Presidential Palace during the coup. Workers in the factories attempted to defend themselves against the military attacks - but they were not sufficiently organised or sufficiently armed. They went down to defeat.

• South Korea: a summer of discontent

• Free Brazilian landless workers!
• General strike in Chile
• Support locked-out Indonesian workers
• Protests at WTO Cancun, Mexico

• People's United Opposition Party launched in Indonesia

• Guatemalaen maquila workers' victory
• Victory in the Hyundai strike
• Sri Lankan trade unionists under attack
• Yao Fuxin and Xio Yunliang moved to labour camp
• Brazil pension reform sparks workers protest

by Pablo Velasco

• Peruvian unions defy state of emergency

• Zimbabwe opposition strikes
• Lula gets backing from right
• Class struggle in Israel
• Indonesian socialists to contest elections

The BJ&B factory in the Dominican Republic makes caps for Nike and Reebok and for colleges like Penn State and the University of North Carolina.

The factory, north of the capital, Santo Domingo and employing 1,600 people, has been a major focus for US students' campaigns against sweatshop labour. It is probably the largest factory among the free-trade zones of the Caribbean, Central America or Mexico to have been unionised.

Soyapa Melgar and Maria Luisa Regalado of the Honduran Women’s Collective, CODEMUH, will visit Britain in March.
Until 1992 Soyapa worked in a maquila—garment for export—factory. Since 2000 she has been involved in the Honduran Independent Monitoring Group, monitoring factories in northern Honduras that supply GAP.
Maria Luisa co-ordinates women’s campaigning.
More details from the Central American Women’s Network: cawn@gn.apc.org

Where there's oil...

By Gerry Byrne

"Where there's muck there's brass" used to be the slogan of manufacturing capitalists. You might equally say: "Where there's oil there's blood." With threatened war and continuing destabilisation in the Middle East, global capital wants to keep an eye on the next largest oil-producing region, Latin America.

• Felixstowe wage deal

• Rails strikes
• Airport strike
• the global picture:
  • Bermuda teachers' strike

  • Bush use 'anti-terrorism' to break strikes