The Americas

Honduran bosses murder trade unionists as thousands strike against coup

Thousands of workers are now on strike against the right-wing coup which deposed Honduran president Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales on 28 June. Meanwhile, the coup regime has suspended civil liberties, attacked workers' organisations and sponsored the murder of political opponents, including two prominent trade unionists. All of Honduras' unions have opposed the coup. Teachers, hospital workers, taxi drivers and airport workers seem to be the core of the resistance. They have been joined by, amongst others, Chiquita banana workers, who gave up a day's pay to participate in national strike action...

Striking Chilean miners need solidarity!

103 miners from Tambillo, a small mining village in the region of Coquimbo in Chile, have been on official strike since May 1st. By the middle of August they had been out for over 100 days without pay in the longest strike in Chile since the restoration of democracy in 1990. The pit is owned by one of the largest capitalists in Chile, Francisco Javier Errazuriz, a well known Pinochet supporter, anti-union right winger. As well as the Tambillo mine Errazuriz owns a chain of super markets called Unimarc and Errazuriz wines, which are sold worldwide. Miners are calling for a boycott of all of...

Honduran coup

Protests have been organised around the world to demand the reinstatement as president of Honduras of Manuel (Mel) Zelaya, ousted in a coup on 28 June. A protest outside the Honduran embassy in London on 29 June drew about 50, many of them from the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, and from Unite union’s south-east regional office. Zelaya, although from the neoliberal Liberal Party, has angered the establishment in Honduras by supporting measures to alleviate poverty. Honduras ranks 117th in the world on the Human Development Index (HDI), while, by comparison, Costa Rica ranks 42nd, Mexico 55th...

Coup in Honduras

This is a useful analysis of the coup in Honduras, from the Solidarity (US) website - publishers of Against the Current.

http://www.solidarity-us.org/hondurascoup

The First Latin American Coup on Obama's Watch
- by Dan La Botz, June 28

The Honduran military overthrew and exiled President...

World News in Brief

Japan Thousands of workers have rallied in Tokyo demanding job security and wage rises. Japan’s economy is in its worst condition for three decades, with several large firms announcing job losses. The rally, organised by the Japanese equivalent of the TUC, represents a markedly different approach to that taken by many union leaders in the UK (such as those of the GMB and USDAW) who have meekly accepted job losses and have reduced the union’s role to that of mitigating the impact of forced redundancies. Banners on the Japanese rally included slogans such as “never let workers get fired”...

Workers of the world: Guadeloupe, Israel, United States

GUADELOUPE: The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe has been rocked by a general strike — a total shut-down of shops, supermarkets, schools and public services. A demonstration on 24 January saw 25,000 workers take to the streets; an equivalent demonstration in Britain would comprise over 3,000,000 protestors. The UGTG (General Union of Guadeloupean Workers) has led the strike, along with nearly fifty other working-class organisations which have cohered into “The Committee Against Extreme Exploitation”. Guadeloupe is officially an overseas territory of the French Republic, although it...

Che Guevara: the politics behind the icon

Who was Che Guevara? Ernesto Guevara was born in 1928 to middle class parents in Argentina. He studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires and after qualifying as a doctor travelled through Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Columbia and Venezuela in 1953 – recorded in his Motorcycle Diaries. In 1954 Guevara was in Guatemala when a CIA-backed coup overthrew the reforming Arbenz government, which turned him towards political activity. In 1954, he moved to Mexico City, where he met Fidel Castro and joined the July 26 Movement. It was at this time he acquired the nickname Che, meaning mate. In 1956...

Good news - Pinochet is dead

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.

I demonstrated against him when he was briefly detained here a few years ago...

Latin America: a revolution for women?

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. The continuing centrality of Catholic culture to all of South America is important when we consider the “women’s liberation” carried out under governments like the Sandinistas and Chávez, reinforcing the traditional role of women while glorifying...

Ortega wins Nicaraguan elections

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. Ortega won 38% of the vote, the two right wing candidates Eduardo Montealegre (National Liberal Alliance, ALN) and José Rizo (Constitutional Liberal Party, PLC) got 29% and 26% respectively. Edmundo Jarquín from the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) got over 6% and another former Sandinista Eden Pastora 0.27%. National Assembly elections were also held, with the FSLN...

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