A History of Organized Labor in Panama and Central America

A History of Organized Labor in Panama and Central America A History of Organized Labor in Panama and Central America...

Author: Robert J. Alexander

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A History of Organized Labor in Panama and Central America

A History of Organized Labor in Panama and Central America ROBERT J. ALEXANDER With the collaboration of Eldon M. Parker

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alexander, Robert J. (Robert Jackson), 1918 Nov. 26A history of organized labor in Panama and Central America / Robert J. Alexander ; with the collaboration of Eldon M. Parker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978–0–275–97740–5 (alk. paper) 1. Labor unions—Central America—History—20th century. 2. Labor unions—Panama—History—20th century. I. Parker, Eldon M. II. Title. HD6537.A44 2008 331.8809728—dc22 2008010855 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2008 by Robert J. Alexander All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008010855 ISBN: 978–0–275–97740–5 First published in 2008 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10

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Copyright Acknowledgments “Costa Rica” by John A. Booth, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram. Copyright © 1987. Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT. Excerpts from Napoleón Morazán in Holm-Detlev Köhler and Manfred Wannöffel (coordinadores), Modelo Neoliberal y Sindicatos en América Latina. Fundación Friedrich Ebert, México, 1993, page 210. Reprinted with permission. Excerpts from Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985 by Deborah Levenson-Estrada. Copyright © 1994 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher, www.uncpress.unc.edu.

To Shanti Tangri

Contents

Preface Introduction 1 Organized Labor in Panama

ix 1 6

2 Costa Rican Organized Labor—Part I

33

3 Costa Rican Organized Labor—Part II

55

4 Organized Labor in Nicaragua

79

5 Organized Labor in Honduras before 1957

117

6 Organized Labor in Honduras after 1957

142

7 Organized Labor in El Salvador until the 1967 General Strike

160

8 Salvadoran Organized Labor after the 1967 General Strike

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9 Guatemalan Organized Labor before June 1954

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10 Guatemalan Organized Labor after June 1954

237

Bibliography

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Index

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Preface

My interest in the history of organized labor in Latin America was first aroused in the late 1930s, when I wrote an extensive term paper on the history of the Argentine labor movement for the course in Latin American history taught by Dr. Frank Tannenbaum at Columbia University. Similarly, my acquaintanceship with Central America was kindled when I did another paper for him on the United Fruit Company, paying special attention to that firm’s labor relations in the Central American nations within which it was then operating. A decade later, I was able for the first time to develop a personal acquaintance with the Latin American labor movements in two extensive trips: first to South America and the Caribbean in 1946–1947, and then to Central America and Mexico in the summer of 1948. On many subsequent trips to Central America in the next four decades, I was able to follow the development of organized labor in the countries of the region. The pages of this book will in part reflect these continuing contacts. During the 1950s and early 1960s, I was fortunate to work from time to time for Serafino Romualdi, the Latin American representative of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and then of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); and for Jay Lovestone, for long the foreign minister, so to speak, of the AFL and then of the AFL-CIO. Romualdi provided me with considerable original documentary material, whereas my trips to the area financed by Lovestone permitted me to maintain over a number of years ongoing personal contact with the Central American labor movements. I reported back to Lovestone on what I observed in the various countries, and some of these reports are cited in the pages of this book.

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Preface

Meanwhile, a number of other scholars have looked more or less closely at the organized workers’ movement in the various Central American republics. I have relied upon the works of these researchers to amplify my own direct knowledge of the subject, particularly for events in more recent decades when my personal contacts have been less extensive. This volume deals with the history of organized labor in the five countries of Central America and the Republic of Panama. If one glances at the map, Panama would seem to be part of Central America, but the Panamanians are loathe to include their nation in that grouping. Their country straddles the division between North America (of which Central America is geographically a part) and South America, which includes the southernmost segments of Panama. During most of the first century of the postcolonial era, Panama was part of what finally became the Republic of Colombia and so did not experience the kind of political struggles that characterized its five northern neighbors. Although after it gained independence from Colombia in 1903, its politics came increasingly to resemble those of the Central American republics, but the Panamanians still did not accept the idea of being part of Central America. With the Panama Canal, which cut through the middle of their nation and became the central element in their national economy, the Panamanians’ feeling that they were different from their northern neighbors was reinforced. In recent decades, they resisted all efforts to get them to become involved in the Central American Common Market, as well as efforts toward a move toward economic unity and possible political unification. Hence, the title of this book stresses that it is a history of organized labor in Panama and Central America, rather than of Panama as part of Central America. There is a seventh country lying between Mexico and the South American continent, the area roughly dealt with in this volume. That is Belize. It was until nearly the end of the twentieth century the only British colony in the region. Until shortly before it obtained independence in 1981, its contacts with the rest of Central America were limited and generally not overly friendly. It remains a part of the Commonwealth, and it has seemed more logical to include the history of the labor movement of Belize in a study of organized labor in the English-speaking West Indies rather than in the present volume. Like all authors, I owe many debts to people who have helped me gather the material that is brought together in these pages and to bring this book into existence. First, I certainly owe a great deal to the Central American trade union and political leaders, U.S. diplomats, and other people who, over the years, were willing to be interviewed by me, and thus provide me with essential information for a study such as this one, even though I am sure that none of them expected that what they told me would many years later be found recorded in a book on Central American labor history.

Preface

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Of course, without the help given me by the late Serafino Romualdi and Jay Lovestone, it would have been impossible for me to develop the personal contacts with the Central American labor movements that I was able to acquire. Although neither of them will be able to read these words, I must express my obligation to them in any case. I am also much obliged to Professor Thomas Walker for his enthusiastic acceptance of the ideas of bringing this volume to the light of day. I first met him during one of my trips to Central America, when he was taking his first steps toward becoming the United States’ most foremost expert on Nicaragua. As has been the case in most of my more recent books, I owe thanks to two people without whom this volume would probably not have appeared. Dr. James Sabin, for long of the Greenwood Publishing Group, accepted the manuscript of this work for publication; and Eldon Parker, who was once my student, has since been my close friend and most excellent copy editor and general collaborator in bringing this work from a typewritten manuscript to a published one. Finally, I am always much obliged to my late wife, Joan, for permitting me to spend much time in gathering over the years the material for this work, and then working that material into publishable form, when I am sure that she often felt that my time might better have been spent on familial matters. Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ

Introduction

This volume deals with the history of organized labor in six of the countries located between South America and Mexico: Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. However, that history can only be understood when it is sketched against the background of the political, economic, and social evolution of those nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The history of the six republics of Panama and Central America since they ceased being a part of the Spanish Empire in the early decades of the nineteenth century has been particularly turbulent. Central America first emerged from Spanish rule as part of the short-lived Mexican Empire of Agustín de Iturbide, soon breaking away to form the Republic of Central America. Panama, during most of the first century of the postcolonial era, was part of what finally came to be called the Republic of Colombia. The Republic of Central America was short lived, soon breaking up into the five republics of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. There were from time to time during the nineteenth century conflicts between some of these small nations. Even as late as the 1960s, there was the short so-called soccer war between Honduras and El Salvador. Within each of the five republics of Central America were continuous conflicts in the nineteenth century between the liberal and conservative factions. Although frequently these struggles involved personalities more than doctrine, there were certain key distinctions between the two partisan groups. The liberals tended to be opposed to the secular interests of the Catholic Church and to accept liberal economic doctrines—that is, more or less support of free enterprise and foreign investments in their

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Introduction

respective republics. The conservatives, on the other hand, tended to support the interests of the Church and to favor greater government intervention in the economy. By the end of the nineteenth century, the liberals had generally won these battles. Domestic politics in the Central American countries was complicated by foreign interference. Perhaps the most colorful instance of such incursion was the invasion of Nicaragua by an American freebooter, William Walker, ostensibly to help the liberals, but in fact for his own aggrandizement—an attack that was finally overcome by the united efforts of several of the Central American countries. More long lasting were the attempts of both the United States and Great Britain to influence, if not control, the various Central American states. Aside from general imperial expansion, the principal issue involved was the possibility of building a canal across the area to run from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. The two sites most frequently discussed for this purpose were Panama and Nicaragua. Both the United States and Britain coveted the right to build such a canal, although by the end of the nineteenth century, the British had conceded the priority of the claim of the United States to do so. The canal issue was finally resolved in 1903 when, after negotiating with Colombia to build one across Panama but running up against refusal of the Colombian Congress to accept the United States’ term for such an enterprise, the government of Theodore Roosevelt encouraged the Panamanians to break away from Colombia, after which the new Republic of Panama signed a treaty not only permitting the United States to build a canal, but also to have “rights as if it were sovereign” in a strip right across the center of the new republic, the so-called Canal Zone. U.S. intervention in the Central American republics did not end with the settling of the canal issue. Most notoriously, the United States meddled in Nicaraguan politics, helping to oust a president who was not regarded as friendly, and subsequently sending in U.S. Marines several times in the first three decades of the twentieth century to support a government more or less installed by the United States. In the last such instance, in the 1920s, the Marines and the National Guard organized and trained by them were met by a guerrilla war led by Augusto Sandino, whose struggle won wide popular support not only in his own country but throughout Latin America. United States intervention in Nicaragua did not cease with the death of Sandino. As late as the 1980s, the government of President Ronald Reagan organized a guerrilla war against the government of the Sandinista Liberation Front, which had finally succeeded in overthrowing the government of the Somoza family, which had ruled the country since the 1930s. Anastasio Somoza, the father of the Somoza dynasty, was just one of the types of caudillos who tended to dominate the politics of the Central American countries in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.

Introduction

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Relying on a certain amount of popular support and on military might, the Somoza family seized power and held it as long as they were able. However, in the twentieth century the nature of the armed forces at the command of the caudillos or would-be caudillos changed considerably. The countries developed more or less professional military forces to replace the armed followers of a particular political leader that had been traditional. Somoza and some others like him rose to and held onto power largely through their control of such official armed forces. After it became an independent country, Panama’s politics tended increasingly to resemble those of its five northern neighbors. The liberals triumphed there as they did in the Central American republics but soon splintered into rival personalist factions. After World War II, the armed forces undertook action on several occasions to oust the incumbent president, with military men sometimes assuming the presidency themselves, as was frequently done in most of the Central American republics. In the twentieth century, the major exception in Central America to rule by armed force was Costa Rica. A system of changes of government through more or less honest elections came to be dominant in that country. However, even there it broke down on at least two occasions—in 1917 when the army commander established a short-lived military dictatorship, and in 1948 when the incumbent president used the powers of his office to negate the results of an election giving rise to a short bloody civil war, which established a new pattern of rule in that republic that lasted the better part of a generation. Starting in the later decades of the nineteenth century, the economies of the Central American countries were fundamentally changed as a result of the victory of the liberals. Instead of being based on largely self-sufficient small-scale agriculture, the Central American countries developed economies depending on one or two major export crops—principally coffee and bananas. In the case of bananas, the principal firm involved was the United Fruit Company (UFC), which not only developed the banana industry but also came to control the railroads, telegraph services, and various other parts of the economies, particularly in Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. The UFC also established itself in Panama, although there its economic influence was far surpassed by that of the Canal. The rise of export crops tended to bring into existence new oligarchies, either consisting of owners of land producing the export crops or of mercantile groups that handled the export of those crops. Not infrequently, these oligarchies merged whatever remained of oligarchic elements of the Spanish colonial society. These elements usually shared political power with the military leaders. After World War II there was a certain diversification of the economies of the Central American countries. Manufacturing industries were established on the basis of import substitution strategy and with support of the various governments. The new industries produced—as the strategy’s

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Introduction

name implies—goods that previously had been imported. This process continued until the late 1970s or 1980s. It was stimulated for a while by the establishment of the Central American Common Market, which considerably widened the markets for the new industries. However, the 1980s, generally considered “the lost decade” for Latin America, were particularly disastrous for the Central American republics. There were civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, in which the United States became more or less directly involved. The impact of those conflicts spilled over to the other two countries—Costa Rica and Honduras. There was also a major change in economic policy in all of the area. The so-called international oil crisis of the previous decade had provoked severe balance of payments crises and substantial inflation. That situation brought the intervention of the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. government, both of which insisted on a so-called neoliberal economic policy in all five nations of the area as the price for giving aid in dealing with their economic crises. This involved ending the import substitution policy of industrialization and returning to total emphasis on an export-oriented economy, with consequent abolition of tariff and other protectionist measures. It also forced drastic reduction in social spending—education, health care, aid to poorer segments of society—by the respective governments, and the selling-off of many government-owned segments of the economy to private firms. The political and economic history of the region was the background for and to a large degree determined the advent and development of organized labor in Panama and Central America. To begin with, the slowness of the modernization of the economies of the area explains why virtually until the World War II period, a large segment of organized labor continued to consist of mutual benefit groups rather than trade unions. The long-standing importance of the banana business of the UFC in the national economies of the region, with its modern plantations employing thousands of wage laborers and its other related enterprises, including railroads and communications networks also providing such employment for workers, explains why among the earliest and strongest unions to appear were those of workers in the UFC and its related enterprises. Also, the entrenched position of national oligarchies associated with the export industries—principally in agriculture, plus a few mining firms (particularly in Nicaragua)—helps to explain the often ferocious resistance of employers to their workers’ unions. Frequently, such employers were seconded in their actions by military-dominated regimes, both because of close political connections between the two groups and the natural tendency of any military who had usurped power to regard any potentially powerful popular organization to be subversive. Employer resistance to trade unionism took many forms, such as opposition to legislation favoring the growth of unionism and refusal to conform

Introduction

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to such legislation once it was passed. Specific kinds of resistance to trade unionism included use of intimidation, dismissal from employment, refusal to recognize and deal with workers’ organizations, establishing companyrun unions, summoning police and the military to restore order, and in the 1970s and 1980s supporting murder squads to kill union leaders and rank and filers. However, in two Central American countries, Costa Rica and Guatemala, another instrument was developed to try to undermine the labor movement. This was so-called solidarism, designed, it was claimed, to stress the mutual interests of workers and their employers. The employers adopting solidarism established financial institutions, with funds taken largely from the workers’ wages, which would constitute the equivalent of petty banks, to provide funds with which the workers could borrow or purchase household equipment and even modest homes. Of course, as participants in such arrangements, workers were required to abandon any union activity. In addition to increased employer resistance to unions, there were other menaces the labor movement faced in the 1980s. These were the civil wars that raged during most of the decade in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and the forced adoption of neoliberal economic policies by the various countries of the region. The civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala inevitably involved the labor movement of those two countries. Some union groups in both countries developed connections with underground organizations allied with the guerrilla forces. At the same time, right-wing murder squads kidnapped, tortured, and murdered large numbers of trade unionists, with little regard to their relations with the underground. In the Nicaraguan case, the military conflict’s major impact on the labor movement was its stimulation of out-of-control inflation, which totally disrupted collective bargaining. Although the civil wars were approaching their end by 1990, the neoliberal policies forced on the Central American countries in the 1980s continued after the military conflicts had terminated. Those policies destroyed economic institutions of the import substitution development process that had to a considerable degree given organized labor its ability to defend the interests, and increase the incomes, of its members. Furthermore, the austerity policies that accompanied the adoption of the neoliberal ideology particularly emphasized efficiency and cost-effectiveness, which in terms of the labor force meant massive layoffs of workers and opposition to wage increases and fringe benefits, which added to the cost of labor. By 1990, the ending of the civil wars in three of the Central American republics was likely to provide a political atmosphere more congenial to the functioning of organized labor. However, the general acceptance of neoliberal economics in the region did not bode well for the future of the labor movement.

CHAPTER 1

Organized Labor in Panama

During the more than three hundred years of colonial rule, the Isthmus of Panama was of key importance to the Spanish Empire. It was the point of transshipment of gold and other precious metals from the viceroyalty of Peru to Spain, and of European goods coming from Spain to the Pacific coast of South America. Panama’s significance was occasionally dramatized by raids by Sir Francis Drake and other later English enemies of Spain. With the end of Spanish colonial rule in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the province of Panama became part of the Republic of Nueva Granada (subsequently Colombia). But it maintained its strategic significance, a facet that would ultimately lead to its separation from Colombia and organization as the separate Republic of Panama. Soon after the beginning of the California gold rush, which started in 1849, Panama gained additional significance. Transit through it became part of one of the routes for the gold seekers and others who were streaming into California from the eastern United States and Europe. As a consequence, the Panama railroad was constructed to get travelers from the Caribbean side of the isthmus to the Pacific side. The rapid growth of trade between the eastern and Pacific parts of the United States, as well as the expansion of commerce between Europe and the Far East, led to attempts to fulfill a dream that had existed for centuries—a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. The first serious effort to build such a waterway was undertaken by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Frenchman who had gained worldwide fame as the builder of the Suez Canal. He was granted the right to build a sea level canal, but the firm he formed to carry out this project went bankrupt.


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Thereafter, both the United States and Great Britain sought to undertake the task at which de Lesseps had failed. However, in 1901 the British ceded the right to build a canal to the United States, which then entered into negotiations with the government of Colombia, to allow it to undertake the task. Although agreement on a treaty to this effect was reached in 1903, the Colombian senate refused to ratify that document, feeling that the compensation offered by the North Americans was insufficient. The direct result of this refusal was a conspiracy between U.S. authorities in Panama (and in Washington, DC) with dissident political leaders in Panama, who had long been unhappy with Colombian rule. This revolution succeeded quickly in November 1903, when United States naval vessels, which “accidentally” happened to be on the scene, prevented Colombian troops from reaching Panama—and when three days after the Panamanian declaration of independence, the United States diplomatically recognized the new republic. The first foreign minister of the Republic of Panama was a Frenchman, Phillipe Buneau-Varilla, who had been associated with the de Lesseps enterprise. He quickly went to Washington, where he signed a treaty with Secretary of State John Hay establishing the terms and conditions under which the government of President Theodore Roosevelt would undertake the task of building the Panama Canal. This agreement remained a bone of contention between the two countries for three quarters of a century and provided peculiar problems for the Panamanian labor movement. It conceded a 10-mile strip through the center of the Republic of Panama where the United States was to have control “as if it were sovereign,” that is, the Canal Zone. It also gave complete control over the building and operating of the canal to the United States. In return, the United States was to give Panama a modest down payment and a very modest annual rent for the zone. Subsequently, with the writing of a constitution for the Republic of Panama, a section was added that virtually made Panama a protectorate of the United States. Like the famous Platt Amendment of the first Cuban constitution, adopted about the same time as that of Panama, this provision granted the United States the right to intervene in Panamanian political affairs at its own discretion. The canal was completed in 1914, 10 years after it was begun. For the construction tens of thousands of black West Indians were brought to work on the project. Many died of diseases or accidents, but enough survived and stayed in Panama, adding an important new element to the Panamanian population—black, English-speaking, and largely Protestant, instead of mestizo or American Indian, or European, Spanish-speaking, and Roman Catholic, as most Panamanians had been until then. From the establishment of the Republic of Panama, the country’s economy to a large degree centered on the canal—its construction and maintenance and the professional and commercial activities generated by it. Outside

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of the canal area, agriculture remained the principal economic activity for more than a generation. In the North, the United Fruit Company established banana plantations on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides. Elsewhere, crops for local consumption and grazing were major activities. The so-called revolution that brought the Republic of Panama into existence was largely the work of the commercial and landholding oligarchy, which had long dominated what had been the Colombian province. They continued to be dominant economically, socially, and politically—so long as they did not clash with the United States. Under Colombian control, the parties of Panama were those of Colombia—Liberals and Conservatives. This continued to be the case for a while in the new republic, although within a decade the Liberals had become so dominant that the Conservatives all but disappeared, and most political rivalry was between various liberal factions. In the 1920s and 1930s, other political groups appeared. One was Acción Comunal, which preached the doctrine of Panamanian nationalism, and was headed by two young brothers, Harmodio and Arnulfo Arias. In 1932 Harmodio Arias became president of Panama, and in 1940 his brother was elected president, leading the Partido Panameñista. He brought enactment of a new constitution, greatly expanding the power of the president, and took steps to deprive many of the West Indians (as well as Chinese and others) of their Panamanian citizenship. Many Chinese merchants were deprived of their property. Arnulfo Arias also enacted some social legislation. However, Arias’s nationalism also had an anti–United States component and aroused much concern there, in the light of the Second World War, which was then under way. His opponents, with the blessing of the United States, took advantage of his temporary absence from Panama to depose Arias. Two other political groups of some significance—particularly insofar as the labor movement was concerned—also emerged. These were the Communist and Socialist parties. In 1948, Arnulfo Arias was elected president once again. However, at first the head of the National Police, José Remón prevented his taking office. Only after some considerable confusion did Remón, who now emerged as the dominant figure in Panama politics, install Arias. Once again, Arnulfo Arias’s incumbency was very short lived. In 1952, José Remón himself was elected president. Although there had been widely current rumors of Remón’s corruption during World War II and thereafter, he proclaimed his intention of cracking down on corrupt elements during his presidency. He also sought the support of the labor movement and launched a significant agrarian reform. He reorganized the party system, bringing together a miscellaneous medley of parties that had supported his election in to the government party, with the Liberal Party constituting the opposition.


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In January 1955, President Remón was assassinated. His first vice president was implicated in his murder, and he was soon succeeded by the second vice president, Ricardo Arias (no relation to Arnulfo). Several years after the end of the Ricardo Arias administration, the Liberals returned to power. However, in 1968, Arnulfo Arias was once again elected president. This third administration proved to be the shortest of all three—as soon as he began trying to purge the National Police, he was overthrown in a coup engineered by Colonel Omar Torrijos. Torrijos dominated national politics until his accidental death in 1981. Torrijos ruled as a more or less benevolent dictator. He gained fame principally for successfully negotiating the end of the Canal Zone and the passing of control of the Panama Canal to the Republic in the year 2000, the so-called Carter–Torrijos Treaty. With Torrijos’ death, General Manuel Noriega quickly emerged as the dominant figure. His dictatorship was much more heavy handed than that of Torrijos, with several of his opponents being killed. He also was reputed to be involved in the international drug trade. Noriega aroused the active opposition of the government of the first President George Bush. After unsuccessfully trying to ostracize him internationally, President Bush launched an invasion in 1989. Amid considerable bloodshed, particularly due to U.S. bombing of slum areas in Panama City, Noriega’s forces were defeated, and Noriega himself was captured, brought to the United States, and tried and convicted on drug charges, which had been brought against him several years before. Panama’s motley twentieth-century history helped to determine the nature and trajectory of the Panamanian labor movement. Industrialization was late in coming and relatively modest, thus not generating a very substantial manufacturing working class. The only large-scale modern agricultural enterprise was that of the United Fruit Company, which showed in Panama little enthusiasm for unions among its workers. Most peculiar were two other aspects of organized labor in Panama. One was the existence, for most of the twentieth century, of a substantial group of United States workers on the canal who lived in the Canal Zone, and for long had a disdainful if not totally hostile attitude toward their Panamanian fellow workers—and had their own unions to express these attitudes. The other was the existence of an ostensibly substantial Panamanian merchant fleet, most of which never touched base in Panama and had crews, which for the most part had few if any Panamanians in them. THE EARLY PANAMANIAN LABOR MOVEMENT Domingo Barría traced the beginning of the labor movement in Panama to the establishment in 1906 of the bakers’ Unión Panaderos y Ayudantes, originally a mutual benefit organization. Two years later, the Unión de

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Muelleros y Transporte was formed by port workers and those transporting goods across the isthmus before the canal was completed. In 1911 there was the first strike of the bakers. Then in 1915 the Unión de Muelleros y Transporte organized a walkout, but it was broken by the police. In the same year, the first effort was made to bring together various labor groups, with the establishment of the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), still made up mostly of mutual benefit groups, but it was short lived.1 During this period, a group of Spanish anarchists was active in Panama. They were apparently the principal union organizers during these years.2 Meanwhile, workers employed in the Canal Zone had formed the United Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way, established soon after the completion of the canal. According to Sharon Phillips, “This union called several strikes between 1916 and 1920 to protest low wages and poor living conditions.”3 Domingo Barría noted a strike in the Canal Zone in 1917, called to protest the repatriation of Jamaican workers who were unemployed as a result of the completion of the canal. That walkout was broken by the United States armed forces in the zone.4 The New York Times reported in July 1919, “The employees of the Canal Zone are displaying resentment over the fact that increases granted Government employees in the United States have not been granted them. There is considerable sentiment in favor of a general strike, but no action in this direction has yet been taken.”5 However, in February 1920, some 17,000 workers did walk out in what was virtually a general strike in the zone. The government of the republic first tried to mediate this walkout and then insisted that the United States authorities keep the strikers from leaving the zone. The Panama Canal Company deported some 2,000 workers after the strike was broken.6 In 1918–1919 there was also a strike “of considerable magnitude” on the United Fruit Company’s plantations in the northern part of the country. The workers were not strongly organized, but they were aroused by Marcus Garvey’s black identity campaign. In the face of this movement, the company was reported to have made “certain concessions.”7 The first more or less successful central labor organization in Panama was the Federación Obrera de la República de Panama. According to Domingo Barría, it was established in 1919, although Sharon Phillips dates it from July 1921. It included, among others, organizations of bakers, bricklayers, dockers, and plumbers. It had both mutualist and more trade union–like organizations in its ranks.8 The federation held its second congress in January 1924. Among the resolutions adopted at this meeting was one demanding establishment of a minimum wage in the republic, and another dealing with night work in bakeries. It also advocated for the following: the Government to make representations to the governor of the Canal Zone, assuring Panama workers the right to work in the Canal Zone. . . . The American


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Federation of Labour would be asked to take steps to require the governor of the Canal Zone to treat workers from Panama on equal terms with workers from the Antilles occupied in the Zone. Above all, equality of wages should be established and all workers should have the right to work in the Zone, even if they were not domiciled init.9

This congress was host to Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, who was visiting Panama at the time. Gompers wrote concerning this encounter: “January 6th, I addressed a convention of the Panama Federation of Labor and was given an enthusiastic welcome. The Panamanian labor movement has about 2,500 members and desires the sympathetic aid of the A. F. of L. in gaining the advancement for which they are striving.”10 The high point of militancy of Panamanian organized labor in this period was reached in 1925. In 1924, a number of young leaders of the Federación Obrera, who were organized in the Grupo Comunista, had broken away to establish the Sindicato General de Trabajadores (SGT). It organized several new unions, but more importantly, established the Liga de Inquilinos (Tenants’ League). That organization conducted an extensive campaign to lower rents in the cities of Panama. This culminated in a general rent strike in Panama City, which was marked by considerable violence. The government of Panama thereupon asked that United States Army units from the Canal Zone intervene, which they did, establishing martial law and breaking the strike. Twenty-two people were said to have been killed and many others wounded in the process of this movement.11 This incident provoked severe repression of the labor movement on the part of the Panamanian government. The SGT disappeared.12 However, by July 1931, the labor movement had revived sufficiently that the Federación Obrera was able to call another general strike, demanding, among other things, a minimum wage of 20¢ an hour and 24 percent overtime pay. The New York Times reported, “Strikers paraded industrial plants . . . when the walkout was called, asking unaffiliated workers to join them. The city was in uproar.” The governor of the Panama City area brought union and employer representatives together. Although many employers were to accept an eighthour day and payments for overtime, they were reluctant to accept the minimum wage demand, saying that it would make them pay more than the Panama Canal was paying at the time.13 With the revival of organized labor in the early 1930s, it was largely under the influence of the Communists, although there was a militant Socialist Party opposition to Communist leadership in some of the unions. These internal disputes undoubtedly were a negative factor in the revival of the labor movement.14 In 1932, the Liga de Inquilinos was revived, and four years later it declared another rent strike. At that time, President Harmodio Arias

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declared a moratorium on rents and gave the Liga de Inquilinos a number of houses for the unemployed, with the government paying their rent.15 In 1939, a new element entered the Panamanian labor scene. This was the decision of the Congress of Industrial Organizations of the United States to establish the Panama Canal Zone Workers Organizing Committee. It set about to unionize the non-U.S. workers employed in the Canal Zone.16 In 1940, a Comisión de Organización Sindical was established to conduct organizing drives and lay the groundwork for establishment of a new central labor group, the earlier one having disappeared. It helped to bring into existence unions of bartenders, railroad mechanics, metalworkers, chauffeurs, printing trades workers, shoemakers, and bricklayers. These joined at the end of 1944 to set up the Comisión Organizadora del Congreso Obrero to prepare for reestablishment of a new central labor organization. On August 14, 1945, a congress was held that established the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de Panamá (FSTP).17 THE FEDERACIÓN SINDICAL DE TRABAJADORES DE PANAMÁ In 1946, Ernesto Galarza of the Division of Labor and Social Information of the Pan American Union, reported: The Panamanian labor movement is of recent origin and today it is virtually in the organizational stage. Efforts to organize Panamanian workers have been and will continue to be affected to an important degree by the fact that Panamanian labor organization is excluded from the Canal Zone where United States unionism dominated. A large proportion of the unskilled workers are Negroes whose economic and cultural handicaps are serious obstacles to effective organization. Constant pressure is exerted, moreover, on the service and industrial unions of Panama City by the influx of agricultural workers in search of higher wages.18

However, at its inception, the FSTP included most of the important unions of the Republic of Panama within its ranks. These included organizations of clothing workers, furniture workers, shoemakers, and printing trades workers, among others. For some years, the FSTP was the country’s most militant central labor organization. Sharon Phillips has commented, “The Trade Union Federation was responsible for most of the protest actions experienced in Panama between 1945 and the mid-1960s.” She mentions among these actions a strike of the clothing workers in 1946 for higher wages, a walkout that was declared illegal after 38 days; a demonstration organized by the FSTP in 1955 against rising food prices that resulted in considerable concessions by the government; a successful four-day strike in 1956 of the bus drivers,


13

demanding a reduction of the gasoline tax; and a Hunger and Desperation March in 1959 that won enactment of a minimum wage law.19 One of the most significant strikes by FSTP workers was that of the bus drivers in 1954. Those workers were not wage earners, but rather rented their buses from their owners, had to pay for the gas used during their operation, and had to pay the owners a certain fixed amount. They struck for a fixed daily wage and other benefits. After the strike had gone on for three days, the government stepped in and declared the strike illegal. Although several of the leaders of the FSTP were jailed for 99 days as a result of this walkout, when the issues involved were submitted to arbitration, the result was that the bus drivers were included in the social security system and were offered $50 vacation pay each year. The bus drivers’ union withdrew from the FSTP during the strike.20 In 1947, the FSTP decided to try to organize the Panamanians working in the Canal Zone, establishing the Unión de Trabajadores de la Zonal del Canal. It sought to establish collective bargaining relations with the Canal Company and other enterprises operating in the zone but was denied the right to do so on the grounds that the workers involved were employees of the United States government and so could not be represented by a union of the Republic of Panama. Thereafter, the FSTP supported the organizing efforts of the United Public Workers of the United States Congress of Industrial Organizations.21 In the beginning, various political tendencies were represented in the leadership of the FSTP, but it soon came under control of the Communist Party, which during World War II had been renamed the Partido del Pueblo. At that point, some of the unionists who were opposed to the Communists and were consequently removed from the FSTP leadership broke away to form a short-lived rival, the Unión Nacional de Sindicatos Obreros. Then in 1948, there was a further split in the FSTP, with establishment of the UGT, which for a while at least was the largest central labor group. As a consequence of these splits and of general changes in the national political situation, the membership of the Federación Sindical varied from time to time. Thus, in September 1949, the president of the Unión Nacional de Sindicatos Obreros de Panama claimed that the FSTP had only three unions affiliated with it: the tailors, shoemakers, and mechanics. He claimed that his own group had five unions—the barmen, waiters, cooks, the Unión de Músicos, and the Unión de Obreros y Agricultures de Chitré. At that point, the UGT was, according to him, the strongest of the three groups, with seven unions, which included the typographers, chauffeurs, carpenters, electricians, maritime workers, and bakers. In all, this union leader asserted that there were about 3,000 workers in the three central labor groups, of whom only about 300 paid dues. In addition, the workers of the United Fruit Company had an independent union, as did workers in the local brewery.22

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Three years later, the labor reporting officer of the United States Embassy said that the FSTP had “declined very much” and did not have “very great support.”23 In 1954, it was reported that, with the withdrawal of the bus drivers’ union from the FSTP during the July strike, the federation was left with only two legally recognized unions, those of tailors and the power and light workers of Colón. However, it also had two other unions that did not have legal recognition: the port workers of Colón and the mechanics and metallurgical workers. The Ministry of Labor sought unsuccessfully to get the power and light workers to disaffiliate, which in the eyes of the ministry would have left the federation with only one affiliate, which would have meant that it could no longer have been regarded as a federation and therefore could de deprived of its legal recognition.24 However, this maneuver was not successful. The Federación Sindical continued to exist, to be under Communist control, and to be relatively militant. In 1961 it conducted a strike of the local slaughterhouse workers in Panama City, which was lost when all of the workers were fired.25 Two years later, a United States Department of Labor source estimated that the membership of the FSTP was only about 200. However, it added that “there is no doubt that it exercises an influence on the general political and labor scene far out of proportion to its actual membership.”26 In 1967, the veteran leader of the FSTP, Domingo Barría, admitted that the FSTP was not numerically the strongest of the Panamanian labor groups. However, he maintained that it was “the best organized” union group and the only one that was able to get the masses of workers out in the streets to demonstrate.27 At that same time, the labor attaché of the United States Embassy estimated that the FSTP had only about five to seven hundred members but conceded that it was “very well organized.”28 In 1970, the FSTP was upgraded into the Central Nacional de Trabajadores de Panama (CNTP), on the initiative of the government of General Torrijos, apparently as a move to counterbalance the influence of the Confederación de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá, affiliated with the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT). According to Sharon Phillipps, in the late 1980s, “[t]he CNTP had seven federations, thirty-six unions, and 21,500” workers affiliated with it. Among other important organizations, it had “all of the unions of banana workers except those in Bocas del Toro.” She argued that “[s]ome of its leaders, such as Angel Gómez, Marta Matamoros, and Domingo Barría, are synonymous with organized labor in the minds of Panamanians.” As it had been from its inception, the FSTP–CNTP continued to be affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions. It also belonged to the successor to the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina, the Congreso Permanente de Unidad Sindical de los Trabajadores de América Latina, which had been established in 1968 and had its headquarters in Panama City.29


15

THE PERONISTAS IN THE PANAMANIAN LABOR MOVEMENT For some time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the most serious challenge to the Communists within the Panamanian labor movement came from the Peronistas. However, the sympathizers with Juan Perón were divided into at least two different groups. For several years, labor attachés in the Argentine Embassy in Panama City were very active in trying to recruit followers in the Panamanian labor movement. They had substantial amounts of money to help them in these efforts. In mid-1952, they were reported to have four Panamanians on their payroll in Panama City, each of whom received $250 a month, as well as several organizers who were attempting to form peasant groups in the interior of the country and who were said to receive $10 a week for their efforts.30 The Argentine labor attachés also provided funds for the UGT to maintain their headquarters when they were threatened with being expelled from the office because of delinquency in paying their rent.31 The first group to display Peronista sympathies was the UGT, which broke away from the FSTP. Soon after the formation of the UGT, Jorge Brouwer, a leader of the Socialist Party, called it a “semi-Socialist” group.32 Some years later, the secretary of organization of the UGT told me that he was a Socialist.33 However, as the labor reporting officer of the United States Embassy commented, the Socialists of the UGT were a peculiar sort, since they accepted invitations to visit Argentina at the Perón government’s expense and then came back to Panama praising the Perón regime, while their Argentine counterparts were being persecuted by that government.34 I was able to confirm this peculiar position of the UGT Socialists in a conversation with Felipe Lazos, the UGT organization secretary. He told me that in conversing not only with Peronista trade union officials, but with common people of various sorts, he had learned that before Perón, the workers of Buenos Aires had had to get fish out of garbage cans in the harbor, because they could not afford meat—but that since Perón had come to power meat had been plentiful for all. The fact that at that moment, the Perón government was urging people to eat fish twice a week rather than meat was not due to a meat shortage but because the government thought that it was more healthful to eat more fish instead of the large quantities of meat that the people were accustomed to consuming. However, Lazos insisted that he and the UGT were not Peronistas. As evidence of this, he said that the UGT had refused to affiliate with the Comité de Unidad Sindical Latinoamericano, the first stage of the Latin America–wide union movement organized by the Peronistas.35 One UGT leader, Juan V. Espiazzano, head of the UGT’s small union of Panama Canal workers, did open an office in Panama City for the Comité

16


de Unidad Sindical. He had tried to establish a branch of the UGT among the Panamanian workers in the Canal Zone but had been expelled from the zone by the U.S. authorities on charges that he was a “Communist.” Since his union ceased to pay its dues to the UGT, it was dropped from its rolls. Espiazzano’s office was subsequently taken over by Padre Carlos Pérez, the head of the other group that was generally considered to be Peronista.36 Padre Pérez claimed that, although he had very friendly relations with the labor attachés in the Argentine Embassy, he was not a Peronista but rather a Social Catholic. He had first organized a Young Catholic Workers (Juventud Obrera Católica) group but had quickly become convinced that that was inadequate and that instead he should try to establish a Christian trade union movement, with the philosophy of the papal encyclicals dealing with labor problems. Pérez first worked to this end within the UGT. However, he claimed that the UGT had been taken over by the Communists, and he brought about a split in the organization, establishing the Comité Nacional de Organización Sindical (CNOS). In 1952, Padre Pérez claimed that the CNOS had in its ranks 21 agricultural workers’ sindicatos (trade unions), of which 8 had legal recognition. It also had a union in the city of Colón, the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Zona Libre Colón, made up mainly of English-speaking offspring of Jamaicans, most of whom were Protestants, as well as the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Arcilla, a firm making cement blocks and other building materials; the bakers’ Sindicato de Panaderos, with some 400 members, an old union that joined his group; and a chauffeurs’ union in Pedregal.37 The operations of Padre Pérez decimated the UGT. In mid-1952 they were reported as having only two unions still affiliated, those of furniture workers and typographers.38 Even these two unions were almost inoperative.39 ORIT-AFFILIATED UNION GROUPS More long lasting and significant than the Peronista-oriented labor groups were those affiliated first with the Confederación Interamericana de Trabajadores (CIT), and then with the ORIT. The first such organization was the Confederación Obrera y Campesina de la República de Panamá (COCRP). The COCRP was established at a congress on September 23–24, 1950. That congress had been called by the Comité de Unificación Sindical de Panama, which had originally consisted of the UGT, the Federación de Trabajadores Independientes, and the Federación Agrícola de Panama. However, the UGT, which was already under Peronista influence, did not participate in the meeting or in establishment of the COCRP—arguing, rather, that all of the unions involved ought to join the UGT.


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The unions that participated in the congress were the Sindicato de Trabajadores Marítimos, the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Zona del Canal, consisting of Panamanian workers in the zone, and the Plumbers Union, the only union of U.S. workers that participated in the congress. Augusto Malavé Villalba, the Venezuelan union leader who was present as a fraternal delegate from the CIT, reported to the CIT on the congress. He summed up his impressions of it thus: “In any case, I think that a positive step has been taken with the creation of the Confederación Obrera y Campesina de la República de Panamá and that is leaders are well intentioned and desire to work to achieve improvements in the living conditions of the Panamanian workers, and several of its leaders have trade union experience, both national and international.”40 In 1952 the COCRP was composed of two federations, the Federación de Sindicatos Independientes and the Federación de Sociedades Agrícolas de las Provincias de Panamá, Colón y Coclé. The first of these was made up of unions in the urban areas, and the second consisted of rural workers’ organizations. The unions affiliated with the Federación de Sindicatos Independientes were for the most part located in Panama City. In 1952 they included organizations of maritime workers, theater employees, taxi drivers, and telephone workers. The federation was in the process of organizing the white-collar workers and aviation employees.41 The Federación de Sindicatos Agrícolas in 1942 claimed to have 56 unions of agricultural workers in the three provinces nearest to Panama City. It had been impossible, up to that point, to expand beyond those three provinces because of insufficient funds for travel further afield.42 Among its other activities, the COCRP carried on a cultural program. It organized talks and movie showings to members of various constituent organizations. It received considerable assistance from the United States Embassy in the form of movies made available without cost.43 The COCRP received a subsidy from ORIT, and there was considerable disagreement between the leaders of the two federations as to how that subsidy should be used. As a result, in August 1952, Francisco Aguirre, then the secretary-general of ORIT, visited Panama to try to resolve the dispute. A tentative agreement was reached, allotting $100 a month to maintain the COCRP office in Panama City, and $60 a month to finance the organizing activities of the rural federation, which involved a great deal of travel outside of the city.44 However, this agreement did not solve the internal problems of the COCRP. In 1952, Tomás Dionisio Aráuz, head of the rural federation, was suspended from his position in the leadership of the confederation. As a consequence, the COCRP was splintered.45 As a consequence of this quarrel, the Federación Agraria withdrew from COCRP. Under the leadership of Arauz, it joined with two other

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rural workers’ groups, the Federación Agraria Transístmica, consisting of workers living along the cross-isthmus road, and another interior group, to establish the Confederación Agraria Nacional. It, like the COCRP, affiliated with ORIT. Aráuz was an alternate member of the executive committee of ORIT. The Confederación Agraria claimed to have 54 unions affiliated with it in 1954.46 However, in the mid-1950s, neither the ORIT-affiliated groups nor the Panamanian labor movement as a whole was very strong. I wrote to Jay Lovestone in August 1954: The trade union movement of the Republic of Panama suffers from rickets, scurvy and other diseases of malnutrition. There are several reasons for this, both economic and political. In the first place, there is little industry in the Republic of Panama. The biggest industrial enterprise of all lies outside the jurisdiction of the Republic, in the Canal Zone. The Republic divides its attention between agriculture, largely of a subsistence nature, and commerce, dependent upon traffic through the Canal. The type of agriculture, except for the United Fruit Co.’s operations in the northern part of the country, is not very conducive to straight trade union activities. Commerce never was a very strong field for trade union organization.

I also noted: “Another factor which has made for a weaker labor movement than might otherwise exist in the political situation of the country. Politics are very unstable in Panama. . . . The political parties . . . have not been ‘social’ in the sense of developing a popular, modern program and leadership.”47 In 1956, the ORIT-affiliated union groups in Panama were reunited to form the Confederación de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá (CTRP). It included the Federación de Sindicatos Independientes, Tomás Arauz’s Confederación Agraria, and the Federación de Trabajadores Marítimos.48 By 1967, the CTRP claimed to have 47 unions affiliated with it. These included organizations of metalworkers, hotel workers, transport workers, a few unions of industrial workers, and a substantial number of agricultural workers’ groups.49 Among the affiliates of the CTRP in the early 1960s was the Sindicato de la Chiriqui Land Company (United Fruit Company in Panama) in the Boca del Toro region. However, the United Fruit managers in Panama had at best an equivocal attitude toward the unionization of their workers. Until 1948 the Communists were the principal people trying to organize the banana workers. In 1947, they had established the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Chiriqui Land Company as an affiliate of the FSTP. At that time, the union claimed to have 4,000 workers in its ranks and had union committees on each of the company’s farms. However, when the union held its first congress, all of the 100 delegates attending that meeting were fired by the Chiriqui Land Company.50


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A new union was then established, with the aid of the company, which helped it get legal recognition from the Ministry of Labor. However, since the company kept close control over the union, its membership in 1952 was reported to be only about 100 workers.51 The attitude in the 1950s of the local United Fruit Company management toward unionization of its workers was demonstrated in an incident that occurred to Serafino Romualdi in 1955. He was at the time a Latin American representative of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) and assistant general secretary of ORIT. Romualdi had for several years been trying to get the top management of the United Fruit Company to acquiesce in the existence of real unions on their plantations in the various Central American countries. He was particularly concerned about the situation in Panama and got the approval of the Boston headquarters of the company to visit their holdings there. However, the officials of the Chiriqui Land Company had different ideas from those of the Boston headquarters. They first prevailed on the Panamanian government to deny Romualdi a visa. However, after a protest from Romualdi in his official capacity, the Panamanian government changed its mind. Romualdi went first to a Catholic conference in Panama City where, he said, he met more bishops than he had ever seen before. After that conference, Romualdi visited the Chiriqui Land Company’s operations. On his second day there, he was picked up by the Panamanian secret police, taken to the city of David, and then deported from Panama. A year later, Romualdi met Ricardo Arias, who had been president at the time of his deportation, and Arias told him that the local Chiriqui manager had called up the local secret police and told them that there was “a dangerous Communist” (Romualdi) on the Chiriqui holdings, as a result of which they had arrested and deported him. President Arias claimed that he had known nothing about it until after the incident.52 However, by the early 1960s, the banana workers were well organized. Those on the Pacific side of the country were in a union belonging to the FSTP. Those on the Atlantic side were at least nominally affiliated with the CTRP.53 A United States Department of Labor source described the Atlantic coast banana workers’ union in rather glowing terms in 1963. It wrote that the union (SITRACHILCO), “which now claims the loyalty of 4,000 dues-paying members and a yearly income of about fifty thousand dollars, continues to be by far the Republic’s largest, richest, most efficient union. SITRACHILCO boasts a full-time paid executive committee, a paid legal advisor, paid staff, union offices, equipment and vehicles, and an unmatched system of field delegates (shop stewards) which carry the union’s influence to all remote corners of the plantations.”54 The Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Chiriqui Land Company remained affiliated to the CTRP throughout the 1960s. However, for some time in

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the 1970s it switched to the Communist-controlled CNTP. In 1978, its members decided to return once more to the CTRP.55 The CTRP remained the largest central labor group in Panama. The U.S. Department of Labor document we have cited earlier noted in 1963 that it claimed to have 30,000 members, “but appears to have no more than 10,000 members by the most liberal estimates.”56 That the CTRP was still the largest Panamanian central labor group was admitted in 1967 by Domingo Barría, longtime secretary-general of the FSTP, although he claimed that his own organization was the most influential labor group.57 In that year, the United Sates Embassy labor attaché estimated that the CTRP had some 3,500 members, adding that its only substantial affiliate was the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union.58 However, in 1967 the CTRP claimed five federations affiliated with it. One of these was the Federación de Sindicatos Independientes, which included a number of craft and small industrial unions. Among these was the bakers’ union, which had 118 of Panama City’s 700 bakers in its ranks and had begun negotiating collective agreements with some of the firms that it had thoroughly organized. The Hotel Workers Federation (FITBA) had local unions in four of the major hotels in the Panama City area. It had gained the checkoff of the union dues and either had or was negotiating collective agreements with these four firms. Another federation of the CTRP was the Federación Industrial del Transporte de Panamá, which included unions of drivers of large taxis, drivers of small taxis, drivers of tourists cars, and the sailors’, the Unión de Marinos de Panama. Bus and truck drivers also had unions but they were not in the Federación Industrial or the CTRP. Finally, there was the Federación de Colón de Obreros y Campesinos. This included a number of diverse unions in the city of Colón.59 In July 1967, I was able to attend a meeting of the CTRP that discussed changes in legal minimum wages for various worker groups—each category of workers would have its own minimum rather than there being a general minimum wage for all types of workers. At that time, the CTRP had the custom of having regular meetings on Monday and Thursday evenings to discuss issues of current interest. There were from 45 to 50 people present, representing various unions, including the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union and those of bartenders, taxi drivers, movie operators, and metal workers. The immediate issue was a raise in the minimum wage of the hotel and restaurant workers, which was legally due for revision in the following month. When the question was raised as to whether the minimum wages for other groups were also due for revision, no one was quite sure, and it was agreed to send someone to the Minimum Wage Board on the following day to ascertain this. It was agreed to ask for an increase of the hotel workers from 45¢ an hour to 80¢, and for the restaurant workers from 45¢ to


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70¢, and to accept an invitation from the Minimum Wage Board to discuss the issue.60 By the late 1980s, the CTRP had 11 federations and 65 unions in its ranks, and Sharon Phillipps estimated its total membership at about 22,000. She noted that the most significant federations were the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Democráticos, including Local 907, to which belonged the Panamanian workers employed by the United States Army, with about 1,400 members; the Federación de Sindicatos de Trabajadores de las Provincias Centrals, to which belonged the sugar workers, and had 2,400 members; and the Hotel and Restaurant Workers, “which claims most of the hotel and supermarket workers, as well as laborers in the food-processing industries.” The Chiriqui Land Company workers also belonged to the CTRP.61 One of the most militant unions belonging to the CTRP was the Sindicato Industrial de Trabajadores del Azúcar, sus Derivados y Afines, the sugar workers’ group. It had been legalized in 1961. When, in 1965, the union sought to renegotiate its contract, the privately owned Empresa Azucarera Nacional refused to bargain until after the sugar harvest. However, the union organized a march on Panama City, where it presented the president of the Republic with its demands. There was also a general strike in Panama City in support of the sugar workers. The upshot was that, although the union won its wage demands, the firm laid off about 30 percent of its workers.62 The CTRP and its constituent organizations worked more or less closely with the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which began operations in Panama soon after it was established in the early 1960s. Numerous Panamanian union leaders were sent for more or less advanced training at programs run by the AIFLD in Puerto Rico and in San Pedro Sula in Honduras.63 THE CATHOLIC-ORIENTED PANAMANIAN LABOR MOVEMENT We have noted the activities in the early 1950s of Padre Carlos Pérez, whose avowed objective was to establish a Christian labor confederation, although he was regarded by labor leaders who were not associated with his organization to be seeking to establish a Peronista rather than a Catholic labor movement. However, some union leaders believed by the mid1950s that the Catholic hierarchy in the republic was helping efforts to organize a Catholic central labor organization.64 Such a group was not, in fact, set up in the 1950s. It was in 1961 that the Federación de Trabajadores Cristianos (FTC) was established, with an avowedly Social Christian philosophy as expressed by successive popes in encyclicals on labor and social problems.65 In 1952, the FTC was credited by a leader of one of its rivals with having six affiliated unions.66 By 1967, the FTC had in its ranks, among other groups, a construction workers’ union, which was having problem maintaining a membership

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corps because of the casual nature of the work of the union members, and a chauffeur’s union of bus drivers in the Canal Zone. It also had a union of vegetable oil workers, which was fighting with a company union for which the employer had succeeded in obtaining legal recognition. It also had several other small craft and industry unions. The FTC was “ideologically close” to the recently created Christian Democratic Party. However, the union leaders insisted that they were in no way subordinate to the party.67 In the opinion of the U.S. labor attaché, in 1967 the FTC, although smaller than the CTRP, was “better organized” than the CTRP.68 In 1971, with the support of the Torrijos government, the FTC was converted into a confederation, the Central Istmeña de Trabajadores (Isthmian Workers Central). It grew over the years, and by the late 1980s it had six federations and 26 unions affiliated with it, with an estimated membership of 4,690 workers. Sharon Phillipps noted, “Since its inception it always has been involved with supermarket and commercial workers, and most of its member unions are in services and commerce.” The Central Istmeña de Trabajadores and its predecessor were affiliated with the Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores (CLAT) and the Confederación Mundial del Trabajo (World Confederation of Workers).69 PANAMANIAN ORGANIZED LABOR UNDER TORRIJOS AND AFTER After Colonel Omar Torrijos seized power in October 1968, he at first sought both to encourage organized labor and exercise as much control over it as possible. His regime first suggested that all of the existing unions, federations, and confederations be united in a single central labor body, tentatively named the Central Única de Trabajadores. However, there was strong opposition to this, particularly on the part of the ORIT-affiliated CTRP and the Catholic-oriented Central Istmeña de Trabajadores, and the idea was finally dropped.70 We have noted that the Torrijos regime fostered the conversion of the FSTP into a confederation (or central labor organization), the Central Nacional de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá, and of the Federación Cristiana de Trabajadores also into a central labor group, the Central Istmeña de Trabajadores. Those changes were apparently designed to curtail the influence of the CTRP. The Torrijos regime indicated its general friendliness to organized labor in April 1972 by enacting substantial changes in the labor code. Sharon Phillipps has commented as follows. Significant changes introduced included: job stability after two years of employment; a thirteenth month salary; collective bargaining at the request of the union; union dues collected from all workers covered by a collective agreement, regardless


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of membership in the union; greater flexibility in declaring the legality of strikes; and a seniority bonus after ten years of service. Perhaps the most important aspect of the labor code was its explicit tone as protector of labor.

The number of legally recognized unions increased substantially during the early years of the Torrijos regime. Over 120 were given such recognition between 1970 and 1977, having 19,700 members, representing 57 percent of all recognized unions and 30 percent of union members. Also, the number of collective agreements rose between 1970 and 1978 from 30 to 800. However, as economic conditions worsened, the Torrijos regime substantially altered its labor policies. It enacted Law 95 in 1975, which removed some of the prounion provisions of the labor code. The trade union movement objected strongly, and after the signing of the Canal Zone treaties that turned the canal over to Panama in 2000, it became militant concerning the issue. There were several protest strikes, including two general strikes. The government finally modified its modifications of the 1972 revised labor code. It reestablished some of the concessions that had been made earlier to the organized workers. With the accidental death of Omar Torrijos in 1981, his successors led by General Manuel Noriega turned strongly against organized labor. Sharon Phillipps noted that they “used it as a scapegoat for Panama’s continuing precarious economic condition.” Writing in the late 1980s, she added, “Labor had had to maintain a war stance in order to preserve some of the benefits it achieved during the 1970s.”71 THE FLAGS OF CONVENIENCE PROBLEM Panama has had two kinds of labor problems that are unique to Latin America. One of these has been the use of Panamanian registry of ships that had little or no contact with the republic aside from using its emblem as a so-called flag of convenience. The other was the peculiar position of the workers in the United States–controlled Canal Zone. After World War II there developed the widespread procedure whereby shipping companies based in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere sought to register their vessels in countries that had little regulation over maritime shipping formally registered as being based in those countries, and where labor legislation covering the people employed on these vessels either did not exist or was not enforced. Panama was one of the favorite nations used for this purpose. As a consequence, large numbers of ships were registered as being of Panamanian origin, but they had little contact with that republic beyond flying its flag. Several factors were made by the Panamanian labor movement to deal with this problem. In 1948, the FSTP organized the Unión Sindical Marítima de Panamá, which sought unsuccessfully to organize workers on Panama flag ships.

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Despite its origins with the Communist-dominated FSTP, this union affiliated with the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), associated with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. In 1951, the ITF denounced the effort of the employers to organize a company union, the Sindicato de Marineros de Panamá.72 In its First Congress, in March 1952, the Federación de Sindicatos Independientes, to which the Unión Sindical Marítima was then affiliated, adopted an extensive resolution concerning the ships of Panamanian registry. Among the demands put forward in that resolution was a total review by the Panamanian government of the state of ships registered in Panama. It urged that this review should include information concerning wages paid, lifesaving equipment aboard, accident insurance on behalf of crew members, and the existence or nonexistence of adequate navigation and radio facilities. It also urged that Panama ratify all International Labor Organization accords dealing with maritime employment. Finally, the resolution demanded “[t]he signing of a Collective Labor Contract between those firms that have ships registered in the Republic of Panama and the Unión Sindical Marítima de la República de Panamá.”73 Subsequently, two other sailors’ unions were organized, the Unión Nacional de Marinos for common seamen and the Unión de Marinos Clasificados for more skilled workers. With the help of the National Maritime Union of the United States these unions made attempts to get Panamanian workers to Casablanca, Morocco, so that they could get employment with the Panamanian-flag ships that operated widely in the Mediterranean Sea area. This effort received little or no help from the Panamanian government and was not successful.74 For a while, the Unión Nacional de Marinos published a mimeographed newspaper, one page of which was in English. Among other items noted in this periodical was an effort to get the government to inspect Panamanian-flag ships going through the canal. Permission had been received from the U.S. Canal Zone authorities to do so.75 There is no indication that there were such inspections or that, if there were, they brought about any change in conditions on Panamanian-registered ships. Most of the Panamanian seamen worked on tankers of the Esso and Texaco companies that operated in the Caribbean area. In 1962 they were reported by one Panamanian labor leader to being treated “quite well” on those vessels, although there was no indication that the Panamanian unions had any collective bargaining with the companies. The Unión Nacional de Marinos was in 1967 affiliated with the CTRP but also with the National Maritime Union of the United States. It maintained a small school for training shipboard personnel.76 ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE CANAL ZONE The history of organized labor in the Panama Canal Zone is divisible into two parts. One concerns the operations of locals of various United


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States unions that were made up of United States citizens employed by the canal administration and the United States Army stationed in the zone. The other has to do with organizations of the non-U.S., principally Panamanian, workers who also worked in the zone. For several decades, these two groups were tacitly or overtly in opposition to one another. From the time the canal was under construction, substantial numbers of U.S. citizens—virtually all of them white—were brought in to fill the jobs of skilled artisan workers (electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and so forth) and white-collar employees. By World War II, there had evolved the Zonian category of expatriate U.S. workers, a substantial number of whom had been born and bred in the Panama Canal Zone. Their attitudes and behavior insofar as the Panamanians were concerned were akin to those of white settlers in Kenya or Rhodesia. These U.S. workers in the zone had been unionized virtually since the time of the building of the canal. But they were organized into locals of U.S. unions and as a group under the aegis of the Metal Trades Department of the American Federation of Labor. As unionists, they bargained and lobbied the U.S. government (particularly the U.S. Congress) strictly for their own benefit. They had little concern for the largely nonwhite Panamanian and other workers laboring alongside them—except they feared that those workers might undermine the privileged position, which they (the U.S. workers) enjoyed in the zone. For several decades, the Zonians enjoyed a status and way of living that they could not have aspired to had they lived in the United States. Their incomes generally were tied to those of their counterparts in the United States—plus 25 percent for the so-called hardship of living overseas. They had schools, hospitals, commissaries, and other benefits, which set them totally apart from other workers in the zone. Furthermore, the segregation patterns of the United States South of the time reigned in the Panama Canal Zone. There were separate facilities of all kinds for the Zonians and the other workers in the zone—drinking fountains, doors, toilet facilities, and housing developments. Segregation was also evident in the payments to different workers in the zone. From the time of the building of the canal, there had been two payrolls—the so-called golden (later, “U.S. rate”) one for U.S. citizens, and the silver (later, local rate) one for other workers. Serafino Romualdi noted that in 1949 those who were local-rate employees had a wage scale ranging from 26¢ per hour to $1 per hour, whereas U.S.-rated workers had a minimum of $2 per hour. Romualdi recounted the difficulties encountered in trying to change this situation. The AFL leadership—particularly then AFL secretarytreasurer George Meany—quickly became aware of the fact that the labor situation in the Canal Zone was a significant impediment to the AFL’s developing close relations with non-Communist and non-Peronista labor movement in Latin America in the immediate post–World War II period.

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As Serafino Romualdi had predicted, the Canal Zone issue was raised at the founding congress of the CIT, which met in Lima, Peru, in January 1948. He supported a resolution that was unanimously adopted by the congress to establish a committee to investigate the labor situation in the Canal Zone, consisting of himself and another North American, Anthony Matz, and three Latin Americans—Luis Alejandro Cuellar, president of the Unión Nacional de Sindicatos Obreros, which was then the CIT’s Panamanian affiliate; Luis Alberto Monge of the Rerum Novarum Confederation of Costa Rica; and a Colombian labor leader. That investigation group received a rather frigid reception from the AFL union locals in the Canal Zone. However, it submitted a report that proved to be a beginning of the elimination of the disparities between the Zonian workers and the Panamanian employees in the Canal Zone. Writing a decade later, Romualdi said, “The last ten years have seen much progress made in the elimination of discrimination against native workers and a steady advance in their wage scales, which now are at the same level as those of U.S. citizen employees.”77 However, the United States Department of Labor did not quite agree with Romualdi’s optimistic view. A 1963 document of the department, after noting the union locals of U.S. citizens working in the zone, most of which belonged to the Central Labor Union–Metal Trades Council (CLU-MTC), said of them: “United States citizen locals, acting through CLU-MTC and through its representatives in Washington have continued to play a leading role in opposing what they regard as U.S. concessions to Panama in the Canal Zone and what they view as Panamanian incursions on employment opportunities for Americans in the Canal Zone.” However, this Labor Department document did note the recruitment of non-U.S. workers in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME). It also said that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Association of Machinists, and the Sheet Metal Workers Union “have been quietly enrolling fully qualified skilled craft non-citizen employees in the company and Government” and that “the two local American Federation of Teacher Unions have a sizeable number of non-citizen members.”78 Meanwhile, efforts had been taken to organize the non-U.S. workers in the zone into the labor movement of the republic. The first such attempt had occurred as early as 1920, when a union was formed among the silver workers in the zone. Soon after it was formed, that union launched a strike for better conditions, “which lasted for eight days, which was 100% effective, and which completely tied up the operations of the Canal. The strike was broken by then Governor of the Panama Canal Zone, and after eight days the “silver” workers returned to their jobs and “to the same conditions that existed prior to their walkout.”79


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Right after World War II, the FSTP undertook to organize the silver workers and established the Unión de Trabajadores de la Zona del Canal. However, when it sought bargaining rights, the Canal Zone authorities refused to negotiate, saying that the workers involved were employees of the United States government and therefore could not be bargained for by a Panamanian union.80 As a result, in April 1946, the FSTP’s union in the zone sent a letter to Phillip Murray, the president of the CIO in the United States, asking the CIO to help organize the silver employees of the Canal Zone. At the same time, the Panama Canal West Indian Employees Association (PCWIEA), which had been the only organization seeking to speak for those workers between the two world wars, sent Murray a similar request. The PCWIEA had formerly tried to be admitted to the AFL, but the AFL had refused their request for affiliation. Phillip Murray passed on the request of these two groups to the United Public Workers of America (UPWA), the CIO affiliate that seemed appropriate. As a result, the UPWA sent a representative to Panama in July 1946, first to investigate the situation and then to establish an affiliated local, #713. The new UPWA local accepted the union’s (and the CIO’s) policy to “prohibit strikes against the Government of the United States.” In January 1947, Local 713 claimed to represent a majority of the silver employees in the Canal Zone. In that month, it submitted its first formal demand to the Canal Zone authorities for wage increases for its members.81 However, the UPWA was a union under Communist control in the United States, and when the CIO purged the Communist-dominated organizations from its ranks in 1949, it established the Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee (GCEOC) to compete with the UPWA. In the face of this clash, Local 713 collapsed. In its place, the GCEOC chartered Local 900, covering all of the non-U.S. workers in the zone. Subsequently, the workers employed by the U.S. Army withdrew from Local 900 to form Local 907, the Armed Forces Employee union. Both locals ultimately became members of the AFSCME into which the GCEOC merged. Serafino Romualdi summed up the activities of the AFSCME during its first few years in the Canal Zone. He said, “The AFSCME has undertaken a continuous drive against job discrimination and has been able to open to Panamanians many positions which formerly were reserved for U.S. Citizens. These include supervisory positions and others in the technical and professional fields.”82 Of course, after the Carter–Torrijos Treaties, providing for the Panamanians to take over control of the canal by the year 2000, and starting with the abolition of the Canal Zone, there was absolutely no more justification for the kind of discriminatory treatment of workers that had characterized the first half century or more of the canal’s existence.

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CONCLUSION Organized labor has never been strong in Panama—with the exception (for several decades) of the unions of United States in the Canal Zone. One reason for this has been the nature of the Panamanian economy. From the beginning of the republic, the three principal centers of employment in Panama were the canal and United States military operations in the zone, commerce generated by the canal, and agriculture. Another factor contributing to the relative weakness of the Panamanian labor movement was the fact that few of the governments of the republic had any particular concern for organized labor. Only during the early years of the Torrijos regime did those in power seek overtly to encourage the growth of the labor movement. Employer resistance to unionism was a third factor that explains the relative weakness of Panamanian organized labor. This was dramatically shown until the late 1950s by the attitude of the United Fruit Company— although subsequently that company did change its behavior. A 1963 document of the United States Department of Labor, which we have previously cited, sketched some of the consequence of this situation. It said: A number of so-called labor organizations can be considered little more than workers’ associations or clubs. They frequently are formed by a handful of workers of a trade, or employed by the same employer. They did not bargain collectively in the accepted American sense, nor in many occasions are they recognized as spokesmen for the workers by their employers. It is not uncommon that they draw their members and even their leaders from persons who have no relation with the industry, enterprise or trade in which the union nominally functions. (Emphasis in the original).

This same document noted: “A significant number of the unions constituting the Panamanian labor movement are more like benevolent societies, agricultural associations, or cooperatives than trade unions.” Few of the agricultural workers’ groups were orthodox unions, dealing collectively with employers; rather, they dealt principally with problems of land tenure, using “agitation and political pressure.” Even much of the urban labor movement was made up of organizations of self-employed workers who “have united to promote their interests as producers, apportion business among themselves, and obtain favorable purchase prices on needed supplies rather than to defend their interests as workers.” As a consequence of all this, collective bargaining was limited. The Department of Labor Document stressed that the law did not require employers to bargain collectively, and commented: “Deprived of collective bargaining as a tool, weaker unions are often limited to a role of compelling the employer, through agitation or moral suasion, to observe at least the minimum requirement of the labor and minimum wage laws.”83


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As we have noted, the Torrijos regime in 1972 revised the labor code to provide for compulsory collective bargaining if a union demanded it and to make legal recognition of unions easier. However, even when Torrijos was still in power, when the economic situation turned bad in the latter 1970s, some of what had been granted to labor was withdrawn. Under Torrijos’ successor, General Noriega, organized labor was forced to be on a so-called war footing to protect its interests and those of its members. It proved impossible to do much about one of the two peculiarly Panamanian problems facing the labor movement of the Republic of Panama, that is, the use of Panamanian registry to provide ships having no other connection with the republic than a flag of convenience. However, changes in the status of the Panama Canal, culminating in the Carter–Torrijos Treaties of the late 1970s, did serve to modify the other peculiarly Panamanian problem of the country’s organized labor movement—that of workers in the Canal Zone. Also, the organization of non-U.S. citizens by a few United States unions, particularly the AFSCME, and the association of those U.S. union locals with the Panamanian labor movement, substantially strengthened organized labor in Panama as a whole. Furthermore, the abolition of the Canal Zone as such as a consequence of the Carter–Torrijos agreements, and the fact that the Republic of Panama completely took over management of the canal in the year 2000, meant that workers involved in the canal became part of the workforce of the Republic of Panama, and the unions of those workers became an integral part of the labor movement of the Republic.

NOTES 1. Domingo Barría (secretary-general, Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de Panamá), interview with the author in Panama City, July 7, 1967. 2. José A. Brouwer (Socialist Party member of Legislative Assembly of Panama, organizer of Liga de Inquilinos in 1924–1925), interview with the author in Caracas, Venezuela, July 24, 1947. 3. Sharon Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 592. 4. Barría, interview. 5. New York Times, July 18, 1919. 6. Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 592. 7. Charles David Kepner, Jr., Social Aspects of the Banana Industry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 193. 8. Barría, interview; Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 578. 9. Industrial and Labor Information (Geneva: International Labor Organization, May 12, 1924), pp. 34–35. 10. Samuel Gompers, “Conditions of Life and Labor on the Panama Canal Zone,” American Federationist XXXI: 3 (Washington, DC, March 1924), p. 219. 11. Brouwer, interview; Barría, interview; see also Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 578.

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12. Brouwer, interview. 13. New York Times, July 22, 1931. 14. Brouwer, interview. 15. Barría, interview. 16. New York Times, July 22, 1939. 17. Barría, interview. 18. Memorandum from Ernesto Galarza, Pan American Union, Washington, DC, June 1946. 19. Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 587. 20. Robert E. Moberley (labor reporting officer, U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Panama City, August 6, 1954. 21. Barría, interview. 22. Luis Alejandro Cuellar (president of Unión Nacional de Sindicatos Obreros of Panama), interview with the author in Havana, Cuba, September 10, 1949. 23. Moberley, interview. 24. Ibid. 25. Leucelio Cubilla Smith (member of Executive of Sindicato de la Chiriqui Land Company of Bocas del Toro, Panama), interview with the author in Washington, DC, September 5, 1962. 26. United States Department of Labor, “Panama: Guide to Program Officers, Team Managers and Lecturers,” n.d. (ca. 1963) (mimeographed), p. 5. 27. Barría, interview. 28. Herbert Thomas Mitchell (labor attaché, U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Panama City, July 6, 1967. 29. Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 588. 30. Tomás Dionisio Aráuz (secretary of international relations of Confederación Obrera y Campesina de la República de Panamá, and subsequently secretarygeneral of Confederación Agraria Nacional), interview with the author in Panama City, August 27, 1952. 31. Padre Carlos Pérez (adviser and organizer of Comité Nacional de Organización Sindical), interview with the author in Panama City, Panama, August 27, 1952. 32. José A Brouwer (Socialist Party member of Legislative Assembly of Panama, organizer of Liga de Inquilinos in 1924–1925) interview with the author in Panama City, July 26, 1948. 33. Felipe Lazos (secretary of grievances, Sindicato de Trabajadores del Mueble, and secretary of organization of Unión General de Trabajadores), interview with the author in Panama City, August 27, 1952. 34. Ray Valliere (labor reporting officer of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Panama City, August 27, 1952. 35. Lazos, interview. 36. Padre Carlos Pérez, interview; Angel García (secretary-general of Confederación Obrera Campesina de la República de Panamá), interview with the author in Panama City, August 27, 1952. 37. Padre Carlos Pérez, interview. 38. Angel García, interview. 39. Horacio Henríquez (secretary-treasurer of Unión General de Trabajadores), interview with the author in Panama City, August 27, 1952.


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40. Augusto Malavé Villalba, “Informe Sobre el Congreso Obrero-Campesino de la República de Panamá, Celebrado en los Dias 23 al 24 de Septiembre 1950” (typewritten). 41. Angel García, interview; Dionisio Aráuz, interview. 42. Dionisio Aráuz, interview. 43. Sr. Galvan (cultural secretary of Confederación Obrera Campesina de la República de Panamá), interview with the author in Panama City, August 27, 1952. 44. Dionisio Aráuz, interview. 45. Diogenes Brown (recording secretary of Federación de Sindicatos Independientes of Panama), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 1, 1953. 46. Dionisio Aráuz, interview. 47. Letter from Robert J. Alexander to Jay Lovestone, August 30, 1954. 48. Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 584. 49. Carlos R. Julio (secretary-general of Confederación de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, July 5, 1962. 50. Barría, interview. 51. Alberto García (Panamanian banana workers’ leader), interview with the author in Panama City, August 27, 1952. 52. Serafino Romualdi (Latin American representative of AFL-CIO, assistant secretary-general of ORIT), interview with the author in New Brunswick, NJ, December 11, 1956. 53. Cubilla Smith, interview. 54. United States Department of Labor, p. 5. 55. Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 554. 56. United States Department of Labor, p. 5. 57. Barría, interview. 58. Mitchell, Jr., interview. 59. German Meléndez (secretary-general, Confederación de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá); Carlos Peters (recording secretary of Confederación de Trabajadores); Nicolas Silva (secretary of Sindicato de Panaderos); and Catalina Fiesta; all interviews with the author in Panama City, July 6, 1967. 60. Robert J. Alexander, “Impressions of Meeting of Confederación de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá,” July 6, 1967 (typewritten). 61. Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 584. 62. Ibid., p. 586. 63. Meléndez, interview; Silva, interview. 64. Dionisio Aráuz, interview. 65. Carlos George (official of Federación de Trabajadores Cristianos), interview with the author in Panama City, July 6, 1967. 66. Julio, interview. 67. George, interview. 68. Mitchell, Jr., interview. 69. Phillipps, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 586. 70. Ibid., p. 581. 71. Ibid., p. 582.

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72. Barría, interview; Federación International de los Obreros del Transporte (ITF), “Comunicado de Prensa,” London, May 16, 1951 (mimeographed). 73. “Acuerdos y Resoluciones del Primer Congreso de la Federación de Sindicatos Independientes” (mimeographed). 74. Julio, interview. 75. Unión, mimeographed newspaper of Unión Nacional de Marinos, Panama City, January 5, 1956. 76. Julio, interview; Félix Herrera (ex-leader of Unión Nacional de Marinos de Panamá, president of Confederación de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá), interview with the author in Panama City, July 6, 1967. 77. Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons: Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967), pp. 96–107. 78. United States Department of Labor, pp. 2–3. 79. “Brief in Support of Proposals for Wage Increases,” Local 713, UPWA, pp. 9–10. 80. Barría, interview. 81. “Brief in Support of Proposals for Wage Increases,” p. 10. 82. Romualdi, p. 108. 83. United States Department of Labor, pp. 6–7.

CHAPTER 2

Costa Rican Organized Labor—Part I

Costa Rica has been unique among the Central American countries. Although during much of the nineteenth its history was a turbulent one, during most of the twentieth century it experienced an unusual degree of political democracy and civic freedom, broken only by a short-lived dictatorship between 1917 and 1919 and a short but relatively bloody civil war in 1948. It did not develop the ingrained militarism that characterized its Central American neighbors. Certainly one reason for this difference was that, in spite of the name “Rich Coast,” Costa Rica did not turn out to be rich from the point of view of its Spanish conquerors. It had neither precious metals nor a highly developed Indian population who could be made to work under servile conditions for the conquistadors, such as existed in the more northerly provinces of the isthmus. As a consequence, most of the Spaniards who did come there were content to become peasant farmers. The Indians whom they conquered were to a greater or lesser degree ultimately absorbed into the Spanish immigrant population. The small landholding peasant became a characteristic of the Costa Rican highlands, although, particularly after the beginning of the coffee boom in the latter half of the nineteenth century, some relatively large landholdings did develop. It was often the case that peasants who did not want to be turned into tenants or agricultural laborers could move into as-yet unoccupied lands and maintain their independent existence. This continued to be the case through much of the twentieth century. The economic and social elite that emerged was based rather on

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commerce, handling the purchase and export of coffee and other products of the highlands, instead of on semifeudal landholdings. Another aspect of Costa Rican society that made it distinct from its neighbors was that well before the advent of the twentieth century there had begun to develop an extensive public education system. As a consequence, a large proportion of the population was literate—in contrast to the situation further north in Central America. A number of urban centers developed in the highlands, including San José, the capital, as well as Cartago, Heredia, Alajuela, and the port towns of Limón on the Caribbean side and Puntarenas and Gulfito on the Pacific coast. These grew up principally as commercial centers, but also by the turn of the twentieth century a few had some small-scale artisan industry. The attempt to build a railroad from Limón to San José, which had begun in 1871, gave rise to an entirely new sector of the Costa Rican economy. The railroad project proved to be exceedingly expensive in terms of both money and human lives. An American engineer in charge of the British-financed project, Minor Keith, got the idea to grow bananas along the part of the road already constructed and to export them to the United States, so as to have a source of profit for the railroad. This project prospered, and Keith’s operation merged with Boston-based banana growers elsewhere in the Caribbean to form the United Fruit Company (UFC) in 1899. For several decades the UFC spread its operations along the Atlantic coast, but then in the late 1920s, in the face of diseases that attacked the fruit there, it began to transfer its operations to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Subsequently, the Standard Fruit Company resumed some operations in the Limón area and also opened plantations on the Pacific coast. The establishment of the banana industry was important for several reasons. First, it provided Costa Rica with a second major export. Second, it brought with it other economic effects, such as extension of the railroad, telegraph, and other communication systems. Third, railroad construction and the banana trade brought immigrants into Costa Rica. Few Costa Ricans from the highlands—where most of the people lived—were willing to go down to the republic’s tropical regions to work. So the railroad and fruit companies first brought in sizable numbers of blacks from the English-speaking West Indies and subsequently attracted substantial numbers of Nicaraguans, who were more used to life and labor in the tropical climate than were the Costa Ricans, as well as Chinese and Italian laborers. Finally, the advent of the UFC brought to Costa Rica the phenomenon of economic imperialism. A single gigantic—from the Costa Rican perspective—United States corporation not only dominated the production of the country’s second most important export, but came to dominate much of the transport and communications, both internally and with the outside world.


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Following the Civil War of 1948, in part as a result of the policies of the governments of the period, there was a substantial development of light manufacturing. The new industries included textiles, food processing, construction materials, and light metallurgy, among others. There was also expansion of white-collar employment as the result of diversification of the economy. These developments gave rise to the growth of a new economic and social elite.1 POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF COSTA RICA During the first four decades of the twentieth century, Costa Rican politics was strongly personalistic, the parties of the period being organized around particular leaders. For much of this time, Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno and Cleto González Víquez alternated in the presidency. They both maintained a wide degree of civil liberties and more or less free elections. The period marked by their leadership came to an end in 1936. The one exception to the democracy of this period was the dictatorship of Federico Tinoco Granados. The war minister of President Alfredo González Flores, Tinoco overthrew the president in 1917 and governed arbitrarily. However, faced with serious internal opposition and the refusal of the United States government of President Woodrow Wilson to recognize his regime, Tinoco finally resigned and went into exile about two years after seizing power. In 1940, a medical doctor who received certain fame for serving the poor, Rafael Calderón Guardia, was elected president. He pushed through Congress a social security system and a labor code and generally encouraged the labor movement. Encountering strong opposition from the economic and social elite, Calderón Guardia formed an alliance with the Communist Party, which largely dominated the labor movement at the time. Aside from engendering opposition on the grounds of his advanced social policies, Calderón also aroused opposition as a result of widespread corruption. His opponents accused him of rigging the election of his successor, Teodoro Picado, in 1944. In the meantime, a new opposition had appeared. Whereas many of the young intellectuals who had come to maturity in the late 1930s and the 1940s tended to be attracted to the Communist Party, a considerable number of university graduates of the subsequent decade, although believing in broad social and economic change, were alienated by the outside control over the Communists and were anxious to find a Costa Rican answer to the country’s problems. In the mid-1940s these young people joined forces with José Figueres, who had suddenly been catapulted onto the national political scene in 1942. When in July of that year the sinking of a Costa Rican ship by German submarines had led to rioting and vandalism in San José, which Figueres claimed were instigated by the Communists, he got on the radio

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and denounced what was going on. He was arrested before he could finish his speech and was deported to Mexico. Figueres was a businessman and a rural landowner whose principal reputation before 1942 had come from his interest in experimentation on his farm and in beneficent treatment of those working for him. Until 1942, he had not been concerned with politics, but from his exile in Mexico, he wrote a series of public letters proclaiming his belief in a somewhat vague kind of Costa Rican Socialism. Upon his return home in 1944, the young intellectuals joined with Figueres in establishing the Socialist Democratic Party. Also becoming members of this party were some of the leaders of a new labor confederation, the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores (CCT) Rerum Novarum, which was in the process of formation. With the approach of new elections in 1948, the party of ex-president Calderón and President Picado, the National Republican Party, named Calderón Guardia as its candidate. The opposition, consisting of both Figueres and the Social Democrats and more conservative elements, named Otilio Ulate, publisher of one of the country’s principal newspaper, as their nominee. The opposition feared that the government would try to steal the election, as they claimed had occurred four years before. José Figueres let it be known that if such an effort would be made, it would be met with an armed insurrection. When the votes were counted, they showed Otilio Ulate the victor. His triumph was confirmed by a majority of the National Electoral Board, but then Congress met and canceled the decision of the board and proclaimed that Calderón Guardia had won. From his La Lucha Sin Fin plantation, José Figueres thereupon declared a revolt. He was joined by many of the young Social Democrats. They seized some commercial aircrafts and soon were supplied with arms by elements of the government of President Juan José Arévalo of Guatemala. The forces supporting the government were divided among the very small national army commanded by President Picado, armed followers of Calderón, and armed groups organized by the Communist Party. There was little coordination in the government ranks. The rebels were able to capture the port of Limón and to advance on San José. After two months of sometimes bitter fighting, negotiations for peace were opened, with Padre Benjamin Núñez, the secretary-general of the Rerum Novarum Labor Confederation, being the principal spokesman for the rebels, and Communist Party leader Manuel Mora the main negotiator for the government. These negotiations led to surrender by the government forces. Meanwhile, an agreement had been reached between the rebels and Otilio Ulate that for a period of two years there would be a provisional government, the Founding Junta of the Second Republic (Junta Fundidora de la Segunda República), headed by Figueres, after which Ulate would


37

be inaugurated as the duly elected president. As a matter of fact, the junta remained in office only 18 months, turning over power to Ulate in November 1949. During its short period in power, the junta, consisting principally of Social Democrats, made many changes. It imposed a 10 percent capital levy on all businesses, it nationalized the country’s banks, and it set up economic development institutions. It also outlawed the Communist Party (Vanguardia Popular) and the labor confederation that the Communists controlled. In addition, the junta called elections for a new constituent assembly, elections in which the Social Democratic Party did not do well, in spite of being in the government. A new constitution was written, which was not as progressive as the Social Democrats and the junta would have liked. Because of the poor showing of the Social Democrats in the 1949 elections, the elements who had controlled the Junta Fundidora decided that it was necessary to launch a new party. It was organized in large part on the basis of the personal popularity that José Figueres had won during his period as head of the junta. This was the Partido Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Party—PLN), organized in 1951. For the next half century, Costa Rican politics was basically divided between the PLN and coalitions of the opponents of the PLN, with the Communists and other Far Left groups being a small third element. Power tended to go back and forth between the PLN and its opponents, although the PLN did win consecutive elections on two occasions—when Daniel Oduber succeeded José Figueres in 1974, and when Oscar Arias succeeded Luis Alberto Monge in 1986. THE BEGINNINGS OF ORGANIZED LABOR IN COSTA RICA John A. Booth has traced the beginnings of organized labor in Costa Rica to the gremios or guilds, which were established by the Costa Rican government starting as early as 1830. There were brought into these both employers and workers, and they were basically designed to allow government to control various segments of the economy. Booth commented: In summary, the government organized workers and professionals in order to protect wider societal interest from inadequacies or abuses among practitioners of particular trades. Little attention was paid to protection of the rights of workers per se, but the responsibilities and obligations of employers, clients, and workers in the various fields were often delineated in such laws. These labor guilds (e.g., arrieros, dockworkers), were antecedents of later mutual aid societies and modern labor unions. The early professional guilds also established a Costa Rican pattern of state-sanctioned professional associations that has spread to more than a dozen other professions.2

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Mutual aid societies began to appear as early as the 1850s, the Sociedad de Socorros in San José, established in 1854, probably being the first of these. In the late 1850s, in the face of a turndown in the economy, mutual aid groups began to proliferate. Some, such as the Sociedad de Artesanos de San José, and similar groups in Alajuela, Cartago, and Heredia, contained workers from various trades. Others, particularly in San José, brought together workers in specific trades, including such groups as painters, tailors, commercial employees, carpenters, plasterers, engineers, and mechanics, newspaper workers, telegraphers, and typographers. These early labor groups became involved in politics. Many workers became involved in the presidential campaign of 1886 of General Bernardo Soto, but then three years later when, as president, Soto sought to manipulate the next election against another candidate the workers’ groups favored, there was serious rioting in San José and other towns, forcing Soto to resign. Then in early 1890 an Artisans Constitutional Club was formed to coordinate workers’ political activity and stimulate the establishment of new workers’ groups.3 Elements of the Catholic Church were interested in the embryonic labor movement. Thus, the Sociedad de Artesanos de Socorros Mutuos, established in San José in January 1874, was headed by a priest, Francisco Calvo.4 Almost two decades later, in 1893, Bishop Augusto Thiel organized a party, Acción Católico, which sought workers’ support. He issued a pastoral letter entitled “Fair Wages for Workers,” which was widely denounced by the better-off classes and the government of the day. The minister of cults, Manuel Jiménez, sent Thiel a letter denouncing him for giving publicity “without permission of the Executive Power” to his pastoral letter. That document, the minister said, presented “such erroneous doctrines as that the government should fix wages of the workers, as uneconomical as fixing prices of articles of prime necessity, as inconvenient as inciting the workers and artisans to form part of their organizations and join forces in an unfriendly manner to free themselves from supposed intolerable oppression.” Meanwhile, the country had experienced its first strikes. According to Edwin Chacón León, one of the earliest occurred in 1884 among the Chinese workers who had been brought in to work on construction of the railroad from Limón to San José. This walkout was “brutally suppressed,” with several workers dead and wounded. Shortly afterward, 1,500 Italians who were employed in the same project also struck. Although that walkout was apparently less violently suppressed, there is no indication that it was any more successful in improving the situation of the railroad construction workers than the Chinese workers’ strike had been.5 There were also some walkouts among native Costa Rican workers. In 1883, telegraph workers went on strike, in 1892 workers in a Heredia textile mill walked out, and in 1894 and 1901 there were strikes among San José bakers.


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An important change in the nature of the Costa Rican workers’ organizations took place in 1905, when for the first time organizations called sindicatos (trade unions) were formed among shoemakers, plasterers, carpenters, typographers, and bakers. According to John A. Booth, these sindicatos were “influenced by socialist and anarchist labor theories.”6 By the early 1900s two ideological tendencies that were to play major roles in the Costa Rican labor movement were already evident. These were the Social Christian concepts first put forward by Pope Leo XII, first enunciated in Costa Rica by Bishop Thiel in the 1890s, and expressed again in 1902 by a group of Catholic youth in Cartago who launched a periodical Justicia Social. One of those involved in this activity was Jorge Volio, who would play a very significant role in the 1920s. The second tendency was that of Marxism. In 1909 a group of young intellectuals formed the Sociedad de Trabajadores, which published a periodical Hoja Obrera (Workers’ Page), and set up a Center for Social Studies. It was this group that was to launch the country’s first central labor group.7 THE CONFEDERACIÓN GENERAL DE TRABAJADORES Under the patronage of the Center for Social Studies, the Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) was established in 1913, in the midst of a wave of strikes. Its proclaimed objective was “working class solidarity and common action and defense of workers’ interests in their struggle against capital.” Its president was Juan Rafael Pérez, leader of the bankers’ union. Subsequently, at the time of the struggle against the dictatorship of Federico Tinoco (1917–1919), strikes organized by the CGT were an important factor in bringing down the Tinoco government.8 In 1913, there was the first celebration of May Day in Costa Rica. Mario Oliva described this event, in San José: From eight thirty in the morning the events began with a parade . . . there was a soccer game, sweets were distributed to the children, and speeches were given by the workers Juan Rafael Pérez, Gerado Vega and some intellectuals such as Carmen Lyra and Omar Dengo. At noon they visited the workers’ cemetery, and in the evening Joaquin García Monge gave an appropriate speech. . . . The contents and significance was in its recognition of the martyrs of Chicago and in showing its internationalist character.9

During the succeeding decade, May Day was celebrated only sporadically. In some cases, it was converted into a merely social occasion, without any particular working-class or political significance.10 Associated with the CGT was the Centro Socialista, organized in 1919, by Aniceto Montero. The CGT and the Centro Socialista “helped organize and support new unions and a series of strikes in which the once mutualistic and decentralized labor movement became more oriented toward

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class conflict and more broadly united.” A number of new unions were established in this period, some of them among government employees. The country’s first general strike was organized by the CGT in February 1920. The demands of the strikers were the eight-hour day and increases in wages. Those walking out included unions of factory workers, craftsmen, sailors in the Gulf of Nicoya, and various workers in San José, Limón, Puntarenas, and Alajuela. The workers finally won from the government a general 20 percent wage increase and the eight-hour workday for government employees. The year 1920 also saw what was apparently the first strike of UFC workers, in the port of Limón, in protest against substantial layoffs by the fruit company. The strike, called by the Federación de Trabajadores de Limón, involved some 2,500 workers. There were clashes with the police, who burned down the federation’s headquarters. The walkout was suspended when a short border war broke out between Costa Rica and Panama.11 The CGT also lobbied extensively to get the Legislative Assembly to pass some prolabor legislation. They had some success after the 1920 general strike, but Edwin Chacón León noted that the application of these laws “was generally frustrated by the employers, in which they had the complicity of the authorities.”12 The CGT decided in 1923 to dissolve itself as a union group and give way to the Reformist Party, headed by Jorge Volio, by then an ex-priest and a member of Congress. The Reformist Party fought for a labor code, a social security system, and the establishment of a civil service system. The party disappeared in the early 1930s.13 Meanwhile, the CGT was revived as a labor confederation in 1928. However, John A. Booth has noted that “largely ineffective in its second period of existence, the CGT was one of several organizations whose leaders gave rise to the Communist Party.”14 Edwin Chacón León summarized the experience of this early CGT: “If it is true that this Confederación did not have the system of organization that present ones do, it succeeded in attracting hundreds of workers who needed an organization to unite them, to struggle to overcome so much injustice and to end so much exploitation.”15 THE COMMUNISTS AND THE ORGANIZATION OF THE BANANA WORKERS The Communist Party of Costa Rica was established in 1929, largely due to the efforts of a young law student still in the university, Manuel Mora. There were both university students and workers among the founders of the Communist Party, which in June 1931 took the name Bloque de Obreros y Campesinos. The workers came principally from a group in San José, ARCO, which Chacón León described as being “of Marxist tendency.”16


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Mora and his colleagues began to work in the labor movement in San José, at first establishing a carpenters’ union, and then in 1930 launching the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). As he himself admitted, the UGT was not very successful and did not last very long. Mora soon turned his attention to an attempt to organize the banana workers of the UFC.17 In its early years, the Communist Party of Manuel Mora was quite atypical. Perusing its periodical, which was edited by a young Venezuelan exile, Romulo Betancourt, one finds virtually none of the idolization of Joseph Stalin, which by that time had become common in Communist publications. There were even some quotations from Leon Trotsky, although he had long since fallen into disgrace in the international Stalinist circles. There was strong condemnation of Yankee imperialism, particularly of the UFC, but relatively little lauding of the accomplishments of the Soviet Five Year Plans. All of this changed after the Costa Rican Communist Party joined the Communist International in 1935 (and Romulo Betancourt left Costa Rica and its Communist Party).18 Soon after it was established, the Communist Party entered the electoral arena. They succeeded in electing Manuel Mora and Efrain Jiménez Guerrero to the Legislative Assembly (the parliament) and eight members to the San José city council.19 Manuel Mora and his colleagues encountered great difficulties in trying to organize the banana workers. One of these was that many of the workers were black West Indians, who spoke only English, and in some cases were still British subjects. Others were Nicaraguans. Costa Ricans were mainly employed on the railroad and in UFC commercial activities. Of course, another major problem was the UFC wanted nothing to do with any union. However, the organization campaign was successful. In 1934 it culminated in a general strike of the banana workers, with about 15,000 participating. Some of the English-speaking workers were reluctant to participate, although they were not hostile to the strikers. Many merchants in the banana regions sided with the walkout, feeling that wages were very low, and that if wages would go up the merchants themselves would benefit. The strike went on for a month. The principal issues were the abolition of payment of the workers by chits cashable only at the company’s stores, improvement of housing conditions for the workers, the ready availability of antisnakebite serum and quinine on all of the plantations, and other general improvements in the conditions of the workers. The strike was marked by clashes between the strikers and the police. The strikers themselves took over control of policing the banana camps, because they feared sabotage of the company’s installations by the company itself, to provide an excuse for the government to use force to break the strike.

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Manuel Mora, speaking for the strikers, had several interviews with President Ricardo Jiménez. The president told Mora that he, Mora, could overthrow Jiménez if he wished to do so, but that he would not be able to stay in power more than three days, after which would come a dictatorship of the coffee and banana barons. Mora told the president that he had no intention of overthrowing the government, that this was a strike for improvement of working conditions. Jiménez replied that in those terms, he sympathized with the strikers, but that as president, he would have to preserve the constitution and law and order. Mora agreed to this.20 President Jiménez was attacked for dealing with Mora and other Communists as spokesmen for the striking banana workers. He replied to these attacks by saying: “I cannot use force against ideas. I treated with the Communists because they represented the workers on strike. I, as the President and as a citizen loving justice, cannot silence the Communists. I cannot ignore the laborer—the forgotten man overlooked in the shadow of humiliation. It is my duty to hear and examine his complaints with justice.”21 After conferring with Mora, Jiménez suggested to the company that it settle with the strikers. They refused, and the walkout went on, with increased violence, the workers burning parts of the plantations and blowing up a bridge over which the company was trying to move bananas. There were more clashes with the police, and several people were killed and wounded. President Jiménez then told the company that it would have to settle with the strikers. They at first agreed, but when Mora was chosen as one of those with whom they had to deal, they reneged, saying that he was not an employee of the company, and they would therefore refuse to negotiate with him. However, the small Costa Rican planters—who supplied a part of what the UFC exported—agreed to deal with Mora and actually started to do so. The company then applied pressure and the local planters backed down. However, in the face of an ultimatum from President Jiménez, the UFC finally agreed to accept any conditions to which the small planters agreed. Manuel Mora subsequently said that the strike was a complete success for the union. The negotiations brought an end to the system of payment by chits. Housing conditions were improved, medical demands were met, and the company in general changed its attitude.22 ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS, THE UNEMPLOYED, AND SHOEMAKERS Several unions were formed in San José in the mid-1930s. Two of these were of particular significance, the organizations of teachers and shoemakers, in both of which the Communists played a leading role. Two efforts to organize the teachers of San José in the early 1930s were frustrated by the school authorities in 1933 and 1935. Two of the principal


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leaders in these efforts were Carmen Lyra and Luisa González, both founders of the Communist Party. However, in 1936 a new effort to establish a teachers’ union was successful, with the organization of the Agrupación (or Asociación) de Maestros Unidos. In August 1936 there were meetings of delegates from the various schools in San José, which brought into existence the new union. In its statutes it proclaimed its objectives to be: “A) To work for the cultural progress of the Nation. B) To work to improve the conditions of life of the teachers in their moral, economic and recreational aspects.”23 The teachers’ union was ultimately to become the country’s largest. The Communists were also active in organizing the unemployed, who were numerous as a result of the impact of the Great Depression. In May 1933, they organized a parade of the unemployed through the main streets of San José, which resulted in severe clashes with the police.24 Of more long-run significance than the organization of the unemployed was the establishment of the shoemakers’ union, which for a number of years was one of the most important labor groups of the capital. It originated early in 1934 as the result of spontaneous strikes in two of the most important shoemaking firms in San José caused by the employers’ decision to reduce their workers’ wages because of the economic crisis. When the employers refused even to listen to their demands, the workers decided that it was necessary to establish a permanent organization, a union, to deal with the owners of the enterprises in which they worked.25 THE CONFEDERACIÓN DE TRABAJADORES DE COSTA RICA The victory of the workers in the 1934 banana strike undoubtedly gave general stimulus to trade union organization. Numerous groups of artisans, rural workers and factory employees were established. In 1938, the Sindicato de Zapateros (shoemakers) of San José was represented at the founding congress of the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL) in Mexico City by Efrain Jiménez Guerrero.26 The CTAL subsequently aided the move to establish a national labor confederation in Costa Rica. A congress held in San José in October 1943 established the Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica (CTCR), which began its career claiming 96 affiliates, with 30,000 members. The convention passed five principal resolutions, in addition to the one establishing the CTCR. These named President Calderón Guardia as honorary president of the CTCR; extended praise to Archbishop Sanabria Martínez for his support of organized labor; stated its political position to be that of opposing any candidates inimical to social legislation; sent greetings to Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin; and sought diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union by Costa Rica. Among those who addressed the congress were President Rafael Angel Calderón

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Guardia, and the president of the CTAL, Vicente Lombardo Toledano. The CTCR voted to affiliate with the CTAL.27 The CTCR and its affiliated unions strongly supported the labor and social legislation enacted by the Calderón Guardia government. One major law established a social security system. Another was a labor code. This code was praised by Rodolfo Guzmán, secretary-general of the CTCR, as one of the most advanced anywhere in the world because it covered not only urban but also rural workers.28 However, it had one weakness from labor’s point of view, which was to hamper the trade unions for several decades: it did not prohibit employers from dismissing workers for trade union activity. During the war years, strikes were reduced to a minimum. A compulsory arbitration law, passed in December 1942, set up a National Arbitration Board, with representatives of the government, the workers, and the employers, and provided that this board had to hear disputes within 24 hours.29 However, this was not sufficient to prevent all strikes. For instance, workers on the Palomar and Golfito plantations of the UFC, in the southeastern part of the country, went on strike in September 1943. The government intervened, as did national union leaders, and an agreement was soon reached.30 The strike apparently marked the beginning of a period of relatively good relations between the UFC and the unions, for Rodolfo Guzmán, secretary-general of the CTCR, reported to the Cali Conference of the CTAL late in 1944: “We have entered into a new era in our relations with the United Fruit Company. The CTCR now discusses even general problems with the company, such as the housing and health situations in the banana regions.”31 Soon after the end of the Second World War, the workers of the Northern Railway went out on strike. At this time, Prospero Guardia, manager of the government-owned Pacific Railways, was put in charge of the struck road while the management and the workers negotiated an end to the strike.32 In the postwar era there were also walkouts led by the CTCR among the public utility workers of San José and among the banana workers.33 The Communists continued to dominate the CTCR and its affiliated unions. The Communist Party, in a national conference in 1943, voted to formally dissolve the party and form a new one to be known as the Vanguardia Popular. It went on record supporting President Calderón Guardia and praising the social encyclicals of the popes.34 One important result of this apparent transformation of the Communist Party was a statement by Víctor Sanabria, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San José, giving qualified support to Vanguardia Popular. After citing several flattering references by Vanguardia to papal encyclicals, Monseñor Sanabria said: “Can I condemn the new party? No, I cannot condemn it,


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and if I condemned it I should have to give reasons for doing so, and I do not have any. I am not saying to Catholics that they should enter this or any other party, or that they should not enter this or any other political group. All of the parties start at the same place as does the Partido Vanguardia.”35 John A. Booth has said: “The Costa Rican labor movement (particularly the Vanguardia-dominated CTCR) attained the apogee of its political power from 1942 to 1948.” He added, “As opposition to the Picado government grew, the Popular Vanguardia and its unions began to employ political intimidation and violence to protect their new-found power and policy gains.”36 FOUNDING OF THE RERUM NOVARUM CONFEDERATION Although Archbishop Víctor Sanabria Martínez had expressed a tolerant if not friendly attitude toward the rechristened Communist Party and the CTCR, which it controlled, he was at the same time anxious to encourage the organization of a labor movement oriented toward Catholic social principles. With this purpose in view, Sanabria had sent a young priest, Benjamin Núñez, to study for four years in the United States—at Niagara University in Niagara Falls, New York, and then at the Catholic University in Washington, DC, to prepare himself for the task of organizing such a Catholic-oriented trade union group.37 With the return of Padre Núñez, the archbishop was ready to lend his support to the organization of a new branch of Costa Rican organized labor. On June 14, 1943, Archbishop Sanabria issued a statement saying: “The ecclesiastical authority is undertaking the formation of Catholic workers groups and amplification of existing ones, not to weaken the cohesion of the working classes but to channel that movement in the most convenient way within the ample course laid down by pontifical teaching.” Then, on August 2, 1943, Padre Núñez spelled out in some detail in a talk in Cartago the direction the new labor movement would have. In September 1943 the Central de Sindicatos Rerum Novarum was established “as a coordinating organization of the trade union activities of democratic ideology.” Three months later, the first congress of leaders of the unions already associated with the central was held. It issued a “Declaration of the Congress of Leaders of the Rerum Novarum Movement.” Meanwhile, new unions were being formed with the help of Padre Núñez, as well as some federations, which were required for the formation of a legal labor confederation. Finally, in April 1944, delegates from these federations met in a congress that established the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajo Rerum Novarum.38

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Although the Rerum Novarum Confederation was established under auspices of the Archbishop of San José, and its first president was a priest, Padre Benjamin Núñez, neither Sanabria nor Núñez wanted it to be a Church-dominated organization. Unlike some other Catholic-inspired labor groups in Latin America, there was no provision for the individual affiliated unions of Rerum Novarum to have ecclesiastical advisers, the only such individual being one on the confederation level, with a voice but not a vote within its leadership. After Padre Núñez ceased being president of Rerum Novarum on becoming minister of labor after the 1948 civil war, there was no priest associated directly with the organization. Even when Padre Núñez was president of Rerum Novarum, he made it clear that he did not want local priests “interfering” in the unions of the confederation.39 As a matter of fact, in the early period of the Rerum Novarum Confederation many priests were hostile toward it. They tended to think, and preach, that trade unionism was synonymous with Communism, was the work of the devil, and that Catholic workers should have nothing to do with unions. In combating that kind of attitude, the position of the archbishop, the presence of Padre Núñez at the head of the organization, and the name it had adopted, were all helpful.40 Serafino Romualdi, the Latin American representative of the American Federation of Labor, was impressed by the nonconfessional nature of the Rerum Novarum Confederation. Steven J. Schwartzberg noted that before Romualdi’s visit to Costa Rica for the first time in 1947 he “had been dubious about cultivating close relations with a labor movement with a strong religious tendency. His attitude changed on meeting the union leaders to whom he was introduced by Núñez, particularly Luis Alberto Monge. He described them to the U.S. Embassy in San José as ‘enthusiastic, energetic and well-read’ and described their federation as unlike any Catholic trade union movement he had ever encountered.”41 During the first years of the Rerum Novarum Confederation, Padre Núñez’s salary was paid by Archbishop Sanabria, as was that of Núñez’s principal lieutenant, Luis Alberto Monge. After the Civil War of 1948, those church subsidies ended.42 In these early years of the Rerum Novarum Confederation, it received some financial help from the American Federation of Labor. Padre Núñez received a grant of $750 from the Free Trade Union Committee of the A.F. of L., and subsequently asked for a further $4,000 “to maintain the trade union movement in Costa Rica at the same level of efficiency as a rival labor confederation influenced by the Costa Rican Communist party and supported by the Costa Rican government.” Steven Schwartzberg has noted, “Final judgment on this request had been withheld pending Romualdi’s visit to Costa Rica. Given his favorable impressions, it may be assumed to have been approved.”43 With the end of the Civil War of 1948, the CCT Rerum Novarum was left as the country’s only legal central labor organization. An early decree


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of the Junta Funidora de la Segunda República outlawed the Vanguardia Popular and the central labor group it controlled, the CTCR. De facto, for several years, the Rerum Novarum Confederation had no legal rivals. SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS AFTER 1948 In general, following the Civil War of 1948, political power in Costa Rica alternated between administrations of the Partido Liberación Nacional, founded under the leadership of José Figueres Ferrer, and those of its opponents. However, through this period there developed a socioeconomic model in Costa Rica that began with the postwar government of the Junta Funidora de la Segunda República and did not vary substantially until the 1980s, regardless of which party controlled the administration. It was within the context of that model that the labor movement functioned during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Guillermo Villalohos sketched the main elements of the Costa Rican model. He wrote: From the beginning of the decade of the fifties and as a complement to the process of product diversification, there was created a social infrastructure that permitted the raising of the levels of living of the majority of the Costa Ricans. The fundamental purpose was the eradication of poverty. The social reform of the forties (labor code, social security and social guaranties) providing a more ample institutional form and the necessary financing for achieving the established objectives. All of this was expressed in the creation of an ample set of autonomous institutions that covered multiple services with a social emphasis: housing (INVU0, electricity (CE), potable water (AA), access to basic grains (CNP), extreme poverty (IMAS), and health and education.

Villalohos continued: The strategy followed by the country sought to assure a social development that would touch all aspects of life. To that end there was a policy of social protection and not only of aid. The philosophical concept was ‘A people educated, healthy and well fed produced better, so that financing of social policy is not a cost but an investment in human resources.’ The protagonist of this process was the State, which in addition to having an active participation in the economy carries forward a policy of rising wages that was the base of elements, which sustained the model.

Villalohos particularly noted expenditures on education and health. Primary schools were established in every population center, and more than 250 secondary schools were founded throughout the republic. Adequate teachers’ training institutions were set up, and new universities were founded. The literacy rate rose to 95 percent, and 25 percent of the government budget was spent on education.

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In the health field, the social security system (health insurance) was made universal, providing both preventative and curative care. There was a marked decline in the infant death rate, and measures to prevent the spread of contagious diseases were very effective.44 There was also extensive diversification of the economy in this period. Particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, Costa Rica went through a substantial process of industrialization. Guillermo Villalohos wrote about this: Starting in the sixties, with the application of the model of import substitution and the process of Central American integration, the diversification of the productive structure was initiated, stimulating the export of manufactured goods to the countries belonging to the Central American Common Market. . . . Thus Costa Rica from those years adopted a strategy of development based on industrial import substitution, although a process of diversification of the structure of exports. The country grew at the rhythm of 7 percent a year between 1963 and 1972, but maintained a considerable deficit in the commercial balance that was compensated for with the diversification of exports of sugar and meat, the increased production of banana, the productivity of coffee and new industrial exports.45

ORGANIZED LABOR AFTER THE 1948 CIVIL WAR The Civil War of 1948 would seem to have paved the way for the Rerum Novarum Confederation to take the place of the CTCR as the predominant central labor organization, since the CTCR was outlawed by the Junta Funidora de la Segunda República, whose Minister of Labor Benjamin Núñez became. However, this did not come to pass. The leaders of the Rerum Novarum Confederation, although they were strongly anti-Communist and had supported the overthrow of the Picado government, were not in favor of outlawing the CTCR. As Luis Alberto Monge, who succeeded Padre Núñez as head of Rerum Novarum, said, they wanted it to remain “as a check upon themselves.”46 The Rerum Novarum Confederation strongly supported the government of the Junta Funidora de la Segunda República. In a document it issued in 1954, the confederation wrote: “One of the characteristics that distinguished the short Government of Señor Figueres (18 months), was a desire to do justice to the working classes that had for long, almost always, had been forgotten about by previous governments. This characteristic generated during this period a capitalist opposition to Señor Figueres.” The same document indicated that relations between Rerum Novarum and the government of President Otilio Ulate, starting in November 1949, were not as friendly. It said: In its way it respected the labor movement, but during his government, he paid no attention to it, even allowing the Ministry of Labor to remain vacant for many


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months. . . . Furthermore, during his Government, without our saying that he was personally responsible, although he tolerated it, a strike of our Confederation in an aviation company, declare legal by the Labor Tribunals . . . he aided with his attitude the breaking of the strike, turning his back on the most just hopes of the workers.47

The CCT Rerum Novarum did not by any means become as dominant as certainly they themselves had hoped. There were reasons for this. One was the emergence within a short time a factional struggle within Rerum Novarum. A second was the difficulty they faced in developing strength among the banana workers, who had been the largest and most powerful element in the CTCR. The third was the fairly prompt recovery of strength within the labor movement by the Communists. THE PERONISTA PROBLEM The internal dissension in the Rerum Novarum Confederation arose as a result of the proselytizing efforts of two labor attachés in the Argentine Embassy in San José, seeking to win over the confederation to support of the regime of Juan Perón and to cooperate with the Argentine CGT in trying to form a Peronista Latin American labor organization. They widely distributed Peronista literature among the local affiliates of Rerum Novarum and talked with union leaders in various parts of the country. Their first success, apparently, was with Warren Bonilla, vice president of the CCT Rerum Novarum, whom they sent to the Trade Union School of the Argentine General Confederation of Labor in Buenos Aires. By July 1950, the Peronistas had won support of a majority of the Executive Committee of the Rerum Novarum Confederation.48 A showdown between the Peronista and anti-Peronista leadership of the Rerum Novarum began at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the confederation on July 31, 1950. When the majority present at the meeting adopted resolutions favorable to Peronismo, their opponents resigned from the committee. However, as Luis Alberto Monge wrote Serafino Romualdi, he had “absolute confidence that he would be able to regain the Confederación if there were people disposed to fight—but really fight—to shout and struggle with energy against the agents of Peronismo.”49 There were such people, notably Padre Benjamin Núñez. As he explained the situation, the anti-Peronistas in the leadership, after formally resigning from the CCT Rerum Novarum Executive, “meeting then in exile in the store of Dona Berta, we discussed two probabilities: either we withdraw those unions we could and form a new Confederation, or we attempt the reconquest of the leadership of the R.N. We decided for the second. We began an intense campaign, which fell principally to Claudio and me: I dedicated myself to visiting unions to gain them for the cause.”50

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The anti-Peronistas insisted on a meeting of the General Assembly of the confederation, consisting of delegates from its affiliates, which took place on August 13, 1950. There, the leader of the CCTRN banana workers, Juan R. Solis, moved a motion to have all members of the executive replaced by new elections. This motion was finally accepted by the assembly. At that point, the pro-Peronista delegates to the assembly walked out. A new executive was chosen by those who remained—a quorum—on which the pro-Peronistas had no representation.51 According to Luis Alberto Monge, those who had withdrawn from the August 13 meeting were representatives of the Sindicato de Transporte, consisting of small intercity bus owners, the municipal workers of San José, the Federation of Turrialba that, according to Monge, “has not in fact existed in practice for a year,” and the commercial employees’ union of Puntarenas.52 For several years, the Federación Obrera Capitalina, of which the Municipal Workers Union was the largest affiliate, remained under the control of the Peronistas. In 1953, on the basis of that federation and others in Limón and Puntarenas, they established the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT). The CNT was represented at the founding congress of the Peronista Latin American labor group, the Agrupación de Trabajadores Latino Americanos Sindicalizados (ATLAS), with which it affiliated, and one of the principal CNT leaders, Héctor Gutiérrez Camora, became financial secretary of the ATLAS. In spite of their quarrel with the Partido Liberación Nacional sympathizers who continued to control the Rerum Novarum Confederation, the Peronistas of the CNT supported the government of José Figueres, which came into office in November 1953. This was shown by a statement issued by the CNT after an unidentified plane flew over San José, dropping leaflets violently attacking Figueres. The CNT document said that in attacking the president, those distributing the leaflets were attacking “the people of Costa Rica.”53 Peronista influence quickly declined after the overthrow of Perón. Early in 1959, the Federación Obrera Capitalina withdrew from the CNT, depriving it of most of its remaining unions. It was then subsidized by the government of President Echandi. In 1966, with the reorganization and expansion of the Rerum Novarum Confederation as the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos (CCTD), what remained of the CNT became part of the new confederation.54 BANANA WORKERS ORGANIZATION AFTER 1948 For more than a decade before the Civil War of 1948 the banana workers had had one of the strongest and most militant unions of Costa Rica. However, after that conflict, the banana workers were divided, and the UFC apparently did its utmost to maintain that situation and to prevent the emergence of another powerful union among its workers.


51

The Rerum Novarum Confederation sought to move into the vacuum left by the end of the CTCR’s control of the banana workers. Under the confederation’s patronage, and aided for some time by a subsidy from the Organización Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT), the Federación de Trabajadores Bananeros (FETRABA) was established under the leadership of Juan R. Solis, who, as we have noted, played a major role in preventing the Peronistas from capturing the Rerum Novarum Confederation. However, the FETRABA never officially affiliated with Rerum Novarum. The efforts of the Rerum Novarum Confederation to organize the banana workers faced several major difficulties. For one, many workers, faced with the apparent inability of the Communist trade union leaders to defend their organization in the face of the legal dissolution of the CTCR, were very wary about participating in any union at all, at least for a time. Solis and his fellow organizers were also faced with what they felt was a duplicitous policy on the part of the UFC officials in Costa Rica. They found that, on the one hand, the general manager of the company in San José was quite approachable and reasonable, would admit that abuses were occurring in the various plantations, and sometimes would order that those abuses be terminated, but that more often than not his subordinates ignored such instructions. Also, the general manager insisted that the prestige of managerial personnel had to be maintained, and even when continuing abuses were brought to his attention, refused to discipline his subordinates in the field. For at least some time, the UFC’s resistance to unionization had the benevolent support of key personnel in the U.S. Embassy in San José. In August 1952, the chargé d’affaire explained to me that the company’s attitude toward the unions was “understandable.” He said that after the disappearance for a while of the Communist-controlled banana workers’ group, “one couldn’t expect” the UFC to encourage its being supplanted by another union. He found it “quite natural” for the company to play off the Communist-controlled union groups against those that were not Communist controlled. This same gentleman suggested that José Figueres was a “Communist.”55 That the company did thus play one workers’ group against another was illustrated by an incident at the Finca Cultivez on the Atlantic coast, where the company had an abaca plantation. The workers there had a grievance concerning the loading of mules with the abaca, and the union there belonged to Rerum Novarum. However, in spite of that, the local manager called in the Communist leader of a union on a neighboring plantation to ask his advice on the matter, and that union official sided with the company against the Rerum Novarum union. Of course, the manager took the Communist unionist’s advice. This incident was not an isolated one but rather represented UFC policy in this period.56

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In 1949, FETRABA called a general strike in the banana industry, which was widely adhered to by the workers. The question at issue was that a wage increase granted by the company was immediately followed by increases in prices in the UFC commissaries, which negated the wage increase that had been conceded. Although the strike was officially declared to be legal, the government refused to back the workers and they had to return to their jobs without any real concession by the company. In addition to those problems for Rerum Novarum, the Communists soon returned to activity in the banana areas. They reestablished their own banana workers’ federation. Moreover, by the early 1950s, the FETRABA had broken its connection with the Rerum Novarum Confederation, arguing that unity among the banana workers had to include those local unions controlled by the Communists. Edwin Chacón León noted, “Many times it has been said that the only one responsible for the growth of the Communist trade union movement in the Banana Zone was exclusively the Banana Company itself, which arduously persecuted all manifestations of democratic unions. It even accepted many times the persecution by the Communists of the democrats.”57 The upshot was that by the late 1950s there were three different union groups operating among the banana workers. There was FETRABA; the federation organized by the Communists and affiliated with their new central labor organization; and local unions affiliated directly to the Rerum Novarum Confederation. Negotiations in 1959 for FETRABA to join Rerum Novarum came to nothing. One effect of this division of forces was that the negotiation of any legal collective agreement was rendered impossible, since the law required that a union have at least 60 percent of the workers in an enterprise within its ranks before it could negotiate such an agreement. By the middle 1960s, the number of organized workers in the banana industry remained small, and the workers remained divided. Although it was possible for one or another union group to negotiate grievances on a local level, no overall collective bargaining was possible with either the UFC or the Standard Fruit Company, which had also entered the Costa Rican banana business.58 NOTES 1. For a study of the Costa Rican economy to the middle of the twentieth century, see Rodrigo Facio, Estudio Sobre Economía Costarricense (San José, Cost Rica: Editorial Surco, 1942). 2. John A. Booth, “Costa Rica,” in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 214–15. 3. Ibid., p. 215. 4. Edwin Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica (San José, Cost Rica: Centro de Estudios Laborales C.A.—CTCA-ORIT, 1980), p. 5.


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5. Ibid., p. 6. 6. Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 217. 7. Ibid., pp. 217–18. 8. Ibid., p. 218. 9. Mario Oliva, 1º de Mayo en Costa 1913–1985 (San José, Costa Rica, n.d.), p. 8. 10. Ibid., pp. 9–11. 11. Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 219. 12. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 12. 13. Booth, “Costa Rica,” pp. 218–19. 14. Ibid., p. 234. 15. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 12. 16. Ibid., p. 17. 17. Manuel Mora Valverde (secretary-general, Vanguardia Popular), interview with the author in San José, September 1, 1952. 18. See Robert J. Alexander, Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ, 1982. 19. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 17. 20. Mora Valverde, interview. 21. Charles David, Kepner, Jr., Social Aspects of the Banana Industry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 198. 22. Mora Valverde, interview. 23. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 18–19. 24. Ibid., p. 19. 25. Ibid., pp. 20–21. 26. C.T.M.—1936–1941, México, D.F.: Confederación de Trabajadores de México, 1941), p. 560. 27. Trabajo, official newspaper of Partido Comunista de Costa Rica, San José, October 8, 1943. 28. Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica, Informe de la Secretaría General al Consejo de la C.T.A.L., San José, December 8, 1946. 29. “Report of the United States Delegation to the Lima, Peru Inter American Trade Union Conference (January 1–13, 1948),” Inter America Labor News. 30. La Prensa Libre, San José, September 27, 1943. 31. Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina, Segundo Congreso General de la Confederación de Trabajadores de la América Latina, Cali, Colombia, Diciembre 1944, México, 1945, p. 120. 32. New York Times, December 28, 1945. 33. Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica, Informe. 34. Notícias Católicas, news sheet of National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service, Washington, DC, July 3, 1943. 35. Ibid. 36. Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 221. 37. Padre Benjamín Núñez (minister of labor, former head of Rerum Novarum Labor Confederation), interview with the author in San José, July 28, 1948. 38. Rafael A. Sancho, Cordero, “Como se Fundo la Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Rerum Novarum,” Instituto de Educación Obrera CCT “Rerum Novarum,” August 22, 1959 (mimeographed). 39. Padre Benjamín Núñez, interview. 40. Robert J. Alexander, Presidents of Central America, Mexico, Cuba and Hispaniola, Conversations and Correspondence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), p. 65.

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41. Steven J. Schwartzberg, “The Civility of Yankee Imperialism: Democracy and American Policy in Latin America in the Truman Years” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1996), p. 283. 42. Alexander, Presidents, p. 65. 43. Schwartzberg, “The Civility of Yankee Imperialism,” p. 65. 44. See Guillermo Villalobos in Ruptura en las Relaciones Laborales: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estados Unidos, México, Paraguay, coord. Manfred Wannöffel (México: Fundación Friedrich Ebert (México, DF), Nueva Sociedad, 1995). 45. Ibid., p. 114. 46. Alexander, op cit., p. 65. 47. See “Memorandum de la Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Rerum Novarum Para CIOSL-ORIT y demás Organizaciones Sindicales Hermanas del Continente y del Mundo, Realidad Política de Costa Rica,” San José, November 23, 1954 (mimeographed). 48. “Report of Arturo Jáuregui to Serafino Romualdi on the Situation in the Costa Rican Labor Movement,” August 30, 1950 (manuscript). 49. Letter from Luis Alberto Monge to Serafino Romualdi, August 19, 1950. 50. Letter from Benjamín Núñez to “El grande y buen querido amigo,” August 13, 1950. 51. “Crónica de la Asamblea General de la C.C.T. Rerum Novarum,” Sunday, August 13, 1950 (typewritten). 52. Alberto Monge, letter. 53. “Trabajadores!!!,” statement of Comité de Prensa, Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores, San José, June 22, 1954. 54. Unless otherwise noted, preceding from the author’s interviews with Héctor Gutiérrez Zamora (financial secretary, Agrupación de Trabajadores LatinoAmericanos Sindicalizados [ATLAS]), in Buenos Aires, July 14, 1954; Álvaro Jiménez Zavaleta (secretary-general, Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos), in San José, June 30, 1967; Eddy Alvarez (treasurer and secretary-general, successively, of Confederación Costarricense del Trabajo Rerum Novarum), in San José, September 7, 1959; Gonzalo Castillo (ex-secretary general, Rerum Novarum Confederation), in San José, July 14, 1953; Rafael Angel Sancho Cordero (member of Executive of Rerum Novarum Confederation), in San José, September 7, 1959; Joaquín Zúñiga Mora (member of Executive of Federación Obrera Capitolina), in San José, September 7, 1959; and Alfonso Lara (office secretary of Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores), in San José, September 7, 1969. 55. Phillip Williams (chargé d’affaires of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in San José, August 29, 1952. 56. Leopoldo Pita (exiled Peruvian labor leader, organizer for Rerum Novarum Confederation in Costa Rica), interview with the author in San José, July 15, 1953. 57. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 35. 58. Unless otherwise cited, preceding from the author’s interviews with Cláudio González Queirós (president of Rerum Novarum Confederation), in San José, August 31, 1952; Carlos Montero Segura (honorary president of Rerum Novarum Confederation), in San José, September 7, 1959; Rafael Angel Sancho Cordero (member of Executive of Rerum Novarum Confederation), in San José, September 7, 1959; Gonzalo Castillo (ex-secretary general, Rerum Novarum Confederation), in New Brunswick, NJ, May 28, 1952, and in San José, August 28, 1952.

CHAPTER 3

Costa Rican Organized Labor—Part II

Although the Communist-controlled Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica lost its legal recognition right after the Civil War of 1948, most of its unions did not. Almost immediately, the Communists began to recoup their forces in organized labor. Luis Alberto Monge, writing in August 1950, sketched the process of recuperation of the Communists. He said, “The Communists began a regrouping of their union forces during the revolutionary government of Figueres. They formed various unions under the name of independents, to which the Minister of Labor of that period, Padre Núñez, granted legal recognition. They opened offices and formed a Commission of Trade Union Reorganization, which in reality turned out to be the camouflaged Executive Committee of the Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica (CTCR). So far, they had had relative success with the shoe workers and the printing trades.”1 By 1952, the Communists had “federations of independent unions” in San José, Heredia, Cartago, Alajuela, and Puntarenas. In San José, their most important unions were those of shoemakers, textile workers, construction workers, and woodworkers. They also had local unions in various parts of the banana industry.2 Finally, in 1953 the Communists organized another central labor group, the Confederación General de Trabajadores Costarricenses (CGTC). It affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions and the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL).3 This new confederation was given legal recognition by the first constitutional government of José Figueres Ferrer. Edwin Chacón León suggested that one of the reasons why such recognition was granted, in spite of the

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fact that the Communist Party was still illegal, was the fact that “[a]ll those who appear as officers were at this time practically unknown in trade union circles and legally had to be accepted, and thus the CGTC gained legal life and from then on participated openly in the trade union struggle in different zones of the country.”4 By 1959, its secretary-general claimed that the CGTC was the strongest of the country’s central labor organizations, bigger than all of the rest combined. He said that it had 36 unions affiliated with it, with some 15,000 members. It had a federation of banana workers (FOBA) and a federation of coffee workers. In San José, it had unions of shoemakers, tailors, and other artisan groups.5 In 1967, a leader of the CGTC admitted that numerically the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos had more members than the CGTC but insisted that the support of the CGTC rank-and-file members was more solid than that of the other central labor groups, as demonstrated by the fact that only it had in recent years been able to mount May Day demonstrations. By 1967, the CGTC had several federations affiliated with it. One of the most important was the Peasant and Plantation Workers Federation, which included unions in both the United and Standard Fruit companies’ operations—although as the CGTC leader said, because of the employers’ opposition it was very hard for unions to function in the banana industry. The CGTC also had several regional federations in various parts of the country.6 By 1967, the CTAL had gone out of existence. However, the CGTC belonged to its successor, the Congreso Permanente de Unidad Sindical Latino Americana, with its headquarters in Montevideo. In the CGTC there functioned the Bureau of Trade Union Information of Central America, a subregional grouping of the union organizations belonging to the Congreso Permanente.7 In May 1967, the CGTC issued a plan, which it said was designed to meet the economic crisis through which it said the country was then passing. This 13-point document demanded, among other things, that companies that had established business under the Law for Industrial Production no longer receive exemption from import taxes, that the United Fruit Company and similar enterprises be forced to pay real estate and income taxes, like any other firms, as well as for land distribution to poor peasants, construction of roads, protection of small manufacturing firms from competition engendered by the Central American Common Market, government monopoly of all mineral wealth, expansion of the social security system, and passage of a law protecting union leaders from dismissal by their employers.8 According to John A. Booth, the CGTC had about 6,000 members in 1971. He commented: The CGTC regained much of the strength of the old CTCR in Atlantic and Pacific zone fruit company unions. It also organized many new groups of peasant small


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holders, industrial workers, public employees, and construction and transport workers. In 1979 the CGTC had thirty-four constituent unions with nearly 20,000 members; its greatest relative strength and number of affiliates were found in the provinces where the banana industry and fruit companies operate.9

In 1980, the CGTC took the initiative to form the Labor Unity Committee (CUS) as a move to establish a single central labor organization in Costa Rica. At first, the CUS brought together with the CGTC the Costa Rican Democratic Workers Confederation (CGTD), the Costa Rican Workers Central (CTC), and several independent unions. Subsequently, it was transformed into the Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT—Unitary Workers Confederation). However, because of Communist dominance of the CUT, several independent unions, as well as the CGTD and the CTC, withdrew from it. In 1981, the CGTC-CUT’s banana workers’ affiliate conducted a 67-day strike against the Del Monte Company. Attempts to generate sympathy strikes in support of this walkout were unsuccessful, and the strike was lost. This failure led to a purge of the leaders of the CUT. John A. Booth concluded that the “CUT continues to exist with a somewhat broader base than the CGTC, but it is far from the powerful unified labor front envisioned when the CUC was formed in 1980.”10 THE RERUM NOVARUM CONFEDERATION AND ITS SUCCESSOR In addition to the difficulties facing the Rerum Novarum Confederation after 1948, which we have already mentioned, it faced several other problems in trying to become the dominant Costa Rican labor confederation. One of these was the lack of adequate full-time personnel to organize new unions and maintain existing ones, which was in contrast to the Communists, who were able to maintain a corps of union officials. Another problem was inadequate financing. As in the case of most Latin American union groups, the Rerum Novarum Confederation encountered difficulties in collecting dues on a voluntary basis. Although a handful of member unions succeeded in getting dues checkoff by the employers, and although for a few years Rerum Novarum got a small subsidy from the Organización Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT), particularly for activity among the banana workers, its financial base remained weak—again in contrast with the Communist union leaders. Also, the Rerum Novarum Confederation leaders showed a lack of militancy that was somewhat surprising. This was noted for foreign observers. For instance, in 1954, Thomas Gaines, an American businessman who was interested in establishing a modest low-cost housing project in Costa Rica, approached the Rerum Novarum leaders with the suggestion that they help him recruit workers for the project and form them into a

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union. However, the Rerum Novarum proved to be “supremely uninterested” in the idea, according to Gaines.11 Five years later, the labor officer of the U.S. foreign aid program in Costa Rica commented that the Rerum Novarum Confederation leaders were doing no union organizing and were not adequately servicing their member organizations. He commented that they hardly ever moved out of the confederation headquarters.12 Finally, Rerum Novarum never really found strong support from the successive governments. Those of Liberación Nacional paid relatively little heed to the labor movement; those administrations led by anti–Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) parties were more or less overtly hostile to the Rerum Novarum Confederation. However, Rerum Novarum did remain one of the principal Costa Rican labor groups. In 1952, it had affiliated with it four federations: the Federación de Industrias, consisting of unions of factory workers and craftsmen; the Federación Obrera Regional de San José, grouping the affiliated unions in the region of the capital; the Federación Obrera de Heredia; and the Federación del Café, consisting of coffee workers’ unions. The Federación de Industrias had various unions affiliated with it. These included the workers in the country’s largest textile plant, that of workers in the largest canning company, and the Sindicato de la Industria de Vestido, including about 250 clothing workers, as well as the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Harina, including bakers and other workers handling wheat products, with about 150 members. The San José federation included a construction workers’ union with 200 members, a commercial employees’ union with 150 members, and the Sindicato Musical, which controlled all of the musical bands in the country and had over 300 members. The federation also included the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Seguro Social, which included hospital workers and white-collar workers in the social security system. Finally, it had in its ranks the union of workers of the light and power company. The Federation of Heredia had a union in the local match factory, a union of municipal workers, and a union of shoe workers. There was also a commercial employees’ union of Heredia in that federation. The Coffee Federation had five unions. They were hoping that that federation would become the backbone of the confederation, since the coffee industry was by all odds the country’s largest. The unions were on various large coffee farms. After the breaking of relations between the banana workers federation Federación de Trabajadores Bananeros (FETRABA) with Rerum Novarum, the ORIT subsidy was transferred for a while from it to the Coffee Federation. Finally, the Rerum Novarum Confederation had a number of unions that did not belong to any federation but were directly affiliated with the central labor body. These included a union of shoemakers in Grecia, a rural Sindicato Agrícola of Turrialba, and a union of small farmers in San Antonio de Belem.13


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The Rerum Novarum Confederation held regular annual assemblies or congresses. That of May 1, 1952, dealt particularly with the need for general wage increases in the country and suggested improvements in the social security system. It also adopted a resolution urging the workers to take an active part in the general election campaign that was to start, although not specifically calling for support for any party or candidates.14 The Rerum Novarum Assembly of February 1953 accepted a report by its retiring Directing Board, which stressed the organization’s attempt, only partially successful, to bring together all of the democratic trade union groups and urged the necessity for members to pay dues regularly. It also adopted a resolution posing 11 questions directed at all of the parties then contesting the general election; again, no overt endorsement was given to any candidate or party. The meeting was attended by Luis Alberto Monge, who had recently become secretary-general of ORIT.15 In 1958, there was a change in leadership of the Rerum Novarum Confederation. Eddy Álvarez, who for several years had been secretarygeneral, resigned, and several other leaders were displaced. As a consequence, two of the confederation’s affiliates, the Federación Agraria and the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de Obras Públicas, withdrew from the confederation. The question at issue was largely one of how to deal with the fact that the PLN had been defeated in the 1958 general election. Although virtually all of the leaders of the Rerum Novarum Confederation were members of the PLN, the group that took over in 1958 was more willing than its opponents to seek some kind of friendly arrangements with the new president, Mario Echandi.16 Edwin Chacón León credited the Rerum Novarum as of 1958 with about 4,000 members. He added, “One must not forget that in its early period this confederation came to have 50,000 members.”17 By 1959, the Rerum Novarum Confederation was running an institute to train labor leaders. Among its courses were union organizing procedures, the history of Rerum Novarum, the nature of the ORIT and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and collective bargaining procedures. About 40 people were attending these classes, which met twice a week for six weeks.18 In 1966, the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajo Rerum Novarum formally passed out of existence, giving way to a new group, the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos (CCTD), which like its predecessor was affiliated with the ICFTU and the ORIT. This process of change began when several independent unions suggested unification with the unions of Rerum Novarum but said that to make that possible the Rerum Novarum would have to be liquidated and a new organization be formed. The Rerum Novarum leadership finally accepted this idea. The three federations, which had not been in the Rerum Novarum Confederation in 1966, but joined the CCTD, were the Federación de

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Trabajadores de Telecommunicaciones, the Federación de Trabajadores de Seguro Social (which had been expelled from Rerum Novarum in 1959 for suspected Communist influence in its leadership), and the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores, originally established by Peronistas, but that had long since lost such association. In addition, during its first year, the CCTD undertook to organize three new federations, those of fruit and vegetable street merchants, health workers, and peasants.19 The CCTD claimed a membership of 12,000.20 Soon after the establishment of the CCTD, its electrical workers’ union was able to negotiate a collective agreement with the local electric company, a subsidiary of the American and Foreign Power Company. However, such agreements remained rare. In this case, the willingness of the company to sign a collective contract was attributed to several factors: that American and Foreign Power was accustomed to signing agreements with unions in other Latin American countries, that it had recently come under attack for making “excessive” profits, and the fact that the labor relations director of the local company was a friend of Pepe Figueres and Daniel Oduber.21 Another field in which unions affiliated with the CCTD sought to negotiate collective agreements was the banana industry. The confederation had unions in both the southern banana region of the Pacific Coast and on the Atlantic Coast. In both cases, the union entered into negotiations with the employer, but before they were concluded, the Communist unions of the regions demanded to participate in the negotiations, a demand supported by the company involved, after first agreeing to deal only with the CCTD union. In the case of one of the unions, President Figueres’ minister of labor, Danilo Jiménez Veiga, one of the original founders of Rerum Novarum, also insisted that the Communists be included in the collective bargaining. This seriously undermined the CCDT efforts to gain strength among the banana workers.22 In a somewhat related situation, the CCTD established a union in the port of Quepos, the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la División de Quepos (SITRADIQUE). It succeeded in getting a collective agreement, but in 1975, when it came time to negotiate a renewal of that accord, the Communists insisted that their union in that port, the Sindicatos de Trabajadores Agrícolas y de Plantaciones de Quepos (STAPQ), be included in the negotiations. However, the SITRADIQUE was able to demonstrate that it was the majority union, and it negotiated the new collective contract.23 The CCTD, like its predecessor, Rerum Novarum, worked more or less closely with the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which established its Central American headquarters in Costa Rica. The AIFLD first set up a union leadership training program and had social projects for workers’ housing, aid to cooperatives and community development, in association with the local unions. Then in the 1970s, it founded a research center in San José, which sought to gather information on wage levels, living costs, nutrition, and other similar matters for all of the


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Central American countries. The union groups in the area associated with the ORIT and ICFTU helped gather the information and were able to use it in negotiating with the employers.24 In 1971, there was a serious split within the CCTD. This arose largely as a result of conflicting ambitions among the leaders of the organization, although the dissidents, led by Ernesto Ortiz Mora, claimed that the CCTD leaders were more interested in getting posts in the boards of various autonomous government institutions, such as the Banco Popular and the Caja de Seguro Social, than they were in defending the interests of the workers.25 Apparently another cause of dissension in the CCTD, leading to the 1971 split, was its relations with the AIFLD and the ORIT. After the split, the dissident group said: “The intervention of international organizations in its functions, the very active participation of representatives of these in the election of directive organs, pressuring in different ways and favoring the elements that better represented external interests, which did not correspond to those of the Costa Rican working class, were some of the situations that some leaders and rank and file saw with preoccupation.”26 The dissident group withdrew to form the Confederación Auténtica de Trabajadores Democrática (CATD). It took with it unions of food and drink and hotel workers, nurses’ aides, and some transport workers. At first, the CCTD’s banana workers’ group on the Atlantic coast, the Unión de Trabajadores Bananeros, joined the CATD, then withdrew to rejoin the CCTD, after which it once again joined the CATD, and finally ended up as an independent union, without affiliation to any central labor group. Efforts to get the Unión Ferroviaria Nacional, the railroaders’ organization, to join the CATD were unsuccessful. In 1979, the Sindicato de Educadores Costarricenses (SEC—Costa Rican Educators Union) with about 5,000 members, principally rural school teachers, joined the CATD. The CATD received the strong support of Danilo Jiménez Veiga, the minister of labor in President José Figueres’ government. The CCTD people claimed that he granted legal recognition to the CATC in spite of the fact that it did not have in its ranks the two federations that were required by law.27 One leader of the PLN reported to me in 1978 that the CATD had “stolen” a considerable number of the government employees from the CATD, leaving it “quite weak.”28 A year later, the CATD leaders were informed by the Ministry of Labor that because of the decline in their membership, there was danger that the CATD might be deprived of its legal recognition.29 Edwin Chacón León claimed that at the beginning of the 1980s, the CCTD was the largest of the country’s central labor groups. It included among its affiliates the railroad workers’ union, organizations of metallurgical, textile, petroleum, and construction workers, the union of employees of the Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, and the Unión Musical Costarricense, as well as a variety of other organizations.30

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In 1980, both the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos and the CATD joined with some independent unions to establish the Comité de Unidad Sindical (CUS), which was soon converted into the CUT. However, when it became clear that the CUT was dominated by the Communists of the CGTC, the CCTD withdrew from it. The CATD, on the other hand, remained part of the CUT.31 ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE PLN The relationship of the PLN to organized labor was somewhat equivocal. The PLN proclaimed itself a multiclass party, and its leaders often compared it with the Acción Democrática (AD) Party of Venezuela. However, unlike AD, the PLN did not have any labor bureau, and the labor leaders who belonged to it never had anything approaching the decisive voice in the party’s counsels, which the AD labor bureau sometimes possessed. Over the decades, most of the leaders—and a fair proportion of the rank-and-file members of the Rerum Novarum Confederation and its successor—were supporters and even members of the PLN. However, the party did not go out of its way to favor the labor movement. There were undoubtedly several reasons for this. In the first place, José Figueres and other top figures in the PLN were concerned principally with other matters than those concerning the labor movement. They wanted to use the nationalized banking system and other innovations, which they introduced primarily to help the small farmers to obtain land, credit, and facilities for marketing their products, rather than concern themselves with the country’s wageworkers. Even in their policies toward the banana companies, the PLN leaders were more interested in getting a larger percentage of the profits of those companies for the Costa Rican economy than they were with making the fruit companies negotiate with their workers and provide them with higher levels of living. As time passed, there was undoubtedly another factor of considerable importance that influenced the PLN’s relations with organized labor. The policies fostered by the successive PLN governments undoubtedly stimulated the economic development and particularly the industrialization of Costa Rica. For at least a considerable number of years, those who benefited most from this and were able to set up new industries and other enterprises were supported by—and in quite a few case leaders of—the PLN. Their weight in party circles was often much greater than that of the organized workers— and they were not particularly friendly disposed to organized labor. From time to time, there were revolts within the PLN against this presumed power within the party on the part of this so-called new class. One of these was in 1967, when at a party conference a group of younger leaders headed by Luis Alberto Monge, a founder and second head of the Rerum Novarum Confederation, was elected secretary-general of the party. However, although Monge’s presence in that post presumably helped at least for a time


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to preserve the loyalty of many Rerum Novarum workers to the party, it did not basically convert the PLN in any sense into a workers’ party. The neglect of organized labor by the Liberación Nacional was reflected in the area of labor legislation. When Figueres first ran for the presidency in 1953, he promised important changes in the labor code. He particularly said that he would push for more economic independence for the labor movement by enacting legislation to allow an employer checkoff of union dues and to provide for immunity of elected union officials from arbitrary dismissal by the employers. Although a modified law on the checkoff was enacted, the government never did push through legislation protecting union leaders from employer reprisals. The upshot of this situation was reflected over the years in at least two things. One of these was the inability of the Rerum Novarum Confederation to obtain a really dominant influence in organized labor—in contrast, for instance, to the dominant position, which Acción Democrática long held in the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela. The second result was the fact that over the decades a very substantial part of the urban working class remained loyal to ex-President Calderón Guardia, who had originally sponsored enactment of the labor code and establishment of the social security system. Likewise, a small but significant part of the urban workers—and banana workers—remained loyal to the Communist Party. Liberación Nacional, in contrast, had much greater support from the peasantry. THE CONFEDERACIÓN LATINO AMERICANA DE SINDICALISTAS CRISTIANOS AFFILIATE IN COSTA RICA In the early 1960s, the Confederación Latino Americana de Sindicalistas Cristianos (CLASC), the Latin American organization of the ICFTU, became interested in establishing an affiliate in Costa Rica. The Rerum Novarum Confederation, which was originally of Social Catholic inspiration, had almost from its inception been associated with the Latin American and world groups to which the American Federation of Labor (AFL) (and subsequently the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations [AFL-CIO]) belonged and had wanted nothing to do with CLASC and the IFCTU. In 1964, the CLASC invited a leader of the Juventud Obrera Católica (Catholic Worker Youth) to attend a course in union leadership training that it was running in Caracas. Upon his return, this young man began to seek recruits for a specifically Catholic labor movement in Costa Rica. One of his early recruits was Claudio Gamboa, who quickly emerged as the principal figure in this movement. What has variously been called the Frente de Obreros y Campesinos Cristianos and the Federación de Obreros y Campesinos Cristianos was

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soon established. In 1967 it changed its name to Confederación de Obreros y Campesinos Cristianos (COCC). It was the Costa Rican affiliate of the CLASC and the IFCTU. By 1967, the COCC had three federations affiliated with it. One of these was a Peasant Federation (Federación Campesina—FEC). It sought particularly to recruit wage-earning agricultural workers, who it estimated accounted for about 20 percent of the rural population, most of the rest being landowning peasants or renters. The second federation was the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Municipales. The third was the Federación Obrera Cristiana, which consisted of two groups, the Asociación Nacional de Empleados Públicos and the Asociación Sindical de Obreros del Ministerio de Transporte. The COCC claimed about 4,000 members in 1967 and received financial aid from German and Belgian Catholic sources. The COCC carried on extensive leadership training operations. It not only ran courses in San José, but it also sent people to CLASC schools in Guatemala City and Caracas.32 In 1969–1970, there was an internal struggle in the Catholic labor group, centering on the role being played by the Latin American Catholic trade union group, the Confederación Latino Americana de Trabajadores (the former CLASC). This led to the withdrawal of some of the organization’s leaders, including Claudio Gamboa, who had been one of the founders of the movement.33 John A. Booth noted, “COCC’s early success lay in the organization of peasants including small truck, coffee and agricultural workers in various areas of the central highlands. CCOC also won affiliation from unions representing public employees in several national and municipal agencies.” He credited the COCC with about 2,000 members in 1971. In 1972, the COCC changed its name to Central de Trabajadores Costarricenses (CTC). Booth noted that by 1979 it had 29 unions affiliated with it and had about 3,400 members.34 Charges had been made that the CTC was under the control of the clergy. To counteract this claim was one of the reasons for changing the name of the organization. In its declaration of principles, the CTC declared, “Respectful of the philosophical, political and religious convictions of all of the members, the CTC determines its own declaration of principles, program and action, with full independence of the political parties, the government, the employers and religious and philosophical authorities.”35 In 1980, the CTC participated in formation of the Comité de Unidad Sindical and subsequently in the CUT. However, it soon withdrew from the CUT because of Communist control of that organization.36 GOVERNMENT WORKERS’ UNIONS Some of the strongest and most militant unions were those of government employees. These can be divided into two broad groups: those of workers


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in the national government and its autonomous agencies and those of the country’s school teachers. Most of these unions were independent, that is, they did not belong to any of the central labor organizations. The CCTD did have within its ranks some unions of government workers, including those of postal employees, electrical and telecommunications workers, railroaders, and employees of the Consejo Nacional de Producción,37 and some of the other central labor groups also had small unions of specialized government workers. But the large unions of those kinds of workers—with one important exception— did not affiliate with any national labor confederation. The largest organization of central government employees was the Asociación Nacional de Empleados Públicos (ANEP). It was originally established by a group of workers in the Ministry of Labor and was made up of a number of unions established in the 1950s among employees of various segments of the government. In the beginning, the ANEP had friendly relations with the CCTD, although it never joined that confederation. A number of its leaders studied in courses run by the CCTD’s Instituto de Estudios Sindicales y Sociales. However, subsequently it came under more radical leadership. The organization that came to include the ANEP, and that organization itself, was quite militant. In 1959 there was a strike of government workers demanding a year-end bonus, and in 1969 and 1970 there were walkouts for salary increases. In 1980, the ANEP threatened another strike if promised salary increases were not forthcoming, although the union finally settled on the terms originally proposed by the government. According to John A. Booth, by 1980 the ANEP leadership “was divided among three leftist factions, each apparently independent of the Communist Party.”38 The other large union of government workers was the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de los Servicios Públicos (FENATRAP). According to Chacón León, it was established “more as an alternative to the ANEP, than for anything else,” during the period when ANEP was still on friendly terms with the CCTD. It was set up following strikes in 1974 and 1975 by employees of the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity, providing national telephone service and electricity. The FENATRAP was important in strikes in 1979 among health workers and of various groups in the Atlantic coast area.39 The largest teachers’ union was the Asociación Nacional de Educadores (ANDE), established in December 1942. At that time, the Maestros Unidos organization, which had been set up nine years earlier, went out of existence. The ANDE combined being a professional association with acting as a trade union and was credited with having 14,000 members in 1980, 70 percent of all of the teachers. During the administration of President Picado, just previous to the Civil War of 1948, the ANDE underwent a split. In their majority, the teachers belonging to ANDE were against the Picado government, and

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the progovernment minority split away to set up the Unión Nacional de Educadores (UNE). However, after the victory of the forces led by José Figueres, the UNE disappeared. The ANDE called strikes in 1955 and 1973, and in 1980 it threatened a walkout when the government finally capitulated.40 The most important rival of ANDE was the SEC, established in 1969. It was formed by teachers who considered the ANDE too conservative. It had its strength particularly among rural teachers, many of whom did not have academic degrees, but it also had many members who did possess such qualifications. By the late 1970s, it was said to have some 5,000 members, compared to the 22,000 credited to the ANDE. The SEC was clearly under more left-wing influence than the ANDE. Some of its leaders were close to the Communists’ CGTC, and others were on friendly terms with the Social Catholic confederation, the CTC. However, SEC ended up joining the Confederación Auténtica de Trabajadores Democráticos. In 1980 it joined forces with the ANDE and two smaller organizations to make demands upon the government.41 THE COMITÉ DE UNIDAD SINDICAL One of the things that made the Costa Rican labor movement weaker than it might otherwise have been was its splintering into numerous competing central labor groups and independent unions. There were undoubtedly both ideological conflicts and personal rivalries among union leaders that brought this about. Although most of the central labor groups professed to believe in unity of the labor movement, few real efforts to achieve this were taken after 1948. However, one such attempt was made in 1980. The Communistcontrolled CGTC invited other groups to meet to work toward a unified labor movement and to confront mounting inflation and the antilabor bias of President Rodrigo Carazo. The CCTD, the CATD (the group that had split from the CCTD), and the Central de Trabajadores de Costa Rica, as well as a number of independent unions, responded to the invitation. As a consequence of this meeting, the Comité de Unidad Sindical (CUS) was established. There was extensive discussion among the various labor leaders about measures to be proposed to the Legislative Assembly. However, this unity was short lived. When at a subsequent meeting, which dealt with the proposed regulations that should govern the CUS, Oscar Caamaño, secretary-general of the CCTD, objected to some of them, this brought attacks upon him by CGTC leaders and others. After several other attempts to work in the CUS, the CCTD withdrew from the organization. The Central de Trabajadores de Costa Rica also decided to withdraw from the CUS, provoked by criticism by CGTC leaders of the CTC’s failure to participate in a joint May Day demonstration. Alsimiro Herrera,


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secretary-general of the CTC, replied to this criticism, calling it “perverse,” and adding that “it is not a secret that for these political leaders, who are in no way leaders of the workers, any action that is outside of the control of their partisan interests and those of the Soviet Union, which uses them, must be strongly combated. In the end, the CUS was largely reduced to the CGTC and the CATD. It was renamed the Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT).42 COSTA RICAN UNIONISM AT THE END OF THE 1970s During the 1960s and the 1970s, the Costa Rican labor movement grew substantially. Whereas in 1963 only 2.6 percent of the country’s workers were unionized, by 1973 this had risen to 10.9 percent, and by the end of the decade it stood at about 15 percent. Both the number of unions and the number of union members had risen substantially, and in 1976 there were 71,709 unionists in the country, in 268 different organizations. Some 56.7 percent of the country’s unions were small—defined as having a membership between 20 and 100. But the larger organizations had the overwhelming majority of members—some 81.4 percent. Manuel Rojas Bolaños noted the reasons for the growth of the labor movement in the 1970s. He wrote: Various factors favored the growth of unionism. In the first years of the decade, the authorities of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security showed an attitude favorable to the development of unionism, which permitted the extension of the use of instruments of negotiation that until then had been limited, such as the collective agreement: between 1972 and 1979, 291 collective agreements were signed. The appearance of new political organizations was another factor that contributed to the relative growth of trade unionism in the public sector and in productive parts of the private sector, which until then had not been organized, such as in activities in the sugar cane sector of agriculture.43

There were also comparatively numerous strikes during the 1970s. Between 1972 and 1979 there were 85 walkouts, “some of them of great national impact, given the type of demands that were made.” These included strikes of workers in the Social Security Fund, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad and the important Templesque sugar firm. Manuel Rojas Bolaños noted, “Recognition of unions and increases in wages were the principal demands made; demands that continued in the face of the deterioration of the situation, which the country suffered in the years 1974 and 1975.”44 THE CRISIS OF THE 1980s For Costa Rica, as for most of the Latin American countries, the 1980s were the lost decade. But for Costa Rica the crisis of that period was particularly acute. Not only was the country’s economy in serious trouble,

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making it dependent on aid from the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. government, but successive Costa Rican administrations were also faced with dealing with the impact of the civil war, sponsored by the Reagan administration, in Costa Rica’s northern neighbor, Nicaragua. One important aspect of the economic crisis of the 1980s was the fact that the import substitution strategy of development was approaching the limits of its effectiveness. Guillermo Villalobos noted: “The second decade of application of the model of import substitution began to show evidence of exhaustion. From 1978 on, the formation of capital in the agricultural sector was restricted and private investment in industry began to decline. The private surplus was fundamentally oriented toward non-productive activities, real estate and sumptuary consumption.”45 Another aspect of Costa Rica’s economic problems by 1980 was its foreign debt. Martha Honey described the origins of this debt. She wrote: This economic collapse was precipitated by the so-called second OPEC . . . crisis of the late 1970s, during which prices of gasoline and petroleum products rose steeply, hitting hardest Costa Rica and other non-oiling producing Third World nations. . . . At the end of the decade the country plunged into its most serious slump in this century, with coffee prices plummeting, oil import prices doubling, and inflation skyrocketing 100 percent. As the terms of trade shifted, Costa Rica was forced to borrow heavily from foreign bank and lending institutions. International interest rates shot up, increasing Costa Rica’s foreign debt to more than $3 billion by 1980, the highest per capita in Latin America. The situation was particularly acute because almost half of Costa Rica’s debt was in high-interest, shortterm loans from commercial banks.46

This severe economic crisis was made more complicated by the extensive efforts of the Reagan administration to try to get Costa Rica to cooperate with the United States’ proxy war, carried out through the so-called contras, against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. During this period, the U.S. government sought to get Costa Rica to provide bases from which the contras could operate, to convince the Costa Ricans to reestablish the army that they had dissolved in 1948, and to generate overt hostility on the part of the Costa Rican government to the Sandinista regime. Policies to deal with the economic crisis and policies toward the Nicaraguan civil war were closely linked. It was clear to the U.S. government that the cost of getting help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States to deal with its economic problems was twofold: adopt the economic policies dictated by the IMF and collaborate with the contra war in Nicaragua. Although to some degree, successive Costa Rican administrations were able to limit collaboration against the contras, they were almost totally unable to resist the economic dictates of the IMF (backed strenuously by the U.S. government). The cost that the IMF laid down for its aid, with the militant support of the U.S. Embassy, was the dismantling of the socioeconomic system, which


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had been built up after the Civil War of 1948. This meant privatization of many of the government enterprises—the banking system, for instance— and drastic cuts in government expenditures on education, health care, and other services to the population. It also involved development of new forms of export agriculture and the resulting sacrifice of the use of land for meeting the food and other needs of the Costa Rican population.47 The impact on the Costa Rican population of these IMF–U.S. policies was disastrous. Guillermo Villalobos indicated some of these effects: Studies carried out by the BID and ILO indicate that the impact of the crisis on the level of living of the Costa Ricans produced a drastic reduction of their material conditions and the increase of the so-called urban informal sector. . . . In this sector, and in the sectors of employment with the lowest income in the public sector, there are fundamentally the young, women and the elderly, which meant the appearance of new contingents of urban misery. At the beginning of the decade of the nineties, 67% of the poor were in the informal sector.

Villalobos also cited specific figures on these developments. Average real wages fell 42 percent during the 1980s, unemployment rose drastically, with 9.4 percent being openly unemployed and 23.8 percent semiemployed. He also noted that the drastic cutback in social expenditures, which until the 1980s were considered to constitute 30 percent of the real income of the average working family, thus further reduced the levels of living of the great majority of urban Costa Ricans.48 IMPACT OF 1980s CRISIS ON THE LABOR MOVEMENT Clearly, the trade union movement of Costa Rica could not help but suffer from the so-called neoliberal policies imposed on the Costa Rican government by the IMF and the U.S. government during the 1980s. Not only did these neoliberal policies affect most directly the segments of the economy in which trade unionism was strongest, that is, the government and its autonomous agencies, but they also stimulated a kind of resistance to trade unionism on the part of the private sector that had not existed before. Rodrigo Aguilar Arce presented figures indicating the importance of the government and its autonomous agencies to the trade union movement. He noted that although government employees only constituted 9.9 percent of the total number of gainfully occupied people, government employees accounted for 64.62 percent of the country’s unionized workers, and 61.39 percent of the government workers were unionized.49 This situation can be seen as even more serious for the future of the trade union movement if one looks at the degree of unionization of those directly employed by the national government, as compared to that of workers in the state’s autonomous agencies. Some 48.43 percent of the

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employers of the government were unionized, but 75.04 percent of those working for the autonomous agencies were organized.50 Of course, it is exactly the autonomous agencies that neoliberal policies and policy makers sought to take away from the state and turn over to private employment. Guillermo Villalobos noted the following as a result of the neoliberal policies of the 1980s: “The trade union movement and the Costa Rican workers were going to see throughout this decade (1980–1990) modification of the relations between the State and the unions and between businessmen and unions. Characterized by an irregular behavior, there was broken the traditional scheme of negotiation and there was produced a weakening of collective agreements that began to be systematically reduced together with collective conflicts.”51 Actions of both administrative and judicial branches of the Costa Rican government, in pursuit of neoliberal policies, undermined the large segment of the labor movement made up of government employees. In conformity with agreements with the IMF to transfer government workers to private employment and thus reduce the total number of those working for the government, workers were offered attractive terms to leave their government jobs. However, Guillermo Villalobos noted that “it is known that a good quantity of workers who took ‘voluntary labor mobility’ as these accords were known, were not absorbed by the private sector as had been projected, and rather augments the ranks of the informal sector.” Neoliberalism also attacked the concept of the minimum wage. Villalobos noted, “If one looks at the minimum wage decrees that the government issued before and after adjustment, we are going to see that the number of occupations with state fixing of minimum wages is less now than before the process of adjustment.” At the same time, the courts were also being influenced by neoliberalism to move against the labor movement and collective bargaining, particularly in the public sector. Thus, the Constitutional Court, as Guillermo Villalobos wrote, “decreed some things tending to weaken the scheme of collective negotiation in the public sector.” It decided that arbitration was not applicable to public employees, and Villalobos predicted that it might soon decree that collective bargaining was inappropriate to the public sector also. He added that the court implied “through their decisions that public employment is the province of administrative law and not of labor law.”52 Rodrigo Aguilar Arce observed the strategy of the neoliberals to undermine, little by little, the position of the labor movement. He wrote: The most grave matter is the management of this conflict in a separated way, and with knowledge of the organization level of the country, the neoliberals promoted one-day decisions, which affected one sector (health for example) and in some cases applied this at the micro level so that within that sector it would be only one group that would have to defend itself, immediately proposing or projecting


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another action affecting another sector (railroads for example with application of mobility) and in this way attack another flank (education to cite the case with pensions) and immediately force others to defend themselves (institutions with collective decisions or agreements).53

President Luis Alberto Monge (1982–1986), who had entered public life as a trade union leader, sought to mitigate as much as possible the effects on labor of the austerity and neoliberal policies forced on his government by the IMF and the Reagan administration. Manuel Rojas Bolaños noted that Monge at the beginning of his period “was able to establish a climate of relative collaboration among the different social forces, with the aid of the labor sector of the FDT. . . . Conflicts did not disappear during the second semester of 1982, nor did protests and strikes, but the government could undoubtedly create a margin of maneuver of some amplitude in exchange for some concessions and many promises of social improvement.”54 However, IMF pressure was inexorable, and in December 1982 the Monge government was forced to raise the prices of public services, and the effects of restrictions on public expenditures began to be felt, particularly those involving social welfare. As a result, a new series of conflicts developed in March 1983, when peasant groups blockaded the highways and the teachers went on strike. These conflicts reached a high point in May and June 1983, forcing the Monge government to at least temporarily back away from fulfilling its commitments to the IMF. Rojas Bolaños said of this protest movement: “It is interesting to point that this movement, which practically paralyzed the country, and which possibly was the most important popular movement to occur after 1948, was a movement organized and directed by communal groups, which worked through a very wide struggle committee from a political point of view, leading aside the large trade union organizations.”55 By the end of 1983 the unions grouped in the FDT had become increasingly critical of the Monge government. In the following months there was also increased militancy on the part of unions under more left-wing control. On July 10, 1984, there began a banana workers strike, which was to last 72 days, the longest banana strike in Costa Rican history. The strike was a failure, bringing the destruction of the powerful Unión de Trabajadores de Golfito.56 The Monge government brought minimum wages back up to the level at which they were in 1979. There was also some recovery of average wages in the public sector and in wages of professional workers, factors that, according to Rojas Bolaños, somewhat dampened labor militancy.57 A major factor that worked against organized labor’s ability to confront the onslaught of neoliberalism was the continuing division in its ranks. In spite of several efforts to bring about greater trade union unity, these were not very successful, and in fact to some degree the atomization of the labor movement got worse.

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At the beginning of the 1980s there were two major groupings in the Costa Rican labor movement. One was the CUT that, as we have previously noted, consisted mainly of the Communist-led CGTC and the CATD. The other was the Federación Democrática de Trabajadores (FDT), established in January 1981 and consisting of some central labor groups not under Communist influence and some independent unions.58 In 1984, when the effects of neoliberalism on the labor movement began to be acute, there were several efforts to establish greater unity among the nation’s trade unions. In January, the Coordinadora Democrática del Sector Público, made up of various government workers’ organizations, was established, and in April most of the organizations, which belonged to the FDT, joined with the CUT to establish the Consejo Nacional de Confederaciones (CNC). On April 16, the CNC and 40 independent unions sent a complaint to the International Labor Organization (ILO) claiming that the government had violated a number of ILO agreements, which had been ratified by the Costa Rican National Assembly. However, as Rojas Bolaños noted, “unity efforts rapidly exhausted themselves.”59 In some regards, the unity of Costa Rican labor deteriorated during the 1980s. In 1983 there was a split in the CCTD, reportedly over disputes concerning how to distribute funds received from the AIFLD. This split resulted in establishment of still another central labor group, the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores.60 There was also a major split in the ranks of the left-oriented unions. This resulted from a schism within the Costa Rican Communist Party (Partido Vanguardia Popular), which took place in December 1983. In the middle of the following year, the Communist trade union forces were divided, with the formation of the CTCR.61 SOLIDARISMO The labor movement was not only faced with continuing internal dissension and the downsizing of government, where the largest part of its membership was to be found, but was also faced in the 1980s with a devastating attack by employers in the private sector. This attack particularly took the form of what was known as solidarismo. Solidarismo, which had existed on a small scale in Costa Rica since 1947, but that really mushroomed in the 1980s, substituted direct negotiations of the employers with their individual workers for collective bargaining. As Manuel Rojas Bolaños described it, solidarismo “dealt with associations of workers, promoted by the firms and with great influence of these in their internal affairs, which offered certain material incentives to the workers in exchange for their renunciation of trade unionism.”62 Solidarismo was based on the establishment of saving funds, to which the workers contributed 5 percent of their wages, a sum that the employers matched. Guillermo Villalobos explained: “These savings permitted the


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worker to obtain loans at moderate interest, financing for the purchase of domestic equipment . . . to finance medical assistance and, finally, to support housing projects. This type of activities generate the growth of the capital of the association, and the workers obtain some return every once in a while.” These saving funds were pictured as harmonizing employer–worker relations and as a substitute for trade unionism and collective bargaining. As Villalobos noted, “The principal gainers from solidarismo are the employers, since with the elimination of collective contracts and unions, they save expenditures of social services, since these are covered now by the workers themselves.” Successive governments encouraged solidarismo. They not only passed legislation authorizing establishment of these savings funds but “lent themselves to employer violation of the most essential labor rights established by the International Labor Organization. As a result of this systematic campaign, which [had been] joined by an important sector of the Catholic Church, the trade union organizations in the banana sector [had] almost completely disappeared, [having been] substituted by solidarist associations.” The importance of this development in the banana industry is obvious. Long the most militant part of the labor movement, and representing the second-most important concentration of unions, after those of government employees, their disappearance was a major blow to Costa Rican trade unionism. The percentage of workers in the banana industry who were unionized fell from 90 percent in 1982 to 5 percent in 1987. Overall, the impact of solidarismo on the Costa Rican labor movement was disastrous. This was indicated by the fact that, whereas between 1981 and 1986 the number of solidarist organizations grew by 410 percent, the number of collective contracts fell from 41 in 1980 to only 20 in 1986.63 THE CHALLENGES TO COSTA RICAN ORGANIZED LABOR By the end of the 1980s, the Costa Rican organized labor movement was clearly faced with challenges to its very existence. Two of these were of particular importance: how to end the atomization of its ranks and how to develop a new strategy to deal with the onslaught of neoliberalism. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Costa Rican labor movement had at least half a dozen central labor groups, while about half of the country’s union members belonged to independent unions that did not belong to any central labor organization. Traditionally, this splintering of the labor movement had been due to ideological differences, disagreements on strategy and tactics, and personal rivalries among labor leaders. However, if organized labor was to continue to be a force of significance in Costa Rican national life, ways would have to be found for it to be able to speak

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with a single (or united) voice in dealing with the country’s economic and political problems and in protecting the rights and interests of the nation’s wage and salary earners. Guillermo Villalobos emphasized the importance of the second challenge to the Costa Rican trade union movement. He noted: Within the trade union movement discussion has grown concerning the reply of the working class to the programs of structural adjustment. The debate shows two clearly defined positions: that which continues relying on maintaining the model existence before adjustment and resists the reforms and modernization (majority), and those others who understand the need for changes, but which so far have not been able to build a distinct alternative, although one must recognize some advances in that direction (minority).

Villalobos noted the elements of change in attitude and strategy of the minority in the labor movement that felt the need to adopt new approaches toward the state and private employers. He said: We encounter novel positions with regard to organization, with schemes that democratize the structure and participation of the rank and file through program of education . . . decentralization of the structures of power, etc.; in the contents of the new agenda of discussion, trying to include new concepts of collective bargaining and in their conversations with the employers, such as total quality, flexibilization, productivity . . . and in general new forms of the development of production of the firm and the State; and search for greater autonomy, which allows the designing in the medium run of a trade union policy project that recognizes its innovative capacity.64

One other aspect of orientation of the labor movement to enable it to deal adequately with the menace of neoliberalism was certainly the need to develop relations with other groups in Costa Rican society, which shared at least some of the objectives of organized labor. Of particular importance in this regard was the so-called informal economy, into which so many members were forced in the 1980s and thereafter. That part of the economy undoubtedly included many ex-trade unionists and certainly needed to defend itself against the damage done to it by neoliberalism, as did the labor movement. Ways needed to be found by which organized labor and those in the informal economy could work together in economic, social, and particularly political terms. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Organized labor played a significant role in the history of twentiethcentury Costa Rica. Having its origins—as elsewhere in Latin America—in the mutual benefit societies of the country’s artisans, particularly in San José, organized labor began to spread beyond these even before the First


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World War, with the establishment of the first Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT). After the CGT gave way to pure politics in the mid1920s, the labor movement was revived as such in the 1930s, largely due to the efforts of the newly founded Communist Party. For almost two decades, the labor movement was dominated by the Communists, who succeeded in organizing the banana workers and the craftsmen and other workers of the fifties, and established the country’s second central labor organization, the CTCR. The Communists and the CTCR formed a close alliance with President Angel Calderón Guardia who, in the early 1940s, brought about the enactment of the labor code and established the social security system. However, after the election of 1944, the Calderón regime and its successor, that of Teodoro Picado, was widely accused of corruption and rigging elections, and when Congress in 1948 overruled the electoral tribunal and decided that Calderón had defeated his opponent Otilio Ulate, there occurred the civil war, which was won by the opposition forces headed by José Figueres Ferrer. Only in the last years of this period did a rival to the CTCR appear, the Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Rerum Novarum. Thereafter, the labor movement tended to be divided between the Communists and their allies and the people more or less associated with the movement founded by José Figueres, which in the early 1950s took the form of the PLN. After the Civil War of 1948, the labor movement was very much influenced by the economic and social model first established by the Junta Fundidora de la Segunda República headed by Figueres in 1948–1949 and generally followed by all of the government of the next thirty-some years. This model involved the government having the major role in economic and social development, through the nationalized banks, which extensively financed both agriculture (particularly small- and medium-sized farms) and industry, as well as the government-owned electricity service. In the 1960s and 1970s the government particularly favored establishment of import-substituting industries. The government also greatly extended education and made health care, through the social security system, virtually universally available. The avowed aim of eliminating dire poverty was virtually achieved by this system. As a consequence of the post-1948 strategy of development, the trade union movement became very heavily concentrated in the government sector, where a substantial part of the work force was covered by some form of collective agreement. The second largest part of the labor movement was agriculture, where unions in the banana, sugar, and other largescale enterprises were particularly important. Industry and commerce were less extensively unionized, although there were also important labor organizations in these sectors.

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With the crisis that began at the end of the 1970s and continued through the following decade, which was brought on by decline in the prices of major Costa Rican exports and by gigantic increases in the price of petroleum, resulting in heavy borrowing abroad, largely from private commercial banks, on a short-term, high-interest basis, the system that had existed since 1948 was seriously undermined. With the advent of the general Latin American debt crisis after September 1982, Costa Rica was forced to turn to the IMF for aid in meeting its debt payments. The IMF, backed by the Reagan administration in the United States, demanded the adoption of neoliberal economic policies as the condition for such aid. These included ending protection for Costa Rican industries, privatization of government sectors, and drastic reduction in government social expenditures—in effect putting an end to the strategy of economic and social development that Costa Rica had been following since 1948. Clearly, this forced neoliberalism had disastrous results for the Costa Rican labor movement. Aside from substantially reducing government employment (where trade unionism was heavily concentrated), it encouraged both the government and the courts to move to limit the rights of unions of government workers, including their right to bargain collectively. At the same time, the private employers adopted a strong antiunion attitude, the most significant aspect of which was solidarismo, that is, the substitution of employer-organized and employer-influenced workers’ savings funds for trade unions and collective bargaining. By 1990, the Costa Rican trade union movement was faced with the question of whether it could continue to exist as a significant factor in Costa Rican public life and as the defender of the rights and interests of the country’s working class. Certainly, without greater unity than it had theretofore been able to achieve, and without new strategies and tactics in dealing with the employers (both governmental and private), this appeared to be highly problematical. NOTES 1. See Robert J. Alexander, Presidents of Central America, Mexico, Cuba and Hispaniola: Conversations and Correspondence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), p. 71. 2. Manuel Mora Valverde (founder and secretary-general of Partido Vanguardia Popular [Communist Party of Costa Rica]), interview with the author in San José, September 1, 1952. 3. Gonzalo Sierra Cantillo (secretary-general of Confederación General de Trabajadores de Costa Rica), interview with the author in San José, September 7, 1959. 4. Edwin Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica (San José: Centro de Estudios Laborales C.A.–CTCA–ORIT, 1980), p. 34. 5. Sierra Cantillo, interview. 6. Juan Rafael Solis Barbosa (secretary of organization of Confederación General de Trabajadores de Costa), interview with the author in San José, June 30, 1967.


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7. Edwin Amadeo Pérez (secretary of propaganda, Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica), interview with the author in San José, June 30, 1967. 8. “Plan de la C.G.T.C. Para Salir de la Crisis, Acogido y Aprobado También por una Reunión de Dirigentes Sindicales Celebrada del 25 Enero de 1967 en el Ministerio del Trabajo,” San José, May 1967. 9. John A. Booth, “Costa Rica,” in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 233. 10. Ibid., pp. 235, 242. 11. Thomas A. Gaines (U.S. businessman), interview with the author in New York, February 2, 1954. 12. Tom Walsh (labor officer of International Cooperation Administration in Costa Rica), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, September 8, 1959. 13. Leopoldo Pita (exiled Peruvian labor leader, organizer for Rerum Novarum Confederation in Costa Rica), interview with the author in San José, July 15, 1953. 14. “Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Rerum Novarum, Congreso 1ºde Mayo 1952” (mimeographed). 15. Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores (CCT) Rerum Novarum, “Acta No. 412,” minutes of February 8, 1953, General Assembly. 16. Tom Walsh, interview; Eddy Alvarez (former secretary-general of CCT Rerum Novarum), interview with the author in San José, September 7, 1959; see also Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 231. 17. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 6. 18. Rafael Angel Sancho Cordero (member of Executive Committee, CCT Rerum Novarum), interview with the author in San José, September 7, 1959. 19. Alvaro Jiménez Zavaleta (secretary-general, Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos), interview with the author in San José, June 30, 1967. 20. Rolando Leonardo Díaz (Central American representative of Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores), interview with the author in Managua, Nicaragua, June 26, 1967. 21. James Willis, labor attaché in U.S. Embassy, interview with the author in San José, June 30, 1967. 22. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 48–49. 23. Ibid., p. 63. 24. Ron Chinchilla (representative in Costa Rica of American Institute for Free Labor Development), interview with the author in San José, July 5, 1967; Paul Rusillo (American Institute for Free Labor Development country program director in Costa Rica), interview with the author in Front Royal, VA, December 17, 1975; Paul Smogi (American Institute for Free Labor Development official), interview with the author in Front Royal, VA, December 17, 1975. 25. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 70. 26. Ibid., p. 72. 27. Ibid., pp. 70–71; see also Booth, “Costa Rica,” pp. 226, 231. 28. Francisco Morales Hernández (a leader of Partido Liberación Nacional), interview with the author in San José, July 22, 1978. 29. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 75. 30. Ibid., pp. 65–66.

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31. Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 242. 32. Omar Orozco, secretary of education of Confederación de Obreros y Campesinos Cristianos (COCC), interview with the author in San José, June 30, 1967. 33. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 67. 34. Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 230. 35. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, p. 68. 36. Booth, “Costa Rica,” pp. 228–30. 37. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 65–66. 38. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 80–82; Booth, “Costa Rica,” pp. 237–38. 39. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 83–84; Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 237. 40. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 26–28; Booth, “Costa Rica,” pp. 236–37. 41. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 76–79. 42. Chacón León, El Sindicalismo en Costa Rica, pp. 85–86; and Booth, “Costa Rica,” p. 275. 43. Manuel Rojas Bolaños, El Sindicalismo Centroamericano: Una Visión Comparativa (San José: Centro de Estudios Para la Acción Social, 1988), pp. 9–10. 44. Ibid., p. 11. 45. See Guillermo Villalobos, in Ruptura en Las Relaciones Laborales: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estados Unidos, México, Paraguay, coord. Manfred Wannöffel (México DF: Fundación Friedrich Ebert [México], Nueva Sociedad, 1995). 46. Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 56. 47. For extensive descriptions of IMF plans and their execution, as well as of U.S. efforts to get Costa Rican support for the contras, see Honey, Hostile Acts. 48. Villalobos, Ruptura en Las Relaciones Laborales, p. 125. 49. Rodrigo Aguilar Arce, Actualidad del Movimiento Sindical en Costa Rica (San José: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1993), p. 15. 50. Ibid., p. 17. 51. Villalobos, Ruptura en Las Relaciones Laborales, p. 127. 52. Ibid., p. 127. 53. Aguilar Arce, Actualidad del Movimiento Sindical, p. 32. 54. Rojas Bolaños, El Sindicalismo Centroamericano, p. 19. 55. Ibid., p. 20. 56. Ibid., p. 21. 57. Ibid., pp. 22–23. 58. Ibid., p. 14. 59. Ibid., p. 21. 60. Ibid., p. 20. 61. Ibid., pp. 20–21. 62. Ibid., p. 13. 63. Villalobos, Ruptura en Las Relaciones Laborales, pp. 128–29. 64. Ibid., p. 131.

CHAPTER 4

Organized Labor in Nicaragua

As was the case in most of Central America, Nicaragua was torn through much of the nineteenth century by recurring struggles—often involving contending armed forces—between Conservatives and Liberals. The situation was complicated by frequent interference by outside interests, particularly those of the United States and Great Britain, which were primarily interested in Nicaragua as a possible location for a cross-isthmus canal. The rising coffee industry, in which the growers were principally Liberals, in the late nineteenth century helped to catapult that party to power in 1893 under President José Santos Zelaya. His increasingly nationalistic orientation and negotiation with other powers led to U.S. armed intervention in 1909 to support Santos Zelaya’s overthrow by a Conservative rival. This was followed on two occasions—1912–1925 and 1926–1933— by occupation of the country by U.S. Marines, generally supporting the Conservatives. When a compromise between the Conservatives and Liberals was reached under U.S. auspices in 1927, whereby a Conservative president would be succeeded by a Liberal, Juan Bautista Sacasa, one Liberal military leader, Augusto César Sandino, declined to accept this agreement, refusing to lay down arms until the U.S. Marines had been totally removed from Nicaragua. For more than half a decade, he carried on a guerrilla struggle, which won wide sympathy throughout Latin America. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marines had organized a Nicaraguan National Guard, a military force that was supposed to be nonpolitical. However, by the time the Marines were withdrawn, the leadership of the National

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Guard was in the hands of Anastasio Somoza García, a relative of President Sacasa and a Liberal. When, after the withdrawal of the Marines, Sandino came to Managua to negotiate with President Sacasa, Somoza arranged to have him assassinated by members of the National Guard. Then in mid-1936, Anastasio Somoza ousted President Sacasa and took the presidency for himself. He remained in control until his own assassination in 1956, when he was succeeded by his son Luis. At the end of Luis Somoza’s term, he was succeeded by René Schick Gutiérrez, a close Somoza associate. Schick died in office. In subsequent elections in 1967, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the elder Somoza’s second son and head of the National Guard, was elected. He was to be the last ruler of the Somoza dynasty. The Somoza regime was a hardly disguised dictatorship, based on the family’s control of the National Guard. It is true that as Liberals, the Somozas commanded a certain degree of loyalty from that part of the population that was traditionally Liberal. They also sought to augment that support by enacting a certain amount of labor and social legislation, starting in the 1940s. But the Somozas were never willing to put that loyalty to a real test through genuine elections. When they could not buy off their opponents in the Conservative Party and in hostile factions of the Liberals, they stole elections or resorted to more brutal methods of coercion. A curious incident in 1947 reflected the Somoza modus operandi. In the election of that year, Somoza chose Leonardo Arguello, who had opposed him in the past, as the Liberal candidate. Although many believed that Enoch Arguado, the Conservative nominee, had in fact won, the ballots were counted for Arguello. However, once in office, Arguello showed surprising independence. Announcing that he would be no man’s puppet, he began to replace in key government positions various Somoza favorites by people of his own choosing. He finally demanded Anastasio Somoza García’s resignation as chief of the National Guard, the post he had assumed on giving up the presidency. But instead of resigning, Somoza overthrew Arguello after only a few weeks in office. The Somozas were interested in two things—power and wealth. Power depended on control of the National Guard. Wealth was acquired by using power to establish many profitable businesses, and in fact, to require that the Somozas be silent partners in virtually any enterprise of any consequence in the country. An informed U.S. observer estimated in 1967 that the Somozas were the richest single family group in the country and that they had about half as much wealth as the hundred or so families associated with the traditional oligarchy. Although some of the Somoza enterprises belonged to individual members of the family, the bulk of their holdings, including most of their agricultural properties, were held by a cooperative, Succesores Somoza, in which they were all shareholders. This same observer noted that the Sacasa–Debayle group was closely related to the Somozas. There were about 80 single family units in this


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group, which was one of the old traditional families. They had relatives in all parts of the country. Anastasio Somoza García had married a Debayle; Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, the long-time Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States, whose mother was a Sacasa, had married a daughter of the elder Anastasio Somoza. So, if one talked of the Sacasa–Debayle–Somoza extended family, it was certainly far and away the richest and most influential family group in the country.1 However, during most of their tenure in power, the Somozas permitted people outside of their circle to prosper along with them. The family provided stability, beloved of the business community, and it allowed the Conservative Party (and its various factions) with which much of the business sector was affiliated, to function with a minimum of interference— except in crisis periods—on the understanding that the Somoza Liberals would always win elections. However, the third member of the dynasty to be president—Anastasio Somoza Debayle—violated the rules that his father and elder brother had always followed. The occasion for this was a violent earthquake that struck Nicaragua in December 1972 and destroyed much of the center of the capital city, Managua. When very extensive foreign relief aid streamed into the country, President Somoza and his closest associates stole much of it, and goods that were supposed to be given to victims of the earthquake were sold instead. Furthermore, when reconstruction of Managua began, little effort was made to rebuild the center of the city; instead, new buildings were constructed on pieces of real estate outside the center that belonged to Somoza and his friends. All of this deeply alienated the formerly pliable business community. This alienation was intensified when Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, owner and editor of La Prensa, the principal opposition newspaper, and a longstanding real opponent of the Somoza regime, was assassinated in February 1978. This provoked a general strike backed by much of the business community and by various workers’ groups. Attempts, with support of the U.S. government, to negotiate a way out of the situation by meetings of opposition leaders with Somoza failed. Thereafter, most of the principal opposition leaders gave up trying to seek a peaceful way to bring about President Somoza’s exit from the scene. Rather, the opposition generally turned to support of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). The FSLN had been organized by dissident Communists a decade or more before. With some help from the Castro regime in Cuba, it had attempted to launch a guerrilla war against the Somoza regime, but with very limited success. However, from mid-1978, with the backing by then of most of the civilian opposition, these sporadic guerrilla efforts were rapidly converted into civil war. It was waged most brutally by the National Guard, with bombardment of cities, and arrest, torture, and murder of civilian oppositionists.

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An alternate government was established in San José, Costa Rica, including leading figures of the FSLN and of the civilian opposition. With the final overthrow of Somoza on July 19, 1979, that junta became the new government of Nicaragua. Although a wide variety of political elements at first participated in the new regime, headed by Daniel Ortega, a principal leader of the FSLN, it soon became clear that it was the nine comandantes who headed the FSLN who had the real power because they commanded the only remaining armed force. This soon brought resignations from the government of many of the non-FSLN elements. By the end of 1979, it was clear that there was in power a Sandinista (as the FSLN were known) government. The Sandinistas proclaimed their intention of allowing pluralism in politics and a mixed economy. Although properties of the Somoza family and its closest associates were taken over by the regime, Ortega and the others exhorted the private entrepreneurs who were not affected by these seizures to work to rebuild the economy. Perhaps understandably, many land and business owners gave only a tepid response to this call. Following their coming to power, the Sandinistas set out to establish a series of new organizations. These included a new army, the Sandinista Army, as well as a Sandinista Police Force and various mass organizations, including those for women and the young. They also set up neighborhood organizations, which combined the task of keeping track of the political situation in each local area and the carrying out of small development and civic improvement projects in each locality. Finally, there were new organizations of workers and peasants, which were more or less under the control of the FSLN and the government. During the first five years there was a kind of provisional government, which included a Council of State, with representatives on it of various groups, which shared legislative power with the ruling junta. However, in 1984 there were elections for president and a national assembly. Although much of the opposition boycotted the elections—in some cases too late to have their names removed from the ballots—the Sandinistas won only by something short of two-thirds of the total vote. Thereafter, there was a more or less vocal opposition in the National Assembly. The U.S. government played a major role in the situation. Although the administration of President Jimmy Carter, after the fall of Somoza had forgotten, appropriated $75 million as immediate aid for the job of rebuilding Managua and had actually provided about half of that amount by the time it left office, the position of the administration of President Ronald Reagan, which came to power in January 1981, was totally different. President Reagan all but declared war on the FSLN regime in Nicaragua. It cut off all further aid from the $75 million originally appropriated. It soon undertook to organize a military force against the Managua regime, the socalled contras, based in the beginning on remnants of the National Guard who had fled abroad, headed by Guard Colonel Bermúdez. With varying


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fortunes, the contras carried on war with the Sandinista government for the rest of the 1980s. The noose was tightened on that government by a U.S. economic embargo against Nicaragua. In the earliest phases, the Sandinista regime undertook important social reforms. One of these was an agrarian reform, giving some land formerly belonging to the Somozas and their associates to individual peasants, organizing other holdings as largely state-run cooperatives. Encouragement was given to the expansion of the labor movement, particularly, of course, to unions under the aegis of the FSLN. Efforts were made to expand education and health services to the urban and rural poor. However, as the exigencies of the war grew, the state of the economy did not permit further expansion of social services. Rather, with inflation reaching the rate of several hundred percent a year, with war expenditures using up almost half the government budget, and with foreign trade vastly curtailed, the Sandinista government was forced to adopt drastic austerity measures. By the late 1980s, with the country facing economic disaster, with war weariness becoming widely prevalent even among supporters of the regime, and with the supplanting of the Reagan government by that of President Bush, who was less enthusiastic than his predecessor about crushing the Sandinista government at all costs, things began to change. Important too at that time was the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the growing economic crisis in Cuba, making it increasingly difficult for the Sandinista regime to get help from the Soviet Union and Cuba. After long and painful negotiations, a kind of truce was worked out between the Sandinista regime and its domestic opponents. As a result, elections were finally called in 1990, and—to the surprise of the Sandinistas and perhaps to that of the opposition—the Sandinistas were defeated. So, by the end of the period of our study of the history of Nicaraguan organized labor, the labor movement was facing still a new perspective and set of problems—those of the post-Sandinista period. THE BEGINNINGS OF ORGANIZED LABOR In 1910, the workers’ first mutual benefit society, Progreso Obrero, was established in Managua. It received personería jurídica (legal recognition) two years later. The organization still existed in the early 1950s but had been converted into a cooperative.2 However, during World War I mutual benefit societies began to proliferate. Among these were organizations known as Protección Obrera, Alba Social (Social Dawn), Youth of the Capital, and Sociedad Aurora (Dawn Society). Both in Managua, the capital, and in some of the interior cities, workers’ social clubs were organized. Characteristic of all of these groups was their prohibition of discussion of politics and religion.3

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However, after World War I some unions began to appear, which Richard Stahler-Sholk has said were “under anarcho-syndicalist and socialist influences.” He has noted that there were strikes on banana plantations on the Atlantic Coast in the early 1920s, which were “brutally repressed,” and that there was “a massacre of striking Caramel banana workers in 1925.”4 One of the earliest unions was that of shoemakers in Managua, established in 1921. By that time, various workers’ groups in the capital had undertaken to learn more about labor organization. With the help of historian Sofonías Salvatierra and Gerónimo Ramírez Brown, they established what came to be known as the Social Studies Course in 1922. The country’s first central labor group, Obrerismo Organizado, was set up on March 15, 1923. Bringing together various mutual benefit groups in Managua, its platform included planks advocating thrift as a means of individual and collective independence and “association and cooperation, so far as laws allow.” It also expressed its desire to elect members to Congress “as well as to the administrative branch of the government.”5 A Mexican source has noted that there was obvious influence of the Masons in Obrerismo Organizado and that it aligned itself with the Liberal Party.6 For some time, the organization issued a weekly paper, Patria.7 By 1929 Obrerismo Organizado claimed 15 affiliated groups, with 1,200 members, and was publishing a paper, La Evolución Obrera.8 In 1931, Sofonías Salvatierra, who had been associated with Obrerismo Organizado since its inception, became minister of labor in the government of President Sacasa and put before Congress a proposal for a labor code, which was not acted upon. However, because Salvatierra was a friend of the rebel general, Augusto César Sandino, he retired from political life and all association with the labor movement after the murder of Sandino in 1934. But Obrerismo Organizado continued to be active. In 1936, it carried on an intensive campaign to have Congress pass an eight-hour-day law. In 1940, it held a national convention for the purpose of studying the social program of the dictator, President Anastasia Somoza, resulting in a complete endorsement of both him and his program. Dr. Moisés Poblete Troncoso noted that as a result of this, Obrerismo Organizado soon disappeared.9 Obrerismo Organizado was active principally in Managua and Granada. However, there soon appeared another labor group with its principal base in the city of León. This was the Federación Obrera Nicaraguense (FON). Among its most important affiliates were the port workers’ organization of Corinto and the sugar workers of San Antonio de Chinandega. The FON developed contacts with the Partido Laborista of Mexico (CROM). At one point, in 1926, the Mexican party offered arms to the FON to take part in the civil war then raging in the country—the FON being strongly aligned with the Liberals.10 Also, the poor workers of Corinto declared a strike to try to prevent the landing of arms for the U.S. Marines.11


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The FON had contact with the Pan American Federation of Labor (PAFL), and Salamón de la Selva, one of its leaders who had been active with the PAFL, was forced into exile. In 1927, the FON was invited to send a delegation to the PAFL’s Fifth Congress in Washington, DC. There, that delegation sought to have the congress go on record denouncing the U.S. Marines’ operations in Nicaragua. However, the most that they could get was a resolution saying that “the Congress respectfully calls the attention of the American government to the necessity of withdrawing American troops from Nicaragua.”12 It was noted that even that resolution was “not well received in governmental circles in the country.”13 In 1928, the Partido de Trabajadores Nicaraguenses (PTN) was established clandestinely. In that same year, it led an extensive campaign for the eight-hour day. In 1932, the party came out into the open but was considerably persecuted by the government of President Sacasa. Its members were very active in the labor movement.14 The PTN published a periodical called Causa Obrera. When the government closed it down, the party put out El Proletario for several months in 1935 until it also was suppressed.15 The PTN was associated with the Communist International. It split in the mid-1930s over the Comintern’s Popular Front policy. One faction opposed this policy and continued to function under the name Partido de Trabajadores Nicaraguenses. In the 1937 presidential election campaign it supported the candidacy of General Anastasia Somoza, soon after which it disappeared. The other faction of the PTN, which supported the Popular Front policy, changed its name to Partido Socialista de Nicaragua (PSN), a name it was to keep for the next half century or more. A third element, which also supported Popular Frontism, was led by Armando Amador, editor of a labor newspaper, Indice; at first it did not join the PSN although subsequently most of the group did so. Amador subsequently went to Costa Rica, where he participated in that country’s Communist Party, Vanguardia Popular.16 Another labor group that appeared in the mid-1930s was the so-called Nacional Sindicalismo Nicaraguense. Although in Spain that name had been used by workers’ groups associated with the fascist Falange Nacional, that was the nature of the short-lived Nicaraguan group. Established in May 1934, it was, according to Richard Stahler-Sholk, “based on a model of ‘apolitical’ syndicates organized within individual enterprises.” This group lasted only about three years.17 By 1935 there were a number of unions in existence in Managua and provincial cities. When the government decreed an increase in the price of gasoline, the Chauffeurs Union of Managua declared a strike in protest. It rallied the support of most of the other unions. However, the walkout was broken by the force of the police and the National Guard. Then, when on June 6, 1936, General Somoza overthrew President Juan Bautista Sacasa, there was a widespread police roundup of union leaders.

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Those captured were placed on an island in the Caribbean Sea for eight months, after which they were allowed to return home. During 1937, the labor movement largely recovered from this blow. In that year there were functioning unions among the shoemakers, typographers, carpenters, bank clerks, stone quarrymen, slaughterhouse workers, and horse-drawn vehicle operators. In February 1938 there was a strike of 900 miners demanding wage increases. The strike was successful, “decisively strengthening trade union organization,” although unionization of the miners soon disappeared. Later that year, in November, a Conference of Workers of Nicaragua was held in Managua. It included delegates from various artisan workers’ groups in the capital and elsewhere, as well as some miners and a Local Peasant Committee of Sábana Grande, in the Department of Managua, apparently one of the first unions of rural workers to be established. That meeting set up a continuing organization, under the title Conferencia de Trabajadores de Nicaragua, which received the support during the next year of a number of other union groups. However, in July 1939 there was another roundup of union leaders by the Somoza government, which exiled most of those who had been arrested. By 1941 most of the exiles had returned.18 THE CONFEDERACIÓN DE TRABAJADORES DE NICARAGUA In its early years, the Somoza government had a somewhat schizophrenic policy toward organized labor. On the one hand as we have seen, it punished unions that showed marked militancy. On the other, in 1940 the government built the Casa del Obrero in the center of Managua as a headquarters and a general meeting place for unions that it considered more or less friendly. Several unions and mutual benefit societies had their offices in the Casa del Obrero, and the people who administered the building were chosen by the organizations that were headquartered there.19 By the time the exiled trade union leaders returned to Nicaragua, World War II was underway, which somewhat modified the country’s political atmosphere. Some of the union leaders organized a meeting “against fascism” in July 1941. After the United States—and with it Somoza’s Nicaragua—entered the war, it was possible to form in 1943 a Bloc of Antifascist Workers, and in September to establish an Inter Union Workers Council, which included most of the unions that had belonged to the CTN. Each of these groups had as one of its objectives the establishment of a national central labor organization.20 The move to establish a labor confederation undoubtedly got stimulus from the visit to Nicaragua in May 1943 of Vicente Lombardo Toledano, president of the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL). Lombardo received a friendly greeting from President Somoza,


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who invited him to the presidential palace. During that visit, Lombardo conferred not only with Somoza, but also on two occasions with the leaders of the PSN, meeting once with its politburo and once with its central committee. Lombardo Toledano and President Somoza jointly reviewed a parade of the dictator’s Liberal Party followers. Lombardo also spoke over the government radio.21 Apparently, Lombardo Toledano’s visit to Nicaragua helped to bring about an alliance between the Communists and Somoza. The general political climate was conducive to such a development. The Communists throughout Latin America were following the policy of supporting any regime that declared itself supportive of the United Nations in World War II. For his part, Somoza had quickly aligned Nicaragua with the Allies once the United States got into the war. Furthermore, his regime was sufficiently insecure at that point—given the contrast between his dictatorship at home and its fighting a war in defense of democracy, so that the president welcomed any support he could get. The effect of this new alliance was shown most clearly in the labor movement. The so-called First National Congress of Workers and Peasants of Nicaragua met in the Casa del Obrero in Managua on May 26, 1944. U.S. Communist sources reported that this meeting was sponsored by President Somoza, who was one of the orators at the session, where he announced his intention of enacting a labor code. This meeting established the Confederación de Trabajadores de Nicaragua (CTN).22 The establishment of the CTN had been preceded by formation of the Federación de Trabajadores de Managua in the capital in March 1944. Subsequently, local federations were also established as part of the CTN in Matagalpa, Granada, León, Corinto, and Chinandega. The CTN received legal recognition from the Somoza government in 1945. It affiliated with the CTAL.23 During the period of the existence in the CTN (1944–1948), organized labor demonstrated considerably militancy. For instance, there were two strikes, in 1944 and 1947, in the Cadalla Maria textile plant in Managua, both of which were successful.24 The PSN, the country’s Communist party, was completely dominant in the CTN. The PSN factions met in many of the unions before meetings of the unions themselves to determine the decisions those meetings should take. Armando Amador, who had returned from Costa Rica, was secretary-general of the Managua federation of the CTN, and other PSN members held key leadership positions in the labor confederation. This control of the organized labor movement reflected the alliance between President Somoza and the Communists. This arrangement was also shown in the fact that in 1944 the party was able to organize a public meeting (although without mention of the PSN) in the Casa del Obrero for Blas Roca, the Cuban Communist leader who was making a weeklong visit to Nicaragua.

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Somoza and the Communists particularly collaborated in supporting passage of the labor code, which met bitter opposition from the Conservative Party. The PSN publicly backed the passage and promulgation of the labor code, and Somoza appreciated their backing. This appreciation was reflected in the fact that on July 6, 1946, the PSN was able to hold its first public meeting in its own name in the Ginasio Nacional. The Communists sought to use the friendship of Somoza to obtain jobs within the government. They also suggested that some PSN members be named on the government party’s list of congressional candidates in the 1947 elections. However, Somoza resisted the PSN pressure on these issues. In fact, the 1947 election reflected a growing split between Somoza and the PSN. In that contest, the PSN joined the Conservative Party and the Independent Liberal Party in backing Enoch Aguado against the government’s presidential candidate, Leonardo Arguello. The opposition had offered to name six PSN members as candidates for deputy on their ticket. However, once Aguado had been counted out by the Somoza government and Arguello proclaimed the winner, the PSN rushed to express the support of the party for Arguello. Once Arguello was in power, the PSN believed that the Somoza regime might well be on the way out because of the new president’s defiance of his patron, National Guard commander and ex-President Anastasia Somoza. However, Somoza soon put an end to the Arguello regime.25 On the basis of available information, one can only speculate on what made the PSN turn against Somoza. It is possible that they thought that his regime was going to fall and that they therefore wanted to place themselves in an advantageous position should that happen. Or it is also possible that the changed attitude of the PSN toward the dictator was motivated by the alteration in the policy of the international Communist movement with the outbreak of the Cold War, in which Somoza was clearly aligned with the United States against the Soviet Union, from which the Nicaraguan Communists drew their inspiration and overall policy direction. In any case, the break between Somoza and the PSN (and therefore the CTN controlled by the PSN) was disastrous for the Nicaraguan labor movement. In January 1948 virtually all of the country’s important labor leaders were arrested, as Communists. The CTN was outlawed and many of the unions belonging to it ceased to function. It took several years for the labor movement to recover, at least in part, from this blow.26 THE CONFEDERACIÓN GENERAL DE TRABAJADORES IN THE 1950s In spite of their treatment by Somoza, the Communists remained very active in the labor movement. But by 1948 there was another political element seeking support among the Nicaraguan workers. There were


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two active labor attachés in the Argentine embassy in Managua, and they were busily seeking to align the Nicaraguan labor movement with the Argentine Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) and Peronismo. They arranged to send a number of Nicaraguan trade union officials to Buenos Aires, and those people agreed while in the Argentine capital to try to establish a new central labor group upon their return home. However, the labor leaders involved were not in a position to undertake this task by themselves, so they entered into conversations with unionists of the Partido Socialista, who still controlled a substantial number of local unions in various parts of the country. The outcome of these discussions was the establishment in October 1948 of the CGT. For the first two and half year, the CGT was largely dominated by the Communists of the Partido Socialista. However, in the middle of 1951, when there was an official meeting of Non Governmental Organizations associated with the United Nations in Managua, the leadership of the CGT issued a document reflecting the Communist line of the moment. This prompted an investigation by the Somoza government into the affairs of the CGT, which soon resulted in the ousting of PSN leaders from the CGT and the cancellation of legal recognition of half a dozen of its unions. The Communists then established their own Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). It was reported in 1953 to have unions of shoemakers, domestic employees, printing trades workers, stonecutters, and agricultural workers in the Managua areas, as well as a scattering of unions in provincial towns. Neither the UGT nor its affiliates had legal recognition under the labor code. In the face of that situation, the Argentine labor attachés redoubled their efforts. They arranged for a new delegation of Nicaraguan labor leaders to visit Argentina, including not only people from the CGT, but also from the Transport Workers Federation and several other independent union groups. Some CGT leaders attended the two Latin American labor conferences organized by the Peronistas, the preliminary meeting in Asunción, Paraguay, and the founding meeting of the Agrupación de Trabajadores Latino Americanos Sindicalizados (ATLAS) in Mexico City in January 1953. Peronista control of the CGT was reinforced when pro-Peronista leaders were thrown out of a rival nationalist labor group. They immediately joined the CGT and soon were able to take over leadership of that organization.27 The overthrow of President Juan Perón in 1955 ended the association of the CGT with Peronismo. However, the CGT continued in existence and by 1959 was claiming to be the largest central labor group in Nicaragua, with local affiliates in virtually every city and town in the country. In the port town of Corinto, for instance, it had a local federation that included

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dockworkers, office employees, and truck drivers, as well as several other unions. Its port workers affiliate had recently carried out a successful strike over issues arising from a shift in payment of workers by the hour to payment by the amount of tons loaded.28

THE NACIONALISTA UNIONS During the period of Communist control of the CGT, several unions withdrew from it because of that control. These included organizations of commercial employees, bakers, carpenters, slaughterhouse workers, and agricultural workers in Managua and its environs. In December 1950 these groups established the Federación Sindical Nacionalistas (FSN), which set out to establish similar federations in other cities. By mid-1953 they had organized such groups in León and Masaya. In September 1953, a congress was held that established the Confederación Nacionalista de Sindicatos Democráticos (CNSD). The nacionalista union groups, as well as the CGT, at first worked with the Peronistas. They were represented at the Asunción congress of proPerón labor groups and at the founding congress of ATLAS. However, soon after the ATLAS meeting, the FSN held a congress, where there was a struggle over the issue of Peronismo. Officially, the majority at that meeting decided to repudiate the ATLAS, a decision that brought a split in the FSN, the minority group leaving to join the CGT, as we have noted. At the time of this decision by the FSN there was a scandal over the issue in the Managua press, and the Argentine labor attaché hurriedly returned home to avoid being declared persona non grata. Thereafter, the Confederación Nacionalista de Sindicatos Democráticos was regarded as the Somoza government’s trade union group. Its opponents claimed that the CNSD was subsidized by the regime and that most of its leaders held government jobs. The secretary-general of the CNSD denied these charges to me, claiming that the government did not pay the confederation any money, and explained that although he himself had a government job, he worked only part time at it, having an accounting business of his own that provided most of his income.29 Reportedly, President Anastasio Somoza García met with a group of union leaders of the CNSD and other groups shortly before he was killed, at a time when he was running for reelection once again. He promised them important changes in labor laws and to bring about representation of the labor movement in Congress, with six or seven deputies. However, he was killed before he had the chance to put these plans into execution, if he really intended to do so.30 The CNSD continued to exist well into the 1960s. By 1967, it was reported to consist, in fact, of only one union in the city of León. It continued to be closely aligned with the Somoza regime.31


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THE SINDICATOS DEMOCRÁTICOS The smallest of the three central labor organizations of the 1950s was the so-called Comité Obrero Organizador de Sindicatos Libres Democráticos. This group had broken away from the CGT in opposition to Communist and Peronista influence in that group. It was led by Pedro A. Gutiérrez, the secretary-general of the Sindicato de Empleados de Empresas Mercantiles, a union of about 100 workers in Managua. According to Gutiérrez, it also included in 1953 a union of pushcart workers that claimed 75 members, as well as a construction workers’ union that that had broken away from that controlled by the Communists and claimed a membership of 365. In the city of Granada, the Comité Obrero Organizador, according to Gutiérrez, had as its affiliates the Unión de Trabajadores de Granada, a single union with carpenters, bricklayers, mechanics, and others organized in separate sections, claiming a total of about 200 members. Near Rivas, the group had a rural workers’ organization, the Comité Rural de Rivas, with about 35 members, and in San Juan del Sur it had a Union of Marine Stevedores.32 According to another leader of the group, it also had commercial employees’ unions in León, Granada, and Rivas in its ranks, as well as tobacco workers in Rivas. He claimed that in all, the Comité Organizador had about 2,000 members.33 The Comité Organizador did not have friendly relations with the Somoza government. In part at least, this was due to its efforts to organize workers employed by firms in which the Somoza family had significant ownership. Thus, a cement workers’ union established by the Comité Organizador was forced by the government to join the Nacionalistas, whereupon it went out of existence. The Democráticos also met strong resistance to attempts to organize workers in a sugar mill in Rivas owned by Somoza.34 The Somoza regime interfered with the Comité Organizador’s efforts to establish international contacts. The government refused to grant passports to leaders of the group to attend an anti-Communist congress in Mexico in 1954 but allowed a delegation from the Nacionalistas to do so, a delegation that praised the so-called democracy of the Somoza regime. The government also refused to allow any leader of the Comité Organizador to participate in a labor training seminar run by the Organización Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT) in Mexico in 1954.35 Although saying that the Comité Organizador was the weakest of the Nicaraguan central labor groups, the labor reporting officer of the U.S. Embassy claimed in 1953 that it was “the nearest thing to a free trade union movement” there was in Nicaragua.36 By the late 1950s, the Comité Organizador had been converted into the Federación Obrera y Campesina. It was the only labor group in Nicaragua that at that time was affiliated with the ORIT and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).37

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THE TRANSPORT WORKERS FEDERATION The strongest Nicaraguan workers’ group in the 1950s was the Transport Workers Federation. It combined functions of a trade union with those of a mutual benefit society. The Sindicato de Chóferes of Managua was established in March 1949. There had been two attempts, in 1945 and 1948, to establish a chauffeur’s union in the capital, but they had been short lived. By 1953, the Sindicato de Chóferes had a membership of about 700. It included bus drivers, taximen, truck drivers, and mechanics. Although this union had not succeeded by 1953 in getting a collective agreement with employers, it had been able to enforce a minimum wage for its members. By the early 1950s, it had also developed a number of mutual benefit services, including collectively putting up for its members the bond, which was demanded by the director general of transport for all professional drivers; jointly covering court and other costs arising from accidents; and provision of medical expenses for its members. The sindicato also established two filling stations in Managua where the chauffeurs—both union and nonunion—could buy their gas and other requirements; this provided substantial income for the sindicato. The sindicato also sought to exercise certain discipline over the chauffeurs. It particularly sought to discourage them from driving while intoxicated, throwing drivers out of the union upon occasion for this reason. On the basis of the Managua union, the Federación de Transportadores Unidos de Nicaragua (FTUN) was established. By 1953, the FTUN had member unions in 11 other cities and towns in addition to Managua. These included two miners’ unions in towns where the FTUN had organized chauffeurs’ unions and had been asked to help establish organizations among the miners. These were the El Limón and La Luz gold mines. Both firms were controlled by very antiunion U.S. entrepreneurs, and after a considerable struggle, both unions were crushed. The FTUN sought to rally the support of the whole labor movement to help the mineworkers. For this purpose, it played host in July 1953 to the so-called First Labor Congress of National Unity, held in the Casa del Obrero. Present were delegates of the FTUN, the CGT, the FSN, and the Comité Organizador de Sindicatos Libres.38 However, this effort was of little effect insofar as the antiunion mine owners were concerned. The principal leader of the FTUN was Raúl Sandoval, who was secretarygeneral of both the Managua union and the Federación. He was a veteran of the army, which had fought against Augusto Sandino in the 1920s and 1930s. He tended to be more or less sympathetic with the Somoza government—admitting to me that he “got along well” with Anastasio Somoza García. For a while he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies. The attitude of the FTUN toward the Somoza government is reflected in the Report of the Executive Committee of the Sindicato de Chóferes y


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Similares de Managua covering the period December 1, 1952, to November 30, 1953. That report commented: “The Directing Board elected for the year 1952–1953 thanks His Excellency the President of the Republic, the Minister of Labor and Authorities of that Ministry, the Chief of Transit, the Military Authorities and society in general for the support given to our struggle for the moral, social and economic improvement of our working class to making greater our beloved Fatherland.”39 Although Sandoval had accepted an invitation from the Argentine labor attachés in Managua to visit Argentina, he was not won over to the Peronista cause. When in the following year he also accepted an invitation to visit the United States to make contact with unionists there, he was strongly denounced by both the Peronistas and the Communists. In 1959, Sandoval was for a while ousted from the leadership of the FTUN. The reason for this was that he opposed a general strike, which was called in coordination with an exile invasion seeking to overthrow the government of President Luis Somoza. However, within a short while, he was restored to the leadership of the FTUN and still held that position in 1967. As had been the case since its inception, the FTUN remained outside of any central labor group.40 ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE 1960s AND EARLY 1970s The Nicaraguan labor movement expanded considerably during the 1960s and early 1970s, reflecting in part the expansion of export-oriented agriculture and grazing and the growth of manufacturing. It remained divided into several rival union groups of differing political orientation. The Somoza regime remained somewhat schizophrenic toward the organized labor. Although it sought to appear friendly toward the organized workers and to keep alive elements that were more or less friendly disposed toward the regime, it was generally hostile toward any union groups that were potential political opponents. Also, the Somozas repeatedly made it clear that whatever the labor code might say, it did not apply to enterprise in which the Somozas were the principal owners; in such firms not only were unions not welcome, but they would be quickly suppressed should they appear. As we have noted, several different labor groups were active in the period between 1960 and 1972. We shall look at each of these factions of the organized labor movement. THE GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF WORKERS DURING THE 1960s The General Confederation of Workers (CGT) remained the most significant pro-Somoza labor group during the 1960–1972 period. In 1963,

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the CGT suffered a major schism, after which its progovernment faction would become a minor factor in the country’s labor movement. Starting in 1956, the Communist-led unions, which had been ousted from the CGT half a decade before, liquidated their UGT and reentered the progovernment union group. Within a short while, they were once again playing a major role in the confederation’s affairs. At the beginning of the 1960s, the CGT-affiliated unions conducted several significant strikes. One of these was a walkout of some 4,000 members of the Construction Workers Union, which lasted 22 days. It was partially successful. Shortly after this, there was a walkout of 2,000 members of the Shoemakers Union, which lasted for two months. It was finally broken by the police and National Guard.41 However, in 1963 the CGT split into two separate organizations, one still aligned with the Somoza regime and the other controlled by the Communists. The immediate provocation for this schism was the acceptance by the CGT’s secretary-general of a candidacy for deputy in the election in which René Schick Gutiérrez became president, in doing so claiming that he (the secretary-general) was the “CGT’s candidate.”42 This incident gave rise to the summoning of a “national convention” by unions opposed to the group controlling the CGT, to discuss electing a new administration for the confederation. When that meeting demanded that the secretary-general call a regular national congress of the Confederación for the purpose of choosing a new leadership, he refused. As a consequence, the Communist-controlled unions, which had demanded such a congress, called their own, which met in March 1963, and elected a new leadership. The pro-government delegates withdrew from the congress, and refused to recognize the new leaders of the CGT, headed by Domingo Vargas Morales. With this split, the government quickly recognized the old CGT leadership as the only genuine one and extended the CGT’s legal recognition to that group. Henceforward, that organization, although still calling itself the CGT, was usually referred to as the “CGT Oficialista.” The dissident group, which did not obtain legal recognition, took the name Confederación General de Trabajadores-Independiente (CGT-I).43 After the split with the Communists, the CGT Oficialista was a minor element in the labor movement. In 1967, it was reported that in Managua its only significant affiliate was the Road Workers Union, which provided most of the top leaders of the CGT. Outside of the capital, its principal affiliates were the stevedores’ and dockworkers’ unions of the port of Corinto.44 The CGT Oficialista lingered on through the 1970s. According to Richard Stahler-Sholk, it did not totally disappear until after the overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1979.45


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THE CGT-I Throughout the 1963–1973 period, the Communist-controlled CGT-I was the country’s largest central labor group. In 1967, the CGT-I had nine regional federations. In Managua, it had a substantial number of unions, including construction workers, printing trades workers, sawmillers, furniture workers, and several other groups.46 The CGT-I put particular emphasis on work among rural workers and peasants. In September 1965 it organized the First National Peasant Conference in Managua, attended by 534 delegates—157 others being prevented from attending when the government arrested them and held them until after the conference had adjourned. The final session of the meeting was addressed by Juan Lorio (onetime head of the PSN) speaking for the CGT-I. The conference went on record demanding a thoroughgoing agrarian reform that would give land to the landless (and to small proprietors) and provide credit and other things necessary for successful exploitation of the soil. The meeting also called for establishment of a national peasant confederation, although it did not itself bring into existence such an organization.47 In January 1967, the Confederación Nacional de Campesinos de Nicaragua was finally formally organized by the CGT-I. Although it succeeded in establishing unions and other organizations in various parts of the country, the Peasant Confederation had no success at all in unionizing the workers on rural landholdings belonging to the Somoza family. In this regard, the situation was not any different from that in urban properties of the ruling family—anyone trying to establish a union in them was immediately dismissed. Elsewhere in the economy, a few CGT-I unions were able to negotiate collective agreements with the employers, although most were not able to do so. The CGT-I did not seek legal recognition. According to one of its principal leaders, the only advantage deriving from legal recognition was that it obliged the government to deal with the organization, but in the case of the CGT-I (and the Peasant Confederation), because of their substantial size and influence, the government usually dealt with them, informally, even though they were not considered legal organizations. The CGT-I was associated with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), although not formally a member.48 THE CATHOLIC LABOR MOVEMENT In the early 1960s, a new tendency developed within the Nicaraguan labor movement, a group of Catholic orientation. It had its origins in the Young Catholic Worker Movement, and its first expression was the Movimiento Obrero Católico (MOC), which entered into contact with the Confederación Latinoamericana de Sindicalistas Cristianos (CLASC), the Catholic-oriented Latin American trade union group.49

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With the help of the CLASC, some of the MOC leaders were sent to training schools run by CLASC in Guatemala and at CLASC headquarters in Caracas. Finally, in September 1962, the Movimiento Sindical Autónoma de Nicaragua (MOSAN) was established. By 1967, the MOSAN had federations—some legally recognized, others not—in eight departments (provinces). In Managua their unions included one in construction, in competition with that controlled by the Communists; one in transport, including bus drivers, taximen, and truck drivers, in competition with the FUN and a chauffeurs’ union controlled by the Communists; as well as unions of garment workers, gas station attendants, and metalworkers. The clothing, metal, and gas station unions had obtained collective agreements with the employers. The MOSAN had also established a number of rural workers’ and peasants’ organizations. The MOSAN maintained friendly relations with the Social Christian Party, although the MOSAN leaders insisted that their organization was in no way subordinate to the party, and Social Christian employers did not welcome MOSAN organizing their workers. The labor group also maintained friendly contact with Social Christian students in the University in Managua.50 The MOSAN unions had some strikes. One of these, against the Singer Company, waged by the Commercial Workers Union, was particularly notable. Not only did the strike last for three and a half months in 1964, but it was the only strike on record that the Ministry of Labor officially declared to be legal. It was finally won by the workers, who not only gained everything they had demanded, but also received full payment of wages for the time the workers had been on strike. A great deal less successful was a walkout in 1965 of the MOSAN garment union against the Vestex firm. Although a strike first won a collective contract, when the employer began ignoring the conditions of the agreement, and the workers again walked out, the Supreme Labor Tribunal not only sided with the employers, but officially dissolved the union.51 ORIT-ORIENTED LABOR GROUPS The only organization that had been affiliated with the ORIT in the 1950s, the Federación Obrera y Campesina, had all but disappeared by the beginning of the following decade. However, in the early 1960s a new effort was undertaken to establish in Nicaragua a group associated with the ORIT. This was a two-pronged effort. On the one hand, the ORIT itself opened an office in Managua, the principal function of which was to organize new unions. On the other hand, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) also began in 1964 to operate within Nicaragua, with union leadership training and social project activities. At first, the ORIT operated on the basis of trying to get together in a single group all of the trade union organizations that were not under


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Communist leadership. The ORIT representative in Managua did succeed in getting the CGT Oficialista, the remains of the CNSD, and the Federación Obrera y Campesina de Nicaragua. However, this soon fell apart as the result of conflicts among the leaders of the different groups.52 Then, with the assistance of the AIFLD, the ORIT set about trying to organize a completely new branch of the Nicaraguan labor movement. The AIFLD began to operate in the country in 1964 and organized labor leadership training operations on various levels. In different parts of the country it established local two-week training programs, and then the best graduates of these were brought to Managua for more intensified onemonth programs. Finally, the outstanding people from those were sent to courses in the AIFLD Central American regional training center in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. By 1967 a number of the graduates of these various programs were beginning to emerge as leaders in various unions and were undertaking the establishment of new ones.53 One of the earliest graduates of this AIFLD training program was Trinidad Beteta. He was named an official ORIT representative in Nicaragua and set about organizing new unions. By mid-1967, Beteta and his colleagues had succeeded in organizing five new unions in Managua, those of telecommunications workers, musicians, hotel workers, airline workers, and commercial employees. Most of these had been able to negotiate collective agreements providing for wage increases, seniority systems, two weeks of dismissal pay for every year of employment, and a twoweek Christmas bonus, none of which were provided for in the labor code.54 Most of the workers in these unions paid dues more or less regularly.55 A perhaps typical example of these unions was the Sindicato de Trabajadores Aéreos of the Taca Airlines and of Pan American Airways, both the mechanics and the office staff, most of whom were women and had been able to thwart resistance by the local managers to unionization. The union had also succeeded in negotiating contracts with these two airlines. However, the story was different with the La Nica Airline. The principal stockholder was Anastasia Somoza Debayle, who a leader of the Airline Workers Union described as being “allergic to having a firm belonging to him organized.” La Nica had consistently fired any workers who took the lead in trying to unionize its workers. By 1967, the union had, temporarily at least, given up efforts to organize the workers in the airline belonging to the president of the Republic.56 By the middle of 1968, the unions organized on the initiative of the ORIT, and AIFLD established what was first called the Consejo de Unidad Sindical. In 1970 it changed its name to Confederación de Unificación Sindical (CUS). According to the CUS it had at that time 24 legal unions on its books, as well as 24 unions affiliated with it, with a total membership of between three and four thousand workers.57

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The CUS maintained friendly relations with the Federación de Maestros, the teachers’ federation, although it did not join the CUS. The Federación de Maestros was at the time one of the largest of the country’s unions.58 In 1967, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Labor listed 424 legal unions on its books, as well as 23 federations and confederations. However, the labor reporting officer of the U.S. Embassy estimated that only about 100 of those organizations really existed and were functioning more or less normally.59 ORGANIZED LABOR AFTER THE 1972 EARTHQUAKE In December 1972 a catastrophic earthquake, the epicenter of which was located in the center of the city, devastated Managua. As we have noted earlier, this event was the beginning of the end of the rule of the Somoza dynasty. The last years of the rule of the Somozas were marked by significant clashes between organized labor and the regime, and the fall of that regime would bring major changes in the labor movement. Decrees issued by President Anastasio Somoza Debayle immediately following the earthquake aroused strong resistance from the labor movement. The president ordered that in place of the customary eight-hour day, workers would now labor for 10 hours per day and 60 hours per week, and that government employees would have to contribute a month’s wage for “national reconstruction.” He also proclaimed that four of the year’s nine official work holidays be eliminated, and workers would labor on those days “for the nation’s welfare.” The decree brought an almost immediate response from the construction workers’ union Sindicato de Carpinteros, Albañiles, Armadores, y Similares (SCAAS) of the CGT-I, which declared a strike that virtually brought the earthquake reconstruction effort to a halt when 6,000 workers walked out. The strike lasted 29 days, at the end of which the government canceled the offending decree insofar as the construction workers were concerned. Immediately following the construction workers’ walkout, some 13,000 hospital workers struck, demanding the cancellation of the president’s decree that government workers would have to forego one month’s wages for national reconstruction. The strikers also demanded other concessions. Not only did the government back down in the face of this walkout, but the workers were able for the first time to obtain a collective contract. Labor militancy continued. In 1973 there were general strikes of textile workers, construction workers, Standard Fruit banana workers, and hospital workers. Some of those walkouts were successful, whereas others failed.60 Several significant new union groups emerged in the years following the 1972 earthquake. One was the Federación de Trabajadores de la Salud, which was established in 1975 and brought together most of the country’s


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health workers. It was part of the Christian Social–oriented faction of the labor movement during this period.61 Another new organization was the Unión Nacional de Empleados. In 1978 it became a part of the Movimiento Pueblo Unido (MPU), which brought together several union and political groups more or less aligned with the FSLN.62 Some new central labor groups also appeared. Three months before the earthquake, the Christian Social Trade union faction MOSAN formally became a confederation, under the name Confederación de Trabajadores de Nicaragua (or CTN, not to be confused with the heretofore mentioned CTN of the 1940s). It was very active in the struggle against the Somoza regime.63 Two new central labor groups emerged as the result of splits in leftwing political parties. One was the Central de Acción y Unidad Sindical (CAUS), which originated in 1973 under the leadership of the Partido Comunista de Nicaragua, which had split away from the PSN in 1967. The CAUS was formally organized as a central labor organization three years later. It became part of the MPU in the period of the civil war preceding the fall of the Somoza regime. 64 Another small central labor group, the Frente Obrero, was founded in 1974 by a pro-Maoist splinter of the FSLN, the Movimiento Acción Popular–Marxista Leninista. Frente Obrero published a newspaper, El Pueblo, and organized its own militia group to fight the Somoza regime during the 1978–1979 civil war.65 ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE FALL OF THE SOMOZA DYNASTY The labor movement played an active part in the events leading up to the final collapse of the Somozas’ dynastic rule. When the wide opposition group, the Unión Democrática de Liberación (UDEL), was established in 1974, it was joined by the CGT-I and the Christian Social–oriented Central de Trabajadores de Nicaragua. Then when the UDEL called a general strike after the murder of opposition leader Pedro Joaquín Chamorro in January 1978, the CGT-I was particularly active in carrying out the strike. In July 1978, the UDEL was largely superseded as the principal opposition movement by the Frente Amplio Opisitor (FAO), in which (for the first time) the FSLN was represented. When the FAO called a four-week general strike in August 1978, that walkout was supported by the CGT-I, the CTN, and the ORIT-affiliated CUS.66 Although the CUS had sought to remain apolitical and to concentrate on collective bargaining activities, by 1977 this became impossible. As one of its leaders said, the confederation gave up strictly economic activities and became almost completely political, concentrating on trying to oust

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the Somoza regime. The head of the CUS attended a congress of the International Transport Workers Federation and got it to agree to boycott all air and ship transport to Nicaragua until the fall of Somoza. At the Nicaraguan ports, the workers also refused to handle any shipments. In January 1979, one CUS leader, Luis Medrano Flores, was killed by agents of the Somoza regime. With the calling of the June 1979 final general strike against the Somoza regime, the CUS union in one of the Managua textile plants organized a sit-down strike there. They first cut the electrical wires to make it impossible to work the machines, then negotiated with the employer, and finally reached an agreement that the workers would be paid their full wages during the shutdown of the plant and that they, the workers, would make sure that the factory’s equipment would not be damaged.67 In the final crisis of the Somoza regime, when a new general strike was declared in early June 1979, the United Press International reported that the walkout was 90 percent effective. It had the general support of the labor movement, as well as of most employers.68 Until the final crisis of the Somoza regime, the FSLN had had little following among urban workers and peasants. However, by the late 1970s, the FSLN had organized Rural Workers Committees ( beginning in 1978), and about the same time established Workers Struggle Committees among the urban workers. Both of these groups were to be converted into leading labor organizations after the fall of the Somoza regime.69 The overthrow of the Somoza regime immediately brought a profound change in the Nicaraguan labor movement. This was due to the fact that the FSLN emerged from the struggle against the Somoza dynasty as the country’s dominant political force. There were at least two reasons for this. On the one hand, the Sandinistas were the only political group in the postSomoza period who had an armed force at their command—both the new army and the new police force. On the other hand, the FSLN enjoyed wide prestige as the result of having organized and led the successful armed struggle against the Somozas. Although, until the victory over the Somoza regime, the FSLN had been at best of marginal significance in organized labor, it quickly emerged after July 19, 1979, as the most powerful element in the labor movement. The Sandinistas organized two important workers’ organizations—one in the countryside and one in the cities and towns. Also, although generally not suppressing labor groups with a non-FSLN leadership, they sought to have their own groups absorb the prerevolutionary central labor organizations. Overall unionization grew rapidly after the 1979 revolution. It was estimated that whereas in 1979 about 11–12 percent of the wage and salary earners were unionized, this had risen to 40 percent by 1983 and 56 percent by 1986. Of these, the two Sandinista central labor groups, the Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC) and the Central Sandinista


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de Trabajadores (CST), had over 60 percent of the unionized workers in their ranks, the former having about 50,000 members and the CST claiming 13,000.70 THE ATC The older of the two central labor groups established by the Sandinistas was the ATC. It was set up in 1977, even before the triumph of the revolution. After the overthrow of the Somozas, the ATC was the principal organization of rural workers. The ATC was stronger in some regions than in others. Its memberships was particularly numerous in the parts of the country producing cotton and sugar, where the labor force was relatively large. Except in some isolated areas, the ATC did not meet much competition from other rural workers’ organization.71 Early in 1980, the ATC pushed for an increase in the minimum wage, which would particularly favor rural workers. As a result, on June 11, the Council of State ordered a general wage rise of 125 cordobas ($1 equaled 10 cordobas) for all workers receiving less than 1,200 cordobas a month, a decree affecting an estimated 80 percent of the rural workers.72 The ATC met considerable resistance from some landowners. This was indicated by a demand put forth in a Plan of Struggle issued by the ATC in February 1980, on the anniversary of the murder of Augusto César Sandino, for “a halt to firings and harassment of ATC organizers on private estates.”73 The ATC played a role in the agrarian reform program carried out by the Sandinista government. It was the workers organization recognized by the government on so-called State Production Units (UPEs) established as state-run cooperatives on land taken over from family members and associates of the Somozas. In addition to being the spokesman for the workers on such projects and presenting grievances of individuals to the management, the local ATC groups (according to one regional leader of the organization) worked to convince workers to live in central villages on those projects instead of in individual family homes and helped to increase production and productivity.74 At first, the ATC included not only agricultural wage earners, but also small and medium landowning peasants. However, in 1981, the latter were separated from the ATC to form their own organization, the Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos. By the end of 1983, the ATC claimed a membership of 40,000.75 One U.S. observer commented in 1988 that the ATC, in contrast (he said) to the CST, did “really try to fight for the interests of the agricultural workers.” He added that it sometimes publicly disagreed with the government’s policies, although it avoided open confrontation with the Sandinista regime.76

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THE CST There is no doubt the urban labor movement grew very substantially after the victory of the Sandinista revolution in July 1979. There was a dramatic rise in the number of unions and the number of union members. Many of the new unions and new union members were affiliated with the CST. This organization was established on July 26, 1979, only a week after the flight of President Somoza.77 The CST was controlled by the FSLN and closely allied with the Sandinista government. Iban García, secretary-general of the CST, claimed in November 1980 that the number of legally recognized unions had risen from 55 to 179 unions since the revolution, and that the total number of union members had risen to 80,652, representing 80 percent of the urban labor force. He also said that the number of collective bargaining agreements had risen dramatically—that in nearly two decades before the revolution there had been only 190 such accords signed, but that in the year following the revolution some 200 contracts had been successfully negotiated. The CST leadership claimed that by November 1980, their group had 74.6 percent of all of the legally recognized unions in its ranks. It also claimed that the CST had 82.2 percent of all union members.78 Leaders of other trade union groups claimed that the Sandinista government used a substantial amount of coercion to force workers to belong to the CST. They said that in the industries and other enterprises formerly belonging to the Somozas and that were taken over by the government, the CST was the only trade union group that was allowed to try to organize the workers. Also, in some cases, where some other union group was already established, force was used to make the workers shift their affiliation to the CST.79 Both the ICFTU and the World Confederation of Labor published documents that they widely circulated among their national affiliates, giving details of coercion brought to bear by the government and the FSLN to get unions to join the CST, as well as details concerning persecution of leaders of rival trade union groups.80 In March 1982, the government declared a state of national emergency. One of the provisos in this decree was that declaring strikes was illegal. Although this measure was repealed in August 1984, as a prelude to general elections, the Sandinista government remained opposed to walkouts by the workers.81 There is no doubt that immediately following the overthrow of the Somoza regime there were substantial gains made by different groups of Nicaraguan workers. This was particularly the case with the miners, who previously (as we have noted) had met an almost impenetrable wall of employer resistance to unionization. Following the revolution, the U.S.-owned mines were nationalized and the miners were organized by the CST. In 1981, the first collective bargain-


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ing agreement was signed between the government mining firm and the union, covering all five gold-mining enterprises. This included important provisions for the health and safety of the miners and improvement of working conditions, as well as health care, improvement of housing and transport facilities, and food subsidies. Subsequently, in spite of nearby operations by the contras organized with the help of the Reagan government, the mines continued to function as well as the conditions permitted.82 With the reorganization in April 1980 of the Council of State, the semilegislative body established right after the overthrow of Somoza, both the CST and the ATC were given representation in the expanded body. It was originally announced that the CST would have three of the eight representatives allotted to the urban labor movement and that the ATC would also have three council members. However, in fact, the CST was given six positions on the reorganized Council of State.83 In the early part of the Sandinista regime, the CST frequently adopted a militant revolutionary position. For instance, in 1980 and 1981, it carried on an extensive campaign against decapitalization of the economy by the privately owned sector. Decapitalization meant everything from refusal of owners to invest in extending or even maintaining production to speculation on the currency market. The CST leaders urged workers to seize property of offending “decapitalizers.”84 However, the task of the CST became increasingly difficult and thankless. With the proxy war of the so-called contras launched by the Reagan administration against the Sandinista regime, the economic situation of Nicaragua became increasingly desperate. Markets for Nicaraguan exports were closed by the Reagan government, and foreign currency with which to import even the bare necessities became increasingly scarce. Although modest Soviet and Cuban aid for military and some other purposes was provided, the USSR and Cubans were unable or unwilling to provide most of what the Nicaraguans needed. Furthermore, the war provided other reasons for popular discontent. Military conscription was instituted to provide recruits for the Sandinista armed forces, a highly unpopular measure. Also, whatever its original intention, the Sandinista government adopted increasingly restrictive measures on the civilian opposition. The upshot of this situation was an economic disaster. Inflation rose drastically and by the late 1980s was virtually out of control. Black markets flourished, reinforcing the inflation. Scarcities of all kinds developed. At various times the Sandinista government took measures to try to stem the inflation and stabilize the economy. But these steps involved officially sponsored austerity, with the lowering of levels of living of much of the population, particularly in the cities and towns. In the face of this situation, the role of the CST became increasingly one of trying to explain the government’s policies to their members and to the

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workers at large. Its task became one of curbing union militancy rather than trying to stimulate that militancy. As early as November 1980, the CST launched a discussion which presaged the future role of the organization. As one foreign Trotskyist observer wrote at the time: The points raised by the CST do not promise milk and honey for the workers; on the contrary, they call on the unions to assume the responsibility for the problems the revolution confronts today. The points proposed for discussion by the CST are: 1. Increasing production and productivity. 2. Improving working conditions and social services and increasing wage levels in accord with the economic situation of Nicaragua. 3. Maintaining strict revolutionary discipline in the work places. 4. Resolving labor conflicts without halting production.85

The kind of tensions facing the CST was exemplified by a strike of the workers of the government-owned Victoria Brewery in Managua in November 1984. The strikers, who belonged to a local of the CST, demanded 100 percent raises for the lowest paid workers and other increases of 50 to 75 percent. The walkout generated demonstration of support by other unions. After a personal appeal by the Minister of Labor, who pointed out that the union had not gone through the procedures necessary to make the strike legal, the workers returned to their jobs.86 Another example of the role that the CST had to play because of its close association with the FSLN and the Sandinista government was presented in May 1985. At that time, the government announced that henceforward payment of part of workers’ wages paid in goods rather than money would be abolished. This reversed a policy that had been adopted two years earlier, in part at least, at the suggestion of the CST. In 1983, according to one U.S. Trotskyist source, “led by the Sandinista Workers Federation (CST), Nicaraguan workers agreed to forego a wage increase because of the economic problems the country was suffering, due in large part to the U.S.-backed mercenary war.” This source added that “local agreements, however, were concluded at some factories establishing quotas of products workers could buy cheaply to compensate for the lack of a wage increase. The CST led the struggle to win the payment-in-kind quotas at that time.” Of course, the payment-in-kind mechanism worked to the workers’ benefit principally in the textile, garment, shoe, and food industries, where workers received goods that they could either use directly or that they could easily sell. By 1985, the government decided to end the system, and the role of the CST in this decision was to explain it and defend it before the members of their own movement.87 In September 1984, the CST held its second national congress. According to CST secretary-general Lucio Jiménez, this meeting “opened the possibility of strengthening ourselves ideologically” and was “the beginning


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of an offensive throughout the whole length and breadth of the country to make sure we all understand that it is necessary to work more, even if with fewer economic demands than we had before, and in addition, to be ready to confront the invasion.” The base document adopted by this meeting noted: Today the working class of Nicaragua, the unions, have before them the following challenges: 1. Strengthen and consolidate the military defense forces ranging from the Sandinista People’s Army to the Revolutionary Vigilance. 2. Work for the approval in all work centers of norms of production that would allow us to reach the historic output, guarantee the achievement of the planned goals, and make up for the campañeros mobilized at the battle-front. 3. Resolve labor problems and conflicts through negotiations without halting production. 4. Seeing the possibility of pockets of hunger as a result of scarcity and the escalating war, we support distribution on a territorial basis, insuring a correct distribution of existing supplies. 5. We ask the Revolutionary Government to finalize the application of the first subsystem of the National System for the Organization of Work and Wages and to begin immediately the wage scales.

This document ended: “For the building of socialism . . . We go forward with the Front!”88 By 1988, the economic situation had reached a state of major crisis. In the previous year, inflation had been 1,500 percent, and by the beginning of 1988 it was running at the rate of 3,000 percent per year. There were five official exchange rates for the cordoba, varying from 70 to the dollar to 20,000 to the dollar, disparities that were being exploited by the black market. So, in February 1988, the government took drastic measures. A new currency was issued, which reduced the money supply. Wages were increased about 700 percent, and the regime began a process of cutting government employment to reduce the budget deficit, which was pushing inflation. They also began cutting personnel of government firms that were losing money; from 7,000 to 24,000 were expected to be laid off before the process was completed. There was strong trade union reaction to this program. The union groups not controlled by the Sandinistas launched a series of strikes. The CST did not strike, but it presented a long list of demands to the Ministry of Labor.89 However, generally the CST again supported the government’s policies. As two regional leaders of the confederation in the Matagalpa area commented to me, the workers understood the dire straits in which the Nicaraguan economy was and recognized the futility of making exorbitant demands on the government that could not possibly be met. Rather, the workers understood and supported the CST’s call for the workers to sacrifice for the country, they said.90

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SANDINISTA EFFORTS FOR LABOR UNITY In addition to the two central labor groups, the CST and the ATC, the Sandinistas came to control several other significant unions outside of these two organizations. These included the Federation of Health Workers, which had belonged to the Central Nacional de Trabajadores but withdrew from that group in March 1980 after electing a new national executive controlled by the Sandinistas;91 and the teachers’ union, the Asociación Nacional de Educadores de Nicaragua, which, according to Richard Stahler-Sholk “maintained a pro-Sandinista Liberation Front orientation after the Sandinista victory.”92 In the years following the victory over the Somoza regime, the Sandinistas made several efforts to unite the labor movement under their control. The first of these attempts was the Comisión Nacional Intersindical, established in January 1980. At first, it included not only the CST and ATC, but also the CGT-I (controlled by the Communists’ PSN), and the CAUS of the Partido Comunista de Nicaragua. However, by 1981, this group had disintegrated.93 The second attempt to unify the labor movement was the Coordinadora Sindical de Nicaragua, established in November 1981. It included the two Sandinista-controlled central labor groups as well as the CGT-I, the CAUS, and the independent unions of teachers and of health workers, as well as the white-collar union, the Unión Nacional de Empleados. The ORITaffiliated CUS at first joined the group, but quickly withdrew. The Christian Social–oriented confederation, the Central Nacional de Trabajadores, refused to join it at all.94 However, by the late 1980s, all of the Sandinista efforts to unify the labor movement under their own leadership had failed. Quite to the contrary, in October 1987, a certain degree of unity was established among the non-Sandinista trade union groups, with the establishment of the Congreso Permanente de Trabajadores, founded with the express purpose of fighting the government’s economic policies. It included the ORIT-affiliated CUS, the CGT-I, the CAUS, and the dissident Christian Social labor group, the Central de Trabajadores de Nicaragua (Auténtica).95 THE CGT-I IN THE 1980s Throughout the 1980s, the Confederación General de TrabajadoresIndependiente continued to be controlled by the country’s traditional Communist Party, the PSN. Its particular center of strength was among the construction workers of Managua, but it also had influence among the textile workers. By 1988 it still had departmental federations in all of the country’s departments (provinces) except Bluefields on the Atlantic coast. It had a number of agricultural workers affiliated with it.


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In the beginning, the CGT-I adopted what might be called a collaborationist attitude toward the Sandinista regime. It joined the two groups, found in 1980 and 1984, under CST leadership, with the supposed objective of uniting the labor movement. However, by 1984 the CGT-I and the Partido Socialista began to adopt a different attitude. The PSN refused, for instance, to join with the FSLN in supporting a joint ticket in the election of that year. By 1987, the break with the Sandinista government was clear. The CGT-I became a founding member of the Congreso Permanente de los Trabajadores, the organization of the anti-Sandinista groups, and by that time it had become the most militant of those groups. With the launching of the Sandinista government’s economic reform program of February 1988, the CGT-I took a leading role in opposition to those measures. The construction workers launched a general strike of protest, demanding large wage increases to offset austerity measurers decreed by the government. Late in April 1988 a hunger strike in support of the construction workers was declared in the CGT-I headquarters by 36 leaders of the various oppositionist union groups. However, 200 people were in the building when the hunger strike was declared, and the police would not allow them to leave. The government cut off water, electricity, and telephone service to the CGT-I headquarters, and hundreds of soldiers were stationed around the building. Sanitary and health conditions in the CGT-I headquarters became frightful, and after Interior Minister Tomás Borge promised negotiations with the various opposition labor groups, the hunger strike was finally called off after 11 days and the building was evacuated. Subsequently, the CGT-I leaders claimed that the promises of Borge had not been kept—and the construction workers’ strike continued.96 THE CENTRAL DE TRABAJADORES DE NICARAGUA IN THE 1980s Early in the 1980s, the Christian Social central labor organization, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Nicaragua (CTN), claimed to be the largest of the labor groups not controlled by the Sandinistas. This claim was confirmed by the U.S. scholar, Richard Stahler-Sholk.97 From the beginning, the CTN refused to participate in the Sandinistas’ attempt to form a single central labor organization. A November 1983 document of the U.S. Relations Office of the international Catholic labor groupings commented: CTN is an independent, autonomous labor movement; therefore refuses to join the official CST . . . a decision that has resulted in persecution and repression. The workers who recognize membership with unions affiliated to CTN are the first to be fired by the management of State-owned companies; when local unions want to

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affiliate themselves to CTN, they are harassed by State bureaucrats and persecuted by security officers. CTN officials have been arbitrarily arrested.98

In November 1982 the CTN held an Extraordinary Congress. Aside from delegates from all of its affiliates, the CTN Congress was attended by representatives of the Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores CLAT (the former CLASC) and several union groups affiliated it. Also present were representatives of the Catholic Church and several opposition political parties. The CTN congress adopted a manifesto, denouncing a number of the actions and policies of the Sandinista government. With regard to trade union affairs, the manifesto charged: “Flagrant violation of the rights and freedom of the workers, suppressing the right to strike; violations of the rights and freedoms of the workers, suppressing the right to strike; violations of the rights and freedoms of the workers, repressing their leaders, thus seeking to prevent the workers from expressing themselves independently.”99 At the end of 1983, the CTN claimed a membership of 50,000 workers. It had its largest following in the rural areas, among banana and coffee plantation workers, as well as sugar workers. It also had some small farmers in its ranks. In the urban areas, it had organizations in the communications, public transport, and the food industry.100 The CTN refused to join the moves launched by the CST in 1980 and 1984 to try to unify the Nicaraguan labor movement. The CTN had always been aligned with the Partido Social Cristiano (PSC). When that party split in 1982, giving rise to formation of the Partido Popular Social Cristiano, which was more sympathetic to the Sandinista regime than was the PSC, the Central de Trabajadores de Nicaragua also split, its dissidents establishing the Central de Trabajadores de Nicaragua-Autónoma.101 Subsequently, when the Congreso Permanente de Trabajadores was set up in 1987 to oppose the Sandinista government’s economic policies, the CTN-A joined this group, although apparently the CTN did not.102 A U.S. Embassy officer commented that although the CTN-A was aligned with a party, which tended to be sympathetic with the Sandinista government, the CTN-A “as a union group is fairly militant.”103 THE CUS IN THE 1980s The CUS remained the Nicaraguan affiliate of the ORIT and the ICFTU. It continued to get financial and other aid from these two international groups throughout the 1980s. Until 1981, the CUS also was aided by the AIFLD. However, in that year the Sandinista government forced the AIFLD to close down its operations in Nicaragua. Nevertheless, the CUS did continue to send people


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to leadership training courses run by the AIFLD in Costa Rica and Washington, DC. In 1988, the CUS claimed to have 34,000 dues-paying members. It had regional groups in 11 of the country’s 18 departments, with particular centers of strength in the northernmost departments and in Managua. In the capital area its affiliates were mainly in privately owned industries, as well as some rural unions, some of which maintained cooperatives. The CUS, some of the affiliates of which had been taken over—by force or otherwise—by the CST, also maintained informal organizations within CTS unions. A CUS leader cited to me in 1988 a recent case in the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua in which although the CST supposedly represented the workers, the CUS had stepped in and negotiated a settlement of a problem with the hotel management. In the mid-1980s, the CUS suffered considerable persecution at the hands of the Sandinista government “Turbas” or gangs that seized the CUS headquarters, seized and destroyed most of its records, and damaged the building. At the same time, a number of CUS leaders were arrested on various charges—four of whom were still in jail in 1988.104 However, by 1988 the pressure of the government on the CUS had been greatly mitigated, reflecting the beginning of negotiations to bring an end to the civil war.105 With the defeat of the Sandinistas in the election of 1990, Alvin Guthrie, secretary-general of the CUS, wrote to American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations president Lane Kirkland expressing enthusiasm for the result of the election. He attributed the defeat of the Sandinistas principally to their imposition of military conscription.106 THE FAR-LEFT LABOR GROUPS During the decade following the overthrow of the Somoza regime, there were three principal groups to the left of the Sandinistas and of the traditional Communist Party, the PSN, which were active in Nicaraguan organized labor. All of them fought against the attempts of the Sandinistas to bring into existence a unified labor under Sandinista leadership. The first of these groups was short lived. It owed its origin to the so-called Simón Bolivar Brigade, a group of combatants from other Latin American countries that had participated in the last phases of the Nicaraguan civil war of 1978–1979. They had been organized by one faction of International Trotskyism, headed by the Argentine Nahuel Moreno, particularly by the Socialist Workers Party of Colombia. Once the fighting was over, the members of the Brigada Simón Bolivar called for the immediate imposition of Socialism and set to work to organize strikes and land seizures. In the face of this situation, the new government deported the members of the Brigada, and although a Trotskyist party was

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organized in Nicaragua, it did not have any significant influence in the organized labor movement.107 The other two Far Left trade union groups were of considerably more significance. These were the CAUS, associated with the Partido Comunista de Nicaragua, and the Frente Obrero (FO), organized and led by the Movimiento de Acción Popular/Marxista Leninista (MAP-ML), which had been established in 1972 by dissident members of the PSN, the Frente Sandinista, and the Partido Comunista de Nicaragua. The Partido Comunista de Nicaragua had broken away from the PSN in 1967, more for personality and tactical reasons than for ideological disagreements. The PCN, like the PSN, was a pro-Moscow Communist party. The PCN had organized its own labor group, the Comité de Acción y Unidad Sindical (CAUS) in 1973. Its name had been changed to Central de Acción y Unidad Sindical three years later. It had its particular strength in the textile industry.108 Although the CAUS at first participated in the labor unity moves fostered by the Sandinistas in 1980 and 1984, it had frequent clashes with the government and the Sandinista central labor organization. As early as February 1980, it called a strike in 18 Managua factories, demanding a 100 percent increase in wages. The walkout was declared illegal and was finally crushed by the government. A month later, a Sandinista mob seized and closed down the CAUS headquarters in the provincial city of León. In October 1981, 24 CAUS leaders were arrested, accused of publishing “provocative” documents. These included two people who had been named to the Council of State. At least some of the CAUS leaders were sentenced to three years in jail. Shortly afterward, the Fabritex plant, a center of CAUS influence among the textile workers, was closed down by the government.109 Subsequently, the CAUS joined the Congreso Permanente de Trabajadores, the grouping of anti-Sandinista labor organizations, when it was established in 1987. The Frente Obrero (Workers Front) was the trade union group established by the MAP-ML, which had split from the Frente Sandinista in 1974. The Frente Obrero had its own newspaper, El Pueblo. The MAP-ML had its own guerrilla group, The Milicia Popular AntiSomocista, during the final phases of the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship. It refused to demobilize this armed group with the end of the civil war. The Frente Obrero had a major center of support among the workers of the Monterrosa and San Antonio sugar mills and plantations. In 1980 it called walkouts in those work centers, in defiance of the government’s call for workers’ restraint. The government retaliated against these strikes by suppressing the newspaper El Pueblo. The regime also seized the arms of


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the MAP-ML military group. Richard Stahler-Sholk noted that “FO activities declined” after these events.110 After the Sandinista government cracked down on the Frente Obrero, it reportedly forced some 50 unions associated with the Frente to join the CST, and some of the MAP-ML leaders deserted to join the Sandinistas. The Frente Obrero continued to exist, although it did not have any legally recognized unions. Like the CUS, the Frente had a number of groups inside CST unions, particularly among the metalworkers and construction workers, where they claimed to have major leadership positions. The Frente Obrero was strongest in Managua, Chenindega, and Limotega.111 The sugar workers were among those unions that deserted the Frente Obrero and joined the CST. However, in February 1984, some 5,000 workers at the San Antonio mill struck to protest an agreement insisted upon by the government even though the owners of the mill had said that they would have been willing to pay more than was provided for in the agreement. The strike lasted three days and was successful. The local union subsequently switched its allegiance from the CST to the CUS.112 CONCLUSION For nearly half a century, the labor movement of Nicaragua had to operate against the background of the regime of the Somoza dynasty. That regime at different times was more or less cordial to organized labor, and much of the time sought to keep at least some portion of it under the control of, or allied with, the government. However, throughout the period, one thing was clear: workers’ unions were not welcome in firms in which the Somoza family or some member of it was the principal proprietor. Throughout this period, the longest-lasting non-Somocista political element in the labor movement was the Communist Party, known locally as the PSN. For a while in the mid-1940s, there was a species of alliance between President Anastasio Somoza García and the PSN. Thereafter, there was a greater or lesser intense hostility between the PSN and the Somoza regime. In the 1960s, two other political strains developed within Nicaraguan organized labor. One was a moderate element aligned with the ICFTU and its American grouping, the ORIT. The other had a Social Christian tendency, aligned with the World Confederation of Labor and its Latin American group, the CLASC (subsequently the CLAT). Collective bargaining became more or less widespread in the 1950s and thereafter in the private sectors of the economy not owned by the Somozas, and even to some degree the government workers were unionized and bargained with those parts of the state in which they were employed. After the 1972 earthquake, the labor situation changed abruptly, as did the general political arena. As the general rebellion against the Somoza

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regime intensified, virtually all of the labor movement became active in this opposition. Economics and collective bargaining gave way to the political—and in the end military—struggle against the regime. With the overthrow of the last of the Somoza presidents, and the coming to power of the FSLN, there was a major transformation in organized labor. For one thing, it expanded very rapidly. For another, the new FSLN government sponsored formation of new union groupings, particularly the CST, and exercised very great pressure to have the CST become the only central labor group. Although the CST came to represent the considerable majority of the urban workers, the trade union groups of other political orientation stoutly resisted efforts to subordinate them to the CST and the Sandinista government. The great deterioration of the economy, engendered in part by the U.S.-sponsored civil war of the contras against the Sandinista regime, created great problems for all segments of the labor movement. It became increasingly difficult for the CST to convince the workers of the need for restraint in the face of the drastic decline in their standard of living; it became increasingly difficult for the non-Sandinista labor factions to function normally because of government actions against them. However, the Nicaraguan labor movement reached the 1990s numerically much stronger than it had ever been before. It continued to be split among various central labor groups and independent unions of differing ideological and political loyalties. The defeat of the Sandinistas in the March 1990 election opened a new chapter in the history of Nicaraguan organized labor, which goes beyond the time span of the present study. NOTES 1. Patrick Nicholas Theros (labor reporting officer, U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Managua, June 29, 1967. 2. Tulio Tablada (member of Executive Committee, Federación Sindical Nacionalista, ex-leader of Partido Socialista de Nicaragua), interview with the author in Managua, July 18, 1953. 3. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, Instituto Nacional de Estudios del Trabajo, Secretaria del Trabajo y Previsión Social, Centro de Estudios Sociológicos, El Colegio de México, México, March 1976, p. 1. 4. Richard Stahler-Sholk, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 550. 5. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, p. 1. 6. Ibid., p. 2. 7. Ibid., p. 2. 8. Moisés Poblete Troncoso, El Movimiento Obrero Latinoamericano (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1946), p. 239. 9. Ibid., pp. 239–40. 10. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, p. 2.


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11. International Press Correspondence, periodical of Communist International, January 26, 1928. 12. International Press Correspondence, September 1, 1927. 13. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, p. 2. 14. Tulio Tablada, interview. 15. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, p. 3. 16. Tulio Tablada, interview. 17. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 568. 18. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, pp. 3– 4. 19. Pedro Cavarette (manager of Casa Obrera), and José Camacho and Domingo Vargas (directors of Sindicato de Zapateros), interviews with the author in Managua, August 2, 1948. 20. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, p. 4. 21. See Robert J. Alexander, Communism in Latin America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957), p. 380. 22. Alexander, Communism in Latin America, p. 380; Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, p. 4; Cavarette, Camacho, and Vargas, interviews. 23. Tulio Tablada, interview. 24. Cavarette, Camacho, and Vargas, interviews. 25. Tulio Tablada, interview. 26. Cavarette, Camacho, and Vargas, interviews; Tulio Tablada, interview. 27. Tulio Tablada, interview; Raúl Sandoval (secretary-general, Sindicato de Chóferes de Managua and of Federación de Transportes Unidos de Nicaragua), interview with the author in Managua, July 17, 1953; Raymond J. Barrett (labor reporting officer, U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Managua, July 14, 1953. 28. Eduardo González (a leader of Sindicato de Oficinistas y Empleados de Comercio de Corinto, Nicaragua), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, July 29, 1959. 29. Foregoing from the author’s interviews with Raúl Sandoval, Tulio Tablada, interview; Carlos Adán Espinoza (secretary-general, Confederación Nacionalista de Sindicatos Democráticos), interview with the author in Managua, August 9, 1954; Abel Garay (secretary of organization, Federación Sindical Nacionalista de Managua), interview with the author in Managua, July 17, 1953; Adrián Bermúdez (h) (member of Executive of Confederación Nacionalista de Sindicatos Democráticos of Nicaragua), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 1, 1953. 30. Humberto Gallegos Ruíz (a leader of the Confederación Nacionalista de Sindicatos Democráticos of Nicaragua), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 5, 1958. 31. Theros, interview. 32. Pedro A. Gutiérrez (secretary-general of Comité Obrero Organizador de Sindicatos Libres Democráticos), interview with the author in Managua, July 17 and 18, 1953; see also Francisco Fletes (secretary-general, Sindicato de Chóferes de Granada), interview with the author in Granada, July 16, 1953. 33. Orlando Aguilar (secretary of peasant action of Comité Organizador de Sindicatos Libres Democráticos of Nicaragua), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 5, 1958. 34. Gutiérrez, interview.

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35. Humberto Cellado Arce (secretario de relaciones Sociales of Comité Coordinador de Sindicatos Libres Democráticos), interview with the author in Managua, August 9, 1954. 36. Barrett, interview. 37. Carlos Silva Martínez (a leader of Sindicato de Intelectuales Obreros of CGT of Nicaragua), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 6, 1958. 38. “Resoluciones del 1er Congreso Obrero de Unidad Nacional,” Managua, 1953. 39. “Sindicato de Chóferes y Similares de Managua Informe del Comité Ejecutivo,” Managua, 1953, p. 5. 40. Sandoval, interviews; Santos Cardoza (treasurer, Sindicato de Chóferes of Managua), August 9, 1954; Fletes, interview; Víctor Valencia Navarro (a leader of Sindicato de Trabajadores Portuarios de San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, July 29, 1959; Theros, interview; P. B. Pérez Salinas (Venezuelan union leader, former ORIT official), interview with the author in Caracas, February 13, 1959. 41. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, op. cit., p. 6. 42. F. Sánchez, secretary of peasant affairs, Confederación General de Trabajadores-Independiente, interview with the author in Managua, June 27, 1967. 43. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, op. cit., p. 6. 44. Trinidad Beteta (ORIT Representative in Nicaragua), interview with the author in Managua, June 27, 1967. 45. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 564. 46. F. Sánchez, interview. 47. Hacía la Alianza Obrera Campesina, publicaciones de la CGT-Independiente, Managua, March 1965. 48. F. Sánchez, interview. 49. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, op. cit., p. 6. 50. Amadeo Venegas (secretary of organization, Movimiento Sindical Autónomo de Nicaragua), interview with the author in Managua, June 29, 1967; Adolfo Bonilla (secretary-general, Movimiento Sindical Autónomo de Nicaragua), interview with the author in Managua, June 29, 1967; Theros, interview. 51. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, pp. 6–7. 52. Rolando Leonard Díaz (ORIT representative in Central America), interview with the author in Managua, June 26, 1967. 53. Interviews with Bill Richards, program officer of American Institute for Free Labor Development in Nicaragua, interview with the author in Managua June 26, 1967; and Art Nixon (labor technical officer, USAID in Nicaragua), interview with the author in Managua, June 28, 1967. 54. Trinidad Beteta, interview. 55. Theros, interview. 56. Abel Icabalceda (secretario de conflictos of Sindicato de Trabajadores Aereos), interview with the author in Managua, June 26, 1967. 57. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, op. cit., p. 7. 58. Beteta, interview. 59. Theros, interview. 60. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Nicaragua, pp. 7–8. 61. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 563.


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62. Ibid., pp. 566–67. 63. Ibid., p. 569. 64. Ibid., pp. 572–73. 65. Ibid., pp. 574–75. 66. Ibid., pp. 553–54. 67. Santos Tijerino Jiménez (secretary of national and international relations, Confederación de Unificación Sindical), interview with the author in Managua, June 22, 1988. 68. El Diario/La Prensa, New York, June 5, 1979. 69. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 553–54. 70. Ibid., p. 555. 71. Marta Juárez (assistant secretary, in Secretaría de la Mujer of Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo of Nicaragua), interview with the author near Managua, June 12, 1988. 72. Fred Murphy, “Nicaragua: Toiling Masses Tighten Control of Production,” Intercontinental Press (New York), July 21, 1980, p. 757. 73. Fred Murphy, “30,000 Campesinos Join ATC March in Managua,” Intercontinental Press (New York), March 3, 1980, p. 188. 74. José Velázquez Madrid (member of Executive of 5th Region of Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo), interview with the author at Asentamiento Sta. Rita, Bosco Department, June 12, 1988; Alejandro Herrera (technical administration of Finca El Triunfo), interview with the author in Estelí, Nicaragua, June 18, 1988. 75. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 559–60. 76. David Nolan (political officer of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Managua, June 21, 1988. 77. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 571. 78. Lars Palmgren, “Nicaraguan—New Efforts Towards Trade Union Unity,” Intercontinental Press (New York), November 17, 1980, p. 1189. 79. Tijerino Jiménez, interview; Milo Salazar Aguilar (secretary-general of Sindicato de Carpinteros, Albaniles, Armadores y Similares, member of Executive of CGT-I), interview with the author in Managua, June 23, 1988; Carlos Huende (secretary-general of Confederación de Trabajadores de Nicaragua), interview with the author in New Brunswick, NJ, December 1, 1983. 80. See William C. Doherty, “Nicaragua: A Revolution Betrayed—Free Labor Persecuted,” Washington, DC, April 1984 (manuscript); Central de Trabajadores de Nicaragua: “CNT Members Detained Since Nov. 11, 1983” (mimeographed); U.S. Relations Office—CLAT/WCL, “Independent Labor Leaders Arrested and Jailed in Nicaragua,” August 1, 1983. 81. Industrial Worker, newspaper of Industrial Workers of the World, December 1984. 82. Cindy Jaquith, “Nicaraguans Rebuild Mining Community,” Militant (New York), organ of Socialist Workers Party, October 11, 1985, pp. 4–5. 83. See Fred Murphy, “FSLN Announces Worker-Peasant Majority in Council of State,” Intercontinental Press (New York), May 5, 1980, p. 484; and Murphy, “Nicaragua: Toiling Masses Tighten Control of Production, p. 757. 84. Arnold Weisberg, “Unions Discuss Workers Control,” Intercontinental Press (New York), July 20, 1981, p. 757. 85. Lars Palmgren, “Nicaraguan—New Efforts Towards Trade Union Unity,” p. 1189.

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86. Industrial Worker, November 1984. 87. “Sandinistas Explain End of Payment in Kind,” Intercontinental Press (New York), September 8, 1985, p. 528–33. 88. “Nicaraguan Unions Vow to Defend Revolution,” Intercontinental Press (New York), November 26, 1984, pp. 686–88. 89. Keith Jackson (Associate of Instituto Histórico Centro Americano, New Zealander), interview with the author in Managua, June 13, 1988. 90. Tomás González (member of Regional Executive of Central Sandinista de Trabajadores) and Mario Cruz (functionary of Central Sandinista de Trabajadores regional organization), interviews with the author in Matagalpa, June 17, 1988. 91. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 563. 92. Ibid., p. 566. 93. Ibid., p. 566. 94. Ibid., p. 567. 95. Tijerino Jiménez, interview. 96. Salazar Aguilar, interview; Nolan, interview; Tijerino Jiménez, interview. 97. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 569. 98. U.S. Relations Office—CLAT/WCL: “Profile of CTN, Nicaragua, op. cit. 99. CLAT Newsletter (New York), publication of Central Latinoamericna de Trabajadores, January 1983, no. 9. 100. Huende, interview. 101. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 570. 102. Salazar Aguilar, interview; Tijerino Jiménez, interview. 103. Nolan, interview. 104. Tijerino Jiménez, interview; Nolan, interview. 105. William C. Doherty (head of American Institute for Free Labor Development), interview with the author in New York, April 18, 1988. 106. AFL-CIO News (Washington, D.C.), March 5, 1990. 107. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 572; see also Robert J. Alexander, International Trotskyism 1929–1984: A Documented Analysis of the Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 632. 108. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 572–73. 109. Workers Vanguard (New York), newspaper of Spartacist League, Trotskyist group, June 3, 1983. 110. Stahler-Sholk, Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 574–75. 111. Carlos Cuadras (Movimeinto de Acción Popular Marxista-Leninista member of National Assembly). interview with the author in Managua, June 22, 1988. 112. Doherty, “Nicaragua: A Revolution Betrayed,” pp. 10–11.

CHAPTER 5

Organized Labor in Honduras before 1957

The nineteenth-century Conservative–Liberal struggle for power in Honduras culminated in the victory of the Liberals under Marco Aurelio Soto in 1876. Thereafter, the usual programs of the Latin American Liberals were put into effect—limitation of the role of the Catholic Church, free enterprise, and the encouragement of economic development and foreign investment. One result of the Liberal hegemony was the transformation of the economy. Honduras had until the late nineteenth century been characterized by rural villages occupied by small-scale peasants, producing principally for their own sustenance, but with some surpluses of cattle, indigo, and tobacco, largely for export. There were also some precious metals and logwood exports. By 1900 bananas were beginning to be exported to New Orleans in substantial quantities. Thereafter, the Standard Fruit Company and the Cuyamel Fruit Company (which merged in the late 1920s with the United Fruit Company) developed a large-scale operation, which made Honduras for a number of years the world’s largest exporter of bananas. This development shifted the economic center of the Honduran economy to the north. It stimulated the growth of some manufacturing industries and commercial activity, particularly in the northern city of San Pedro Sula. Meanwhile, opposition to the Liberals arose in the form of the Partido Nacional. It was founded by dissident Liberals and led by General Manuel Bonilla, who was succeeded by a lawyer and part-time guerrilla military leader, Tiburcio Carías Andino. Carías told me that although he had the title of “general” he was in fact principally a lawyer—the only one entitled

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to practice law in all five Central American republics—and was only a part-time soldier, having had that role since he was 14 years old.1 Carías Andino came in first in the 1923 elections, but without a majority. After a major crisis, he was not allowed to take office. In the next election, in 1928, the Liberals won once again. Finally, in 1932, General Carías Andino was elected president of Honduras. He was destined to keep that office until 1948, ending the steady series of coups and civil wars that had characterized Honduran politics, but also establishing a very rigid dictatorship. During the Carías regime, the labor movement, which had begun to emerge in the 1920s, all but disappeared. Due to growing internal opposition, the overthrow of caudillo dictatorships in neighboring Guatemala and El Salvador, and some pressure from the U.S. government, Carías Andino decided not to run for president again in 1948. Instead, he chose Juan Manuel Gálvez as his successor. Although he had served in various posts in the Carías dictatorship, President Gálvez followed completely different policies from those of the old caudillo. He freed all political prisoners and allowed the Liberal Party—which had been completely banned under Carías—to function and in municipal elections to gain control of many of the country’s towns and cities. He also founded the Central Bank and the Development Bank and expanded the education system. Most important, from the point of view of the present study, he allowed the emergence of a strong and militant labor and peasant movement. At the end of Gálvez’s term late in 1954, the Liberal candidate, Ramón Villeda Morales, received a plurality but not quite the constitutionally required majority. In the ensuing confusion, President Gálvez resigned, giving way to the vice president, Julio Lozano, who at first had the support of all three parties that had contested the election. But Lozano soon established a stringent dictatorship, and after he stole an election for his successor, he was ousted by a military coup. New elections resulted in a clear victory for Ramón Villeda Morales and the Liberals. The Villeda Morales regime established a social security system, enacted a labor code, launched housing and education programs, and passed an agrarian reform law. Generally, Villeda Morales had the support of the labor movement. In the 1963 election to choose a successor of Villeda Morales, the military were very unhappy about the Liberal nominee, Modesto Rodas Alvarado (who seemed likely to win), because of his promises to reduce the political power of the armed forces. So, less than a week before the election, the soldiers, led by Air Force chief Colonel Osvaldo López Arellano, overthrew President Villeda Morales and canceled the election. López Arellano governed for two years as a de facto chief executive and then had himself elected to a six-year term, from 1965 to 1971. Near the end of this term, there occurred the short-lived soccer war with El


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Salvador in mid-1969. López Arellano governed largely with elements of the Partido Nacional, and his administration had little enthusiasm for the reforms launched during the Liberal regime. As the end of López Arellano’s term approached, the president forced a unity pact between the Liberals and Nacionalistas, which resulted in the election of a Nacionalista, Ramón Ernesto Cruz, as president in 1971. However, after less than two years, Colonel López Arellano again seized power, this time pledging widespread social reforms, particularly a land redistribution program. In the third period, he had extensive support from organized labor and the peasantry. However, in 1975, the country’s conservative economic and political interests forced the resignation of López Arellano, who was charged with having taken a large bribe from United Brands, the successor to the United Fruit Company. He was succeeded by another de facto regime, headed first by Colonel Juan Alberto Melgar Castro (1975–1978) and then by Colonel Policarpo Paz García (1979–1982). The de facto regime was ended by elections, first for still another constitutional assembly, and then for president and congress. The Liberals won both of these elections, and in 1982 Roberto Suazo Córdova became president. He was succeeded after the 1986 election by another Liberal, José Azcona de Hoya (1986–1990). The 1980s, in spite of the existence of an elected government during most of the decade, was a disastrous period for Honduras. The Reagan administration virtually co-opted southern Honduras to serve as a base for the contra war that it was conducting in neighboring Nicaragua. It dealt more with the military—including army maneuvers—than with the civilian government, not only undermining it, but causing considerable economic havoc in the war zone. However, the Liberal Party governments of President Suazo Córdova and Azcona Hoyo put up considerable resistance to the “neoliberalism” that was sweeping most of the rest of Latin America. As Napoleón Morazán, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation representative in Honduras, noted: “[t]hose programs of adjustment were not adopted in large part because they would reduce the popularity of the party and would present difficulties in future electoral contests and in maintaining power; it is also appropriate to note that both governments totally opposed the recommendations of the organs of international financing to liberalize totally the economy, devalue the money and reduce the state apparatus.” However, in his last two years in office: Azcona began steps that without constituting a devaluation of the money had as its objective the equalization of the purchasing power of the national currency, lempire, vis-à-vis the United States dollar, and at the same time there started actions tending toward the privatization of firms belonging to the State or those in which the State had been the principal stockholder. These last measures initiated

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in the country an inflationary spiral, which became the fundamental theme of the electoral campaign of the Partido Nacional and its presidential candidate, Rafael Leonardo Callejas.2

Callejas won the 1990 election on the basis of promises of “change” and of reaching a “national agreement” on economic policy through the process of consultation with all of the important sectors of the Honduran economy and society. But once on office, Callejas launched an all-out neoliberal policy, supported by principal business and employer organizations, the results of which we shall note subsequently.3 THE EARLY MOVEMENT The earliest labor conflicts in Honduras of which we have record took place in the 1870s in mining enterprises in the eastern part of the country. The workers demanded that they be paid in legal tender currency instead of in chits usable only in stores owned by the mining firms. No lasting union or other labor organization appears to have developed from these conflicts. As elsewhere in Latin America, the first labor groups with continuing life to appear in Honduras were mutual benefit societies, which began to be organized in the first decade of the twentieth century. These appeared in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, and Copán, as well as in certain other towns. Most of them appear to have been comprised of artisans of several different trades, although one, the Sociedad de Impresores Juan Gutemberg, clearly was composed only of printing trades workers.4 However, in the first decades of the century, there also appeared some labor groups that sought to negotiate with the employers. One of the earliest of these was at the U.S.-owned Rosario mine, where in 1919 workers presented demands for changes in the way the workers were paid. Attempts to negotiate the issue resulted in violence, and police were sent to the mine to restore order. The banana companies were also the scene of early workers’ organization. In 1916, the employees of the Cuyamel Fruit Company struck, demanding that the company exchange its dollars in which they were paid for Honduran currency at the legal rate of exchange instead of at a discount, and that the workers be able to buy freely instead of being forced to buy only at company stores. The strike, which broke out first among dockworkers, was quickly suppressed when troops were brought in, and 40 workers were jailed. In the following year, the workers of the Vaccaro Brothers Company (predecessor of the Standard Fruit Company) struck when the company began paying them in gold coins instead of silver ones. There is no indication how this walkout ended, but in 1920, the Vaccaro workers struck once again, demanding an eight-hour workday and wages of $2 per day. A state of siege was declared, and troops were brought in to suppress this walkout.


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In May 1924 there was a strike of workers of the Tela Railway Company, the name of the United Fruit Company operation in Honduras. This was followed in February 1925 with a walkout of the sugar plantations of a Cuyamel Fruit Company subsidiary near La Lima where the workers demanded that they be paid in money, not in chits usable only at company stores, and insisted on shorter working hours, higher wages, lower food prices, and health care in company hospitals for workers’ families. Some banana workers presented similar demands to the company. Although the employer refused most of the workers’ demands, it did agree to pay wages in cash, to allow salesmen to come into the company property to sell to the workers, and to take care of workers’ families in the hospitals.5 In at least some cities, local labor groups were established during this period. It was reported that in 1918 there were 10 unions in Tegucigalpa in the Unión de Obreros El Progreso, which affiliated with the Pan American Federation of Labor.6 Apparently the first attempts to establish a national central labor organization in Honduras took place in May 1921, when a congress was held in Tegucigalpa, at the headquarters of the masons’ union of the capital, the Sindicato de Albaniles El Porvenir, which established the Federación Obrera Hondureña (FOH). It brought together both mutual benefit and union groups that existed in various parts of the country and included organizations of dockers, railroaders, printers, and various artisan groups.7 Among the other activities of the FOH was that of lobbying. Thus, it was reported in 1923 that the federation was seeking legislation to ban the importation of foreign workers from the West Indies to work on the fruit and sugar plantations.8 Undoubtedly, one major reason for the unions wanting such legislation was the use of such foreign workers as strikebreakers. An example of this occurred in the following year, 1924, when there was a strike of United Fruit Company workers on a plantation near La Ceiba, who were reported to be receiving the equivalent of 15¢ to 20¢ a day. When the strike broke out, strikebreakers who were paid 10¢ per hour were brought in from the West Indies. The New York Socialist newspaper New Leader reported, “To guard against any interference with the strikebreakers, the American Consul at La Ceiba was interested. He sent a call to the Navy Department at Washington and the Galveston was rushed to the scene.” The newspaper quoted Secretary Vargas of the Pan American Federation of Labor as saying: “Yes, ‘quiet prevails’ in Honduras. But those who are acquainted with Latin America know the sort of quiet it is. It is the quiet of panic-stricken natives who are terrified by the marching marines and the thunderous volleys fired for ‘demonstration’ purposes by a warship. It is the quiet that this fruit monopoly has secured to continue a sixteen-hour day for a maximum wage of twenty cents.”9 The FOH had a somewhat turbulent existence. There were within it workers of various political tendencies. Although the Communist Party

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of Honduras was not formally established until 1927, there were active Communist sympathizers in the FOH considerably before that. They objected to the policies of the FOH leadership that, according to Neale J. Pearson “stressed politician action, cooperative societies and the need for labor laws, hygienic housing and schools for workers. In May 1926, the pro-Communist elements established a rival to the FOH, the Federación de Sociedades Obreras del Norte (FSON).10 A third central labor group was formed at a congress in La Ceiba early in 1927, attended by delegates from “many scattered labor unions,” which established the Honduran Federation of Labor. It used the slogan “no further exploitation of our brothers, either by employers from abroad or at home,” and resolved to join the Pan American Federation of Labor. The president of the new federation sent a “formal report” of the congress to the headquarters of the Pan American Federation, which stated “that for three days the delegates discussed every problem of their industrial and political and social condition. He added that their determination to form a single central authority and to affiliate with the P.A.F. of L. was due to their desire to preserve international peace and their refusal to accept unlimited exploitation.”11 Meanwhile, controversy continued in the FOH. It was reunited at a congress in November 1926. This meeting adopted what was called the Workers Constitution and decided to decentralize the organization, establishing three councils: in the center, the west, and the north. However, when the FOH Executive Council decided to endorse the Liberal presidential candidate, Vicente Mejía Colindres, in the 1928 election, the Communists and some other leaders of the FOH objected strongly. One of these, Manuel Cáliz Herrera, was expelled from the FOH, whereupon the Communists and their allies withdrew from the federation to form the Federación Sindical Hondureña (FSH), on May 1, 1929.12 The FOH was reported in 1931 to have some 6,000 members.13 The FSH attempted to launch a general strike movement against the United Fruit Company in 1930. This effort was thwarted when martial law was declared, and the union leaders were arrested.14 The leaders of the FOH appealed to their members to help defeat the general strike and were reportedly influential in its collapse.15 In 1931 there was another general strike attempted by the FSH. However, Kepner said of this: “It appears . . . that although some of the specially active strikers belonged to communist groups, the large majority of the workers did not, that unions who were extremists were involved and that political revolutionaries (but not economic revolutionaries) enticed many of the workers, especially those who were unemployed, into the ranks of political rebellion.”16 This series of strikes in the banana regions came to a climax in January 1932. A walkout began when the United Fruit Company announced a 20 percent wage cut for the workers on the company’s plantations. The


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small planters supported the strike because they also were threatened with a 25 percent cut for their bananas. Longshoremen at Tela also joined the walkout. President Mejía Colindres declared martial law, rushed troops to the area, and called upon the strikers to accept the wage cuts “in the national interest of Honduras.” Troops arrived on January 3 but were reported to have fraternized with the strikers and were withdrawn. Some time later, however, the walkout was broken when the leaders of the strike were kidnapped and shipped to El Salvador.17 The efforts to organize the banana workers were made at an unfortunate moment. Not only was Honduras suffering from the Great Depression, but on February 1, 1933, President Tiburcio Carías Andino came to power. Thereafter, as Neale J. Pearson has written: “Carías crushed the Honduran Communist Party, as well as all dissident political and trade union groups. Only some fifteen years later, with the inauguration of Juan Manuel Gálvez as president, did the political situation begin to change.”18 At least part of the time under Carías, groups of more than two people were forbidden to gather on the streets. Any gathering larger than that was liable to arrest. Virtually all labor organizations were illegal.19 BEGINNING OF NEW LABOR POLICY UNDER PRESIDENT GÁLVEZ President Juan Gálvez moved cautiously to change his predecessor’s attitude toward the workers and their organizations. In April 1950, a bit more than a year after Gálvez took office, a parliamentary committee was established to study labor conditions in the country. It recommended a seven-point program that would achieve the following: (1) the establishment of a Social Security Institute; (2) the establishment of a Bureau of Mines; (3) the establishment of a Department of Labor and Social Welfare; (4) the establishment of a corps of labor inspectors; (5) the enactment of a workmen’s compensation law; (6) the enactment of legislation protecting working women and minors; and (7) the affiliation of Honduras with the International Labor Organization.20 Notably, there was no recommendation for legalizing workers’ organizations. However, some began to appear. Soon after the inauguration of Gálvez, some Catholic priests undertook to organize rudimentary labor groups under the name of Círculos Obreros. The priests involved indicated to Luis Alberto Monge, who visited the country on behalf of the Confederación Interamericana de Trabajadores, that they hoped that those círculos would eventually be converted into full-fledged trade unions. President Gálvez indicated to Monge his friendly interest in these nascent labor groups.21 However, the president was not yet ready to tolerate militant unions. As James Rorty reported at the time, “If the Gálvez administration loosens its

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controls to the point of permitting the organization of independent labor unions, without which the development of a genuine democratic process is inconceivable, there is every reason to expect the Communists to seize control of the unions if they can.”22 One of the first militant labor organizations to appear was a union of printing trades workers in Tegucigalpa, which was established in 1949. It began publishing a newspaper called Voz Obrera. In mid-1950 the printers’ union took the lead in establishing a Committee for Worker Coordination (Comité Coordinador Obrero), consisting of mutual benefit societies and nascent trade unions. Later that year, it reported that it had rejected overtures from the Peronistas to send a delegate—at the Argentine government’s expense—to Buenos Aires for the annual October 17 celebration, the Peronista holiday. The Comité Coordinador Obrero obviously was made up of people of various political orientations. This was reflected in Voz Obrera, which was affiliated with the Communist-controlled Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL) and World Federation of Trade Unions, although it sent observers to the meeting in January 1951, which established the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT), the regional grouping of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Also, the paper was very critical of the influence of Carías Andino, which it claimed persisted in the Gálvez government. It carried articles by Vicente Lombardo Toledano of CTAL, as well as of others praising the agrarian policies of the Chinese Communist regime. In September 1953, Voz Obrera was closed down by the government, and some of the leaders of the Comité Coordinador Obrero fled abroad. Most of them went to Guatemala, while some went to Argentina. A new printers’ union, the Asociación Gráfica Hondureña, was established under so-called moderate leadership.23 THE 1954 BANANA STRIKE A dramatic change in Honduran organized labor and in the policy of the Gálvez government took place with the banana workers strike of mid1954. It was the real beginning of the modern labor movement in Honduras. This walkout involved both of the major banana companies—United Fruit and Standard Fruit. It also came to encompass a number of industrial plants and other enterprises in the cities and towns of the banana-growing area. As early as March 1954, a dispute arose in the Standard Fruit Company over the issue of double pay for work on Sundays. A law on the subject had recently been passed by the Honduran Congress, although its wording had been somewhat ambiguous. Standard Fruit agreed at this time to pay double wages to those people who had to work on Sundays.


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Then, on April 18, a strike broke out among the dockworkers of the United Fruit Company at Puerto Cortes over the same issue. It was settled when the government intervened, promising that the wording of the new law would be clarified. A few days later, on April 26, a walkout broke out at the machine shop at Puerto Cortes over the firing of certain people deemed agitators. However, the general strike in the area began on May 3, in the Tela division of the United Fruit Company operation, over the workers’ demand for a 50 percent wage increase. It spread within 24 hours to Tela itself. On May 5, the Cortes division also was shut down. Before long, all of the United Fruit Company was strike bound, including the railroad that was owned by the company. On May 7, the strike also hit the Standard Fruit Company over a demand for a percent wage increase. However, other items were soon added to the demands, dealing with issues such as the firing of foremen, better hospital facilities, and other matters. By May 11–12, the workers of the United Fruit Company had drawn up a 30-point list of demands that had they been met would have wiped out most of the United Fruit Company’s profit on its Honduran operation. On May 7, industrial plants in La Ceiba were closed down, including a shoe factory, a soap and lard factory, and a brewery. The soap factory was a Standard Fruit Company subsidiary. Then, on May 13, the strike hit industrial plants in San Pedro Sula, the major city of the region, including the tobacco company, and the Machito mine employing 400 workers also was closed down by the walkout. The magnitude of the strike was evident considering that the Tela Railroad Company, the official title of the United Fruit operation, employed between 23,000 and 24,000 and the Standard Fruit Company had some 13,000 workers. All of these were involved in the walkout, about 38,000 workers in all. Strike committees were set up locally and virtually took over the towns of Progreso, Tela, Puerto Cortes, and La Ceiba, although not San Pedro Sula. Picket lines were thrown around company buildings and government edifices. The strike committees took over and controlled traffic. In some cases, even the local military commanders had to get passes from the strike committees in order to move around. However, the workers did not misuse this temporary power. On May 17, the brewery at San Pedro Sula was struck. On the following day, the workers in seven clothing factories in the same city walked out. There was talk about a commercial employees strike, but this did not take place. Nor did the strike spread to the capital, Tegucigalpa, although after settlement of the big strike, clothing workers in Tegucigalpa did walk out. All transport in the north was closed down except for the National Railroad, which had been administered by the Tela Railroad Company but

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control of which was temporarily taken over by the government, which successfully ordered the workers to stay on the job. Five different Central Strike Committees functioned successively during the strike. These were divided between elements who were more or less identified as Communists and those who were not. The latter group dominated the Central Strike Committee during the latter phases of the walkout. In the middle of May, the government of President Gálvez set up a Mediation Committee, consisting of representatives of the Ministries of Commerce and Development and of the Central Bank. There were five members of this committee. The Mediation Committee first went to La Ceiba, seat of the Standard Fruit Company operations. The Standard Fruit Company had offered a 4 to 8 percent wage increase soon after the strike began. When the Mediation Committee went to La Ceiba, the company opened its books to the group. The Committee, upon studying these, concluded that a 5 to 10 percent wage increase, plus certain fringe benefits, would be a fair resolution of the strike and within the company’s ability to pay. The Standard Fruit Company and its workers both accepted these terms of settlement on May 20, plus the agreement that three officials of the company to whom the workers particularly objected would be removed. A couple days later, many of the workers returned to their jobs. However, on the plantations themselves, there were some problems because the United Fruit Company workers were urging their Standard Fruit Company coworkers to stay out in solidarity. However, by May 24, the strike was over in the Standard Fruit Company. Negotiations to settle the strike of the United Fruit Company workers were much more difficult. The strikers kept insisting on 30 points. There was also some dissension in the strike leadership. The company offered wage increases ranging from 5 to 19 percent but would not deal with the Central Strike Committee, making the offer, rather, directly to the workers.24 BEHAVIOR OF UNITED FRUIT DURING THE BANANA STRIKE It is clear that the United Fruit Company was not happy about the sudden advent of labor organization in their operations in Honduras. There was undoubtedly a split in the high councils of the corporation, but its hesitancy about accepting the fact that the workers were revolting against the arbitrary, albeit paternalistic, role of the United Fruit Company is attested to by the fact that the strike lasted for more than two months before it was finally ended by the intervention of President Juan Manuel Gálvez. The economist who was first brought in by President Gálvez for consultation about the walkout, and who then became the principal economic


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adviser of the Central Strike Committee, Roberto Arellano Bonilla, concluded that the United Fruit Company had acted very maladroitly—to put it mildly—during the strike. He felt that the managers of the company had greatly underestimated the intelligence of the workers and particularly that of the leaders of the strike. Most of the strike leaders were people with at least a secondary education, and many of them spoke English, but the United Fruit officials were unwilling to deal with them on any basis of equality. In the second place, Arellano Bonilla felt that the United Fruit Company people greatly underestimated the tenacity of the workers. The workers lived very meagerly during the strike, on rice, beans, and corn. Those who had savings used them up during the strike so as not to burden the central financial reserves of the strikers. Merchants established credit for individuals whom they knew. The company did not realize the willingness of their workers to sacrifice and the help that they would receive from the community. Arellano Bonilla was also convinced that the strike could have been settled much earlier than it was if the United Fruit Company had been willing to negotiate in good faith. The first demands formulated by the strike leadership were very limited. But the company, in reply to these, let it be known that it would have to have 30 days to study them, apparently figuring that the workers could not hold out for 30 days. However, the strike in fact lasted more than 10 weeks. During this, time, a list of 30 demands, which was admittedly impossible to satisfy, was presented by the strikers. But, Arellano Bonilla claimed, that was the company’s fault.25 The U.S. ambassador, Whiting Willauer, shared at least some of the views of Arellano Bonilla. A few weeks after the strike, he told me that he thought the United Fruit Company “must learn.” He said that the top company officials in Honduras thought that they were treating their “family” well, and very much resented the fact that the workers wanted a union. Also, the ambassador added, the Fruit Company officials tended to call anyone they did not like a “Communist.”26 CONCLUSION OF THE STRIKE There is no doubt that President Juan Manuel Gálvez brought the banana workers’ strike to an end by forcing the United Fruit Company to negotiate with the leaders of the walkout. The strike in the United Fruit Company had gone on for almost two months when President Gálvez finally called the fifth Central Strike Committee and representatives of the company together in Tegucigalpa. He told the workers’ representatives of the United Fruit Company he could not possibly accept their 30 demands, but in terms of monetary concessions he suggested that if necessary he would issue a decree providing for considerable more liberal terms than those that the company had indicated that it was willing to concede.27

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The upshot of the negotiations in Tegucigalpa was a one-year agreement, signed by the members of the Central Strike Committee, the two top officials of the Tela Railroad Company, and the members of the Mediation Commission that President Gálvez had appointed. It was signed on July 9, 1954, and consisted of 34 points. The first clause of the agreement listed a series of substantial wage increases for workers who were paid by the hour, by the piece, and by the month. Other provisions of the agreement included time and a half paid for overtime over eight hours per day, sick pay for workers, two weeks paid vacation after one years’ service, improvements in hospital services provided for the workers by the company, and company-provided housing. The company agreed to take back all of the strikers who reported for work within eight days of the signing of the agreement. It also promised that there would be no retaliation against the strike leaders and agreed “to recognize the workers’ representatives for discussion of pending issues and other differences that might arise in the future.”28 NOTABLE ASPECTS OF THE 1954 BANANA STRIKE One notable future of the walkout was the widespread support that it received from the general Honduran populace. Most notable was the backing it got from merchants in the banana region, who provided not only credit to the strikers, but actually made contributions to them, both in cash and in produce. This attitude and action reflected the resentment of the Honduran businessmen at the monopoly that the fruit companies had maintained on the sale of consumer goods to the banana workers. Among the general population, the strike against the fruit companies was considered to be a Honduran patriotic effort.29 Another notable thing about this walkout was the attitude that President Gálvez had toward it. He made no effort to use force to break the strike, allowing it to go on for more than two months. When he did finally intervene, he insisted that an agreement must be reached between the fruit companies and their workers, thus laying the basis for the emergence of a real trade union movement in Honduras. There is evidence that the position that the president adopted toward the banana workers strike did not have the support of all the members of his government. The foreign minister, after insisting to me shortly after the end of the walkout that the banana workers’ strike had been a Communist plot to overthrow the Honduran government, said that he was opposed to the development of unions. He argued that although in theory he did not oppose unions, he was sure that once the big foreign-owned banana companies were unionized, the movement would spread to smaller Honduran firms, and that this would be damaging for the Honduran economy.30 Finally, the Honduran banana workers strike of 1954 was remarkable for its peacefulness. No one was killed or even wounded in the process.


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This was in spite of the fact that at one point, the United Fruit Company sought to recruit strikebreakers. Apparently, the widespread support for the walkout among virtually the whole population of northern Honduras thwarted the recruitment of strikebreakers.31 ORIGINS OF THE 1954 BANANA STRIKE Both during and after the 1954 banana strike there was controversy over how it had come to pass. The rapidity with which it spread in both of the major fruit companies and the order and discipline maintained by the strikers seemed to many to indicate that the walkout had been planned and organized considerably in advance of when it actually broke out. It was widely believed that the Communists had planned the strike and that at its inception it had direction from the Communists of neighboring Guatemala, where the Arbenz government in which the Communists were participating was still in control at the time the Honduran walkout began. This opinion was held by President Juan Manuel Gálvez himself. In a conversation with me shortly after the end of the banana strike, President Gálvez said that when the strike broke out, the Guatemalan Communist leaders Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, Carlos Manuel Pellecer, and José Fortuny were at a border town giving direction to what went on across the frontier. Gálvez said that these men hoped that his government would attempt to crush the strike and that the strikers would then flee to Guatemala, where they would be equipped with arms from a ship that was due to arrive from Poland. President Gálvez claimed that this chain of events was frustrated by two things. One was that he refused to try to break the strike with force. The second was that the United States and Great Britain interfered with the arrival of the ship, which reached Guatemala long after the strike had begun. He said that he had copies of instructions, which Gutiérrez, Pellecer, and Fortuny had sent from Guatemala, and of replies that their comrades in Honduras had sent back to them.32 Other members of the Honduran elite were also convinced that the Communists had been responsible for launching the banana workers’ strike. Thus, the Bishop of San Pedro Sula insisted that the very good organization of the strike was evidence that the Communists had started it and said that some of the strike leaders had received previous training in Guatemala and Mexico. He claimed that the Arbenz government in Guatemala had been behind the Honduran banana workers’ walkout.33 United Fruit Company officials also shared the belief that the Communists had been behind the strike. The general manager of the Tela Railroad Company told me that he had no doubt that the Communists were instrumental in starting the walkout. He cited as evidence the fact that in the Cortes division so-called goon squads appeared on every farm as soon as the strike started, although this was not so in the company’s Tela’s

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division, where the strike did not break out until 60 hours after its origins in the Cortes division.34 His principal assistant also insisted that there was “ample proof” that the strike was organized in the beginning by the Communists, but that after it spread, the Communists lost control of the walkout.35 Edward Bernays, then the public relations representative of United Fruit, also insisted that while the strike was still in process it “looked very peculiar.” He claimed that it broke out “in an organized way, as if there had been a trade union movement there for many years.” He also insisted that two Guatemalan military officers landed in a northern Honduras city with letters to the Guatemalan consul in that city giving directions about how to conduct the strike. According to Bernays, these people were sent back to Guatemala, and the consul and his assistant were declared persona non grata.36 U.S. diplomats who were on the scene at the time felt that it was likely that the Communists had been responsible for launching the walkout. Both the ambassador and the labor reporting officer of the U.S. Embassy believed that the very good organization that the strike had from its inception indicated that the Communists had been influential in launching it. The ambassador argued that such good organization had to come either “from the Kremlin or from the ORIT,” and he was sure that the ORIT had not been involved at the beginning of the walkout. He claimed to have foreseen the likelihood of a banana strike and had urged the president to invite the ORIT in to help to organize the workers so that they would not fall under Communist control, but his suggestion had been turned down, so he knew that the ORIT had not launched the strike.37 Although the lawyer who became an ORIT representative in Honduras soon after the banana workers’ strike said that the Communists “were originally responsible” for the walkout,38 those men who emerged as leaders of the walkout by the time it ended denied this. One of the principal leaders of the Tela section of the so-called preunion that emerged after the strike said that he could “swear” that there was no organization of the workers before the walkout. He said that everything was chaotic at first. Order emerged slowly, he said, as committees were established to deal with finances, vigilance, and other matters. He denied strongly that there had been any Communist influence in starting the strike.39 Similarly, a member of the Comité Central Sindical, which emerged after the walkout, insisted that there was no organization at all at the beginning of the strike. He said that it started in Cortes, then spread to Progreso, and then when the government did nothing to break the strike, other workers went out without consulting with those already on strike, and soon the whole United Fruit operation in Honduras was closed down.40 Finally, an economist who had been an adviser of the Central Strike Committee, which emerged during the strike, also insisted that the walkout had not been previously organized and certainly not by the Communists.


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Different demands were at first formulated in different parts of the strike area, and it was not until a considerable time had passed that a unified list of demands was presented. Also, members of the local strike committees in various parts of the area did not know one another until the strike committees were organized. If there had been organization beforehand, he said, those who had organized it would have taken control, and they would have known one another, or at least would have known about one another, but such was not the case. This man also argued that if the strike had been organized ahead of time by the Communists, it would not have been possible during the walkout to oust a Central Strike Committee of definitely leftist orientation and substitute for it a more moderate group. If the strike had been organized by the Communists, he concluded, that would not have been possible.41 CONSOLIDATION OF UNIONISM IN THE BANANA INDUSTRY The successful conclusion of the 1954 banana strike was followed by the consolidation into unions of the more or less informal organizations that had grown up during the walkout. The strike was also followed by the organization of workers who had not been participants in the work stoppage of the banana workers. What had been the last Central Strike Committee of the United Fruit workers during the walkout was converted thereafter into the Comité Central Sindical. Its principal task was to establish a full-fledged union and in the meantime to handle whatever workers’ grievances arose before the formal organization of the union. Under the Comité Central Sindical, subsidiary groups were established. These were the so-called seccionales and subseccionales. Each major part of the United Fruit operation had a seccional, and each plantation and other local center had a subseccional. The Comité Central Sindical established its headquarters in San Pedro Sula and began to publish a weekly paper, El Revindicador. The second number of that paper, on August 8, 1954, announced that a congress would be held in San Pedro Sula on August 28 and 29 to establish the union of workers of the Tela Railroad Company.42 In this period, the local union people had considerable help from the ORIT. This was a follow up of some financial aid, which the union groups of the ORIT, particularly those of the United States, had given during the walkout. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) had sent the Central Strike Committee $1,000 and the Congress of Industrial Organizations of the United States had also sent a contribution, through the ORIT.43 Early in August, a delegation from the ORIT, consisting of Serafino Romualdi, Latin American representative of the AFL and assistant general secretary of the ORIT; Arturo Jáuregui, the Peruvian labor leader who

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was director of organization of the ORIT; and Augusto Malavé Villalba, secretary-general of the Venezuelan Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela and member of the staff of the ORIT visited northern Honduras to help in the process of organizing the new union. They visited all parts of the United Fruit operations and spoke at meetings of workers in various places. According to El Revindicador, “The workers showed great interest in these talks and asked a series of questions related to trade union organization in other countries and their social and labor laws. . . . The members of the mission of the ORIT also offered the workers, and particularly those in the banana zone, some scholarships to attend the Seminar in Labor Education in September that [would] be held in Monterey, Mexico.”44 As was indicated by José Cubas Gross, secretario de conflictos of the Comité Central Sindical, the general press was wrong in saying that their delegation was in Honduras to organize the banana workers’ union. That already existed de facto, and the foreign labor leaders were there to help and to give advice.45 Romualdi and Jáuregui stayed in Honduras only a short while. However, Malavé Villalba remained on a more permanent basis. He did a variety of different kinds of things. For instance, he drew up model statutes for the new union, feeling that the first draft prepared by the Comité Central Sindical had been inadequate. He also participated in settling grievances on various of the banana farms. He was very impressed by the self-discipline of the newly organized workers, even before the new union had formally been established.46 POLITICAL STRUGGLES IN THE UNITED FRUIT COMPANY UNION During this preparatory period, there was a struggle for control of the union that was about to be established. Pro-Communist elements who worked through the Partido Democrático Hondureño (PDRH) were strong in the urban centers of the company, while the strength of the more moderate elements, who controlled the Comité Central Sindical, was in the banana farms. The Comité Central Sindical leaders, therefore, were in favor of having the new leadership of the union chosen by vote of all of the union members rather than at the founding congress of the organization.47 The fierceness of this conflict was indicated in an editorial in El Revindicador, signed by Luis F. Guerra, the office manager (Official Mayor) of the Comité Central Sindical. It asserted that “[t]he agreement that put an end to the Strike, say what you may, is an authentic conquest of the Honduran worker . . . contains substantial increases in wages . . . there is recognized by the Firm the existence of an entity that represents permanently all the workers and with which it must deal in cases where differences arise in labor relations.” The editorial also attacked another periodical, El Chilio, accusing it of “serving as the instrument of the interests of international


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communism for its predatory ends, without concern for the destiny of the working masses.” The editorial also attacked the PDRH, whose organ it claimed was El Chilio. It said: “This Party is the only one that claims that the Members of the Comité Central de Huelga, its Advisers and members of the Mediating Commission, all sold out to the firm; is the one that claims that we are servants of Yankee imperialism because we have accepted technical aid of the ORIT to organize our union; it is, in sum, the enemy of Honduras and the Hondurans.” 48(Emphasis in the original.) The conflict continued for some time after the formal establishment of the union. Its bitterness is reflected in a letter from Raúl E. Estrada, the president of the new union, to Arturo Jáuregui, early in September. Once the union was formally established, each of the secciones of the former Comité Central Sindical had to vote to become part of the union. Members of the Central Committee of the new union had to visit the various secciones to gain their affiliation. Estrada reported to Jáuregui on his visit to the Tela Sección, the meeting of which was largely dominated by elements of the PDRH, in whose headquarters the meeting was held. Estrada told Jáuregui: Again they returned to criticizing our present exhortations to the workers to resolve all the labor problems in a conciliatory mood, without recourse to stoppages. . . . Revindicador was criticized for its appeals against Communism, which provoked the expected approbation. A little periodical that the Sectional Committee publishes, with emphasis on the fierceness of its attacks on the Firm . . . again everyone applauded. The situation was such that I opted to “listen and be quiet,” until emboldened, impermissible and indirect allusions were made to “traitors,” “sellouts,” “bribed ones,” etc., when I, angered as I had to be, violently interrupted to tell them to watch their words or speak more clearly, making them see that I was not afraid to hear direct accusations, since I could defend myself anywhere.49

On August 28, 1954, the union of the United Fruit Company employees in Honduras, the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Tela Railroad Company (SITRATERCO) was established, under moderate leadership, and affiliated with the ORIT. From its inception, it was the largest union in Honduras. In the following year, the workers of the Standard Fruit Company organized the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Standard Fruit Company (SITRASFCO). ATTITUDE OF UNITED FRUIT COMPANY AFTER THE 1954 STRIKE One important issue after the banana strike was the degree to which the companies, particularly the United Fruit Company, were willing to live up to the agreement ending the walkout that they had signed. William Lloyd Taillon, the principal spokesman for the United Fruit Company, told me

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that the company was ready to accept a union of its workers in Honduras. He said that they were used to dealing with unions in Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Jamaica, and Guatemala and had never tried to break them. He added that the company’s hope was that the union would “settle down” and that the management expected some “excesses” by the union leaders in the early phases of their relations with the United Fruit Company.50 E. G. Platt, the assistant manager of the Cortes division, also said that the company was ready to accept the union. He said it just wanted “a firm line of authority” in the union so that the Company management would know with whom they were dealing.51 About a month after the strike, Henry Hunter, the assistant director of labor relations in the Tela division of the company, noted that his office had received more grievances since the strike than there had been before it. He said that they particularly concerned firings of workers. He added that his department investigated each grievance and usually put the workers concerned back on their jobs, although if the worker involved had been charged with a “grave violation of rules,” he was removed from his job but allowed to find another one somewhere else in the company.52 Three years after the strike, Alfred Giardino, the labor relations consultant of the United Fruit Company in New York, claimed that relations between the union in Honduras and the company had been “satisfactory.” He professed surprise at the “degree of responsibility” that the union leader had shown.53 Opinion among the new union’s leaders differed as to whether the company was conforming to the strike settlement. José Cubas Gross, the conflicts secretary of the Comité Central Sindical, told me in August 1954 that in his opinion the company had not lived up to the agreement that it had signed. He claimed that it had in fact taken reprisals against the workers, some 1,500 of whom had been fired. Also, hacienda foremen were refusing to do things previously agreed to, saying that they had orders from the company to act as they were doing. Overtime in many cases had not been paid, and hospital services had not been improved. Workloads had been increased. He summed up the situation by saying that the United Fruit Company wanted to “maintain its dictatorial power” and was refusing to dismiss foremen who did not carry out things agreed to because that would be “surrender” on the part of the company.54 Also, the periodical put out by the Tela seccional of the Comité Central Sindical, Boletín Sindical, carried frequent complaints about the failure of the company to abide by what it had agreed to. A particularly bitter issue, according to that publication, was preferential treatment being given to the company to strikebreakers.55 On the other hand, Alfonso Corrato, secretary-general of the Comité Seccional Sindical in La Lima said in August 1954 that “for the most part” the company was living up to the agreement. His office had presented


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some grievances, but they generally had been able to settle them in La Lima, without having to go any further.56 The counselor of embassy of the U.S. Embassy noted that Arturo Jáuregui had been “well impressed” with the attitude of the company. The counselor opined that “[t]he company seems to have learned something, at last.”57 That the company had “learned something” was perhaps reflected in its official periodical, Campo Gráfico, published in La Lima. In its first issue after the strike, this newspaper carried a friendly interview with Arturo Jáuregui. Also, in its report on the strike, it commented, “The strike of 67 days affected considerably all the workers, and more than anyone, the fatherland, which was itself seriously menaced from all points of view. Now that there has been a return to work, spirits are in all ways more animated and it is to be hoped that from now on there will be better understanding between the employer and the worker who serves it.”58 A few months later, the United Fruit Company had an opportunity to show its changed attitude and policy. There was a terrible storm early in October that at least temporarily destroyed most of the banana plants of the company. The United Fruit’s first reaction was to announce its intention to lay off from 8 to 10,000 workers. However, the leaders of the union, together with Augusto Malavé Villalba and Serafino Romualdi, entered into negotiations with the firm on the issue. As a result, an agreement was reached, according to the following: a) the company promised to lay off temporarily only 3,000 workers and only if they were contracted by the Government of Honduras to work on a Plan of Emergency Public Works developed as a result of the storm; b) the laid-off workers will receive a special compensation of 40 lempiras (about 20 dollars) in the case of those workers who have worked less than three years and of 60 lempiras (about 30 dollars) for those who have been employed for more than three years; c) the suspended workers will be given parcels of land to cultivate for their personal use to produce rice, grains and other food products; d) the workers who do not belong to the union will be laid off first; those belonging to the union will be given preference for employment in the future; e) the compensation is retroactive for those workers who were displaced two weeks before the negotiation of the accord with the union.59

The United Fruit Company negotiated successive collective agreements with the union. These were generally reached directly between the union and the firm, without government intervention. In the early years, the only government participation was in 1958, when the contract negotiated that year provided for a wage increase. When the labor code went into effect soon afterward, the company claimed that provisions of it overrode the promised increases, but when the union appealed to the courts, the decision was in favor of the union.60

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EXPANSION OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT Once the banana workers had won their strike and gained recognition for their union, organized labor began to spread beyond the confines of the fruit companies’ operations. Workers in the national capital, Tegucigalpa, began to unionize. Within a month of the settlement of the United Fruit Company strike, unions were being organized in Tegucigalpa, including sindicatos of hotel workers, with about 200 members; of workers in shirt factories, with 500; and of chauffeurs, with about 800 of the city’s 2,000 drivers. Also, there appeared organizations of typographers, with 60 of the city’s 500 printing trades workers; mechanics, with 50 of the city’s 200 workers; telegraph operators with 200 members; and radio operators with 50 members. Efforts were under way to organize the tailors, brewery workers, and railroad employees. Serafino Romualdi, Arturo Jáuregui, and August Malavé Villalba of the ORIT played a significant role in helping to bring these new unions into existence. Since there was not yet a labor code that gave special recognition to unions, these organizations were established legally as associations, that is, civil organizations that anyone could form, instead of sociedades, which were generally commercial enterprises.61 I had the opportunity to be present at organization meetings of two of the new unions in Tegucigalpa, those of printers and tailors, which were held consecutively in the office of a lawyer who was serving temporarily as a representative of the ORIT, Gustavo Adolfo Zevalla. This was the second meeting of the printers and was first addressed by Augusto Malavé Villalba, who pledged the support of the international free trade union movement for the unions in Honduras. He urged the workers to push for establishment of a labor code. Then, after some confusion, a five-man committee was elected to draw up statutes for the new organization. The meeting of the tailors followed that of the printers. It was the first meeting of the group, and while the printers’ meeting had been in process, the tailors had watched a showing of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union movie With These Hands. Once the meeting had been called to order, Malavé Villalba was again called upon to talk. There then followed the election of officers of the new union. Malavé explained quickly the function of each officer to be elected. Five candidates were then nominated, and the election was held, Malavé asking each individual for whom he voted and reporting this to Zevalla who was keeping count. One peculiar incident in the tailors’ meeting reflected the novelty of trade unionism in Honduras at that point. One of these present disclosed that he was an employer, expressed disappointment that other employers had not attended the meeting, and said that he thought that workers and their employers should belong to the same organization. At that point, Malavé explained that although the union was not being established “to


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carry on war” with employers, a union was, in fact, an organization to which only workers belonged. Although the employer did not answer this, he did stay until the end of the meeting.62 In at least one instance, a new union had already been able by midAugust 1954 to gain something for its members. This was the case of the aviation mechanics. Although they had been being paid double time for overtime, the government airline Servicio Aéreo de Honduras SA (SAHSA) had the custom of giving the workers the next day off without pay, thus in effect negating the overtime payment. The new union intervened with the management and got them to end this procedure.63 As the labor movement expanded, the need for unifying the various unions within broader organizations became obvious. Two of these appeared in the years immediately following the banana workers’ strike. The first was the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Norteños de Honduras (Trade Union Federation of North Honduran Workers—FESITRANH), which was founded at a congress in Tela on April 26, 1957. It concluded not only the two large banana workers’ unions but also sindicatos of industrial and craft workers in San Pedro Sula and other urban centers in the northern part of the country. The FESITRANH was granted legal recognition in 1958 and soon afterward changed its name to Federation Sindical de Trabajadores Nacionales de Honduras (FESITRANH).64 A U.S. Department of Labor source credited the FESITRANH with having between 12,000 and 13,000 members in March 1960. Aside from the banana workers’ union, it was said to have in its ranks brewery workers, retail clerks, textile and shoe workers, employees of food processing firms, and hospital workers, including nurses.65 The second regional central labor group was set up in the center of the country, based in Tegucigalpa. The first move in this direction was a congress in February 1958, and its delegates were construction workers, commercial employees, workers in the government electric firm, and workers of the Tegucigalpa brewery, all in the capital city, as well as from a Communist-oriented union from La Lima in the north. Out of this congress came the Federación Sindical del Centro. In the face of newspaper attacks on the new group as being Communist dominated, some of the affiliated unions withdrew. Subsequently, the Federación Sindical del Centro was officially dissolved by the Ministry of Labor, following which a new Federación Central de Sindicatos Libres de Honduras was founded, with help from an organizer from the ORIT, at a congress on December 21, 1958. This federation was granted legal recognition in April 1959.66 This Tegucigalpa-based federation was credited by the U.S. Labor Department with “about 2,400” members as of 1960. These included “brewery workers; retail clerks; textile mill operators; theater workers; ice cream vendors and allied workers; musicians; barbers and hairdressers; bank employees; hotel workers; transport workers, match workers; and aviation mechanics.”67

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In spite of the spread of union organization, there were still relatively few collective bargaining contracts in force by the end of 1950. These included, of course, the agreements with the two fruit companies, as well as contracts with the San Pedro Sula brewery, two sugar companies, and the soap and vegetable oil plant in San Pedro Sula. In all, only 23 collective agreements were in effect, and 15 of those had been negotiated since the passage of the labor code in 1959.68 THE LOZANO INTERLUDE The process of consolidating and expanding the Honduran labor movement was for a while put in considerable jeopardy by political events following soon after the 1954 banana strike. Vice President Julio Lozano, who took over when President Juan Manuel Gálvez became ill late in 1954, sought to establish a personalist dictatorship of his own. Augusto Malavé Villalba, the ORIT representative in Honduras, summed up the attitude of Lozano to organized labor, saying that he “doesn’t know what the whole situation . . . is all about, he certainly doesn’t know what trade unionism is all about. He doesn’t care if the workers form what they call a trade union so long as it doesn’t do anything. However, the minute it tries to do something, to redress its members’ grievances, and so on, he gets the idea that it is Communist.” Malavé Villalba was forced by the Lozano government to leave Honduras.69 After first trying to buy the support of labor leaders by offering them membership in a constitutional convention he was organizing, an offer the union leaders turned down, President Lozano cracked down severely on organized labor. In February 1956, many of the principal trade unionists were arrested, the government attacking them as “Communistic,” and large numbers of troops were sent to the banana area. At that point, the ORIT intervened in the situation. Once more, in April 1956, Serafino Romualdi and Arturo Jáuregui went to Honduras. They conferred with the union leaders of the United Fruit Company, as well as with company officials, confirming the dangers that were facing the young labor movement. Romualdi and Jáuregui also met with President Lozano on April 21. Several years later, Romualdi commented on this meeting: I spoke to him freely about what I considered grievous mistakes on the part of the government. I criticized it, for having arrested the union leaders on flimsy pretext, and second for having described them as Communists while at the same time protecting the true Communists just because they had made a political deal to support the government candidates. I told him, also, that the ORIT and the unions from the United States could not maintain indefinite silence about this situation. I repeated, however, that we were ready, as in the past, to mediate a sort of compromise that would make possible the resumption of normal relations between the government of Honduras and the banana unions of the North Coast.70


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Whatever compromise Romualdi and Jáuregui were able to arrange between President Lozano and the union leaders was not long lasting. In July 1956, Lozano cracked down very hard on the opposition, deporting Liberal Party leader Ramón Villeda Morales, and as Romualdi noted, “Hundreds of active trade unionists were arrested, many sought asylum in the embassies of Costa Rica, Mexico and Argentina.”71 After presiding over fraudulent elections in which his followers were credited with winning virtually all of the votes, Lozano was overthrown by a military coup. Subsequent elections for yet another constitutional assembly were won by the Liberals, and Ramón Villeda Morales was elected president by that assembly. NOTES 1. Robert J. Alexander, Presidents of Central America, Mexico, Cuba and Hispaniola: Conversations and Correspondence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), pp. 122–24. 2. Napoleón Morazán, in Modelo Neoliberal y Sindicatos en América Latina, coord. Holm-Detlev Köhler and Manfred Wannöffel (México, DF: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1993), pp. 207–8. 3. Ibid., pp. 208–9. 4. Anuario Sindical Abierto: Honduras, Instituto Nacional de Estudios del Trabajo, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, Centro de Estudios Sociológicos, El Colegio de México, México, D.F., March 1976, p. 1. 5. Neale Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 469–71. 6. American Labor Yearbook 1925 (New York: Rand School Press), p. 356. 7. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 470. 8. U.S. Department of Commerce, Commerce Reports (Washington, DC, March 26, 1923). 9. New Leader (New York) August 29, 1924. 10. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 469–71. 11. New Leader (New York), February 12, 1927. 12. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 471–72. 13. Charles David Kepner, Jr., Social Aspects of the Banana Industry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 183. 14. American Labor Yearbook 1931, (New York: Rand School Press), p. 288. 15. Kepner, Social Aspects of the Banana Industry, p. 193. 16. Ibid., p. 194. 17. International Press Correspondence, periodical of Communist International, April 7, 1932. 18. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 472. 19. Oscar Mencía (vice president, Asociación Gráfica Hondureña), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954. 20. Eduardo Jibaja, “El Drama de Una Nación,” Isthmania (Guatemala City), February 24, 1951. 21. Luis Alberto Monge, “Breve Informe de la Jira Sindical por las Repúblicas de El Salvador, Honduras, y Nicaragua, Realizada Durante el Mes de Agosto de 1949.”

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22. James Rorty, “Point Four in Action,” New Leader (New York), June 11, 1951. 23. See Voz Obrera (Tegucigalpa), April 5, 1953; also see José N. Carvalho (member of Statutes Committee of Asociación Gráfica Hondureña), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954; Sam Moscowitz (labor reporting officer of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954. 24. Moscowitz, interview. 25. Roberto Arellano Bonilla (legal adviser of Central Strike Committee during 1954 banana strike), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954. 26. Whiting Willauer (U.S. ambassador to Honduras), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 6, 1954. 27. Moscowitz, interview. 28. El Revindicador (San Pedro Sula), August 1, 1954, pp. 2–3. 29. Whiting Willauer, interview; José Cubas Gross (secretario de conflictos, Comité Central Sindical), interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 11, 1954; Ramón Valerio Pineda (member of local Executive Committee of Liberal Party of San Pedro Sula), interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 11, 1954; E. G. Platt (assistant manager, Cortes Division, Tela Railroad Company), interview with the author in La Lima, August 12, 1954; Francisco Milla Bermúdez (legal adviser of Comité Central Sindical), interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 12, 1954; and Cameron Peake (U.S. Consul in San Pedro Sula), interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 14, 1954. 30. Edgardo Valenzuela (foreign minister of Honduras), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954. 31. Francisco Milla Bermúdez, interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 12, 1954. 32. Alexander, Presidents of Central America, p. 124. 33. Antonio Capdevila (bishop of San Pedro Sula), interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 14, 1954. 34. William Lloyd Tailion (manager of Cortes Division of Tela Railroad Company), interview with the author in La Lima, Honduras August 12, 1954. 35. Platt, interview. 36. Edward Bernays (public relations representative of United Company), interview with the author in New York, May 10, 1954. 37. Gustavo Adolfo Zavalla (representative in Honduras of ORIT), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954. 38. Ibid. 39. Francisco Ríos (office manager of Comité Sindical Seccional of Tela), interview with the author in Tela, August 13, 1954. 40. Cubas Gross, interview. 41. Arellano Bonilla, interview. 42. El Revindicador, August 8, 1954, p. 1. 43. Ríos, interview; Luis F. Guerra (official mayor of Comité Central Sindical), interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 10, 1954. 44. El Revindicador, August 8, 1954, pp. 1, 4. 45. Cubas Gross, interview. 46. Augusto Malavé Villalba (Venezuelan labor leader, representative of ORIT), interview with the author in San Pedro Sula, August 11, 1954, and August 13, 1954. 47. Cubas Gross, interview.


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48. El Revindicador, August 8, 1954, pp. 1, 4. 49. Letter from Raúl E. Estrada to Arturo Jáuregui, September 5, 1954. 50. Tailion, interview. 51. Platt, interview. 52. Henry Hunter (assistant director of labor relations, Tela Division of Tela Railroad Company), interview with the author in Tela, August 13, 1954. 53. Alfred Giardino (labor relations consultant of United Fruit Company), in New York City, May 8, 1957. 54. Cubas Gross, interview. 55. Boletín Sindical (La Lima), organ of Seccional Tela of Comité Seccional Sindical of La Lima, August 12, 1954. 56. Alfonso Cerrato (secretary-general of Comité Seccional Sindical of La Lima), interview with the author in La Lima, August 12, 1954. 57. Wymberly Coerr (counselor of embassy, U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 10, 1954. 58. Campo Gráfico (La Lima), periodical of Tela Railroad Company, August 1954. 59. Noticiario Obrero Norteamericano (Washington, DC), periodical of American Federation of Labor, December 1, 1954. 60. Luis Velázquez (officer of Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Tela Railroad Company), interview with the author in New Brunswick, NJ, June 12, 1961. 61. Gustavo Adolfo Zavalla (representative in Honduras of ORIT), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954. 62. Robert J. Alexander, “Observations on Meetings of Gráficos and Sastres Unions,” Tegucigalpa, August 16, 1954. 63. Adolfo Zavalla, interview. 64. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 481; see also Rachel Seider, “Honduras: The Politics of Exception and Military Reformism (1972–1978),” in Authoritarianism in Latin America since Independence, ed. Will Fowler (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 115. 65. United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Law and Practice in Honduras (Washington, DC, September 1961), p. 18. 66. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 475; Seider, “Honduras: The Politics of Exception,” p. 115. 67. United States Department of Labor, Labor Law, p. 18. 68. Ibid., p. 22. 69. Malavé Villalba, interview. 70. Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons: Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967), p. 257. 71. Ibid., p. 258.

CHAPTER 6

Organized Labor in Honduras after 1957

The advent to power of the Liberal Party government of President Ramón Villeda Morales in 1957 began an almost six-year period in which organized labor experienced the most favorable treatment by the government of any time in its history. The 15 years after the overthrow of Villeda Morales were dominated by General Osvaldo López Arellano, who treated the labor movement differently at different times, and was succeeded by military presidents who were basically suspicious of, if not hostile to, the trade unions. Finally, in the 1980s organized labor in Honduras, as in most of the rest of Latin America, had to face the onslaught of neoliberalism, which had little concern for the living and working conditions of the workers and peasants and no place in its philosophy and practice for the organized labor movement. Honduran trade unions were also faced with the political and economic devastation wrought by the conversion of their country into a base for the contra war, which the Reagan administration was waging in neighboring Nicaragua. LABOR IN THE VILLEDA MORALES REGIME The Liberal Party government of President Ramón Villeda Morales was frankly prolabor. As the U.S. labor attaché commented, the Honduran president considered himself “a member in good standing of the Betancourt-Figueres club.”1 Under the Villeda Morales administration a labor code, which had been discussed since the government of President Gálvez, who had invited a mission from the International Labor Organization to advise him on


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what kind of a code to develop, was finally enacted. As elsewhere, it gave special legal status to unions and provided for collective bargaining and special labor courts.2 The Villeda Morales government also established the beginnings of a social security system. Finally, in conformity with the prescriptions of the Alliance for Progress, it enacted an agrarian reform law, although it was not able to put the law fully into effect before being overthrown by the military.3 The labor movement expanded during the Villeda Morales administration. It also underwent an extensive program of leadership training, both in courses in Honduras, and in programs at the University of Puerto Rico and in continental United States. Some 500 trade unionists had participated by mid-1959 in courses organized in Honduras, and 100 others had been sent to programs in Puerto Rico and the United States. These programs involved the cooperation of ORIT, the U.S. foreign aid program (International Cooperation Administration), and the Honduran Ministry of Labor.4 A typical leadership training course held in Tegucigalpa ran for two weeks, with sessions from 8:00 a.m. to noon and from 2:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. each day, with labor films being shown in the evenings. The subjects included the history of the labor movement, parliamentary procedure, rights and duties of unions, labor-management relations, collective contract negotiation, labor inspection, social security, grievance procedure, and various other items.5 One result of this intensive training effort was a general strengthening of the non-Communist leadership of the labor movement. Reportedly, in September 1959, of the 65 legally registered unions in the country, only 8 were Communist controlled.6 However, all of those who participated in these training programs did not turn out to be non-Communists. It was reported that several of those from the Standard Fruit Company union, in which Communist influence was extensive, had returned home to continue to work with the Communist faction in that union.7 In 1959, I reported, “There is no doubt that the Villeda Morales government is encouraging the development of the trade union movement, in Tegucigalpa and on the North Coast. Partly, this is probably the result of the strong working class support for the Liberals, partly it is out of conviction on the part of Villeda Morales and other government leaders.”8 The support of the organized workers for the Villeda Morales regime was shown at the time of a coup attempt against the government early in July 1959. A number of unionists in the Tegucigalpa area were armed by the government, some of the women unionists served the government forces as nurses. Also, the banana workers offered to send 10,000 men to fight for the government, an offer that turned out to be unnecessary.9 However, labor support was not sufficient to defend the government against another military coup in October 1963, led by Air Force chief

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Osvaldo López Arellano. Villeda Morales was overthrown because the military leaders feared that the Liberal candidate who seemed likely to win the election scheduled for a few days after the coup took place would carry out his promises to limit the political influence of the armed forces. The overthrow of the Liberal regime opened a new chapter in the history of the Honduran organized labor movement. ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE LÓPEZ ARELLANO PERIOD Between the overthrow of the Villeda Morales government in October 1963 and the military coup, which ousted Osvaldo López Arellano on April 22, 1973, Honduran politics were largely dominated by the colonel who had led the armed forces in ousting the Liberal government. During that period, there were many significant changes in the organized labor movement. During the first two years of the López Arellano period, the employers, who generally supported the regime, took advantage of it to refuse on a wide scale to renew collective agreements. Whereas under the Liberal government, the signing of collective agreements was becoming more or less general in firms where unions existed, this ceased to be the case after 1963. One major labor leader expressed the opinion in 1967 that by that time the only employers that had “really good agreements” were the two big banana companies. He added that it was very difficult to convince other employers of the need to sign a collective agreement, in spite of the provisions of the labor code. In the face of this situation, the unions received no help from the López Arellano government, particularly in its de facto period. When the unions felt forced to take issues with their employers to the Ministry of Labor, that ministry, instead of intervening itself, referred the issue to the labor courts, which often referred the issues involved to the Supreme Court, which more or less automatically decided against the union involved. Understandably, the union leaders tried to refer as few issues to the Ministry of Labor as possible.10 In spite of these difficulties, the labor movement continued to function with more or less militancy and enthusiasm. It underwent significant changes during the López Arellano period. On the one hand, two central labor organizations emerged, one largely based on the existing labor federations of the north and center, the other a new element of Christian Democratic orientation. On the other, there was a major effort to organize the peasants as a more or less integral part of the labor movement, and in that area, too, organizations of differing ideological orientation were established. There was also a substantial change in the relations of the labor movement—particularly the segment aligned with the ORIT—with the López


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Arellano regime by the late 1960s and early 1970s. The acute hostility at the beginning changed into a more friendly relationship. There was also a change in relations between the labor movement and the growing industrialist class of employers during this period. THE CONFEDERACIÓN DE TRABAJADORES DE HONDURAS As early as 1959, leaders of the Federation of Workers of the North and the Free Federation of Workers of the Center told me that they hoped that these two would soon be joined in a national central labor organization. However, it was not until 1964 that this came to pass. From September 25 to 29, 1964, a congress was held in Tegucigalpa, with delegates from the two regional federations, as well as from the new National Association of Peasants of Honduras. That meeting established the Confederación de Trabajadores de Honduras (CTH).11 The secretary-general of the new organization was Andrés Víctor Artiles of the Standard Fruit Company Workers Union, who had led the successful fight to remove the Communists from the leadership of that organization.12 Within the CTH, the most important affiliates for long continued to be the two unions of fruit company workers on the north coast. They were particularly strongly organized, and even in the period when the employers and the López Arellano government were discouraging the negotiation of collective agreements, they continued to renew their agreements with the companies regularly. One U.S. labor attaché was particularly impressed with the efficiency and thoroughness with which the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Tela Railroad Company (SITRATERCO), the United Fruit Company workers union, conducted their negotiations with the United Fruit. He said that before entering contract talks, the union leaders gathered all available information on the financial and economic position of the United Fruit Company, not only in Honduras, but all over the hemisphere, as well as information about its earnings and its operations in fields other than bananas. This thoroughness went far to explain, said the labor attaché, why the union remained strong and was able to maintain more or less good relations with the company, in contrast to the situation in some neighboring countries. The CTH was affiliated with the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The CTH also became part of a Central American Confederation of Labor, a subregional grouping of the ORIT, which was headed by Celio González of SITRATERCO.13 The CTH and some of its affiliates encountered very strong resistance from many employers. One such case occurred in 1967, when a mine

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owned by a North American refused to negotiate with its workers’ union, which was affiliated with the CTH. The CTH thereupon called for support of the whole labor movement to bring pressure on the recalcitrant employer, receiving the backing, among others, of the Catholic-oriented federation. When the Ministry of Labor said that it could do nothing to force the mine owner to negotiate a collective agreement, the CTH called for expulsion of the mine owner from Honduras. Finally, the combined pressure of organized labor, and perhaps of the Ministry of Labor and the U.S. Embassy, got the mine owner to deal with his workers’ union.14 The CTH worked closely with the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which began to operate in Honduras in the early 1960s, soon after its establishment. In March 1963, the AIFLD established the Instituto de Estudios Sindicales de Centro América in Tela, as a leadership training school for ORIT affiliates in all of the Central American countries.15 The AIFLD’s Social Projects Division helped SITRATERCO to obtain a loan from the Agency for International Development (AID) for a union housing project, the first such AID loan. Establishment of the project, which was in La Lima and consisted of 1,200 homes, was handled by SITRATERCO itself, without intervention of government housing authorities. The United Fruit Company made available the land on which the project was built.16 When the Lima housing project was damaged by a hurricane in 1974, the union organized the work of cleaning up and repairing the damage. They did this without any help from outside people or institutions.17 THE CATHOLIC LABOR MOVEMENT A specifically Catholic-oriented labor grouping was somewhat late in developing in Honduras. In 1959, although there existed Churchsponsored Círculos Obreros and a Juventud Obrera Católica, they were both reported to be weak, and no unions then in existence were oriented toward Catholic social doctrine.18 However, this situation changed in the 1960s. The Catholic Church began community development programs in 1960. At the same time, Andrés Mercau, an official of the Confederación Latinoamericana de Sindicatos Cristianos (CLASC) started Acción Sindical de Obreros y Campesinos de Honduras, which began organizing unions and peasant groups and attracted a handful of unions from the Federación Central de Sindicatos Libres de Honduras. In February 1963, these were brought together in the Federación Auténtica Sindical de Honduras (FASH), with its headquarters in Tegucigalpa.19 By mid-1967 the FASH had 10 unions in its ranks that had legal recognition, as well as a number of peasant organizations, some of them cooperatives, and some ligas campesinas, which were composed of workers who


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had their own land, renters, and squatters. Most of the unions in the FASH were in the Tegucigalpa area, where their biggest organizations were those of bus drivers and radio and television workers. The FASH developed a program of trade union leadership education, with the help of CLASC. They had a series of courses lasting for two months on Saturdays and Sundays, and another series running for two solid weeks, which were held four times a year. Among the courses offered in these sessions were union administration, public speaking, collective bargaining, and Christian social doctrine. The FASH also sent people periodically to the CLASC training school for Central America in Guatemala. Occasionally, they also sent people to the Latin American school of CLASC in Caracas.20 It was not until 1970 that a more or less nationwide Catholic-oriented central labor organization was established. This was the Confederación (or Central) General de Trabajadores (CGT), established in April of that year. It had as its principal affiliates the Flash and the Unión Nacional Campesina, one of the country’s principal peasant organizations. It took 14 years before the CGT was granted legal recognition. The largest affiliate of the CGT was the Unión Nacional Campesina. Its most important urban affiliates were unions of sugar mill workers, bank employees, and the municipal workers of San Pedro Sula. Like the FASH, the CGT was affiliated with the CLASC—renamed the Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores (CLAT)—and the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions, renamed the World Confederation of Labor (WCL).21 PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS A significant new element within organized labor that appeared in the 1960s was that of the peasants—as opposed to rural wage laborers in the large fruit company plantations. As soon as the Federation of Workers of the North and the Federation of Workers of the Center were established, they began to plan for organizing campaigns among the small landholders, tenants, and squatters. Peasants were among those workers who were sent for leadership training programs run by the ORIT and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the first peasant group, the Federación Nacional de Campesinos de Honduras (FENACH), was established. However, when the Communists began to gain influence within the FENACH, those opposed to that influence withdrew and established the Asociación Nacional de Campesinos de Honduras (ANACH), at a congress in San Pedro Sula in October 1962, shortly after the Villeda Morales administration had promulgated an agrarian reform law. One of the basic purposes of the ANACH was to help peasants obtain land under that law.22

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The peasant organizations had their own peculiar problems. In a country in which illiteracy was still very widespread, particularly in the rural areas, even the leaders of the new peasant organizations were largely uneducated. Few of them had graduated from primary school. Thus, they needed technical help in bookkeeping and other fairly rudimentary things.23 Also, the landholding pattern of Honduras presented peculiar problems. Although in 1950 only 48 percent of the total land was clearly private property, with 31 percent belonging to the national government, 17 percent to the municipalities (described as ejidos), and 4 percent was held communally, these figures hid as much as they revealed.24 Most of the members of ANACH were squatters, cultivating land that either was without title or was ostensibly property of large landholders who had not made effective their claim to it. By the 1960s, with certain diversification in agriculture, these landholders tried to give reality to their claims and hence sought to oust the squatters. This situation was complicated by the fact that the big fruit companies were retrenching their operations and were giving up land that they had rented from the government or private owners. In the case of the United Fruit Company, a rich family in Tegucigalpa suddenly claimed that it owned the land that the company was abandoning, and rented it to a Colombian who proceeded to throw off the land peasants who had for some time been squatting there with the consent of the United Fruit Company.25 In all, it was estimated in 1965 that 24 percent of the rural population of Honduras was without land that they owned.26 Thus, the principal concern of the peasants was obtaining and holding onto land rather than questions of wages, hours, and working conditions as in the case of urban workers’ unions. The situation was also complicated by the fact that successive government blew hot and cold about the question of making land ownership available to landless peasants and in general about relations between the government and the peasant organizations. The Villeda Morales government had been quite disposed toward real agrarian reform. But it was overthrown less than a year after establishment of ANACH, and in the first period of the rule of López Arellano, the regime varied from being openly hostile to agrarian reform to modestly endorsing it and putting it into practice. Only in the years immediately following López Arellano’s second seizure of power in 1972 was the government seriously interested in a land distribution program. COMPETING RURAL WORKERS ORGANIZATIONS The ANACH was the first significant peasant organization to be established and continued to be the largest such organization. It grew particularly in 1970s. Thus, the claimed membership grew from 25,000 organized into


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300 local groups in 1973 to 80,000 in 750 local groups seven years later (perhaps a considerable exaggeration).27 However, the ANACH suffered considerable internal conflict. In 1970, Reyes Rodríguez Arévalo became its leader. As time went on, his rule came to be regarded as high handed, and he was accused of being associated too closely with Ricardo Zúñiga, a leading figure in the Partido Nacional. At the ANACH’s 1979 annual convention, Reyes Rodríguez, when challenged, walked out with 106 followers. Subsequently, they established a rival organization, the Alianza Campesina de Organizaciones Nacionales de Honduras, which received legal recognition in June 1981. A substantial number of those local groups that followed Reyes Rodríguez out of the ANACH subsequently returned to the Asociación.28 The ANACH had not been particularly closely associated with any political party after the fall of the Liberal government of President Villeda Morales in 1963. However, in 1977 a number of ANACH leaders took the initiative in organizing a new party, the Partido Revolucionario Hondureño (PRH). It claimed the backing of the ANACH peasants, as well as of some urban workers’ groups and even some small merchants. It had hopes of becoming a major element in national politics. It developed some association with the Socialist International.29 However, the PRH never succeeded in gaining legal recognition. The single most important rival of ANACH was the Unión Nacional de Campesinos (UNC), which arose as a result of work by socially minded priests and lay Catholics and the organizing efforts of the CLASC. Its strength was particularly among peasants in the southern part of the country. The UNC gained a sad kind of publicity when on June 12, 1975, Major José Enrique Chinchilla and a local ranch owner, Manuel Zelaya, led an attack on the Santa Clara Leadership Training Center on the Horcones Ranch in Juticalpa, resulting in the death of two priests and 11 other people. Although the major and a sergeant were ultimately jailed, this incident served to make the Catholic Church reduce its support for the rural workers’ movement.30 Two other smaller peasant groups were of some significance. One was the Federación de Empresas Asociativas de Campesinos de Honduras (FEDACAMH), established following the second agrarian reform law enacted by General López Arellano in the middle 1970s. It consisted of groups of peasants who occupied lands formerly used by the two large fruit companies and began to cultivate them on a cooperative basis. According to Neale Pearson, its “leaders’ ideological tendencies were Marxist and anti-government” in spite of the fact that many of the peasants involved had previously belonged to ANACH.31 The second smaller peasant group was the Federación de Cooperativas de Reforma Agraria de Honduras (FECORAH), which was established

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with the help of the Agrarian Reform Institute and won legal recognition in 1974. It, too, consisted of groups of peasants who occupied land formerly used by the banana companies, who cultivated their land on a cooperative basis. In 1980, FECORAH reportedly had about 5,000 members in more than 140 cooperatives.32 ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE 1980s The 1980s were a difficult time for Honduras. Although in 1980 it returned to an elected constitutional governmental with a Liberal president, pressures from the outside made the situation of the democratic regime precarious. The Reagan administration, which came into office shortly before did the Honduran president Roberto Suazo Córdova, launched the contra war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, using Honduran territory as the staging area from which the contras operated. The U.S. regime under Reagan also dealt more with the military leaders of Honduras than with the elected government. Peasants were forced off land in southern Honduras to make way for the contras and for U.S. armed forces conduction of maneuvers jointly with those of Honduras. As the contra war drew to a close, a number of contras turned to criminal activities in Honduras. There also appeared Honduran guerrilla groups, as well as right-wing death squads that although not growing as powerful as in neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala nonetheless were a menace to the continuation of even a formal democracy and potentially a menace to the organized labor movement.33 Manuel Rojas Bolaños summed up the political situation during the first part of the Suazo Córdova administration, when Colonel Gustavo Álvarez Martínez was chief or the armed forces. He said the following: Suazo represented the conservative sectors of the Liberal Party, while Álvarez the most repressive and conservative sectors of the Armed Forces. There was established a close alliance between both sectors, an alliance within which, however, it would be the military power that was predominant, thanks to the profundization of political, economic and military relations with the United States. But the period was also to be characterized by a restrictive economic policy and an increase in the repression against the trade union movement and, in general, against the popular movement.34

In spite of these multifarious problems, organized labor continued to function throughout the decade of the 1980s. The CTH continued to be by far the largest of the country’s central labor groups, claiming as many as 142,000 members in its ranks (probably an exaggeration). The CGT remained its nearest competitor.35 In 1981 there appeared a third central labor group that, although much smaller than the CTH and CGT, had in its ranks some unions of consid-


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erable significance. This was the Federación Unitaria de Trabajadores de Honduras (FUTH) and was under the influence of the Communist Party of Honduras. Since the great banana strike of 1954, the influence of the Communists had ebbed and flowed. Immediately following the strike, the Communists had been of significance principally in the Standard Fruit Company union and the Sindicato Autónomo de Mecánicos de La Lima, a small rival of the union of workers of the United Fruit Company. In March 1963 there was the first effort to set up a central labor group more or less under Communist aegis and control. This was the Federación Democrática de Sindicatos de Trabajadores de Honduras. The affiliates of this federation included dissident Standard Fruit Company Union local groups, as well as some dockworkers, railroaders, brewery and cement workers, and some dissidents from the ANACH peasant group. Also affiliated was the Sindicato Autónomo de Mecánicos de la Lima. The Federación Democrática de Sindicatos de Trabajadores de Honduras was undermined when pro-Communist elements lost out in elections in the Standard Fruit Company union in June 1963, after which there was a decline in Communist influence in some peasant groups. However, between 1975 and 1977, Communists gained temporary control of both of those unions. Meanwhile, in 1978, groups controlled by the Communists within both the Federation of National Workers of Honduras on the north coast and the Central Federation of Free Workers of Honduras in the Tegucigalpa region joined to establish the Comité de Unidad Sindical (CUS). In 1981, the CUS joined with the Frente Sindical Independiente, which had been formed in 1977 by Communists elements that failed to get control of the Central Federation of Free Workers of Honduras, and another group, the Comité de Unidad Inter-Sindical, to establish the FUTH. The FUTH claimed by April 1985 to have some 30,000 members, although Neale Pearson credited it with only about 10,000. However, as Pearson noted, the federation included several strategically located unions, including that of the National Electrical Energy Company workers, the beverage and brewery workers’ Sindicato de Trabajadores de Bebidas y Similares, and the union of workers of the National Autonomous Water and Sewer Service. Other affiliates included organizations of staff employees of the National University and of the Central Bank, as well as a union of construction workers.36 On August 19, 1986, the FUTH launched a series of strikes to protest against U.S. troops that were in the country for so-called maneuvers. The walkouts were also in protest against large sale dismissal of workers in the Agrarian Reform Institute. Some 30,000 workers were reported to have participated in this series of walkouts. On the occasion of these strikes, the FUTH issued a statement saying: “The military occupation of Honduras by foreign troops and the war

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carried out against the sister republic of Nicaragua by the Reagan administration, using Honduran territory, has come to aggravate the political and economic situation and to sharpen other problems, including the labor situation.”37 The labor group that was largely outside of any central labor organization in the 1980s was that of public school teachers. Various teachers’ unions had developed after 1965, covering primary school, secondary school, and rural teachers. In July 1982 three teachers’ groups formed the Frente de Unidad Magisterial (FUMH) and launched a strike, demanding a 90 percent pay increase—which they claimed the recently inaugurated President Suazo Córdova had promised during his campaign. The government intervened in the largest of the teachers’ organizations and broke the strike, in part by the use of strikebreakers. Although most of the teachers who were dismissed at the time were later able to get back their jobs, they were subject to considerable discrimination. The breaking of the 1982 strike did not end the teachers’ unions. In 1986, the largest of these, the Colegio Profesional de Superación Magisterial Hondureño, indicated it was going to join the CGT.38 EMPLOYER AND GOVERNMENT RESISTANCE TO ORGANIZED LABOR Honduras did not suffer from the varying degrees of civil war in the 1970s and 1980s experienced by its three neighbors, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, which imperiled the labor movement in those countries. However, Honduran trade unionism suffered varied sorts of resistance, both from the employer class and the government during this period. The ORIT published a study in 1987 of the ways in which trade union rights were violated in all four of these countries. It reflected the problems in this regard that were faced by the Honduran labor movement. A wide diversity of measures was being taken by employers to prevent the formation of unions by their workers, according to this report. Some employers went so far as to force all new employees to sign undated resignations on blank pieces of paper, which would be filled in if they had the audacity to try to form a union. Others reduced the number of their employees to below the 30 required for the legal establishment of a union, while still others sought to bribe those workers registered with the Ministry of Labor as leading a union seeking legal recognition so that they would resign their jobs and thus put an end—at least temporarily—to the process of legalizing that labor organization. Still other measures were taken to try to prevent the formation of a union. Some employers would temporarily close down their firms and discharge their workers. Others would publicly denounce to the authorities those trying to organize a union, claiming that they were “leftists


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and Communists,” which, as the ORIT report state, “in present political circumstances might mean danger for the integrity of their persons.” Sometimes, government officials would join in this process of trying to prevent the formation of unions. Functionaries of the Ministry of Labor might notify employers of the names of those listing themselves as officers of a new union seeking legal recognition so that they could be dismissed. Or the ministry would take an inordinately long time in granting legal recognition, thus giving the employers an opportunity to disband the union before it really got started.39 Although Honduran labor law provided immunity from dismissal for union officials except in very extraordinary circumstances, this protection was often violated. The Ministry of Labor often took as long as two years to settle a case of a dismissed union official, or it procrastinated in giving union officials the certificate naming them as such so that the person involved could not legally carry out his functions.40 Honduran labor law prohibited employer interference in the internal affairs of unions. On this issue, the ORIT report said that its investigators had been told that “among the Honduran employers the tendency is generalized to attract the leaders, suborning them with money, particularly in the small unions, whose organizational capacity is limited. This is accompanied by terrorizing the workers, with the employers threatening possible failure of the firms if the unions demanded too much, which would imply the loss of their jobs.”41 Although Honduran labor law provided for the negotiation of collective contracts, these were rare in the 1980s because of the growing number of unemployed. The ORIT report said, “The state and the employers argue that the situation of crisis is the fundamental factor for not conceding collective contracts since these presuppose high costs for the firms. As we see, they combine structural and political factors to work against the right of the collective contract.”42 The legal right to strike was also very limited. As stated in the ORIT report: “A specialist in labor law explained that the procedure of direct solution, mediation, conciliation and arbitration make any strike illegal, because the decision of those who act as arbitrators is obligatory and not subject to appeal and with it the workers cannot decree a strike. And if the workers decide to carry out a strike after exhausting conciliation, this becomes illegal for not having gone through arbitration.” In addition, as one trade union leader explained to the ORIT representatives, there were few strikes because “there is in force an anti-terrorist law decreed as a consequence of the strike of workers of the transnational company Texaco in 1984.”43 Finally, even strong unions were under severe pressure. For instance, the Standard Fruit Company in the 1980s turned over much of its operation to contractors who were not covered by the company’s collective contract, as a result of which the number of workers in the Standard Fruit’s union fell from more than 4,000 in 1985 to only 2,500 two years later.44

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NEOLIBERALISM AND ITS RESULTS The application of the philosophy and policy of neoliberalism began under the Liberal Party government of President Suazo Córdova, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the United States government. Manuel Rojas Bolaños noted the effects of this on the workers: “Massive dismissals as a way of dismissing public expenditures, increases of taxes, liberalization of prices and reduction of real wages, caused important movements of protests in the years 1982–1984, being particularly notable the conflict in the Empresa Hondureña de Telecomunicaciones . . . the strike of hospital workers and the strike of teachers, all conflicts in 1982; the strikes of workers of the Municipality of San Pedro Sula and of workers of the Atlántida Regional Hospital in 1983, and the conflict in the Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica, in 1984.” Rojas Bolaños noted that in this period, the CTH was more willing to seek negotiations with the government and the military over economic issues than was the CGT.45 The fall of Colonel Álvarez in March of 1984 provided some relaxation of tensions. In April, the FUTH and the Electrical Workers Union, Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (STENEE), mounted a demonstration against the “disappearance” of several union leaders, notably the secretary-general of the STENEE. During the Suazo Córdova regime, there were several attempts to establish greater unity in the labor movement to confront the neoliberal policies of the regime, but these failed. Then, according to Rojas Bolaños, “In 1986, after the profundization of the economic crisis, the military occupation of Honduran territory by North American troops and Nicaraguan contras, favored the renewal of unity efforts among the trade union and popular organizations.”46 However, these too largely failed. The Partido Nacional government of President Rafael Leonardo Callejas, which came to power early in 1990, adopted a thoroughgoing policy of neoliberalism, in spite of the promises to the contrary in its election campaign. This program was launched early in 1990 with the Law of Structural Reordering of the Economy. As Napoleón Morazán wrote: The law in question put forth a series of fiscal and monetary measures that provided for: a) increase of taxes, principally indirect ones; b) reduction of public expenditures; c) initiation of a process of tariff reduction and devaluation of the money; d) elimination of all types of state regulation of the economy; e) liberalization of prices of goods and services. The Commercial exchange and financial liberalization has constituted the pillar of the economic program of the government.47

The social impact of this neoliberal policy was disastrous. The College of Honduran Economists reported that “the indicators of the labor market reflected open unemployment, which involved 10,000 jobs, total employment was reduced by 5.8 percent, and number of underemployed rose 13.9 percent and the number of unpaid family workers grew by 21.7 percent.”


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A report of the UNICEF said that “the adjustment made worse the standard of living of the Hondurans . . . nutrition is the most serious problem that is going to confront the Honduran people in the next years because the increase of the price of food diminished the diet, women and children being those most affected.”48 Rather than reducing inflation, which had been 11.4 percent in 1989, this neoliberal policy increased it to 36 percent in 1990. Morazán noted: “Some calculations of the purchasing power of the wage earning groups say that it was reduced between 40 and 50 percent, reduced also were the availability of health, education and housing services. On the other hand, the exporting sector—represented fundamentally by transnational firms— obtain enormous profits as a result of the devaluation of the currency.”49 In February 1992, the Callejas government enacted another pieces of legislation, the Law of Agricultural Modernization and Reactivation. This statute had as its objectives “to eliminate intervention of the State in agriculture; to guarantee private property in land, guaranteeing its efficiency by elimination of its social function and finally to foster foreign investment and the production of traditional and non-traditional goods for export.”50 LABOR AND PEASANT RESPONSE TO NEOLIBERALISM Faced with the threat of neoliberalism, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the German Social Democratic organization that had been active in Honduras for several years, sought in the late 1980s to make possible a unified trade union and peasant response to that menace. In 1988, it had fostered the establishment of the Consejo Coordinador de Organizaciones Campesinas de Honduras (COCOCH), which brought together virtually all of the important groups. Then in October 1989, the foundation had helped in the establishment of the Plataforma de Lucha para Democratización de Honduras. It brought together the COCOCH and the principal trade union groups, that is, the CTH, the CGT, the FUTH and the Federación Independiente de Trabajadores de Honduras. Also part of the Plataforma de Lucha were organizations of university faculty members, high school teachers, and primary school teachers. Napoleón Morazán noted that at the first assembly of the Plataforma de Lucha in October 1989, a program was adopted, which “contain[ed] a group of economic, social and political and organizational proposals to create a real basis of social justice and participation of organized sectors in the taking of decisions that had to do with their own future and the future of the country as a whole, and with all these it was sought to obtain in the country a real democracy, in political, economic and social terms.” He noted, too, that subsequently, when the Liberal Party, “which

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had claimed to be the defender of popular causes,” refused to offer effective opposition to the neoliberal program of the Partido Nacional government, and smaller left-wing parties were “not a real power alternative,” it fell to the Plataforma de Lucha to confront the problem of neoliberalism.51 At first, President Callejas made it appear that he was willing to negotiate with the Plataforma de Lucha. In the face of demonstrations the Plataforma organized in various parts of the country, he signed with the Plataforma de Lucha “an agreement that obliged him to reach agreement on subjects such as: minimum wages and general readjustment of wages, prices, privatization, employment stability, freedom of organization, electoral reform and others.” However, said Morazán, “this accord has not been respected by the government, which continues its practice of intervention in organizations supporting parallel directives, weakening the organizational structures and systematically refusing to dialogue with the Plataforma de Lucha as a whole.”52 President Callejas sought to divide the Plataforma de Lucha. He succeeded in doing so with regard to his program for agriculture. It gained the support of the following: some peasant organizations—of small affiliation and little representation which form part of the Central General de Trabajadores which have echoed the government policy—and of two very representative organizations of peasants ANACH and FECORAH. However, other peasant organizations which are very representative of the agrarian sector of the country . . . and important sectors of ANACH have shown themselves against the law which they consider a negation of the process of agrarian reform . . . favoring the landlords, favoring also minifundia which will lead again concentration of land, eliminate the principal provisions for land reform and reduce credit.53

Thus, the Plataforma de Lucha was not able to provide the kind of opposition to the imposition of neoliberalism that had been hoped for. Napoleón Morazán attributed this failure to four cases. First, given the heterogeneous nature of the Plataforma de Lucha “many of the members of the national leadership of the member organizations [were]not convinced or incorporated into the unity project; this weakness and above all the individualism shown by some leaders [was] ably exploited by the government of the Republic.” A second handicap of the Plataforma was the fact that it was very difficult to get its message to the rank and file of the organizations belonging to it. Virtually all mass communications were controlled by those favoring neoliberalism. A third difficulty was that “this organization [had] not been able to overcome internal situations so that it could pass to the offensive, always maintaining itself on the defensive and responding—a posteriori—to the measures that the government [carried] out with regard to its program of adjustment.”


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Finally, Napoleón Morazán noted that, although the Plataforma de Lucha included the great majority of the popular organized forces, there was still a large part of the population that remained unorganized. Those masses were unable to make their voices heard, and the elements in the Plataforma de Lucha had been unable to organize them and get their support.54 Morazán summed up the situation in the early 1990s: “The hopes of the partisans of social democracy are today deposited in large measure in the Plataforma de Lucha por la Democratización de Honduras. The failure of this initiative would be fatal for the future of social democracy in Honduras; in the short term, the calvary of misery and hopelessness in which the great majority of the Honduran people who face the greatest economic and social crisis would be much harder and prolonged.”55 CONCLUSION The labor movement of Honduras, although being rather late in getting finally established, became for some years the largest and best-organized trade union movement in Central America. Although there had been the beginnings of a modern labor movement in the 1920s, the movement was thoroughly destroyed by the dictatorship of Tiburcio Carías Andino and it was not until the great banana strike of 1954 that it was reborn. Beginning among workers of the United Fruit Company and the Standard Fruit Company, the labor movement spread to the city of San Pedro Sula, also in the banana region of Honduras’ north coast, and to the region of the capital, Tegucigalpa. Subsequently, it also came to encompass peasant squatters, renters, small proprietors, and agrarian reform beneficiaries in various parts of the country. Collective bargaining became widespread, with the two banana workers’ unions taking the lead in this, after having received considerable aid from the ORIT and the U.S. labor movement. Even the difficult situation, which developed in the early 1980s, did not entirely break this pattern. However, beginning at the end of the 1980s, the Honduran labor movement was faded with the problem that confronted the organized workers throughout the continent, that is, neoliberalism. The strategy and polices imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. government and strongly endorsed by powerful employer interests had the immediate effect of drastically reducing the levels of living of the workers of Honduras and threatening the very existence of the organized labor movement. Napoleón Morazán summed up the situation of Honduran organized labor in the early 1990s: [t]he perspectives of trade union action in the face of neoliberal policies are linked to an ample program of communication and education of the rank and file . . . the organization of vast popular sectors so far not organized, the discussion and

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analysis of the great national problems that permit concrete measures to confront them and attenuate the adjustment measures; in summation, the structuring and consolidation of the Plataforma de Lucha, the only uniting project, which presently offers a real possibility pf confronting positions on behalf of the national masses in face of the neoliberal package.56

NOTES 1. Barry Taylor (labor attaché of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, September 8, 1959. 2. Letter from Robert J. Alexander to Jay Lovestone, September 22, 1959; for details of the Honduran Labor Code, see Anuario Sindical Abierto: Honduras, Instituto Nacional de Estudios del Trabajo, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, Centro de Estudios Sociológicos, El Colegio de México, México, DF, March 1976, pp. 5–12. 3. Neale Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 464. 4. Taylor, interview. 5. Paul Prentice (labor officer of International Cooperation Administration in Honduras), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, September 19, 1959. 6. Taylor, interview. 7. José Alejandro Alvarenga (secretario de trabajo y reclamos, Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Fábrica de Manteca y Jabón Atlántida of Honduras), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, July 15, 1958. 8. Alexander, letter. 9. Taylor, interview; Luz Argentina Soto Valladares (recording secretary of Sindicato de Trabajadores de Casas de Comercio of Tegucigalpa), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, July 29, 1959. 10. Salvador Rámos Alvarado (treasurer of Confederación de Trabajadores de Honduras), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, June 21, 1967. 11. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 477. 12. John Louis De Ornellas (labor attaché of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, June 22, 1967. 13. John O’Grady (former labor attaché of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Bogotá, Colombia, July 6, 1966. 14. John Louis De Ornellas, interview; Emilio López (secretary of education, Federación Autónoma Sindical de Honduras), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, June 22, 1967. 15. Rachel Sieder, “Honduras: The Politics of Exception and Military Reformism (1972–1978),” in Authoritarianism in Latin America since Independence, ed. Will Fowler (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 115. 16. O’Grady, interview; Gordon Allen (Central American representative of American Institute for Free Labor Development), interview with the author in Princeton, NJ, April 24, 1965. 17. Bruce Jay (American Institute for Free Labor Development representative in Honduras), interview with the author in Front Royal, VA, December 17, 1975. 18. Taylor, interview. 19. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 487.


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20. Emilio López, interview. 21. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 483. 22. Rámos Alvarado, interview; see also Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 485. 23. John Heberle (official of American Institute for Free Labor Development), interview with the author in Front Royal, VA, August 26, 1975. 24. Sieder, “Honduras: The Politics of Exception,” p. 112. 25. De Ornellas, interview. 26. Sieder, “Honduras: The Politics of Exception,” p. 115. 27. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 485. 28. Ibid., p. 486. 29. Rodolfo Francisco Jiménez Caballero (secretary-general of Partido Revolucionario Hondureño), interview with the author in Santa Barbara de Heredia, Costa Rica, July 27, 1978. 30. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 482, 487–88. 31. Ibid., pp. 479–81. 32. Ibid., pp. 484–86. 33. Mark Rosenberg (director of Latin American and Caribbean Center, Florida International University), interview with the author in Miami, October 27, 1989. 34. Manuel Rojas Bolaños, El Sindicalismo Centroamericano: Una Visión Comparativa (San José: Centro de Estudios Para la Acción Social, 1988), p. 29. 35. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 473. 36. Ibid., pp. 485, 493–94. 37. The Militant (New York), September 26, 1986. 38. Pearson, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 489–90. 39. Los Derechos Sindicales en Centroamérica, ORIT and ICFTU, n.d (ca. 1987), pp. 16–17. 40. Ibid., p. 24. 41. Ibid., p. 32. 42. Ibid., p. 41. 43. Ibid., p. 51. 44. Ibid., p. 42. 45. Rojas Bolaños, El Sindicalismo Centroamericano, p. 30. 46. Ibid., pp. 30–31. 47. Napoleón Morazán, in Modelo Neoliberal y Sindicatos en América Latina, coord. Holm-Detlev Köhler and Manfred Wannöffel (México, DF: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1993), p. 210. 48. Ibid., p. 211. 49. Ibid., p. 212. 50. Ibid., p. 213. 51. Ibid., pp. 215–16. 52. Ibid., p. 218. 53. Ibid., p. 214. 54. Ibid., pp. 218–19. 55. Ibid., p. 220. 56. Ibid., p. 220.

CHAPTER 7

Organized Labor in El Salvador until the 1967 General Strike

El Salvador is geographically the smallest country in Latin America, with the highest population-to-area ratio in the region. Much of it is mountainous, with several large volcanoes. The valleys and coastal plain are very fertile. Like most of the other countries of Central America, El Salvador was the scene of more-or-less violent conflicts between Conservatives and Liberals during the early decades of its existence, first as part of the Republic of Central America and then as an independent country. However, in 1871 the Liberals had a definitive victory and the country was governed in their name until 1944. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Salvadoran economy came to be largely dominated by the production and export of coffee. The spread of coffee cultivation involved the displacing of relatively small peasant farms and Indian communities by large landholdings, and the emergence of an oligarchy, which was commonly and somewhat exaggeratedly known as the “fourteen families.” This group not only dominated the cultivation and processing of coffee (and other export agricultural products), but also controlled the banking system, most of the export– import trade, and much of the internal commerce as well. The Salvadoran fourteen families for many decades constituted the most highly integrated and powerful oligarchy in Latin America. Interlocking directorates protected the interests of this oligarchy. By the middle decades of the twentieth century there had also developed another sector of the national economy: manufacturing. Including textiles and processed food products, light metallurgy, construction


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materials, and oil refining, among other sectors, this industrial segment of the economy expanded very markedly with the establishment of the Central American Common Market at the beginning of the 1960s. Unlike export agriculture and banking, manufacturing was not begun by the fourteen families but rather was generated by the immigrants, particularly Arabs and Spaniards. However, with the rapid expansion of industry after World War II, the oligarchy came to control much of the manufacturing sector.1 The fourteen families’ oligarchy was largely brought into existence by the policies of the Liberal governments after 1871, and for 50 years the oligarchy controlled the country’s political as well as its economic and social life, without very much competition. The armed forces supported the regime but did not dominate it. However, in the 1920s serious challenges to the role of the oligarchy appeared. A labor movement grew up among the artisans, factory employees, transportation workers, and others. The surviving Indian communities became increasingly assertive in trying to defend their rights, as did the peasant community in general. New political parties appeared, particularly a Labor Party and a Communist Party. In 1930 the Labor Party, which had been organized by Alberto Masferrer, succeeded in electing Arturo Araujo as president on a platform promising widespread reforms. But elected with Araujo was General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, a Liberal, as vice president. Against the background of the onset of the Great Depression, great hopes for change by the Araujo government, and generalized unrest and protest, General Hernández Martínez overthrew the president in December 1931. A month later there occurred an event that is still looked back upon in El Salvador with horror. This was the Matanza (slaughter) carried out by the Hernández Martínez regime. The occasion for this massive killing was an attempted insurrection of very poorly armed peasants, particularly Indians, in which the Communist Party was involved. It was suppressed without great effort by the army, which then proceeded on a massive scale to murder in cold blood many thousands of peasants—estimations of the number varying from 10,000 to 30,000. Among others, the U.S. labor official Serafino Romualdi described the Matanza, citing the words of a Salvadoran trade union leader, Rafael Fernández Saravia. According to Romualdi, Fernández Saravia said: “The first thing the Government did was to capture the known leaders of the revolt, those were known as Communists, and executed them. They were Augustín Farabundo Martí, law student. . . . Mario Zapata, also a law student . . . and another student named Luna. They were executed in a public square in San Salvador. For the next five days, all over the countryside, squads of soldiers shot down the campesinos on sight. More than 25,000 were killed in five days. Some said 30,000. The exact number was never known.”

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Fernández Saravia also told Romualdi what happened in the town of Armenia: “In this town five hundred campesinos were executed. By express order of the dictator, the bodies were left exposed in the open so that the people left alive could see and ‘learn and lesson.’ This macabre exposition lasted for eight days.”2 This was the beginning of the sanguinary dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, which lasted about a decade and a half. However, Hernández Martínez was finally driven out of office in mid-1944 by an almost universal general strike and mass protest, in which the few remaining workers’ organizations played a major part. However, after a short outburst of freedom during which the beginnings of a revived labor movement appeared, Lieutenant Colonel Castañeda Castro seized power, and severe repression returned. Although his rule was nowhere near as harsh as that of Hernández Martínez, political and trade union organization were very difficult under him. Late in December 1948 a group of middle-rank officers, led by Major Oscar Osorio, overthrew Castañeda Castro. Osorio was elected president in December 1950. His regime proclaimed itself “revolutionary” and enacted significant reformist legislation. It permitted the establishment of a legal labor movement in the cities and launched an extensive economic development program, as well as a modest workers’ housing effort. A government party, the Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Democrática, was established. President Osorio’s successor, Colonel Lemus, installed a regime, which at first made further concessions to organized labor but then became oppressive. In 1961 it was overthrown, being succeeded by a short-lived leftist-inclined military–civilian junta. That junta lasted only a short while and was succeeded by a more conservative junta regime, which established a new government party, the Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN). There were then four more administrations headed by military men, those of Julio Adelberto Rivera (1962–1967), Fidel Sánchez Hernández (1967–1972), Arturo Armando Molina (1972–1977), and Carlos Humberto Romero (1977–1979). Although varying degrees of freedom and repression characterized these administrations, none of them was ready to permit a really serious challenge to the regime supported by the fourteen families and run by the armed forces. This was shown in 1972 when a civilian opposition ticket headed by the Christian Democratic ex-mayor of San Salvador, José Napoleón Duarte and Guillermo Manuel Ungo, head of the Social Democratic Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), actually won the election; but instead of taking office, Duarte and Ungo were deported and the PCN military candidate, Colonel Molina, was declared the victor. Molina’s successor, General Romero, was particularly repressive. His regime gave rise in October 1979 to a military–civil coup. Power was held for a short while by an army–civilian junta in which Manuel Ungo and


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some Christian Democrats participated. But when the junta was unwilling or unable to carry out promised agrarian and other reforms, Ungo resigned from it, and a more conservative junta took over in January 1980, in which some Christian Democrats, including Duarte, continued to participate. These events gave great impetus to a guerilla war, which had begun on a small scale sometime earlier. It developed into a real civil war that was to continue for a decade. Military and police elements fought this war not only in combat with the guerrillas of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), but by organizing death squads that assassinated thousands of people over the years—political figures, trade union officers, peasant leaders, foreign trade unionists, and nuns, as well as Catholic priests, including the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. Meanwhile, forces allied with the guerrillas were active in San Salvador and other cities. They played a role in the history of the Salvadoran labor movement in the 1970s and 1980s. The principal organizer of the death squads was ex-army officer Roberto D’Aubuisson, who also established a political party, Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (National Republican Alliance—ARENA). That party won the elections for a Constituent assembly in 1982 but was unable to defeat José Napoleón Duarte, the Christian Democratic presidential candidate, two years later even though they had a plurality in Congress. Nevertheless, five years later, ARENA candidate Alfredo Cristiani did win the presidency. With D’Aubuisson dead by that time, President Cristiani entered into serious negotiations for peace with the FMLN, negotiations that President Duarte had started but had not been able to successfully complete. A peace agreement was reached in 1991, with elements from both sides in the civil war participating in a somewhat precarious democratic regime. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SALVADORAN LABOR MOVEMENT In the early decades of the twentieth century there existed organizations that Miguel Mármol classified as guilds. These apparently consisted of both artisan employers and their workers.3 Apparently out of these there developed both mutual benefit groups and trade unions. As early as 1910 an organization of commercial workers was formed, which claimed some 5,000 members. It was legally recognized by the government in January 1920. By 1928, its membership was reported to have declined to 1,500.4 In 1914, the first reported attempt was made to establish a central labor group. We have found this called both Confederación de Obreros de El Salvador (COES) and Federación Obrera Regional de El Salvador. It was

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a conservative-minded organization, which defined its purpose to be “to improve the social and economic welfare of the workers.” We have little information concerning what groups belonged to this confederation. It was perhaps the group that was represented at the founding congress of the Pan American Federation of Labor in Laredo, Texas, in December 1918.5 The COES held a congress in the city of Armenia, 15 miles from Sal Salvador, in June 1918. It was presided over by A. Cindad Real and about 45 guilds and mutual benefit societies were represented by some 200 delegates. This congress pledged political support for a new political movement headed by Arturo Araujo and Alberto Masferrer, which sometime later established the Partido Laborista Salvadoreño (PLS).6 In the last part of the World War I and the years just following it, the Salvadoran workers were stirred by events going on outside the country. Miguel Mármol listed these as including “the Great Bourgeois Revolution in Mexico . . . the Great October Revolution in Russia; the revolution and its variations in Germany, the factory take-overs by the Italian workers; the upsurge of proletarianism in Spain, Great Britain, the United States, etc.” The new militancy of the workers of El Salvador found expression in a number of strikes. These included a walkout of railroad workers in 1919, one of tailors in 1920, and the first general strike of shoemakers in 1921.7 According to William Bollinger, the first trade unions were organized in 1922, and they formed the Unión Obrera Salvadoreña (UOB), which was opposed to mutual benefit orientation of the Confederación Obrera de El Salvador.8 Miguel Mármol pointed out that as the Salvadoran labor movement grew, several political tendencies were evident within it. He said that anarchist ideas were brought by periodicals from Spain, Argentina, and Mexico; Socialist influence came from the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana in Mexico and from Great Britain. Communist ideas and information, according to Mármol, came particularly from the Confederación General du Travail Unifié of France, whose publications came in considerable number to El Salvador. There was also an appreciable amount of Soviet literature that circulated in this period.9 By the end of the 1920s, the Communists had become the predominant political element in the labor movement of El Salvador. The government that was in power between 1918 and 1927—that of Jorge Meléndez and his brother-in-law Alfonso Quiñónez—sought to appropriate for themselves the growing feeling of discontent and potential militancy among the country’s artisan workers following World War I. To that end, they organized the so-called Liga Roja (Red League), proclaiming it “the vanguard of the working class,” and adopting the red flag as its symbol. However, the Liga Roja could not counteract the hostility engendered by the government’s repression of the beginnings of real labor organization.


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The Liga disappeared after the establishment of the Federación Regional de Trabajadores de El Salvador.10 THE FEDERACIÓN REGIONAL DE TRABAJADORES DE EL SALVADOR The first effective trade union central labor body in El Salvador was the Federación Regional de Trabajadores de El Salvador (FRTS), established in 1924. Miguel Mármol described the circumstances that gave rise to the FRTS. He said: “[i]n 1923 and 1924 several guilds had organized into trade unions with a deep class outlook. In the large cities, labor was organized in every shop, attracting all the employed workers: shoemakers, bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, barbers, tailors, tanners, textile workers, bakers, mechanics, etc.” In smaller population centers, where there were not enough people of a single trade to establish a union, sindicatos de oficios varios were established, composed of workers of different skills. The FRTS was originally organized as the Salvadoran segment of a Confederación Obrera Centro Americana, which was supposed to encompass federations in all five of the Central American republics. However, that overarching organizing was still born, according to Miguel Mármol.11 The FRTS was established at a congress on September 21, 1924. At its inception, it claimed 10,000 members, and in the following year it boasted 26 affiliated organizations of industrial and agricultural workers.12 The United States labor newspaper Justice, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the founding of the FRTS, published a report on it. This note said that the following of the federation: “[It] can certainly point to very gratifying results . . . it has organized many new trade unions, i.e, weavers, clothing workers, boot and shoe operatives, masons, and carpenter’s unions. The Trade Union Federation now has 26 affiliated organizations, two of which, with the aid of well-managed strike funds, have already organized several successful strikes.” This article also said: “The Trade Union Federation of Salvador pays great attention to the organization of women, particularly in the textile and tobacco industries. The wages of the women workers are on an average only a quarter of the men’s wages, although the women’s hours are nearly everywhere the same as the men’s. Another useful piece of work done is the institution of a workers’ education club and a library.”13 The federation had many activities. It carried on extensive organizing. Miguel Mármol described his organizing activities in the region of Ilopango, where he set up a Society of Workers, Peasants and Fishermen, which among other things organized a fishermen’s cooperative and established a “Department of Social Welfare to provide social services to everyone in the village who needed them, whether or not they were members

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of the Society.” The Society also undertook such community projects as repairing old local roads and building new ones.14 The FRTS was particularly active in organizing in the rural areas, where the great majority of the populations still lived. They sought to bring together the urban workers, the peasants, and agricultural laborers. They agitated the need for agrarian reform and reduction of rents of tenant farmers, as well as for government support of the rural workers’ rights to organize.15 The FRTS also established a People’s University. They recruited friendly intellectuals to lecture on such things as economics, political science, and law. Mármol noted that although most of the lecturers stressed the iniquities of United States imperialism “and in more general terms . . . characterized the structure of society from the point of view of class division . . . real proletarian ideology . . . didn’t come up more than fragmentarily.” The FRTS also had international relations. It sent a group of volunteers, headed by Farabundo Martí, a young student who became the federation’s most prominent leader, to join the forces of Agustín Sandino who were fighting a guerrilla war in neighboring Nicaragua against the local National Guard and U.S. Marines.16 It also was a founding member of the Confederación Sindical Latino Americana, established in 1929 to bring together Communist-controlled labor organizations in Latin America.17 As a civic group of growing size and importance, the Federación Regional had a natural interest in El Salvador politics. As we have seen, its predecessor, the COES, gave support to the reformist forces led by Arturo Araujo and Alberto Masferrer. Thereafter, the political forces within the confederation (FRST) became sufficiently diverse that it could not wholeheartedly support any political group or leader. From 1918 to 1927 when the so-called Meléndez–Quiñónez regime was in power, exercising a hardly disguised dictatorship, there was little or no temptation for anyone in the labor movement to support the government. However, starting in 1927, there was a short period of comparatively democratic regimes under Presidents Pío Romero Bosque and Arturo Araujo, whose mildly reformist governments presented a different situation for organized labor. The Bosque government passed legislation to legalize unions and established arbitration committees to intervene in labor disputes. It even offered to provide a subsidy for the FRTS, an offer that was rejected. However, in the last period of its incumbency, the Bosque tended to crack down on organized labor. The government of President Araujo, elected by the Labor Party with wide workers’ support, soon disillusioned the hopes of the labor movement and in any case was overthrown by the military with civilian oligarchy support before it had been in power for a year. The internal political situation within the FRTS evolved considerably. In its earliest years there were at least three political tendencies within it: anarchosyndicalist, reformist (mainly Araujo’s Labor Party), and Communist.


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However, by 1929 the Communists had largely gained control of the organization, even though they had not yet formally established a party. According to Miguel Mármol, anarchosyndicalism in the beginning had most influence within the FRTS and the Salvadoran labor movement in general. However, the Communist International soon took an interest in Salvadoran organized labor. Foreign Communists from Mexico and Peru, as well as Ricardo Martínez, the Venezuelan who was the official organizer for the Red International of Labor Unions in Latin America, visited El Salvador for longer or shorter periods of time.18 Even before the visits of these foreign Communists, there had begun to develop in El Salvador a group of labor leaders and intellectuals who were sympathetic to the Comintern and the Soviet Union. As early as 1920 the Workers’ Cultural Center had been established in San Salvador, where lectures were given “about the Soviets and the brilliant universal perspectives of the Bolshevik Revolution, about what the Russians were going to do with their liberated country.” By the mid-1920s there existed a group in El Salvador who considered themselves Communists. In 1928 they succeeded in expelling the reformists from the FRTS. In the Fifth Congress of the FRTS in 1929, according to Miguel Mármol, “those of us who were now Communists took responsibility for the regional leadership.” The still considerable part of the organization that was led by the anarchosyndicalists responded by refusing to pay dues to the FRTS, which considerably weakened it. However, the Communists consolidated their control in the Sixth Congress of the FRTS in 1930.19 By the time of the FRTS Sixth Congress, there finally existed a fullfledged Communist Party. For a number of years, those in the labor movement (and in the university) who felt themselves to be or wished to be Communists had organized study circles to learn more about Communist theory and organization. The arrival of the foreign Communists whom we have noted helped intensify this process of self-education in Bolshevik theory and practice. Finally, in March 1930, a formal Constitutional Assembly of the Communist Party of El Salvador was held at Ilopango, attended by between 30 and 35 people. It resolved to establish the party and proceeded to elect its Central Committee. It also resolved to establish a Young Communist League and a branch of International Red Aid, the Comintern’s organization, to provide legal help and other aid to Communists who got in trouble with the law because of their party activities. Miguel Mármol, who was commissioned to organize the Young Communist League and who remained for many years a major leader of the Salvadoran Communist Party, wrote, “We’re not distorting our country’s history when we say our Communist party is the child of the Salvadoran working class, since you won’t find any instances, as occurred in other countries, where the CP was primarily organized in the university or

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among the petty bourgeois. Our CP sprang from the very bowels of our working class, from the trade union movement as a superior form of class organization.20 THE HERNÁNDEZ MARTÍNEZ COUP AND THE MATANZA As we have noted, Arturo Araujo, the head of the Labor Party, was elected and took office as president of El Salvador early in 1931. At its inception, the Araujo government had very wide support from the workers, organized and unorganized, although this backing soon diminished because of the failure of Araujo to move energetically to carry out the reforms that he had promised. However, the very existence of that government aroused fear and hatred on the part of the fourteen families, and plotting against it began virtually from its inception. The leaders of the Federación Regional heard the rumors of the plotting to overthrow Araujo, and although they had lost whatever enthusiasm they might originally have had for this government, they feared very much what would result from this overthrow and discussed the possibility of a general strike if a coup was attempted. However, they had not made any concrete plans when General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the minister of war, overthrew Araujo, meeting virtually no resistance. The Communists, who by then completely dominated the leadership of the FRTS, were faced with serious problems. The Hernández Martínez coup had aroused widespread indignation, particularly among groups of rural workers. The Communists also faced the fact that the new dictator had not canceled congressional and local elections that were scheduled for the end of December; after extensive debate they had decided earlier in the year to participate in those elections and now had to decide whether or not to continue to do so. For some time, the Communists sought to reach some arrangement with General Hernández Martínez. They decided to continue to take part in the elections, which were rescheduled for January 3 – 4, 1932. Their efforts in this direction were negated when the Hernández Martínez government refused to recognize the extensive victories that Communist candidates had had. The Communists also sought to prevent a spontaneous uprising, particularly in the Ahuachapán region in western El Salvador, where a general strike was declared in the face of particularly violent interference with the elections by the National Guard, and the authorities responded by gunning down many people. In an act of desperation, the Communists sought to obtain a meeting with General Hernández Martínez. Although he at first agreed to confer with them, when a Communist delegation waited upon him he refused to speak with them, turning them over to the minister of war, who stonewalled the Communist deputation.21


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At that point, the Communists decided to encourage, and take the leadership in, a mass uprising against the Hernández Martínez dictatorship. They felt that they had a fair chance of success, not only because of the massive revulsion of the civilian population against the regime, but also because they thought that they had the support of important elements of the army, and particularly of the air force, who would join the revolt. Miguel Mármol had played a key role in conspiring with the military elements. However, on a couple of occasions they postponed the date on which the revolt was to take place. The government, which had received information about the planned uprising, moved first. They were able to arrest Farabundo Martí and many of the leaders of the Communist Party and the FRTS even before the revolt began, and these people were shot almost immediately. The government was also able to arrest most of the key military people who were compromised with the uprising, and execute them, so that when the revolt actually began, crudely armed peasants and city workers faced overwhelming fire power from the armed forces. The actual uprising was put down with relative ease by the military. Then began the Matanza, which we have noted earlier—the rounding up of unarmed peasants—men, women, and children—and their executing without trial, often in the public streets and squares. The government was also able to capture many of the Communist and union leaders who had escaped the first roundup. These included Miguel Mármol, who was sent out to be executed along with several of his comrades but who was severely wounded but not killed by the firing squad, a fact that was not noticed by the officer in charge, as a result of which some hours later Mármol was able to get out from under the comrade who had fallen on top of him, and he got away.22 The Matanza resulted in the virtual liquidation of the organized labor movement of El Salvador. The dictatorship that was inaugurated by the Matanza left no room for opposition, and little for the existence of organizations of workers and peasants. For a decade after the Matanza there was for all practical purposes no labor movement in the republic. LABOR AND THE DECLINE AND FALL OF HERNÁNDEZ MARTÍNEZ It was not until the advent of World War II that the labor movement, although in a very attenuated form, began to appear once again. Although there is a record of COES having been established some time in the late 1930s and that it joined the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL), it is clear that the COES was a paper organization.23 Whether because he was sure of his hold on power or because he wanted to seem to appear democratic as a member of the United Nations in World War II, President Hernández Martínez had his government launch Salvadoran Social Reconstruction in 1942. According to Miguel Mármol this

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“was intended to be the gem of one single, central guild, through which the Government could control the Salvadoran workers’ movement in the future.” However, some of the underground Communist and trade union leaders took advantage of this to organize units of the new group. For instance, Mármol himself organized a group of shoemakers, from the union to which he had formerly belonged. Some other Communists took similar steps.24 By early 1944, discontent against the Hernández Martínez dictatorship had reached near the point of explosion. In early April there was an abortive insurrection from within the armed forces, which Hernández Martínez met with declaration of a state of siege and by launching a massacre reminiscent of January 1932, although not as intense. As a consequence, as Miguel Mármol said, “The guild organisms stopped functioning, the leaders from every sector strictly controlled.”25 However, this repression did not suppress the nationwide revulsion against the dictatorship. At that point, a number of the Communist trade unionists decided to launch a new political party, the Unión de Trabajadores (UNT). The immediate objective of the UNT was to have a workers’ political group that could join with student organizations and middleclass elements who were organizing resistance to the regime.26 There was apparently some confusion as to whether the UNT was a political party or a central labor organization.27 One non-Communist labor leader told me subsequently that almost all of the country’s labor organizations had joined the UNT.28 The upshot of the situation was the so-called strike of fallen arms. This nationwide walkout was called for first by the students but was joined in by workers and business people and became a virtually universal protest against the regime and demand for its overthrow. The UNT played a major role in mobilizing the workers. Success was finally achieved on May 9, 1944, when President Hernández Martínez fled to Guatemala.29 General Andrés Ignacio Menéndez took over with the flight of Hernández Martínez, and for a short while he permitted a considerable degree of political freedom.30 Almost immediately, a presidential election campaign began, with the principal candidate being Arturo Romero, a secret member of the Communist Party but with wide popular appeal. The UNT came out in support of him, as did a new Partido de Unidad Democrática (PUD). The labor movement began to revive, with many new unions being established and the Communists reemerging as the principal political element in the movement.31 Among the unions to appear was the Unión de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros (Union of Railroad Workers—UTF), which was under non-Communist leadership.32 However, this short period of relative freedom came to an end on October 21, 1944, when Colonel Osmín Asquirre—who had been chief of police at the time of the 1932 massacre and had regained that position after Hernández Martínez’s ouster—led a successful coup and installed himself


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in power. Osmín Aguirre reestablished a bloody repression and outlawed the UNT and the PUD parties. A national general strike was called against the coup, but it failed.33 Osmín Aguirre soon organized an election in which there was only one candidate, Colonel Salvador Casteñeda Castro, who took office early in 1945. Under him, the severity of the dictatorship was somewhat relaxed. The labor movement began to reorganize, under the leadership of the Coordinating Committee. Late in 1945, there was a strike of the railroaders, and President Casteñeda Castro “acceded to some demands.” In January 1946, he had a law enacted that recognized the right to strike, but with “severe restrictions,” with a new National Labor Department having to decide whether or not a strike was legal.34 The Coordinating Committee soon established a new Pro-Workers Confederation Committee, which led several strikes of textile and bakery workers in August and September 1946. The Castañeda Castro government responded violently to these walkouts, helping to break them, and troops fired on a union demonstration. A general strike called by the Coordinating Committee on September 21 failed, and the government legally dissolved a member of unions and exiled some trade union leaders. In October, the president established a Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare to exercise more extensive control over organized labor. For the next two years trade union activity had to be largely clandestine. In 1947 a new tentative central labor group, the Comité de Reorganización Obrera Sindical Salvadoreño (CROSS) was established. It held its second congress in mid-1948. According to William Bollinger, “CROSS established provisional union leadership committees and rebuilt unions independent of government control.”35 Communist influence was substantial, if not dominant, in the Coordinating Committee and the CROSS. However, there were a number of labor groups that were not under Communist control. These included the Centro Cultural de Motoristas, ostensibly a mutual benefit society of the chauffeurs, but which served in some ways as a trade union. It sent a delegate to the conference in Lima, Peru, in January 1948, which established the Confederación Interamericana de Trabajadores, the rival of the Communist-controlled CTAL. In mid-1948 a group of unions aligned with the chauffeurs was planning for establishment of a national union confederation and was lobbying in Congress for passage of a labor code and establishment of a social security system.36 One leader of the Centro Cultural de Motoristas indicated in August 1948 that there were 15 other workers’ groups still functioning openly in Salvador. These included the UTF, unions of the electric company workers, commercial employees, bartenders, and a new teachers’ union. He also noted that unions of shoeworkers, bakers, construction workers, and carpenters had been dissolved under the Castañeda Castro regime. Some labor organizations still existed in at least eleven provincial cities and towns.37

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Certainly, the organized labor movement was not an element of any substantial political or economic importance in 1948. This was indicated by the comment of the British general manager of one of the country’s principal banks in August of that year that there was no trade union movement in the country, although the banker thought that President Castañeda Castro was trying to foment one, as a part of his campaign to have himself reelected.38 THE DECEMBER 1948 COUP AND THE OSORIO ADMINISTRATION In December 1948 the government of President Castañeda Castro was overthrown by a coup of middle-ranking army officers. A junta government was formed, headed by Major Oscar Osorio, who was elected president and took office December 14, 1950, on the second anniversary of the coup.39 The railroad workers’ union, the UTF, was particularly militant in this period. In May 1949 it launched a strike against the country’s two railroads, which were refusing to negotiate with it. When the railroad companies brought pressure on the government to break the strike, the president of the UTF waited upon one member of the junta and told him that if the government sought to do so, there would be a general strike. The government finally brought pressure on the railroads to settle with the union, as consequence of which a collective bargaining agreement was reached. It provided for annual paid vacations for the workers, sick pay at one-half regular wages, a forty-five-hour workweek with forty-eight hours’ pay, as well as a wage increase.40 During the junta period and the first couple of years of the Osorio administration, the government adopted a more or less paternalistic attitude toward organized labor and the problems of the (urban) workers. Two successive labor laws were passed, in 1950 and 1951, which legalized unions and asserted the right to strike, but with many limitations. Both labor laws forbade the formation of union federations or confederations and prohibited unions from joining any international labor organization. They also forbade the formation of unions of rural workers. President Osorio told the American ambassador that the government wanted “to develop the unions slowly, to engender the least resistance possible.” Osorio said that their development would at first be confined to the cities and that after they had been firmly established there, the unions might be permitted to form federations and confederations, and union organization might be extended to the countryside.41 According to the Organization of American States source, there were 26 (presumably legal) unions, with 5,941 members in El Salvador in August 1951. By July 1953 this number had grown to 30 unions and by January 1954 to 49.42


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The prohibition of rural unionism was particularly important, given the fact that the vast majority of the wage earners were in agriculture. Minister of Labor Mario Héctor Salazar frankly explained to me that rural unionization was “too dangerous.” He added that the government had “to walk carefully, since there are powerful interests which might turn against it.” He said that ultimately the formation of agricultural workers’ organizations might be permitted, but for the time being they had to be banned.43 More than a decade later ex-President Oscar Osorio explained to me that rural trade unions could not be permitted because they would raise wages so much as to make the country’s rural exports uncompetitive. He added, “Perhaps in a hundred years El Salvador will be a predominantly industrial country, and then it can afford to have rural unionism when agriculture is no longer as important to the national economy.”44 On the other hand, the official government controls over legalized unions were somewhat less extensive in these laws than was the case in many of the Latin American labor codes. For instance, the Union Supervision Section of the Ministry of Labor only concerned itself with union finances if the government banking department reported that a sindicato had spent money on things prohibited by law—principally money-making enterprises or politics. Also, the Ministry of Labor had no legal role to play in union elections and was not authorized to refuse to recognize the results of such elections.45 The Venezuelan labor leader Augusto Malavé Villalba reported to the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT) on the labor legislation that existed in El Salvador in 1955. Among other laws, he noted the one in legalization of unions, one on collective bargaining, and a General Law on Collective Labor Conflicts. There also existed a law on labor accidents and one requiring employers to have provisions for first aid on the premises in case of workers’ accidents. A social security law had just been passed, covering only the capital city and its environs at that point, which covered common illnesses, labor accidents, work-related disease, and maternity.46 The Law of Unionization of 1951 had two provisions that were not always found in Latin American labor legislation. It provided in Article 36, “Members of the directing bodies of duly constituted unions or those in formation, elected according to the dispositions of the present law, cannot be dismissed, transferred or have their conditions of work worsened during the period of their election or holding office except for just cause confirmed by the Labor Inspection Department.”47 Article 38 provided for employer checkoff of union dues. It stated, “The firm that has workers affiliated to a union of whatever kind, will be obliged to deduct from their wages or salaries the union dues, to turn them over to the union or unions, providing that it or they have provided the appropriate Department Delegation or Inspectorate of Labor with the names of the unionized workers.”48

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In addition to legalizing urban unions and enacting some labor protective legislation, the Osorio government also showed some interest in labor education. Something of the nature of that program may be seen in the curriculum of a labor education course organized by the Municipal Slaughterhouse Workers Union of San Salvador, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Labor. According to an Organization of American States source, “There the educators in addition to teaching reading and writing . . . have talked and discussed with the workers subjects such as duties and Rights of Man, care of the family, relations among workmates, history of the fatherland, significance of the flag, coat of arms and national anthem and other things of worker interests.” The sessions also dealt with organizing and managing a union cooperative.49 Also, unlike the situation in some other Latin American countries, the regulations on wages, hours, and working conditions set forth in the two labor laws of 1950 and 1951 were subsequently reported to be generally enforced. These included maximum hours legislation and limitation of child labor. In 1954, the inspection service of the Ministry of Labor, the personnel of which had been considerably expanded, was making 900 inspections a week.50 The Osorio administration made it a policy to try to prevent strikes. Minister of Labor Mario Héctor Salazar, in his fifth and final report to Congress commented, The efforts of the Government to get the employers and workers to resolve their difficulties and differences in terms of law and not by extreme resort to strikes or stoppages, had had the greatest success: no labor-management conflict has been resolved during the present administration by the coercive method of the strike or stoppage, since although many conflicts have arisen, with strike deadlines, these were resolved with the friendly intervention of the Department of Labor, which was always able to generate between the parties a frank spirit of conciliation.51

By 1952 there clearly existed two groups of unions in El Salvador, those that were under Communist influence, and those that were not. The former all had their headquarters in the same building, where there were fourteen different groups. Although they were not allowed to legally establish a federation, they “met periodically to resolve their joint problems.”52 These unions included the shoemakers, bakers, construction workers, brewery employees, the Minerva textile plant union, one bus union, the liquor industry workers, among others. Some of these unions had groups in the interior of the country that were affiliated with them. This was the case with the bakers’ union, for instance.53 It was also true of the construction workers’ union, which claimed a membership of 2,500, making it the largest union in the country.54 Similarly, the mechanics union, which had a membership of 1,200, of whom 500 paid dues, had branches in two provincial cities.55


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The Venezuelan labor leader Augusto Malavé Villalba, who visited El Salvador in 1955 on behalf of the ORIT, visited another de facto regional federation in the city of San Miguel in eastern El Salvador. He noted, “The workers have rented a large building called the Casa Sindical, where all of the unions of the locality function. They maintain strong unity and practically functions as a Regional Federation, since they have a Comité Coordinador Pro Federación de Oriente.”56 The Communist-influenced unions had established in 1951 a Comité Pro Defensa de los Derechos Laborales, which included some union leaders who were not Communists, to take the place of CROSS, which had been dissolved by the junta government.57 It also was apparently outlawed by the Osorio government, although for some time the semi-federation in San Salvador that we have noted was allowed to continue to exist. Augusto Malavé Villalba wrote in August 1955, “Recently there has been established a Comité Pro-Confederación de Trabajadores de El Salvador, in which are represented the majority of the unions, which is laying the basis for the constitution of regional federations of workers, and of the Confederación. It also aspires to get representation in a series of government organisms of recent creation in which the employer forces have their people.”58 None of the unions in the de facto federation in San Salvador had been able to negotiate a collective contract with its employers. However, they did have established grievance procedures through which the union members could deal with their individual problems. POLITICAL TENDENCIES IN ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE OSORIO PERIOD The most important of the unions that were not under Communist influence was the UTF, which claimed to have 90 percent of the railroaders in its ranks. It was also the only union that in 1952 had a collective bargaining contract, the most recent one having been negotiated in December 1951. Among the other features of that agreement were the checkoff of union dues and an established grievance procedure. With the dues income they had received in the first months of the contract, the UTF had been able to equip their offices with necessary furniture. The UTF had some connection with the Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Democrática (PRUD), established during the junta government by those who made the December 1948 coup. In subsequent elections, three leaders of the railroad workers were elected to Congress on the PRUD ticket.59 Another major union that was not under Communist control in this period was the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Empresas Eléctricas, including workers of all five electric companies serving the country. It had originally been established in 1945 as the Sociedad de Trabajadores de

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Empresas Eléctricas and in 1949 had been reorganized as a trade union. In 1954 it was said to have between 800 and 1,000 members—having almost all of those in two of the electric firms, very few in two others, and perhaps half in the fifth company. It had sufficient income so that its Executive Committee members could be paid by the union when conducting union business (at the rate they would otherwise receive on their regular jobs). It had collective contracts with two of the country’s electric firms and was submitting demands for negotiations with the other three.60 Another group of unions that were not under Communist influence were the half-dozen miners’ organizations. They were meeting very considerable resistance from the employers, who worked extensively to break them up.61 Serafino Romualdi had occasion to visit two of the three miners’ organization. About one, the Monte Cristo mine, he reported, “Though the workers had a union, it had not been able to help them to any great degree.” Concerning another, the El Divisadero gold mine, Romualdi reported that “it filled me with a feeling of helplessness” and that many if not most of the workers there suffered from silicosis.62 Although the Communists obviously had some considerable influence in the labor movement after December 1948, they were not able to get the degree of control that they had had in the early 1930s. This was due to at least two reasons. On the one hand, the provision of both the 1950 and 1951 labor laws providing that no union official could hold office for more than a year made it rather difficult for them to consolidate their position in many of the unions. In the second place, in December 1953 to January 1954 the Osorio government cracked down strongly on the Communists in the labor movement, jailing and exiling a number of their leaders.63 One effect of this crackdown by the Osorio regime was to break up the informal federation of Communist-influenced unions that had been functioning in San Salvador until then. Although the unions involved still remained legal, most of them were forced to move their headquarters out of the building where they had been located, and they were no longer able to work together to the degree that had formerly been possible.64 However, this crackdown on organized labor was not confined to persecution of Communist trade union leaders. Serafino Romualdi wrote, “At the beginning of its term, the Osorio government thought it could fight the Communists by indiscriminate use of police power, and be labeling as Communist anyone who was fighting for the improvement of the working class.”65 Characteristic of the attitude and behavior of many in the 1948 so-called revolutionary government was the arrest and deportation of Arturo Jáuregui, who visited El Salvador in September 1950 on behalf of the Confederación Interamericana de Trabajadores (CIT). Those who arrested him and dumped him across the Honduran frontier accused him of being a Communist, in spite of his credentials from the CIT, of the significance of which they were either ignorant or had no interest in.66


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Romualdi himself intervened in this situation, in his role as assistant secretary-general of ORIT. He wrote, “I was privileged with an invitation to discuss with President Osorio himself the ‘best way to fight Communism and build up a genuine democratic labor movement. . . . This dialogue with the President and his collaborators continued for a number of years.” According to Romualdi, he advised Osorio and his ministers of labor that among other things required was a program for training nonCommunist labor leaders and “social measures on the part of the government itself.”67 However, the Osorio government remained very reticent about permitting too much freedom to organized labor. It continued to refuse to allow the unions to form federations and confederations, although by 1954 it had permitted the establishment in the towns of San Miguel and Sonsonate of casas sindicales, buildings that housed the offices of most of the unions in those municipalities. According to Minister of Labor Héctor Salazar, these were “experiments” to see how the unions would work together. However, he suggested that it would be a “long time” before the formal establishment of union federations would be permitted.68 An official of the U.S. Embassy reported in August 1954 that the labor movement was weaker than it had been two years before, although it had grown slightly in terms of numbers. He credited the unions with having about 13,000 members. He claimed that the workers had expected too much from the unions and that many of them had become disillusioned. He also commented that the labor movement was plagued with unable leadership because of the labor law requirement that no union official could serve for more than a year.69 During the early 1950s, there was a third political element seeking influence with the Salvadoran labor movement, aside from the Communists and ORIT. This was the Peronistas. The Argentine Embassy’s labor attachés were actively propagating the message of President Juan Perón. However, their impact in El Salvador was substantially less than in some of the neighboring countries. Minister of Labor Mario Héctor Salazar discounted completely the influence of the Peronistas in the Salvadoran labor movement, saying that the local Peronistas consisted of “five fellows of whom one hears nothing,” and that they had not been able to recruit any significant unions. A leader of the railroad workers said in 1952 that although the Argentine labor attachés turned out “mountains of propaganda,” they had not been able to gain any significant influence. The head of the Electrical Workers Union said that although his union received a great deal of Peronista propaganda, they paid little attention to it, although he did add that his union had been represented at two conferences leading up to the establishment of Agrupación de Trabajadores Latino Americanos Sindicalizados (ATLAS), the short-lived Peronista Latin American labor confederation. Apparently that union did not formally join ATLAS, however.70

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Luis Alberto Monge, then a Costa Rican labor leader who visited El Salvador in order to interest the labor groups there in sending delegates to the Second Congress of the CIT in Havana in September 1949, commented on the influence of the Peronistas in El Salvador at that time. He said that they had joined with the Communists in the UTF to block that union’s sending such a delegate.71 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FEDERATIONS AND CONFEDERATIONS Colonel José María Lemus, the candidate of the PRUD who was “elected” to succeed President Osorio, promised during his campaign to end the prohibition on unions establishing federations and confederations. The labor leaders generally looked upon this promise with a considerable degree of skepticism.72 However, in 1957, President Lemus took steps to fulfill his electoral promise. He permitted the summoning of a national labor congress in March, apparently feeling that the government could be certain that the meeting would not turn out to be critical of the regime. However, that did not prove to be the case. It drew up “a program calling for trade union freedom, passage of a labor code, the right to organize for farm workers, and creation of a single Salvadoran trade union confederation.” The elements controlling the March 1957 congress moved in August to establish a new central labor organization. This was the Confederación General de Trabajadores Salvadoreños (CGTS) and was headed by José Alberto López. However, soon afterward, unionists who were in disagreement with the CGTS leadership broke away to set up, with the support of the ORIT and acquiescence of the government, the Confederación General de Sindicatos (CGS), which was led by Rafael Fernández Saravia and affiliated with the ORIT.73 One of the most significant unions forming the CGS was the Sindicato Unión de Trabajadores de la Construcción (SUTC), formed in 1956 to compete with the Sindicato General de Trabajadores de la Industria de la Construcción, the construction workers union controlled by the Communists. Due in part at least to the hostility of the government toward the Communist-led union, the SUTC quickly became the larger of the two and one of the largest unions in the country. It claimed 6,000 members in 1959 and 10,000 by 1963. Although it prospered in the 1960s, when it had collective contracts with many of the principal construction firms, it was faced with a crisis in the construction industry in the following decade.74 Another significant CGS union was the Sindicato de la Industria Pesquera (SIP), which was not established until 1961, as part of the CGS’s Food and Beverage Workers Federation of Trade Unions. Although it officially had only 221 members in 1963, it subsequently organized the workers in eight shrimp firms, both fishermen and workers in the processing


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plants and allied activities. The union was one of the few in which the majority of members were women—about 70 percent. The SIP was one of the unions that left the CGS at the time of the split in that confederation in 1972.75 The Communists were undoubtedly very active in the CGTS, although at least one foreign observer interpreted it as being generally antigovernment rather than specifically Communist in its orientation. Alfredo Nazario, head of the Labor Institute of the University of Puerto Rico, conducted a labor leadership training program in San Salvador early in 1959, attended by 50 people, drawn from the ranks of the CGTS, the CGS, and some independent unions. Nazario estimated in mid-1959 that there were over 80 unions in El Salvador. Of these, over 50 belonged to the CGS, almost 40 to the CGTS, and about half a dozen unions were independent of either of the central labor groups.76 At about the same time, a former labor adviser of the United States International Cooperation Administration claimed that the CGS had the great majority of the country’s unions in its ranks. He credited the CGTS with having principally artisan’s organizations such as the printers, shoemakers, and tailors as affiliates, with the printers union being the most significant of its member organizations.77 Some important unions were outside of either central labor group. One of these was the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Empresas Eléctricas, covering workers in the five private electric companies supplying the country, which was the second largest independent union in the 1950s and early 1960s.78 ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE 1960s BEFORE THE 1967 GENERAL STRIKE On October 26, 1960, the government of President Lemus was overthrown in a widely supported civil–military movement, in which the CGTS played a part. For a short while there was a progressive civil–military junta in charge, centering on a new party, the Partido Revolucionario Abril y Mayo (PRAM), which among other things passed some new labor legislation, including the establishment of labor courts for the handling of workers’ grievances. However, on January 23, 1961, this junta was overthrown in a further bloody coup. A number of trade unionists were among those killed in this coup. A new, more conservative, civilian–military junta took charge, and the PRAM soon disappeared.79 In 1962, Colonel Julio Adalberto Rivera was elected president with the support of the so-called PCN, which was to be the government party for nearly 20 years. The new president had the support of the CGS, and he at first made some apparently progressive moves. Among these was a law supposedly regulating conditions for the country’s agricultural workers.

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This law provided for vacations for them, as well as a minimum wage and a prescribed diet that the employers were supposed to offer them. It is doubtful these laws were vigorously enforced.80 President Rivera had promised to enact a labor code. He did so in 1963. However, a labor attaché of the American Embassy described this code as being “made for the lawyers, not either for the workers or the employers.” Both unionists and employers sought for changes in the legislation— workers because of the limitations on the right to strike, and employers because it contained some material favorable to the workers that tended to raise the costs of production. As for the right to strike, which was supposedly granted in the labor code, the labor attaché noted that there were so many steps that had to be executed before a strike could be declared legal that it took 19 months to two years before this could occur.81 As a consequence, between the passage of the law and 1967, not a single strike had been declared legal.82 In spite of the government’s failure to declare a single strike legal, walkouts did occur. Early in 1967, the bus drivers in San Salvador went on strike. The year before they had won the establishment of a single eighthour shift, whereas before most workers had been working two shifts. Both the drivers and the public were pleased with this because the public felt that not only were the workers dangerous drivers near the end of the second shift, but they were also frequently discourteous. However, the bus workers soon found that they were facing a 40 percent wage cut. So the union demanded a 75 percent wage increase. When the owners paid little attention to this demand, the workers went out on strike. The government, fearing that the walkout would have a negative effect on the election campaign that was under way, brought pressure on the bus owners to settle, and the workers won a 40 percent wage increase. There was also a walkout at a Japanese-owned textile plant near the San Salvador airport. The issue was the employer’s policy of having a rapid turnover in the factory personnel and failure to pay legally required dismissal pay to workers laid off. Again, the government intervened to force a settlement favorable to the workers.83 The Rivera government was hostile toward the Communist-influenced CGTS confederation and favored the CGS. Late in 1962, a leader of the CGS claimed that his confederation had 80 unions affiliated with it, while only 8 belonged to the CGTS.84 According to William Bollinger, the CGTS a year later had only eight unions with 2,482 members.85 The CGTS disappeared when its affiliates joined with some independent unions, including the UTF, to establish the Salvadoran Trade Union Unity Committee (CUSS), which included 20 unions. The CUSS sought to bring into existence a single trade union confederation. With that in mind, a conference met in April 1965, officially entitled the Second National Trade Union Congress. There were delegates from unions associated with the CUSS, the CGS, and a small Catholic trade union group. The only


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agreement there was to work together for changes in the 1963 labor code. However, in October 1965, the unions associated with the CUSS formally established a new central labor group, the Federación Unitaria Sindical de El Salvador (FUSS).86 Although the FUSS was predominantly under Communist influence, the labor attaché of the U.S. Embassy reported in 1967 that it was not “unconditionally so.” He cited the fact that the founding congress of the FUSS refused a Communist proposal to include a demand for nationalization of the International Railways of Central America and various public utility enterprises in the federation’s statement of principles. The delegates from the railroad union vetoed that, having no desire for the government to take over the railroad, which would make it much more difficult for the union to get concessions from the management than it was when the management represented a foreign private enterprise. The attaché added that although the unions of the FUSS were perfectly willing to go on record denouncing the United States’ actions in Vietnam, they were not willing to follow the Communist line if it was damaging to their own interests.87 Meanwhile, the CGS had merged its affiliated unions into four federations. These were the Construction Industry and Transport Union Federation (FESINCONSTRANS), with about 10,000 members; the Food and Beverage Workers Federation of Trade Unions (FESINTRABS) with 2,264 members, the Textile Union Federation (FESINTEXSICA), with 2,698 members, and the Industry and Service Workers Federation of Trade Unions (FESITRISEVA), “with no affiliates of significant size.” The ORIT, and after 1962, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), collaborated closely with the CGS during most of the 1960s. According to William Bollinger, between 1962 and 1972, the AIFLD conducted seminars in El Salvador that trained 7,219 unionists, while 29 Salvadoran unionists were sent to the AIFLD regional training office at Front Royal, Virginia, near Washington, DC, for further instruction.88 By 1967, the CGS claimed to have 127 sindicatos in its ranks. According to one of the principal leaders of the organization, although the confederation, its four federations, and its individual unions were generally led by non-Communists, only his federation, that of Food and Beverage Workers, was completely free of Communist influence.89 Another CGS leader cited one of the marked advantages that the Communists had in the labor movement was that they had as many as 35–40 full-time paid organizers working in or for the unions.90 THE 1967 GENERAL STRIKE A high point in the development of organized labor in El Salvador was undoubtedly the general strike of April 1967. Although very limited in

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its objectives, and occurring against a background of a change from one government administration to another that undermined the unity of the regime and its party and gave organized labor exceptional leverage, the walkout was a notable triumph for the trade union movement. The crisis that gave rise to the general strike began with a labor dispute at the Sociedad Acero S.A. metallurgical plant owned by an Italian company headed by Antonio Borgonovo and located on the coastal road outside of the town of Zacatecoluca, 58 kilometers from the capital, San Salvador. The workers there had extensive grievances against the plant management, including low wages, abusive behavior by one of the principal administrators, and other issues. What brought the resentment of the workers to a boiling point was the unfair dismissal of two workers. The workers at Acero were represented by a union belonging to the CGS. With the dismissal of the two workers, the union met to discuss the presentation of a series of demands to the employer and the possibility of a strike. Present at this meeting was Felipe Zaldivar, the head of the Construction and Transport Workers Federation of the CGS, with which the union was affiliated. Although he urged that wage issues not be part of the union’s demands, since they should await the negotiation of a new collective contract, the local union leaders decided to include a general wage increase as part of their demands—after consulting with leaders of the FUSS, the rival central labor body. The management ignored the union’s demands, and on April 6, the workers went out on strike. The National Association of Industrialists immediately backed the Acero management and demanded that the Ministry of Labor declare the strike illegal, which it did on April 10, giving the workers until April 15 to return to work, after which the management would be free to replace the strikers. Union leaders of both confederations regarded this as a threat to the right to strike in general. They signed a Pact of Unity in support of the Acero strikers and mobilized workers from all over the country to gather in front of the plant on the morning of April 15 to defy any attempt by the government to usher strikebreakers into the factory. In the face of the very large number of workers there, the government of President Julio Adalberto Rivera backed down. The government then sought to divide the workers. The president named René Barrios Amoya, head of the chauffeurs’ union, as mediator in the strike, and Barrios Amoya invited the union’s negotiating committee to go with him to the presidential palace in San Salvador, to meet with the president who would settle the conflict. The local union leaders turned down this invitation. It was renewed by President Rivera through other channels, although he made it clear that the two advisers to the union negotiating committee (members of the General Strike Command that had already been established) Felipe Antonio Zaldivar of the CGS and Julio César Castro Belloso of the FUSS,


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would not be received by him. The negotiating committee agreed to meet with the president, but nothing came of that meeting since no one from the Acero firm’s management was present, and President Rivera himself had no concrete suggestions as to how to resolve the problem. The union leaders became convinced that there were divided counsels in the government, between certain elements who had been close to Rivera and had a hard line, and others closer to president-elect Fidel Sánchez, with a more moderate position. The General Strike Command therefore decided upon calling a general strike. It was first set to begin at midnight April 24/25, but was postponed for one day. It was a so-called progressive general strike, that is, some workers would walk out the first day, others would join them the next day, and so on, until virtually all of the country’s workers were on strike. The General Strike Command planned carefully which unions would strike when. The workers’ response to the general strike call was strong. On the first day, railroad and port workers, bakers, hotel industry workers, and construction workers walked out. On the second, various groups of workers in the food trades, the textile industry, and the shoe industry struck, among others. Some workers who were not unionized at all also joined the walkout. By noon of the third day, 35,000 workers were said to be on strike. The Rivera administration was faced with a dilemma. If they responded to the walkout with overwhelming force, this would bring innumerable casualties, and given the lame duck nature of Rivera’s presidency, might well have provoked a coup. So the president decided on negotiations. He turned this job over to the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who brought together the Acero Company management and the union negotiating committee on the evening of the first day of the strike. By the early morning of the third day, an agreement had been reached—giving the workers a substantial wage increase, accession to the union’s demand for dismissal of a top company official, and the reemployment of the two workers whose dismissal had precipitated the strike. When this agreement had been ratified by a general assembly of the Acero union, the General Strike Command called off the general strike. This occurred at noon on the third day of the walkout.91

NOTES 1. See David Mena, in Ruptura en las Relaciones Laborales: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estados Unidos, México, Paraguay, coord. Holm-Detlev Köhler and Manfred Wannöffel (México, DF: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, Nueva Sociedad, 1995). 2. Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons: Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967), pp. 29–250. 3. Roque Dalton, Miguel Mármol (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1987), p. 100.

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4. M. Olan (garment manufacturer, ex-Socialist, ex-Communist), research notes. 5. Moisés Poblete Troncoso, “Labor Legislation in Cuba and Central America,” Monthly Labor Review (Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, September 1929); Olan, research notes. 6. Olan, research notes; see also William Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 385. 7. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 99. 8. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 385. 9. Miguel Mármol (onetime Communist trade union leader in El Salvador), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 22, 1953. 10. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 365–66. 11. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 101. 12. Olan, research notes. 13. Justice (New York), newspaper of International Ladies Garment Workers Union, September 25, 1925. 14. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, pp. 124–25. 15. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 386. 16. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 115. 17. Mármol, interview. 18. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, pp. 139–41. 19. Ibid., pp. 141–48. 20. Ibid., p. 149. 21. Ibid., pp. 226–39. 22. Ibid., pp. 238–61. 23. Segundo Congreso General de la Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina, Cali, Colombia, Diciembre 1944 (México, DF: Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina, 1945). 24. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 402. 25. Ibid., p. 425. 26. Ibid., pp. 226–27; see also Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 310. 27. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 434. 28. Eduardo Alfonso Figeac (secretary of Centro Cultural de Motoristas), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 7, 1948. 29. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, pp. 226–27; Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 310. 30. Alfonso Figeac, interview. 31. Dalton, Miguel Mármol, pp. 429–36. 32. Ibid., p. 435. 33. Ibid., pp. 437–38. 34. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 311, 373. 35. Ibid., pp. 372–73. 36. Alfonso Figeac, interview. 37. Francisco Bustos Fernández (official of Centro Cultural de Motoristas de El Salvador), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 6, 1948. 38. Gerald D. Crossley (general manager, Banco Salvadoreño), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 9, 1948.


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39. Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, p. 251. 40. Benjamin Mejía Martínez (president of Unión de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros of El Salvador), interview with the author in Havana, Cuba, September 10, 1949. 41. Angier Biddle Duke (U.S. ambassador to El Salvador), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 3, 1952. 42. “Instituto de Trabajo” en El Salvador (Washington, DC: Unión Panamericana, Departamento de Asuntos Económicos, y Sociales, División de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales, 1955), p. 1. 43. Mario Héctor Salazar (minister of labor), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 3, 1952. 44. Robert J. Alexander, Presidents of Central America, Mexico, Cuba and Hispaniola, Conversations and Correspondence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), p. 141. 45. Sr. Olmedo (head of Union Supervision Section of Ministry of Labor), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 3, 1952. 46. Augusto Malavé Villalba, “Progresos Promulgado en el Movimiento Sindical de El Salvador,” August 29, 1955 (manuscript). 47. Recopilación de Leyes de Trabajo Promulgado Hasta Marzo de 1952, No. 2, Ministerio de Trabajo y Previsión Social, San Salvador, 1952, pp. 26–27. 48. Ibid., pp. 27–28. 49. “Institutos de Trabajo” en El Salvador, p. 2. 50. Irving Tragen (foreign operations administration labor adviser to government of El Salvador), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 17, 1954. 51. Política Social del Ministerio de Trabajo, Parte General de la Memoria del Ramo Correspondiente a la Gestión 1954–1955 (San Salvador, 1955), p. 41. 52. Felicito Martínez (financial secretary of Sindicato de Trabajadores del Calzado), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 3, 1952. 53. Jesús Hugo Escobar (secretary-general of Sindicato de Panificadores), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 2, 1952. 54. J. C. Tejada (secretario de relaciones of Sindicato de Construcción), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 2, 1952. 55. Miguel Angel Rodríguez (member of Executive of Sindicato de Trabajadores Mecánicos), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 2, 1952. 56. Augusto Malavé Villalba, “Informe Sobre La Visita a San Miguel en la Región Oriental,” August 29, 1955 (manuscript). 57. Rafael Fernández Saravia (secretary-general of Sindicato Gremial de Pilotos Automovilisticos), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 18, 1954. 58. Malavé Villalba, “Progresos Promulgado.” 59. José Alfredo Simón (secretary of conflicts of Unión de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 2, 1952; José Antonio Hernández (secretary of organization and propaganda of Unión de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 2, 1952. 60. Herbert Martínez (secretary-general of Sindicato de Trabajadores de Empresas Eléctricas), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 18, 1954. 61. Héctor Burgos (a leader of Salvadoran miners’ union), interview with the author in New Brunswick, NJ, May 28, 1952. 62. Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, pp. 252–53.

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63. Héctor Ventura (secretary-general of Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 17, 1954. 64. Rogelio Chávez (head of inspection service of Ministry of Labor of El Salvador), interview with the author in San Salvador, August 17, 1954. 65. Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, p. 251. 66. Arturo Jáuregui, “Report of Arturo Jáuregui Concerning His Treatment in El Salvador,” September 7, 1950 (manuscript). 67. Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, p. 252. 68. Héctor Salazar, interview. 69. John Lamar Mills (third secretary of U.S. Embassy in El Salvador), interview with the author in San Salvador, June 22, 1954. 70. Héctor Salazar, interview; Martínez, interview; Francisco Sánchez (an official of Unión de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros), interview with the author in San Salvador, September 3, 1952. 71. Luis Alberto Monge, “Breve Informe de la Jira Sindical por las Repúblicas de El Salvador, Honduras y Nicaragua, Realizada Durante el Mes de Agosto de 1949” (manuscript). 72. Augusto Malavé Villalba (Venezuelan union leader, former ORIT representative in El Salvador), interview with the author in Buenos Aires, May 11, 1956. 73. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 348–49. 74. Felipe Antonio Zaldivar (secretary of organization of Confederación General de Sindicatos and secretary-general, Federación de Construcción y Transporte), interview with the author in San Salvador, June 19, 1967; see also Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 336. 75. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 345. 76. Alfredo Nazario (director of Labor Institute of University of Puerto Rico), interview with the author in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 12, 1959. 77. Tom Walsh (former labor adviser of International Cooperation Administration in El Salvador), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, September 8, 1959. 78. Martínez, interview; see also Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 342. 79. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 312. 80. Salvador Jiménez Molina (member of Executive of Confederación General de Sindicatos of El Salvador), interview with the author in Washington, DC, September 4, 1962. 81. Jay Nussbaum (labor attaché of U.S. Embassy to El Salvador), interview with the author in San Salvador, June 19, 1967. 82. Salvador Cayetano Carpio, El Salvador: La Huelga Obrera de 1967 (Chilpancingo, México: Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero Salvador Allende, , 1982), p. 5. 83. Nussbaum, interview. 84. Jiménez Molina, interview. 85. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 312. 86. Ibid., p. 312. 87. Nussbaum, interview. 88. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 350.


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89. José Antonio Ortiz (recording secretary, Confederación General de Sindicatos and secretary-general of Food and Beverage Workers Federation), interview with the author in San Salvador, June 19, 1967. 90. Antonio Zaldivar, interview. 91. For description of the Salvadoran 1967 general strike, see Cayetano Carpio, El Salvador.

CHAPTER 8

Salvadoran Organized Labor after the 1967 General Strike

The 1967 progressive general strike was a remarkable success in terms of being an impressive demonstration of labor unity and in achieving the very limited concessions that were its objective. However, it did not result in the labor movement’s becoming a major factor in the country’s economy and political life or in overcoming on a longer-run basis the divisions within organized labor. In the dozen years following the general strike of 1967, the labor movement expanded considerably, in part reflecting the growth of the country’s industries. The relations of organized labor with succeeding governments— all headed by military men—varied from time to time but became increasingly strained. Although the Confederación General de Sindicatos (CGS) remained allied with the government party, the Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN), most other elements were to a greater or lesser degree hostile toward, or at least very critical of, the regime. The employers remained unfriendly to organized labor, and during the 1970s there appeared death squads for the first time, supposedly organized by elements of the police and military with the support of some employer elements and right-wing civilian politicians, and trade union leaders were among their principal targets. Many different organizations and factions of the labor movement were active between the time of the 1967 general strike and the outbreak of the civil war in 1979–1980. We shall look at the more important of these, with particular attention to the rise of rural labor groups, before sketching the impact of the civil war on Salvadoran organized labor.


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THE CGS AFTER 1967 William Bollinger has written, “From the mid-1960s on, CGS suffered erosion of its influence and disaffiliation of most of its key affiliates, due in part to CGS identification with the anti-labor policies of the ruling PCN.”1 One of the most important to break away was the Construction Industry and Transport Trade Union Federation, headed by Felipe Zaldivar. The federation “was able to distance itself somewhat from the onus which progovernment CGS leaders bore.”2 The Textile Union Federation, another major affiliate of the CGS, did not disaffiliate from the confederation. However, only one of the six largest unions that were affiliated with it in 1965 was still in the federation 15 years later. The others had either become independent or had joined rival trade union groups.3 In November 1968, one of the most important unions that had recently joined the CGS, the Water and Sewage National Administration Workers Union (SETA), withdrew from the CGS because of its close links with the government. The SETA remained an independent union until 1975, when after a strike called to protest the attempt of the Water and Sewage National Administration to have the union legally dissolved, the SETA joined the Federación Unitaria Sindical de El Salvador (Unitary Trade Union Federation—FUSS). However, after two of the union’s principal leaders were jailed and tortured in March 1977 and 100 union members were fired, the union was destroyed, only to be revived in the following year.4 The CGS continued to be allied with the PCN and succeeding military presidents. This association finally brought about the expulsion of the confederation from the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT) in 1980, on the initiative of Felipe Zaldivar.5 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SALVADORAN WORKERS The largest split in the CGS took place in 1972. At that year’s congress of the confederation there was very extensive criticism of the corruption and conservatism of the CGS, and delegates from 18 of the 36 unions represented walked out of the session. Subsequently, 12 of these founded the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Salvadoreños (National Federation of Salvadoran Workers—FENASTRAS), which became the country’s federation of industrial unions. Some hitherto independent unions also joined in the formation of FENASTRAS, as well as organizations formerly part of the CGS. Among these was the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Empresas Eléctricas, the union representing workers in the privately owned electric utility companies. In 1977 this union successfully fought an effort to destroy it after the electric firms had been nationalized.6

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At its establishment, the FENASTRAS had the support of the political forces of the National Democratic Union (UDN), “a broad front under the influence of the Communist Party.” In 1977, the FENASTRAS joined with the FUSS and the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de la Industria del Alimento, Vestido, Textiles, Similares y Conexos de El Salvador (Food, Garment and Textile Workers Trade Union Federation—FESTIAVTSCES) to form the Unitary Confederation of Salvadoran Workers. However, although it received legal recognition, this confederation was largely stillborn. During the late 1970s, two other political groups competed with the UDN for influence in FENASTRAS. These were the Bloque Popular Revolucionario (Popular Revolutionary Bloc—BPR) and the Frente de Acción Popular Unida (United Popular Action Front—FAPU), both of which had some association with guerrilla groups that were beginning to form. By 1979, the FAPU was predominant within the federation, and some member unions controlled by the BPR split from FENASTRAS to form the Revolutionary Trade Union Federation. The four largest unions belonging to the FENASTRAS were the Coffee Industry Union, the organization of employees of the Lempa River Hydroelectric Commission (which the government abolished by decree in 1980), the Water and Sewage Administration workers, and the Fishing Industry Union. It also had “important unions of bank employees, garment workers, bus drivers, and construction workers.”7 Another significant affiliate of FENASTRAS was the Sindicato Industrial de Dulces y Pastas Alimenticias (SIDPA), a union of workers in pastry- and pasta-producing enterprises. It was distinctive in being led principally by women. Its largest affiliate was the local in the Diana firm, which had formerly belonged to the CGS. In 1978, the Diana local had “waged a bitter but successful struggle with the firm.” That local joined SIDPA in 1980.8 According to William Bollinger, “the success of FENASTRAS during the 1970s was due to its radical departure from the more cautious organizing methods of the pro-government CGS unions and the left-led FUSS and FESTIAVTSCES federations.” It used such unorthodox procedures as sitdown strikes and factory seizures, and “the most effective direct action consisted of factory takeovers in which top management officials were held to protect workers from police assault.”9 THE FUSS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR The FUSS grew substantially in the late 1960s. Its leading role in the general strike of April 1967 helped raise its prestige among the workers. At that time it claimed 32 affiliated unions. In February 1968 it supported the country’s first teachers’ strike, led by the National Association of Salvadoran Educators. The FUSS was working toward establishment of a new left-wing central labor organization. With that aim in view, it helped to form another


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federation, the FESTIAVTSCES, and some of its own affiliated unions were transferred to the new group. Finally, in 1977, the Unitary Confederation of Salvadoran Workers (CUTS) was established, but as we have noted, it had a very short existence. The FUSS was concerned with training union leaders, perhaps as a counterweight to the extensive leadership training program sponsored by the CGS and the American Institute for Free Labor Development. To this end, the FUSS established in 1967 the Instituto Obrero “José Celestino Castro” in conjunction with the National University. The FUSS, which was largely under Communist Party leadership, faced two very serious difficulties. One was more or less severe persecution at the hands of succeeding government and the right-wing death squads that in the 1970s began playing an increasing role in national affairs. In 1974, a major leader of the textile workers aligned with the FUSS was murdered, and in the following year FUSS general secretary Rafael Aguñada Carranza was also assassinated, the first of six FUSS general secretaries to suffer this fate. Two of the FUSS-affiliated unions—the railroaders and water and sewage workers—were dissolved by the government. The second problem faced by the FUSS was the rise of the other leftwing political groups outside of the Communist Party. These groups were interested in developing a labor movement under their own control and outside of the FUSS.10

THE COMITÉ COORDINADOR DE SINDICATOS “JOSÉ GUILLERMO RIVAS”—CCS In 1975, some more militant trade union leaders established the Comité Obrero de Orientación Revolucionaria (COOR), which was dedicated to a policy leading to a policy leading to “building a revolutionary current within the union movement.” It was influenced by one of the new leftwing political movements that disappeared in the later 1970s, the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación, headed by Salvador Cayetano Carpio, a onetime secretary-general of the Communist Party. However, subsequently its leaders were important figures in the People’s Revolutionary Bloc, the largest of the new leftist political groups. The COOR favored labor militancy and direct action, and among other things, participated in seizing the Ministry of Labor in November 1977 to protest the failure to deal adequately with labor disputes. In 1978, the COOR, which included four important unions of factory workers, was converted into the Comité Coordinador de Sindicatos “José Guillermo Rivas,” using the name of the general secretary of one of its affiliates who had recently been assassinated by death squads. The minister of labor refused to legalize the Comité Coordinador de Sindicatos.11

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THE FEDERACIÓN SINDICAL DE TRABAJADORES DE LA INDUSTRIA DEL ALIMENTO With the help of the FUSS, 14 unions joined in January 1969 to form the FESTIAVTSCES. The idea behind the establishment of this group was that it might ultimately join with the FUSS and another as-yet unorganized federation to set up a new central labor group—three federations being required under the labor code of 1963 in order to have a legal confederation. The new federation was legally recognized by the Sánchez Hernández government in April 1960. It included several unions that until then had been part of FUSS, including brewery workers, bakers, sugar refinery employers, and others. Although the new confederation was finally established in 1977, when the national Federation of Salvadoran Workers joined with FUSS and its offspring in setting it up, as we have seen, the new central labor group was of short duration. The FESTIAVTSCES suffered considerably at the hands of the right-wing death squads. A textile union leader of the federation was assassinated in 1974 and in the following year the general secretary of the federation, Ernesto Soto Argueta, was “disappeared,” never to be seen again.12 CATHOLIC WORKERS NATIONAL UNION A small union group that was active during the late 1960s and the 1970s was the Unión Nacional de Obreros Católicos (Catholic Workers National Union—UNOC). It had been established in 1950, with the help of the Catholic Church hierarchy, as “a middle ground in the trade union movement between left-led and pro-government unions.”13 However, the Church was relatively weak in El Salvador and was particularly badly staffed. Thus, in 1967, in the diocese covering the eastern third of the country there were only 30 clergy for about 1,000,000 people. Some of these were in the diocesan establishment and some were teachers, leaving very few parish clergy or priests to work in connection with the organized labor.14 As a consequence, the Catholic labor group remained small and weak and many of the affiliates of the UNOC were mutual benefit organizations rather than trade unions. The UNOC had been formally disassociated from the Church in 1961. The UNOC carried on a campaign to organize rural workers, which gave rise to the Christian Peasant Federation. The UNOC participated in the 1965 Second Workers Congress, although it was not a major force in the meeting. It continued to be active on a limited scale during the 1970s. It had some association with the Christian Democratic Party and was affiliated with the Confederación Latino Americana de Sindicatos Cristianos (CLASC), later renamed the Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores (CLAT).15


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THE ASOCIACIÓN NACIONAL DE EDUCADORES SALVADOREÑOS “21 DE JUNIO” One of the most significant features of the labor movement in the 1960s and 1970s was the emergence of the public school teachers as one of the largest and most militant segments of organized labor. There had for long existed teachers’ organizations, but before the early 1960s they had been more or less passive and progovernment organizations. The Asociación Nacional de Educadores Salvadoreños (ANDES) had two immediate predecessors. One was the Federación Magisterial Salvadoreña, established in 1960, and the other the Unión de Maestros Salvadoreños. Although both were repressed by the government, that fact did not serve to dampen the growing feeling of militancy among the teachers. The ANDES was established in December 1964 to protest a program of the government of President Julio Adalberto Rivera to reorganize the teachers’ jobs. On June 21, 1965, the new union organized a demonstration of thousands of teachers in the capital city to protest the government’s project to limit teachers’ pensions. That date was subsequently added to the name of the organization. The ANDES immediately claimed to have 18,000 members out of a total of 23,000 teachers, making it the second largest union in the country. However, since government employees were not supposed, under the labor code, to establish unions, it gained legal recognition as an association rather than a union. In 1967–1968 ANDES conducted a 58-day strike during which school buildings were occupied by the teachers, and there were hunger strikes, mock trials, and other kinds of demonstrations. The government responded with violence against the strikers. Although the strike was lost, William Bollinger has said that the walkout “strengthened the union” and stimulated the militancy of the teachers. The ANDES carried out another strike, this time lasting 50 days, demanding improvement in salaries and working conditions. Although the walkout had wide sympathy among the general public, the government responded with force, in the process of which two teachers were killed by the police, while large numbers of others were jailed. As a result of the teachers’ frustration in seeking to improve their economic situation, they became radicalized. The ANDES played a major role in organizing antigovernment demonstrations when the regime openly stole the election of 1972. Subsequently, the union became associated with the FAPU and the BPR, both of which had connections with the guerrilla forces that were beginning to appear in the late 1970s. By the late 1970s, ANDES had about 10,000 dues-paying members, although the union spoke on behalf of at least twice that many, since many teachers, in fear of government persecution, did not formally join the union.16

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ORGANIZATION OF RURAL WORKERS IN THE 1960 S AND 1970 S We have noted that when the government of President Osorio authorized legal recognition of unions in 1950, it exempted the rural workers from this measure, with Osorio even suggesting that it might take a century before their organization would be allowed. But the rural workers, who made up the considerable majority of the population, were not ready to wait, and by the early 1960s they had begun to establish several different kinds of organizations. One of the first initiatives toward organizing the peasants and rural workers was undertaken by the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). It began operations in that field in 1965, organizing seminars among the rural workers and working to encourage cooperatives and other rural organizations. These were brought together in the UCS in 1969.17 In 1970, the government of President Fidel Sánchez Hernández permitted the legal registration of the UCS as an association under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior, instead of as a union under the Ministry of Labor. During the first four years as a legally recognized organization, the UCS carried out 96 leadership training courses and held 39 regional meetings. U.S. government funds were used to help establish 45 rural cooperatives and to finance savings and loan societies. The UCS also sponsored 20 production cooperatives through which 5,000 landless peasants were able to buy land.18 Understandably, the local landlords regarded the UCS as being highly subversive. They succeeded in getting the government of President Arturo Molina to expel the AIFLD from El Salvador in 1973. However, within two months of the closing of the AIFLD operations in El Salvador, the work of helping finance the activities of the UCS was taken up by the Inter American Foundation, a semigovernmental U.S. organization. When objections to this were raised by the landlords, the head of the foundation visited San Salvador, talking with the minister of agriculture and other government officials, while the U.S. ambassador spoke with the president, indicating to him the interest of the U.S. government in seeing the UCS continue in operation. These interventions undoubtedly were influential in preventing the Molina government from shutting down the UCS entirely. By 1975, the Inter American Foundation had extended three substantial loans to the UCS.19 In June 1979 the AIFLD was finally allowed to renew operation in El Salvador. However, as one AIFLD official noted, they went in under “very tenuous circumstances” and by October 1979, when the government of President Carlos Humberto Romero was overthrown, it had not yet been made clear whether the regime would allow the AIFLD to renew its aid to the UCS.20


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Left-wing political and trade union groups in El Salvador were very critical of the UCS. Among other things, they accused it of corruption, and of having friendly relations with the government’s right-wing organization operating among the peasantry, the so-called Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN), charges that the UCS and the AIFLD strongly denied.21 Another impetus for organizing the peasantry and rural workers came from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1963 Church officials and the small Catholic Workers National Union began to organize rural cooperatives and in the following year brought together a number of peasant groups to establish the Federación Cristiana de Campesinos Salvadoreños (FECCAS). This group organized what it called the First Peasant Congress in 1965, established the National Council of Christian Peasants late in 1967, and held a Second Peasant Congress in August 1968. The last of these called for an agrarian reform. The establishment of Christian-based communities, starting in 1969, stimulated the growth and militancy of the organizations associated with the Christian Peasants Federation. William Bollinger noted that the FECCAS “became a dynamic, growing organization independent of both the [Partido Demócrata Cristiano] PDC and the [Partido Comunista de El Salvador] PCS.” The FECCAS became a founding member of the United Popular Action Front (FAPU), one of the new left-wing mass organizations that were appearing outside of the influence of the traditional Communist Party. A year later, it left the FAPU to join the BPR, another such group. In March 1977 FECCAS organized a land seizure movement, and the army took over control of the area involved. On March 12, Father Rutilio Grande, one of the principal priests involved in the organization of the rural workers, was assassinated. In November of the same year, FECCAS members participated in occupying the Ministry of Labor in protest against its inability to help resolve labor disputes. The government-controlled rural organization, ORDEN, violently attacked FECCAS local groups and murdered some of their leaders. Ultimately, when the civil war began, areas where the FECCAS unions had been most widespread became centers of the armed struggle against the government.22 Another rural workers’ organization of Catholic origin was the Unión de Trabajadores del Campo (UTC), which also had its origins in the Christianbased communities. It was established in 1974 in parts of the country where the FECCAS was not active. In 1977, the UTC joined the FECCAS in establishing the Rural Workers Federation, which was of short duration. Like the FECCAS, the UTC was severely persecuted by the government, the death squads, and ORDEN. Its first secretary-general, Justo Mejía, was tortured and killed in 1979. Bollinger has noted that “[m]ost UTC founding leaders were killed during the late 1970s and early 1980s.” As was true with FECCAS, areas in which the UTC had been active later served as bases for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front once the civil war began.23

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The government’s violent reaction against the two Catholic-inspired rural workers’ movement brought an open clash with the Catholic Church. The regime began expelling foreign priests involved in work in the countryside. Death squads killed not only Padre Rutilio Grande, but also Padre Alfonso Navarro. These murders provoked Archbishop Oscar Romero to say that “[t]hese two crimes have only reinforced the unity of the Church, which the government wishes to reduce to silence.”24 An entirely different kind of organization of the rural population was the ORDEN, established in 1963 by the intelligence branch of the Salvadoran Army, the Salvadoran National Security Agency (ANSESAL). Obviously engendered because of the growing restlessness of the peasants and rural workers, it was designed to prevent the emergence of a rural landlord class of the army-dominated government. Both the ANSESAL and ORDEN were said to have the support of and close relations with the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Estimates of the number of rural workers and peasants mobilized by ORDEN varied from 30,000 to 100,000. The ORDEN was ostensibly an anti-Communist organization. However, its definition of Communism was broad enough to cover any rural peasants and workers’ organization that was seeking to defend the peasants’ interests, to seek agrarian reform, or to be critical of the government or of so-called Yankee Imperialism. The ORDEN played a major role in arresting, torturing, and murdering those active in other rural workers’ organizations during the 1970s. With the overthrow of President Romero in October 1979, the ORDEN was officially dissolved, as was its patron, the ANSESAL. However, in one form or another it continued to function for some time after that.25 SLIDING INTO CIVIL WAR After 1970, the labor movement had to function in the face of intensifying political crisis. For several years, the opposition tried to use the electoral system to gain power. They established the Unión Democrática Oposicionista (UDO), which consisted of the Christian Democratic Party, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) (affiliated to the Socialist International), and the Unión Democrática Nacionalista, a onetime conservative group that had been infiltrated and taken over by the Communists. The UDO participated in the 1972 general election, and its presidential and vice presidential candidates—José Napoleón Duarte of the Christian Democrats and Guillermo Manuel Ungo of the MNR—actually won the election. The government’s response to that was to exile Duarte and Ungo and declare the government’s military candidate for president, Arturo Armando Molina, the victor. The extent of the fraud in this case was demonstrated by the fact that in municipal elections a few months later opposition tickets won in a great majority of the country’s municipalities.


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The opposition boycotted the 1976 municipal elections because of the evident fraud that was being prepared by the regime, with the result that from that time on, the government’s Partido de Reconciliación Nacional controlled all of the municipalities. However, in the 1977 general election, the UDO tried for the last time to use the electoral process, that time naming a retired general as its presidential candidate. As before, the opposition was counted out by the government and General Carlos Humberto Romero became president. However, in October 1979, President Romero was overthrown by a young officers’ coup and a five-man junta—three civilians and two army officers—in which the civilians were Guillermo Ungo; a representative of the industrialists; and another with close associations with the Catholic Church. Christian Democratic and Unión Democrática Nacionalista representatives were named to the cabinet. This junta proclaimed its intentions of establishing a democratic regime, carrying out an agrarian reform, and launching other important measures. In spite of these proclamations, it soon became clear that conservative elements in the military, together with the economic oligarchy, would not let the junta go forward with its plans. The three civilian members therefore resigned. A new civil–military junta was formed in which José Napoleón Duarte participated. Subsequently Duarte became head of the junta. However, the association of the Christian Democrats with this second junta split the party in March 1980, with 7 of the 13 members of its Executive Committee leading a schism that established the Social Christian Popular Movement, of which Rubén Zamora was the most outstanding figure. The second junta soon announced an extensive agrarian reform, which was to take place in three stages. The first was for the government to take over all landholdings over 500 hectares; the second to involve all holdings of 15–500 hectares; and the third was to grant sharecroppers title to the lands they cultivated. However, once the first phase had been completed, the government skipped over the second and went right to the third phase. The significance of this was that the coffee industry, the core of the rural oligarchy, was concentrated largely in holdings of 15–500 hectares. The failure to carry out the most important part of the agrarian reform undermined the civilian support of the Christian Democrats and intensified the power of the reactionary military men in the junta and in the general political situation. By 1989, the American Institute for Free Labor Development, which had strongly supported the agrarian reform decreed by the second junta and had maintained more or less close relations with the elected government of the President José Napoleón Duarte had come to the conclusion that both the agrarian reform and the Duarte regime had been failures. They argued that in the case of the land taken over in the first phase of the agrarian reform, instead of handing the land over to the rural worker,

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together with sufficient credit and other support to make it possible for them to cultivate it, the government had organized it into state-owned cooperatives where the peasants had little incentive, provoking very bad economic and social results. The AIFLD also was by then strongly opposing any further U.S. military aid to the Salvadoran regime because of the treatment of the people by the military. It had earlier opposed such aid until those guilty of the murders of two AIFLD officials and the head of the Agrarian Reform Institute had been punished, but had subsequently adopted a more generally hostile position toward helping the government in the civil war.26 The death squads (in large part organized within the army and police forces), which had appeared during the 1970s, became increasingly active and outrageous. Even during the period of the first, supposedly progressive, junta, murders at the hands of the death squads notably increased, some 1,000 people being murdered during this period. In the first six months of the second junta the number was said to have increased to 6,000; subsequently it intensified even more. The victims included politicians, trade union leaders, professional people, and priests. The most famous murder was that of Archbishop Romero, killed in his own cathedral. Leadership of the death squads was generally attributed to Roberto D’Aubisson, a retired army officer. He also organized a political party, the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA). When elections for a new constitutional assembly were held in March 1982, ARENA defeated the Christian Democrats. However, subsequently, when general elections were held, José Napoleón Duarte was chosen as the constitutional president. He had strong support from the U.S. government. Meanwhile, the country had fallen into a state of civil war. Guerrilla groups had begun to operate in the late 1970s, as it became absolutely clear that the regime was not going to allow itself to be defeated through the electoral process. One of the first of these was the Frente Popular de Liberación, formed by a group of dissident Communists. In 1979 the Communist Party itself decided to launch a guerrilla effort. By 1980 there were four different guerrilla groups in operation. They joined together to form the Faribundo Martí National Liberal Front (FMLN), which waged a united war against the government and army. On the civilian front, so to speak, the guerrilla groups operated through four new mass organizations that had appeared in the 1970s, plus the Communists’ Unión Democrática Nacionalista. The four new mass political organizations were the Frente Acción Popular Unido, the BPR, the Liga Popular 28 de Febrero, and the Movimiento de Liberación Popular. Each of these was associated with one or another of the guerrilla groups. These mass organizations were part of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, the overall civilian opposition. In 1980 there were eight organizations represented in the Executive Committee of the Democratic Revolutionary Front. These were the Social Christian Popular Movement, the


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MNR, the Independent Movement of Professionals and Technicians, and all five of the mass revolutionary groups. By 1983, the military situation had become more or less a standoff, which it was to remain for almost a decade. In spite of massive aid from the U.S. government, the army could not suppress the guerrillas, who continued to control substantial areas, while for their part, the guerrillas were unable to defeat the government forces. From 1983 on, the FMLN expressed its support for a negotiated peace. President Duarte, both openly and behind the scenes, tried to negotiate with the FMLN but was thwarted as much by resistance from his side as from the guerrillas. His ARENA successor also sought negotiations. However, it was not until after the end of the Cold War that peace was finally reestablished in 1992.27 THE LABOR MOVEMENT AND THE SALVADORAN CIVIL WAR The organized labor movement reacted favorably to the overthrow of President Romero and the installation of the first junta. Manuel Rojas Bolaños wrote: After the coup of 1979, the popular struggle passed to a high level, jumping over the strictly revindicative limits, to pass openly to the political level. The majority of Salvadoran trade unionism was swept up in the dynamic established by the police-military organizations; a significant sector was captured by Christian Democracy, which needed a popular social base that would support it in “the second junta.” In this way was created the so-called “political center,” with the intention of counteracting the revolutionary bloc.28

William Bollinger has sketched the overall effect of the early years of the civil war on the labor movement: “Of the more than 30,000 Salvadorans killed by death squads and security forces from 1979 to 1983, an estimated 5,000 trade unionists lost their lives. Dozens of unions were destroyed, and thousands of union activists fled into exile. Many employers were able to violate contracts at will and fire ‘troublemakers.’ Strikes became rare and the Ministry of Labor recorded only four during all of 1983.”29 Thus, organized labor suffered particularly from the effects of the civil war. The situation was especially difficult from 1980 to 1983, when much of the labor movement had virtually to function clandestinely. Trade union membership was said to have fallen by 40 percent between 1980 and 1983.30 Nevertheless, starting in 1983 there was a certain degree of recovery, with a return to militancy, and the establishment of several important new unions and other labor groupings. This recovery continued for the rest of the decade, although organized labor continued to be the victim of rightwing terrorism.

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The labor movement was a particular target of the death squads. Roberto D’Aubisson, the presumed organizer and head of the death squads, from time to time published lists of “Communists,” including many union leaders who were in fact opponents of the Communists in the labor movement. Appearance on such a list virtually came to be regarded as a sentence of death.31 Typical of the situation during this period was what happened in September 1983. One hundred trade unionists, including Santiago Hernández Jiménez, head of the FUSS, were kidnapped by the death squads. Hernández Jiménez’s body was discovered on October 7; he, along with three other opposition leaders, had been strangled.32 In the case of the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Salvadoreños, it was estimated that between 1979 and 1981, some 345 of its affiliates were killed, the organization’s headquarters was searched 11 times by the police, and one of its regional offices was dynamited twice. Most of its regional offices were forced to close.33 The teachers’ federation ANDES was one of the unions that suffered most severely from the operations of the death squads. By 1983 it was estimated that 266 members of the federation had been killed. During this period, too, the government shut down hundreds of schools in areas where the guerrilla groups had influence, including 85 percent of those in the eastern segments of the country. Many union members fled abroad, particularly to the United States and Mexico.34 However, the death squad murders were by no means confined to leaders of the more left-wing-aligned unions. For instance, Felipe Zaldivar, the head of the ORIT-affiliated Construction and Transport Workers Federation, was assassinated in 1981.35 In January of that year, one of the most spectacular murders by the death squads took place—assassination of Michael Hammer, head of the AIFLD in El Salvador as well as another AIFLD official, Mark Pearlman, and Rodolfo Viera, former head of the UCS and at the time head of the Agrarian Reform Institute—in the restaurant of the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador.36 In almost none of the instances of murder of trade union officials was anyone arrested, let alone brought to trial. In the case of the Hammer– Pearlman–Viera assassination, although two former National Guard corporals were tried due to United States pressure, cases against the three active guard officers who were ordered and observed the murder were dropped in 1983.37 The second government junta, in the name of national security, took a number of steps that severely curbed the labor movement. After the second of two general strikes in the summer of 1980, it issued Decree No. 26, which ended the right to strike of public employees, providing that anyone who struck could be suspended for from six months to a year. A week later, after an electrical workers’ strike, another decree suspended the legal recognition of the union involved, and its leaders were jailed.


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Decree No. 44 militarized all public services, with the workers in them to be considered as belonging to the army and subject to military discipline. Then Decree No. 507 froze wages and suspended further collective bargaining.38 Throughout the civil war period, there existed roughly two groups of unions and union leaders. One was more or less closely associated with the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and was affiliated toward the ORIT and cooperated with the AIFLD. The second grouping, which took several forms, was made up of union leaders and organizations that were to the left of the Christian Democrats. The tendency throughout the period was for union leaders and organizations that were aligned with the Christian Democrats to become disillusioned with the PDC and either to seek closer contact with the more leftist groups or actually join their ranks. Early in the civil war, in September 1980, the Unidad Popular Democrática (UPD) was formed to bring together the centrist union groups more or less aligned with the Christian Democrats. Although not legally recognized as such, the UPD for some time served virtually as a central labor organization. The principal affiliates of the UPD were the Construction Industry and Transport Union Federation, which had once been one of the four federations in the Confederación General de Sindicatos (CUS) but had split from that group some years earlier because of its cooperation with the militaryled regimes of the 1970s; the UCS, the AIFLD-backed rural workers’ organization; the association of agrarian reform beneficiaries Confederación de Asociaciones Cooperativas de El Salvador (COACES) and two other groups that had split from the UCS some time before; and the Asociación Nacional Indigena Salvadoreña (ANIS), consisting of Indian peasants and agricultural workers. The UPD at first had the backing not only of the ORIT and AIFLD but also of the Catholic Latin American regional trade union group, the CLAT. By the time the 1984 general election approached, with the Christian Democrats’ José Napoleón Duarte and Roberto D’Aubisson of the death squads and the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) as the two presidential candidates, the UPD leaders met in Honduras to draw up a series of demands upon the two presidential nominees. As a consequence, in February 1984, the UPD and the Christian Democrats signed a social pact as the price of UPD endorsement of Duarte and the PDC. In it, the PDC promised that a Christian Democrat government would “end deathsquad terror, prosecute human rights violators, extend social reforms, and negotiate a political settlement to the civil war.” However, once the Christian Democrats had won the 1984 election, and Duarte became president, he found it very difficult, if not impossible, to abide by the social pact with the UPD. Under pressure of the Salvadoran military and the Reagan government in the United States to make victory over the FMLN his major objective, and from the U.S. government and

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international lending agencies to put inflation control next highest on his agenda, President Duarte soon alienated many, if not most, of his labor supporters. The AIFLD, and particularly its then director in El Salvador, Bernard Packer, reacted very negatively toward the insistence of UPD leaders that Duarte comply with the social pact. Packer soon sought to launch a rival to the UPD, in the form of the Confederation of Democratic Workers. Packer was ultimately withdrawn from El Salvador by the AIFLD. However, by that time the UCS had split, with two different conventions being held by rival factions, selecting two different groups of leaders, one quitting the UPD, the other remaining in it. The UPD finally ended up demanding the expulsion of AIFLD from El Salvador.39 Meanwhile, the bulk of what remained of the UPD joined with the union groups not allied with, or that were opposed to, the Christian Democrats, formed a new labor coalition, the Unidad Nacional de Trabajadores Salvadoreñas (UNTS). This was established in February 1983. By that time, the more leftist union groups had in many cases been focused to operate clandestinely due to government persecution. Also, some of them underwent internal controversy and even splits. For a while, the Federación Sindical Revolucionaria (FSR) was an important element among the more left-wing union groups. It had been established in 1979 and legally recognized in the following year and included a number of important unions of industrial workers. Although its secretary-general, José Sánchez Gallegos, was murdered early in 1981, it was able to hold congresses in 1981, 1982, and 1983. The Second Congress demanded a general wage increase, in the face of the government’s 1980 wage freeze, since which prices had risen almost 100 percent. However, the FSR split after its Third Congress as the result of feuding between rival revolutionary political groups that were seeking to control the federation. When what remained of the group held its Fifth Congress in 1984, the police broke up the meeting, arresting 15 of those present—who were only released a few months later after strong international protest.40 In April 1980, the Revolutionary Trade Union Federation had joined with the industrial union group FENASTRAS, and a number of independent unions to form the Comité de Unidad Sindical (CUS), as a bloc of the more leftist union groups. It was responsible for organizing the June 1980 general strike that won some concessions and the one in August 1980 that was crushed by the junta government. However, government persecution had virtually driven the CUS out of existence by 1983.41 Another effort to unite the leftist and centrist unions was made early in 1983 with he formation of the Movimiento Unitario Sindicalista y Gremial de El Salvador (MUSYGES). This brought together the FUSS, the industrial workers’ federation FENASTRAS, and several independent unions, as well as the Federación de Sindicatos de Trabajadores


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Salvadoreños, which until then had been a centrist rather than a leftist union group. The formation of MUSYGES helped to encourage substantial unionization of government employees, perhaps its most significant achievement. However, in November 1984, the MUSYGES was officially dissolved.42 In February 1986 there was established what William Bollinger has called “the broadest coalition of trade unions established in El Salvador since the 1950s,” the UNTS. The lead in organizing this group had come from two sources. One was the Consejo Coordinador de Trabajadores Estatales y Municipales, a new group of government employees on a national and municipal level that had appeared in the mid-1980s, in reaction against the “fiscal economy” policy of the successive governments since 1980, which had virtually frozen wages of all government employees.43 The other was the Coordinadora de Solidaridad de Trabajadores (CST), which had been formed in November 1984 by many of the unions of factory workers, and which on May Day 1985 organized the first significant demonstration in five years.44 The immediate event that provoked formation of the UNTS was President Duarte’s announcement, under pressure of the U.S. Embassy, of a new austerity program in January 1986. The two principal subjects of discussion at the founding meeting of the UNTS were opposition to this program, and the demand for a negotiated peace to end the civil war. The UNTS was reported at its inception to have 100 affiliates, which claimed total membership of 300,000.45 Included in the UNTS in the beginning was the Central de Trabajadores Salvadoreños (CTS), consisting largely of public workers’ unions, which was affiliated with the Catholic oriented hemispheric labor group, CLAT, although it subsequently withdrew from the UNTS. The UPD also at first joined the UNTS, but subsequently withdrew, although the Asociación Nacional Indigena Salvadoreña, one of the UPD’s major affiliates, remained in the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores del Salvadoreños.46 Largely as a reaction to the establishment of UNTS, those union groups that still continued to work with the AIFLD and with the Christian Democratic Party later in 1986 established the Unión Nacional ObreroCampesina (UNOC). Elements of the Construction Industry and Transport Trade Union Federation, as well as the UCS were the most important element making up this organization. It continued to express it support of the regime of President José Napoleón Duarte.47 LABOR MILITANCY IN THE LATE 1980 S After 1984, the labor organizations that had been forced into a kind of semiclandestine existence became more open in their operations, and there was a renewed militancy in many of them. One U.S. Trotskyist

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newspaper sketched this revival of the Salvadoran labor movement in September 1985: The labor movement in El Salvador has begun to spring to life. Recent work stoppages, sit-ins, and demonstrations bring back memories of the late 1970s before death squads and government repression drove the union movement underground. Workers engaged in over 100 strikes last year compared to only four in the private sector during 1983. Garment workers, bank workers, hospital workers, fishing industry workers, postal workers, and employees of nearly every government industry have walked off the job in recent months.48

This reawakened militancy continued in the years that followed. Another U.S. Trotskyist periodical noted in June 1986, “Three times in three months the unions have mobilized impressive shows of strength: on February 21, some 60,000 workers and peasants marched to protest Duarte’s starvation economic ‘package’; on April 24, tens of thousands stopped work for hours; and on May Day an estimated 75,000 workers marched in downtown San Salvador.”49 One of the most militant unions during this period was the telephone workers organization Asociación Salvadoreña de Trabajadores de Telecomunicaciones (ASTTEL). In 1986 it conducted a 51-day strike starting on April 15 to protest against the government-owned telephone company’s refusal to pay wage increases that had been won in a previous walkout.50 Almost two years later, when the general secretary of ASTEL was jailed by the Treasury Police, protest by members of his union brought his release within one day.51 However, increased union militancy did not bring an end to the operations of the death squads against labor leaders and rank and filers. It was reported that between August 1987 and March 1988, almost 100 unionists were either murdered or disappeared at the hands of death squads. These included hospital nurses, teachers, and telephone workers, among others.52 With the coming to power of a government of the right-wing ARENA in 1990, the Salvadoran labor movement had new reasons to seek unity. The ARENA government of President Alfredo Cristiani announced its intention to roll back the agrarian reform and to push a neoliberal economic policy. Both the UNOC and the UNTS were opposed to the policy of the ARENA regime. As David Mena wrote, “Both organizations rejected the government’s program. The UNOC launched the slogan of no surrender of land that had been won and the UNTS decided to confront the economic policy. Furthermore, they fully joined in supporting the process of dialogue and negotiation between the government and the guerrillas. This converted objectively into social opposition to the new government.” As a result of this common opposition to the ARENA government program, a new organization, the Intergremial, was established in 1990 and


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“was converted into a permanent forum for exchange of information and discussion of political, economic and labor problems. . . . In the final phases of the peace negotiations the Intergremial was consulted by the rebel FMLN and other political parties on socioeconomic problems related to these negotiations.”53 EMPLOYER AND GOVERNMENT ABUSE OF ORGANIZED LABOR In addition to the general violence leveled at the labor movement as a consequence of the civil war, it continued to be subject to frequent abuse of other kinds at the hands of an employer class that had never been particularly willing to accept the existence of trade unionism and of a government that had relatively little interest even in enforcing the laws designed to protect the workers and their organizations. This abuse took many forms. As a late 1980s report by the ORIT stated, “According to the statements of the trade union leaders who were interviewed, in El Salvador the right of free unionization is violated in various ways.” One of these was the dismissal of workers by the employers when they learned that their employees were forming a union. Thus, the study noted, “the management of Industria Muebles Prado, Incorporated, dismissed in 1986 some 115 workers who were organizing a union in the firm. The firm Salvaniel in the same year fired all its workers, giving them indemnization, but not permitting the formation of the union.” The same ORIT report said that there was evidence also of “intimidation and fear over the loss of employment if the workers joined unions.” It added, “As a group of workers interviewed simultaneously said, in the present war circumstances, the accusation of subversion against workers is one of the pressures most used by many businessmen.” This same group noted that blacklisting of workers who tried to form unions, so that once they were dismissed they could not get another job, was common. The Ministry of Labor contributed to the employers’ campaign against the formation of unions by procrastinating in giving legal recognition to unions that were formed. The ORIT report presented various examples of this. It added that “the person interviewed said that this procedure is very difficult to prove specifically, but is a common practice in El Salvador.”54 Although the law presumably protected union officers from unfair treatment by the employers, this was widely violated by the employers and not enforced by the government. The ORIT report noted: In many cases, the credentials that the Ministry of Labor gives the officers has no validity for the employers. For example, the heads of the Banco Salvadoreño do not permit the entry into their offices of the officers of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Institución Autónoma Administración Nacional de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (ANDA); national police take down names of workers who enter the

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installations of the firm, and pay attention to the list of persons who cannot enter; in this list are the names of officers of the union. The management of the Empresa Piomar S.A. gives the Secretary General of the Union his wage, but does not permit him to enter the factory, to prevent him having contacts with the workers.

Union officials so treated found that although the government might officially support them, little was done to enforce this decision. Thus: The workers appeal to the justice system but do not find solution to their problems. For example, in the face of dismissal of the members of the executive of the ANDA union on May 28, 1985 for having called a strike, went to the Supreme Court, charging the action of the employer was illegal. In May of the same year, that Court decreed return of those who had been dismissed but the employer paid no attention to that decision. The workers then went to the Attorney General of the Republic to gain recognition of their trade union immunity and to have their wages paid; the Attorney General decided in favor of the workers, but the employer did not obey the decision of that authority. Finally, the trade union leaders asked for an audience with the President of the Republic who, in addition to not granting it, ordered the militarization of the work center.55

The unions also had great difficulties in negotiating collective agreements with the employers and having such agreements complied with once they signed. It was frequent, according to the ORIT report, for employers to first discuss wage demands and then refuse to talk about benefits asked for by the workers. Frequently, too, the employer refused to discuss a collective agreement at all, in spite of the fact that the union was legalized and the law required that he engaged in such negotiations. Once agreed to, provisions of a collective contrast were frequently not fulfilled by the employers. The ORIT report noted: The majority of those interviewed agreed that the violation of collective contracts was principally failure of the employer to conform to the economic clauses agreed to: wages, extra pay for holidays worked, vacations, and so forth. Other violated clauses covering dismissal of workers without knowledge of the union; denying wage payments to union officials engaged on union business; bad treatment and overwork of the workers in various ways. . . . And when some labor problem is not covered in the collective contract, the employer follows the custom of the firm to resolve it and not what is established in the Labor Code.56

SALVADORAN TRADE UNIONISM IN THE EARLY 1990 S In spite of the renewed militancy of the labor movement in the later 1980s, trade unionism remained very limited in El Salvador in the early years of the following decade. Of course, unionization of the rural workers continued to be forbidden legally until after the civil war. However,


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even in the other sectors of the economy, the labor movement remained weak, numerically and otherwise. There were only 106 legalized unions in 1993, and only 1.8 percent of all firms covered by social security did the workers have such organizations. From the manufacturing sector only 3.8 percent of all firms were unionized. As David Mena noted, “These figures, so low, show us that the existing political and legal system is contrary to the freedom of organization of the workers.”57 The majority of the organized workers in the early 1990s were in the construction industry, where there were 13 legalized unions, only four of which were in fact functioning. They had within them 65,160 of the total of 107,409 union members. Over 80 percent of all construction workers were unionized and were covered by a collective contract. The second-most unionized sector was that of public utilities (electricity, water, and sewage disposal), all parts of which were government owned. Almost 40 percent of the workers in that part of the economy were unionized, and they accounted for 4.3 percent of all union members. They, too, had collective contracts. In manufacturing, the most unionized group consisted of those workers in food industries, where 11.6 percent of all workers were organized, representing 11.3 of all unionists. In contrast, the textile and shoemaking industries had only a fifth as many union members as in food processing. One aspect of the textile industry that hampered unionization was the importance of so-called maquiladora firms, producing for export, which had been founded on the frankly antiunion basis. Union membership was very small in both transport and communications. In the financial sector, there had been only 500 unionized workers in 1979, but the number had rapidly increased to 10,000 after the nationalization of the banks; but with privatization again a few years later, the private owners attacked the unions so that by 1993 there were only 1,430 union members, representing only 7 percent of the workforce in that part of the economy. Workers in the health and education fields had a higher than average proportion of unionized workers, 14.1 percent and 15.5 percent respectively. In both cases, the unionized workers tended to be concentrated in the publicly owned part of the sector. There were in 1993, according to the Ministry of Labor, three labor confederations, 10 federations, and 20 independent unions. Four of these organizations—the Federación de Asociaciones Sindicales Independientes de El Salvador, the Confederación General del Trabajo, the Central de Trabajadores Democráticos, and the Organización de Sindicatos Libres Salvadoreños—were not legally recognized.58 The number of collective contracts was very limited, and it fell substantially in the 1980s. Between 1975 and 1991, the average number of collective agreements signed each year had been 286. The largest number, 391,

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was signed in 1978, and the smallest, 148, in 1981. However, in 1991, the number of workers covered by collective contracts was less than it had been in 1975, having fallen from 5 percent of the total workforce to only 3 percent.59 POSTSCRIPT: ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR Although the end of the Salvadoran civil war occurred shortly after the end of the period generally dealt with in the present volume, 1990, it is appropriate to deal with it here, since it represented the end of one period in the life of the country’s labor movement and the beginning of another. The peace agreement between President Alfredo Cristiani and the leaders of the FMLN was signed in Mexico City on January 16, 1992. As we have noted earlier, the intergremial, the forum established by most of the country’s labor organizations, played some rule in the final phase of the negotiations between the government and the FMLN. It had been consulted by the FMLN during the negotiations in Mexico City, and one result of these consultations was the establishment of the Foro para la Concentración Económica y Social, consisting of government, employer, and union representatives that would discuss, and hopefully agree upon, a number of new policies in the economic and social fields. When the Foro was established it included representatives from the intergremial, as well as from the Alianza Democrática Campesina, the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de la Construcción y el Transporte, and the UPD. In preparation for the Foro, the intergremial prepared what it hoped would be the agenda for its discussions. This included the following: a) immediate measures of social compensation; b) elaboration of policies to alleviate the social cost of adjustment; c) elaboration of a national agrarian policy; d) elaboration of a financial policy; e) elaboration of a policy for modernization of the public sector; f) revision of the legal framework of labor relations; g) participation of the workers in the Plan of National Reconstruction; h) elaboration of the policy on the environment; i) participation of the workers in Central American integration.60

The workers’ organizations were certainly disappointed in the results of the Foro. Although they did get agreement on government ratification of some International Labor Organization accords, these did not include those on trade union freedom and collective bargaining. They also achieved a revision of the labor code, although here again this fell far short of what organized labor wished.61 Although organized labor fell far short of obtaining from the peace process the benefits for the workers and peasants that it had hoped for, this process did provide a kind of recognition of the legitimacy of the trade


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union movement that the government and employers had not previously been willing to grant. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION One of the most embattled labor movements of Latin America has been that of El Salvador. After first coming into existence in the 1920s, it was almost completely destroyed after the massacre of peasants and workers by the Hernández Martínez regime in 1932. Then immediately after the overthrow of the dictator in 1944, there was a short period of relative freedom in which the labor movement was able to come back to life, only to be suppressed once again within a few months. Only after the revolution of October 1948, which brought Major Oscar Osorio to power, did the government officially legalize organized labor in the cities, although it refused to do so in the countryside where the great majority of the country’s workers resided. That regime also enacted some modest labor protective legislation. Thereafter, for a quarter century, successive military presidents, largely the product of rigged elections, varied from an attitude or relative paternalism to one of strong repression. In that period, too, there developed tendencies within organized labor, one that sought more or less accommodation with the regime, the other of more or less Far Left persuasion. The latter was controlled by the PCS until the 1970s, when rival Far Left groups appeared that challenged the role of the PCS. The decade of the 1980s, marked as it was by a raging civil war, was the most difficult period for organized labor since the Hernández Martínez dictatorship of 1932–1944. Death squads of the Far Right, which had appeared in the 1970s, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered thousands of trade unionists—as well as politicians, professional people, and priests. For the 1980–1983 period much of the labor movement had to function clandestinely. However, the remarkable thing was that organized labor survived this time of troubles, and in the latter part of the 1980s there was a revival of union militancy. Nevertheless, the labor movement remained small in numbers and was only able to engage in collective bargaining on a very limited scale. It also remained divided politically and organizationally, although near the end of the civil war the unions were able to get together in two identifiable groups. The end of the civil war brought the labor movement a degree of government and employer recognition that had been largely missing in the past. However, the trade union movement of El Salvador, like that of virtually all of the other Latin American countries, still faced the challenge of the neoliberal philosophy and practice that had become dominant through the region during the 1980s and that seemed to have little place for organized labor.

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NOTES 1. William Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 312. 2. Ibid., p. 334. 3. Ibid., p. 379. 4. Ibid., p. 384. 5. Ibid., p. 351. 6. Ibid., p. 342. 7. Ibid., p. 357. 8. Ibid., p. 332. 9. Ibid., pp. 357–58. 10. Ibid., pp. 382–83. 11. Ibid., pp. 379–80. 12. Ibid., pp. 345–46. 13. Ibid., p. 330. 14. Jay Nussbaum (labor attaché of U.S. Embassy in El Salvador), interview with the author in San Salvador, June 19, 1967. 15. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 330. 16. Ibid., pp. 355–57. 17. John Haberle (public relations director, American Institute for Free Labor Development), interview with the author in Denver, Colorado, November 5, 1983. 18. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 368. 19. Roger Soles (field representative of Inter American Foundation), interview with the author in Arlington, VA, July 2, 1975. 20. Haberle, interview. 21. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 368–69. 22. Ibid., pp. 330–32. 23. Ibid., p. 367. 24. Le Monde (Paris), May 27, 1977. 25. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 359–61. 26. William C. Doherty (head of American Institute for Free Labor Development), interview with the author in New York, June 8, 1989. 27. Foregoing principally from the author’s interviews with Rubén Zamora (head of Movimiento Social Cristiano Popular) in New York, October 16, 1980; and with Guillermo Manuel Ungo (leader of Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario), in Sta. Barbara de Heredia, Costa Rica, July 23 and July 26, 1978, and in New York, October 12 and October 16, 1983. 28. Manuel Rojas Bolaños, El Sindicalismo Centroamericano: Una Visión Comparativa (San José: Centro de Estudios Para la Acción Social, 1988), p. 16. 29. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 319. 30. Steve Wattenmaker, “Unions Mobilize Urban and Rural Workers,” Intercontinental Press, October 31, 1983, p. 597. 31. Doherty, interview. 32. Wattenmaker, “Unions Mobilize Urban and Rural Workers,” p. 596. 33. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 359. 34. Ibid., p. 356. 35. Ibid., pp. 369–70. 36. Ibid., pp. 369–70.


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37. AFL-CIO News (Washington, DC), May 7, 1983, p. 1. 38. José Sánchez Gallegos (secretary-general, Federación Sindical Revolucionaria of El Salvador), interview with the author in New York, February 28, 1981. 39. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 338–41. 40. Ibid., pp. 366–67. 41. Ibid., pp. 380–81. 42. Ibid., p. 381. 43. Ibid., pp. 377–78. 44. Ibid., pp. 387–88. 45. “Salvadoran Unions Reject Austerity, War,” Intercontinental Press, April 21, 1986. 46. Bollinger, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 364. 47. Ibid., pp. 362–63. 48. William Lesser, “Salvador Labor Leaps to Action,” Socialist Action, September 1985. 49. “El Salvador Workers Face Showdown,” Workers Vanguard (New York), June 6, 1986. 50. “San Salvador Phone Workers Appeal for International Solidarity,” Workers Vanguard (New York), July 4, 1986. 51. “Labor Solidarity Frees Humberto Contento,” Workers Vanguard (New York), March 2, 1988. 52. “Salvador Workers Strike against Death Squad Regime,” Workers Vanguard (New York), March 11, 1988. 53. David Mena, in Modelo Neoliberal y Sindicatos en América Latina, coord. Holm-Detlev Köhler and Manfred Wannöffel (México, DF: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1993), pp. 204–205. 54. Los Derechos Sindicales en Centroamérica, ORIT, CIOSL, n.d. (ca. 1988), pp. 13–14. 55. Ibid., pp. 22–23. 56. Ibid., p. 39. 57. David Mena, Ruptura en las relaciones Laborales: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estados Unidos, México, Paraguay, coord. Manfred Wannöffel (México, DF: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1995), p. 169. 58. Ibid., pp. 170–72. 59. Ibid., pp. 166–67. 60. Ibid., p. 156. 61. Ibid., pp. 158–59.

CHAPTER 9

Guatemalan Organized Labor before June 1954

Guatemala had broken away from Spain, first as part of the short-lived Mexican Empire of Agustín de Iturbide, then after the fall of Iturbide in 1822 as part of the Republic of Central America. Then in 1847, under the leadership of José Rafael Carrera, it became the Republic of Guatemala. During the first half century after ceasing to be a Spanish colony, Guatemala was the scene of frequent civil wars between Liberal and Conservative factions. Finally, in 1873 Justo Rufino Barrios won power, marking the beginning of nearly three quarters of a century of Liberal rule. After some confusion following Barrios’ death in 1885, another Liberal caudillo, Manuel Estrada Cabrera, seized power in 1898 and remained president until he was finally overthrown in 1920. The Liberal governments of the 1920s somewhat relaxed the dictatorial rule that had characterized the Estrada Cabrera regime. But in February 1931, General Jorge Ubico became president and presided over the last of the Liberal dictatorships until he finally resigned in July 1944. The long period of Liberal rule changed Guatemala in many ways. The power of the Catholic Church was vastly reduced, with the government’s seizure of most of its property, and a drastic reduction in the number of clergy. Even more significant was the fostering of “economic development” by the Liberal regimes. This involved the extensive building of roads and other infrastructure; the stimulating of the coffee industry (much of it in the hands of German immigrants), and the establishment of the banana industry on both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Bananas were largely the province of the United Fruit Company (UFC), which also came—through ownership of the International Railways of Central America and of the


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Great White Fleet—to control key parts of the country’s internal and external transport system. The UFC also for long dominated communications through its Tropical Radio subsidiary. The principal victims of economic development were the Indians, who made up the great majority of the country’s population. Large numbers of them forced off their communal or individual landholdings to make way for the coffee fincas, and General Ubico established a vagrancy law that forced Indians to work on the coffee plantations during the harvesting season. By the middle of the twentieth century, there had also developed a modest manufacturing sector. This included some textile plants, food processing industries, and other factories, making Guatemala one of the two most industrialized countries of Central America, although manufacturing remained only a secondary part of the national economy until the advent of the Central American Common Market in the 1960s. The Liberal period came to an end with the Revolution of 1944. President Ubico was forced out of office, to be succeeded by General Federico Ponce, but then in October 1944 an uprising of middle-rank officers and civilians forced out General Ponce. In elections held in December 1944, Juan José Arévalo, a young professor who had fled the Ubico regime in 1934 and spent most of the next 10 years in Argentina, was elected president. The Guatemalan Revolution lasted about 10 years and covered the presidencies of Arévalo and his successor Jacobo Arbenz, who was elected in 1950. It brought in a new constitution, that of 1945, which was written by a constitutional assembly consisting in large part of university students and recently graduated professionals. It enacted a labor code, which stimulated the growth of the labor movement. It stimulated economic development. It enacted an agrarian reform that had the avowed purpose of bringing into existence a prosperous small farmer class, mainly consisting of Indians. Until its last months, the Revolution also provided Guatemala with probably the most democratic government it has ever enjoyed. As the end of President’s Arévalo’s term approached, there were two obvious candidates to succeed him: Colonel Francisco Arana, commander of the army, and Colonel Jacobo Arbenz. When Colonel Arana was murdered in July 1949—provoking the most serious of several military uprisings against the Arévalo government—that left the road clear for Arbenz, who won overwhelmingly in the following year. Several parties played major roles during the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944 –1954. Immediately following the ouster of Ponce, three parties appeared. These were the Frente Popular Libertador (FPL), the Partido Renovación Nacional (PRN), and the Partido Acción Revolucionaria (PAR). Personal differences rather than ideological issues separated these three, and the PRN was considered to be most closely associated with President Arévalo. A bit later, the Partido Socialista was formed under the leadership of Augusto Charnaud McDonald.

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Early in the Arbenz administration these four parties merged to form the Partido de la Revolución Guatemalteca, but this unity was short lived, elements withdrawing to reestablish the FPL, PRN, and PAR. In January 1954, I wrote about the parties then active: In spite of the fact that there are apparently three more or less strong parties in the government coalition, all of which are much greater in voting strength than is the CP [Communist Party], they have little personality of their own. It is hard to find any essential difference among these three parties. They exist largely because the government finances them and because they are organs through which government jobs and favors are divided or dispensed. None of these political parties is in reality a party of the Democratic Left, comparable, let us say, with the Apristas of Peru or the Democratic Action Party of Venezuela. They have no real ideology of their own, and they are incapable of taking lead in setting policies of the government.1

The other major party of this period was the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (Guatemalan Party of Labor—PGT), the country’s revived Communist Party. People who had been Communists or worked with them while in exile returned to Guatemala after the fall of Ubico. They joined one or another of the new parties, meanwhile recruiting other Guatemalans to Marxist–Leninist ideas. In 1947 they formed the semiclandestine Democratic Vanguard. Then, in 1949 they formally established the Communist Party of Guatemala that early in the Arbenz regime was legalized as the PGT, eschewing the name “Communist” because of a proviso in the 1945 constitution banning “international” parties. The Communists, although remaining relatively few in numbers, and never electing more than four members of parliament, became a major element in Guatemalan politics, particularly during the administration of President Arbenz. They came to dominate the labor movement, largely controlled the two government newspapers and radio station, and were given key positions in the social security system and the Departamento Agrario Nacional, administering the agrarian reform.2 In June 1954, an invasion from neighboring Honduras, largely organized by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, resulted in the fall of Arbenz, when the army refused to defend his regime. That brought an end to the Guatemalan Revolution and established the pattern of reactionary military domination of Guatemala that continued for nearly half a century. The Castillo Armas regime gutted the agrarian reform, outlawed all existing political parties, suspended the 1945 constitution, and destroyed a large part of the labor movement. A political party organized by the regime, the National Democratic Movement, survived Castillo Armas and under one name or another remained the principle party of the Guatemalan Far Right. Following assassination of Castillo Armas in July 1947, new elections brought General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes to the presidency. Although


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a onetime cabinet member of President Ubico, Ydigoras presided over a somewhat more tolerant regime than that of Castillo Armas, and organized labor fared somewhat better. However, his administration was also notable because leaders of a failed military revolt against him established the first left-wing rural guerrilla movement, the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces—FAR). President Ydigoras was overthrown in 1963 by a revolt led by Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, who organized his own party, the Partido Institucional Democrático (Democratic Institutional Party—PID), which was to be the instrument of military rule for most of the next 20 years. Peralta’s regime was more tyrannical than that of Ydigoras, and for the first time right-wing death squads began to operate, assassinating labor leaders and non-rightist political figures. However, under a new constitution engineered by Peralta, elections brought to power in 1966 the first civilian government since 1950 under President Julio César Méndez Montenegro, candidate of the Partido Revolucionario, formed in the late 1950s by non-Communist supporters of the Guatemalan Revolution. Although Méndez Montenegro served out his four-year term and was more or less sympathetic to the labor movement, his hopes of continuing the Revolution were thoroughly thwarted. The military blocked any real reforms, and the death squads intensified their activities. The principal author of the right-wing terror was Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio. He was elected the successor of Méndez Montenegro, as candidate of the PID. The leftist guerrillas, who had lost some force under Méndez Montenegro, revived their strength and two new guerrilla groups appeared. In 1974, General Kjell Langerud, again the PID candidate, was officially proclaimed elected, although it was widely believed that the candidate of the Christian Democrats, General Efraín Ríos Montt, had won. His regime was more moderate than its predecessor, and the labor movement was able to recover some of the ground it had lost. However, in 1978, the still PID administration of President General Romeo Lucas García proved to be one of the most brutal since 1954. The labor movement was almost destroyed during his regime, and the military and the death squads decimated the Indian population, accused by the government of supporting the guerrillas. President Lucas was overthrown shortly before the end of his term in 1982, and a junta led by General Ríos Montt was installed. During his regime, which lasted about a year, persecution of the civilian population abated in the cities but was intensified against the Indians in the countryside. In August 1983, Ríos Montt was ousted, giving way to General Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores. After the writing of still another constitution, new elections, which were relatively free, resulted in the election of a civilian, Vinicio Cerezo, head of

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the Christian Democratic Party, who served from 1986 to 1990. Although human rights were somewhat more respected under Cerezo, the president was unable to carry forward any reform projects, and his efforts to bring an end to the guerrilla war were ineffective. That did not occur until several years after the end of Cerezo’s term. THE ORIGINS OF THE GUATEMALAN LABOR MOVEMENT The beginnings of Guatemalan organized labor can be traced at least as far back as 1872, when mutual benefit societies began to appear among the artisans of Guatemala City. The workers’ association El Provenir de los Obreros (Workers’ Future) was organized in 1894, and it was for several years the most important element in the labor movement. This group helped in the organization of workers of various crafts, and by 1912, there were enough workers’ societies to form a Federación de Sociedades Obreras. This included organizations of bricklayers, printers, and other craft groups, as well as more general workers’ societies such as El Porvenir de los Obreros.3 During World War I, the Estrada Cabrera regime sought to organize the workers on its own behalf and aided in founding the Federación Obrera de Guatemala para la Protección Legal del Trabajo (Workers Federation of Guatemala for the Legal Protection of Labor). However, Estrada Cabrera’s efforts to court organized labor were not very successful. Although the struggle to oust him was led by the Partido Unionista, a party of the conservative oligarchy, the organized workers played a significant, if subsidiary, role, operating with “certain independence.” There was first established the Comité Patriótico de Obreros, and then in September 1919, the Liga Obrera de Guatemala, headed by a tailor, Silverio Ortíz, who published a journal, Obrero Libre, which “denounced the blows against the workers and put forward their demands.”4 More militant than the federation, it organized workers’ demonstrations against the government that were important in bringing about the overthrow of Estrada Cabrera.5 In the period immediately following the ouster of Estrada Cabrera, the labor movement faced severe difficulties. An article in the New York Times noted, “Reports published in Mexico City state that the Guatemalan Government has refused permission to labor leaders who are seeking to organize labor unions in Guatemala. Two Mexican leaders who started to organize unions now are held prisoners on shipboard in Puerto Barrios. It is also stated that President Orellana of Guatemala has ordered the death sentence for all agitators or labor leaders who are trying to stir native labor through formation of labor unions.”6 Nevertheless, in the years that followed, organized labor made progress and there were several important strikes, including a successful walkout for increased wages on the International Railway of Central America, led


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by the Unión Ferrocarrilera. It was followed by a strike of telegraph workers, as well as the dock laborers of Puerto Barrios, who struck in 1924. This last walkout was used by the government as an excuse for outlawing all strikes.7 The Federation of Labor (the old Federación Obrera para la Protección Legal del Trabajo) claimed a membership of nearly 6,000 and included within its ranks groups of building trades workers, musicians, dental mechanics, typographers, general workers, printers, chauffeurs, and barbers. According to its constitution, the federation strove toward the following: improving the moral, economic and intellectual conditions of the workers of the Republic, and encouraging labor organization, not only of factory workers, but also of agricultural workers and of women in their various activities; toward the growth of the personality of workers and the designation of delegates to workers’ congresses, both national and international; toward the unity of all the labor elements of the Republic; toward putting forth every possible effort to place members in public office, so that the enforcement of labor legislation may be under surveillance.8

This federation joined the Pan American Federation of Labor in 1927.9 It also became part of the Consejo Obrero Centroamericano, a subsidiary of the Pan American Federation.10 Another central labor group of the 1920s was the Federación Regional de Trabajadores, which was under Communist Party leadership. Manuel Villar, an anarchist writing in the Buenos Aires anarchist newspaper La Protesta, noted that “it respond[ed] to the inspiration of Moscow, but represent[ed] an effective force.” Villar also noted the existence of the Federación Centroamericana, “which establishe[d] it secretariat by rotation, one year in each Central American republic.” Villar likewise said that an anarchosyndicalist labor group had been established, due in part to the efforts of J. Díaz, the representative in Central America of the Argentine FORA and of the international anarchosyndicalist group, the International Workingmen’s Association. Under Díaz leadership, an anarchist group Nueva Senda (New Path) had been established in 1926, and early in the following year it had brought into being the first union under anarchist leadership, the Tailors’ Society. Subsequently, there had been organized by the anarchosyndicalists the Comité Pro Acción Sindical, which by mid-1928 had affiliated with it a union of bricklayers (which was publishing a biweekly paper Orientación Sindical, as well as a tailors’ union, and others of textile workers, newsboys, shoe workers, and metallurgical workers, in Guatemala City. Villar added that the Comité also “maintain[ed] relations with four other organizations” in the interior of the country.11 Mario López Larrave noted that during the 1920s “there proliferated unions of shoemakers, construction workers, bakers, tailors, and so forth, in their majority craft groups, precisely because the mode of production

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continued being predominantly of an artisan type or in small firms. These unions were the most combative.” However, López Larrave also noted that “organization also came to the large enterprises, the UFC, the International Railways of Central America (IRCA), and to the nascent national industries, to the commerce and banking sectors, and even to women, particularly in coffee processing and clothing manufacturing.”12 By 1930, union organization had even begun to spread to the coffee plantations of the western highlands and the southern coastal area.13 The labor movement also participated in politics during the 1920s. Soon after the overthrow of Estrada Cabrera, the Unificación Obrera Socialista (UCS) was established. However, it was outlawed after a coup in December 1921 that was carried out by three generals. Thereafter, the right wing of the UCS formed the Partido Laborista, which succeeded in electing one member of the Legislative Assembly. The left wing of the UCS organized the Central American Communist Party, Guatemala Section, which, according to López Larrave, “exercised considerable influence in the labor movement of the period.”14 Under the regime of General Ubico from 1931 to 1944, the labor movement was given little or no freedom. The only labor group during that period was the more or less dormant Federación Obrera de Guatemala.15 Deborah Levenson-Estrada noted that under Ubico “unions and parties were abolished, most newspapers were closed, and even particular words such as ‘strike’ and ‘worker’ were barred.”16 THE BEGINNINGS OF A REVIVED LABOR MOVEMENT Although General Ubico had expressed admiration for Hitler, following Pearl Harbor he hastened to join the United States in declaring war on the Axis. He also subsequently confiscated the extensive coffee holdings of German citizens in Guatemala, as property belonging to “enemy aliens.” However, entry into World War II proved to be counterproductive so far as General Ubico was concerned. United States wartime propaganda, which circulated widely in Guatemala, pictured the struggle against the Axis as one for democracy, which made increasingly incongruous the continuing tyranny of the general-president. Discontent among students and workers, and even among businessmen, reached a climax in mid-1944, forcing the resignation of President Ubico. A few months later, in October, an uprising of middle-rank army officers (with wide civilian support) installed a junta consisting of Major Francisco Arana, Captain Jacobo Arbenz, and a civilian, Jorge Torriello, a movement that became known as the Guatemalan October Revolution. The junta hastened to call elections in December that were won by Juan José Arévalo, an opponent of Ubico who had had lived for a decade in Argentina as a university professor.


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One of the earlier legislative enactments of the Arévalo government was the labor code, adopted in 1947. Hank Frundt and Norma Chinchilla have said: The Labor Code established, for the first time, the right to organize unions and to strike, the right to compulsory labor-management contracts, minimum wage levels, equal pay for equal work, decent working conditions, and social security. It created a ‘social law,’ a whole body of legislation related to trade union issues. Although the government retained the power to arbitrate disputes, to legalize unions through formal recognition, and to dissolve unions if they were found to serve foreign interests of to engage in politics, the basis for a free and autonomous trade union movement had been established.17

Even before the enactment of a labor code, a new trade union movement had come into existence. Deborah Levenson-Estrada noted that “hundreds of unions . . . arose immediately after the October Revolution without government promotion.”18 Some of the new unions had existed even during the Ubico regime as mutual benefit societies. The most important of these was what came to be the Sindicato de Acción y Mejoramiento de los Ferrocarrilleros (SAMF), the union of the workers on the International Railways of Central America (a subsidiary of the UFC). After the overthrow of Ubico it was converted into a union and gave up virtually all of its mutual benefit activities.19 In another case, the mutualist Unión General de Pilotos Automovilísticos split soon after the October Revolution, with the dissidents withdrawing to form the Sindicato de Pilotos Automovilísticos. The Sindicato came to include truck and bus drivers, while most of the taxi drivers remained in the Unión General.20 The bakers’ mutual benefit society, which had also existed under Ubico, likewise became a union after his fall.21 In the months following the fall of Ubico, the railroaders’ union and the teachers’ Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educacción en Guatemala were among the largest and most important unions. The latter was characterized by having a more radical point of view than the SAMF. Together, these two groups took the lead in organizing the Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CTG), in October 1944, at a congress in the old headquarters of the Federación Obrera.22 At its foundation, the CTG proclaimed itself to be “an organism of social struggle constituted by association of trade union resistance organizations, within the legal norms to counter the advances of capitalism to the detriment of the rights of the laboring class. . . . Its supreme ideal is expressed in its slogan that is ‘For the unification of the proletariat and its social advance.’”23 However, in 1946 the CTG suffered two splits. The first arose when the CTC expelled its secretary-general, Gunercindo Tejeda. He took the lead in forming what López Larrave called “a tiny central labor group,” the

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Federación Regional Central de Trabajadores, which soon changed its name to Federación Laboral Autónoma de Guatemala.24 Subsequently, a more serious division took place in the CTG. It arose over the issues of whether or not to affiliate with the Communist-controlled Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (Confederation of Workers of Latin America—CTAL), and whether all secretaries-general of the CTG affiliates should attend the Communists’ Escuela Claridad. The leadership of the railroad workers’ union opposed both of these ideas. As a consequence, the railroaders and various other unions withdrew from the CTG to form what was first called the Unión Sindical de Guatemala, and subsequently the Federación Sindical de Guatemala (FSG), which Mario López Larrave said, was “the strongest central labor group.”25 After the split in the CTG, it had most strength among peasants (except in the vicinity of Guatemala City) and among the artisans of the capital and other cities. It established unions and leagues among agricultural wageworkers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers, although encountered considerable suspicion among the Indians, who made up most of the rural population and spoke a variety of languages not understood by the ladino (non-Indian) organizers going out from the cities to try to organize them, and in many cases the Indians did not speak any Spanish. In 1948, the CTG had a local federation in Guatemala City, with 16 unions affiliated with it, as well as some other unions in the city affiliated directly with the confederation. It also had three other local federations. In Guatemala City, most of its affiliates were unions of artisans, including carpenters, shoemakers, and some others. It also had a handful of factory workers’ groups, including a soap workers’ union, two textile unions, and a few more.26 THE FSG The FSG, which was not affiliated with any international labor organization, had most of the factory workers’ unions of Guatemala City, Quetzaltenango, and other urban centers in its ranks. Its strongest union was the SAMF, but it also had the Sindicato Agrícola de Trabajadores de Tiquisate, the principal UFC union, which in 1948 claimed membership of 4,500 of the 8,000 UFC workers in the Tiquisate area—most of them manual workers, since the white collar workers for the most part stayed out of the union. In contrast, in most of the factory unions belonging to the Federación Sindical, both manual and white collar workers belonged to the same union. In the early years, relatively few unions were able to negotiate collective contracts with their members’ employers, in spite of the labor code’s providing for such negotiations after 1947. One of the most important organizations that was able to do so was the SAMF. In the case of the UFC union, the employer procrastinated about negotiating a contract. The banana workers had gone on strike in 1944, when


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the Ponce government was still in power, and had succeeded in winning an increase in the minimum wage from 50¢ to 80¢ a day, and a union was established early in 1945 and was legally recognized under the labor code. But by August 1948, the union had still not been able to negotiate an agreement with the UFC. However, there had been established a grievance procedure, by which union delegates from various parts of the Tiquisate division of the company’s operations presented complaints locally, and if issues were not resolved there, top union officials dealt with management representatives. If no solution was reached at that level, matters were passed to the labor courts.27 When the FSG was established it adopted a declaration of principles that stated, “The Federation will defend its ideological independence and will be energetically opposed to the meddling of exotic doctrines that do not fit into Guatemalan social movement, in order that its final objectives may be reached without the intervention of foreign influence and guidance.” This declaration was clearly aimed at the Communists and the various foreign Communist leaders who were then advising their Guatemalan comrades. However, before long Communist influence began to grow within the FSG. Although at its first congress in May 1947 it reiterated its “national” and “Guatemalan” nature, the situation began to change. At its second congress in January 1948, Arturo Morales Cubas of the SAMF, a strong opponent of the Communists, was succeeded as secretary-general of the FSG by Manuel Pinto Usaga, also from the SAMF but much more friendly to the Communists.28 At about the same time, Arcadio Puíz Franco, who categorized himself as a Socialist, was pushed out of the FSG leadership, and he claimed later that it was the Communists who brought this about because he had developed friendly relationships with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.29 José Alberto Cardoza, a Communist, became secretary of organization of the FSG. In that position, he began to circulate so-called official FSG documents elaborating on Marxist–Leninist ideas. His union, the Graphic Arts Union, published Lenin’s Social Democracy in Russia. In January 1960 Pinto Usaga pushed through a motion to have the FSG join the World Federation of Trade Unions and CTAL. As a consequence, his union, the SAMF, expelled him and withdrew from the FSG. However, Pinto Usaga was able to get the third congress of the FSG in August 1951 to agree to merge with the CTG.30 THE CONFEDERATION GENERAL DE TRABAJADORES DE GUATEMALA In spite of the split in the CTG in early 1946, later in that year an overall coordinating body for the labor movement was established. This was the Comité Nacional de Unidad Sindical (CNUS), which included the CTG,

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the Federación Sindical, and several smaller groups. Frundt and Chinchilla noted that it worked with the Arévalo government “to abolish the vagrancy laws and to pass the important 1947 Labor Code.”31 One of the leaders of the Federación Sindical commented to me about two years after the establishment of the CNUS that it “work[ed] in perfect harmony.”32 Although one of the functions of the CNUS presumably was to bring about unity in the organized labor movement, no serious effort was undertaken during the Arévalo period to bring its member groups together in a single confederation. That situation changed with the advent to power of Colonel Arbenz in late 1950. There is no doubt that his administration strongly favored the establishment of a single Guatemalan central labor organization. Also, by 1950 the Communists had come largely to control not only the CTG but also the FSG. Meanwhile, the CNUS had sponsored formation of a National Workers’ Political Committee (CPNT), which organized counterparts in a wide number of unions. The CPNT played a major role in organizing the campaign for president of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz in 1950. This CPNT attacked with particular ferocity the candidacy of Jorge García Granados, Arbenz’s most important rival after the murder of Colonel Arana.33 At least in part as a result of pressure of the Arbenz government, most of the labor movement was united in October 1951 to form the Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CGTG). Deborah Levenson-Estrada noted, “Forming the backbone of the confederation were unions of tailors, printers, barbers, bakers, textile workers, carpenters, and shoemakers; teachers in the Union of Guatemalan Educational Workers (STEG); and railroad workers organized in the Railroad Workers Mutual Aid Union (SAMF).”34 Frundt and Chinchilla have said that at its height the CGTG had 200,000 members,35 although in September 1952, Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, the secretary-general of the CGTG, said that it had only between 40,000 and 50,000 members.36 On the other hand, Max Salazar, organizing secretary of the CGTG, put membership at the unlikely number of 500,000 in 1952.37 The CGTG established the policy of organizing its constituent unions into national industrial and craft federations wherever possible. It also had regional federations, based on the various urban areas throughout the country, and the idea was that these would come to consist only of those unions that could not conveniently be grouped in the national industrial or craft organizations. The regional groups would also play a major role in organizing new unions. By 1953, the CGTG had federations of textile workers, leather workers, construction workers, food workers, teachers, and printing trades employees. It was in the process of establishing a transport workers’ federation, consisting of SAMF, the chauffeurs, and the airline employees.38 With the establishment of the CGTG, the FSG had continued to exist as a federation within the new confederation because it had within its ranks


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most of the organized industrial workers. However, it was planned that as federations were established for workers of various crafts and industries, the FSG would gradually disappear.39 The Textile Workers Federation, which was the oldest of the industrial groupings, had seven unions affiliated with it by the early 1950s. These were organized on a regional basis, and in 1953 claimed a total membership of 3,000, about half of whom were women. The secretary of conflicts of the federation in 1953 was a woman. Two of the unions of the federation covered workers in individual factories, the others consisted of workers of various enterprises specializing in particular types of production in what was still to a considerable degree a handicraft industry. All of the unions in the textile federation had collective agreements with the employers by the early 1950s. Among other things, these agreements included a grievance procedure, which provided for a local unit of a union to notify the conflicts secretary of the union to which that unit belonged when a grievance arose. That individual negotiated with the employer, and if no resolution of the problem could be reached, the matter passed to the labor inspectorate; in case no solution was achieved there, the issue went to the labor courts. However, in 1952 it was reported that most grievances were being settled at the level of direct negotiations between the employer and the union.40 The Leather Workers Federation in 1953 consisted of 10 unions. One covered the only factory in Guatemala City big enough to have a union of its own, and another in the capital covered the small leather workshops. The other eight unions were in the provinces, the largest of these being located in Cobán, and having 350 members. The two unions in Guatemala City, at least, had collective agreements with their members’ employers.41 In the case of the construction workers, a federation had been organized in 1945, but it disappeared. A new one was established in December 1952, and it consisted of six unions, those of road workers, public works employees, installation electricians, workers of the electric company, bricklayers, and wood and glass workers. Still outside of the Construction Workers Federation were unions of the cement plant employees, of mechanics and blacksmiths, and one or two others that remained part of the FSG. The unions in the Construction Workers Federation all had collective agreements with their members’ employers. The road workers and public works employees’ organizations had contracts with the government; in the case of the latter group, the contract being renewed each year in negotiations with the director-general of public works. The other unions in the federation had agreements with groups of private employers or with individual employers. The union of employees of the electric company had recently had a strike, early in 1953, which lasted only from 10 o’clock a.m. until 7 o’clock p.m., when government installed an administrator to run the company until the issue of wage increases was settled.42

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The Second Congress of the CGTG in January 1954 emphasized the importance of the federations within the CGTG. Its resolution on Trade Union Unity called for the CGTG “to work tirelessly to overcome the organizational weaknesses of the CGTG, strengthening the industrial and craft federations and the regional federations, establishing new organizations in conformity with the general plan of organization of the CGTG.”43 One major problem of the CGTG and most of its affiliates was that of finances. Two of the major constituent organizations, the SAMF and the teachers’ federation, had obtained the checkoff of union dues through their collective bargaining agreements. However, according to Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, the secretary-general of the CGTG, the confederation did not generally favor the checkoff because it converted dues paying into a duty, and the CGTG preferred that workers pay their dues voluntarily.44 But Max Salazar, the organization secretary of the CGTG, admitted to me that “only a small percentage” of the members of the CGTG in fact paid their dues.45 Similarly, the secretary of conflicts of the Guatemala City textile workers’ union said that “most workers” did not pay their dues but reiterated Gutiérrez’s opposition to the checkoff.46 The Second Congress of the CGTG adopted a special resolution “On Finances.” It called for “Intensification of propaganda within all the basic trade unions for dues paying, as the fundamental base of the finances of each organization, so that it can carry out its different tasks and deal with the problems of its members.” The resolutions elaborated at length on this theme. This resolution also proclaimed, “The finances of the CGTG must not be based only on dues. The finance commission of the organization must by all licit means available to it organize different activities, and use different methods to obtain funds. However, every moment it must see to it that these activities do not undermine in the least the conquests of the workers or the independence of the labor movement” (emphasis in the original). The CGTG was concerned with broader economic and social issues, as well as with the direct concerns of the organized workers. This fact was reflected in the resolutions of the Second Congress of the organization. For instance, the congress proclaimed the following: [t]he workers must be in the vanguard of the struggle to push forward the economic and independent development of Guatemala, increasing agricultural production, defending national industry from ruinous foreign competition, supporting measures tending to give impulse to development and steps designed to diversify the foreign commerce of our country, all of which will raise the living conditions of the population, open new sources of work and create the conditions for the development of a national culture.

The congress also strongly endorsed the agrarian reform.47 The CGTG had some groups affiliated with it that were not trade unions. For instance, in August 1953 a Tenant League (Liga de Inquilinos) was


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organized in Guatemala City that joined the confederation. It claimed a membership of 2,020 in January 1954. It dealt with all kinds of problems facing tenants; thus when a landlord sought to evict a tenant, the Liga took up the matter with the government dependency that dealt with rent problems; if landlords turned off gas and electricity because of nonpayment of rent, the Liga would also intervene. The Liga’s secretary reported in January 1954 that the Liga was “usually successful” in dealing with its members’ problems.48 Both the federations belonging to the CGTG and the confederation itself frequently became involved in the collective bargaining of the unions affiliated with them. According to Carlos Manuel Pellecer, then secretary of conflicts of the CGTG, a sindicato usually handled its bargaining alone if only a single firm was involved; a federation intervened when “a matter of national policy” was at issue. When the CGTG became concerned with collective bargaining negotiations it sometimes looked at the issues with a wider perspective than that of the individual union, or even those of a federation. For instance, in the case of the workers in the citronella industry, which had suffered a drastic fall in the price of its product, the CGTG intervened to discourage the unions from pushing the demand for minimum wage of 80¢ per day that was generally being sought in the countryside. At the same time, the CGTG leaders brought pressure on the government’s Banco Agrícola to give credit to the citronella farmers so that they could shift to the production of sugar. In the case of the textile industry, the CGTG was faced with another kind of problem. That industry was still to a large degree in the handicraft stage in the early 1950s and was faced with considerable competition from abroad. Some of the textile manufacturers wanted to modernize their plants, bringing in modern machinery, but this would result in their laying off a number of workers. Since the labor code required that workers who were dismissed for redundancy should be paid one month’s wage for every year they had been employed, and a large percentage of the workers had been in their jobs for many years, this would have required the employers to pay layoff compensation to their workers beyond the firms’ means, and this tended to make the modernization of the industry very difficult, if not impossible. The CGTG had not found a way out of this problem before the fall of the Arbenz government.49 THE COMMUNISTS AND THE ARBENZ REGIME The Communists came to dominate the Guatemalan labor movement in the early 1950s. The Communist Party of Guatemala that had existed in the late 1920s had been destroyed during the Ubico dictatorship between 1931 and 1944. However, a new one was established after the October Revolution. An important role in the rebuilding of the Communist Party

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was played by Salvadorans and Mexicans who were either residents in Guatemala or came there after the fall of Ubico, and by Guatemalan exiles under Ubico who had become Communists or Communist sympathizers while abroad, particularly in Mexico. The Guatemalan Communists also had the support and direction of foreign Communists from Mexico and Cuba, and even from Chile. In the beginning, Communist sympathizers were active in the new parties that appeared after Ubico’s fall, particularly in the FPL and PAR. For example, José Manuel Fortuny, who became secretary-general of the Communist Party, was in 1948 the secretary-general of the PAR.50 On the other hand, Carlos Manuel Pellecer, who later was one of the four Communist members of Congress and a major figure in the CGTG, started out in the Frente Libertador and was one of its deputies in the 1945 Constituent Assembly.51 According to José Manuel Fortuny, the Communist Party “can be said to have been established in 1949.”52 That was indeed the year in which they formally took the name of Communist Party and held their first open convention. But two years earlier the predecessor of the party, the clandestine Vanguardia Democrática Guatemalteco (VDG), had been established in September 1947. It included those who were to emerge publicly as leaders of the Communist Party, including José Manuel Fortuny and labor leaders Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez and Carlos Manuel Pellecer.53 Some of those who were to launch the Communist Party had earlier established a training school, Escuela Clardidad, where the principles of Marxism–Leninism and allied matter were taught. They succeeded in getting a decision of the CTG to have the secretaries-general of all of the CTG’s affiliated unions attend that school. They thus developed a corps of trained leaders influenced by, if not committed to, their way of thinking.54 The Communists were very influential in the Arbenz regime. A Peruvian Aprista leader, then in exile in Guatemala, and publishing a news magazine Isthmania, attributed the origins of their influence with Arbenz in the first place to the fact that they had been among the earliest supporters if his presidential candidacy and had set out to “colonize” him, providing him with much of his political education. In addition, in the opportunistic atmosphere of Guatemalan politics, Arbenz came to see the Communists as the only group that was definitely loyal to him. Finally, he judged correctly that they were the only political group whose leaders did not try to enrich themselves from the public purse.55 The United States labor attaché gave me almost the same explanation of Arbenz’s support of the Communists.56 José García Bauer, a onetime FPL member of the 1945 constituent assembly and later a labor judge, drew somewhat the same conclusions. He said that Arbenz lacked the political experience and training to distinguish between Communists and other leftists that he had a deep social conscience and was convinced that the Communists were the group most sincerely in favor of social progress.57


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There were undoubtedly other factors involved in the relationship of Arbenz with the Communists. Popular jokes about current affairs sometimes reflect the truth of a situation. Such was the case with a story that circulated widely during the Arbenz period, in several different versions. It concerned someone who asked whether there were many Communists in the regime, and got the reply, “No, there are not really many Communists, they just claim to be Communists so as to get government jobs.”58 One indication of the influence of the Communists during the Arbenz period was the fact that, on the initiative of the four Communist deputies, Congress declared a minute of silence on memory of Stalin at the time of the Soviet dictator’s death. Only one progovernment deputy, Carlos García Bauer, publicly opposed this action.59 Subsequently, García Bauer and five other deputies withdrew from the Partido de la Revolución Guatemalteca in protest against Communist influence in that party.60 As late as March 1, 1954, in his speech opening Congress, President Arbenz indicated his continuing support of the Communists. Saying that there were people who “are asking that the Communists be put in quarantine as well as those who are alleged to be Communists,” he said: The democratic and progressive forces of Guatemala are not something isolated from the democratic and patriotic program of those same forces, which were grouped around my candidacy and that now firmly support my government. To attempt to combat certain democratic and progressive forces without at the same time undermining our program is not paradoxical but presumes an ingenuousness on our part in agreeing to lose the support of what has been the basis of the conquests achieved through that program and that are at the same time indissolubly associated with our regime. This would be equivalent to suicide for the democratic and revolutionary movement of Guatemala.61

Although the Communists had only four members of Congress, the party was given very important positions in the Arbenz administration. According to Leonardo Castillo Flores, secretary-general of the Confederación Nacional Campesina, a majority of the agrarian inspectors of the Departamento Agrario Nacional (DAN), carrying out the agrarian reform, as well as other functionaries of the DAN, were Communists. However, Major Alfonso Martínez, the head of the DAN, was not thought to be particularly pro-Communist. Castillo Flores also said that the government’s Radio Nacional was Communist controlled. He illustrated this by his experience with the government’s radio’s covering of the February 1944 congress of the peasant’s confederation: Radio Nacional at first refused to cover the congress at all, then agreed to broadcast its opening meeting—but after carrying the national anthem and the first paragraphs of Castillo Flores’s opening speech, cut him off and only came back on the air when the Communist trade union leader Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez was presenting his greetings to the meeting.62

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I can vouch from personal experience for the Communist inclinations of Radio Nacional. One noontime, I was sitting in the plaza in front of the presidential palace, listening to the news broadcast of Radio Nacional that was being carried by loud speakers and that was devoted entirely to the alleged use of germ warfare by the United States in the Korean War, then in progress, part of a worldwide propaganda campaign then being carried on by the international Communist movement. According to Carlos Manuel Pellecer, during the Arbenz administration one of the principal Communist leaders of the CGTG, there were strong differences of opinion within the Communist Party leadership on the issues of this kind of propaganda. On the one side were José Manuel Fortuny, secretary-general of the party and the Communist leader closest to Arbenz, together with Salvador García Aguirre, a major figure in the Cuban Communist Party leadership who was present in Guatemala during most of the Arbenz regime to be an adviser to the PGT. Fortuny supported the germ warfare campaign because he said that the Soviet Union wanted it as a means of alienating the Latin Americans from the United States. On the other side in this dispute were the principal Communist trade union leaders, Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, Max Salazar, and Pellecer himself. They opposed the germ warfare campaign on two grounds—that it was untrue (or at least the Guatemalans had no evidence to support it), and that it served to alienate the United States government from the Arbenz regime unnecessarily.63 THE COMMUNISTS AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT There is no doubt that the Communists played a major role in the Guatemalan labor movement after 1944. From the beginning, Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, a Communist, was secretary-general of the CTG. However, Gutiérrez had strong disagreements with José Manuel Fortuny and his friends who dominated the Communist Party. He argued that they were making the party a middle class rather than a worker–peasant organization and were not pushing for agrarian reform as they should be doing. (In fact, Fortuny was following the Soviet line of the moment, which opposed stressing agrarian reform in Latin America.) In November 1949, Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez resigned from the Communist Party, and a few months later established the Partido Revolucionario Obrero de Guatemala (PROG) to which most of the Communist labor leaders became affiliated. It was pictured as the party of the Guatemalan workers and peasants, but it is also made clear that it was a Marxist– Leninist–Stalinist party, amply demonstrated by the fact that a summary by Gutiérrez of Stalin’s History of the Communist Party (b) of the Soviet Union was required reading for all party members. The party came to include


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not only the principal leaders of the CTG, but ultimately those of the FSG as well. Neither the Communist Party nor the PROG was eager to quarrel openly with the other. Indeed, they collaborated on a number of activities. Gutiérrez was elected with the backing of both parties as secretary-general of the (CGTG) when it was established in 1951. Soon after the founding congress of the CGTG, Gutiérrez went on a trip to the Soviet Union, with a stopover in Cuba, where he conferred extensively with Cuban Communist leaders, particularly Blas Roca, the Cuban secretary-general. He was urged both in Moscow and Havana to liquidate his party and rejoin the Partido Comunista. Upon arriving home, he announced the dissolution of the PORG, and that he was returning to the Partido Comunista. According to Carlos Manuel Pellecer, Gutiérrez made this announcement without consulting any of the other leaders of his party.64 There can be little question that the Communists dominated the Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala. The four top officials—secretarygeneral Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, conflicts secretary Carlos Manuel Pellecer, agrarian affairs secretary César Montenegro Paniagua, and secretary of organization Max Salazar—were all Communist Party members. The first three were PGT members of Congress. The editor of the CGTG newspaper Unidad was the veteran Salvadoran Communist trade unionist Miguel Mármol. The political alignment of the CGTG was reflected in the Second Congress of the organization in January 1954. That meeting was attended by fraternal delegates from the worldwide and regional Communist trade union groups, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina, with both of which the CGTG was affiliated. A special message, which was reported as being greeted with “thundering applause,” was read from N. Shvernik, head of the Soviet trade unions.65 A resolution of the congress was passed “expressing the fraternal greeting of the Second National Trade Union Congress to the World Federation of Trade Unions and to the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina in the name of the labor movement of Guatemala,” and another resolved “to strengthen the solidarity and unity of the workers of Guatemala with their brothers of the entire world united in the international unitary organizations, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina.”66 The unions under Communist leadership participated in international events organized by the Communist element in the world labor movement and in activities of Communist “front organizations” within Guatemala. Thus, the textile federation sent a delegate to a conference of textile unions organized in Prague, Czechoslovakia by the WFTU in October 1952. They also participated in a “peace” meeting organized by a local branch of the current Soviet-sponsored international “peace” campaign, as well as in a

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Trade Union Congress for Peace organized by the CGTG leadership—both of these meetings in July 1953.67 Communist control of the CGTG was one of the major causes of conflict between the labor confederation and the Confederación Nacional Campesina de Guatemala (CNCG), the peasants’ confederation that López Larrave said was “the largest organization in Guatemala in the Arbenz period.68 The CNCG had been organized principally by members of the Partido Socialista, headed by Arbenz’s minister of interior, Augusto Charnaud McDonald; when it merged with other groups to form the Partido de la Revolución Guatemalteca, the CNCG leaders became members of that party, but soon afterward joined others in splitting away to re-form the PAR, and in 1953 most of the top CNCG leaders were also members of the Political Bureau of the PAR. There were no members of the Communist Party in the top leadership of the peasants’ confederation. The different party leadership of the labor and peasants’ organization tended to intensify the certain degree of rivalry that would have naturally existed between the two confederations. In theory, the CGTG had within its ranks only wage-earning agricultural laborers. Tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and small landholders were in theory supposed to belong to the CNCG, and when agricultural workers became landholders as a result of the agrarian reform, or for any other reason, they were supposed to leave the CGTG and become part of the peasants’ confederation. However, leaders of both confederations told me that the CGTG was often reticent about agreeing to such a transfer of affiliation.69 The CNCG leaders resented the resistance of the labor confederation to handing over to the peasant group those people who institutionally belonged there. There were also some other more or less normal causes of conflict between the two groups, such as control of local committees set up to help carry out the agrarian reform. However, the CNCG leaders were hesitant about pressing their complaints against the CGTG too strongly. Leonardo Castillo Flores, the CNCG secretary-general, told me that the Arbenz government favored the Communists, and if the CNCG were to push positions that seemed to be “dividing the labor movement,” the government would side with the Communist-controlled CGTG.70 This judgment was confirmed to me some years later by Carlos Manuel Pellecer, by then an ex-leader of the Communist Party and of the labor confederation.71 As time went on, Communist control of the CGTG and its affiliates was intensified. In the earlier years, the railroad workers’ organization SAMF was the principal union opposing Communist influence in the labor movement. It split with the CTG to form the FSG, as we have noted, because the CTG joined the CTAL. For some time most of its leaders belonged to Augusto Charnaud McDonald’s Partido Socialista.72 The SAMF leader who most strongly opposed the Communists was Arturo Morales Cubas, who had headed the SAMF’s cooperative. However,


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in 1953 he was defeated by a vote of two to one in internal elections within the SAMF by a candidate supported by the Communists.73 A year later, I wrote Jay Lovestone about the defeat of Morales Cubas that he “is in the Spanish phrase a ‘sin verguenza,’ one without shame. He is tremendously corrupt, and stole the union blind when he was head of its cooperative. However, he still has a strong following in the union.”74 In any case, after Morales Cubas’ defeat the SAMF offered little opposition to Communist control of the labor movement. ATTEMPTS TO ORGANIZE RIVALS TO THE CGTG During the Arbenz administration there were at least three attempts made to undermine Communist influence in Guatemalan organized labor and/or establish a rival to the CGTG. None of these had much success. One of these efforts was undertaken by José García Bauer, a lawyer, onetime FPL member of the 1945 constitutional assembly, and one of the first labor judges under the labor code. García Bauer, a member of the Third Order of the Franciscans, wanted to establish a Social Christian current within the leadership of the labor movement. To this end, García Bauer, with several faculty members of the university, established what they called the Escuela Libre de Derecho de Trabajo y Filisofía Social. This was a small institution to train people for trade union leadership while instilling in them the social teachings of the Catholic Church. In the year or more of its existence, García Bauer’s school was only able to train a small number of students, some of whom were labor inspectors in the Ministry of Labor.75 Another attempt to penetrate the Guatemalan labor movement was made by the Peronistas. There was a labor attaché in the Argentine Embassy who sought to spread the gospel of Peronismo among the Guatemalan trade unions. He did succeed in getting several unions to send delegates to the conference organized by the Peronistas in Asunción, Paraguay, to lay the grounds for a Latin America–wide Peronista labor confederation, although there is no indication that any of the Guatemalan groups represented in Asunción took any steps to organize a Peronista confederation in Guatemala, or to affiliate with the Peronista hemispheric group, the Agrupación de Trabajadores Latino Americanos Sindicalizados (ATLAS).76 Although Juan Garone, the secretary-general of ATLAS, once told me that the Peronistas had “a strong group” in Guatemala, there is no other evidence that such was the case.77 However, there is some indication that the CGTG leaders were somewhat worried by the Peronista efforts. At its Second Congress in January 1954, the CGTG adopted a resolution “[t]o condemn the divisionist maneuvers of the agents of ATLAS and of any other yellow confederation, which serving feudal reaction and imperialism attempts to divide

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the labor movement that works under the glorious banner of the Only Central Body, the CGTG.”78 The only overt attempt to establish a rival to the CGTG was made during late 1953 and early 1954. The group involved was the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres (UNTL), which had a very short life and was virtually out of existence by the time the Arbenz government was overthrown. The UNTL had its origins in demonstrations of the unemployed in Guatemala City in the summer of 1953, organized by the Unión General de Trabajadores Desocupados. After these demonstrations, the three principal organizers of the unemployed workers’ organization—Rubén Villatoro, Enrique Coronado, and Ramiro Aguilar—converted that group into the UNTL, and at first worked with some success to get jobs for some of the unemployed. However, the UNTL leaders were soon jailed, and the court imposed fines on them. Rubén Villatoro was able to pay his own fine, but the others stayed in jail until Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, the secretary-general of the CGTG, came to the jail and told them that they were free to go. Subsequently, Gutiérrez issued a formal invitation to the UNTL to be represented at the Second Congress of the CGTG late in January 1954. The UNTL immediately rejected the invitation. Meanwhile, the UNTL leaders sought to recruit unions into its ranks. It claimed by January 1954 to have at least two unions affiliated, that of the La Fe bus line and that of the Incatectu factory in Guatemala City, a group that had just recently ousted its Communist leadership—although the new president of that union denied membership in the UNTL while saying that his group had withdrawn from the CGTG. The UNTL leaders also claimed to believe that the Airline Workers Union, a union of dockworkers in Puerto Barrios, and a small regional labor federation in Quetzaltenango (from whence Rubén Villatoro had come) were contemplating joining the UNTL. However, none had done so before the Arbenz government virtually drove the UNTL out of existence.79 The trade union backgrounds of the leaders of the UNTL were rather skimpy. However, Ramiro Aguilar, the treasurer, had been among the founders of the carpenters’ union in Guatemala City but claimed that when he found what ends the Communists were using that union, he had withdrawn from it “in disgust.”80 The American Federation of Labor (AFL) had entered into contract with the UNTL as soon as they learned of its existence, according to Serafino Romualdi, the Latin American representative of the AFL writing to Villatoro. When I visited Guatemala in January 1954 on behalf of the AFL, I interviewed Villatoro and other leaders of the group to try to find out about it, and to hear what, if any, help the AFL might offer the UNTL. Rubén Villatoro asked me to pass on a request for a considerable amount of money to permit them to have several full-time organizers and two jeeps for getting to the countryside for organizing purposes. He


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claimed that as of January 1954 the only funds available were those provided by member unions of the UNTL, although Enrique Coronado, the UNTL secretary, said that they received some money from the Archbishop of Guatemala City.81 However, even before I had left Guatemala, the top leaders of the UNTL were arrested. They were subsequently deported: Villatoro to Mexico, the rest to Honduras. For all practical purposes that put an end to the UNTL for the rest of the Arbenz regime. NOTES 1. Letter from Robert J. Alexander to Jay Lovestone, January 27, 1954. 2. For more details on the Communist Party of Guatemala, see Robert J. Alexander, Communism in Latin America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957), pp. 350–64. 3. Mario López Larrave, Guatemala: Breve Historia del Movimiento Sindical, Colección: El Despertar de los Trabajadores de América Latina, Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero Salvador Allende, Chilpancingo, Mexico, 1983, p. 7. 4. Ibid., p. 7. 5. Hank Frundt and Norma Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 431. 6. New York Times, April 17, 1920. 7. La Correspondencia Sudamericana (Buenos Aires), periodical of South American Secretariat of Communist International, March 15, 1927. 8. Moisés Poblete Troncoso, “Labor Legislation in Cuba and Central America,” in Monthly Labor Review (Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of Labor, September 1929), pp. 514–15. 9. Moisés Poblete Troncoso, El Movimiento Obrero Latinoamericano (México, DF: Fondo de Cultura de Económica, 1946), p. 212. 10. López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 8. 11. Manuel Villar, “Algo Sobre Nuestro Movimiento en Guatemala,” in La Protesta (Buenos Aires), June 14, 1928. 12. López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 8. 13. Ibid., p. 10. 14. Ibid., p. 9. 15. Poblete Troncoso, El Movimiento Obrero Latinoamericano, p. 211. 16. Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City 1954 –1985 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), p. 16. 17. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 399. 18. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 22. 19. José Félix Mendizábal (ex-secretario de conflictos of Sindicato de Asistencia y Mejoramiento Ferrocarrilero), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952. 20. José Cecilio Salguero Ramos (secretary-general of Sindicato de Pilotos Automovilísticos), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952. 21. José Félix Monteroso (secretary of control and statistics, Sindicato Central de Panificadores), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952.

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22. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 398; López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 12. 23. López Larrave, Guatemala, pp. 12–13. 24. López Larrave, Guatemala, pp. 13–14. 25. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 399; López Larrave, Guatemala, pp. 13–14. 26. Miguel Mármol (veteran Salvadoran Communist trade unionist, “advisor” of Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 11, 1948. 27. J. Francisco Muralles Herrera (secretario de trabajo y conflictos, Sindicato Agrícola de Trabajadores de Tiquisate), interview with the author in Tiquisate, Guatemala, August 17, 1948. 28. Ronald M. Schneider, Communism in Guatemala 1944–1954 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959), p. 130. 29. Arcadio Ruíz Franco (former head of Federación Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 25, 1954. 30. Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, pp. 130–31; Aristeo Sosa (secretarygeneral of Sindicato de Asistencia y Mejoramiento Ferrocarrilero), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952. 31. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 399; López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 14. 32. Castillo Hernández, interview. 33. Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, pp. 134 –36. 34. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 17. 35. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 418. 36. Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez (secretary-general of Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952. 37. Max Salazar (organizing secretary of Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952. 38. Salazar, interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952, and July 21, 1953. 39. Manuel Gutiérrez, interview. 40. Calixto Morales (secretario de conflictos of Sindicato de Textiles de Guatemala, and the secretary of organization of Federación de Trabajadores Textiles), interview with the author in Guatemala, September 5, 1952, and July 21, 1953. 41. Armando González (technical secretary of Sindicato de Trabajadores del Cuero), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 21, 1953. 42. Alfredo Pellecer (secretary of finances, Federación de Construcción), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 21, 1953; Ruy Díaz (member of Executive of Sindicato de Obreros de Obras Públicas), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 21, 1953. 43. Diario de Centro América (Guatemala City), February 11, 1954. 44. Manuel Gutiérrez, interview. 45. Salazar, interview. 46. Morales, interview. 47. Diario de Centro América (Guatemala City), February 11, 1954, p. 2.


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48. Marta Mencos (secretary of Liga de Inquilinos), interview with the author in Guatemala City, January 25, 1954. 49. Carlos Manuel Pellecer (conflicts secretary of Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 22, 1953. 50. José Manuel Fortuny (secretary-general of Partido Acción Revolucionario, and subsequently secretary-general of Communist Party [Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo]), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 11, 1948. 51. Manuel Pellecer, interview. 52. Manuel Fortuny, interview. 53. Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, p. 57. 54. Luis Felipe Balcarcel (member of National Advisory Committee, and subsequently secretary-general of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 23, 1954; see also Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, p. 23. 55. Andrés Townsend Ezcurra (Peruvian Aprista Party leader in exile, editor of Isthmania), interview with the author in Guatemala City, June 22, 1953. 56. Andrew Wardlaw (labor attaché of the U.S. Embassy, in Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 22, 1953. 57. José García Bauer (onetime member of 1945 Constituent Assembly, labor judge), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 20, 1953. 58. William Krieg (counselor of embassy, U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Guatemala City, March 29, 1954. 59. Carlos D’Ascoli (Venezuelan Acción Democrática exile, official of Guatemalan Instituto de Fomento de Producción), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 19, 1953. 60. Krieg, interview. 61. Shown to me by William Kreig, in interview in Guatemala City, March 29, 1954. 62. Leonardo Castillo Flores (secretary-general, Confederación Nacional Campesina de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, March 30, 1954. 63. Manuel Pellecer, interview; for further discussion of Communist influence in Arbenz regime, see Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, pp. 184 –217. 64. Manuel Pellecer, interview; see also Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, pp. 58–68. 65. Diario de Centro América (Guatemala City), January 20, 1954, p. 2. 66. Diario de Centro América (Guatemala City), February 11, 1954, p. 2. 67. Morales, interview. 68. López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 14. 69. Castillo Flores, interviews with the author in Guatemala City, July 23, 1953, January 20, 1954, and March 30, 1954; Clodoveo Torres (secretary of organization, Confederación Nacional Campesina de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 23, 1953; César Montenegro Paniagua (agrarian secretary of Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, January 18, 1954; Wenceslao Gordón y Gordón (acting agrarian secretary, Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, July 21, 1953. 70. Castillo Flores, interview, March 30, 1954.

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71. Manuel Pellecer, interview. 72. Félix Mendizábal, interview. 73. Nicanor Mujia (Peruvian Aprista Party exile), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 5, 1952. 74. Letter from Robert J. Alexander to Jay Lovestone, January 27, 1954. 75. García Bauer, interviews, July 20, 1953, and March 30, 1954. 76. Letter from Robert J. Alexander to Jay Lovestone, September 17, 1952. 77. Juan Garone (secretary-general of Agrupación de Trabajadores Latino Americanos Sindicalizados [ATLAS]), interview with the author in Buenos Aires, July 14, 1954. 78. Diario de Centro América (Guatemala City), February 11, 1954. 79. Rubén Villatoro (president of Unión Nacional de Trabajadores ), interview with the author in Guatemala City, January 10, 1954; Enrique Coronado, secretary of Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres, interview with author in Guatemala City, January 19, 1954; Alfonso Pontaza Paz, president of Incatecu Union, interview with author in Guatemala City, March 30, 1954; Andrew Wardlaw, U.S. Embassy labor attaché, interview with author in Guatemala City, January 18, 1954. 80. Ramiro Aguilar (treasurer of Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres), interview with the author in Guatemala City, January 19, 1954. 81. Villatoro interview; Coronado interview.

CHAPTER 10

Guatemalan Organized Labor after June 1954

In June 1954 the government of President Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown and the Guatemalan October Revolution came to an end. The overthrow of Arbenz was to a large degree the work of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Its instrumentality was a ragtag army led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a onetime supporter of Colonel Arana and a leader of the attempted military uprising against the Arévalo government that followed the murder of Arana in 1949. Although provided with some arms by the CIA and the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, it is highly doubtful that, other things being equal, it could have defeated the Guatemalan army. Castillo Armas’ so-called army invaded Guatemala from neighboring Honduras but penetrated only a few miles into the country. At that point, it seemed to stall, and for some days nothing happened. Meanwhile, the Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala took the lead—with no encouragement from the army—to organize Committees for the Defense of the Revolution that, according to Deborah Levenson-Estrada, mobilized 350,000 people. These committees begged Arbenz to give them arms to defend the regime. The only reply was that army officers took a number of the volunteers to the Guatemalan City golf course, where they drilled them—but did not arm them. The fact of the matter was that the army chiefs were not willing to fight in defense of the Arbenz government. The upshot was that on June 23, 1954, President Arbenz got on the national radio and announced his resignation.1 At that point, the United States Embassy, which, according to Ambassador John Peurifoy, had until then been engaging in “psychological warfare”

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with Arbenz and his government through press releases and other activities, took an open hand in the situation. Peurifoy met in El Salvador with Castillo Armas and representatives of Arbenz’s military successors, and it was first agreed that there would be established a five-man junta drawn from both groups. This was soon reduced to a three-person junta, and finally to Colonel Castillo Armas as the single chief executive.2 Deborah Levenson-Estrada has described the tragic aftermath of Castillo Armas’ victory, which was officially “The Liberation.” She wrote: [W]ithin weeks of the coup the Liberation massacred over 9,000 Guatemalans, jailed 7,000 and commanded the firing of over 18,000 including hundreds of banana and railroad workers, thousands of school teachers, and every inspector in the Ministry of Labor. Responsible for much of this repression was the Committee for the National Defense Against Communism . . . dedicated to eradicating ‘sovietism.’ The Liberation dissolved the political parties and the labor confederations of the 1944–54 period and it temporarily suspended unions and simultaneously forbade them from using the color red. Library journals, books, and union newspapers disappeared in huge street bonfires, and prominent trade unionists, political leaders, and progressive intellectuals who did not flee were imprisoned, if not tortured and killed.3

The labor movement, as it had existed before June 1954, suffered greatly from the almost universal purge of Guatemalan society following the triumph of the forces led by Castillo Armas. Virtually all of the top leaders of the unions took refuge in embassies and went into exile. However, many of the lower-level labor officials suffered as described by Deborah Levenson-Estrada. THE CASTILLO ARMAS REGIME AND ORGANIZED LABOR Although in talks with members of the United States Embassy, with visiting foreign labor people, and with some Guatemalan trade unionists, President Castillo Armas expressed support for reestablishment of a labor movement that would be free of Communist leadership, actions taken by his regime did not reflect such support. There were several such measures. The first government edict with regard to organized labor was Decree No. 21, of July 29, 1954. It removed all executive committees of unions and gave three months for election of new ones and provided that if no new one had been elected by that time, a union would officially cease to exist. This was followed by Decree No. 48, which dissolved all existing political parties, as well as the CGTG and the National Peasants Confederation, and then went on to dissolve the railroad workers’ union Sindicato de Acción y Mejoramiento de los Ferrocarrilleros (SAMF), the two unions of workers of the United Fruit Company (UFC), and the teachers’ union


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Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación en Guatemala (STEG). In spite of the fact that the U.S. Ambassador John Peurifoy and two of his aides visited President Castillo Armas to tell him that they thought the Decree No. 48 was “ill-advised,” it was not changed.4 Then in 1956 the Castillo Armas regime issued a new labor code. Deborah Levenson-Estrada described the principal features of that new law: “The new code explicitly prohibited union participation in politics (which the 1947 one had expressly encouraged), limited legal grievance to economic ones, severely curtailed rural organization, and made it illegal for state employees to form or join unions.” The author went on: Urban workers in private sector retained the right to unionize, but the new code mandated procedures for unionization and contract negotiation which were so perilous as to be just barely worth risking. To win a union legal status, twenty-one workers had to petition the Labor Ministry, which was required to accept or reject the petition within sixty days. However, if the company fired any of the twentyone workers during that period, the petition was automatically invalid. Companies often did fire workers who signed such petitions, and this is one important reason why between 1956 and 1985 few unions—623—actually gained legal status.

The 1956 labor code also had severe limitations on the right to strike. According to Levenson-Estrada: The code specified that unions that finally won legal standing could vote to strike if no contract had been executed with their employer after eight months of negotiation. A strike was legal if three-fourths of the work force—both union and nonunion workers—voted in favor of it. Once a union struck legally, the court had to rule the strike ‘just’ or ‘unjust,’ a strike was just only when the union proved, based on the company’s books, that the company was able to meet the strikers’ demands . . . between 1954 and 1985 only one strike was ever declared both legal and just.5

Even Guatemalans who had supported Castillo Armas’ “invasion,” and foreign labor people who had strongly opposed the Arbenz regime, lost all faith in Castillo Armas’ claims to be favorably disposed to the rebirth of the labor movement. For instance, José García Bauer, the ex-labor judge who in the first months after the overthrow of Arbenz sought to reestablish the labor movement, opined as early as August 1954 that although Castillo Armas was “all right” and had “decent ideas,” the people around him were “terrible,” and made it “impossible” for Castillo Armas “to carry out the good ideas which he ha[d].” He added that the labor and social policies of the government were “making heroes of the Communists.”6 In mid-1956, Serafino Romualdi, the Latin American representative of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), who had played a significant role in trying to help the

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revival of the Guatemalan labor movement after Liberation, published an article entitled “Time is Running Out in Guatemala,” which strongly expressed his criticism of the labor policies of the Castillo Armas government. Near the end of his article, Romualdi wrote, “The vigilance against the return of Communist trade union leadership is commendable and worthy of support, but what good is this vigilance exercised by political and judicial authorities if, on the other hand, the government is feeding the Communist underground with an ever increasing stream of issues as a result of this curtailment of trade union rights and whittling down of the labor code?” Romualdi went on, “And how can any one in his right mind hope to defeat the renewed underground Communist agitation as long as Guatemalan labor courts continue to side openly with management, allow violations of law to go unpunished and ignore the persecution of peasants by farm owners?”7 The policy of the labor courts condemned by Romualdi was indicated by an article in the Guatemala City newspaper Prensa Libre in September 1954. The article said, “A new way of applying labor law has been adopted by the labor and social security tribunals. This consists of judging the application of the law to the conflicts between employers and workers strictly from the point of view of the law, thus avoiding decisions barefacedly partial to the workers, under the pretext of rendering a judgment based on ‘conscientious’ application of the law, as occurred before.” The article provided an example of the way the law would now be employed. It involved 14 workers who had been jailed for 20 days and had not been permitted to return to their jobs upon being released. The employer had been upheld by the labor court in dismissing them because they had not, as required by law, notified their employer why they were absent from work.8 In September 1954, a joint Memorandum of the Comité Nacional de Reorganización Sindical (CNRS) and the Federación Autónoma Sindical was sent to Castillo Armas protesting the government’s treatment of the labor movement and demanding changes. After citing various violations of union rights—and statements of Castillo Armas supporting the reestablishment of the labor movement—it presented nine requests or demands to “Mr. President of the Liberating Movement, anti-communist, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas,” the first of which was “That the declarations given by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, on repeated occasions ‘that the movement of free unionization will be respected (always if it is removed from Communist infiltration)’ be translated into concrete facts.” It urged rapid recognition of unions that had elected new leadership and restoration of their property, and that ministers, departmental governors, and other key government officials be ordered not to persecute the trade union movement, among other things. The memorandum ended by saying that if


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quick action on it was not forthcoming, both the CNRS and the Federación Autónoma Sindical (FAS) would cease their activities.9 EMPLOYER RESISTANCE TO UNIONISM With the fall of the Arbenz government, the employers of Guatemala went on a wide offensive against the labor movement. Serafino Romualdi wrote in September 1954 about this drive of the employers: “Another factor which threatens to make the free trade union activity in Guatemala even more difficult is the policy of wholesale dismissals adopted by a number of large concerns. They plan to eliminate from their industries not only Communist elements but also those whom they classify ‘agitators’ meaning every active trade unionist.”10 Some of the worst offenders were United States–owned firms. For instance, the International Railways of Central America (IRCA), then a subsidiary of the UFC, in the period just following Arbenz’s ouster threw out of employment some 164 people on a wide range of pretexts. In some cases, these dismissals had the approval of the government, in others it did not. The situation got so bad with the IRCA that President Castillo Armas asked the United States Embassy to intervene to make it change its behavior.11 In fact, Ambassador Peurifoy called in the two top Americans in charge of IRCA to argue that they change their way of handling their workers.12 Those workers who took the first steps to try to reconstitute the SAMF sent a copy of their plan to do so to President Castillo Armas, and he sent them a note of congratulations on their work. But three days later they were arrested and were kept in prison for about two weeks, a fact that one of those involved told me made them very cautious about trying to reorganize the railroad union. The same man said that the irony of the mass firings on the IRCA was that many of those being thrown out of their jobs were people who had led the fight against Communist influence in the union.13 The UFC refused to allow reestablishment of genuine unions on its plantations. It established a company union, and when in 1959 that group sought to have the UFC negotiate a collective agreement, the company responded with a lockout, which was upheld by the government of President Ydigoras, and dismissed 2,000 workers.14 In some cases dismissals of union people were forced by the highly secret Comité de Defensa Contra Comunismo. This was the case with the leaders of the Sindicato Banco Hipotecario bank workers’ union. When asked why they had dismissed those workers, the managers of the bank said that they had not wanted to, since the people involved were very good workers, but having been faced with the demand of the Comité, they had no choice.15 Another similar case was the dismissal of José Villatoro, a teacher who had for years fought against Communist influence in the Teachers Union, but was charged by the Comité de Defensa Contra Comunismo with being a Communist, and so he was dismissed.16

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INITIAL EFFORTS TO REESTABLISH THE LABOR MOVEMENT With the flight into embassies—and ultimately into exile—of most of the country’s trade union leaders, the arrest (and sometimes torture and murder) of hundreds of others, and the retirement into anonymity of many more, it became necessary to start the rebuilding of the Guatemalan labor movement virtually from the beginning. This was made necessary, too, by the several government decrees that we have already noted. The political atmosphere was certainly not propitious for the revival of the labor movement. There was considerable pressure on President Castillo Armas to suspend all trade union activities for at least six months, and even U.S. Ambassador John Peurifoy had to assure the president that that would be a very bad move for the new government to take.17 Foreign trade unionists from the United States and from the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT) played a significant role in the process of trying to reestablish the labor movement. Serafino Romualdi of the AFL, Daniel Benedict of the CIO, and Raúl Valdivia and Rafael Otero of the Cuban Confederation of Workers and the ORIT were among these. Arriving in Guatemala less than two weeks after the fall of Arbenz, Romualdi and Benedict met with people from various unions, particularly the railroad’s SAMF, with whom they had had or were able to develop contact, as well as with Rubén Villatoro of the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres (UNTL), who had returned from exile. They also conferred with United States Embassy officials and had a meeting with President Castillo Armas, who professed to endorse their efforts. A meeting was finally arranged, with workers from various unions, for the purpose of setting up an organization that could undertake the job of reorganizing and gaining legal recognition for the country’s sindicatos. A substantial proportion of those present were from the SAMF, although Rubén Villatoro presided over the session. A committee of five was elected, two of them railroaders, one from the post office workers, and Villatoro and one other from the UNTL. They constituted the CNRS. The government soon turned over to the CNRS the old headquarters of the CGTG.18 Meanwhile, a somewhat similar effort was being undertaken by José García Bauer, who for a year or more had been running a small trade union leadership training school to prepare leaders to participate in the labor movement from a Social Christian orientation. After the fall of Arbenz, he had spent most of his time as head of a group of labor lawyers trying to get people, particularly trade unionists who had been imprisoned without any visible cause, out of jail. At the same time, García Bauer took the lead in organizing the Federación Autónoma Sindical (FAS). Although he conferred with Romualdi


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and Benedict, he did not participate in the CNRS, rather seeking to lay the groundwork for a new Social Catholic–oriented central labor group.19 The CNRS and FAS people felt that the most important first step in rebuilding the labor movement was to reestablish the SAMF, which had been officially dissolved by the Castillo Armas government’s Decree No. 48. It had been and would be again the country’s single strongest trade union, and if it would be brought back into existence, it could be of great help in bringing back to life many other unions. I happened to be present at three meetings in Guatemala City that were the first steps in reconstituting the SAMF. I was traveling around Latin America for the Free Trade Union Committee of the AFL, headed by Jay Lovestone, and happened to be in Guatemala at the time the meetings were held. The first of these sessions took place on August 20, 1954, at the headquarters of the CNRS, the old building of the Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CGTG). It was opened by short talks by José García Bauer; Rafael Otero, a Cuban railroad union leader; Daniel Benedict of the CIO; and me in representation of the AFL. The meeting then got down to the business at hand. After some discussion, it was decided, on the suggestion of Arnaldo Ottens, a veteran SAMF leader, to call a second meeting the following day, which hopefully would be more widely attended and would elect a Provisional Committee that would have as its function the summoning of a congress to formally reestablish the union. There was then some discussion of the IRCA’s threats to fire any workers who engaged in trade union activities. On the next day the follow-up meeting was held at the headquarters of the FAS with about 75 people present, although only 53 finally signed the acta, or minutes, of the session. A chairman of the session was elected: Luis Padilla, a compadre of President Castillo Armas. He was chosen not because of his leadership abilities but because of his relationship with the president. Arnaldo Ottens then proposed nine names for the new Provisional Committee, which were accepted, after which six others were also chosen. While the acta was being written, there were speeches by Rubén Villatoro, Rafael Otero, Dan Benedict, me, and José García Bauer. Two nights later there was the first meeting of the Provisional Committee, with 14 of the 15 participating. Rodolfo Madrid, like Arnaldo Ottens a member of the CNRS, was chosen as treasurer, and a press committee of three was also chosen. There was further discussion of what the procedure would be to reorganize the union so as to conform to the new legal requirements established by the Castillo Armas regime.20 It was to be several months before the SAMF could finally be fully reorganized and able to function normally.

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THE SLOW REESTABLISHMENT OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT The first union to be fully reestablished was the small Sindicato de Empleados Particulares, late in August 1954.21 By the middle of September, 14 unions had been reorganized, although none of the larger and more important ones had yet gained government recognition.22 The procedure required to renew legal recognition of the unions was substantial and served to hamper the full reestablishment of individual unions. First, a petition bearing at least 20 signatures of union members had to be submitted to the General Inspectorate of Labor, which then chose three people from those signing the petition officially to reorganize the union. However, those named then had to be approved by the anonymous Committee for Protection Against Communism. Once the three people had been confirmed, they had the duty of calling a meeting of the union to elect new officers. The names of those elected then had to be approved by the Labor Directorate and the Commission Against Communism. Even Rubén Villatoro, head of the UNTL, and personal friend of President Castillo Armas, was led to tell me that although the government claimed to support trade union freedom, its actions did not show any such support.23 Reorganization of the railroad union SAMF took a particularly long time. Although steps were taken, as I have indicated, to establish the union only a few weeks after the overthrow of Arbenz, these did not immediately bear fruit. Election of new officers was several times postponed and had still not been held by March 1955.24 It was almost a year after Arbenz’ ouster before the SAMF was functioning with some degree of normalcy. When elections were held, Luis Padilla, a compadre of President Castillo Armas, who had sought to take advantage of the situation to launch a career as a labor leader, was defeated by more than two to one by Rodolfo Madrid to be secretary-general of SAMF. After the election, the railroad union’s funds, which had been seized by the government, were returned to it.25 In some cases, workers’ associations, sponsored by the employers, were established in an effort to thwart the reestablishment of real unions. This occurred in the banana plantations of the UFC. In the case of the Tropical Radio Company, a subsidiary of United Fruit, the company refused to bargain with the reconstituted union and succeeded in getting the government to refuse to give legal recognition to the union. Even Serafino Romualdi, Inter American representative of the AFL, was unable to thwart the action of Tropical Radio.26 THE COMITÉ NACIONAL DE REORGANIZACIÓN SINDICAL–CONSEJO SINDICAL DE GUATEMALA Two new central labor groups emerged in the aftermath of the fall of the Arbenz government, as we have noted. These were the CNRS and


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the Federación Autónoma Sindical (FASGUA). These evolved in different directions. The CNRS, which had the particular support of the AFL and ORIT, had an episodic history. At its inception, the Comité had to devote much of its time and resources to getting out of jail the numerous lower-ranking trade union leaders who had been imprisoned following the so-called Liberation, and in this they had some success. They were a good deal less successful in helping to reestablish functioning unions.27 One of the first tasks the CNRS undertook was to try to train new leaders for a non-Communist-controlled labor movement. To this end, several Guatemalans were sent to a leadership training school in Mexico run by the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores.28 One of the CNRS problems in the beginning was a leadership conflict. With the support of Serafino Romualdi, who attended the founding meeting of the organization as we have noted, Rubén Villatoro, of the UNTL, had been chosen as head of the CNRS. But it soon became clear that he was not the person for the job. With his return to Guatemala, Villatoro had revived his UNTL. Although one of his lieutenants claimed in its new incarnation it was trying to bring together the country’s mutual benefit organizations rather than its unions,29 other unionists tended to see Villatoro as trying to use the revived UNTL to build a power base within a reconstituted trade union movement. According to one of the SAMF members of the CNRS, whenever some unionist approached Villatoro seeking help to establish his organization, Villatoro referred him to the UNTL instead of to the CNRS. This same person claimed that Villatoro in fact had no trade union base or experience, and that when it was convenient, the CNRS would have to get rid of Villatoro.30 On at least two occasions, Villatoro’s high-handed methods threatened to break up the CNRS. In the first instance, Serafino Romualdi was present and was able to prevent such a breakup. In the second, the ORIT representative, Rafael Otero, was able to step in to prevent a schism.31 Serafino Romualdi himself quickly became disillusioned in Villatoro. In September 1954, he told me that he had discovered that Villatoro was “dishonest.”32 Two months later, Romualdi said that Villatoro was “a smalltime racketeer.”33 Villatoro soon disappeared from the CNRS. In March 1955, he was arrested on charges of corruption.34 Meanwhile, the CNRS had become increasingly critical of persecution of the labor movement by elements of the Castillo Armas regime. In November 1954 it issued a statement “denouncing to public opinion the persecution of which trade unionism has become the victim in the country by some authorities who confuse it with communism and either are unaware of, or purposefully ignore, the proposals of the government of liberation to assure the trade union and democratic movement of Guatemala.” The declaration then listed a number of instances of such persecution.35

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The CNRS was given a more permanent form as the Consejo Sindical de Guatemala (CSG). By 1959, the CSG claimed eight unions—those in three sugar mills, Pan American Airways workers, Taca airline workers, Social Security Institute employees, Electric Company workers, commercial and bank employees, and the workers of the Tropical Radio Corp. The SAMF railroad workers union had originally been in the CSG but had withdrawn. The CSG was affiliated with the ORIT and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and until early in 1959 received a small subsidy from the ORIT.36 One of the more important CSG affiliates was the Sindicato de Trabajadores del Instituto Guatemalteco de Seguridad Social. Although Castillo Armas originally was opposed to unionization of government employees, this union of social security workers was legalized. However, in November 1958, the Ministry of Labor refused to recognize the result of the union’s elections; but when the union leaders took the issue to the labor courts they were upheld, and the ministry finally recognized the newly elected officials. When the issue was still pending, Serafino Romualdi visited Guatemala to bring pressure on the government to respect the union members’ decisions as to who should run the organization.37 Most of the CSG unions were finally able to negotiate collective contracts. For instance, the Sindicato de Luz y Fuerza signed an agreement with the electric company in 1958 that provided for wage increases and other benefits and that contained a grievance procedure. According to leaders of that union, it was possible to settle most grievances through direct negotiations with the employer rather than resort to the government’s labor tribunals.38 The CSG, according to Deborah Levenson-Estrada, “sent hundreds of workers to ORIT or AFL-CIO training schools, where they studied accounting, editing, parliamentary procedure, and the ‘indoctrination techniques of totalitarianism’ without producing an effective core of workingclass leaders.” It did relatively little organizing beyond the ranks of its original membership. Although it was able, with AFL-CIO support, to launch a textile federation, this “remained insignificant and small.”39 In the earlier years there were also some efforts by the CSG to unionize Indian rural workers, although the effects of these attempts seem to have been quite limited.40 THE SUCCESSORS TO THE CSG In 1965, the SAMF joined with the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union and some others to form the Federación de Unidad Sindical (FUS). It applied for and got legal recognition. Meanwhile, the CSG had been trying to bring together all of the country’s unions to form a new federation. It was hampered in trying to do so


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by the fact that for long it had not been able to obtain legal recognition but did finally obtain this after the FUS had been legalized.41 During the Ydigoras administration, the leaders of the CSG met with some regularity with those of the FASGUA, the SAMF, and the textile federation. They particularly cooperated in opposing a proposed “Law of Defense of Democratic Institutions,” which in fact would have established a legal dictatorship.42 In 1965, a group of unions had withdrawn from the CSG to set up a rival group, the Confederación Sindical de Guatemala. However, the CSG remained in existence, with the Social Security Workers Union and two others composing it. Negotiations continued toward establishing a more widely based union confederation. Involved in these negotiations were the FUS, a Federation of Workers of the South, with its headquarters in Escuintla, and the CSG. Finally, in October 1966, a new Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala (Contragua) was established. In 1967, the Contragua claimed to have 80 unions affiliated with it, and it claimed some 60,000 members (probably a considerable exaggeration). Its most important unions included the SAMF, the social security workers, the hotel and restaurant workers, and a union of workers of one of the sugar mills. It also had several peasant leagues, composed of peasants who did not work for someone else, but were small proprietors, sharecroppers, renters, or squatters. The Contragua did not belong to any international organization. However, the SAMF and one of the confederation’s two dockworkers’ unions belonged to the International Transport Workers Federation, which was associated with the ICFTU.43 In 1967, the Contragua was the largest Guatemalan central labor group.44 The Confederación Sindical de Guatemala (Consigua), which had been formed by dissidents of the CSG, claimed in 1967 to have 35 affiliated unions, with some 8,000 members. Its strongest affiliate was the Luz y Fuerza union, and others included the Union of Tropical Radio Workers, which had been reorganized after having been destroyed by the employers some years before, the Bando Hipotecario Unión, and a textile federation that claimed about a dozen member unions. It also had about a dozen peasant unions, mainly on large fincas producing coffee or sugar. Most of the unions in Consigua had collective agreements with their members’ employers. The Confederación Sindical was a member of both the ORIT and the ICFTU. The Consigua was led by Mauro Monterosso, as secretary-general. He was the only trade union member of parliament after the 1966 election. He was a member of the Partido Institucional Democrático (PID), the party that had been organized by Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, the military dictator after the overthrow of President Migual Ydigoras in 1963.45

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Apparently Monterosso had agreed to run on the PID ticket because he thought that the Partido Revolucionario, with which most workers sympathized, either would not be able to win the 1966 election or would not be allowed to take power if it did win.46 Estimates of the number of unionized workers in the mid-1960s varied considerably. We have noted the claim of Contigua that it had 60,000 members. However, Mauro Monterosso of the Contigua estimated that there were only about 40,000 union members in the whole labor movement.47 The U.S. labor attaché, for his part, put the figure at about 35,000 out of a total of 600,000 wage and salary earners. He noted that there were 120 legally recognized unions, 12 federations, and two confederations that had legal standing. The only two national unions according to him were the SAMF and the Social Security Workers Union. The average size of the base union was about 80 members. The labor attaché also noted that from at least his point of view, the situation of the labor movement had improved for a while with the coming to power of the Partido Revolucionario government of President Julio César Méndez Montenegro in 1966. That government had been more friendlily disposed than its predecessors to organized labor, and in its first year some 5,000 workers had been added to the unionist ranks.48 In 1970, the Contragua and Consigua merged to form the Central de Trabajadores Federados (CTF), which joined the ORIT and ICFTU. Hank Frundt and Norma Chinchilla noted, “For a time it was the largest national confederation with more than 30,000 members, but by 1975 it had experienced many defections.”49 The CTF came under the control of Arturo Morales Cubas, the onetime leader of the railroaders’ SAMF, who had been disgraced for corruption in the Arbenz period. But in 1976 Morales Cubas was thrown out of the CTF and formed his own small union group, the Frente Federativo Sindical, and leadership of the CTF was assumed by Romero Hernández and Simeón Guerra.50 The Frente Federativa Sindical came to have eight unions affiliated with it, claiming some 7,000 members. According to Frundt and Chinchilla, “The FFS never achieved legal status, and it disappeared by 1979.”51 The Contragua, Consigua, and CTF all worked more or less closely with the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which Serafino Romualdi established under AFL-CIO auspices and financial support from the Agency for International Development. The AIFLD’s work with the unions in Guatemala was in the area of leadership training.52 However, Deborah Levenson-Estrada noted that it also had in the 1970s a program for fomenting peasant cooperatives in the rural areas and noted that it ran into strong opposition from landholders and the government— particularly army—officials.53


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Frundt and Chinchilla said that in the late 1970s, the CTF still claimed eight unions in its ranks, with 20,000 members. However, they added that the CFT “by 1982 had nearly disappeared.”54 FASGUA The second central labor group to appear in the wake of the fall of the Arbenz government was the FASGUA. It was organized originally as a Social Christian-oriented labor federation but soon took an entirely different tack. Two people played a major role in the establishment of the FASGUA. The first was José García Bauer, the labor lawyer, who was able to rally the support of the Young Catholic Worker (Juventud Obrera Católica—JOC) groups that had been organized in the late 1940s and early 1950s.55 The second key figure in launching FASGUA was Luis Felipe Balcarcel. He had been active in mutual benefit societies before the fall of Ubico and subsequently was one of the founders of the Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CTG), becoming its director of organization. However, he opposed growing Communist influence in the CTG and led the split-away of 15 unions to form the Unión Sindical, which became the Federación Sindical de Guatemala. Then in February 1946 he was deported, and upon returning home two years later he retired from work in the labor movement until after the fall of Arbenz.56 The work of organizing the FASGUA was originally undertaken by what was called the National Advisory Committee, consisting of García Bauer, Balcarcel, and three others. Their intention was that, as unions were reconstituted and affiliated with the federation, the Advisory Committee would give way to an elected leadership.57 In the first few months, García Bauer was relatively optimistic about the possibility of reviving the labor movement. In November he wrote: The Labor Code still exists, thank God and I think that they have abandoned the desire to destroy it; the Labor Inspectorate is working regularly; the Administrative Department, not a very happy group, delays recognition of the trade union executive committees; and the Labor Tribunals continued. We have a good SubSecretary of Labor, Lic. Manuel Villacorta, who understands the problem. . . . The problem is not institutional, but one of some functionaries. The social gains have been saved from that point of view.

However, García Bauer commented, “The ‘fear’ of the workers to unionize has not totally evaporated. But I hope that with the plan of work with the Sub-secretary of Labor Villacorta has, probably Guatemalan trade unionism will soon have a resurgence.”58 By September 1959, the FASGUA claimed to have 15 affiliated unions. These included the Sindicato de Artes Gráficas, the Sindicato de Pilotos Automovilísticos, three peasant unions, the union of candle and vegetable

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oil workers, the shoemakers, tailors, bakers, and several individual plant unions, including one at the cement plant. Eight of the FASGUA affiliates had collective contracts, three of which were with employers’ associations, the others being with individual employers. Four other unions, including the brewer workers in Quetzaltenango, were in the process of getting legal recognition.59 The FASGUA got legal recognition in February 1957. At that time a new leadership was chosen. However, when Castillo Armas was killed in July 1957, all of the members of the leadership were arrested, and some of them were deported. When they all were able to return to activity, some of them were afraid to continue working in the federation, so early in 1958 still another directing group of the organization was elected. Until 1957, the FASGUA was subsidized by the government. However, thereafter the leadership refused any government subsidy. They also refused government financial aid, which they had previously received, for their May Day demonstrations, because they felt that they wanted to be free in those demonstrations to criticize certain measures that the government was taking.60 For some time, the effective leader of the FASGUA was Luis Balcarcel. He organized the first May Day meeting after Arbenz’s downfall, May 1, 1955, together with the leaders of the Consejo Sindical. At that meeting, Serafino Romualdi read a message of greeting from George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, saying that “six million workers in the USA support unions in Guatemala.”61 However, the orientation of the FASGUA quickly began to change. Deborah Levenson-Estrada has traced the origins of this change. She wrote, “Within weeks of the coup . . . clandestine Communist PGT members and other militants took advantage of the fact that the Liberation allowed precoup unions to reconstruct their own organizations within the shelter FASGUA provided. Entering a federation that the Liberation supported was not official PGT policy until 1955; however, individual workers in the party and other labor activists did so as soon as the opportunity arose.” One of the first groups to do so consisted of workers in the Sindicato de Artes Gráficas, which joined FASGUA, and held the new elections required by the Castillo Armas government. Those elected were from the leadership of the Arbenz days. Although the Committee for National Defense Against Communism vetoed the new secretary-general, Jesús Santiago, and he finally withdrew, it did not take steps against three other “suspected Communists” who had been elected.62 Levenson-Estrada noted, “In a similar manner, other unions with leftist precoup antecedents joined FASGUA and then sought and eventually received clearing. Within a year and a half of the coup, while FASGUA’s leadership remained fanatically conservative, nine of the thirteen unions affiliated with it were led by clandestine PGT members or sympathizers. . . . It


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is remarkable that immediately following the 1954 coup an organization earnestly struggling to extirpate Marxism among workers was simultaneously being appropriated by the Communists.”63 As early as 1956 a general assembly of FASGUA would not allow Serafino Romualdi to address it and voted down a proposal by secretary-general Balcarcel that the federation join the ORIT.64 Subsequently, FASGUA officials made a point with me that the organization did not belong to any international labor group.65 However, during my visit to FASGUA headquarters in September 1959, I noticed that there were large posters of the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL) in its hallway. In its early years, large May Day demonstrations were a major feature of FASGUA activities. At first these were jointly arranged with the CSG, but after 1956, when Balcarcel, Serafino Romualdi, and others were prevented from speaking, and the rostrum was seized by an unidentified left-wing orator, and the same kind of the thing happened the following year–––the demonstrations were organized only by FASGUA. At the 1959 May Day meeting a message from Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, former secretary-general of the CGTG, and in 1959 an underground leader of the Communist Party, was read. In the following two years, banners backing Arevalo, Arbenz, and Fidel Castro were featured in the May Day meetings. From 1962 on, the importance of May Day demonstrations, when they occurred, greatly diminished.66 The government of President Ydigoras Fuentes (1958–1963), which adopted a somewhat more tolerant attitude toward organized labor than its predecessor, decided to return to the labor movement some of the property taken from it under Castillo Armas. The FASGUA was one of the organizations that benefited from this decision, receiving among other things a typewriter, a desk, and three chairs. The decision of the FASGUA leaders to accept these things apparently aroused some objections within the membership.67 During the military dictatorship of Colonel Enrique Peralta Azidua between 1963 and 1966, the FASGUA virtually worked underground, with no public headquarters. However, with the installation of the Partido Revolucionario government of President Julio César Méndez Montenegro in July 1966, the FASGUA reopened its headquarters, and although it was closely watched by the police, it was able to function more or less regularly. It consisted principally of craft unions in Guatemala City and some peasant leagues in that period.68 In 1967, FASGUA leaders claimed that there were 20 unions in Guatemala City affiliated with it, as well as 60 peasant leagues. One FASGUA leader estimated that the federation had about 60,000 members,69 which certainly was a considerable exaggeration. Among its other activities was a special effort to organize working women, both those employed in factories and handicraft shops and those who were domestic servants.70

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With the rest of the labor movement, FASGUA suffered severe repression at the end of the Méndez Montenegro regime and the beginning of the government of Colonel Arana in 1970 and 1971. However, Frundt and Chinchilla have noted, “When the federation gained some freedom to operate, it organized many campesino groups and the employees of the University of San Carlos, Cavisa, GINSA, Industria Harinera, and Duralux . . . it united twenty-five unions holding 5,000 members. . . . Because of the repression in the 1980s, many of its campesino affiliates were then forced to abandon Fasgua membership.” In the 1970s, FASGUA affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions and its Latin American regional grouping, the Permanente de Unidad Sindical de los Trabajadores de América Latina (Permanent Congress of Sindical Unity of the Workers of Latin America—CPUSTAL).71 Deborah Levenson-Estrada commented on the ultimate fare of the FASGUA: “Without growing beyond a few more unions scattered throughout the city, and without ever organizing large masses of people, Fasgua enjoyed a public life until 1980, when an even greater state repression than that of the 1960’s first drove it underground and then, finally, destroyed it as the country exploded into war.”72 CATHOLIC-ORIENTED LABOR GROUPS Although the FASGUA did not, as José García Bauer and Luis Felipe Balcarcel had hoped, become a Catholic-oriented labor group, others of this kind did appear. In 1962, the Frente de Trabajadores de Guatemala was established.73 In 1963 it was converted into the Federación Central de Trabajadores de Guatemala (FCTG). It had its origins in the aftermath of very serious riots that took place in Guatemala City in December 1962, in which students, workers, and others participated. It was founded early in 1963. By 1967, the FCTG reported that it had 32 unions affiliated with it. They included plant unions in food processing, metallurgy, the building trades, textiles, and two agricultural workers’ unions. Four transport unions were separated from the FCTG to form a separate Transport Workers Federation. The hope was to bring these two organizations and the Federación Campesina, which also was of Catholic orientation, together in a national confederation. All three of these organizations belonged from their inception to the Confederación Latino Americana de Sindicatos Cristianos and the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions. They received financial aid from those sources, which permitted them to maintain two full-time organizers of promoters, an office staff, and the costs of renting and maintaining an office. With only the dues of their unions’ members this would not have been possible. A Federación Campesina was formed at virtually the same time as the FCTG was established. It worked particularly among peasants from the


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highland areas who went down to the Pacific Coast to work at harvest time. They included small proprietors, sharecroppers, squatters, and other kinds of workers and were formed into peasant leagues. In the highlands these leagues worked on community development projects and other activities, while the federation also sought to negotiate with employees on the coast on behalf of their migrant worker members.74 The hope to unite the Catholic-oriented workers’ groups in a single confederation was achieved with establishment of the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT) in 1968. It was also affiliated with the CLASC (recently) renamed Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores—(CLAT), although it withdrew from that organization in 1978.75 The CNT was reported to have been originally financed to a considerable degree by the Christian Democratic Party. However, the CNT leadership quarreled with that of the party, and such financial assistance disappeared.76 The CNT grew particularly rapidly beginning in 1975. By May 1976 it was said to have 50 unions affiliated, with about 25,000 workers. It played a major role in supporting the 1976 Coca-Cola workers strike and subsequently helped unions in several of the country’s major industrial firms. The CNT, for operating purposes, had two segments or fronts, one for urban workers, the other for rural ones, although the CNT coordinated the two sectors’ work in education, organization, and self-defense. Frundt and Chinchilla wrote: “The industrial work front created union committees to monitor certain industry, political and military developments. The campesino front contained unions of agricultural workers, cooperatives and certain Indian families that held their lands in common. There were regional groupings in Petén, Quiché, and Los Verapaz, and the structure was flexible according to particular circumstances.”77 The CNT played the most important role in the resurgence of the labor movement in the early 1970s. It also suffered most heavily from the persecution against organized labor that was launched in 1978. THE DECLINE OF THE SAMF For many years, the railroaders’ union, the Sindicato de Acción y Mejoramiento de los Ferrocarrileros, was the single largest and most powerful union in Guatemala. However, it suffered a prolonged crisis of decline and ultimately went out of existence. We have noted the difficulties encountered in the efforts to reconstitute SAMF after the fall of the Arbenz government, arising to a large degree from the recalcitrance of the railroaders’ employer, the IRCA, a subsidiary of the UFC. Even after it was more or less firmly reestablished, the union continued to have severe problems with the IRCA. Some of these problems arose from the fact that the IRCA was facing severe economic problems. Until the middle 1950s, the IRCA had more

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monopolized transportation between the Caribbean coast and the highlands of Guatemala, that is, Guatemala City and beyond. However, the Arbenz administration had begun and the Castillo Armas government completed a highway parallel to the IRCA and a new port on the Caribbean coast to compete with UFC-controlled Puerto Barrios. As a consequence, by 1959, the IRCA was faced with very stiff competition. The highway was taking by bus most of the passenger traffic that had formerly gone on the railroad, as well as a large part of the freight, which was going by truck. The fact was that it took less than half as much time to go by bus or truck between Guatemala City and the coast as to go by IRCA. By the end of the decade, about the only freight going by IRCA was that of the UFC. As a result of this, in 1959 IRCA launched what it called a reorganization of its operations. Schedules were drastically cut, and substantial personnel were dismissed. The SAMF tried to fight this reorganization. On the one hand, they blamed much of IRCA’s problems on the railroad’s management. The SAMF leaders argued that much of the IRCA’s difficulties were caused by the fact that the railroad was still using very antiquated equipment and had done nothing to straighten out the line to get rid of the many curves and other impediments that greatly slowed down the trains. Furthermore, the favoritism that the IRCA had traditionally shown to shipments by the UFC, frequently shunting aside, or refusing to ship, freight for customers other than for the UFC, was coming back to haunt the International Railway. Furthermore, the SAMF said that, in laying off personnel, the management was getting rid of those workers with least seniority, as a cost-saving measure. If they dismissed older workers, their liability to pay one month’s wage or salary for each year that the worker had been employed meant that they would refuse to let those workers go, although many of these workers would have been happy to retire and accept the very substantial settlement to which they would be entitled.78 The SAMF was unable to reestablish its former power. Frundt and Chinchilla sketched some of its later history: “It struck in protest of repression and low wages in 1962. . . . It struck illegally in 1967. Declared a legal union in 1968, it won an agreement with the Railway . . . but the Railway immediately violated the agreement, provoking another nine-day strike. It struck IRCA again in 1974; United Fruit then sold IRCA to the government.”79 However, the transfer of ownership of IRCA to the government proved to be the death knell of SAMF. The government again reorganized IRCA, dismissing all of its employees, and then rehiring only those whom it wished to rehire—none of whom were people who had been local or national union leaders. The new railroad management then organized a company union, the Asociación de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros.80 As a kind of footnote to the history of the SAMF there is the fact that José Luis Padilla, the friend of Castillo Armas who had sought to become


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the leader of the SAMF, tried to launch his own central labor group, the Federación de Trabajadores de Guatemala. In 1959 Padilla claimed that it had three unions affiliated with it, the Union of Dental Mechanics, the dockworkers of the port of Puerto Barrios, and a textile union of Quetzaltenango. By then Padilla, who had been head of the Trade Union Committee of Castillo Armas’s party, the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN), was head of the same committee of the party of President Ydigoras Fuentes.81 REPRESSION, GUERILLAS, AND DEATH SQUADS Starting in the 1960s, the Guatemalan labor movement not only had to deal with alternating periods of persecution and more tolerant treatment at the hands of successive governments, but it also had to deal with two other phenomena that were characteristic of political life in this period. These were the existence of left-wing guerilla movements, particularly in rural areas, but also to a lesser degree in Guatemala City and other urban centers, and right-wing death squads dedicated to murdering in cold blood people, including trade union leaders, whom they characterized as “Communists,” whether or not they actually were such. Deborah Levenson-Estrada graphically portrayed the atmosphere in which the labor movement was forced to exist in this period. She wrote: In the middle and late 1960s terror infiltrated all aspects of Guatemalan life to one degree or another and it transformed the way life was understood. It bred extreme caution in all relationships and in all communications, and it made trade unionism a life-and-death struggle. When its terror intensified between 1966 and 1974 and between 1978 and the 1980s, trade unionism declined, and when it declined trade unionism increased. But what is astonishing is that trade unionism never completely stopped dead in its tracks. Perhaps because random state terrorism made all living so risky it made trade unionism worth the risk, and perhaps the random negation of life made defiance seem to be a natural part of living. In any case, the urban and rural poor were not completely paralyzed by fear.82

The advent of a guerilla movement began in 1960 when a group of young army officers led by Luis Turcio Lima and Marcos Antonio Yon Sosa were detailed by a group of colonels to seize Puerto Barrios as part of a plot by the colonels to overthrow President Ydigoras. The colonels canceled their plans but did not tell Turicio and Yon Sosa, who revolted as scheduled, were defeated, and fled to the nearby mountains, where they launched a guerilla operation.83 Citing Yon Sosa, Deborah Levenson-Estrada said that “government persecution, rejections by the PR [Partido Revolucionario] and the experience of living as outlaws among the angry rural disposed radicalized the military officers.” Subsequently, the nascent guerilla movement gained new adherents from the cities following the suppression of violent protests by students, trade unionists, and others in March–April 1962 against the

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stealing of municipal elections by President Ydigoras’s Redemption Party, and some of those involved in these demonstrations fled to the countryside. The Communist Party also organized a guerrilla operation. Late in 1962 the several guerrilla groups joined to form the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes.84 Subsequently, the fortunes of the guerrillas ebbed and flowed, but they never disappeared. Early in the Revolutionary Party regime of President Julio César Méndez Montenegro, the army succeeded in causing serious damage to the guerrillas, and at least some went into Guatemala City. This established a pattern of tenuous relations from time to time between the guerrillas and the labor movement, which the guerrillas sought to penetrate. In the late 1970s there appeared another guerrilla movement, the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (Guerrilla Army of the Poor—EGP), which particularly sought to establish contacts with the labor movement.85 The death squads—suspected of being made up at least in part of army personnel out of uniform—originated during the administration of President Enrique Peralta Azidua (1963–1966). Their activities intensified during the government of Julio César Méndez Montenegro. Deborah LevensonEstrada noted, “By late 1965 many underground PGT and Fasgua members had been kidnapped.”86 Shortly before the inauguration of President Méndez Montenegro in 1966 28 leaders were kidnapped, the most well known of whom were Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez and Leonardo Castillo Flores, former heads of the CGTG and National Peasant Confederation respectively. These people were never seen again, but Eduardo Galeano has written, “It was also learned that most of the twenty-eight had been machine gunned in the armory of the Matamoros barracks and their bodies thrown into the Pacific.”87 The kidnappings, torturings, and murders of the death squads were by no means limited to Communists or even suspected Communists. Early in 1967 a long list of labor leaders was published by the death squads, with the announcement that they were going to be assassinated. Most of those on the list had never had any connection with the Communists.88 Those named included most of the country’s leading trade unionists.89 The death squads did not hesitate to kill even leaders of President Méndez Montenegro’s Partido Revolucionario (PR). The PR chief in Puerto Barrios was picked up on the waterfront by the right-wing terrorists, and his headless body was found several weeks later. Similarly, the PR secretary-general in Chiquimula, who had written the president accusing several local military officers there of organizing terrorist activities, was murdered in public view in his hometown.90 ORGANIZED LABOR UNDER THE ARANA OSORIO AND KJELL LAUGERUD ADMINISTRATIONS President Julio César Méndez Montenegro was succeeded in 1970 by General Carlos Arana Osorio “on a platform of free market reforms and


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political liberalization.” For a while there was renewed trade union activity with the formation of new unions of bank workers and peasants and establishment of the Central de Trabajadores Federados (CTF). However, President Arana soon cracked down on renewed trade union and political activity, declaring a state of siege from January to March 1971, during which period “seven hundred political and union leaders were murdered.”91 When the president again relaxed his repression, the labor movement rebounded to some degree. The most spectacular event was the strike early in 1973 of 15,000 public school teachers that lasted for months. It gained a salary increase of 25 percent, only half of what the teachers were asking, but much larger than any other union had won since 1954. However, when a number of the strike leaders were fired, an attempt to organize another teachers’ strike failed. The CNT blamed this failure on the “economism” of the teachers’ union.92 In spite of this revival of organized labor in the latter part of Arana’s regime, “through either the courts or violence, a third of the unions organized between 1968 and 1972 were destroyed by 1973.”93 During this period several new organizations were established. In March 1970 the Contragua and Cosigua were merged to form the CTF. In the following months a new peasant group, the Federación Nacional de Comunidades Agrarias y Indigenas, was established, which claimed 60,000 members. It joined with another peasant group in 1973 to set up the Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC), which gained legal recognition in March 1974. In December 1973, the Communist-controlled FASGUA, the Christian Democratic–oriented CNT, the ORIT-affiliated CTF, and two other groups established the Consejo Nacional Consulta Sindical. López Larrave said that it was “infighting for common platforms and giving its support or moral solidarity to many conflicts of the workers, both of the private sector and the public sector, but without being able to overcome ideology logical sectarianism.”94 In the election of 1974, the government’s candidate, General Kjell Laugerud, through massive electoral fraud, defeated the Christian Democratic Party’s nominee, General Efraín Ríos Montt. However, in spite of this inauspicious beginning, President Laugerud “allowed a small political opening. What distinguished the Laugerud years was not that the state guaranteed rights, but that compared to the extraordinary levels of violence of the 1966–1973, death squad, army and police actions killed fewer people.”95 In fact, the Laugerud period was to see the most dramatic revival of trade union organization and militancy since 1954. As Deborah LevensonEstrada wrote, “After Laugerud took office, workers in many factories initiated organizing drives, though they were haunted by the fear of what could happen even as they tested the new president pledge to uphold constitutional rule.”96 Early in the Laugerud administration the U.S. Labor Reporting Officer grouped the existing labor organizations in the country into two

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segments. One, which he labeled “officialists,” included the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CSTG), organized with the support of the government; the ORIT-affiliated Confederación de Trabajadores Federados, and the textile workers’ federation. He said that the association of these with the government was “embarrassing” to the ORIT and the AIFLD. The groups that he classified as antigovernment included the Frente Federativo Sindical of Morales Cubas, the CNT, FASGUA, the Federación de Trabajadores de Guatemala, and the bank workers’ federation, all of which had recently formed the Consejo Nacional de Consultiva Sindical.97 One of the more unusual cases of union organization was that of the INCATECU shoe factory. The workers there had been unionized in the 1944–1954 period, when most of the workers were men, producing only rubber shoes. But subsequently the union had been destroyed, whereas the plant expanded to make leather footwear and grew to having 375 workers, most of them women. Deciding that they wanted to establish a union, and knowing little about how to do so, a delegation of them went to the University of San Carlos Law School, asking for help. They were referred to the Central Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT). With the help of the CNT and law professor Mario López Larrave, the INCATECU workers formed their union, got it legalized, and began bargaining with their employer. By June 1975, when bargaining brought no results, the workers went on strike. Their walkout was held by the labor courts to be legal, and subsequently a labor judge even declared the strike to be “just,” that is, that the company was financially able to meet the workers’ demands—the first time since 1954 that a strike had been declared both legal and just.98 All of the new unions did not have the good fortune of the INCATECU organization. In the case of the La Elegante shirt factory, where the workers were also predominantly women and had long been humiliated by their employer, Antonio Malouf, a union was formed in 1974 and sent the Labor Ministry the required petition for legal recognition. However, Malouf refused to have anything to do with the union, and the company’s lawyer—who also worked for the Labor Ministry—got other workers to submit a competing petition. The labor court accepted the second petition, legalizing the company union, whereupon the leaders of the real one were fired.99 THE CASE OF THE COCA-COLA UNION The most spectacular of new union organization was in the local CocaCola bottling plant, EGSA, in Guatemala City. It belonged to a very conservative American from Texas, John Trotter. It had grown extensively as a result of the Central American Common Market, and by 1975 turned out 200,000 bottles of soft drinks a day and employed 300 workers.


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Soon after the 1975 INCATECU strike, some workers in the Coca-Cola plant, including salesmen working out of the plant to distribute its products in Guatemala City, decided to form a union. They got a few more than the legally required 21 workers to sign a petition to the Labor Court for legal recognition, and at the same filed a list of demands on the management, a step that under the Labor Code made it illegal to dismiss union members until the demands had been dealt with. John Trotter was adamantly opposed to the union. After a severe earthquake in Guatemala City in February 1976, he gave loans to 30 workers to rebuild their homes, on the condition that they submit another list of demands to the Labor Court, which they did. Although the Labor Court had had before it the first union petition and list of demands for eight months, instead of the 60-day limit the law provided for a decision, the labor judge almost immediately accepted the second petition, thus freeing Trotter to dismiss all those workers involved in establishing the union. However, the union workers decided to sit in at the Coca-Cola plant. They did so until the police arrived and physically evicted them. They camped in front of the plant, without either blocking its entrance or declaring themselves on strike. The CNT organized a Committee to Support the Coca-Cola Workers, which included not only unions belonging to the CNT but a variety of others. This move was followed on March 21, 1976, by a meeting of representatives of the Coca-Cola workers’ union with 44 delegates from other unions in Guatemala City and neighboring towns. It established the National Committee of Trade Union Unity (CNUS). On April 3, 48 unions threatened to go on strike in solidarity with the Coca-Cola workers unless their union was recognized and the management agreed to bargain with them. President Laugerud then contacted the Ministry of Labor, which finally forced the Coca-Cola management not only to recognize the union, but to enter into negotiations with it.100 For the time being at least, the workers had won at Coca-Cola. However, recognizing the union and negotiating with it were two different things. John Trotter did many things to avoid negotiation. He divided his company into 12 different ones, but this maneuver was negated by the union’s lawyers having employees of all 12 request to be represented by the union. Union leaders were beaten up; others were jailed on framed-up charges of murder. But in Atlanta, the home base of Coca-Cola, Trotter had other problems. Some religious groups that held stock in the so-called mother company demanded that it insist that Trotter deal with the union. He himself was summoned to Atlanta for consultation. Finally, a contract was negotiated in January 1978. It “awarded workers respect for union freedom, job security for union officers, improved safety conditions, overtime pay, personal leave, fixed pay scales, promotion and grievance procedures, lockers, the right to use the company telephone, more vacation time, medical benefits, training programs, and a cafeteria.” It also provided for wage increases.101

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CONTINUING LABOR MILITANCY The labor movement received new impetus from the aftermath of the severe earthquake of February 1976, which killed tens of thousands and made hundreds of thousands of people homeless. As Deborah LevensonEstrada said: Secondary and primary students organized to demand the rebuilding of their schools, factory workers fought for relief aid for their employers, and neighborhood committees, which were often started by students of trade unions, flourished everywhere in the city as residents mobilized to find and bury the dead, provide emergency medical care, prevent robberies, dig latrines, reciprocate or improvise cooking facilities, locate and distribute water, food and building materials, and even entertain one another. In one form or another, these groups lasted for several years. . . . The aftermath of the earthquake was an experience of local power in the face of state corruption. Residents often had to expropriate virtually by force relief aid hoarded by government agencies. Members of unions and of student and neighborhood groups such as the National Movement of Pobladores (MONAP) sometimes turned up at CNUS meetings together. They easily assumed antigovernment stances.102

On May Day 1976 the National Committee on Trade Union Unity organized the first large May Day demonstration of several years. It “demanded such sweeping changes as a general wage increase, fixed prices, and end to death squads, withdrawal of the military from the workplace, and land reforms, as if plans for gaining popular power were under way.”103 However, the union leaders clearly overestimated their strength. There were several cases in the spring of 1976 in which employers broke strikes and otherwise destroyed their workers’ unions. Deborah Levenson-Estrada concluded, “The state and owners faced a more dynamic adversary in the labor movement after the earthquake and the formation of CNUS, but they were not restrained by it.”104 In spite of setbacks, labor militancy rose in 1977. In a number of cases, workers protested by occupying their workplaces. Government workers organized and threatened to strike, although by law they were not permitted to do either. Three unions, those of telegraph operators, Social Security employees, and nurses, formed the Emergency Committee of State Workers (CETE). The most dramatic labor development of 1977 was a march of miners who had organized a union with the help of the CNT at a tungsten mine, Minas de Guatemala, near the Mexican frontier. They walked 250 miles to Guatemala City when their employer threatened to close down the mine rather than deal with his workers’ union. The miners, who started with only 70 people, were joined by increasing numbers of workers from other unions, Indian peasants—the miners themselves were Indians—and journalists and other middle-class people. Even when, under pressure from


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the Laugerud government, the miners’ employer agreed to reopen the mine, recognize the union, and negotiate a contract with it if the miners would stop their march, they refused to turn back. The press gave very wide coverage to the marching miners. The press estimated that as many as 150,000 people accompanied the miners as they marched from the outskirts of Guatemala City to the center of the capital. Once they were there, the miners were housed in the headquarters of the CNT. Gifts of food, medical care, and money were given to them by sympathizers. In spite of the triumphalist air generated by the miners’ march, their “triumph” was very short-lived. Deborah Levenson-Estrada wrote, “The Panteleon workers did not get their jobs back, and within four years the union had been decimated by physical violence. The right to live was not ‘granted,’ much less a contract—three leaders of the miners were killed in a row, one of them tortured to death while his murderers forced his wife to watch.”105 By the middle 1970s, the various guerrilla movements were trying in varying degrees to establish connections with the organized labor movement. There were then four different guerrilla groups: the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR); the Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT—the Communists), who had guerrilla activities as part of their program since the middle 1950s, and two newer groups, the Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA) and the Guerilla Army of the Poor (EGP). Deborah Levenson-Estrada noted, “As the labor and urban movement grew, the men and women who belonged to FAR, PGT and EGP participated wherever they could in unions, professional associations, unity groups, and student and neighborhood organizations. For instance, by early 1980 PGT and EGP, as well as FAR, had secret members in CNT. The states were extremely high, and they competed with one another for influence over workers.”106 A high point of this resurgence of the movement was the May Day demonstration of 1978. Not only trade unionists of the CNT and CNUS unions of Guatemala City and neighboring towns participated in it, but so did a substantial number of peasants, many of them in their customary Indian dress. “The parade was distinguished from previous ones by the diversity of organizations participating and by the prominence of banners calling for ‘Revolutionary and Popular Government.’”107 RENEWED PERSECUTION OF ORGANIZED LABOR The euphoria reflected in the 1978 May Day demonstration was soon to disappear. President Romero Lucas García, who was imposed by the military, soon launched an almost unprecedented persecution of organized labor and began what amounted to a civil war in the countryside. A showdown between trade unionists, university people, and slum dwellers on the one hand, and the Lucas García government and the general

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employer class on the other, developed within weeks of the new president’s taking office. Shortly before Lucas García was inaugurated, the bus drivers of Guatemala City reorganized their union and demanded wage increases, going on strike and seizing many of the buses to obtain their demands. Although the new president decreed a substantial wage increase, the bus owners refused to pay it, demanding a doubling of bus fares instead. The municipal government conceded the fare increase on September 20, but no wage increases were given the bus drivers—who opposed the fare increase in any case. The principal labor groups—CNT, CNUS, and CETE (the government employees organization)–––formed a committee on September 30 to support the bus drivers, although they could not agree on a unified course of action. The CETE declared a general strike of government workers, and some of the unions of industrial workers did the same. In the days that followed there was a virtual uprising in Guatemala City. In working-class districts, barricades were raised. Government offices and a number of industrial parts were seized by their workers. Thousands of people were fired, and 40 people, including several trade union leaders, were killed. Although the municipal council rescinded its bus fare increase, thus conceding the major issue motivating the protests, the CETE decided to continue its week-long strike, demanding reemployment of 3,000 state employees who had been dismissed. Heavily armed police retook the buildings occupied by the strikers.108 The walkouts of government employees and other groups were officially called off on October 13, 1978. But the thoroughly frightened military regime, fearing that the guerrilla groups, who had supported the urban uprising, might capitalize upon the movement, decided “to reduce urban civil society to a pale shadow of its fragile self. From the first half of 1978 to the second, when Guatemala because an international symbol of repression, documented kidnappings increase 72 percent and torture increased 152 percent. The student body and faculty of the University of San Carlos and the newspaper, radio, medical, and legal professions were decimated by violence, as were the church, the labor movement and all manner of student and popular organizations.”109 Not only were trade union leaders kidnapped and murdered, so were leading opposition political figures. These included Alberto Fuentes Mohr, former foreign minister under President Méndez Montenegro, and Manuel Colón Arguetta, former mayor of Guatemala City.110 Faced with intense government terror against it, the labor movement, particularly the largest central labor group, the CNT, found it increasingly difficult to function. The CNT headquarters had previously been very active, providing meeting places for member unions, a center for planning strategy, the source of leaflets and other publications of member groups. By 1979, although its headquarters was not officially closed, the CNT forbade


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virtually all of these activities, fearing what would happen to people who participated in them.111 However, on June 21, on the urging of the underground Guatemalan Labor Party, a meeting of 30 of the principal leaders of Guatemala City CNT unions met in the headquarters, ostensibly to plan a response to murder of one of the leaders of the Coca-Cola workers’ unions. The police raided the meeting, kidnapping 27 of those present.112 On August 24, 17 other union leaders, principally from the Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala, were also kidnapped. Levenson-Estrada said, “With the two mass kidnappings of forty-four men and women, the three most important vehicles of the urban trade union struggle since 1954—Fasgua, CNT and CNUS—ceased to function publicly.”113 Amnesty International widely publicized these kidnappings and presumed murders and urged that protests be sent to top Guatemalan officials.114 Virtually the last action of the country’s central labor organizations was the organization of the 1980 May Day demonstration. Some 100,000 workers reportedly participated. But as the demonstration broke up, death squad elements kidnapped 36 people as they were leaving and tortured and killed them. In the following two months labor leaders were kidnapped or killed at the rate of one per day.115 Levenson-Estrada concluded: Trade unionism in Guatemala City did not end in 1980 with the demise of the labor centrals and federations as a consequence of the massive kidnappings of leaders and members. War in the countryside overshadowed national life, and the army carried out counterinsurgency sweeps in Guatemala City. . . . But activities in a few workplaces managed to at least retain their unions’ legal status. These unions abruptly withdrew from the political arena and kept silent about the strife surrounding them to avoid being engulfed and consumed in the flames of the destruction of the revolutionary movement’s urban organization.116

THE COCA-COLA SIT-IN One of the unions that ultimately survived was that of the Coca-Cola workers. Its struggle for survival became an international cause célèbre. The fact that John Trotter had been forced to sign a contact with the workers’ union, STEGAC, did not mean that he was really willing to accept its existence. In any case, the contract was signed in January 1978, only a few months before the general assault of the Lucas García government on the organized labor movement. In the three years that followed the signing of the contract the union was under extreme pressure. Three successive secretaries-general were murdered; another, as well as the union’s two principal lawyers, were forced into exile. Trotter undertook to establish the Coca-Cola Employees Association, a company union, which most of the workers in the plant felt

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that they had to join, even though that did not mean that they necessarily were opposed to the union. However, as government, employer, and death squad persecution of the Coca-Cola union and the labor movement in general grew, so did international pressure. Amnesty International denounced the general onslaught of the Luca García government on civil liberties. More importantly for the Coca-Cola union, religious stockholders of Coca-Cola renewed their pressure on the Atlanta-based company. Also, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers Associations (IUF), a trade secretariat associated with the ICFTU, took up the cause of the Guatemala Coca-Cola union. The case also drew attention from the press in the United States and other countries, and the Carter administration’s ambassador in Guatemala contacted John Trotter to insist that the protection of human rights was part of the administration’s foreign policy—with the result that Trotter denounced Carter as a “Communist.” Pressure began to grow in various parts of the world from unions affiliated with the IUF to boycott Coca-Cola. But this did not influence John Trotter, and by early 1980 there were only 66 workers left in the STEGAC, while more than two hundred were in the Employees Association. But by the middle of 1980, pressure on the Coca-Cola Corporation and on the Guatemalan government had intensified. The ICFTU endorsed a tourist boycott of Guatemala. At the same time, the AFL-CIO leadership endorsed a boycott of Coca-Cola products, and unions belonging to the IUF from as different countries as Sweden, West Germany, Colombia, Honduras, Iceland, Mexico, Peru, Singapore, and Sri Lanka also undertook to boycott Coke. Finally, in August 1980, the Atlanta headquarters of Coca-Cola found new concessionaires to take over John Trotter’s control of the operation in Guatemala. These were Anthony Zash and Roberto Méndez y Méndez, both with experience in the soft drink business in Latin America. They met with Atlanta Coca-Cola people and IUF representatives and reached agreement that the Atlanta home office would keep close track on the Guatemalan operation for five years, that the STEGAC would be fully recognized and the Employees Association would be abolished, that the Guatemalan Coca-Cola firm would set up a fund for women and children of union “martyrs,” that lines of communication among the Guatemala concessionaires, the local union, the IUF, and Atlanta headquarters would be left open, and that the new concessionaires would intervene with the government to provide “peace’ in the Guatemalan Coca-Cola operation. In December 1980 a new collective agreement was signed between STEGAC and the new concessionaires. Aside from confirming provisions of the 1978 contract, it provided for union dues checkoff and gave union officials time off to conduct union business. The union was also given a small office of the Coca-Cola property.117


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For about three years after the signing of this contract the union functioned with relatively little outside molestation. Internally there were some problems in reintegrating into the union those workers who had earlier joined the Employees Association with those who had stayed loyal to the STEGAC throughout. However, by 1983 a new spirit of unity and a general desire to expand the union and to assume a somewhat more militant attitude was evident.118 But, in February 1984 the union faced a new crisis when the concessionaires, Zash and Méndez, declared themselves bankrupt and proceeded to close the Coca-Cola plant. On February 17, Méndez announced to the four union officials that the plant would not open the next morning because the firm was bankrupt and offered each of them $60,000 a piece if they would get the workers to collect without protest the severance pay they had coming to them. The union officials refused. When the workers arrived the next morning—even many who were off duty coming because of the announcement in the press that Coca-Cola was bankrupt—there was natural confusion. Then a general consensus emerged that the workers should stay in the plant until it would reopen, however that might be brought about. This occupation of the Coca-Cola plant by its workers lasted more than 11 months. After at first surrounding the plant, the police withdrew and did not interfere with what was going on within the plant grounds. For the first few months, virtually all of the Coca-Cola employees participated in the sit-in. Then it was decided that half of them would be there at any one time. From time to time, some of the workers went out to contact other elements in the community to raise support for the Coca-Cola workers. A group of Coca-Cola workers also took part in the annual Holy Week procession.119 Support for the Coca-Cola workers came from many directions. Frundt and Chinchilla noted, “To help the Coca-Cola workers, newspaper workers sent paper and ink; sugar workers sent sugar; textile unions sent clothes; and laundry workers, bank workers, and municipal workers collected funds.”120 In March 1984 a joint IUF and AFL-CIO mission visited Guatemala. According to that mission’s report, it “went to Guatemala on a solidarity and fact-finding mission to lend support to the Guatemalan workers and their unions.” Henry Frundt noted, “After visiting with major national officials, they were able to bring STEGAC considerable press attention as well as $18,000 in aid from other IFU affiliates. Partly as a result, the Guatemalan Labor Ministry became more cooperative.”121 Within the Coca-Cola plant, general assemblies of the workers made all of the important decisions. Special groups organized the feeding of those there, sports activities, some cultural events, and other activities. Finally, with encouragement of the union, a group of Guatemalan businessmen, headed by Carlos Porras and Antonio Barres Arriola, began

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negotiations in January 1985 with the trade union and Coca-Cola headquarters about taking over the franchise and reopening the plant. Even the military government then in power, headed by General Oscar Mejía Víctores, encouraged these negotiations, anxious as they were to put a better face on their abominable international image. After long negotiations, it was agreed that the plant would open with 265 workers instead of the 350 who had been there when the plant closed. However, it was also agreed that aside from 18 workers who had wanted to leave the sit-in some months before, other workers would be asked to volunteer for temporary layoffs, with the promise that they would be the first to be rehired if the new management took on new workers. The volunteers were forthcoming. The plant reopened on March 1, 1985, under a new name. The STEGAC was reorganized as the Union Workers at Embotelladora Central SA (STECSA). A dedication ceremony was held when the plant reopened, with President Mejía Víctores and the U.S. Labor Attaché, among others, in attendance.122 GUATEMALAN ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE 1980s In spite of the hostility of the governments after 1978 toward organized labor, they could not afford to destroy it totally. When the United States Congress inserted a provision that countries must be certified as following trade union activity in order to qualify for participation in President Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative, the government of General Ríos Montt, then in power, permitted formation of the Confederación Unidad de Sindicatos de Guatemala (CUSG) in May 1983. It soon claimed 20 federations and 200 unions in its ranks, with 150,000 members, “many from peasant cooperatives.” Among the unions in the CUSG were those of the Light and Telephone Company, municipal workers, and banana workers in plantations formerly belonging to the UFC. The CUSG was affiliated with the Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT) and got substantial aid from the AIFLD for labor education, formation of cooperatives, and other activities. According to Frundt and Chinchilla, “By 1986 it maintained a right-centrist position of ‘social democracy’ somewhat critical of the government.”123 During the Coca-Cola sit-in a second central labor group was formed in February 1984, initially to bring aid to those workers. This was the Coordinador Nacional de Unidad Sindical (CONUS). This group “soon included twenty-seven affiliates that operated in semi-clandestine fashion.” It was succeeded in 1985 by the Unión de Sindicatos de Trabajadores de Guatemala (UNSITRAGUA), which claimed 25 unions affiliated, with 35,000 members. “It aided various strikes and protests, coincident with the 1985 bus-fare increase, and in 1986 it organized the first major May Day march in six years.” It came to include the reorganized Coca-Cola union, as well


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as a number of factory unions, and some groups of bank workers and municipal employees and some rural wage earners’ organizations. It was apparently organized by the underground FASGUA.124 There also appeared the Coordinador General de Trabajadores de Guatemala (or CGTG, hereafter refers to the Coordinador, not the Confederación mentioned earlier), “which has a Christian Democratic orientation.”125 Its initials were perhaps designed to recall the happier days of the Guatemalan labor movement. A fourth central labor group established in the mid-1980s was the Consejo Nacional de Trabajadores Democráticos (CNTD). It had unions of textile, beer, and rural workers in its ranks. In 1985 there was an outburst of labor unrest. Frundt and Chinchilla have noted, “Two dozen public sector unions, bakery workers, and 5,000 teachers protested for higher salaries and lower prices. The teachers’ strike spread to nearly every department, causing the government to end the term a month early.” A number of workers’ groups occupied their workplaces. At least in part because of the revival of some degree of labor militancy, the military finally agreed to more or less free elections in December 1985, which were won by Christian Democratic candidate Vinicio Cerezo. In the first year of the administration of the first civilian president in almost 20 years, organized labor “was less openly oppressed, but union officials continued to be murdered.”126 Thomas F. Reed and Karen Brandow have sketched the failure of the Cerezo regime in terms of democracy and civil liberties. They wrote: Soon after he took office . . . it was evident that the hopes raised by his election were ill founded. . . . James Goldston states that “far from bringing about needed reforms to enhance the security, liberty, and welfare of working people, the militarybacked Christian Democratic government presided over a continuation of physical attacks and economic reprisals against workers who demanded improved wages, safe working conditions and recognition of associational rights.” Two military coup attempts (1988 and 1989) pushed Cerezo’s agenda even further to the right, as the army used the coups to ensure their control over how far the “democratic opening” would be allowed to grow.127

Government employees became an increasingly important part of the labor movement. Some of their unions formed the Federación Nacional Sindical de Trabajadores del Estado de Guatemala (FENASTEG), while others affiliated with the Coordinador General de Trabajadores de Guatemala or with the CUSG.128 Also, in the latter 1980s several organizations appeared that, although not themselves union groups, cooperated with the labor movement in certain activities. These were the Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala, composed of widows of people killed by the death squads,

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and the Consejo Etnico Rumajel Junam, which worked among the Indians against compulsory service of the Indians in local civil guard groups and in the Army itself, and the Comité Unidad Campesina (CUC), a peasant group seeking both economic gains and the ending of the impressment of the Indians for semimilitary and military service. In 1988 a broad coalition, Unidad Sindical y Popular (UASP), was formed. It included the UNSITRAGUA, the CUSG, the FENASTEG, and the CNC peasant group, as well as some human rights groups and the student’s Asociación de Estudiantes Universitarios. According to Henry J. Frundt, the UASP “represents an alliance between Guatemalan campesinos, state workers and industrial employees—bridging racial differences of Indian and ladino workers.”129 As we have noted, although the election of President Cerezo in 1986 had momentarily aroused some hope in labor’s ranks, the Christian Democratic civilian president was unable effectively to challenge either the Army and death squad repression or the entrenched conservative economic interests. In addition, the country faced severe economic difficulties, particularly inflation. As a consequence, the UASP soon after its establishment sought to get the president to fulfill some of his electoral promises. In March 1968, it reached an agreement with him that came to be known as the March Accord. This agreement dealt not only with price controls, but with “other major issues: agrarian policy, minimum salaries, recognition of unions, adequate health and educational services, measures to combat corruption, and human rights.”130 The Cerezo government did little to carry out the March Accord. As a consequence, the UASP “reacted strongly. In the summer of 1988, it called a series of weekly marches, each larger than the one before, followed by a 2-week general strike.” That walkout in August 1988 had particularly strong support from the government employees.131 In 1989, the member groups of UASP that had legal recognition were able to participate in the so-called National Dialogue called for in the Esquipulas II agreements among the Central American governments to try to bring peace to the region. According to Henry J. Frundt, “because it was able to resolve its own internal problems of member representation, the UASP was able to exert sufficient pressure to demand, and play, an important participatory role.” In the summer of 1989 there were two very important strikes. One was organized by the CUSG and involved 70,000 sugar workers. The strike was quickly suppressed by the military, but the CUSG was able to negotiate a general increase in agricultural workers’ wages with the Unión Nacional de Agricultores. From June to August 1989 there was a general strike of the country’s teachers. Although many people in the UASP had certain severe criticisms of the teachers, particularly in rural areas, the UASP did back the walkout. Frundt has said, “Ultimately, the teachers and other public-sector


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workers won few of their demands, but the walkout did build labor unity by incorporating certain UASP demands, such as controls over food prices.”132 DIFFICULTIES OF LABOR MOVEMENT AT THE END OF 1980s In spite of the recrudescence of the labor movement in the latter part of the 1980s, it suffered grave handicaps due to the continuing civil strife in Guatemala. Organized labor also faced extensive hostility from the employers and at best limited tolerance from the government. A study of the ORIT sketched some of the problems faced by the Guatemalan trade unions in this period. This ORIT survey first noted the impediments the workers faced in trying to exercise their basic right to organize. It said, “There exists a consensus among those interviewed that the long repressive tradition of the Governments and the employers against the worker and peasant movement has aroused fear in the working population to participate in trade union activities because of the risks that the implies and the consequences of which is a small number organized in unions.” The ORIT then listed some of the specific factors hindering organization. One was the strict vigilance of “employees of confidence” on the workers, to prevent their forming unions. Among other things, the workers were often forbidden to talk to one another while on the job. Then, when the workers of an enterprise succeeded in getting together the 20 people needed to form a legal union, the employers would often dismiss enough of the workers who were forming the union so as to deprive them of the minimum number required for legalization. This was reported to the ORIT as being employers’ “normal” behavior. Another tactic of the employers was to divide their enterprises into small-enough independent operations so that no one of these sections would have the required number of 20 workers. The Ministry of Labor frequently cooperated with maneuvers of the employers. One way of doing so was to delay the process of legalizing a new union far beyond the maximum of 60 days provided for in the Labor Code, in order to give the employers plenty of time to destroy the embryo union. Another tactic of the Ministry was to totally deny the legitimacy of a given union. The ORIT report noted one particularly egregious example of this. It said, “The CGTG said that the Ministry of Labor did not legalize a union of health workers (who work for various firms) because, according to the judgment of this Ministry, the workers had to belong to a single firm; on the contrary, these workers should form a craft union, requiring thus that its members must have the same specialty. This requirement limited the organization, because those involved in forming the union had various specialties.”133

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Union officials were fair game for punishment at the hands of the employers, in spite of the Labor Code giving them immunity from arbitrary dismissal. Sometimes the Ministry of Labor refused to recognize the election of certain union officials, for political reasons, indicating to the union members that they were unacceptable. In other instances, government officials totally ignored elected union officials. One example of this recounted to the ORIT investigators was that of a bakers’ union, whose leaders negotiated with the Ministry of Labor for six months about minimum wages in that industry, whereupon the Ministry “arbitrarily named as representatives of the workers individuals who were not members of the union involved. The ministry ignored the union’s protests and only agreed to have discussion with the legitimate representatives when they told the press about the irregular procedure of the state institution.”134 A particularly pressing impediment to unionization by the late 1980s was the spread of solidarismo by the Guatemalan employers. Introduced into the country from Costa Rica by 1976, solidarismo—the establishment as substitutes for unions of employer sponsored workers’ savings funds from which workers could borrow for various purposes, including housing—at first expanded slowly. But after 1984, it grew very rapidly and by end of the decade there were at least 150 such savings funds. In other instances, employers—both private and governmental— organized company dominated unions to block the establishment of authentic ones.135 As a result of the weakness of the labor movement, there were relatively few collective contracts in Guatemala in the late 1980s. Even when they formally existed, the ORIT report indicated that they were frequently violated by employers. Furthermore, attempting to force employers to negotiate collective contracts could prove very dangerous for union leaders: “Three leaders of a federation of bank workers’ unions said that there had been cases in which union officials disappeared after proposing the negotiation of a collective contract. In 1979, for example, Benvenuto Serrano, secretary-general of the Sindicato de Trabajadores del Banco Central de Guatemala, disappeared exactly when he was discussing and fight for a collective contract.”136 CONCLUSION The climate for organized labor was still not favorable in Guatemala by 1990. The country was still torn with a continuing civil war, with very active guerrilla groups in some rural areas. The military continued to have effective control of the government, and together with the death squads were physically eliminating those they considered their enemies, or even just their opponents. Organized labor itself, during the previous quarter of a century, had seen most of its most important leaders killed exiled or driven into inactivity.


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However, the remarkable thing was that through all of the travails that the country had suffered since 1954, the Guatemalan labor movement had survived. Whenever one or another of the successive governments had relaxed oppression to any appreciable degree, the labor movement had resumed its activities and its militancy. Organized labor remained divided into groups with differing ideological orientations, although in the 1970s and 1980s, when the opportunity had presented itself, the labor movement had shown an ability to unite for common purposes. By 1990, it was too soon to know what the impact of the collapse of International Communism would have on the Guatemalan Communists, and hence in their influence in organized labor, which had been so persistent, and at times so strong. NOTES 1. Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City 1954–1985 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 23–24. 2. John Peurifoy (U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 24, 1954. 3. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 25. 4. John Peurifoy, interview; Edward Vallon (labor attaché of U.S. Embassy), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 19, 1954; see also Mario López Larrave, Guatemala: Breve Historia del Movimiento Sindical, Colección: El Despertar de los Trabajadores de América Latina, Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero Salvador Allende, Chilpancingo, Mexico, 1983, p. 21. 5. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 27–28. 6. José García Bauer (member of Constituent Assembly of 1945; labor lawyer and judge), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 20, 1954. 7. Serafino Romualdi, “Time is Running Out in Guatemala,” AFL-CIO American Federationist 63, no. 6 (Washington, DC), June 1956, p. 24. 8. Imprensa Libre (Guatemala City), September 24, 1984, p. 3. 9. “Memorandum L Sr. Presidente del Movimiento Libertador, Anti-comunista, Coronel Carlos Castillo Armas. Sobre el problema de la Reorganización Sindical en Guatemala,” from Comité Nacional de Reorganización Sindical and Federación Autónoma Sindical, Guatemala City, September 24, 1984, p. 3. 10. Serafino Romualdi, “Report on Guatemala,” The American Federationist 61, no. 9 (Washington, DC), September 1954, p. 27. 11. Vallon, interview. 12. Peurifoy, interview. 13. Miguel Carrera (leader of roundhouse workers of Guatemala City yards, International Railways of Central America), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 20, 1954; Luis Padilla (leader of railroad workers in mechanical shop), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 20, 1954. 14. Armando Castillo (office secretary of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959. 15. Rafael Otero (Cuban railroad union leader, representative in Guatemala of Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 23, 1954.

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16. Otero, interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 25, 1954. 17. Peruifoy, interview. 18. Daniel Benedict (assistant secretary of international affairs of Congress of Industrial Organizations), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 21, 1954. 19. José García Bauer, interview with the author, August 20, 1954, and August 25, 1954. 20. Robert J. Alexander, “Observations on Meetings to Reorganize the Railroad Workers Union,” August 1954. 21. García Bauer, interview. 22. Ernst Schwarz (CIO member of Executive Committee of Organización Interamericana de Trabajadores), interview with the author in Washington, DC, September 14, 1954. 23. Rubén Villatoro (president of Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 19, 1954. 24. Daniel James (managing editor of New Leader), interview with the author in New York, March 8, 1955. 25. Serafino Romualdi (Latin American representative of AFL-CIO, assistant general secretary of ORIT), interview with the author in New York, October 11, 1955. 26. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 31. 27. Rodolfo Madrid (railroad union leader, member of Comité Nacional de Reorganización Sindical), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 20, 1954. 28. Arnaldo Ottens (railroad union leader of Comité Nacional de Reorganización Sindical), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 21, 1954. 29. Mario Pinal (official of Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 21, 1954. 30. Madrid, interview, August 21, 1954. 31. Edward Vallon, interview, August 25, 1954. 32. Serafino Romualdi (Latin American representative of AFL-CIO, assistant general secretary of ORIT), interview with the author, in Washington, DC, September 14, 1954. 33. Romualdi, interview with the author, in New York City, November 24, 1954. 34. James, interview. 35. Prensa Libre (Guatemala), November 6, 1954. 36. Mario Mencos (secretary-general of Consejo Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, September 8, 1959. 37. Jaime Monge Donis (ex-secretary general of Sindicato de Tabajadores del Instituto Guatemalteco de Seguridad Social), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959. 38. Juan Diáz (secretary-general of Sindicato de Luz y Fuerza), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959. 39. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 31–32. 40. Monge Donis, interview. 41. D. Romero Hernández (coordinator of Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala [Contragua]), interview with the author in Guatemala City, June 16, 1967.


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42. Letter from Mario Mencos, Joaquín Maldonado, and others to “Senores Disputados del Congreso Nacional,” August 15, 1959; see also Boletín Informativo Fasgua (Guatemala City), August 15, 1959. 43. Romero Hernandez, interview. 44. John B. Tipton (U.S. Embassy labor attaché), interview with the author in Guatemala City, June 14, 1967. 45. Mauro Monterosso (secretary-general of Confederación Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, June 14, 1967. 46. John B. Tipton, interview. 47. Monterosso, interview. 48. John B. Tipton, interview. 49. Hank Frundt and Norma Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, ed. Gerald Michael Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983). 50. Raymond Burghhardt (labor reporting officer in U.S. Embassy in Guatemala), interview with the author in Mexico City, July 7, 1975. 51. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 416. 52. Burghhardt, interview. 53. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 33–34. 54. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 410. 55. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 35. 56. Luis Felipe Balcarcel (member of National Advisory Committee and subsequently secretary-general of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 23, 1954. 57. Carlos Escobar (member of National Advisory Committee of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 19, 1954. 58. Letter from José García Bauer to Robert J. Alexander, November 8, 1954. 59. Castillo, interview. 60. Miguel Valdés (secretary of propaganda, Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959. 61. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 35. 62. Ibid., p. 36. 63. Ibid., pp. 36–37. 64. Ibid., p. 37. 65. Valdés, interview; Fantina Rodríguez Padilla (secretary of feminine affairs of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, June 17, 1967. 66. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 38. 67. Bolentín Informativo FASGUA, July 15, 1959. 68. John B. Tipton, interview. 69. Héctor Amado (secretary of conflicts of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, June 17, 1967. 70. Rodríguez Padilla, interview. 71. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 409. 72. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 47–48. 73. López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 23. 74. Carlos Salomon Prade (organizer for Federación Central de Trabajadores de Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, June 15, 1967.

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75. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 421; and López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 23. 76. Burghhardt, interview. 77. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 421. 78. Ricardo César Rodríguez (official of Sindicato de Acción y Mejoramiento Ferrocarrilero), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959; Manuel de Jesús Girón (secretary of education and propaganda of SAMF), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 10, 1959; Héctor Osorio (secretary of conflicts, SAMF), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959; Mario Mora (secretary-general, SAMF), interview with the author in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959. 79. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 426. 80. Burghhardt, interview. 81. Luis Padilla, interview with the author, in Guatemala City, September 11, 1959. 82. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 46–47. 83. John Dreyfus (chief of political section, U.S. Embassy in Barbados, formerly political officer in Guatemala), interview with the author in Guatemala City, August 28, 1970. 84. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 43–44. 85. Ibid., p. 146. 86. Ibid., p. 44. 87. Eduardo Galeano, Guatemala: Occupied Country (New York: Monthly Press, 1969), p. 74. 88. Tipton, interview. 89. Romero Hernández, interview. 90. Galeano, Guatemala: Occupied Country, p. 6. 91. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 403. 92. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 103. 93. Ibid., p. 102. 94. López Larrave, Guatemala, p. 23. 95. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 106–7. 96. Ibid., p. 107. 97. Burghhardt, interview. 98. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 107–8. 99. Ibid., pp. 95–97. 100. Ibid., pp. 109–23. 101. Ibid., p. 179. 102. Ibid., p. 124. 103. Ibid., p. 125. 104. Ibid., pp. 125–26. 105. Ibid., pp. 128–31. 106. Ibid., p. 134. 107. Ibid., p. 145. 108. Ibid., pp. 145–52. 109. Ibid., pp. 152–53. 110. Ibid., p. 153. 111. Ibid., p. 155. 112. Ibid., p. 170.


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113. Ibid., p. 172. 114. Amnesty International, “Case Sheet: Guatemala: 47 Trade Unionists Kidnapped,” September 26, 1980. 115. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 170; see also Thomas F. Reed and Karen Brandow, The Sky Never Changes: Testimonies from the Guatemalan Labor Movement (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1996), p. 4. 116. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, p. 176; Thomas F. Reed and Karen Brandow (The Sky Never Changes) have gathered testimony of the individual trade unionists concerning this persecution of the workers. 117. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 180–203. 118. Ibid., pp. 203–10. 119. Ibid., pp. 212–29. 120. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 406. 121. Henry J. Frundt, “To Buy The World A Coke: Trade Union Development in Guatemala” (manuscript). 122. Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror, pp. 212–29; see also Frundt, “To Buy The World A Coke,” for discussion of the Coca-Cola situation. 123. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, pp. 406–12. 124. Ibid., pp. 407, 427; see also Frundt, “To Buy The World A Coke,” pp. 3–9. 125. Henry J. Frundt, “Guatemala in Search of Democracy,” Journal of Inter American Studies (Fall 1990): p. 30. 126. Frundt and Chinchilla, in Latin American Labor Organizations, p. 407. 127. Reed and Brandow, The Sky Never Changes, p. 6. 128. Henry J. Frundt, “Guatemala in Search of Democracy,” p. 30. 129. Ibid., p. 32. 130. Ibid., p. 34. 131. Ibid., pp. 43– 47. 132. Ibid., pp. 3, 47. 133. Los Derechos Sindicales en Centroamérica, ORIT and CIOSL, n.d. (ca. 1988), pp. 10–11. 134. Ibid., p. 22. 135. Ibid., pp. 37–38. 136. Ibid., p. 38.

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NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS AFL-CIO American Federationist (Washington, DC), magazine of American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations. AFL-CIO News (Washington, DC), newspaper of American Federation of Labor– Congress of Industrial Organizations. American Federationist (Washington, DC), official magazine of American Federation of Labor. Boletín Informativo Fasgua (Guatemala City) labor periodical. Boletín Sindical (Tela, Honduras), organ of Seccional Tela of Comité Central. Campo Gráfico (La Lima, Honduras), periodical of Tela Railroad Company. CLAT Newsletter (New York), publication of Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores. Commerce Reports (Washington, DC), U.S. Department of Commerce periodical. Diario de Centro América (Guatemala City), Guatemalan government newspaper. El Diario/La Prensa (New York), Spanish language daily newspaper. El Revindicador (San Pedro Sula, Honduras), labor-oriented newspaper. Imprensa Libre (Guatemala City), daily newspaper. Industrial and Labor Information (Geneva), International Labor Organization periodical. Industrial Worker (Spokane), newspaper of Industrial Workers of the World. Inter American Labor News (Washington, DC), mimeographed periodical of Confederación Interamericana de Trabajadores. Intercontinental Press (New York), periodical of Socialist Workers Party. International Press Correspondence, periodical of Communist International. Isthmania (Guatemala City), news magazine. Journal of Inter-American Studies. Justice (New York), newspaper of International Ladies Garment Workers Union. La Correspondencia Sudamericana (Buenos Aires), periodical of South American Secretariat of Communist International. La Prensa Libre (San José), daily newspaper. La Protesta (Buenos Aires), anarchist newspaper. Le Monde (Paris), daily newspaper. Militant (New York) newspaper of Socialist Workers Party. Monthly Labor Review (Washington, DC), magazine of U.S. Department of Labor. New Leader (New York), Socialist Party newspaper. New York Times. Noticiario Obrero Norteamericano (Washington, DC), periodical of American Federation of Labor. Noticias Católicas (Washington, DC), news sheet of National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service. Prensa Libre (Guatemala City), daily newspaper.

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INTERVIEWS Aguilar, Orlando, secretary of peasant actions of Comité Organizador de Sindicatos Libres Democráticos de Nicaragua, in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 1, 1953. Aguilar, Ramiro, treasurer of Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres, in Guatemala City, January 19, 1954. Allen, Gordon, Central American representative of American Institute for Free Labor Development, in Princeton, NJ, April 24, 1965. Alvarenga, José Alejandro, secretario de trabajo y reclamos Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Fabrica de Manteca y Jabón Atlantida, of Honduras, in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, July 15, 1958. Alvarez, Eddy, treasurer and secretary-general, successively of Confederación Costarricense del Trabajo Rerum Novarum, in San José, Costa Rica, September 7, 1959. Amadeo Pérez, Edwin, secretary of propaganda, Confederación General de Trabajadores de Costa Rica, in San José, Costa Rica, June 30, 1967. Amado, Héctor, secretary of conflicts of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala, in Guatemala City, June 17, 1967. Aráuz, Tomás Dionisio, secretary of international relations of Confederación Obrera y Campesina de la República de Panamá, and subsequently secretary-general of Confederación Agrarian Nacional, in Panama City, August 27, 1952, and August 4, 1954. Balcarcel, Luis Felipe, member of National Advisory Committee, and subsequently secretary-general of Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala, in Guatemala City, August 23, 1954. Barnays, Edward, public relations representative of United Fruit Company, in New York, May 10, 1954. Barrette, Raymond T., labor reporting officer, U.S. Embassy, in Managua, Nicaragua, July 14, 1953. Barria, Domingo, secretary-general, Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de Panamá, in Panama City, July 7, 1957. Basillo, Paul, American Institute for Free Labor Development Country Program director in Costa Rica, in Front Royal, VA, December 17, 1975. Bateta, Trinidad, ORIT representative in Nicaragua, in Managua, Nicaragua, June 27, 1967. Benedict, Daniel, assistant secretary of International Affairs of Congress of Industrial Organizations, in Guatemala City, August 21, 1954. Bermudez (h), Adrián, member of Executive of Confederación Nacionalista de Sindicatos Democráticos de Nicaragua, in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, June 1, 1953. Bonilla, Adolfo, secretary-general, Movimiento Sindical Autónomo de Nicaragua, in Managua, Nicaragua, June 29, 1967. Bonilla, Roberto Arellano, legal adviser of Central Strike Committee during 1954 banana strike, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, August 16, 1954.

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Index

Acción Católico, 38 Acción Democrática (AD) Party of Venezuela, 62 Agency for International Development (AID), 146 Agrarian reform, 147–51, 195, 197–98 Agrarian Reform Institute, 150, 151, 198, 200 Agrupación de Maestros Unidos, 43 Agrupación de Trabajadores Latino Americanos Sindicalizados (ATLAS), 50, 89, 90, 177, 231 Aguilar Arce, Rodrigo, 69, 70–71 Aguirre, Francisco, 17 Airline Workers Union, 232 Alba Social (Social Dawn), 83 Alberto Monge, Luis, 37 Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA), 201 Allied Workers Associations (IUF), 264 Álvarez, Eddy, 59 Álvarez Martínez, Gustavo, 150, 154 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 25, 63, 232 American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), 19, 63, 239–40. See also

American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME), 26, 27, 29 American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD): CCTD and, 60–61, 72; CGS and, 181; CTH and, 146; CTRP and, 21; CUS and, 97, 108–9; Hammer-Pearlman-Viera assassination and, 200; opposition to U.S. military aid to the Salvadoran regime and, 198; ORIT and, 96–97; peasants and rural workers and, 194–95; regional training centers of, 97, 181; Social Projects Division of, 146; UPD and, 201–2 Arana, Francisco, 218 Arana Osorio, Carlos, 256–57 Aráuz, Tomás Dionisio, 17, 18 Arbenz, Jacobo, 218, 225–28 Arellano Bonilla, Roberto, 127 Arévalo, Juan José, 36 Arguello, Leonardo, 80, 88 Arias, Arnulfo, 8, 9 Arias, Harmodio, 8, 11–12 Arias, Oscar, 37

292 Arias, Ricardo, 9, 19 Armando Molina, Arturo, 162 Artisans Constitutional Club, 38 Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC), 100–101 Asociación Gráfica Hondureña, 124 Asociación Nacional de Campesinos de Honduras (ANACH), 147–50 Asociación Nacional de Educadores (ANDE), 65–66 Asociación Nacional de Educadores Salvadoreños (ANDES), 193, 200 Asociación Nacional de Empleados Públicos (ANEP), 65 Asociación Nacional Indigena Salvadoreña (ANIS), 201 Azcona de Hoya, José, 119–20 Balcarcel, Luis Felipe, 249, 250, 252 Banana strike of 1954, 126–31. See also United Fruit Company (UFC); aspects of, notable, 128–29; Central Strike Committees and, 126, 127–28, 130–31; conclusion of, 127–28; Mediation Committee and, 126; origins of, 129–31; Tegucigalpa negotiations, 127–28 Banana workers: CCTD and, 60; Costa Rican labor movement and, 41–42, 50–52; Rerum Novarum Confederation’s efforts to organize, 50–52 Barres Arriola, Antonio, 265 Barría, Domingo, 9–10, 10, 14 Barrios Amoya, René, 182 Bauer, José García, 226, 231, 239, 242, 243, 249, 252 Benedict, Daniel, 242, 243 Bernays, Edward, 130 Betancourt, Romulo, 41 Beteta, Trinidad, 97 Black identity campaign, 10 Bloque de Obreros y Campesinos, 40–42 Boletín Sindical (periodical), 134 Bollinger, William, 164, 171, 177, 180, 181, 190 Bolshevik Revolution, 167 Bonilla, Manuel, 117

Index Bonilla, Warren, 49 Booth, John A., 37, 39, 40, 45, 56–57, 64, 65 Brandow, Karen, 267 Brouwer, Jorge, 15 Brown, Gerónimo Ramírez, 84 Bureau of Mines, 123 Bus drivers’ union, 12–13, 14, 92, 96, 147, 180, 190, 219, 262 Bush, George, 9, 83 Calderón Guardia, Rafael Angel, 35, 36, 43–44, 63, 75 Cáliz Herrera, Manuel, 122 Callejas, Rafael Leonardo, 120, 154, 155, 156 Calvo, Francisco, 38 Campo Gráfico (periodical), 135 Canal Zone, 2, 9–13; Panamanian organized labor in, 24–27; treaties, 23 Carazo, Rodrigo, 66 Cardoza, José Alberto, 221 Carías Andino, Tiburcio, 117–18, 123 Carter, Jimmy, 82 Carter-Torrijos Treaty, 9, 27, 29 Casa Sindical, 175 Casas sindicales, 177 Castillo Armas, Carlos, 238–41, 243, 250 Castillo Flores, Leonardo, 227 Castro, Castañeda, 162 Catholic Church: Catholic Workers National Union and, 192; El Salvadoran labor movement and, 192; Guatemalan labor movement and, 252–53; Honduran labor movement and, 146–47; Nicaraguan labor movement and, 95–96; Panamanian labor movement and, 21–22 Causa Obrera (PTN periodical), 85 Center for Social Studies, 39 Central American Common Market, 4, 161 Central American Communist Party, Guatemala Section, 218 Central de Sindicatos Rerum Novarum, 45 Central de Trabajadores Federados (CTF), 248–49, 257

Index Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 237, 242 Central Labor Union-Metal Trades Council (CLU-MTC), 26 Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores (CLAT), 22, 147, 192, 201, 253 Central Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT), 258 Central Nacional de Trabajadores de Panama (CNTP), 14 Central Sandinista de Trabajadores (CST), 100–105 Central Única de Trabajadores, 22 Centro Socialista, 39–40 Cerezo, Vinicio, 267 César Sandino, Augusto, 79 Chacón León, Edwin, 38, 40, 52, 59, 61, 65 Chamorro, Pedro Joaquín, 81 Chauffeurs’ union, 16, 22, 92, 96, 136, 171, 182 Chauffeurs Union of Managua, 85 Checkoff of union dues, 20, 57, 63, 173, 175, 224, 264 Chinchilla, Norma, 219, 222, 248–49, 253, 254, 265, 266, 267 Chinese Communist regime, 124 Chits, 41, 42, 120, 121 Christian-based communities, 195 Christian Democratic Party (CDP), 22, 192, 196, 201, 203, 216, 253, 257 Civil service system, 40 Coca-Cola sit-in, 263–66 Coca-Cola union (EGSA), 258–59, 263–66 Coffee cultivation, 160 Colegio Profesional de Superación Magisterial Hondureño, 152 Collective Labor Contract, 24 Colombian Congress, 2 Comisión de Organización Sindical, 12 Comité Central Sindical, 130, 131, 132, 133 Comité Coordinador de Sindicatos “José Guillermo Rivas,” 191 Comité de Accion y Unidad Sindical (CAUS), 110

293 Comité de Defensa Contra Comunismo, 241 Comité de Reorganización Obrera Sindical Salvadoreño (CROSS), 171 Comité de Unidad Sindical (CUS): Costa Rican labor movement and, 66–67; ICFTU and, 108–9; Nicaraguan labor movement and, 108–9 Comité Nacional de Organización Sindical (CNOS), 16 Comité Nacional de Reorganización Sindical (CNRS), 240–41, 244–46 Comité Nacional de Unidad Sindical (CNUS), 221–22 Comité Obrero de Orientación Revolucionaria (COOR), 191 Comité Obrero Organizador de Sindicatos Libres Democráticos, 91 Comité Organizador de Sindicatos Libres, 92 Comité Patriótico de Obreros, 216 Comité Unidad Campesina (CUC), 268 Committee for Worker Coordination (Comité Coordinador Obrero), 124 Communist-controlled Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL), 43–44, 55, 56, 86–87, 124, 169, 220, 221, 230, 251 Communist International, 167 Communist Party: of Costa Rica, 40–42; of El Salvador, 167; of Guatemala, 214, 225–26; of Honduras, 121–22, 151 Confederación Agraria Nacional, 17–18 Confederación Auténtica de Trabajadores Democrática (CATD), 61–62 Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos (CCTD): AIFLD and, 60–61, 72; banana workers and, 60; CATD and, 61–62; dissension in, 61; electrical workers’ union and, 60; federations of, 59–60; government workers’ union and, 65–66; ICFTU and, 59, 61; Rerum Novarum Confederation and, 50, 59; SITRADIQUE and, 60

294 Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores (CCT) Rerum Novarum. See Rerum Novarum Confederation Confederación Costarricense de Trabajo Rerum Novarum, 45 Confederación de Asociaciones Cooperativas de El Salvador (COACES), 201 Confederación de Obreros y Campesinos Cristianos (COCC), 64 Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (Confederation of Workers of Latin America-CTAL), 43–44, 55, 56, 86–87, 124, 169, 171, 220, 221, 230, 251 Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica (CTCR), 43–45, 47, 48–49, 51, 55, 56–57, 72, 75 Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala (Contragua), 247 Confederación de Trabajadores de Honduras (CTH), 145–46 Confederación de Trabajadores de la República de Panamá (CTRP), 18–22 Confederación de Trabajadores de Nicaragua (CTN-1940s), 86–88 Confederación de Trabajadores de Nicaragua (CTN-1980s), 99, 107–8 Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela, 63, 132 Confederación de Unificación Sindical (CDS), 97 Confederación General de Sindicatos (CGS), 178, 188, 189, 201, 246–49 Confederación General de Trabajadores Costarricenses: (CGTC), 55–56, 57, 62, 66, 72, 230, 232 Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CGTG), 222–25 Confederación General de Trabajadores-Independiente (CGT-I), 94, 95, 106–7 Confederación General de Trabajaqores (CGT), 75, 147; in 1950s, 88–89; Costa Rican labor

Index movement and, 39–40; Nicaraguan labor movement and, 88–90, 93–94 Confederación Interamericana de Trabajadores (CIT), 16, 171 Confederación Latino Americana de Sindicalistas Cristianos (CLASC), 63–64, 252 Confederación Nacional Campesina de Guatemala (CNCG), 230 Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT), 50, 253 Confederación Nacionalista de Sindicatos Democráticos (CNSD), 90, 97 Confederación Obrera y Campesina de la República de Panamá (COCRP), 16–18 Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CSTG), 258 Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), 62, 67 Confederation of Democratic Workers, 202 Congreso Permanente de Trabajadores, 106, 110 Congress of Industrial Organizations of the United States, 12 Consejo Coordinador de Organizaciones Campesinas de Honduras (COCOCH), 155 Consejo Coordinador de Trabajadores Estatales y Municipales, 203 Consejo de Unidad Sindical, 97 Consejo Etnico Rumajel Junam, 268 Consejo Nacional Consulta Sindical, 257 Consejo Nacional de Trabajadores Democrático (CNTD), 267 Consejo Sindical de Guatemala (CSC), 246–49 Construction Industry and Transport Union Federation (FESINCONSTRANS), 181 Contras, 68, 82–83, 103, 112, 150, 154 Coordinadora Democrática del Sector Público, 72 Coordinadora de Solidaridad de Trabajadores (CST), 101–9, 111–12, 203

Index Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala, 267 Coordinador Nacional de Unidad Sindical (CONUS), 266 Corps of labor inspectors, 123 Corrato, Alfonso, 134–35 Costa Rican organized labor, 33–52. See also Rerum Novarum Confederation; banana workers and, organization of, 41–42, 50–52; beginnings of, 37–39; CGT and, 39–40; challenges to, 73–74; CLASC and, 63–64; Communist Party of Costa Rica and, 40–42; CTCR and, 43–45, 47, 48–49, 51, 55, 56–57, 72, 75; CUS and, 66–67; government workers’ union and, 64–66; 1980s crisis and, 67–72; PLN and, 37, 62–63; political development and, 35–37; post-Civil War of 1948 and, 48–49; shoemakers’ union and, establishment of, 43; socioeconomic development after 1948 and, 47–48; solidarismo and, 72–73; teachers and, organization of, 42–43; unemployed and, organization of, 43; unionism, end of 1970s and, 67 Cruz, Ramón Ernesto, 119 Cubas Gross, José, 132, 134 Cuellar, Luis Alejandro, 26 Cuyamel Fruit Company, 117, 120, 121 D’Aubisson, Roberto, 201 Death squads, 191–92, 195–96, 198–201, 256 Dengo, Omar, 39 Department of Labor and Social Welfare, 123 Duarte, José Napoleón, 162, 163, 196–99, 201–2, 203, 204 Earthquake of 1972, 98–99 El Chilio (periodical), 132–33 Electrical Workers Union, 154, 177 El Pueblo (newspaper), 99, 110 El Revindicador (newspaper), 132 El Salvadoran organized labor after 1967 general strike, 188–209; ANDES and, 193, 200; Catholic

295 Workers National Union and, 192; CGS after 1967 and, 189; civil war and, 196–209; COOR and, 191; employer and government abuse of, 205–6; FENASTRAS and, 189–90; FESTIAVTSCES and, 190–91, 192; FUSS and, before the civil war, 190–91; labor militancy in the late 1980s and, 203–5; rural workers and, organizations of, 194–96; trade unionism in the early 1990s and, 206–8; UDO and, 196–97 El Salvadoran organized labor before 1967 general strike, 160–83; beginnings of, 163–65; federations and confederations and, establishment of, 178–79; FRTS and, 165–68; Hernández Martínez coup and, 168–72; Matanza and, 169; in 1960s, 179–81; 1967 general strike and, 181–83; Osorio and the coup of 1948, 172–75; political tendencies in the Osorio period and, 175–78 Enrique Chinchilla, José, 149 Escuela Clardidad, 226 Escuela Libre de Derecho de Trabajo y Filisofía Social, 231 Esquipulas II agreements, 268 Estrada, Raúl E., 133 Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, 195 Federación Auténtica Sindical de Honduras (FASH), 146–47 Federación Autónoma Sindical (FASGUA), 240, 245, 247, 249–52 Federación Central de Sindicatos Libres de Honduras, 137 Federación Cristiana de Campesinos Salvadoreños (FECCAS), 195 Federación de Colón de Obreros y Campesinos, 20 Federación de Cooperativas de Reforma Agraria de Honduras (FECORAH), 149–50 Federación de Obreros y Campesinos Cristianos, 63–64 Federación de Sindicatos Agrícolas, 17

296 Federación de Sindicatos de Trabajadores Salvadoreños, 202–3 Federación de Sindicatos Independientes, 17, 18, 20, 24 Federación de Sociedades Agrícolas de las Provincias de Panamá, Colón y Coclé, 17 Federación de Sociedades Obreras del Norte (FSON), 122 Federación de Trabajadores Bananeros (FETRABA), 51 Federación de Trabajadores Cristianos (FTC), 21–22 Federación de Trabajadores de la Salud, 98–99 Federación de Trabajadores de Limón, 40 Federación de Trabajadores de Segura Social, 60 Federación de Trabajadores de Telecommunicaciones, 59–60 Federación de Trabajadores Marítimos, 18 Federación de Transportadores Unidos de Nicaraglla (FTUN), 92–93 Federación de Unidad Sindical (FUS), 246–47 Federación Industrial del Transporte de Panamá, 20 Federación Nacional de Campesinos de Honduras (FENACH), 147 Federación Nacional de Comunidades Agrarias y Indigenas, 257 Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de los Servicios Públicos (FENATRAP), 65 Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de Segura Social, 60 Federación Nacional Sindical de Trabajadores del Estado de Guatemala (FENASTEG), 267 Federación Obrera de la República de Panama, 10 Federación Obrera Hondureña (FOH), 121–22 Federación Obrera y Campesina de Nicaragua, 91, 96, 97 Federación Regional Central de Trabajadores, 219–20

Index Federación Regional de Trabajadores de El Salvador (FRTS), 165–68 Federación Sindical de Guatemala (FSG), 220–21 Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de la Industria del Alimento, Vestido, Textiles, Similares y Conexos de El Salvador (FESTIAVTSCES), 190–91, 192 Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de Panamá (FSTP), 12–14 Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Salvadoreños (FENASTRAS), 189–90, 202–3 Federación Sindical Hondureña (FSH), 122 Federación Sindical Nacionalistas (FSN), 90, 92 Federación Sindical Revolucionaria (FSR), 202 Federación Unitaria Sindical de El Salvador (FUSS), 190–91 Federation of Workers of the Center, 147 Federation of Workers of the North, 147 Figueres Ferrer, José, 35–37, 47 First Labor Congress of National Unity, 92 First National Congress of Workers and Peasants of Nicaragua, 87 First National Peasant Conference (Managua), 95 Flag of convenience, 23 Food and Beverage Workers Federation of Trade Unions (FESINTRABS), 181 Foro para la Concentración Econórnica y Social, 208 Fortuny, José, 129 Founding Junta of the Second Republic (Junta Fundidora de la Segunda República), 36 Fourteen families, 160 Frente de Obreros y Campesinos Cristianos, 63–64 Frente de Trabajadores de Guatemala, 252 Frente de Unidad Magisterial (FUMH), 152

Index Frente Obrero (FO), 110–11 Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), 81–82 Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 119 Frundt, Hank, 219, 222, 248–49, 253, 254, 265, 266, 267, 268–69 Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces-FAR), 215 Gaines, Thomas, 57–58 Galarza, Ernesto, 12 Gálvez, Juan Manuel, 123–24, 126–27, 128, 129 García Bauer, Jose, 226–27, 231, 239, 242, 243, 249, 252 Garvey, Marcus, 10 General Law on Collective Labor Conflicts, 173 Giardino, Alfred, 134 Golden payroll, 25 Gómez, Angel, 14 Gompers, Samuel, 11 González Flores, Alfredo, 35 González, Luisa, 43 González Víquez, Cleto, 35 Goon squads, 129 Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee (GCEOC), 27 Great Depression, 43, 123 Great White Fleet, 213 Gremios (guilds), 37 Guardia, Calderón, 36, 43 Guardia, Prospero, 44 Guatemalan October Revolution, 218–19, 225, 237 Guatemalan organized labor after June 1954, 237–71; Arana Osorio and, 256–57; Castillo Armas and, 238–41; catholic-oriented labor groups and, 252–53; CNRS and, 240–41, 244–46; Coca-Cola union and, 258–59, 263–66; CSG and, successors of, 246–49; death squads and, 256; difficulties of, end of 1980s, 269–70; FASGUA and, 240, 245, 247, 249–52; guerillas and, 255–56; labor militancy and, continuing, 260–61; Laugerud and, 257–58; in 1980s, 266–69;

297 persecution of organized labor and, renewed, 261–63; reestablishment of labor movement and, 242–44; repression and, 255; SAMF and, decline of, 253–55; Unionism, employer resistance to, 241 Guatemalan organized labor before June 1954, 212–33; Arbenz and, 218, 225–28; CGTG and, 222–25, 231–33; CNUS and, 221–22; Communist Party and, 225–31; FSG and, 220–21; Guatemalan October Revolution and, 218; labor code, 219; origins of, 216–18; revivied labor movement, beginnings of, 218–20 Guatemalan Revolution, 213–15 Guerillas, 255–56 Guerra, Luis F., 132 Gutiérrez, Pedro A., 91 Gutiérrez, Víctor Manuel, 129, 224, 251 Guzmán, Rodolfo, 44 Hammer, Michael, 200 Hernández Martínez, Maximiliano, 161, 162; coup, 168–69; decline and fall of, 169–72; Matanza and, 169 Herrera, Alsimiro, 66–67 Herrera, Manuel Cáliz, 122 Hoja Obrera (periodical), 39 Honduran Federation of Labor, 122 Honduran organized labor after 1957, 142–58; ANACH and, 147–50; Catholic labor movement and, 146–47; CTH and, 145–46; employer and government resistance to, 152–53; López Arellano and, 144–45; neoliberalism and, 154–57; in 1980s, 150–52; peasant organizations and, 147–48; rural workers organizations and, 148–50; Villeda Morales regime and, 142–44 Honduran organized labor before 1957, 117–39; banana industry and, consolidation of unionism in, 131–32; banana strike of 1954 and, 126–31; early movement, 120–23; expansion of, 136–38; Gálvez and, 123–24; Lozano and, 138–39; United Fruit Company and, 132–35

298

Index

Honey, Martha, 68 Hotel Workers Federation (FITBA), 20 Hunger and Desperation March, 13 Hunter, Henry, 134

Jiménez Oreamuno, Ricardo, 35, 42 Junta Funidora de la Segunda República, 47 Justice (newspaper), 165 Justicia Social (periodical), 39

Import-substituting industries, 75 Indice (newspaper), 85 Industry and Service Workers Federation of Trade Unions (FESITRISEVA), 181 Informal economy, 74 Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, 67 Instituto de Estudios Sindicales de Centro América, 146 Inter American Foundation, 194 Intergremial, 204–5 International Association of Machinists, 26 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 26 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU): CCTD and, 59, 61; CLASC and, 63–64; CSG and, 246, 247, 248; CST and, 102; CTH and, 145; CUS and, 108–9; Federación Obrera y Campesina and, 91; IUF and, 264 International Cooperation Administration, 143, 179 International Federation of Christian Trade Unions, 147 International Labor Organization, 24, 73, 123, 142, 208 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 68–69, 70, 71, 76, 157 International Railways of Central America (IRCA), 212, 241 International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), 24 International Trotskyism, 109–10 Iturbide, Agustín de, 1, 212

Keith, Minor, 34 Kepner, Charles David, Jr., 122

Jáuregui, Arturo, 131–32, 133, 135, 136, 138–39, 176 Jiménez Guerrero, Efrain, 41 Jiménez, Lucio, 104–5 Jiménez, Manuel, 38

Labor code, 136 Labor courts, 179 La Prensa (newspaper), 81 La Protesta (newspaper), 217 Larrave, López, 218 Laugerud, Kjel1, 257–58 Law for Industrial Production, 56 Law, 95, 23 Law of Agricultural Modernization and Reactivation, 155 Law of Defense of Democratic Institutions, 247 Law of Structural Reordering of the Economy, 154 Law of Unionization of 1951, 173 Lazos, Felipe, 15 Left-wing central labor organization, 190 Leo XII, Pope, 39 Levenson-Estrada, Deborah, 237, 239, 246 Liberation, 245 Liga de Inquilinos (Tenants’ League), 11–12, 224–25 Liga Roja (Red League), 164 Lombardo Toledano, Vicente, 86–87, 124 López Arellano, Osvaldo, 118–19, 144–45, 149 López Larrave, Mario, 257 Lovestone, Jay, 18, 231, 243 Lozano, Julio, 118, 138–39 Lucas García, Romero, 261–62, 263, 264 Lyra, Carmen, 39, 43 Madrid, Rodolfo, 243 Malavé Villalba, Augusto, 17, 132, 135, 136, 138, 173, 175 Maneuvers, 150, 151

Index Manuel Fortuny, José, 226 Manuel Ungo, Guillermo, 162, 196 Maquiladora firms, 207 March Accord, 268 Mármol, Miguel, 163, 164, 165, 167–68, 169–70, 229 Martínez, Alfonso, 227 Martínez, Ricardo, 167 Marxism, 39, 40, 221, 226, 251 Matamoros, Marta, 14 Matanza, 169 Matz, Anthony, 26 May Day demonstrations, 56, 66, 250, 251, 261, 263 McDonald, Augusto Charnaud, 213, 230 Meany, George, 25, 250 Mejía Colindres, Vicente, 122, 123 Mejía Victores, Oscar Humberto, 215, 266 Meléndez-Quiñónez regime, 166 Melgar Castro, Juan Alberto, 119 Méndez Montenegro, Julio César, 215, 248, 251–52, 256, 262 Méndez y Méndez, Roberto, 264 Metal Trades Department, 25 Mexican Empire, 1, 212 Milicia Popular Anti-Somocista, 110 Minimum wage, 10, 13, 20–21, 221 Minimum Wage Board, 21 Ministry of Labor, 14, 143, 144, 146, 152–53, 173, 174, 269–70 Minors, legislation protecting, 123 Moderate leadership, 124, 133 Monge, Luis Alberto, 26, 37, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 62–63, 71, 123 Montenegro Paniagua, César, 229 Monterosso, Mauro, 247–48 Montt, Ríos, 215 Morales Cubas, Arturo, 248 Mora Valverde, Manuel, 36, 40–42 Morazán, Napoleón, 119 Moreno, Nahuel, 109 Movimiento de Acción Popular/ Marxista Leninista (MAP-ML), 110–11 Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), 196

299 Movimiento Sindical Autónoma de Nicaragua (MOSAN), 96 Movimiento Unitario Sindicalista y Gremial de El Salvador (MUSYGES), 202–3 Murray, Phillip, 27 Mutual benefit societies, 83 Nacionalista union groups, 90 Nacional Sindicalismo Nicaraguense, 85 National Advisory Committee, 249 National central labor organization, 86 National Committee of Trade Union Unity (CNUS), 259 National Council of Christian Peasants, 195 National Dialogue, 268 National Electoral Board, 36 National Guard, 2, 80, 81, 82, 85, 88, 94, 166, 168, 200 National Maritime Union of the United States, 24 National union confederation, 171 Navarro, Padre Alfonso, 196 Neoliberal economic policy, 4, 204 Neoliberalism, 69, 154–57 New class, 62 New Leader (newspaper), 121 New York Times (newspaper), 11, 216 Nicaraguan organized labor, 79–112; ATC and, 100–101; beginnings of, 83–86; Catholic labor movement and, 95–96; CGT and, 88–90, 93–94; CGT-I and, 94, 95, 106–7; Comité Obrero Organizador and, 91; CST and, 100–101, 102–5; CTN-1940s and, 86–88; CTN-1980s and, 107–8; earthquake of 1972 and, 98–99; far-left labor groups and, 109–11; FTUN and, 92–93; nacionalista union groups and, 90; 1960s and early 1970s, 93; ORIT-oriented labor groups and, 96–98; Sandinista labor unity efforts and, 106; Somozas’ dynastic rule and, fall of, 99–101 Noriega, Manuel, 23 Núñez, Padre Benjamín, 36, 45–46, 48, 55

300 Oduber, Daniel, 37 Oil crisis, international, 4 Oliva, Mario, 39 Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN), 195–96 Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (GRIT), 14 Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT), 51, 124; affiliated union groups and, 16–21; AIFLD and, 96–97; labor groups and, ORIT-oriented, 96–98; Nicaraguan labor movement and, 96–98; Panamanian labor movement and, 16–21 Organization of American States, 172, 174 Ortega, Daniel, 82 Osorio, Oscar, 162, 209; coup of 1948 and, 172–75; political tendencies in the Osorio period and, 175–78 Otero, Rafael, 243 Ottens, Arnaldo, 243 Packer, Bernard, 202 Padilla, José Luis, 254–55 Panama Canal Company, 10 Panama Canal West Indian Employees Association (PCWIEA), 27 Panama Canal Zone Workers Organizing Committee, 12 Panamanian organized labor, 6–29; Canal Zone and, 24–27; Catholicoriented, 21–22; early, 9–12; flag ships and, registered, 23–24; FSTP and, 12–14; ORIT-affiliated union groups and, 16–21; Peronistas and, 15–16; Torrijos and, 22–23 Pan American Airways, 97, 246 Pan American Federation of Labor (P.A.F. of L.), 122 Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN), 110, 162, 179, 188–89 Partido de la Revolución Cuatemalteca, 230 Partido Democrático Hondureño (PDRH), 132, 133 Partido de Reconciliación Nacional, 197

Index Partido de Trabajadores Nicaraguenses (PTN), 85 Partido Institucional Democrático (PID), 247–48 Partido Laborista Salvadoreño (PLS), 164 Partido Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Party-PLN), 37, 62–63 Partido Nacional, 117 Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Democrática, 162 Partido Revolucionario Obrero de Guatemala (PROG), 228 Partido Socialista de Nicaragua (PSN), 85, 87–89, 99, 106–7, 109, 110, 111 Paz García, Policarpo, 119 Pearlman, Mark, 200 Pearson, Neale J., 122, 123, 149 Peasant confederation, national, 95 Peasant organizations, 147–48; ANACH and, 147–50; Honduran organized labor after 1957 and, 147–48; neoliberalism and, 155–57 Pellecer, Carlos Manuel, 129, 225, 228, 229, 230 Pérez, Padre Carlos, 16, 21 Peronistas, 15–16, 49–50 Perón regime, 15 Peurifoy, John, 237–38 Phillips, Sharon, 10, 14, 21, 22–23 Picado, Teodoro, 35, 36, 65 Plataforma de Lucha para Democratización de Honduras, 155 Platt, E. G., 134 Plumbers Union, 17 Poblete Troncoso, Moisès, 84 Political center, 199 Porras, Carlos, 265 Prensa Libre (newspaper), 240 Preunion, 130 Progreso Obrero, 83 Progressive general strike, 183 Protección Obrera, 83 Rafael Pérez, Juan, 39 Ramos Alvarado, Modesto, 118 Reagan, Ronald, 2, 82 Reed, Thomas F., 267 Reformist Party, 40

Index Remón, José, 8–9 Republic of Central America, 1, 160, 212 Republic of Colombia, 1 Republic of Panama, 2, 6, 7, 12, 18, 24, 29 Rerum Novarum Confederation, 36; banana workers and, efforts to organize, 50–52; as CCTD, 50, 59 (See also Confederación Costarricense de Trabajadores Democráticos (CCTD)); founding of, Costa Rican labor movement and, 45–47; leadership changes in, 59; Peronista leadership and, 49–50; post-Civil War of 1948 and, 48–49; problems facing, 57–59 Revolutionary government, 55, 105, 176 Revolution of 1944, 213 Rivera, Julio Adelberto, 162, 179–80, 182–83, 193 Rojas Bolaños, Manuel, 67, 71, 72, 150, 154, 199 Romero, Carlos Humberto, 162–63, 194, 196 Romualdi, Serafino, 19, 25–26, 27, 46, 49, 131, 132, 135, 136, 138–39, 161–62, 176–77, 232, 239–40, 241, 242–43, 244, 245, 246, 248, 250, 251 Roosevelt, Theodore, 2, 7 Rorty, James, 123–24 Rosario mine, 120 Rural workers, 148–50, 194–96 Rutilio Grande, Padre, 196 Sacasa, Guillermo Sevilla, 81 Sacasa, Juan Bautista, 79–81, 84, 85–86 Salazar, Héctor, 177 Salazar, Max, 229 Salvadoran National Security Agency (ANSESAL), 196 Sanabria Martínez, Victor, 43, 44–45 Sánchez Gallegos, José, 202 Sánchez Hernández, Fidel, 162, 192, 194 Sandinista Liberation Front, 2 Sandinista regime: ATC and, 100–101; CAUS and, 110; CGT-I and, 107;

301 collaborationist attitude of, 107; CST and, 100–101, 102–5; CTN and, 108; CUS and, 108–9; defeat of, election of 1990, 109; Frente Obrero and, 110–11; FSLN and, 81–83, 100; labor unity efforts of, 106; United States’ proxy war against, 68 Sandino, Augusto César, 2, 79–80, 84, 92, 166 Sandoval, Raúl, 92, 93 Santos Zelaya, José, 79 Saravia, Fernández, 161 Saving funds, 72–73 Schick Gutiérrez, René, 80, 94 Schwartzberg, Steven J., 46 Seccionales, 131 Second OPEC, 68 Second Peasant Congress, 195 “Semi-Socialist” group, 15 Sheet Metal Workers Union, 26 Shoemakers’ union, 43 Silver payroll, 25 Silver workers, 26 Simón Bolivar Brigade, 109 Sindicato Banco Hipotecario bank workers’ union, 241 Sindicato de Acción y Mejoramiento de los Ferrocarrilleros (SAMF): CGTG and, 222, 224, 230–31; CSG and, 246, 247, 248; CTG and, 219; decline of, 253–55; establishment of, 219; FSG and, 220, 221; Morales Cubas and, 230–31; reestablishment of, 241, 242, 243–44 Sindicato de Artes Gráficas, 249 Sindicato de Chóferes of Managua, 92 Sindicato de la Chiriqui Land Company (United Fruit Company in Panama), 18, 19–20, 21 Sindicato de Pilotos Automovilísticos, 249 Sindicato de Trabajadores Aéreos, 97 Sindicato de Trabajadores de la División de Quepas (SITRADIQUE), 60 Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación en Guatemala (STEG), 239

302 Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Standard Fruit Company (SITRASFCO), 133 Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Tela Railroad Company (SITRATERCO), 133, 145–46 Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Zona del Canal, 17 Sindicato de Trabajadores Marítimos, 17 Sindicato de Zapateros (shoemakers), 43 Sindicato General de Trabajadores (SGT), 11 Sindicatos (trade unions), 39, 136 SITRACHILCO, 19 Soccer war, 1, 118–19 Social Christian Popular Movement, 197 Social Democracy in Russia (Lenin), 221 Social Democratic Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), 162, 196, 199 Socialist Democratic Party, 36 Socialist Workers Party of Colombia, 109 Social Security Fund, 67 Social Security Institute, 123 Social security system, 63, 75, 143, 171 Social Studies Course, 84 Sociedad Aurora (Dawn Society), 83 Sociedad de Artesanos de San José, 38 Sociedad de Artesanos de Socorros Mutuos, 38 Sociedad de Impresores Juan Gutemberg, 120 Sociedad de Socorros in San José, 38 Sociedad de Trabajadores, 39 Solidarism, 5, 72–73, 270 Solidarismo, 270 Solis, Juan R., 50 Somoza Debayle, Anastasio, 81, 97, 98 Somoza dynasty, 99–101 Somoza García, Anastasio, 2–3, 80, 81, 86–87, 90, 92, 111 Somoza, Luis, 80 Soto, Bernardo, 38 Soto, Marco Aurelio, 117 Stahler-Sholk, Richard, 84, 85, 94, 106, 111

Index Standard Fruit Company, 124–26, 133 State Production Units (UPEs), 101 Strike of fallen arms, 170 Suazo Córdova, Roberto, 119, 150, 152, 154 Subseccionales, 131 Taca Airlines, 97 Taillon, William Lloyd, 133–34 Teachers’ union, 42–43 Tela Railroad Company, 121, 125, 128, 129 Templesque sugar firm, 67 Textile Union Federation (FESINTEXSICA), 181 Thiel, Augusto, 38, 39 Tinoco Granados, Federico, 35 Torrijos, Omar, 22–23 Trade unions, 5–6, 39, 136 Transport Union Federation, 201 Trotskyist party, 109–10 Trotsky, Leon, 41 Ulate, Otilio, 36–37 Unemployed, organization of, 43 Unidad (newspaper), 229 Unidad Nacional de Trabajadores Salvadoreñas (UNTS), 202, 203 Unidad Popular Democrática (UPD), 201–2 Unidad Sindical y Popular (UASP), 268 Unificación Obrera Socialista (UCS), 218 Unión Democrática de Liberación (UDEL), 99 Unión Democrática Nacionalista (UDN), 190, 196, 197, 198 Unión Democrática Oposicionista (UDO), 196 Unión de Muelleros y Transporte, 10 Unión de Obreros El Progreso, 121 Unión de Sindicatos de Trabajadores de Guatemala (UNSITRAGUA), 266 Unión de Trabajadores de la Zona del Canal, 27 Unión de Trabajadores del Campo (UTC), 195

Index Union federations, 172, 177 Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), 10, 41, 89 Unión General de Trabajadores Desocupados, 232 Unión Nacional de Educadores (UNE), 66 Unión Nacional de Marinos, 24 Unión Nacional de Obreros Cató1icos (Catholic Workers National UnionUNOC), 192 Unión Nacional de Sindicatos Obreros, 13, 26 Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres (UNTL), 232–33, 242 Unión Nacional Obrero Campesina (UNOC), 203 Unión Panaderos y Ayudantes, 9 Unión Sindical de Guatemala, 220 Unión Sindical Marítima de la República de Panamá, 23, 24 Union Workers at Embotelladora Central SA (STECSA), 266 Unitary Confederation of Salvadoran Workers (CUTS), 191 United Brands, 119 United Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way, 10 United Fruit Company (UFC): after banana strike of 1954, 133–35; during banana strike of 1954, 124–27; behavior of, during banana strike of 1954, 126–27; establishment of, 2, 3–4, 34; political struggles in, 132–33 United Popular Action Front (FAPU), 195 United Public Workers of America (UPWA), 27 United Public Workers of the United States Congress of Industrial Organizations, 13

303 U.S. Department of Labor, 14, 19, 20, 26, 28, 137, 174 U.S. Marines, 2, 79–80, 84–85, 166 Urban informal sector, 69 Vaccaro Brothers Company, 120 Vanguardia Democrática Guatemalteco (VDG), 226 Vanguardia Popular, 37, 44–45, 72, 85 Vargas Morales, Domingo, 94, 121 Vega, Gerado, 39 Viera, Rodolfo, 200 Villalobos, Guillermo, 47, 68–74 Villatoro, José, 241 Villatoro, Rubén, 232–33 Villeda Morales, Ramón, 118, 142–44 Volio, Jorge, 39, 40 Voz Obrera (newspaper), 124 Walker, William, 2 War footing, 29 Willauer, Whiting, 127 Wilson, Woodrow, 35 Workers Constitution, 122 Workers’ groups, 38 Workers’ social clubs, 83 Working women, legislation protecting, 123 Workmen’s compensation law, 123 Work shifts, 180 World Confederation of Labor (WCL), 102, 147 World Federation of Trade Unions, 124, 221 Yankee Imperialism, 196 Youth of the Capital, 83 Zamora, Rubén, 197 Zash, Anthony, 264

About the Author ROBERT J. ALEXANDER is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Political Science, Rutgers University, where he taught for fifty-five years. He is the author of many books including several for Praeger and Greenwood.

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