Argentina, Rio Turbio - January 31, 2018
Report from the Turbio strike
The workers and the poor people of Turbio are still standing and firm at the entrance to the mine
The strike has been going on for several days, but our forces remain firm. Yesterday we left in a caravan from November 28 and the entrance of the mine No. 5 to reach the center of Rio Turbio.
The whole town participated in the activity, as it has been doing since the first day.
Not only the interunion organization is in struggle, the comrades of the SOEM (trade union of the municipal employees and workers) fight with us and the teachers who are relatives of the miners do not leave to support us even a minute.
We arrived at the center of the Turbio and there the ATE-YCRT (trade union section of the workers of the state* owner coalmine, which is part of the trade union of public workers) board of directors and one of the dismissed colleagues took the floor. They all highlight in their interventions the enormous accompaniment of all the workers of the coalfield.
But none can explain why the leaders of ATE at national or even at the province of Santa Cruz level, have been called to the general strike. All workers agree that the only way out is unity.
The possibility of generating a provincial struggle committee from the ADOSAC (Association of teachers from Santa Cruz province) congress that will be held in Rio Turbio is of the utmost importance. A Fight Committee that raises a unique list of demands whose first point is ENOUGH OF DISMISSALS, REINCORPORATION OF THE DISMISSAL COMRADES OF RIO TURBIO, for a salary according to the family basket, enough of payments in installments. THE SILVER IS, the oil companies and the mining companies take it. To this committee should be incorporated a delegate of the oil workers who are also facing dismissals. |
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At the entrance of the mine and in the Turbio Square, one constantly talks about how a unique struggle can be faced with the comrades of Posadas Hospital, INTI (Natioanl Institute of industrial technology) and Fanazul (military industry). Even with the comrades of CrestaRoja( agribusiness sector) who were brutally repressed in the struggle for not to stay out.
The miners receive the solidarity of their class siblings, the miners of Bolivia and Colombia.
When we arrive today at the entrance of the mine to help transport the food for the comrades who are kept in the boxes doing service retention, we take the solidarity of the Huanuni miners. "Here came the solidarity from Bolivia, you have to read it so that everyone knows it!" Said the miners.
They have a sound system that covers about 10 blocks around, so the international solidarity of the fellow miners of Huanuni was heard without problems by all the miners who were happy and confident that they were not alone as well as the miners of the NATIONAL UNION OF WORKERS OF ARTISAN, INDUSTRIAL AND LARGE SCALE MINING IN COLOMBIA
Long live proletarian internationalism! That is the way to succeed!
Between the attack of Macri and the demagogy of the K
While the miners remain in struggle, the government and the intervener seek to liquidate in the negotiating tables what has been conquered in the streets.
The "unnameable" (this is how the Superintendent macristaZeidán is called) tries to cheat the workers again with a dialogue table, but nobody buy it. All the miners have been fighting for years against the emptying of the mine and the promises of the different auditors. The forces of the workers are effectively on the picket line in mine No. 5 and in the Turbio Square.
But on the other side, the Kirchnerista politicians also will try to use the heroic struggle of the vast majority of the exploited in the basin. They pose as friends of the mining family denouncing the mismanagement of the national government.
While this happens, the direction of ATE Nacional continues without calling the general strike throughout the country. This allows the Kirchnerista politicians to continue trying to deceive the workers.
But you get to the entrance of the mine and the first image you see is the mural to the 14 miners killed in the 2004 fire. Everyone knows that it was the K inspectors who left the miners working in the worst conditions and that going to work in the tunnel meant a death trap.
The Santa Cruz residents have been suffering from the Kirchners for more than 20 years, none can believe that the Kirchnerists bring more than empty promises and even the most ferocious repression if necessary, as they lived in the Turbio as in Río Gallegos with the public workers and teachers, in the oil basin of the north of Santa Cruz with comrades sentenced to life imprisonment for fighting against the income tax and against job insecurity as in Las Heras.
Yesterday the Kirchner guaranteed super profits to the oil companies and paid 6500 million dollars to the Repsol and performed a trout statization of YPF and gave VacaMuerta to Chevron. Today Macri removes the retentions to the gold miners and destroys the coal mining of the State, pretending to leave more than 400 families without work.
No confidence in the bosses' parties!
The workers have already begun to mark the road on December 14, 18 and 19. The fight cannot be stopped. Those above have declared us a war commanded by the G20 and the IMF.
The fight is class against class. We have to organize a great National Fighting Command, we cannot lose more time.
ATE and CTA have to call the strike already throughout the country. The bureaucracy of the Triunvirato says that it is going to call next to Moyano to a Sunday march for the 22 of February. We have been on the street for weeks, we can not let them defeat us. We must break the subordination of our organizations to the state and bourgeois institutions.
Correspondent
