Argentina - January 13th, 2018

Vidal’s government of and its caste of repressive judges continue attacking the workers of the Rio Santiago Shipyard...
There are already 12 workers processed for fighting!
Here no one shuts up, no one retreats!

LETTER TO MY FIGHTER FELLOWS

There has been over a year of struggle, with combats in the streets, with the occupation of the ARS and the occupation of the Ministry of Economy. We gave a tremendous fight. The struggle for the defence of jobs, for the reactivation of our Shipyard, was an example for the entire Argentinelabour movement.
So we got to January 2019. The shipyard has not been dynamited, but our gunpowder got wet. We gave everything and they took away the triumph from our hands. Thus the government emboldens itself and returns to the war against the shipyard, breaching the Acts, liquidating our labour agreement and imposing labour flexibilization. Along with this, the state attacks the activists of the factory. That is why the cause has advanced and now I am accused of PUBLIC INTIMIDATION.
During one year we attended the emptying of the shipyard. Around December 2017 we participated in the fight against the pension reform that we were fighting to prevent voting, while we also fought for our demand for the opening of the letters of credit to be able to finish the naval constructions. It seems that it was a long time, but no. Nor is the fact that not only they did not give us the letters of credit, but they have been emptying the shipyard to such a point that today this has become a lockout by the state employer.
It is in defence of these attacks and injustices, of these attacks on our salary, work and union organization, we have taken to the streets.
Each action or fight has been taken in assemblies of Section and then in general assemblies, where all the workers of the shipyard express ourselves and we discussed how to defend ourselves from this enormous attack.
They are the ones who for months have intimidated us. They threatened to leave us without work, they threatened to dynamite us. They are the ones who have threatened us. They threatened us and our families and as part of these intimidations they do not want to allow us to defend ourselves. They are the ones who persecuted us in the streets and repressed us. They are the ones who imprisoned and beat our comrades in the repression in the streets of La Plata and in CABA.
They are the violent ones, for months our salaries were looted and our families were condemned to hunger. Violence is having liquidated our Collective Labour Agreement that was conquered with the blood and martyrs of the struggles of the Rio Santiago Shipyard.

THEY WILL NOT SHUT US UP!

How is it that one cannot resist a government measure? How is it "serious to criticize the government"? Is it that this government intends to judge and prosecute all those who criticize its policies and all those who think or express themselves to "resist their measures"?
They have not been able to blow us up. We have to return to the path of the struggle in defence of the Shipyard. For the reactivation, against the persecutions of the activists! For the defence of the most elemental democratic rights; the right to expression within a workers' assembly!
To comment, to raise a position to defend our job, to speak and to discuss in an assembly has never been and we cannot let them turn it into a crime.

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!

The government does not give us peace, nor truce. They continue attacking the workers and they are determined to destroy the Rio Santiago Shipyard as an emblem of naval construction and sovereignty and centrally so that our example of struggle does not become an example for the entire Argentine labour movement. They do not give us any peace. They keep emptying the plant, reaffirming the liquidation of the labour agreement and prosecuting the fellows.
Macri and Vidal’s government have left hundreds of closed factories and hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers around the country. They have been merciless with the naval industry. There is the attempt to dismiss hundreds of workers in the dock of Buenos Aires and especially against the comrades of Tandanor, where they already have laid off workers. Workers will not be silenced. They are not in "social peace"; they lie to us because they have declared war on us, attacking our labour agreements and our conquests and prosecuting our comrades.

They will not stop us, they will not intimidate us

This government is not coming for me. If the question were one, everything would be fine. These people come for everything. They come for the 3309, they come for the union, for the assembly and the jobs. I have always defended our trade union organization from the attacks of the government. This is just one more.
These gentlemen want to pose as democrats, but they are the boot of the gendarmerie, the boot with which they kicked Santiago Maldonado in the head and drowned him, they are the ones who shot Rafael Nahuel in the back.
They are the ones who first arrested and then extradited Lonko Facundo Jones Huala. They are the ones who repressed us while we tried to prevent the pension theft from being voted and they chase Sebastián Romero and imprisoned comrade Daniel Ruiz after he expressed his solidarity with the shipyard. They are the ones who have thousands of prosecuted workers in the country. They are the ones who hold young anarchists imprisoned.

In the war that they declared on us, the government and its judges seek to have us as hostages.
We cannot let them shut us up. Let’s defend our right to express freely. We cannot allow any further attack on any shipyard fellow. As we vote in an assembly, an injury to one is an injury to all!
Fighting is not a crime, it is Justice! Commenting on how to fight and win is a right! It is the democracy of the ones on bottom; it is workers’ democracy!
Stop prosecuting worker and popular fighters!
Freedom to Daniel Ruiz and all the prisoners for fighting!
Acquittal of the prisoners of Las Heras and the workers of Tierra del Fuego! Drop all charges against Diego Parodi and over 7500 popular fighters!
Trial and Punishment to the assassins of Rafael Nahuel, Santiago Maldonado, "Ronald" Orellana and all the martyrs of the working class!

 

Alejandro Villarruel
Avanzada Obrera “Lista Negra” (Advanced Worker "Black List")

Under the banner of classism. Shipyard till death.
We shall triumph
Ensenada, January 13, 2019.

We want to be the workers that we were; we want to have the Shipyard we had!