'Nicaragua has a right to self-determination'

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"Hot-shot strategists in Washington planned this war, and the people suffer Its effects."

Participants at Nov. 2 antiwar conference in San Francisco 12 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1985 the International Woodworkers of America, AFL-CIO.

I'm here today with you to let you know that we in the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador do not support the policies of this administration. I want to talk about why.

I'm no expert on Central America and have never pretended to be. I'm a trade unionist. I went to El Salvador and Nicaragua with the National Labor Com -mittee because I thought it would be good to see these countries with my own eyes and make up my own mind.

Right around the first day of our trip [in February 1985], we made a visit to a refugee camp in San Salvador. It's called San Jose de Montana. It's on the grounds of a seminary run by the Catholic Church. Today there are more than 1000 people in that refugee camp--mostly women and children.

You could tell the new arrivals in the camp by the look of despair and fright that still showed on their faces.

We met with three of the elderly women, all of them recent arrivals. They were from a province called San Vicente. Their vil -lage had been caught between aerial bombardments, on the one hand, and ground sweeps by army troops, other.

Each of these women had lost several family members. We asked one woman why she thought the Army was shooting at her. She replied, "Because the Army hates poor people.

I couldn't help but wonder if this was the enemy. What was it about this old woman that the U.S. government is so afraid of?

I remember sitting in the U.S. Embassy a few days later at a briefing. At one of the meetings, a lieutenant colonel from the [U.S.] Air Force, a friendly fellow named Nick, spoke with some pride of the great strides made by the Salvadoran Army and Air Force over the last year or two.

He talked about the surgical air strikes that "sanitize" an area. Ken Blaylock [president of the American Federation of Government Employees] asked him to describe exactly what he meant by "sanitizing an area." But I'm not sure the answer we got would have made much sense to the women back at the refugee camp--the women who had to live through these "sanitizing" air strikes.

This lieutenant colonel also told us that by the end of this year, "we'll have this thing wrapped up." Well, it's getting on to the end of the year and the war in El Salvador is continuing. It's continuing largely because the Reagan administration and its congressional allies are pursuing a policy that is militaristic--not diplomatic-in its emphasis.

They want and seem to believe they can win a military victory over the rebels, not a political settlement. The logic in Wash -ington is straightforward--wipe out the guerrillas and the problem will be solved.

Military lunacy

I'm here to tell you that this sort of militaristic approach to the conflict in El Salvador--and Nicaragua for that matter--is lunacy. The war in El Salvador did not begin because a couple of Cubans took a hotel room in San Salvador and started issuing orders to the workers and peasants in that country. The war is the result of decades of tremendous social inequality and repression.

North Americans have short memories, but let us at least remember that the war in El Salvador heated up only after the great repression of 1979 and 1980, when literally thousands of people were murdered by the rightist death squads. Many of those killed were our union brothers and sisters, Keith Johnson assassinated for the sin believing that workers have the right speak up for justice and dignity.

I think of these fellow trade unionists when I read that democracy is on the rise in El Salvador. I think of them.

I believe we should look past the public relations campaigns so skillfully orches -trated and ask ourselves what is happening to workers and to their unions. We did that and there is both good news and bad news.

The good news is that unions are organizing more freely and more ef -fectively. They have taken to the streets to demonstrate their demands, and that is always a healthy sign. There has even been an increase in strike activity in both the public and private sectors.

The bad news is that the workers and the leaders who engage in these actions still do so at the risk of their lives. We were told by a couple of young trade unionists that they did not stay more than two nights in any one home for fear of their lives. Some 40 labor activists have been arrested, tortured, disappeared, or murdered this year alone.

There is no reason for us to believe the simple-minded press releases of the Reagan administration when it comes to the progress of democracy in El Salvador. We need only remind ourselves of the hospital strike in June when President Duarte sent in the Army and assault helicopters to break the strike.

Realities of contra war Apart from the war, the central fact of life in Nicaragua today is poverty. On the drive from the airport to our hotel we (continued from page 9: “'We will be going back into the streets next spring'”)

handed over on a silver platter, like George Meany did to Lyndon Johnson on the issue of Vietnam. The State Department has always taken the AFL-CIO for granted or its foreign adventures, but from now on it's got to look elsewhere for its patsies.

So for anyone who wants to know why Central America is a labor issue, I want to tell you. In 1983 we had a meeting with the head of the U.S. advisers, Colonel John Wagglestein--cowboy boots, baby-blue guayabera, aviator glasses, and one of those riding crops. There wasn't a horse within 50 miles.

So we talked to him down in the war room at the Embassy with his boots up on the table. And we said, "Colonel, if the commander in chief were to call you and say, 'Wags, my back's against the wall. Do we go in or do we pull out?' What would you tell him?"

And he said, "Well you know, veteran of Vietnam. I'm a veteran of the passed neighborhoods that could only generously be described as slums. No running water, no electricity, no indoor plumbing in many cases. Managua is not a city, in the way you or I might think a city should be.

What they didn't get and still don't have in Nicaragua is jobs, housing, a decent standard of living. It's beyond my know -ledge to state that the life of the average working person in Nicaragua has ever been easy, but I can surely claim that the contra war is only making matters worse.

Something like half the total Gross National Product of this tiny, poor country goes for military defense. That's money that could go toward constructing a more humane society.

It's as if Ronald Reagan does not want to permit any improvements in the lives of the common people, and the contra war is the way to make sure this doesn't happen in Nicaragua.

Some of us wondered if the hardship of the daily life would generate support for the contra cause. I want to state very clearly that every single trade unionist we met with, whether pro- or anti-Sandinista, was opposed to American support to the contras.

The reason is simple. Unlike the hotshot strategists who madly planned this war in Washington, the people of Nicaragua suffer its effects. They know well who the leaders of the contras are--former associates of Somoza. The Wall Street Journal recently identified 46 of their 48 field commanders as ex-National Guardsmen.

We travelled up to a farm near the Honduran border on our last day in Nicaragua. We stood where the cottonprocessing shed used to be. I say "used to be" because it was destroyed in a contr MORIZ ATIN Congo. I'm a veteran of Bolivia. " And he was too. And he said, "There's two con -ditions you've got to have for a successful incursion." (They are always using medical language--incisions, incursions, sanitary.)

He said, "You've got to have the support of the people in the country. We ain't got that here. These people hate this government. You've got to have, on the other hand, the stiff upper lip at home so when the boys start coming home in body bags you have resolve on the home front. I don't think we have that either."

So we were starting to feel a little I TRUST THIS IS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS.

ITS FOR LEFT. described to us how his wife and children were murdered in the assault; shot and killed by the men Ronald Reagan describes as freedom fighters.

Freedom fighters who cut the throats of innocent men and women and children! Every member of Congress ought to be required to stand and listen while the peasants of northern Nicaragua describe the realities of the contra war.

I believe that the Nicaraguan people, like Americans, or Canadians, have the right to self-determination and that perhaps they really mean it when they say "Free homeland or death."

Finally, I want to say a few words about the state of emergency recently declared by President Ortega of Nicaragua. I think it's a grave mistake. I think it should be opposed. I'm against the suspension of civil liberties, and the suspension of the right to strike and hold meetings freely strikes me as especially counterproductive.

But let me quickly add at the same time that I recognize that Nicaragua is under terrific attack and that this is the major reason the leaders have chosen this path of action.

I want to conclude by re-emphasizing to each and every one of you how important it is that you educate yourselves on this issue and then do what trade unionists do best, and that is to organize.

As Dave Dyson told you earlier this morning, we had an historic meeting in Anaheim, Calif., this past week. It was historic because for the first time, to my knowledge, we had an open and lively debate on the floor of the convention about foreign policy issues.

The resolution was passed with some amendments prior to coming to this forum. I don't want to stand here and tell you it was a good resolution, but it gives us something to work with and something to work toward. It won't be easy but we can bring sanity to the labor movement and American foreign policy. It will take all of us and I want to tell you that we should all be proud of the part each of us plays.

Socialist Action/Don Mahoney encouraged. And we said, "Does that mean, colonel, that you would tell the president you advise against an invasion?"

And he said, "Not so fast. You know we've got a few aces left up our sleeves. You know the B-52s can be out of their airfield in south Texas and over these controlled areas, over these rural areas of Nicaragua, and we can put these people back past the Stone Age to the the Paleozoic Age. And those big silver birds can be cooling down in their hangars in Texas before one senator, one congressman, even wakes up the next morning in Washington, D.C., for their morning jog.

And if that happens, brothers and sisters, we're going to have the sons of unemployed workers in this country dropping death on the impoverished work -ers of Central America. And it seems to us on the Labor Committee there's only one way to say "no". And that's to say "no"!

And to say it with your pens and your pencils, and your typewriters, and your voices, and your bodies, and in jail if need be. No more aid to the contras. And no more young men to die in an old men's

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but his family may not accompany him.