Leader of Amazon Rubber Workers addresses Tribunal

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..cancel imperialist debt SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1989 _17 The following are excerpts from the presentation to the Tribunal by Osmarino Armancio, secretary-general of the Rubber Workers Union of the Amazon (Brazil).

"I have come here to address you on the defense of the people of Amazonia. I am not an intellectual. I have not had a chance to study. There are no educational opportunities for the rubber workers. Please, if you do not understand me, pose questions.

"Here are some of the rubber shoes and boots that we produce. We work in terrible conditions in the Amazonian forest. We work in the oil and rubber industry. The forests have been invaded with the aim of fighting a war against the population.

"We were trained to work. People have lived this way for decades. The armed units came and set people's homes on fire. The Indians were hunted down, murdered and raped. In 1973, the church began to work in the area. It was in 1937 that the first trade union was founded in the Amazon.

"We are here before this tribunal because we feel that at last this is our court. Now we can present for the first time OUR case. This is our trial....

"Our houses are burned and so we must fight against the owners. We have always struggled in this way and our fight has had a large impact. We have a rich history of resistance in Brazil. Nine million hectares of land have been seized and through all this the government has developed a terrible mecha(continued from preceding page)

nisms results in dependency on the world capitalist market, increased borrowing, corruption, and subjugation to the austerity remedies of the financial police of world capital: the World Bank and the IMF.

The debt provides the common ground of oppression of the workers and peasants of these Stalinized workers' states, as the bureaucracies increasingly perform the explicit role of converting themselves into the local instrument of the world capitalist system.

In a lengthy message sent to the Tribunal, Andrzej Gwiazda showed that the government now established in Poland, composed of the Catholic Church, the Stalinist bureaucracy, and the hierarchy of Solidarnosc, has embraced the policy of the IMF for Poland. Gwiazda is a leader of the opposition to nism of repression against the people.

"I want to speak in the name of these people. The workers began organizing in the region and we formed the first regional trade union. The leader of our trade union [Chico Mendes, the person who preceded Osmarino as president of the union] was murdered. The culprits were never found. We organized meetings about this.

"You should know that there are now 1,800,000 people unemployed and without a permanent place to live in this region. The conditions of the people are getting worse. We have formed a council to work together with the Indians. We were always told that they live like animals. We live the same life. We are all exploited by the capitalists.

"Thanks to our trade union and our organization we have organized to stop the repression and the assassinations. But people also need to find ways to prevent illness which is everywhere. We need to work 15 days to earn enough to buy one liter of oil, assuming you are not sick.

"There is another important task which our trade union is carrying out. We are organizing to show that it is possible to work without destroying the environment and the forest. We Walesa within the leadership of Solidarnosc.

The IMF, Gwiazda pointed out, has provided an official counsellor to the Polish government to oversee implementation of austerity measures and pro-capitalist reforms. The power of the nomenklatura, he stated, is undergoing a specific transformation. The old bureaucratic privilege is being translated into direct property ownership. Many of the functionaries are becoming not-so-small property owners.

Gwiazda stated that the IMF policies are designed to reduce the standard of living of the Polish people. The deliberate suppression of production in the countryside and in industry is being carried out so that production can be organized not for need but to pay the foreign debt. This can not be accomplished without demoralizing the people and paralyzing their self-organization. have proven it. All the economists and the experts discuss how to do work without the destruction of nature. But we have expropriated land as protected land to show how to do it.

"The problem in Amazonia is the private ownership of the land. We in the Amazon say that the land belongs to all the people of the world, not to the rich countries. In the rich countries, the workers are also exploited and assassinated as we are.

"We are defending our workers, our people, and also the environment. We are giving Japan trouble. They talk of building a road from one coast to the other. This can only be done by destroying the jungle and the land.

"We are trying to explain here in Lima that the workers' movements from all of Africa and Latin America are authorizing you to take positions. The decisions taken about the Amazon must also reflect our authorization to make decisions to help the people.

"We ask you to also discuss forms of self-defense. Our trade unionists are under attack continually. There have been assassination attempts against my life. For this reason we require that all our trade-union leaders plan their every movement so that they will be Who signed these agreements with the IMF, Gwiazda asked? The rank and file of Solidarnosc were not even informed, let alone consulted, about the acquisition of these loans from the banks or about how the funds would be used in Poland.

These debts can only be paid by taking from the people-from their production and from their living standards, Gwiazda asserted.

"We need a block of countries throughout the world to repudiate and refuse to pay this debt," Gwiazda concluded. "We say that the people of Poland and Peru have the same struggle and we support the International Tribunal in its effort to bring together all the victims in order to fight back together."

Sentence of the Tribunal After hearing all the testimonies and papers from 35 witnesses, the Tribunal-composed of the six presidents of sessions, two secretaries, three presenters of the charges, and 24 jurors drawn from the delegates—weighed the Osmarino Armanco-Rodriguez accompanied always.

"Help the disappeared. We must find ways to defend them. This work we believe is not only the responsibility of the Brazilian comrades but of all comrades.

evidence and the summary of it prepared by a commission. It proceeded to issue a severe sentence against imperialist and capitalist domination.

The sentence that was adopted unanimously by the Tribunal states in part:

"[T]his debt cannot in any manner be considered as the peoples' debt. They neither solicited it, nor contracted it-and nor have they benefited from it....

"[T]he International Tribunal in Lima, after having deliberated according to the rules of law universally recognized in states based on the rule of law ... adopts the conclusions of the reports presented to this body.... Consequently, it declares the total, immediate, and unconditional cancellation of the foreign debt of the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean (Haiti, Antilles), Eastern Europe (Poland, Yugoslavia) and considers legitimate the fight of their peoples against payment of the foreign debt and against the plans of the IMF."