Tragedy and Prospect

...Come May First or the renewal of collective bargaining, and the old flag is dusted off and the old repertory of words such as "solidarity," "class struggle," and "proletariat" re-iterated...

...The fight against the colonels began only later, not as a united action in order to restore democracy, but rather as a defense of the trade union leaders against the military who wanted to replace them with Communist leaders...

...This development has created two antagonistic blocs: the ejidatarios who are always poor and an upper bourgeoisie of the land which differs from the old land-oligarchy only in that it lacks the aristocratic mentality and employs modern instead of feudal methods of production...

...It is logical therefore for the Latin-American labor movement to set the stage upon which it can become effective...

...For the bureaucratization of the trade union movement, which sometimes reaches the proportions of gangsterism, is both cause and effect of a more general situation that is equally reflected in labor politics...

...To succeed, such planning must be truly on a large scale...

...There are three currents in Latin American "nativist" thought, each of them paternalistic and limiting: the "racists" for whom everything "Indian" is perfect...

...Today the United Fruit Company owns four million acres in Central America and the Grace Company has about 200 million dollars worth of land, ships, mines, etc., on the Pacific Coast...

...The Abandonment of the Peasants Latin America is primarily a peasant continent...

...This course, which would involve an effort to build up a socially "controlled capitalism," is by no means without dangers...

...rather we hear of demands for a flat percentage increase redounding to the benefit of the highest wage earners...

...But in other countries the demagogues have either been less skillful or less daring, and for the time being the workers have been saved from purely nationalist contagion...

...And finally, the LatinAmerican people cannot win decisively over dictatorship and demagogy unless liberal and working-class opinion in the United States forces the State Department to set some minimum requirements as the price of governmental recognition...

...But the future will require a choice: either a continuation of the present role, nestling uneasily behind the swords of the dictators, or an effort to become a decisive factor in the evolution of Latin America...

...Should the native patterns of culture be preserved, thus isolating the Indians from modern civilization, or should the Indians be integrated into the national life at the expense of their indigenous culture...

...In fact, the only trade unions which seem at all interested in these matters are those led by the Communists, whose tactic it is to generate fanaticism and utilize the unions for their propaganda...

...It may be argued that this is not the task of the proletariat...

...But nationalism has great dangers...

...But finally, and this above all, the LatinAmerican labor movement needs to regain some of its original purity, some of the enthusiasm of its early fighting period, some measure of that passionate and fervent political spirit which moved the exiles of the Commune to establish, in the Buenos Aires of the gauchos, the first socialist groups...

...union leaders amass private fortunes...

...The intellectuals free of Communist influence defend integrating the Indians into modern life while respecting their individual character...

...But the worst aspect of labor's political impotence is that the peasantry, that miserable 344 • DISSENT • Au+umn 1954 "conglomerate mass" most in need of leadership and whose participation is essential in order to solve any of the continent's basic problems, finds itself pitifully abandoned...

...On the whole, however, the Latin American trade union movement is monopolized by a parasitic caste whose interests demand the transformation of the unions themselves into parasites, first on the state, then on society in general...

...5) increase the social responsibility of employers toward their employees...

...The Communist parties, whose composition is middle-class students, intellect uals, union functionaries, are mere agencies of agitation and technical corps at the service of the military...

...What antiimperialism could not achieve, revolutionary nationalism has...

...It needs the help of the European working class in order to profit from its experience, its accumulated knowledge, its techniques...

...It should conserve and encourage native craftsmanship, oppose all forms of Indian servitude, and demand equal rights for Indians in all respects...

...but I think it is, at present, the most significant possibility...

...It can be influenced or pressured to accept working class leadership in industrial life...

...In general these measures should tend to: (1) maintain a proper balance between consumer goods and production goods industry...

...It needs the alliance of the peasants, who, transformed into small proprietors, will provide a base for this middle class...

...Land must be given to the Indians, of course...

...It needs the alliance of the workers and liberals in the United States in order to set limits to the ambition and greed of North American capitalism...

...Moreover, effective agrarian reform is impossible unless U. S. public opinion is kept informed and the reformers are not falsely labeled as Communists...

...The first demands basic agrarian reform, the second a mature labor movement capable of directing the mining industry...

...The objective from the liberal and labor point of view should not be to make the new capitalists into "angels," but to prevent them from acting against the common interest...

...This does not mean that the working-class parties must necessarily collaborate in the government...

...Before 1930 a passable history of Latin America might have been written without any reference to its labor movement...

...As miserable as the lot of these workers may be, they are still privileged in comparison to farmers, artisans and part of the middle class—greatly so in relation to unskilled workers and farm labor...

...This situation may very well be inevitable, considering the peculiar evolution of the Latin American labor movement, its hesitant beginnings, lack of ideological development and inner contradictions...

...This industrialization seems economically welloriented...

...7) require that national capital be in the majority in each industry...

...One need not speak of the impossible here, a "good" bourgeoisie...

...The differences which arise periodically between these powerful unions and the bourgeoisie are not fundamental class differences but mere differences of bargaining such as arise between various sections of the bourgeoisie in the course of their business...

...Peasants form the majority of the population and depend for their welfare upon the most calloused and incompetent minority: the big landowners...

...If it is to be the latter, what must be the basic direction of these reforms...

...Not a single theoretician of any stature is to be found...

...Until recently Latin America has consisted of states...

...But the Latin American labor movement must place the sincere examination of national needs above the fear of worn phrases...

...This song may suggest the difficulties to be met in organizing the Indians, whose very misery could easily place them in the service of reaction and who thus constitute a potential threat to organized labor as long as they remain outside its ranks...

...Many live in Europe or the United States...

...Given this situation plus the high prices resulting from an antiquated tax system and the absence of limitations on profits, it is easy to see why the industrial workers, who, unlike the impoverished masses, are in a position to buy back at least some small part of what they produce, appear as parasites on the backs of the consumers...

...It is among their leaders that we find outstanding theoreticians and leaders, men such as Haya de la Torre, Figueres, and Betancourt...

...Such a Autumn 1954 • DISSENT • 345 program implies fundamental revision of traditional labor oratory on the agrarian question...

...only during the last few years have nations come into existence...

...It is self-evident that this industrialization is not as healthy from the social as it is from the economic point of view...

...It is the task of the labor movement to canalize this industrialization...

...Not being tied to the feudal oligarchy, this bourgeoisie can "determine itself," by means of appropriate legislation, adequate education and a program of industrialization...

...Political concubinage" is the ap propriate label for their type of activity in relation to Peron, Vargas, Ibanez, to the military juntas in Venezuela and Peru, to Molas in Para guay, General Hendriquez in Mexico and Batista in Cuba...

...For those attached to principles imported from Europe and especially from the Soviet Union, all of this will appear reactionary and "in the service of imperialism...

...Except in Mexico and Argentina, these landowners continue to govern, directly or through the politicians and the military...

...Ample proof of this is to be found in the Mexican situation...

...In certain areas the trade-union leaders are so well entrenched and the rank and file so apathetic, that the former may exploit their station with little fear of reprisal...

...Cursed be the world...

...Outside of Argentina, Chile and Ecuador, they are only small nuclei with narrow doctrinal views and no fighting spirit...

...They oppose the mechanization of agriculture, and therefore also the appearance of an agricultural bourgeoisie...

...For this very reason, by virtue of the curiously mixed development of Latin America, the labor movement now faces new possibilities and responsibilities...

...It might at least demand what it condemns the Communist regimes for lacking: democratic elections, respect for fundamental liberties and abolition of servitude...

...If this trend continues, there will eventually be a complete merging of interest between the powerful unions and the most wealthy sector of the bourgeoisie to the detriment of the majority of the people who will then be exploited by both...

...It is through the state rather than their own militancy that they attempt to gain their ends...

...The Latin-American labor movement needs other allies if it is to accomplish the huge task confronting it...

...The Indian Question A good half of Latin-American peasants are Indians or metis who share the native life...

...In seeking an answer it is necessary to bear in mind that Latin-American industrialization, as presently developing, is tending to separate industrial workers from the rest of the population and transform what is yet scarcely a developed class into a privileged caste...

...Through mechanization, they both sought to transform the peasant into a small proprietor and create an agricultural middle class...

...Cursed be all things...

...Profits from North American investments in all Latin America for 1950 totalled 682 million dollars or slightly over half of U. S. profits from all foreign investments...

...It is politically weak...

...Demagogy renders nationalism sterile, preventing the solution of such basic problems as absentee landlordism and the ownership of national resources...

...In Argentina the workers have fallen into this trap...

...At present they are not even accorded equal status in the unions...

...The trade unions are simply no longer independent...

...Creation of ejidos (collective farms) in Mexico avoided the rise of an agricultural middle class but paved the way for an agricultural (factoryinthe-field) capitalism...

...The Mexican experience has shown that agriculture cannot be socialized in a rising capitalist society...

...Because of this dependence they are affected by the defeats always threatening these precarious parties...

...In wage demands, one never hears of a union asking for a raise inversely proportionate to salaries received, which would help those in the lowest wage ranks...

...Foremost of all, it must determine whether its mission in society is inclusive or fractional, the lifting of Latin America out of its primitive poverty or the protection and aggrandizement of a small "aristocracy" of labor...

...The only organizations on the political field, with the exception of the Socialist Party of Argentina, which defend the working class and strive to reconcile its interests with those of Latin-American society are the revolutionary nationalist parties of the middle class...

...The peasant masses cannot extricate themselves from their poverty and ignorance, from their almost pre-Columbian methods of cultivation, unless they become direct owners of the land they till and unless they imitate, if but on a small scale, the technical example of the foreign trusts...

...The democratic regimes, where they exist, have managed during the past decade to give their peoples some sense of nationality...

...If the Latin American labor movement will make itself the champion of Indian freedom, it will gain an indispensable ally...

...Autumn 1954 • DISSENT • 339 Industrialization and the Working Class In Latin America there are only the land and the mines to nationalize...

...Here we come to another aspect of the Latin-American labor movement which will throw light on its ineffectiveness...

...In 1950, the groups comprising the 42 most powerful enterprises in Mexico had a combined capital of 717,600,000,000 pesos and their profits for the year were 109,800,000,000 pesos, or 15.3 per cent...

...4) encourage small local industry in order to raise living standards in remote areas where transportation is inadequate...

...Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the labor movement itself which should take the initiative in the planning and controlling of Latin-American capitalism...

...they fail to intervene in important national problems or even to protest against injustice unless they are directly concerned...

...But also no one talks of victory of the labor movement, for the very simple reason that no one is able to say what would constitute victory...

...Today not even this is true...

...But in Latin America, where stagnation in a primitive semi-feudal economy has become intolerable and there are neither the resources nor the possibility for an independent development toward socialism, what alternative can there be to the policy of having Autumn 1954 • DISSENT • 341 the working and middle classes exert a severe discipline over the rising bourgeoisie...

...The general decadence is also reflected in the Communist parties...

...Like Peronism, a caricature of revolutionary nationalism, it may place a false emphasis on the noun and obliterate the adjective...

...There are enterprises such as the Ford Motor Company of Mexico which with a capital of 12 millions can report a profit of 9 millions in a single year (1950), or concerns such as H. Steele (office supplies) which with a capital of two millions made three millions in one year...

...Trade Union Bureaucracy A Mexican trade unionist writes: Lacking any educational program to foster future leadership, tradeunion directives are passed around only among a small clique...

...Nor should labor's aim be the transformation of the Indians into industrial workers, but rather the co-existence of native ways of life— improved through culture, hygiene, modern communications, etc.—with an industrialized society...

...It needs the alliance of the Indians in order to neutralize their reactionary tendencies and make them a stabilizing element in the over-all picture...

...the apathy of the masses is so great, their disillusion so profound, that union functionaries dare to arrive at meetings in their Cadillacs without fear of being hissed...

...The spirit and enthusiasm which animated the early working class parties have been lost...

...The Communists have exploited the Indian problem for agitational purposes, systematically eulogizing the ancient pre-Columbian civilizations and demanding the proclamation of the States of Aymara, Maya and others—an advocacy of Indian separatism which approaches racism...

...It is inconceivable that these estates, thoroughly mechanized and managed by the most modern methods, be distributed or converted into primitive agrarian communities...

...Can the trade unions face up to this responsibility...

...But the realization of these aims, involving as it must the creation of both a sense of community and a group of independent technicians to staff the nationalized mines, necessitates the prior existence of a powerful bourgeoisie...

...In de-Europeanizing themselves, the radical parties have acquired all the vices of political oligarchy without gaining integral stature...

...In 1951, this capital 340 • DISSENT • Autumn 1954 increased to 752,800,000,000 pesos and the profits to 169,400,000,000 pesos, or 22.5 per cent...

...Without emancipation of the Indians, there can be no emancipation of the workers...

...The labor movement cannot accomplish this task alone...

...Independence, aborted in its economic phase by imperialism, is slowly becoming a political reality...

...Until very recently the Latin American labor movement had been chained by the prevalence of misery to the immediate task and the immediate moment...

...Two solutions have been advanced for the land problem, one by the Argentine Socialists and the other by the Mexican Zapatists...

...The Argentine Socialists were never in a position to test their theories and in Mexico the program of the Zapatists was distorted in imitation of the Soviet example...

...Sometimes such collaboration may be advisable and at other times not...

...On the contrary, we erect a wall against the weak by the bosses...

...6) favor the organization of farm workers and guarantee them the same benefits enjoyed by workers in industry...

...the "culturalists" who hope to integrate the Indians into an industrial civilization through cultural means...

...Strikes are sold...

...This is why the people, the raw conglomerate mass, remains deaf to our appeals...

...Capitalism will not do it except under pressure from the middle and working class...

...2) require that a high percentage of profits be re-invested in the extension of the same or other industries, and limit the amount that can be withdrawn from the country...

...They do little or nothing to educate their members politically...

...More opposition to this industrialization, started with capital from the only country in the world which has it in surplus, would lead to political suicide...

...The labor movement, too, though more realistically, should strive for integration, a process which must be as painless as possible...

...it is an impudent, immoral collaboration with the most reac tionary forces against the interests of the country and the workers, all in behalf of Soviet diplomacy...

...In the notes that follow I want to outline the trying problems that face the Latin America labor movement, and to suggest—particularly through emphasis on its relation to the middle class and to revolutionary nationalism— a possible course for it...

...but they must also be free to organize their own life, even if this means a degree of anarchism...

...Exception may be claimed for Venezuela and Peru where the trade union leaders come from the Democratic Action and APRA movements...

...In general, only 28 per cent of profits is used to increase available capital or develop industry...

...Peronist demagogy and its equivalents throughout the continent have inadvertently succeeded in drawing the working 338 • DISSENT • Aufumn 1954 class into political life, where it now begins to constitute an influential, if not determining, force...

...huge foreign agricultural holdings must be absorbed by each country, limiting their power while conserving their economic potential...

...For example, the Mexican oil workers allow their industry—one which is nationalized, let it be noted—to employ temporary workers who receive no protection and draw notably lower salaries...

...Autumn 1954 • DISSENT • 347 No one talks revolution in Latin America today, not even the Communists who until 1935 were the only ones demanding power for a practically non-existent proletariat...

...342 • DISSENT • Autumn 1954 Many forms of this trade-union parasitism exist...

...The trade union becomes a blessing or an evil, depending on the impression it makes on its members in relation merely to their personal aims...

...Permanent victory over the foreign enterprises cannot be achieved unless these enterprises are subject to check by unions in their own country...

...The labor movement has not concerned itself with the peasantry, not even in Mexico...

...And what is this life but that of a selfish bourgeoisie...

...The situation is, of course, not identical throughout the Continent and one may find many trade union leaders of personal integrity...

...In Cuba six and one-half million acres belong to North American companies, and the American Sugar Company with 300,000 acres controls 62 per cent of the Cuban sugar industry...

...Have there been any strikes or demonstrations demanding that the State take effective measures in their behalf...

...After due commemoration and the necessary demagogy, we then fall back into the old life...

...Here and now, insofar as these countries are concerned, revolution can only be realized through reform...

...On the other hand, to allow this industrialization to develop blindly is to surrender in advance to a bourgeoisie inclined to copy all the worst aspects of its North American counterpart...

...Their sons speak a different language from that of the men who toil for them...

...in matters of broader scope, in defense of interests only indirectly related to the pressure of daily needs, it had seldom been more than an echo of the middle class...

...Yet on every hand there is evidence that unprecedented possibilities exist in Latin America today for the rise of a modern planned capitalism free from the worst vices that developed under laissez faire...

...Today this would be impossible...

...Ignorance and obliviousness of the origins and principles of our movement are the rule...

...8) establish laws against monopoly in order to protect the national industries against international cartels and consortiums...

...But at the same time, the experience in Venezuela and Peru demonstrates that when the middle class takes power and starts fundamental reform, it is unable to sustain itself...

...Large-scale industrialization, financed by North American capital, was introduced in Latin America only with the Second World War...

...9) secure, at all levels in this program, the participation of not only the working class but also the middle class and farmers...

...None of its objectives can be reached in a basically feudal society out of which a foul capitalism is rising...

...But even these individuals, together with their less honest colleagues, may all be characterized as submissive to the state...

...3) insure that a sufficient portion of investment capital go into agriculture and allied industries, and that a proper balance be maintained between urban and rural consumption, as also between domestic consumption as a whole and export...

...However, this cannot be achieved in a society transitional between feudalism and industrial capitalism which tends to proletarianize the Indian...

...Nor can it be until labor takes measures to control it...

...The results of this system of land ownership and its consequent monoculture are: underproduction, famine, a political tendency toward military dictatorship and dependence upon foreign industry...

...Cursed be my conception...

...The trade union struggle can be made to base itself on the principle that the land must be divided among those who work it and that subsoil rights must become national property...

...From the capitalist point of view, its success is apparent in the fact that for the first time in history local capital is flowing into industry instead of being invested in land or exported...

...As in Mexico, a powerful parasitic agricultural caste of ingenios would arise to exploit the poor ejidatarios under their control...

...Yet the labor movement has not turned towards the Indians, whereas the middle-class parties—APRA, Democratic Action, the Mexican Party of the Revolution, the non-Communist revolutionary groups of Guatemala—have shown genuine concern for them...

...It may be held that all these measures will serve further to develop capitalism...

...Today facts prove, if theory is insufficient, that one cannot pass directly from feudalism to socialism...

...And since the Latin American trade unions help to perpetuate this state of affairs, it devolves upon the political organizations of the working and middle classes to change it...

...The anti-imperialist fight has proved that the working class is not yet the determining force in LatinAmerican life...

...Nor is this a matter of the old Marxist quarrel over support or non-support of bourgeois governments...

...the power to call or forestall strikes is used to extort private bribes from employers...

...These parties were ineffective because they were composed almost exclusively of European immigrants without native roots, but at least they gave some meaning to the life of their members...

...It needs the active alliance of the middle class...

...And finally the Peronist experience makes it clear that demagogy cannot improve the living standards of the masses, and that such a movement dwindles down to a small clique...

...Powerful trade unions, such as the railway workers, oil workers and electricians, form a privileged sector, the interests of which are practically identical with those of the bourgeosie...

...It is continuing with capital from the World and Export-Import banks, as well as from private sources...

...Only those whose actions are geared to world diplomacy rather than the interests of the Continent, can afford to take such a position...

...the "erudite" fascinated by the picturesque...

...The socialist parties have no rank, not even a third one...

...In underscoring the isolation of the trade unions, this unionist con tinues: What do the big trade unions do to improve the miserable conditions of the Indians, child labor, the child beggars, the many who work in small workshops...

...In Latin America today a situation exists where, depending on the capacities of the labor movement, the character of the nascent industrial bourgeoisie can to some extent be controlled...

...348 • DISSENT • Autumn 1954...

...This is true...

...And if it chooses the latter, the Latin American labor movement must confront those essential problems which the middle class has not been able to solve, the caudillos have not known how to solve, and neither the old landed oligarchy nor the new industrial powers even acknowledge to be problems...

...This also may be true: certainly it is a debatable subject in developed capitalist countries...

...However, with the exception of Uruguay and Argentina, the agrarian question is closely related to the Indian question and the two condition one another...

...Political Concubinage It is understandable that when some military clique undertakes a coup d'etat, the trade union bosses, clutching their privileges, stand idly by...

...Heavy industry is being expanded wherever possible, while at the same time light industry is being developed in order to improve the immediate living standards of the masses...

...In the region of Ayacucho, where in 1824 a decisive battle was fought for American independence, the Indians now sing: I was conceived on a stormy night The rain and the wind were my cradle No one feels sorry for me in my misery Cursed be my birth...

...Curses on myself...

...Must one defer the solution of the Indian problem until after the working class has achieved power, or instigate reforms here and now to 346 • DISSENT • Autumn 1954 ameliorate the lot of the Indians...

...Having acquired a taste under the Peronist demagogues for being taken into some account, the workers would resist the relinquishment of what only yesterday had seemed a rare and barely attainable privilege...

...If its position in regard to the peasants is to improve in the future, the labor movement must recognize two things: a socialized agricultural economy is not possible in states where the dominant class is a nascent industrial bourgeoisie...

...It is not uncommon in Mexico for new industries to amortize their initial capital in two or three years...

...Aufumn 1954 • DISSENT • 343 But even in these countries there were no strikes at the beginning...

...Coca, marihuana, and alcohol play havoc among these people who have neither ambition nor perspective and who live in a condition of servitude...

...Here again, though without success, it is the middle class alone which has made efforts to liberate the peasant from his bondage, and here again the labor movement finds itself isolated from the people...

...The trade unions are left, therefore, without any real working-class political orientation, and the industrial workers are left dependent upon the parties of the middle class as the only political force capable of repre senting them effectively...

...it would be enough to have a class that lacked some of the traditional vices of Western capitalism...

...Among the printers many hold one and a half jobs, "jobbing" out the extra half at a profit so as to become direct exploiters...

...The political labor movement has been permeated by the leadership cult which dominates the trade unions as well as the political state, and mediocre leaders have replaced programs...