Reviews
Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City 1954-1985 by Deborah Levenson-Estrada, The University of North Carolina Press, 1994, 288 pp., $45 (cloth), $15.95 (paper). Over the past 35 years,...
...But while supportive of Fidel and a revolution they've grown up with, they evince a definite critical spirit, and a strong desire to determine their own futures...
...The film gives the impressionand provides substantial evidence-that Cuban youth have considerable freedom of expression, particularly in the cultural realm where long-haired "rockers" and black "rappers" face off for the vanguard role...
...Rather, the author argues, they were inspired by Christian notions of human dignity and the right to a decent life...
...Modest industrial growth and the appearance of a political opening in the 1970s led to an upsurge in unionism...
...One young revolutionary openly speculates about the possibility of independent capitalism...
...Even with their faces hidden, it is noteworthy that the dissidents in the film don't support a U.S.-imposed solution to the Cuban crisis...
...Confronted by a state and employers that treated them little better than animals, workers used trade unionism as a vehicle to assert their humanity and their sense of themselves as historical protagonists...
...Guatemalan unionists were not, on the whole, revolutionary, nor were they simply motivated by economic need...
...Cuba's youth debate the revolution-past, present and future-in this fast-paced but somewhat disjointed documentary...
...Scenes of Cuban life and historical footage are interspersed with commentary from a passionate and opinionated assortment of young Cubans who represents a broad range of characters, issues and viewpoints...
...They seem to concur with the lyrics of the upbeat song "Cuba Va...
...Using documentary sources and first-person testimony, LevensonEstrada begins her study of the labor movement after the 1954 coup, when Communists and labor unionists affiliated with the AFLCIO began to reorganize in a patently hostile environment...
...Given such a vicious political climate, the labor movement's very existence-and persistence-is surprising...
...it is a lucid study of work, gender relations, religion, and urban popular culture in post1954 Guatemala...
...The film presents an image of Cuban society undergoing the rapid social change of recent years with extraordinary openness and flexibility...
...Over the past 35 years, Guatemala's tiny labor movement has waged an incessant struggle to survive in the face of a terrorist state bent upon its destruction...
...The overwhelming majority, however-especially of university students-seem to be loyal mainstream Cuban nationalists and self-identified socialists...
...Faithful to this premise, Trade Unionists Against Terror is much more than a narrow labor history...
...a video by Vicente Franco and Gail Dolgin (distributed by CUBA VA video Project, 12 Liberty Street, San Francisco, CA 94110), 1993, 59 mins., $95 (sale...
...Cuba Va...
...After the October, 1980 urban insurrection, the state launched a brutal counterattack which left the movement once again reeling...
...Levenson-Estrada concludes with a detailed look at the remarkable 376-day occupation of the CocaCola bottling plant by the company union in 1984 while the country was under a state of siege...
...Levenson-Estrada argues that to view workers simply as class actors is to underestimate the complex nexus of their material, intellectual NACILA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS and emotional lives...
...This upsurge crystallized in the 1976 sit-in at the Coca-Cola bottling company and the 1977 Glorious March of the Miners...
...but have to wonder-along with the dissidents"Para donde...
Vol. 28 • September 1994 • No. 2
