DATELINE
Four months after ex-President Echeverrfa's much-publicized land expropriation, the dust has yet to settle on Mexico's turbulent Yaqui Valley the rich river valley in the northwestern...
...Despite a relatively successful protest lockout by the landowners, and the December court order ruling the expropriation illegal, the new Lopez Portillo administration has refrained from reversing his predecessor's action...
...The time had come to take the land," explained Castelo, "but this time armed...
...But much also depends on the degree to which the masses themselves are mobilized, either in government programs or by more radical nongovernmental groups which are currently trying to build a solid base among workers and peasants...
...There are thousands and thousands of hectares which must be distributed in Sonora," explained Rafael Jacobo Garcia, Secretary of the Central Independiente de Obreros Agricolas y Campesinos (CIOAC) in a recent interview in Sin Fronle.-as...
...appear to be at a momentary lull after the signing of a new bauxite agreement in January...
...Moreover, some of the more radical elements within the PNP are represented in his government...
...The Sonora expropriation affects only a small number of landless peasants and wealthy growers...
...Four months after ex-President Echeverrfa's much-publicized land expropriation, the dust has yet to settle on Mexico's turbulent Yaqui Valley - the rich river valley in the northwestern state of Sonora where wealthy Mexican growers farm wheat and winter vegetables in partnership with U.S...
...But the hawkish eye of the multinational aluminum companies, including Alcan, Alcoa, Reynolds, Anaconda, Revere and Kaiser, will not rest...
...Land occupations continue to be largely spontaneous isolated incidents, despite the impo-tant work of organizations like the FC1 and the CIOAC...
...Rank and file union movements still lack a coordinated, disciplined leadership to move them beyond immediate work place struggles...
...For the first time an openly declared communist party, the Workers Liberation League, has been allowed to grow with only limited harassment from the current government...
...A New Political Spectrum Since assuming office in 1972 the Manley government has drastically redefined the Jamaican political spectrum...
...The government's recent acquisition of part ownership follows a string of actions taken by the ruling Peoples National Party (PNP) which are extremely disquieting to international, as well as national capital...
...From 1974 onwards, Jamaica has developed increasingly close relations with Cuba, beginning with a series of cultural exchanges, then trade missions, followed by a visit of state by Manley...
...But it is also likely that he will try to calm international capital's worries by paying dollar by dollar for every enterprise the government acquires...
...Whether the PNP's democratic socialist politics will move to the left, continue to drift as is, or swing to the right will be partly determined by internal party struggles and the pressure from national and international capital...
...They thought we would be deceived and switch over to their side...
...Opting out of the international capitalist system is no alternative for Manley, but he intends to protect his flank by widening diplomatic and trade relations in the event that international capitalist organizations boycott Jamaica as they did both Cuba and Chile...
...Castelo and the other leaders managed to pull the FCI together again, despite the work of the infiltrator, and they continued the vigil from their collection of cardboard huts and makeshift tents which marked the center of the land occupation...
...Though the peasants remain on the expropriated land - which was organized into eight collective farms - the legal status of the holdings is precarious as the growers continue to pressure the new Lopez Portillo administration to act on a December court order which ruled the Sonora expropriation illegal...
...STRENGTHENING THE POLITICAL BUREAUCRACY There was obviously more behind the expropriation than the immediate conflict with the FCI...
...market...
...This is clearly a technique to deprive the Jamaican government of any possibility of taking control of the refining process and selling finished aluminium on the world market in competition with the multinationals themselves...
...The struggle for the land will continue in this state and it will continue throughout the country," said Jacobo...
...Like the traditional populist leaders in Latin America, he has fanned the masses' desperate and potentially explosive demands, while continuously reassuring the business community that the government will respect their property rights and interests...
...The fact that the FCI was armed did prevent it from being moved off the land for a period of time, since the government did not want to risk another national backlash like the one caused by the October 1975 massacre at San Ignacio Rio Muerte...
...While expansion of the state sector follows a pattern already familiar in other Latin American countries, none of these measures has been well received by international financial interests...
...By NACLA -West Mexico Project JAMAICA HOW FAR LEFT...
...This is a problem of political leadership," Valle contin-36 DATELINE * DATELINE ued in an interview with NACLA...
...In mid-1974 the Manley government began pressing the huge aluminum companies for a larger share of the lucrative bauxite operations...
...Following Kissinger's visit there was an outburst of violence which lasted for six months...
...The aluminum companies were so angered by the government's actions that they warned Jamaica it was jeopardizing its bauxite market by hiking prices and reproached the U.S...
...In the six months that followed the land seizure, however, Mexico's sophisticated political bureaucracy persisted in its attempts to undermine the FCI...
...The status of the land holdings appears to be one of many important points of negotiation between Lopez Portillo and different sectors of the bourgeoisie...
...The CIOAC is the Mexican Communist Party's farm worker organization which has been active in the northwest land occupations and unionization drives...
...government for not taking a firmer stand with the Manley government...
...The Mexican State and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) were both conceived and constructed largely by sectors of the petty bourgeoisie which rose to power through military and political channels during Mexico's revolution...
...Having failed to repress, divide or buy off the intransigent FCI, Echeverria made a bold move, calculated to turn the conflict to the government's advantage...
...Meanwhile Jamacia broadened her relationship with Cuba and intensified her support of third world liberation struggles such as the MPLA in Angola...
...Since 1972, when the PNP was first elected, the government has purchased formerly British-owned Jamaica Omnibus Corporation, the Jamaica Public Service Company, the power and electricity company and a large flour mill, and has acquired sugar lands from multinationals such as Tate and Lyle to establish producer cooperatives...
...After having achieved the division, three of us were taken prisoner for 20 days...
...and Japanese companies are searching for alternative sources of the mineral where the political climate is more favorable...
...After more than two years of negotiations the Jamaican government is purchasing 51% ownership in Kaiser's mining operations and has agreed to roll back government levies on the important mineral...
...In the aftermath of this revelation, Manley declared de Roulet persona non grata...
...Internationally, Manley has steered a new independent course that worries U.S...
...Their interests have also been hurt by the introduction of a minimum wage and reduction of unemployment, which has driven up the wages of unskilled and non-unionized workers...
...The aluminum companies have always tried from behind the scenes to keep a tight rein on the political situation in Jamaica and the U.S...
...During Secretary of State Kissinger's unofficial visit to Jamaica in late 1975 he reportedly warned Manley to tone down his socialist politics, to abandon relations with Cuba and to end Jamaica's support of the MPLA...
...What we need to build is a permanent political organization which can guarantee its militants revolutionary continuity, which can guarantee its militants constant political action based on a general vision of society...
...On November 19, he officially expropriated 220,000 acres of land in the Yaqui Valley and distributed it to 9,000 peasant families...
...See Counterspy, December 1976 for more on the CIA-planned coup...
...Echeverria's move was also calculated to strengthen the weakened position of the government-controlled peasant bureaucracy, which is finding itself less and less capable of controlling the growing anger of Mexico's peasants and farm workers...
...At the same time, the right wing of the party has been fighting for a retreat from the party's democratic socialist platform...
...DECEIT AND BETRAYAL In Sonora, as in other parts of the country, newly formed peasant organizations, often with significant left influence, are asserting their independence of the State's traditional "peasant bureaucracies" like the Confederacibn Nacional Campesina (CNC) and the Pacto de Ocampo...
...But, added the organizer, "the struggle for the land and the fight for better wages for agricultural workers we see as methods of struggle...
...We are trying to contribute in our country to the creation of an organization which will be a point of struggle, unity and action with the working class, so that there will be a force capable of challenging the control of the government, the political power of the bourgeoisie...
...They finally left the land, but not without first insisting that they - and not the government - turn the land over to the other peasants...
...policy-makers with an eye on the strategic Caribbean...
...Mounting tensions between Jamaica and the U.S...
...The FCI decided to undertake an armed occupation of Yaqui Valley lands in April 1976, six short months after having seen ten of their unarmed comrades massacred by the army at a land seizure in the same area...
...Embassy to destabilize his government...
...The Manley government has also opened relations with other socialist countries...
...The new president, in fact, has made a number of concrete moves which have left Mexican and foreign business interests euphoric...
...Bauxite Politics and Destabilization The current polarization is rooted in centuries of domination by foreign interests...
...In January of this year Manley announced that Jamaica would establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and explore possibilities for extending trade relations with the Comecon countries...
...Ramiro Castelo, leader of the Sonorabased FCI, which has received wide support from the left, explained in a recent press conference that the expropriation was preceded by typical government acts of repression, deceit and betrayal designed to destroy the Federation...
...The Mexican working class, however, still lacks the political organization necessary to turn the current crisis to their advantage...
...aluminum companies...
...In 1974, Prime Minister Michael Manley announced his platform of democratic socialism and simultaneously began pressing for greater control over the island's North Americanowned bauxite operations...
...The land occupied by the FCI was among the holdings expropriated, but members of the FCI were not among those 9,000 peasants who received title to the land...
...Domestically the PNP is pushing for what they call a mixed economy with state ownership and control of major enterprises, workers' cooperatives and small scale private capital, although Manley emphasizes the party does not intend to move Jamaica towards communism...
...Taxes and royalties were raised dramatically, both to pressure the companies in negotiations over Jamaican partnership, and to increase government revenues badly needed to cushion the mounting balance of payments deficit...
...These measures, along with growing government participation in the economy, while not spelling revolution, can be counted as progressive change...
...Meanwhile, Alcan of Jamaica, one of the largest aluminum plants, laid off workers and threatened to close down operations altogether...
...Although the country has been the world's largest exporter of bauxite for nearly twenty years, the Jamaican people have benefitted relatively little from the multimillion dollar foreign investments, since the marketing of bauxite is controlled by U.S...
...The case of the Sonora expropriation is still not settled, however...
...If the government does not want to accept, does not want to believe that we are tired of all that has happened in the past, then we will arise with arms and set forth a revolution...
...In the last months of the Echeverria administration, the President came under strong attack from openly rebellious groups of industrialists, bankers and growers as they sought to assure that the new Lopez Portillo administration would not follow Echeverrda's policies of increasing State intervention in the economy...
...Since then the political bureaucracy has managed, for the most part, to represent the general interests of most sectors of the bourgeoisie by pursuing a course of rapid capitalist development...
...Despite this opposition, Manley has actually been extremely cautious in his politics...
...Ministers such as Arnold Bertrum and D. K. Duncan, who emerged out of the university-Rastafarian black power movement of the 1960's, have close links with radical young people organized in the PNP's youth groups, some of which were responsible for land seizures in 1975...
...The agribusiness interests of the northwest were among the most vocal opponents, and the expropriation was in part a final show of force by the pro-Echeverria segment of the political bureaucracy...
...Former U.S...
...We constantly arrive late to the struggles...
...government has also been anxious to protect the companies' bauxite holdings there...
...And thousands of army troops were moved into the northwest to begin removing dissident peasant groups from the occupied lands...
...In 1973, Jamaica broke relations with Taiwan to establish diplomatic and trading relations with the Peoples' Republic of China, and the Chinese subsequently sent their enormous world trade exhibition to Kingston in 1975...
...REPRESSION...
...Manley's policies have, however, been enthusiastically supported by a large proportion of Jamaica's impoverished working and peasant classes...
...The left continues to walk behind the people," observed Eduardo Valle, a militant of the Partido Mexicano de los Trabajadores (PMT), a new left party with a growing base in the working class...
...Massive investments in bauxite mining and alumina production (the intermediary stage between bauxite and the finished aluminum) led to the gradual redirection of Jamaica's foreign dependence: away from England and the British Commonwealth and toward the United States...
...The overtly anti-communist, pro-private-enterprise stance of the JLP which dominated politics in the 1960's has been swept away...
...The story behind the Yaqui Valley conflict reflects the essence of the current political crisis facing the Mexican State: the political bureaucracy is losing its ability both to control the working class and mediate the growing divisions within the bourgeoisie...
...Despite attempts to destabilize the Manley government prior to the elections, the PNP was returned to office with a two-thirds majority in Parliament...
...To protect their bauxite sources, both U.S...
...At the same time they have planned a giant smelter in Puerto Rico, which has neither abundant energy nor its own bauxite...
...The aluminum companies are disquieted over this political trend in Jamaica, which supplies over 60 percent of the U.S...
...The Jamaican government is paid only a pittance in taxes and royalties on bauxite and alumina in comparison to the market price of refined aluminum on the world market...
...In response to the spontaneous development of mass struggle, we need to encase ourselves naturally in the mass struggle, fighting for the rights and demands of this mass movement, but at the same time pointing out a different perspective - a perspective of political organization, of the permanence of our organization, of the continuity of struggle, of the need to pass beyond the spontaneous element to the organized element...
...Jamaican Socialism, Progressive or Revolutionary...
...Though the Jamaican government has pressured the companies to refine a larger proportion of the bauxite into alumina within Jamaica and to build a smelter to process finished aluminum, the companies have systematically refused to do so, arguing that Jamaica does not have sufficient energy resources...
...The annual December wage hike was kept to a mere 9-10%, representing a drastic decline in workers' buying power after the recent devaluations...
...Ambassador Vincent de Roulet testified before the Senate Foreign Relations sub-committee on multinational corporations that he had made a deal with Manley prior to the 1972 elections, promising U.S...
...On other occasions it emerged as overtly political, such as the armed attack on a PNP office in a rural town by members of the opposition JLP (the Jamaica Labor Party), noted for its strident anti-communism...
...The basic class structure created by capitalist agriculture remains intact, and the class conflict continues to sharpen...
...The land went instead to members of the Pacto de Ocampo...
...The petty bourgeois elements of Jamaican society, formerly a solid source of the PNP's political support, are particularly enraged by tax reforms, foreign exchange controls, and lend lease programs for the peasants...
...BEYOND THE SPONTANEOUS ELEMENT" But whatever the particular settlement reached in the case of the Yaqui Valley, the overall situation has not changed...
...agribusiness interests...
...In mid-1976 Manley declared a state of emergency after the discovery of Operation WEREWOLF,a plot engineered by members of the JLP and CIA agents operating through the U.S...
...Along with other moderately left members of the PNP who have a foothold in the trade union movement,their views are being given wide audience...
...In the wake of last December's electoral victory, it is possible that his party may subject the Jamaican bourgeoisie to some heavy manners...
...Domestically, the PNP government has made an effort to tackle some of the worst problems facing the country: rural poverty and landlessness, unemployment, housing shortages, and extremely inequitable distribution of income...
...I want that understood clearly...
...As always this wretched government sent in agents with their demagogy to divide us...
...At times the violence appeared to be random, as in the shooting of the Peruvian Ambassador in his Kingston home...
...Although there has been much confusion over the character of the PNP's democratic socialist program, several important features of the PNP's brand of socialism are clear...
...One such independent group, the Federaci6n Campesina Independiente (FCI) played a key role in forcing the November 19 expropriation in Sonora...
...Later Cuban technical assistance provided help with a range of projects from fishing to the building of schools in the countryside...
...After we had taken the land, and suffered all that one can suffer, then came the division," Castelo continued...
...At the same time it was a move against a sector of the Mexican bourgeoisie which had most openly opposed Echeverria's efforts to modernize the country's economy and its political bureaucracy...
...In the past ten years, however, as monopolized sectors of industry and finance capital - tied closely to U.S...
...We turned over the land ourselves, peasant to peasant," declared Castelo...
...This January, after a landslide electoral victory, Manley announced a new economic package which includes government purchase of three commercial banks, Radio Jamaica Rediffusion, the British owned radio station (thus completing the government's control of radiotelecommunications throughout the island), and a locally-owned cement factory (to assist in the government's effort to build low-income housing...
...They have chosen Brazil, which has large bauxite deposits, and where they plan to build an aluminum smelter and power station at the mouth of the Amazon River...
...interests - have risen to a clearly dominant position in the economy, the political bureaucracy has found it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of this sector withbut undermining the interests of the smaller bourgeoisie...
...The FCI realized at that point that to carry on the battle would mean pitting themselves directly against other peasants...
...support to the PNP in return for a guarantee that Manley would not raise nationalization of bauxite as a campaign issue...
...Long dependent on sugar exports, the Jamaican economy began drifting into a new phase of raw material dependency in the 1950's with the growth of the North American-owned bauxite industry...
...They thought that we could be bought off," recounted Castelo with total disdain for the State's white collar peasant "leaders...
...Then the Pacto de Ocampo, a government-controlled confederation of peasant organizations, arrived on the scene to "negotiate a merger...
...Manley, who stands slightly left of center in his own party, has been instrumental in bringing the issue of socialism to the forefront of political discussion in Jamaica...
...By Sherry Keith, a researcher and writer who was formerly a professor at the University of West Indies, Mona, Jamaica...
Vol. 11 • March 1977 • No. 3
