BOOKS
SLAUGHTER, JANE
BOOKS Roots of Resistance Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City 1954-1985 by Deborah Levenson-Estrada University of North Carolina Press. 300 pages. $15.95. The Sky Never Changes by...
...They help all of us understand how heroes emerge out of everyday lives—even in the most trying of circumstances...
...Thomas Reed and Karen Brandow have collected ten oral histories...
...We gave them something, with a feeling that comes from the heart...
...Jane Slaughter, formerly of Labor Notes, is a frequent contributor to The Progressive...
...Consuelo Pantaleo took up drinking for a time after her husband was murdered, and now finds it hard to be close to her four children...
...When the police came with tear gas, as mechanic Pablo Telon tells it, 'We sat down, wrapped blankets around ourselves and then wrapped ourselves around ourselves...
...The profiled unionists run the gamut: factory workers, municipal workers, peasants, housewives, literacy teachers, and scout leaders...
...Ernesto, a Mayan peasant organizer, tells how his activist consciousness began: "My family wasn't so badly off that we lacked food every day...
...200 pages...
...This work gives you life, because life isn't simply a matter of breathing...
...14.95...
...Do you think trade unionists are fanatics with their meetings, strikes, demonstrations...
...Rather, life is what one does to feel a part of the people...
...Reading this editorial from a union newspaper, you can feel the tension: "What's happening, you with hair on your chest...
...Instead, they search for the individual answers that make some say yes and others keep their heads down...
...The details are vivid...
...But there were other families who didn't even have tortillas...
...They took up their murdered dead, and not arms...
...She describes the fragmented urban neighborhoods where people didn't know their neighbors—until there was a disappearance or an earthquake...
...The Coca-Cola workers forced the state to recognize their union by occupying the factory," she writes...
...by Jane Slaughter Imet authors Karen Brandow and Deborah Levenson-Estrada when we lived in Guatemala in 1986 and 1987...
...Losing members and not winning battles, the labor movement fought with what it had— its losses," she writes...
...Marcos Antonio Figueroa of the state workers' federation tells of his kidnapping, when he was held in a VW bus specially outfitted for torture...
...Its members were] preoccupied with questions of being...
...Eventually, their captors feed them: "Since we were tied up, they fed us with their own hands, putting the milk to my lips to drink...
...Levenson-Estrada traces the history of urban workers from 1954 through the historic victory of the Coca-Cola factory occupation in 1985, a struggle that won support from all over the world...
...Not all the oral histories are happy ones...
...Unionists began expropriating and repossessing the deaths of their companions at the hand of the state, which was the state's weapon against them, as their own weapon...
...For much of the last four decades, to accept the post of local union general secretary was to sign your own death warrant-So why did they do it...
...In a remarkable section titled "Life Never Lost: The Cult of Martyrdom and the Reversal of Murder," Levenson-Estrada describes how unionists dealt with the bloodiest time, 1978-1980...
...But apparently we were all preoccupied with the same question: With the death squads murdering unionists left and right, why does even one person step forward to carry on...
...And not-being...
...after all, he was a state employee...
...She interviewed Jennifer Harburv in the December 1995 issue...
...They speak of the cost of living, of the difficulty of clothing one's children...
...For the most part, we gringas didn't discuss why we were there—we needed a break...
...My father took us to visit poor people, so poor that you felt pity for them...
...She also explores the qualms of those who cut back their involvement after receiving death threats...
...She describes the complex relationship between urbanized Mayan Indians and ladinos...
...She notes the importance of soccer in union-building...
...They come close to me and ask, 'Mama, do you love me?' And I reply, 'Yes, my child, but get away from me.'" Still, many of the stories are inspiring...
...The thing was not to lose sight of anyone and to count, so that no one disappeared.'" Levenson-Estrada discusses the social environment that hatched the unionists...
...They aren't...
...To their great credit, the authors have rejected the facile explanation that poverty-stricken workers were "forced to fight back" in a simple equation: hardship - resistance...
...The Sky Never Changes by Thomas F. Reed and Karen Brandow ILR Press...
...In recounting his experience this way, Figueroa saved the world for himself...
...She pictures the Catholic youth movement that trained many leaders...
...Like Levenson-Estrada, Reed and Brandow refrain from making Guatemalan unionists into cardboard heroes...
...He and his friend Roberto try to talk to the guard: "We used the word compahero to address him...
...wrapping arms, and then arms around waists and legs around legs, a regular straw mat...
...These books are not just for old Guatemala hands...
...Instead, the authors acknowledge "all the usual human traits, both positive and difficult...
...Both of these books...
...It took them until ten at night to get us out of there because of the way we'd tied ourselves to each other...
...Brandow asks Ernesto whether he was politically inactive after he was forced into hiding...
...She chronicles the resentment of leaders who see their followers wavering...
...Never," he responds...
...Trade Unionists Against Terror and The Sky Never Changes, try to answer the riddle...
...There were tortillas at home each day, although perhaps not salt...
...Humans have many aspects, and if we take advantage of the good ones...
...I will never forget this, the detectives, accustomed to kill and maim, consoling someone with an ulcer...
...Hundreds of union leaders and members have been murdered, tortured, and disappeared since the U.S.-led military coup of 1954...
...we can advance further than we know...
...It isn't fanaticism that we struggle for a better life, nor is it fanaticism that makes leaders spend all their time and sacrifice so that others get good treatment in the company...
...In post-1954 Guatemala the quest for dignity and a decent life translated into an unusual labor movement," writes historian Deborah Levenson-Estrada...
Vol. 60 • June 1996 • No. 6
