40th Anniversary of the General Strike of 1977

Last week I attended a commemorative meeting marking the 40th anniversary of the nationwide general strike of July 19, 1977.

At the rally at Plaza San Martin, the previous week, someone had handed me a flyer for the event, and it immediately piqued my interest because I distinctly remember the strike.

At the time, Peru was ruled by a military junta presided by Gen. Francisco Morales Bermúdez. Morales Bermúdez and his allies had, a couple of years earlier, deposed his predecessor, Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado.  They then set about undoing the structural and social reforms initiated by Velasco. They introduced monetary adjustments which dealt severe blows to people's standard of living, at the same time that they froze wages and let prices rise. They countered protest of these measures with states of emergency, night-time curfews, jailings, exile, and worse.

I was in grade school at the time. I remember that things were tense in the days leading up to the general strike, and everyone wondered how big the walk-out would be, how successful.

I have vivid recollection that on the morning of the 19th Lima, then a city of almost five million people, seemed absolutely silent and still. Not one store was open, not one bus or taxi circulated. No one, it seemed, went to work that day. 

Photo from a display at the event.

Speakers at the event, held at the headquarters of Patria Roja --one of Peru's largest communist parties-- explained how 23 unions had decided to work together and established a unitary struggle committee at a secret meeting at the offices of the water utility workers' union.

They talked about how the struggle committee --which even included the government-sponsored state employees union!-- reached out by word-of-mouth to other unions and tried to bring them on board, first to the idea of a national one-day general strike, and then to the specific date.  All of this, of course, had to be done clandestinely.  The risks were highlighted by the fact that 18 unionists had already lost their lives to the repression in the first half of the year.

As it was, the government arrested many top union leaders and leftist party leaders in an effort to thwart the strike organizing and to cow the movement into submission. It did not work, of course.

The strike was nearly total and paralyzed the country. The people, and specially the working class, had flexed its muscle. In one day the military lost all claim to legitimacy and popular support.  Within a year it had begun the process of transitioning the country back toward representative democracy, with elections to a Constituent Assembly.

Those were heady days, which I well remember. We all, even us middle-class children, felt that the return to democracy was also our victory.

However, as Alfredo Velásquez --then head of the public school teachers union (SUTEP), and part of the joint struggle committee-- explained, the workers' movement paid a heavy price for having spearheaded the opposition to the military regime.  On the day of the strike a number of workers and peasants lost their live in Lima and in other cities, including 13 marchers who were gunned down in the Lima district of Comas.  In the days following the strike the military government passed a law authorizing the summary firing of workers, and in one swoop over 4000 unionized workers were dismissed, decapitating nearly every industrial union in the country. It was a blow, Velásquez said, from which the Peruvian labor movement has never recovered.

Unionists who participated in the strike pose for a group photo.

Back in San Felipe

I've been in Lima just over a week, and am settling into the apartment and back into San Felipe.  

For those unfamiliar with Lima's topography, the Residencial San Felipe (to residents usually just, San Felipe or "la Resi") is a large housing development inaugurated in 1966 (but finished in 1968) during the presidency of Fernando Belaude Terry, who was an architect by trade.  Belaunde was determined to build housing for Lima's growing middle class and assembled a team of several hundred architects and engineers to design it.

The result, built on land that had housed the San Felipe horse racetrack, is a unique community within the city, with 30-some building in five different styles.  Despite housing for 1,085 families, and containing three nursery schools and a commercial center, close to 70% of the Resi is open space, with many and ample tree-filled gardens.

Of course, those gardens require frequent maintenance, which occasionally means pruning of trees and shrubs.  The debris, of course, must be gathered in one spot so it can be hauled away, as in the photo below, from this week.

Seeing that pile, I was reminded of an incindent from my childhood in the Resi.

In the 1970s the gardens usually were surrounded by low hedges --no more than two or three feet. In 1977 many of those were drastically pruned or removed, and many shrubs cut back, in order to deal with an infestation of rodents that had made them their home.  The resulting green waste was deposited in a single pile many times larger than the one above, in one of the parking lots.

It so happened, if I recall correctly, that this came around our midwinter school break, but it also coincided with a period of unrest against the military dictatorship headed by Gen. Francisco Morales Bermudez.  The major labor confederations went on strike, and so the debris was not hauled away from some weeks.

A friend and I started playing in it, and soon had devised a shelter in it complete with a "secret" exit. In the course of a few days we were joined by more and more neighborhood kids, and for a couple of weeks we had great fun expanding our warrens with extra rooms, hidden entrances, and long, winding tunnels, all practically invisible to the casual passerby.

We were much saddened when the government finally managed to get the place cleaned up.

Labor Unions Rally and March

On July 3rd Peru's largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP)  called for rallies and marches to push for an increase in wages, salaries, and pensions, and to show support for the communities of the Tambo Valley in southern Peru who have been resisting the attempts by the government and Southern Copper Corporation and Newmont Mining expand the Tia Maria copper mine.

A large part of the rural communities of the Tambo Valley residents fear the mine expansion will be detrimental to their health and to the local economy, polluting water supplies and damaging pastures.  They charge that the environmental impact assessment was haphazard and that the government rushed through its approval process with minimal review.

After protests turned ugly following a number of documented abuses committed by on-duty police as well as off-duty police hired by the company to quell protests, the government sent in troops and imposed a state of emergency on several southern provinces, limiting freedom of assembly and placing some communities under night-time curfews.

On July 9th several thousand people gathered in Lima's Plaza Dos de Mayo, a traditional spot for such events, in front of the CGTP offices.

Youth Protest in Lima

 

On Monday I headed downtown to buy some books.  My trip  there coincided with a march convened by

 numerous youth groups  in one of Lima's central squares, the Plaza San Martin, in order to.march in a show of their rejection of the recently-enacted Youth Labor Law.

Known derisively as the "Pulpin Law" after a brand of fruit juices meant for infants and toddlers, Law No. 30288 provides incentives for businesses to hire youth 18-24 years of age who haven't previously had formal employment or who have not had it in the previous 90 days.  How?  By making their employment exempt from payment of Compensation for Time of Service (money deposited periodically by the employer into a special account, that workers can then use as retirement savings or unemployment insurance), life insurance, hazard pay, family stipends, and twice-yearly bonuses, all of which are mandated by law for other regular employees.

To the apparent surprise of the Humala administration, the youth have roundly rejected the law as discriminatory and have argued that it is actually an attempt to mollify the entrepreneurial sector after two years of slowed economic growth by making it possible to incur those cost savings in up to 25% of their labor force and to receive an additional tax break for doing so.

The march was scheduled to start at 6 pm. The police presence was notable, but it was also evident that they were making an effort to have a lighter touch than the had displayed toward another such march on the 18th, after which the police were accused of inciting trouble after being video recorded charging the marchers with horses and dousing them --and holiday shoppers-- with tear gas.

These young ladies were clearly excited to be there and smilingly asked me
to take their picture

At this march the police were on deployed on foot, and sans side arms and without their usual allotment of tear gas launchers.  They also deployed a larger number of female officers, genteelly outfitted in white cotton gloves.

That "lighter" touch, however, did not prevent the Minister of the Interior, Army General Daniel Urresti, from showing up at a pre-march concentration at a park some distance away from the plaza, and blustering that anyone causing "disturbances" would be dealt with harshly, as well as suggesting that marchers would be banned from wearing backpacks or head coverings, and even that all participants would have to present their national ID and register with the police beforehand.  Those statements earned him a quick rebuke from the head of the president's Ministerial Council.

   

The march got going promply at 6 o'clock --under the watchful eye of a couple of drones-- with marchers streaming out of the plaza and down Nicolas de Pierola (a.k.a La Colmena) Ave., west down Garcilazo de la Vega (a.k.a Wilson) Ave., and then down Salaverry Ave., and past the Ministry of Labor.

"When the Law is Unjust Protest is a Duty"

An energetic group of young anarchists made up the tail end of the march as it left the plaza:

"If No One Works In Your Stead, No One Should Decide In Your Stead...
No Union or Party Bureacracy; Workers' Free Association!"   

  Later, on my way home from the bookstores, I found that the march had continued past the Ministry of Labor and was now heading down Arequipa Ave. toward the upper middle class and heavily commercial district of Miraflores, passing through the districts of Jesus Maria, Lince, and San Isidro on the way, and disrupting traffic for many blocks.

March proceeding along the two westbound lanes of Ave. Arequipa

I decided to leave my taxi and accompanied the march for a number of blocks at that point, but as I neared home, I decided to continue on my path there.   During my time with the march --which had by now swelled to at least 10,000 and covered a nearly a dozen blocks-- I witnessed many shows of support for the youth, from drivers honking in rythm wiith the chants, passersby clapping for them, and people coming to their windows and balconies to cheer them on.

Large police contingent accompanies the march

The marchers, I saw later on  the news, then gathered and rallied in Miraflores' Kennedy Park. The entire protest lasted some 6 hours, and --despite an attempt to divert the march by a group that managed to split off a contingent along a different avenue-- it went on without incident. 

There was a group that gathered in the Plaza San Marti and who were dispersed and repressed by the police after a brief street battle.  While this was going on the main demonstration was across town, but that hasn't stopped the conservative and pro-business media from trying to smear the protests as violent, or to make ominous pronouncements about "infiltrators".

Anti-repression, pro-environment march in Lima

On July 12th, there was a march in Lima demanding:

• That the Ollanta Humala administration keep its electoral promises
• End of repression against the mass movement in Cajamarca and Cuzco's Espinar province against mining concessions
• No to the Conga mining project in Cajamarca

The popular movement in Cajamarca against the concession of mining permits to Yanacocha corp. for the Conga mining project, which would drain a number of lakes and dry up several streams, in addition to leaving the area with a legacy of toxic waste, called for a nationwide support mobilization on the 12th, so the the Conga issue was merged with the march already called by the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP). (Marches also took place in Ica, in Arequipa, and -in defiance of a declared state of emergency- in Cajamarca)

The concentration point was at the Plaza Dos de Mayo -right in front of the CGTP headquarters- and the march was to end at the Plaza San Martin, a traditional spot for large political rallies.  In between it wound through downtown Lima, stretching 8-10 blocks across four lanes of road.

I had learned about the mobilization from a group of demonstrators in Trujillo, and determined to add my presence to the cause.   I accompanied the march from Plaza Dos de Mayo, down Nicolas de Pierola, Wilson, and to the Plaza Grau.  At that point we had marched quite a distance and it wasn't clear to me what the remainder of the route would be, so I called it a day and missed the final rally in Plaza San Martin.

By the evening and the following day, the news media -largely pro-"development"- focused their coverage not on the march, the rally, or the demands, but on the graffitti painted on the pedestal of the monument to Gen. San Martin by a group of anarchist youth from the Union Socialista Libertaria.   There were the usual demands that left "distance" itself from, and "condemn", "radicals" and "violent" sectors. The occasion was also used to try to put lefty mayor Susana Villaran on the spot for allegedly not policing the event sufficiently.

The only exception to this bandwagon that I saw among the daily press was La Primera newspaper's coverage.

May Day in Lima

Unlike the United States, in much of the rest of the world May 1st is Labor Day and in many places it is an official or de facto holiday.   In the US, until recently, the date has been relatively ignored despite the fact that  it was picked in commemoration of the martyrs of the Chicago "Haymarket Affair" of 1868.

My last full day in Lima was Sunday, May 1st, so I decided I'd take the opportunity to attend the local May Day observance.

This was the May Day rally called by the General Workers' Confederation of Peru (CGTP), the country's largest and oldest labor confederation.    About 300-400 people gathered in the Plaza Dos de Mayo and then marched up Ave. Nicolas de Pierola and then down Ave. Garcilazo de la Vega, to rally at the monument to the founder of the CGTP and of the Peruvian Socialist Party, Jose Carlos Mariategui.

I was a bit surprised, given the bad rap that the Shining Path gave Maoism for so many years, to see Mao's portrait so prominently displayed. At right  is literature praising the programs of reformist general Juan Velasco Alvarado, who, among other things, nationalized petroleum and initiated agrarian reform in 1969.

Kids from the street youths' union.  At right: their representatives at the podium, nect to them, in the white shirt, is Mario Huaman, head of the CGTP

This guys is a left party bigwig, but I can't recall his name.  In the past he was associated withe the United Left (Izquierda Unida) coalition, and maybe Patria Roja.

National Teachers' Union, Lima Region: "In Defense of Teachers' Rights! For Free and Quality Public Education!"

 

Group accusing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori of being complicit in forced sterilizations of poor women during her father's dictatorship 

July 8th: "National Day of Struggle" Rally in Downtown Lima

On July 8th the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), in conjunction with the National Front for Life and Sovereignty (Frente Nacional por la Vida y la Soberania) of which it is a part, called for a Day of Struggle, with a rally in downtown Lima and marches and rallies in other cities. This came in conjunction with a 72-hr ground transport strike which curtailed movement to a significant degree in Lima and other cities, and totally paralyzed Ayacucho on the 7th, and with 72-hr Andean and Amazonian strike.

The demands:

- Return to Peru of Alberto Pizango
- End to criminilization of social protest and to persecution of popular, social, and political leaders
- End to Legislative Decrees 982, 983, 988, and 989.
- Reinstatement of 7 suspended Nationalist Party congressmembers
- Force of law for International Labor Organization Convention 169 and for the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples
- Immediate resignation of the Cabinet
- End to the neoliberal and primary resource export-oriented economic policy
- End to the Public Education Career Law
- Solution to the demands of the transport unions
- Price controls on public services. Reduction in electrical fees.
- Increase in budget for social services, health, and education


Of course, most people were still compelled to go to work, and the government was quick to seize on that to call the mobilization a "failure" although being forced by the obvious to admit that transport was severely curtailed, despite it's own attempts to split the transport unions and its mobilization of state-owned buses and trains to move people about the capital.