MayDay 2007, Part 2: Latin America

While on MayDay 2007 workers in most of the world are at best desperately attempting to hold the line against the one-sided global class war, the situation across much of Latin America is different, more positive, and hopeful for the present and future of working people.Perhaps because for most of the past quarter century, Latin America was the proving ground for the doctrines of neoliberal globalism;

Perhaps because nowhere else are the failures of the corporatist so-called “free market”so obvious, with its austerity programs, its privatizations and its privations, its World Bank and IMF and trilateralism having taken so many nations, so many peoples down to economic calamity;

Perhaps because nowhere else have the destructive consequences of the policies of privatization and the tyranny of the quarterly report been more clear in their consequences for workers, indigenous peoples and the environment;

Perhaps because the economic and social calamities resulting from the neoliberal era have caused a rebirth of a sense of social solidarity, of a vast web of social and political organizations and networks that incubated empowered people and brought forth new ranks of activists, thinkers and leaders;

For these reasons and more, MayDay, 2007 in Latin America is a celebration of what has been achieved in recent years, and a rallying cry to continue the march forward for justice.

Of course conditions are not uniform, and no victory is final. In many places, the forces of oppression and exploitation retain power and control in oligarchic hands. Elsewhere there is often the disappointing co-optation of authentic leaders who upon achieving real power become reconciled to the interests of the hegemonic system, betraying the hopes of those that brought them forward. And in those places where the progress for the poor and working people begins to truly alter the relations of power in society, there is no limit to the measures hegemony will employ to crush those beacons of hope. Still, Latin America stands apart as the sole region on earth where the trend today is away from the hegemony of corporate domination, where the long arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice. For this reason, when the working people, the poor, the peasants and the indigenous take to the streets, to the great squares and plazas this MayDay , they do so not only to celebrate their own victories, and to push forward their own march to justice and democracy, they also do so as the vanguard of the working people everywhere struggling against the power of neoliberal hegemony. Never has it been more truly said:

iEl pueblo unido jamás será vencido!

For listings of MayDay 2007 events in Latin America, continue to the extended copy.

 

 

Bogota

 

Brasil (National List)

 

Buenos Aires

 

Caracas

 

Chilpancingo

 

Guayaquil

 

La Habana

 

Lima

 

Mendoza

 

Montevideo

 

Oaxaca

 

Santiago

I know there must be many more events that should be on this list, but this was all I could find after days of searching. If you are aware of other MayDay 2007 events in Latin America that should be on this list, please leave a comment with a link and I will update to add the event.

 

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