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Today's
Stories
November 29 / 30, 2003
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
November 29 / 30, 2003
The "Free Trade"
History Eraser
Honduras,
Maquilas and Popular Protest in Latin America
By TONI SOLO
Three things hold people's attention currently
in Latin America, the nationwide protest in Bolivia in defence
of the country's natural resources, the ongoing popular defence
of the Chavez government in Venezuela and the heavy political
defeats suffered by President Uribe in Colombia. Uribe's party
lost humiliatingly both the mayoral elections in Bogota and the
national referendum on his government's policies. These events
represent serious unravelling of US government aims in Latin
America.
Despite the setbacks, official US policy
is committed to forcing through as hard as it can the Free Trade
Area of the Americas. That commitment is primarily a continent-wide
strategy to safeguard US corporate commercial dominance. But
it also works as a piecemeal country-by-country bilateral strategy
to lock economically vulnerable countries into the US plutocracy's
international political agenda.
Latin American resistance to this centuries-old
colonial practice is largely a forgotten history in the United
States. "Free trade" ideologues pretend current conditions
are inevitable and God-given. It is a profoundly anti-historical,
carefully contrived illusion. Hard doses of reality help see
through it.
"Max"--poetry
and political memory
Some say it was November 24th, 1993.
Others remember it as the 17th. Rigoberto Quezada Figueroa pulled
up in his car at the traffic light by the Hotel Siesta, just
a few blocks from the centre of San Pedro Sula. The Hotel sits
at a busy traffic intersection a couple of blocks south of the
old banana company railroad tracks. The kind of cheap hotel handy
for the centre of town where you lie awake at night wondering
will the traffic noise ever stop.
In those days it was possible to think
President Callejas' 1990 political amnesty meant a new era. Maybe
Rigoberto thought so too. In any case, waiting on the corner
by the Hotel Siesta, witnesses said later, two assailants shot
him in the head. The newspaper photos showed his body slumped
forward over the wheel with kind of a look of surprise on his
face.
Rigoberto was "Sebastian Rojas",
the poet. For clandestine organizing purposes he was also "Max".
The Honduran press called him "el ultimo guerrillero"--the
last guerrilla fighter. Rigoberto was killed because he wrote
and lived the meaning of lines like these 1
What do you think of your fingernails
when you look at the lines of dirt
that gather with each passing harvest
and that dirt's all that's ever left of you?
And then the boss calls you a thief
(Can you really steal what's yours?
You can lose it. That's different.)
and hauls you up before a judge
and then to gaol, since his judge condemned you
(Condemned you? You're damned to daywork
if you don't organize............)
The role of memory--1954
Another reason they killed Rigoberto
was because he remembered history and refused to let it go. He
remembered the epoch-making strike in 1954 that broke open the
old National Party oligarchy and the stranglehold of the US fruit
companies at the very moment the US was about to overthrow the
democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. The strike
was a surprise to the US colonialists. Few had expected anything
like that from Honduras. Wasn't it the place Sam "the Banana
Man" Zemurray had ridiculed, where you could buy a parliamentary
deputy cheaper than a mule?
Honduras has long suffered from having
been the original banana republic. In fact, Honduran working
people played a vital role in building and sustaining labor rights
in Central America through the 1950s and 1960s. If there is a
single Latin American novelist who speaks for the rural and urban
poor in the 20th Century that writer is Honduran--Ramon Amaya
Amador. His novels are among the few sources that enable us to
recover the lived reality of those times. No better antidote
exists to the modish evasion of realism than to read his novels
"Prision Verde", "Constructores" or "Destacamento
Rojo".
The great strike--from
May to July
The strike itself lasted over two months.
It sprang from the awakening of nationalist and popular consciousness
following 16 years of the US-supported dictatorship of General
Carias Andino. By 1953 newspapers were circulating like "Worker's
Voice" and "Revolutionary Vanguard", a political
party existed called the Honduran Party for Democratic Revolution.
Leading demands were for a Labor Code and the right to form trades
unions. Women won the vote in Honduras in 1955, the year after
the great strike.
Based on demands for fair overtime pay,
the stoppage began in the town of El Progreso on May 1st. It
spread rapidly to the ports of Tela and La Ceiba and other areas
of the banana enclave dominated by the United Fruit and Standard
Fruit companies. 14000 striking banana company workers paralysed
the railways and the docks. Strike committees were set up throughout
the area maintaining discipline and avoiding violence so as to
strip the army of pretexts for repression.
Within a month miners, bottling plant
workers, textile and tobacco workers had joined the strike and
the dispute had spread to the capital Tegucigalpa. By mid-June
around 30,000 workers in various industries were on strike in
support of the fruit company workers' demands. The government
and the fruit companies accused the strike leaders of being communists.
Many were imprisoned. By then the companies and the government
were losing up to a million dollars a week in lost revenues.
Repression deepened in June as employers
and government attempted to isolate the different labor sectors
and negotiate settlements by industry. Despite arrests, repression
and financial hardship the strike held and its basic demands
were met. Employers and government conceded wage rises and improved
conditions. By July 12th it was over with a victory for the Honduran
workers.
The US government blamed Guatemala for
fomenting the dispute--a transparent fabrication. Eisenhower's
Secretary of State Dulles had even mobilised the US Navy to be
prepared to land marines "to protect US citizens".
For the US, the strike made dealing with the moderate reformist
government in Guatemala more urgent. Good democracy was bad for
US business.
Following the overthrow of President
Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Honduran's civilian government was
thrown out by the armed forces in 1955 until a constituent assembly
was formed prior to new elections. In 1957 a Liberal Party government
was elected under Ramon Villeda Morales. A cautious social democrat
but with the 1954 strike as his precedent, Villeda Morales introduced
a Social Security program, a modern Labor Code and the country's
first Agrarian Reform legislation.
1963--the forgotten
coup
Plenty of people know of the coup d'etat
in the Dominican Republic in 1963, when military officers overthrew
the democratically elected centrist government of Juan Bosch
allegedly to save the country from communism. Not so many people
know of the coup in Honduras in October 1963 which ended the
elected government of Ramon Villeda Morales. The coup was led
by the chief of the Honduran Air Force, Colonel Oswaldo Lopez
Arellano who declared in a radio broadcast, "The patriotic
armed forces have intervened to put an end to flagrant violations
of the Constitution and self-evident Communist infiltration."
It might have been a model for Chile
just ten years later. Only 12 hours before the coup, Arellano
Lopez was saying publicly he had no intentions of intervening.
Early next morning, he put two squadrons of warplanes in the
air, threatening to bomb the residence of the democratically
elected President. Arellano Lopez was a man to warm the hearts
of latter-day covert coup-plotters like Colin Powell and Otto
Reich, understudies to Henry Kissinger and Vernon Walters.
On the ground, the army fought and disarmed
the pro-government Civil Guard. The colonel forced Villeda Morales
to resign and packed him and other Liberal Party leaders off
to exile in Costa Rica. Rural workers and urban trades unionists
were not so lucky, suffering imprisonment, torture and murder.
Lyndon Johnson's administration recognised the Lopez Arellano
regime within a matter of months.2
So that's how the
maquilas came about ......
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Honduras
toed the US colonial line. When banana workers again took the
initiative in the 1970s, setting up the ground breaking successful
"Las Isletas" workers cooperative, the CIA stepped
in and wrecked it. The business was taken over by Standard Fruit.
During the 1980s, Honduran domestic agricultural
protection was systematically dismantled. US PL480 "aid"
distorted the country's basic grains market with dumped US surplus
wheat and maize. Provisions in the aid legislation to protect
the indigenous market were waived year after year. That "aid"
was tied to hard political conditions including removal of the
country's Agricultural Marketing Institute and any other effective
support for small domestic producers. Policy was geared to promote
cattle farming and non-traditional exports, favouring large farmers
and big agribusiness. A main beneficiary was the US animal feeds
sector.
As a result local basic grain production
contracted. By the end of the 1980s, Honduras, which had been
a net exporter of basic grains in the 1970s, was dependent on
imports. Correspondingly, the 1980s saw wholesale acceleration
in migration from rural to urban areas--in effect the creation
of the unskilled urban labor reserve needed for US and US-allied
maquilas. At the same time US ambassador John Negroponte helped
oversee a "dirty war" in which as many as 180 leading
members of the popular movement were disappeared or murdered--including
many leading trades unionists. The Honduran people's capacity
for organized resistance was crippled.
The decade also saw the imposition of
international financial institution "structural adjustment"
policies, notorious for their failure either to promote real
economic development or to overcome poverty. By the 1990s all
the necessary conditions were established to promote low wage,
non-unionised assembly operations to serve the US apparel and
other markets. The US government's preferred industrial model
for Central America was in place.
Public sector cutbacks and the collapse
in agricultural employment created a huge pool of unskilled labor
desperate for work. The assault on the popular movement left
trades unions in disarray and on the defensive. The government
parroted free market gobbledygook from its overseers in the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund and translated it into
legislation offering give away terms to attract predatory foreign,
low-cost, light industrial pseudo-investment – the
maquilas.
Honduran maquilas
now
Conditions in Central American apparel
and other maquilas have been well reported over the years. Over
80% of maquila workers are women, the majority between 18 and
25 years old. They work minimum shifts of 9 hours with obligatory
overtime. Their work conditions are usually stressful and unhealthy.
Apparel workers typically suffer serious respiratory problems
after a couple of years working while constantly inhaling lint
microparticles. The women work in a deliberately high tension
atmosphere which includes predetermined and timed rest-room visits.
In those conditions the women perform repetitive micro-tasked
work at an output rate of two to four pieces per minute so as
to make their shift quota, that can be anything from 800 to 1200
pieces. For that, workers are paid a basic rate of about US$25
for a six day week.
The companies keep the wage calculation
complicated. The total wage includes an additional daily attendance
bonus of around US$3 and a similar weekly production bonus enabling
the women to make over US$30 for their week. But if they miss
just one day they lose all their bonuses and their weekly pay
can fall below US$20. Days lost through sickness are treated
the same as a day lost through unjustified absence.
Most women work in the maquilas for no
more than six or seven years, often moving from one to another.
Unable to save, unable to study, those years are lost to them.
A Mexican sociologist has succinctly characterized the plight
of women maquila workers, "To be a maquila worker is to
be vulnerable, day in and day out,"3 It's just the same
in Honduras. Women are stressed all day at work only to be faced
each evening with completing domestic chores in desperately poor
conditions at home.
Penniless philanthropists
finance the free market
The maquilas now employ more than 100,000
workers in over 150 factories. Honduras is the fourth main exporter
of apparel to the United States. In 1999 those exports were worth
more than US$2 billion--a grossly exaggerated return on a total
investment of just a few hundred million dollars. The US owns
over 40% of the maquilas in Honduras followed by South Korea,
Taiwan and then Singapore, China and Hong Kong. Local Honduran
businesses run the remainder. Resistance to labor unions is common
to them all.
With government concessions in practice
exempting the companies from the country's labor laws, foreign
businesses can open up and close down fast. In 2001, 34 companies
closed down throwing nearly 30,000 people out of work. Many workers
were left without their statutory severance pay. Foreign companies
can soon open up again, maximising company profits at heavy social
cost. In addition to the no-cost hire-and-fire culture, some
of the companies dump toxic waste from their plants, frequently
causing widespread pollution.
International and local pressure has
led to slight improvements in employment terms and conditions.
Some of the industrial parks housing these companies now run
childcare centres--but few can pay the usual cost of US$10 a
week out of a total wage of barely US$30. Attempts to organize
continue based on small successes in the late 1990s. But resistance
is fierce from both the companies and from powerful local politicans
like Liberal Party business magnate Jaime Rosenthal.
The maquila motive--high
short-term profit
Local women's organizations try to monitor
conditions to ensure minimum standards are applied. But all efforts
to improve conditions come up against a stark reality. The companies
are only interested in maximizing short term profits. People
and whole countries are expendable assets.
The argument for the maquila industry
is that it brings economic benefits to Honduras. But the principal
characteristic of these businesses is their almost total isolation
from the local economy. Almost all the inputs for the apparel
industry come from high-tech production areas overseas. In Honduras,
extremely labour intensive processes complete the production
process. The goods are then shipped back out to high-income markets
in the US and Canada.
Next to nothing of value remains in Honduras,
mostly sick, exhausted labor and a polluted environment. Tax
revenue for local and national government is virtually nil. But
national and local government pick up the tab for the infrastructure
and social costs that make extortionate maquila profits possible.
National snapshot--look!....not
so invisible hands
Honduras has a population of just under
7 million. Per capita income is around US$920 per year. The poorest
20% receive just over 2% of the country's income while the richest
10% receive over 40%. Just as the rural-urban balance has changed
from 1982 to the present so has the balance between agriculture
and manufacturing. As a percentage of GDP, agriculture represented
over 20% in 1982. Twenty years later that had dropped to under
15%. Correspondingly, manufacturing in 1982 represented nearly
15% of GDP. By 2002 that figure had reached over 20%. The symmetry
is striking.
Honduras is highly indebted. In 2001
the value of international debt was nearly 50% of the country's
gross domestic product and over 100% of the value of its annual
exports. There is no Adam Smith "Wealth of Nations"
invisible hand here. That debt is a jemmy in the all-too-visible
hands of international corporations working in protective gloves
provided by the international financial institutions. As elsewhere
around the world, through privatization they have openly rifled
Central American public sector resources. The maquila system
is part of the same process.
Honduras is supposed to be a free market
model. But Cuba--victim of 40 years of economic blockade and
terrorism by the United States--sits dozens of places above Honduras
in the UN Human Development Index.4 You are unlikely ever to
see that fact widely broadcast or published in the US or in Europe.
The international financial institutions and the corporate controlled
media tirelessly sustain the illusion of inevitability, that
"free trade" is imperative, the only way to haul people
out of poverty. It is a pathetic, easily refuted lie. The truth
is there for all with a mind to see.
One of the reasons for the murder of
Rigoberto Quezada Figueroa was that he worked relentlessy at
grass roots to break the corporate illusory spell and expose
the lie. Few poets are worth a bullet. He was one of them. A
suitable metaphor for the global elite's systematic attempts
to deny hope, dignity and autonomy to the region's poor majority.
But no matter how hard the global corporate media try, people
don't forget. They remember. When is happening in Bolivia recalls
Honduras 50 years ago.
Toni Solo
is an activist based in Central America. Contact:- tonisolo52@yahoo.com
NOTES
1. From his "Jornalero", in
"Regrese a quedarme". Ediciones Martillo Tegucigalpa
1989
2. Amaya Amador brought the Arellano
coup to life in his novel "Operacion Gorila" 1991 Editorial
Universitaria, Universidad Nacional Autonoma, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
3. In "Numerous Killings Of Mexican
Women Unsolved" by Marion Lloyd, Boston Globe 2002
4. "Latin
America in Crisis: Cuba's Self-Reliance in the Storm",
By Nelson P. Valdes, Counterpunch, November 7, 2003
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