"As long as solidarity continues, we will stay out against all odds until at least some of our basic demands are met," explained one oil worker occupying a refinery in Cubatao, Brazil. Working people around the world should take this to heart and give their full support to the unionists now entering their second month on strike.
The oil workers' struggle is the best answer to the rulers' austerity drive not only in Brazil but across Latin America. The strikers have declared they will not roll over and accept the trampling of their dignity and livelihoods.
Facing a mounting economic crisis, and under the gun of imperialist banks and investors in New York, London, and Tokyo, governments throughout the continent are trying to ram major concessions down the throats of working people through privatizations, layoffs, and speed up. Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso "is imposing the same policies as the governments in Argentina, Mexico, and Bolivia," one oil worker said. "They're turning over our national patrimony to multinationals for the price of bananas."
This strike is part of a broader resistance by workers and peasants in the region. The months before the oil workers walked out saw a strike by teachers and thousands of other workers in Bolivia, a series of strikes and uprisings in several provinces in Argentina, a May Day demonstration of 100,000 in Mexico City, continued resistance by peasants in southern Mexico, and numerous other struggles throughout Latin America.
The workers in Brazil are breaking the image the bosses and their lackeys in government throughout the capitalist world try to impose on working people - suffering victims who are incapable of standing up in solidarity as conscious, self-acting human beings. The massive industrial area where workers have occupied the refinery had been dubbed the "valley of death," because of pollution. Now it is earning the title "valley of struggle."
The struggles in Latin America, with the Brazilian oil workers' strike at the center, also answer the arguments of politicians and union officials in the United States and other imperialist countries who try to convince workers that their counterparts in other countries are to blame for unemployment, falling wages, and cuts in social benefits. The strikes make it easier to understand that working people throughout the world face common problems and a common enemy - the world capitalist system - and are capable of fighting back and linking up in solidarity.
Not only do the strikers in Brazil connect their struggle to that of workers in other countries facing similar austerity measures, some are looking to the example of Cuba. Workers at a strike rally in Cubatao responded to a speech by a young Cuban communist with chants of "Brazil, Cuba, Central America; the working class is international."
By taking power out of the hands of the U.S. corporations and the national capitalist class through their socialist revolution, workers and farmers in Cuba became the first, and only, nation in Latin America to achieve real independence, dignity, and sovereignty. Today they are able to use that power to minimize the negative impact of the world economic crisis on workers' living standards and conditions.
The big-business press has been virtually silent on the class struggle unfolding in Brazil. They are scared of working people learning the truth about each others' fights, and thus breaking through the isolation they use to keep workers divided.
That's why the labor movement internationally has a responsibility to publicize the oil workers' strike. Working people in every country can help get out the facts about their fight; get messages of support from unions, student groups, and others; and build solidarity in every way possible. These strikers are in the vanguard of working- class struggle in the world today, and deserve international solidarity.