Vol. 73/No. 50      December 28, 2009

According to a December 15 communiqué by the Nicaraguan Ministry of Defense, the worst massacre was the December 6 ambushing of a truck full of coffee pickers between the towns of Telpaneca and San Juan del Río Coco in the mountainous north-central part of the country known as Las Segovias. Of the 33 civilians on the truck, 29 were killed, many of them burned alive when the mercenaries set fire to the truck after having stolen provisions and identification papers from the passengers.

Jorge Luis Briones—one of four who survived—explained that the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolutionaries attacked the truck using rockets, grenades, and rifle fire.  
 
December 28, 1959
MINNEAPOLIS, December 20—The National Guard is riding herd on some 200 scabs in the struck Wilson packinghouse plant at Albert Lea, about 100 miles south of here. The object at present is to prevent the union from closing down the plant and to gain time for the scab operation.

The plant was at first shut down by the troops December 11 under a declaration of martial law issued by Gov. Freeman after a thousand striking members of the United Packinghouse Workers, Local 6, had engaged in a pitched battle against scabs armed with guns, knives, and blackjacks. Wilson had locked its workers out November 1 and refused to negotiate a new contract.

Major General Cook then authorized a “partial” and “temporary” reopening of the plant. Meanwhile the company is continuing its campaign to pressure the governor into permitting full-scale scab operation of the plant.  
 
December 29, 1934
One of the most vicious anti-labor trials in years is now in full swing in Sacramento, California. The District Attorney, on behalf of the Industrial Association, is trying to send 18 militant workers to the State Penitentiary at San Quentin for the “crime” of organizing to get higher wages, an activity described by the capitalist legal system of California as “Criminal Syndicalism.”

The defendants were the leaders and active militants of the Agricultural and Cannery Workers’ Union. Masked as an “anti-red” crusade, the trial is aimed primarily at this organization, the most active and effective of any of the unions under Communist Party leadership in California.

At this writing, the jury is being picked which will be asked to convict these workers, some of them members of the Communist Party, and others without political affiliation.  
 
 
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