Sister, What you experience, we live here ♦ Worker Demands Respect here ♦ To the ICWP Comradeshere ♦
Letter: Sister, What you experience in the factory, we live in many geographies
–”I’m going to tell you about the factory where I work…”
And so you began your speech with a broken voice, but firm and determined to say your word, to be the voice of those who continue to be silenced by capital, sister comrade.
– “Rats pollute where you are working. (…) People are fired unfairly.”
What matters is production, not your health and even less your life. I listen to you and immediately visualize more working women from different geographies; but all of them from the same world within a logic of the market, sustained by rogue relations between employers and female and male workers, where only exploitation and wage slavery fit.
– “If the children get sick, you can’t ask permission. We have to leave them sick alone and our children do not understand.”
How do you explain to your sons and daughters that their mother is subjugated as an object of production, expropriated of all your value as a human being, where it is forbidden to think of a minimum dignified life for them? It is not your task, sister, it is a collective ethical-political responsibility; a complex but vital challenge that we need to take on.
– “In the factory there is one’s time. When you complain they just tell us: There, you see, if you don’t want to or don’t like it, leave.”
Again your words, emerging from your conscience and heart, beat in me and I see you in the endless rows of young people, mothers, fathers, and even grandmothers and grandfathers, under the sun and the rain, waiting to be “hired, hired”, transgressing borders, without expecting a minimum salary and working conditions.
–”We work and they don’t care about our health.
And one’s work is left there…
And one’s time is left there…”
Your existence, your life is synthesized in producing 140 dozen. It doesn’t matter how, but produce them. And you know the consequences of not reaching the “goal”. Are these consequences only in your factory? You fully understand that it is not, because capitalist interests and all political expressions of the right know no borders. They are like recipes/pieces part of a scaffolding that runs regardless of who it drags, defined by the bosses of your maquila, of the other maquilas near and far, of the so-called world of industry where the word “rights” does not exist, much less “justice”, “equality”, “freedom”.
– “Thanks to the Party I have understood what exploitation means, what to do and how to respond to exploitation.”
And that historic and wise question “What is to be done?”, in your voice has meaning again in my life and I walk and I experience it again as a result of the dialectical praxis in the class struggle. I have no words to tell you:
Thank you, comrade, comrade, sister! Let us always extend our fists in one heart against every expression born of infamous capitalism. You’re not alone! I assure you!
—Comrade in Costa Rica
Letter: Communist Maquila Worker Demands Respect
I am a maquila worker. I am glad to be part of the ICWP, to read and distribute Red Flag.
I want to tell you that I was at the end-of-year meeting, with the participation of comrades from Costa Rica, Mexico, the USA, and this country. We agreed on how the capitalist system has us. Everywhere we suffer the same abuses, just as we do in El Salvador. Where everything looks pretty for the capitalist. But not for the working class.
Today, January 2, we have been affected in the factory. They have laid off staff. As well as in the week before December 19. A marketing gentleman came down to see the work we were doing. And he had a bad expression towards us workers. Sorry for the expression, but this is how he referred to us. He said: “B—-, if you do not work, you will be fired.”
That affected us emotionally and psychologically. We do not expect anything good from the employers. But they demand respect, he stressed.
We are not spoiled. We just do our job. I don’t see the reason for insulting us workers. This is just one of many things that we endure.
We have seen China’s influence in this country. In the historic center is the BINAES, the new National Library with almost no books, donated by the Chinese government. We found Chinese restaurants and companies. Salvadoran businesses have disappeared in that area,
At the international conference, I liked that a comrade commented, “Let’s not talk about the capitalist anymore, he’s bad, we already know that. Let’s talk about Communism, as we think it will be.”
I really liked that part, because only by understanding that important part, will we get out of that thing that has us up to our necks in water.
— Communist Worker in El Salvador
Letter: To Comrades of the International Communist Workers’ Party
It is a pleasure to address you, dear friends and fellow workers of ICWP.
I want to tell you that I am very motivated to have met my communist friends again.
For many years, due to life situations, I had no contact with the party. But I had very good memories that I have shared, with communist ideas, with people who are real fighters. I knew these ideas when I was a teenager and they were always present in my life.
A few weeks ago I was surprised that comrades I knew, and several comrades who accompanied them, arrived in the community. We met again after twenty-two years. It was a very emotional moment, because it had taken many years to meet again. They gave us Red Flag, which we are sharing for everyone to read until the next edition arrives.
My mother welcomed them and told them, “Those who come are also family.” That day we had time to catch up. The whole family is very happy and motivated by this moment.
Then they invited me to a conference that would be held in the next few days. I had some commitments, but I did everything possible to make changes and I attended. It was a joy for me to see them again and meet other national and international comrades.
There at the conference, we had time to plan an end-of-the-year get-together. It took place days later, in the community where I live.
I invited my family and some friends from the community. Eighteen adults and several children were there. We shared many experiences and now we are in communication. And we will have more information with the Red Flag newspaper that will reach our hands soon. Greetings to all!
— Young Communist