William Marino, journalist, columnist for EL ECO. In 1889, the second International, in Paris, adopted a resolution calling for a great national demonstration (France) proclaiming May 1 as International Workers’ Day. Thus commemorating the memory of the Chicago Martyrs and commemorating the struggle of the workers of the world.
One hundred and thirty-three years have passed since this measure adopted by workers, a time when the world was very different from today. Among other things, the Paris Commune (1871), which had been drowned in blood, was very fresh in the memory. Tens of thousands of workers killed by the French army and the exile of many thousands more. The world at that time was, Europe, the US and America.
Colonies in Asia and Africa were subservient to their European “masters.”
The US was emerging as a great power. She kept adding stars to her flag. “Anarcho-syndicalism” was what prevailed in the trade union world.
Uruguay was no stranger to the subject. At the end of the 19th century, in this country the struggle was centered between the interior and the capital. It will be the time of the last two civil wars in our country.
The death of Aparicio Saravia in 1904, will bring “tranquility” to the country, at least in the armed uprisings, but a new social class arose in the country with the advent of industry: the worker, the industrial worker.
Large companies begin to emerge and with it the unions, the unions. But nothing was the same as today. The first act of commemoration of a May 1 apparently was in 1896, in one of the few “Socialist Center” of that time. Even so, this date is the only one that is commemorated worldwide. Only the country that murdered the Chicago Martyrs does not commemorate it, nor does it remember it.
The history of the trade union movement in our country is very rich. From what is remembered as the first strike: in 1873 that of the workers of the Caridad hospital, today the Maciel hospital. In 1880 the strike at the Cuña Pirú mines, of which little is known about it and according to what is said, was fiercely repressed by the guards of the company itself.
In 1884 the first strike of a guild will be that of the fideeros. To reach the first general strike on May 23, 1911. The entire union movement was moved by increased wages and 8-hour work days. All these union movements were very badly seen by the bosses and the political power.
For those in power, these attempts and protest struggles were considered very serious crimes. This was marked by “the laws and customs of the time”. Even the flyers, brochures, newspapers, very little graffiti, except for some billboards, even in the speeches made by the speakers, everything could enter into the issue of what is illegal, what is prohibited, including that of deporting foreigners who “come to work but that in themselves are agitators”.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, it was still very common for working-class prisoners to end up in jail for defending their ideals. In the year 1896, the newspaper El Día, founded a few years earlier by José Batlle y Ordoñez, published a document recognizing and still advocating the fairness of workers’ demands. But it was the only newspaper of the many that were published daily in our country.
Many were the murders by strikebreakers or by police and army repression. But as there was going to be no repression, the chiefs of police were sometimes owners of companies in the cities and in the interior they were the owners of large extensions of land.
The case that we want to remember, happens back in 1907, in the so-called Villa del Cerro. The salters were on strike, a strikebreaker killed the worker Juan Robas. In those days, they planned to hold a big rally at the Cerro International Center, for the freedom of the detainees, who were about 25. The chief of police was a character named West, a former employer leader, who prohibited the rally with a large police deployment. .
In 1953, almost 70 years ago, María del Carmen Díaz, a Ferrosmalt worker, was murdered during a strike, shot by plainclothes policemen. More than 60 years ago, many will remember the staking of several workers at the entrance to the Cerro, on the banks of the Pantanoso stream where the soccer fields are. The chief of police in Montevideo, if I remember correctly, was General Aguerrondo, he was during the government of the National Party in a strike of the workers of the refrigerators.
We could go on, but it was just to remember something that in the history of the Workers’ Movement “should not be forgotten”. Those were times when you worked 8 hours or more and then militated in the social, trade union or political, always militating without asking for anything in return.
What I am writing came to my memory since a Radio Argentina -AM 970 Radio Genesis- asked me if I remembered my first May 1st. And if I remember. In 1957 I lived in Cerrito de la Victoria and we concentrated on General Flores and Industria (today Serrato), around one in the afternoon to wait for those who came from Piedras Blanca and Maroñas. Over time I learned who the Bonaudi brothers were, employees of the Municipal casino, Agustín Badiola and Petizo de León, leaders of transport, Line I of CUTCSA was in Gral. Flores and Santa Ana, Aramis Rojas, a newspaper vendor, would later be a leader of his union, the Santanas who were leaders of the FUNSA union, the Pereiras of SUNCA…..
What a beautiful time that was. It seems that I am still seeing that poster: “WORKERS and STUDENTS UNITE and FORWARD”.
