Solidarity with the sugar cane cutters of Valle del Cauca, Colombia

venezuela / colombia | workplace struggles | news report Friday May 14, 2010 04:42 by Manu García

Appeal in solidarity with the sugar cane cutters of the María Luisa sugar refinery in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, who had been struggling for a month in order to have their rights raised to the same level as other workers in the sector. They are facing a lot of repression in the most adverse situation to demand social rights as is Colombia nowadays.

There is important news in relation to the conflict held by the sugar cane cutters in Valle del Cauca against the powerful bosses of the sugar agro-industry [1], who are big capitalists with numerous enterprises, among them, the financial control of some of the most important Colombian media.

Police has been given orders to evict hundreds of sugar cane cutters and their families from María Luisa, as they have been camping for a month at the gates of that refinery, demanding their labour situation to be levelled to that of other sugar cane cutters, which in any case is pitiful as well: they work 7 days a week, without a right to holidays, without social security (legally, they belong to a “cooperative”, a legal trick created to benefit the bosses), with starvation wages and variable according to the amount of cane they cut (which is weighted by the company), without medical attention, with a working day of 10, 12 or even more hours… and their lot was even worse before the heroic strike of two years ago, which lasted many months.

The companies get great profits from their work, which goes mainly to the biofuel business, and the workers get mere crumbs.

These comrades (most of them Afro-Colombians coming from other regions, in many cases displaced by the internal conflict in Colombia, through the action of far rights paramilitaries) are well organised in a combative union, founded on the basis of solidarity and libertarian principles, which also looks at the situation of the wives of the cutters, their families and demands the right to education of their children. The Committee of Women of the sugar cane cutters has done a wonderful work and has been of paramount importance in all the stages of struggle developed up to this very minute by the comrades.

They have the strength of their unity, they have the courage and the will to keep going on which can only give you deep seated class consciousness, but they need our solidarity, they need of all the support we can offer them from over here, both at and individual and at an organisational level, support that could be economic but also it could be just to let others know what is going on there. Also, it is important to put pressure on their bosses and on the local and national politicians in Valle del Cauca and Colombia.

Do not let the sugar cane cutters stand on their own; let’s show that our solidarity is more than a slogan!