I received some translations of reports or statements made at the 27th International Seminar Problems of the Revolution in Latin America, usually held yearly in Quito, Ecuador, but meeting online this year, September 1-2. The RCP of Uruguay was founded about 50 years ago, in December 1972: pcr.org.uy/
Political situation
After three governments of the Frente Amplio [Broad Front], a front led by social democracy, revisionism (PCU) and social populism (MPP, of former President Mujica), a coalition of the traditional right and the fascist ultra-right has governed since March 2020, which won the 2019 elections by 1.5%.
The National Party of President Lacalle Pou leads the coalition; it includes the Colorado Party of former President Sanguinetti, Cabildo Abierto of retired General Manini Ríos, an ultra-right party with a military leadership very committed to the defense of the fascist military dictatorship and its crimes; the PI, Independent Party, a social democratic party, and the People's Party of the liberal right. It is noteworthy that Cabildo Abierto has 20% of the parliamentary seats of the coalition and weighs decisively on all issues.
What the three Frente Amplio [FA] governments did and did not do
The Law of Impunity was not repealed, very little progress was made in Truth and Justice and Manini ended up being promoted as the commander-in-chief of the army, an oligarch and member of a fascist lodge.
Salaries – The FA took over after the crisis of 2002 when salaries had fallen by 40% and there was no rapid increase in wages; the wage level was regained only after 10 years, but at the cost of sharp conflicts of the workers and not by government decrees
IMF-External Debt-TPPI – This was immediately agreed with the IMF. The debt multiplied by 3 in 15 years and implied accepting the conditions they imposed, including not investing in OSE (state waters), for example, and giving perks to agribusiness, forest monocultures and soy plantations. They approved the Irrigation Law, promoting private dams, with disastrous consequences. On December 28, 2005 the TPPI (investment protection treaty) was signed with the Yankees with whom a Free Trade Agreement was even attempted.
Earth – In 2005, the first year of the government, the largest foreign takeover and concentration of land in history occurred in one year. The Minister of Agriculture was Mujica. After 15 years most of the land was in foreign hands.
Privatizations-PPP-Outsourcing – Attempts were made to keep the water privatized in Maldonador despite the successful plebiscite. Progress was made in privatizations and PPP (public-private partnerships) that created with them a hidden debt and huge businesses for financial capital.
Tax Reform – They promised to remove the tax on salaries and they put it on the IRPF [Personal Income Tax] paid by 80% wage earners and the IASS [tax on pensions] to retirees, while there are US $3,000 million tax exemptions a year for big capital. The Value Added Tax is 22%, one of the highest in the world.
Social Security - the AFAP [Pension Fund Management Companies], which profits from the contributions of the workers and takes finances from the BPS (state social welfare bank), was maintained. Most pensions are miserable.
Papeleras – The establishment of paper mills, UPM 1, Montes de Plata was promoted and authorized and committed to UPM 2.
Industry – The process of deindustrialization of the country continued. The few factories rescued after the crisis were supported by Chávez.
Health – There is still one health-care system for the rich and another for the poor.
Education – It is far from reaching 6+1% of GDP as was promised.
Corruption – There were important cases of corruption – PLUNA (state airlines), ANCAP (state fuel), State Casinos, etc.
The current right-wing coalition government
A few days after taking office, it decreed the contraction of the state budget by 15% and that only 1 in 3 vacancies be filled in much of the state. Then there was a five-year National Budget, with strong fiscal adjustment. From there and with the excuse of the pandemic, a generalized salary reduction for more than 3 years.
It is a government that went full steam ahead against the people and immediately promoted the LUC, Law of Urgent Consideration, with almost 500 articles that are largely repressive and punitive, limiting the right to strike, prohibiting occupations and pickets, with a great attack on public education.
Faced with this law, there was a great popular battle in the streets, with strikes, mobilizations and a Referendum against 135 articles, for which 800,000 signatures were achieved and then with 1,078,000 votes, losing by 1.5%.
The reactionary onslaught continued in each of the annual budget accounts and with the approval of the reactionary Social Security Reform, which in reality is only a pension reform, which increases the required retirement age from 60 to 65 years and obligatorily extends the AFAPs to all savings banks and all workers regardless of the amount of their salary.
The AFAPs are a system of individual pension savings and imply a real emptying of the BPS (state), of US $1,200 million per year that come out of the contributions by the workers under this capitalist-imperialist system that imposes more and more job insecurity and super-exploitation. The reactionary chorus then speaks of the BPS's supposed deficit of $600 million annually.
The AFAPs are a real scam at the service of financial capital that was imposed by the conditions of the IMF and other imperialist agencies. They were eliminated in most of the countries where they were established when it was seen in practice that they do not provide services other than pensions and that in the vast majority of cases these are very low.
This government has deepened its dependence on Yankee imperialism and acts as a battering ram of its policy in the region and on the continent, permanently attacking Cuba and Venezuela as dictatorships and at the same time promoting an FTA with China, which has been the main buyer of U.S. exports: meat, soy and cellulose in recent years. It is a government that conceded a monopoly of loading and unloading of containers in the port of Montevideo to the Belgian company Katoen Natie for 50 years. It carried out the establishment of a second plant of the Finnish paper company UPM, taking charge of the state of a railway, road and bridge infrastructure for US $4,000 million. It is advancing the privatization of public companies, breaking up the Portland plants, and part of the fuel supplies in ports and airports, today in the hands of the ANCAP [National Administration of Fuels, Alcohols and Portland]; the same is happening with the state electric power company UTE and the telephone company ANTEL. With OSE, the state water company, a negotiation was approved with the construction monopolies, in the midst of the water crisis, the Neptune project to pump water of the Río de la Plata, which is questioned by scientists, environmentalists and the workers' union, because it implies privatization and the place of the occupation, Arazatí, has high levels of salinity and pollution.
Economic situation
Due to the crisis furthered by the pandemic, GDP fell sharply in 2020, the first year of the current government, by -6.1%, there was a recovery of 5.3% in 2021 and 4.9% in 2022, mainly due to the high prices of the main export products, meat, soybeans and pulp and construction works. of UPM2 and the great infrastructure that surrounds it.
In the last two quarters of 2022, a slight technical recession was reached and a poor GDP growth of 1.3% is expected for this year. This reflects the "normalization" of international prices, the serious effects of the drought that mainly affected soybeans, a large drop in meat exports due to the drop in purchases from China and the end of the aforementioned works. In the first half of 2023, soybean exports fell -76% and beef exports -32%. In 2022, the main export destinations were China (29%), the European Union (15%), Brazil (14%), Argentina (9%) and the USA (5%).
A factor that is greatly influencing the national economy is the backwardness of the economy, with a dollar that depreciates against the peso and artificially increases the production of goods and services in the country. The basis of this problem is in the issuance of bonds in UI (indexed units), in Uruguayan pesos that adjust for inflation and also pay high interest, which favors the speculative business. What successive governments have been doing with the argument of combating inflation in fact subsidizes all types of imports and permanently increases the public debt.
Global public debt is around $50 billion and about $20 billion in interest. To this we must add the indebtedness concealed by the PPP [Purchasing Price Parity. The GDP forecast at the end of this year 2023 is US $73,000 million.
In these years exploitation has increased, the percentage of submerged wages of less than $25,000 covers 33% of workers, about 550,000. 75% of workers do not reach the average family basket [of necessary goods], which today is $124,000, about US $3,100. There has been an increase in job insecurity, outsourcing and self-employment, much of which is "informal", covering some 350,000 workers.
Poverty has increased, there are 650 irregular settlements where some 250,000 people live and with the pandemic popular pots have become widespread.
The current workers' and people's struggles
March 8 – National strike of 24 hours by Women of the PIT-CNT (labor federation).
March 23 – Partial General Strike from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. against the government's reactionary pension reform.
April 25 – 24-hour National General Strike against the Social Security Reform, the day it began to be voted on in Parliament.
June 27 – Partial General Strike, 50 years after the Fascist Military Coup in commemoration of the heroic 15-day General Strike, carried out by the CNT in 1973.
August 22 – Partial General Strike for wages, in defense of public companies and solidarity with those in conflict.
Between January 1 and June 30, 2023, 60 labor disputes were registered in which 1,198,385 workers were involved. In the month of June there was an increase in sectoral conflict that was more than double that of the previous month and the highest figure in this period of government. This is explained by what happened mainly in construction and education.
The struggles of the workers have been making their way despite the hegemony of opportunism in the leadership of the PIT-CNT, in a year in which a reactionary pension law was approved, the annual Budget Accountability is under parliamentary discussion, the last of the period, and the 10th Round of the Salary Councils. To this is added the struggle for drinking water, given the water crisis and very important conflicts in the unions of public companies (MSCE) against privatizations and for personal income.
The class struggle currents have been advancing in influence and coordination in the Coalition of Trade Unions, and their weight has been decisive in achieving the general strikes and also in the launch of the Social Security plebiscite underway.
Plebiscite for Social Security
On August 10, in the Representative Table of the PIT-CNT, won an important victory by achieving a majority in its plebiscite proposal. The text proposed by ATSS (BPS workers) had the support of the class point of view, that of our party and that of the UP. The campaign to collect the required 300,000 signatures is already being prepared and then for the 1,200,000 votes needed in October 2024, together with the national elections. A constitutional reform is proposed to maintain the retirement age at 60 years, set a minimum retirement equal to the national minimum wage and eliminate the AFAP.
The Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) and the Popular Unity (UP)
The center of gravity of the mass work of the PCR, which commemorated its 50th Anniversary in December 2022, is in the labor movement and the unions, its members are part of the Class Trade Union Current. At this stage, we are fighting for a democratic, agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution in uninterrupted march to socialism.
Since the end of the dictatorship in 1985, we joined the work in the Base Committees of the Broad Front, within the radical left. In 1989 we participated in the founding of the MPP (Popular Participation Movement), with the MLN-Tupamaros and other organizations. We were there until 2001 when the right-wing line of Mujica and Huidobro took over the leadership.
From there we continued in the FA to try to defeat the traditional right and make an advanced popular experience, which was achieved in 2004. In 2005, due to the government's agreements with the IMF and other measures already mentioned, we withdrew from the FA and in 2006, together with the March 26 Movement and the Left Current, we founded the Popular Assembly, today Popular Unity.
The UP, with a consistent anti-imperialist program, won one deputy in the 2014 elections, with 27,000 votes, which we could not maintain in 2019. We persisted for 17 years and prepared for the battles of the plebiscite and the elections of 2024.
International situation
The international situation shows a sharpening of the inter-imperialist contradictions whose center is the imperialist war of aggression of Russia in Ukraine, with the increasing involvement of Yankee imperialism and NATO and the growing danger of a third world war. The use of nuclear weapons is increasingly possible if the situation were to escalate.
This situation is taking place in a context of international economic crisis that was enhanced by the Covid 19 pandemic, and changes in the relations of forces of the imperialist countries. Yankee imperialism remains the main power in terms of its economic, political and military power, but it is in decline and in a multipolar world where Chinese imperialism is seriously contesting for hegemony and the BRICS is being enlarged.
The imperialist powers are once again resorting to war and the arms industry to get out of the crisis and divert the class struggles within their countries. There is an alarming and generalized growth of ultra-right and fascist parties and organizations in the imperialist countries and also in Latin America.
At the same time the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the world have been developing very important struggles, confronting the adjustments against the wages and budgets for health care, housing and education for the people, and reactionary laws such as the reform of social security and those that limit the right to strike, with which international finance capital seeks to place the crisis on the backs of the workers.
The struggle of the popular women’s movements that have become protagonists of great mobilizations is developing throughout the continent. In the case of Uruguay, these have reached 300,000 people on March 8, in Montevideo alone. These struggles have been making very important advances in the struggle for women's liberation and social equality.
The imperialist exploitation of the natural resources of the oppressed countries is being aggravated, which is taking place in the midst of a great inter-imperialist contention over these resources and over the strategic infrastructure control. In Latin America China is making a great advance, both at the commercial level, where it is already the main purchaser in general, and in investments and infrastructure, ports and airports, also advancing in political influence.
In our America the great struggles of the working class and peoples in the face of the crisis opened the way to the electoral defeats of the parties of the right in government, in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Colombia, where governments oriented by various forms of “progressivism” were established. In general, they quickly disappoint their peoples by not taking the necessary measures to break with dependency and carry out the fundamental reforms essential to really improve the situation of the workers and people.
In Bolivia the heroic struggle of the people managed to defeat the fascist coup that overthrew the MAS government, headed by Evo Morales, and in Peru the struggle against the institutional coup that overthrew President Pedro Castillo is persisting.
FORWARD WITH THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS AND
THE PEOPLES OF OUR AMERICA!
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