Homage to Raul
URUGUAY
R AUL SENDIC had a background
as a trade union leader and long experience of peasant struggles. His first experiences of union work in the countryside dated from the 1950s, before the victory of the Cuban revolution. In 1954 he took part in land occupations, in 1955 he was involved with a march by rice-workers, in 1957 he organized beet producers, and in 1958 he threw himself into mobilizing sugarcane cutters and founded the UTAA, a militant class-struggle union in the heart of the big sugarcane estates, which opposed the company unions and initiated the first hunger march, which took place in Montevideo in 1962. He took up the fight to make the big landowners respect the eight-hour day and labour legislation for agricultural labourers. From then on the sugar workers' hunger marches resounded to the cry of "For the land, with Sendic".
Founding of the Tupamaros
It was this tradition of mass working class-style union struggles amongst the peasants that produced Sendic. He started out as a member of the Uruguayan Socialist Party, but, along with other militants from
THE URUGUAYAN revolutionary leader, Raul Sendic,
Communist, anarchist or Christian backgrounds, the reformist ossification of the founder of the National Liberation Movement-Tupamaros traditional organizations convinced him
(MLN-T), and a legendary figure on the far left in Latin that a new revolutionary organization was
America, died in Paris on April 28 1989. More than 50,000 needed.
The result the MLNwas
Tupamaros, the "Tupas". The Cuban revpeople took part in his funeral procession in Montevideo olution was a decisive influence in this on May 6. The Fourth International, through its while the Vietnam war and the process,
Sino-Soviet polemics also affected the
Uruguayan section, the Socialist Workers' Party (PST),
Tupamaros' thinking.
its sections in Latin America and the United Secretariat,
Sendic's long-time companion, Eleuterio added their voices to the homage to comrade Sendic.
Huidobro, has described the hesitations, disappointments and weariness that the
Soon after this massive demonstration, the government divisions in the traditional organizations decided to recognize the MLN-T as a legal party and created in many young people, and their final break. A photo of Che in the Sierra permit it to take part in the forthcoming elections.
Maestra was torn off the wall of a local office with the cry "We are leaving with you!" The Tupamaros always retained a
JEANETTE HABEL & MICHAEL LŒWY large measure of independence from the official Communist movement, even from
Castroism, to which they never subordinated themselves. Their armed propaganda actions and exemplary actions in the towns were aimed mainly at urban workers, in contradiction with the dominant credo of the time of rural guerilla warfare. Founded in 1962, the MLN-Tupamaros was for ten years, until its defeat in 1972, one of the most prestigious and experienced urban guerilla movements in Latin America, confronting an army with a growing input of hardware and advice from the American secret services, the CIA.
Although they were able to mount spectacular actions, and regardless of the sympathy they won from the workers, the form of struggle that they had adopted did not allow for the integration or independent
20 organization of the masses in the struggle.
International Viewpoint #164 • May 29, 1989
The masses looked on from the sidelines at the war between the army and an audacious but isolated vanguard. The Uruguayan working class put up a heroic resistance to the military coup with a general strike that lasted for two weeks. They showed that they were prepared to fight, but were defeated. The military dictatorship lasted for more than a decade.
Arrested for the first time in 1970, Sendic made a spectacular escape a year later with a hundred of his comrades. But he was hunted down by the army and seriously wounded in the course of his re-arrest. He was kept in prison for 13 years, for 12 without trial. He was horribly tortured and kept in solitary confinement throughout. He was finally brought to trial in 1984 and sentenced to 45 years in prison, before being released in 1985 in the general amnesty that was proclaimed when the dictatorship fell.
The military did not mince their words — "Since we could not kill them all when we arrested them, we had to drive them mad". The years of torture of Sendic and his comrades have been described by Huidobro in Memorias del calabozo ("Memories from the Dungeon"). Sendic was almost unrecognizable when he came out: "His nose was broken, his hair was white, he was covered in scars." His voice was hardly audible, but his revolutionary will was unbroken.
Despite all their efforts, the Uruguayan military could not break Sendic. When the popular movement got him released, he at once returned to his post at the head of the
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Sendic
amargo
MLN-T. He had forgotten nothing, but had also drawn the lessons of the past, and he recognized the mistakes in the conception of the armed struggle and its relation to the masses. While retaining his revolutionary objective, he looked for new paths towards the liberation of the exploited and oppressed of his country. In a period when so many of the rebels of the 1960s, especially in Europe, but also in Latin America, who had "loved the revolution so much" went over to a thoroughgoing reformism, Raul Sendic preserved an exemplary consistency and fidelity - to his past, to his companions who died in the struggle, but also, and above all, to the socialist future of his people.
If the movement against an amnesty for the military assassins and torturers, which he did much to create and inspire, was finally defeated, nonetheless almost half of the electors gave their support, despite the blackmail of the military, who threatened to restore their dictatorship if there was any attempt to bring the brass-hat criminals to trial.
In October 1987 Raul Sendic took part in a meeting organized by the LCR (French section of the Fourth International) in Paris to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Che Guevara's death. In his tribute to Guevara, he explained that he was searching "the horizon which is not as clear as it was twenty years ago" for ways to continue the struggle. We met him the following day for a friendly exchange of views. We were struck by two things about him — one was his modesty, and the absence of any claim to possess the absolute truth, his tenacious desire to learn, study and to familiarize himself with new economic and social realities. The other was his internationalism. He was genuinely interested in the experiences of struggle in all countries, not only in Latin America, but in the whole world.
The last of a line of legendary figures
With his death, we have lost the last of those legendary figures who raised the banner of armed rebellion in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s against the ruling classes and imperialism, figures such as Che Guevara, Carlos Marighella, Inti Peredo, Yon Sosa, Miguel Enriquez, Roberto Santucho, Camilo Torres and Carlos Fonseca. Although, unlike them, he was not assassinated, it was an illness resulting from his long years of prison and torture
Raul
Sendic's
last article
UNTIL HIS DEATH Raul Sendic continued to work, notably on the question of Latin America's external debt, sending his contributions to Mate Amargo, the weekly paper of his organization. We publish below the last article he wrote. It appeared on April 20 1989, a week before his death. RAUL SENDIC
F YOU do not pay, they will reduce the debt by 95%, if you pay, by 30 percent." This idea was put forward a long time ago, but it has received a new impetus from the recent events in
It was the French President Mitterrand who first proposed the abolition of a part of the debt for the countries most affected by this curse. Then Brady proposed a plan - quite a surprise coming from a government which, a bit earlier in Reagan's time, had proclaimed that it was out of the question to renounce even a single cent of the debt. Now a meeting of the so-called Group Japan, West Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy and Canada) has proposed reduced for those countries "that are ready to make substantial economic reforms".
URUGUAY
What this means becomes clear when we find that the implementation of the reform is to be overseen by the International Monetary Fund. In return the IMF will guarantee the payment of the interest due to the banks accepting a reduction from the countries that submit to its instructions.
But a part of the Brady plan deals with another way of reducing the debt, which exposes the fictional nature of this "generous" reduction (which the banks say could reach 30% of the nominal debt) that is being dangled by the governments and the banks.
This second big reduction allows debtor countries to buy each other's debts on the parallel market, where those who have the most to pay, such as Chile or Uruguay, have already obtained a larger reduction than is now being promised - 40% in the case of
Other Latin American countries, that do not have such servile presidents as Pinochet and Sanguinetti have a lot less to pay. Some of them will be able to get rid of their debt by paying less than 10% of its nominal value.
Until now only private businesses could repurchase paper debt, and it could not be sold back directly to the debtor government. Furthermore, other creditor banks had to agree to the operation. (Why are the creditor banks allowed to get together, but not the debtor countries?)
The proposal in the Brady plan is to get rid of these preliminary requirements and allow sale direct to the governments without consulting the other banks. This will allow countries who have shown some dignity in the face of this vast swindle to repurchase their debts not with a reduction of 30%, but possibly with a reduction of 90% in some cases. Countries such as Uruguay and Chile on the other hand because of their good record with the IMF, may get a reduction of 30%, while still having to pay the interest on the rest for ever.
All that remains is to lament the role of the opposition in Uruguay in this approach to the external debt. It has failed to lead a united campaign against the payment of the debt of the sort that has been seen in almost all the other countries of Latin America. * mate that finally killed him.
Raul Sendic, your struggle continues. Like Tupac-Amaru! you have sown the seeds of rebellion, and sooner or later these seeds will bear fruit in the consciousness of workers and peasants, young people and women, Indians and Blacks of Uruguay and in the whole of Latin America. * 1. Tupac-Amaru was an Inca chief who led resistance to the Spanish conquest.