Nadezhda Krupskaya is widely known for having been Lenin's partner until her death. However, that recognition does not honor the great personality of the one who was also a great Bolshevik leader that, after the October Revolution, created the new Soviet educational system and set up the libraries of the workers' state.
Born in Saint Petersburg in 1869, she joined a Marxist circle while she was studying at the Women's School, and educated the workers in socialist ideas. At the age of 25, she married Lenin. Shortly afterwards, she was arrested for her revolutionary activities, and, together with the Bolshevik leader, was sent into exile, where she wrote her first book, The Working Woman. The tsarist regime sentenced her to live in Germany, Great Britain and Switzerland, but did not prevent her from actively participating in the revolutionary movement of the Russian exiles. Thus it was that she took an essential part in the publication and secret distribution of the newspaper Iskra ["The Spark"], where she was responsible for relations with the committees inside Russia, that were the ones that nourished the newspaper with workers' news and reports. When the revolution broke out in 1905, she returned to Russia as secretary of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. But from 1907 until after the February Revolution of 1917, she lived through ten difficult years in exile again, which she used to improve her knowledge of subjects of popular education, and she wrote another book, People, Education and Democracy. In 1914, she participated in editing the newspaper Rabotnitsa ("The Working Woman") and in 1915, she made up the Russian delegation to the Third International Women's Conference, organized by Clara Zetkin, that declared itself against the imperialist war. With her knowledge of education, she collaborated in the Russian Revolution of 1917; shortly after the seizure of power, she was appointed Commissar of Education, a position equivalent to that of a Minister. From there, she promulgated the education laws of the new workers' state, sponsored literacy campaigns, set up many cultural institutions and developed library science.
When Lenin was ill, and the Stalinist bureaucracy had already decided to isolate him, with the excuse of not disturbing his fragile state of health, Nadezhda continued passing on political and party news to him. This allowed Lenin to write, shortly before his death, his famous Political Testament, where he indicated that Stalin "had accumulated too much power inside the Party; so much that I was not sure he was always going to use it with sufficient prudence." For Trotsky, Lenin's death and the beginning of the process of bureaucratization confused Krupskaya: "her revolutionary instinct conflicted with her spirit of discipline." It was thus that, opposing Stalin's clique, in 1926 she lined up briefly with the United Opposition (1), from which she later moved away. Stalin collaborated in isolating her, respectfully honoring her for being Lenin's widow, but separating her from party life, controlling her movements, censoring her articles for the press, damaging her reputation, even slandering her in private.
Krupskaya died in March 1939. In his obituary, Trotsky would remember her with these words: "In addition to being Lenin's wife – which was certainly not accidental – Krupskaya was an outstanding personality because of her devotion to the cause, her energy and the purity of her character. She was undoubtedly an intelligent woman. However, it is not surprising that her political thought was not developed independently while she was with Lenin. She had too many opportunities to be convinced of the correctness of his thought, and she was accustomed to trusting her great comrade and leader. After Lenin's death, Krupskaya's life suffered an extremely tragic upset. It was as if she had to pay for all the happiness she had gotten through luck." Trotsky adds that "Stalin always lived with the fear that she would protest. She knew too much. She knew the history of the party and the place Stalin occupied in it." And against those who criticized Nadezhda for not being completely in the political struggle against Stalin, Trotsky defends the figure of this revolutionary of her generation with the following moving words: "Nothing is further from our intention than criticizing Nadezhda Konstantinovna for not having been sufficiently decisive as to break openly with the bureaucracy. Political personalities much more independent than she, vacillated, tried to play hide-and-seek with history and perished. Krupskaya felt very bound by her sense of responsibility. Personally, she had the necessary courage; she lacked mental audacity. With profound sadness, we say goodbye to Lenin's loyal partner, to an irreproachable revolutionary and to one of the most tragic figures of revolutionary history."
(1) Fusion between the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, and the so-called New Opposition, which arose in 1925, directed by Zinoviev and Kamenev.
Translation: Yosef Mikhah
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9/3/03
Interview with Andrea D'Atri
By Workers' Liberty magazine
Andrea D’Atri, a professor at the Argentinian national university of La Plata, is active within the Argentinian women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She spoke to Laura Schwartz about the struggle for women’s rights in Argentina.
What is the current situation for women in Argentina?
Until recently feminism in Argentina was relatively weak and very middle-class. After the economic crisis of 2001 and the social movements that emerged in response, feminist groups have politicised and radicalised. In particular, women have begun to mobilise around the issue of abortion rights.
Abortion in Argentina is illegal under any circumstances, even when a woman’s health is at risk. Contraception is only available for those who can afford to pay for it. In Argentina, for every 700,000 births, there are 500,000 backstreet abortions per year. Every year 400 women die because they are denied access to safe, legal abortion. Despite claiming to be progressive, Kirchner’s new government is not interested in improving women’s rights. The health minister likes to talk a lot about decriminalising abortion, but he has not yet brought a single bill to parliament on the issue. Even worse, Kirchner has made a promise to the Vatican that he will not make abortion legal. The role of the Catholic Church is central to the denial of women’s reproductive rights. In Argentina there is no separation of church and state. The state continues to fund the Church and is highly susceptible to its influence.
However, the women’s movement is fighting back. In 2003, 15,000 women marched through the streets, calling for “Free abortion to avoid death, free contraception to avoid abortion”. Every year all the different women’s groups, trade unionists, and community activists come together at a three day national conference to discuss women’s rights and how we can win them. The Catholic Church has begun to feel threatened by us. It sends in its supporters to pose as “normal women” who claim that they do not want abortion rights and to stop us from even discussing the issues. It also tries to intimidate women from coming to the conference by sending large numbers of young men to march around the buildings where the conference is taking place.
But we have ways of standing up to them. Many Catholic women attend the conferences, and they are welcome, but we will not allow the Church establishment to prevent us from discussing our rights. When we want to rid our meetings of these people who have come to disrupt them, we shout “Filthy church, you are the military dictatorship” until they leave. The conferences always finish with a demonstration, and we make sure that we march around the cathedral in whichever city we are in, to make our voices heard. We are always met by at least three lines of young Catholic men (often mobilised by Opus Dei), who hold up rosaries and threaten us. We point out that the Catholic Church calls itself “pro-life” but that it kept very quiet when the disappearances were taking place under the military dictatorship [of 1976-83].
How is the women’s movement related to the wider struggles that have been taking place in Argentina since 2001?
Part of the reason the women’s movement was so weak in Argentina until the post-2001 struggles was because the workers’ movement in the 1970s and 80s was dominated by a trade union bureaucracy which dismissed women’s rights a deviation and subsequently failed to challenge sexism within the movement. As a result, feminism in Argentina became something for a minority of middle-class women, and tended to ignore the needs of women workers.
Paradoxically, the women’s movement has, in the short term, benefited from the fragmented nature of the mobilisations surrounding the 2001 crisis. These mobilisations involved thousands of unemployed people, as well as middle-class protesters and workers occupying their factories, but the trade union movement stood on the side lines, and even called off a general strike because they were worried things would “get out of control”. However, this has meant that there has been more space for workers and women’s activists to come together.
The women’s group I am active in, Pan y Rosas, was initiated by women in the Partido de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (Workers’ Party for Socialism, PTS) as a broad activist organisation for women and particularly women workers to fight for their rights. We have worked especially closely with the women at the Brukman factory. This was one of the first factories to be occupied by its workers, 80 per cent of which were women. Together we organised discussions, workshops and protests on women’s issues such as abortion rights and domestic violence. We argue that women and workers need to work together if they want to win liberation.
On the 2004 demonstrations to mark the anniversary of the coup, on 24 March, the Brukman workers sang “Women! Come with Brukman, without you we cannot win this struggle!”. When the Brukman women were evicted by their old employer, and were out of work for eight months, Pan y Rosas supported them by joining their protests and raising money. After eigh months they were victorious in re-occupying their factory.
Do you describe yourself as a socialist feminist? How do you conceive your politics?
I don’t define myself as a feminist because I am a socialist, which means believing in liberation from all kind of oppression: class, race and sex. I do not think that patriarchy is the fundamental oppression in society, I think that it emerges from a wider economic class-based system of oppression. You cannot end patriarchy until you end capitalism because capitalism sustains patriarchy. Capitalism causes 1,300 million people to live in poverty, 70% of which are women. People ask me, “how can you be so sure that a socialist society will guarantee women’s liberation?” I tell them, “what I do know for sure is that real liberation is impossible under capitalism.”
Marxism is not very fashionable amongst academics at the moment, particularly gender theorists. What do you think about post-modern critiques which reject the idea of class as a unifying factor?
Post-structuralists like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have a theory of emancipation which talks about a pluralist and radical democracy, but what they do not ask themselves is what the material basis is which will allow this democracy to come about. Post-modernists have done capitalism a huge favour by never mentioning the fact that capitalist modes of production exist. When post-modernists talk about “exclusion”, they talk about gender, they talk about race and they talk about sexuality, but the one word they never mention is class. Class oppression is different from all these other forms of oppression because it is an inevitable antagonism. We might be able to win respect between men and women, we might be able to win respect between white people and black people, we might be able to win respect between straight people and gay people, but the capitalist will never come to “respect” the worker.
The discussion I had with [US academic] Judith Butler was a novelty, in that the Marxist left has very rarely engaged properly with post-modern theory. Marxists have dismissed postmodernism as wrong, but they have sought to ignore it rather than challenge it head on.
Are you hopeful about the prospects for the struggling women and workers in Argentina?
After two or three years of being active with Pan y Rosas, my view is that the women’s movement is moving backwards. As the economy has begun to recover, the middle class has begun to regain its confidence, and to look to the government as the best guarantee of their interests. Middle-class feminists have begun to abandon the streets, leaving working class women isolated. In my view, middle-class feminists are foolish to believe that Kirchner’s government will grant them their rights. In Argentina, the term used for someone who support’s a woman’s right to choose is “abortionista”. Kirchner’s wife, who is also a member of the senate and considered a progressive, was asked by a journalist if she was an “abortionista”. “Absolutely not,” she replied, “I am a Peronista!” [supporter of the tradition of Juan Peron, nationalist-populist dictator of Argentina, 1946-55 and 1973-4].
However, the experience of the joint action between the Brukman workers and Pan y Rosas has shown that socialism and feminism are not in opposition, but are necessary to each other. Many of the women from the Brukman factory had never been politically active before they took over the factory where they worked. This struggle against their bosses and for their rights as workers, led them to think about their position as women too. The leader of the Brukman workers was one of those for whom the occupation provided her first experience of political activism. She has now joined the PTS and in a recent film made about the occupation, she spoke of how it was no longer enough for her to remain in the home.
Therefore, like Louise Kneeland, I believe that “socialists who are not feminists are narrow-minded. But feminists who are not socialists have no strategy.”
Andrea D’Atri, a professor at the Argentinian national university of La Plata, is active within the Argentinian women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She spoke to Laura Schwartz about the struggle for women’s rights in Argentina.
What is the current situation for women in Argentina?
Until recently feminism in Argentina was relatively weak and very middle-class. After the economic crisis of 2001 and the social movements that emerged in response, feminist groups have politicised and radicalised. In particular, women have begun to mobilise around the issue of abortion rights.
Abortion in Argentina is illegal under any circumstances, even when a woman’s health is at risk. Contraception is only available for those who can afford to pay for it. In Argentina, for every 700,000 births, there are 500,000 backstreet abortions per year. Every year 400 women die because they are denied access to safe, legal abortion. Despite claiming to be progressive, Kirchner’s new government is not interested in improving women’s rights. The health minister likes to talk a lot about decriminalising abortion, but he has not yet brought a single bill to parliament on the issue. Even worse, Kirchner has made a promise to the Vatican that he will not make abortion legal. The role of the Catholic Church is central to the denial of women’s reproductive rights. In Argentina there is no separation of church and state. The state continues to fund the Church and is highly susceptible to its influence.
However, the women’s movement is fighting back. In 2003, 15,000 women marched through the streets, calling for “Free abortion to avoid death, free contraception to avoid abortion”. Every year all the different women’s groups, trade unionists, and community activists come together at a three day national conference to discuss women’s rights and how we can win them. The Catholic Church has begun to feel threatened by us. It sends in its supporters to pose as “normal women” who claim that they do not want abortion rights and to stop us from even discussing the issues. It also tries to intimidate women from coming to the conference by sending large numbers of young men to march around the buildings where the conference is taking place.
But we have ways of standing up to them. Many Catholic women attend the conferences, and they are welcome, but we will not allow the Church establishment to prevent us from discussing our rights. When we want to rid our meetings of these people who have come to disrupt them, we shout “Filthy church, you are the military dictatorship” until they leave. The conferences always finish with a demonstration, and we make sure that we march around the cathedral in whichever city we are in, to make our voices heard. We are always met by at least three lines of young Catholic men (often mobilised by Opus Dei), who hold up rosaries and threaten us. We point out that the Catholic Church calls itself “pro-life” but that it kept very quiet when the disappearances were taking place under the military dictatorship [of 1976-83].
How is the women’s movement related to the wider struggles that have been taking place in Argentina since 2001?
Part of the reason the women’s movement was so weak in Argentina until the post-2001 struggles was because the workers’ movement in the 1970s and 80s was dominated by a trade union bureaucracy which dismissed women’s rights a deviation and subsequently failed to challenge sexism within the movement. As a result, feminism in Argentina became something for a minority of middle-class women, and tended to ignore the needs of women workers.
Paradoxically, the women’s movement has, in the short term, benefited from the fragmented nature of the mobilisations surrounding the 2001 crisis. These mobilisations involved thousands of unemployed people, as well as middle-class protesters and workers occupying their factories, but the trade union movement stood on the side lines, and even called off a general strike because they were worried things would “get out of control”. However, this has meant that there has been more space for workers and women’s activists to come together.
The women’s group I am active in, Pan y Rosas, was initiated by women in the Partido de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (Workers’ Party for Socialism, PTS) as a broad activist organisation for women and particularly women workers to fight for their rights. We have worked especially closely with the women at the Brukman factory. This was one of the first factories to be occupied by its workers, 80 per cent of which were women. Together we organised discussions, workshops and protests on women’s issues such as abortion rights and domestic violence. We argue that women and workers need to work together if they want to win liberation.
On the 2004 demonstrations to mark the anniversary of the coup, on 24 March, the Brukman workers sang “Women! Come with Brukman, without you we cannot win this struggle!”. When the Brukman women were evicted by their old employer, and were out of work for eight months, Pan y Rosas supported them by joining their protests and raising money. After eigh months they were victorious in re-occupying their factory.
Do you describe yourself as a socialist feminist? How do you conceive your politics?
I don’t define myself as a feminist because I am a socialist, which means believing in liberation from all kind of oppression: class, race and sex. I do not think that patriarchy is the fundamental oppression in society, I think that it emerges from a wider economic class-based system of oppression. You cannot end patriarchy until you end capitalism because capitalism sustains patriarchy. Capitalism causes 1,300 million people to live in poverty, 70% of which are women. People ask me, “how can you be so sure that a socialist society will guarantee women’s liberation?” I tell them, “what I do know for sure is that real liberation is impossible under capitalism.”
Marxism is not very fashionable amongst academics at the moment, particularly gender theorists. What do you think about post-modern critiques which reject the idea of class as a unifying factor?
Post-structuralists like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have a theory of emancipation which talks about a pluralist and radical democracy, but what they do not ask themselves is what the material basis is which will allow this democracy to come about. Post-modernists have done capitalism a huge favour by never mentioning the fact that capitalist modes of production exist. When post-modernists talk about “exclusion”, they talk about gender, they talk about race and they talk about sexuality, but the one word they never mention is class. Class oppression is different from all these other forms of oppression because it is an inevitable antagonism. We might be able to win respect between men and women, we might be able to win respect between white people and black people, we might be able to win respect between straight people and gay people, but the capitalist will never come to “respect” the worker.
The discussion I had with [US academic] Judith Butler was a novelty, in that the Marxist left has very rarely engaged properly with post-modern theory. Marxists have dismissed postmodernism as wrong, but they have sought to ignore it rather than challenge it head on.
Are you hopeful about the prospects for the struggling women and workers in Argentina?
After two or three years of being active with Pan y Rosas, my view is that the women’s movement is moving backwards. As the economy has begun to recover, the middle class has begun to regain its confidence, and to look to the government as the best guarantee of their interests. Middle-class feminists have begun to abandon the streets, leaving working class women isolated. In my view, middle-class feminists are foolish to believe that Kirchner’s government will grant them their rights. In Argentina, the term used for someone who support’s a woman’s right to choose is “abortionista”. Kirchner’s wife, who is also a member of the senate and considered a progressive, was asked by a journalist if she was an “abortionista”. “Absolutely not,” she replied, “I am a Peronista!” [supporter of the tradition of Juan Peron, nationalist-populist dictator of Argentina, 1946-55 and 1973-4].
However, the experience of the joint action between the Brukman workers and Pan y Rosas has shown that socialism and feminism are not in opposition, but are necessary to each other. Many of the women from the Brukman factory had never been politically active before they took over the factory where they worked. This struggle against their bosses and for their rights as workers, led them to think about their position as women too. The leader of the Brukman workers was one of those for whom the occupation provided her first experience of political activism. She has now joined the PTS and in a recent film made about the occupation, she spoke of how it was no longer enough for her to remain in the home.
Therefore, like Louise Kneeland, I believe that “socialists who are not feminists are narrow-minded. But feminists who are not socialists have no strategy.”
17/5/02
Bosses’ Abuse and Imperialist Arrogance
The Pepsico Snacks factory in Buenos Aires, Argentina, employs about 400 workers. Women make up 70% of the workforce, working a rotating shift system in departments where they have to spend eight hours standing up operating a machine. Most are heads of their families – in some cases they are single mothers, in other cases their husbands are part of the country’s rapidly increasing army of unemployed. These young women often work double shifts in order to get a higher salary, but even that doesn’t meet their family needs.
And as if this life of slavery wasn’t enough, in January Pepsico sacked 70 contract workers. By April, a total of 130 contract workers had been made redundant, despite opposition from some shop stewards who confronted the trade union bureaucracy and the bosses, accusing the latter of violating national labour legislation.
Factory of tortures
Elsa 1 works in the packing section: ‘The machines have been speeded up by more than 50%. Three women assemble the boxes, stack them, and then return to assembling them…’ The same movement with their arms, the same routine for eight hours, with only thirty minutes for lunch and a visit to the toilet. ‘The machine makes you work at high speed,’ says Elsa. ‘Sometimes I am sitting on the floor playing with my son and I cannot get up because of the pain in my wrists, brought on by the speed of the packing. You are standing for eight hours and there is nowhere to rest yourself.’
A young worker – he is a delegate from the factory – tells me that the main illness suffered by the workers is varicose veins. One female worker sued the company and obliged it to cover her treatment, and after this event the union – accomplice of the bosses – withdrew the treatment of varicose veins from the list of illnesses covered by the union health care scheme.
Rosalba says that she cannot stand the heat inside the factory. Fans continuously circulate the hot and rancid air from the frying machines; and, unbelievably, in her department the seats are made of aluminium. Like one of those ancient, macabre tortures attributed to the Chinese, if Pepsico workers get so tired that they have to sit down, they burn themselves on the aluminium seats.
Julia has blisters on her hands, but for her this is routine since the potatoes are cooked at more than 200ºC, and, despite the fact that they work with hot oil, the company has had the clever idea to make them wear latex gloves.
When crisps have a bitter taste
After sacking the contract workers, Pepsico made sure that the permanent workers and the two delegates who supported them were victimised. At present, the two delegates are suspended and inside the factory there is a reign of terror. Shop stewards elected by the whole factory who oppose the sackings and confront the union are not convenient for the bosses.
There have been well attended assemblies of the Pepsico workers, with equal participation by contract and permanent workers – one of the few cases of this in Buenos Aires. The bosses and trade union leaders want to prevent this kind of the organisation amongst workers, so the attacks on them are designed to be exemplary.
The sacked Pepsico workers and the suspended delegates have the support and solidarity of well known lawyers, neighbourhood assemblies, the International Union of Food Industry Workers, workers from the occupied Zanon ceramic factory in Neuquen and the Brukman textile factory in Buenos Aires, hundreds of shop stewards and factory delegates, the human rights organisation CEPRODH2, left political parties and hundreds of people from different professions and organisations who signed a petition of support.
However, this has not been enough to reverse the policy of this American company.
Meanwhile, the IMF envoy to Argentina, Anoop Singh, has told Duhalde what measures he should take against the population. The multinational corporations behave unscrupulously towards the workers that, through their own sweat and sacrifice, allow them to earn millions.3
The masks of the Multinationals
Pepsico is owned by the Pepsi Cola company and makes crisps and other snacks. In its web page, the company points out that it prioritises supplying companies run by women or ethnic minorities.
Pepsico uses the Latino singers Chayanne and Shakira to sell its products. Shakira was unstinting in her praise of her father in law Fernando de la Rúa, the inept former president who fled the presidential palace in a helicopter last December following mass demonstrations which left several dozen people dead.
Of course, Pepsico’s politically correct attitude towards women and ethnic minorities is only a mask for the benefit of consumers. Behind the mask is a monster that carries out the most brutal exploitation of young women imaginable. Behind Shakira are hundreds of Julias, Elsas and Rosalbas.
But in Argentina we are fed up with unemployment, with the abuses and the arrogance of the bosses, and with imperialism.
While Pepsico continues increasing its profits with the compliance of the trade union, the delegates that defend the workers are persecuted. While Shakira dances with little Antonio4 in Miami and drinks Pepsi Cola, women workers get blisters, varicose veins and pains in their joints and their simple dream to work to maintain their children is shattered.
If you wish to send your solidarity you can send your message to: delegadosdepepsico@hotmial.com
1 The names have been changed in order to avoid victimisation. Nevertheless, the testimonies are, unfortunately, real.
2 CEPRODH (Centro de Profesionales de Derechos Humanos). For more information about the activities of this organisation please visit their web site at www.ceprodh.org.ar
3 Last year Pepsico’s turnover was US $20 billion. The factory was established in Argentina 8 years ago and now dominates the market for snack food, having taking over companies like Bum, Pehuamar, etc.
4 Antonio De La Rúa, son of the former Argentinean president.
And as if this life of slavery wasn’t enough, in January Pepsico sacked 70 contract workers. By April, a total of 130 contract workers had been made redundant, despite opposition from some shop stewards who confronted the trade union bureaucracy and the bosses, accusing the latter of violating national labour legislation.
Factory of tortures
Elsa 1 works in the packing section: ‘The machines have been speeded up by more than 50%. Three women assemble the boxes, stack them, and then return to assembling them…’ The same movement with their arms, the same routine for eight hours, with only thirty minutes for lunch and a visit to the toilet. ‘The machine makes you work at high speed,’ says Elsa. ‘Sometimes I am sitting on the floor playing with my son and I cannot get up because of the pain in my wrists, brought on by the speed of the packing. You are standing for eight hours and there is nowhere to rest yourself.’
A young worker – he is a delegate from the factory – tells me that the main illness suffered by the workers is varicose veins. One female worker sued the company and obliged it to cover her treatment, and after this event the union – accomplice of the bosses – withdrew the treatment of varicose veins from the list of illnesses covered by the union health care scheme.
Rosalba says that she cannot stand the heat inside the factory. Fans continuously circulate the hot and rancid air from the frying machines; and, unbelievably, in her department the seats are made of aluminium. Like one of those ancient, macabre tortures attributed to the Chinese, if Pepsico workers get so tired that they have to sit down, they burn themselves on the aluminium seats.
Julia has blisters on her hands, but for her this is routine since the potatoes are cooked at more than 200ºC, and, despite the fact that they work with hot oil, the company has had the clever idea to make them wear latex gloves.
When crisps have a bitter taste
After sacking the contract workers, Pepsico made sure that the permanent workers and the two delegates who supported them were victimised. At present, the two delegates are suspended and inside the factory there is a reign of terror. Shop stewards elected by the whole factory who oppose the sackings and confront the union are not convenient for the bosses.
There have been well attended assemblies of the Pepsico workers, with equal participation by contract and permanent workers – one of the few cases of this in Buenos Aires. The bosses and trade union leaders want to prevent this kind of the organisation amongst workers, so the attacks on them are designed to be exemplary.
The sacked Pepsico workers and the suspended delegates have the support and solidarity of well known lawyers, neighbourhood assemblies, the International Union of Food Industry Workers, workers from the occupied Zanon ceramic factory in Neuquen and the Brukman textile factory in Buenos Aires, hundreds of shop stewards and factory delegates, the human rights organisation CEPRODH2, left political parties and hundreds of people from different professions and organisations who signed a petition of support.
However, this has not been enough to reverse the policy of this American company.
Meanwhile, the IMF envoy to Argentina, Anoop Singh, has told Duhalde what measures he should take against the population. The multinational corporations behave unscrupulously towards the workers that, through their own sweat and sacrifice, allow them to earn millions.3
The masks of the Multinationals
Pepsico is owned by the Pepsi Cola company and makes crisps and other snacks. In its web page, the company points out that it prioritises supplying companies run by women or ethnic minorities.
Pepsico uses the Latino singers Chayanne and Shakira to sell its products. Shakira was unstinting in her praise of her father in law Fernando de la Rúa, the inept former president who fled the presidential palace in a helicopter last December following mass demonstrations which left several dozen people dead.
Of course, Pepsico’s politically correct attitude towards women and ethnic minorities is only a mask for the benefit of consumers. Behind the mask is a monster that carries out the most brutal exploitation of young women imaginable. Behind Shakira are hundreds of Julias, Elsas and Rosalbas.
But in Argentina we are fed up with unemployment, with the abuses and the arrogance of the bosses, and with imperialism.
While Pepsico continues increasing its profits with the compliance of the trade union, the delegates that defend the workers are persecuted. While Shakira dances with little Antonio4 in Miami and drinks Pepsi Cola, women workers get blisters, varicose veins and pains in their joints and their simple dream to work to maintain their children is shattered.
If you wish to send your solidarity you can send your message to: delegadosdepepsico@hotmial.com
1 The names have been changed in order to avoid victimisation. Nevertheless, the testimonies are, unfortunately, real.
2 CEPRODH (Centro de Profesionales de Derechos Humanos). For more information about the activities of this organisation please visit their web site at www.ceprodh.org.ar
3 Last year Pepsico’s turnover was US $20 billion. The factory was established in Argentina 8 years ago and now dominates the market for snack food, having taking over companies like Bum, Pehuamar, etc.
4 Antonio De La Rúa, son of the former Argentinean president.
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