News of interest from Latin America by David Morris
Vol. 1, No. 3. Monday, September 17, 2007

The struggle in Quisqueya

After a successful 24-hour general strike on July 9 to protest the neoliberal economic policies of President Leonel Fernández, activists in the Dominican Republic are planning another strike for October 2. Demands of the strikes and of the frequent marches and demonstrations held recently throughout the country concern low wages, high food prices and deteriorating social services as well as high transportation costs, the lack of dependable electric power and public water supplies and the displacement of poor residents.

Meeting on July 28 to gauge the effects of the stoppage and to plan for the future, 700 activists in the umbrella group Foro Social Alternativo (FSA) said the strike was 90% successful. Business was slow throughout the country and schools were shut down. In Santo Domingo, the national capital and the largest city, where FSA leadership comes in large part from transport unions, movement of both passengers and cargo was at a standstill. Intercity transport was also seriously affected. Business owners reported 35% employee absenteeism for the day and the government said its revenues were down 24%.

Following the strike, the government expanded subsidized food distribution through the mercados populares and began distributing water in tank trucks but has shown no intent of making more substantive changes.

Despite the massive presence of the national police and the army and threats of repression, the strike was more peaceful than many such events in the recent past, with one activist shot to death in Santiago, the second-largest city, and five injured by gunshot. There was a large number of arrests. Police claim Molotov cocktails and homemade bombs were detonated at government buildings in several cities but organizers said most people who supported the strike did so by simply staying home, leaving the streets to the police and the provocateurs.

Some may have stayed home out of necessity. Public transportation in Santo Domingo depends on individual owners and drivers of busses and taxis, who largely supported the strike through their unions. In the strike and in other mobilizations, the transport unions have protested an increase in the cost of license plates, a form of taxation, and have demanded that fuel be taxed at a fixed amount and not as a percentage of the cost. They call for fare subsidies for students, the disabled and the elderly. They demand that the government abide by the terms of PetroCaribe, an arrangement with the Venezuelan government by which Caribbean nations can pay for crude oil through long-term low-interest loans or by supplying goods and services, medical care in the case of Cuba, agricultural products in the case of the Dominican Republic. The governments then refine the crude oil and sell it internally. The profits of fuel sales in the Dominican case should then go to assist the farmers who produce the agricultural products.

But the profits don’t go to the farmers. Although the July 9 strike and other political events have been largely urban, the plight of the campesinos is central to the movement and campesino unions have endorsed it strongly. Eighty percent of the rural population lives in poverty, with scant health care and little public education. Farmers have already experienced the loss of government technical assistance and the dismantling of the banking system they depended on between harvests. The Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) means the loss of tariff protection so subsidized agricultural products from the U.S. and elsewhere capture the local markets. With the drive by the U.S. and European countries to increase world ethanol production, more and more land is bought up by corporate sugar producers to increase the already immense Dominican cane harvests. There is little work in the cane fields for the Dominican campesinos because of the large number of Haitian migrant cane cutters, who work in virtual slavery. With no land left to farm, the campesinos are forced to move to slums on the outskirts of the cities.

Despite close ties in his youth to democratic socialist Juan Bosch, whose seven months as president in 1963 ended in a coup, Leonel Fernández is an ardent proponent of corporate globalization and a champion of DR-CAFTA. The image of the widely admired Bosch adorns Fernández’s campaign literature.

Fernandez’s first term as president, from 1996 to 2000, was marked by relative prosperity and popularity but he lost the 2000 election after a member of his cabinet was implicated in a scheme to steal some 100 million dollars from a government fund to feed the poor. He was reelected after the corruption, cronyism and ineptitude of his successor, Hipolito Mejía, resulted in economic disaster and increased misery for the Dominican people. Fernández is not inept but is as given to cronyism as Mejía and as vulnerable to charges of corruption. After a two-billion dollar scam in the waning days of the Mejía administration brought about the collapse of the Dominican banking system, Fernández appointed the four men accused in the scam to his cabinet.

One of the four men involved in the banking scandal is now in charge of a 500-million-dollar project to construct a subway system for Santo Domingo, a project critics say illustrates the government’s priorities: luxuries for the wealthy minority, neglect for the poor masses, probable unemployment for transportation workers, who will be displaced by the system itself and by feeder bus services likely to be owned by foreign private corporations.

With an eye on the 2008 elections, some politicians in opposition parties have publicly supported the aims of the strike but FSA members and large sectors of the population dismiss electoral politics altogether and have no confidence in the three major parties.

(Sources: Alianza Social Continental, Aporrea, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Diario Libre, Listín Diario, El Nacional, La República, Znet)


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