Brazil

Earlier this year a Spanish comrade visited the occupied factories in Brazil and wrote this report. This was before 150 armed police raided the factory on orders of a judge. This report gives you a taste of what the CIPLA workers had achieved. We must not allow all this to be destroyed. Please take part in the international solidarity campaign and raise this issue wherever you can in the labour movement.

The workers of the occupied factory CIPLA were surprised this morning by 150 men, heavily armed, from the Federal Police, who invaded the factory in order to arrest the members of the factory committee.

Few people know about the true history of the abolition of slavery in Brazil. The veteran revolutionary and leader of the Black Socialist movement in Brazil, José Carlos Miranda, puts the record straight. Also available in Portuguese.

Serge Goulart is the leader of the movement of occupied factories in Brazil. He is also a member of the national council of the PT. In this interview he outlines the situation facing the workers in Brazil and explains how he and his comrades in the PT are building a Marxist Opposition within the party.

The workers at the CIPLA plant in Brazil have successfully run the factory under workers’ control since they occupied it. The government had tried to crush them by attempting to seize assets through the courts. The state is now once more on the offensive. The leaders risk imprisonment and the factory could be closed. But the workers are fighting back. They need your help.

As we have reported in earlier articles,some 691 delegates from 12 countries met in Joinville, Brazil from December 8-10 for the Pan-American Gathering in Defence of Jobs, Rights, Land Reform and Industry. The delegates discussed their different struggles, achievements, and how to organise assistance and solidarity for workers and farmers in struggle across the continent. The following resolution was adopted at the Gathering.

The second day of the Pan American Conference provided a real taste of the most advanced workers’ struggles in Brazil and other countries in Latin America. Peasant leaders, Bolivian miners’ leaders, factory leaders, all spoke about the terrible conditions and expressed their determination to struggle. The idea of factory occupations as an answer to the bosses’ closing of factories dominated the discussion, as did a deep-seated desire to struggle for international socialism.

On Friday one thousand workers gathered in the Cipla plant in Brazil and decided to reduce the working week in the factory to 30 hours. The factory is run by the workers and they are doing it in a very efficient manner, an example to workers in all countries. Workers can run factories and therefore they could also run society. Alan Woods was among the comrades who addressed the meeting, getting a rapturous applause from the workers present.

On Wednesday Alan Woods spoke to 200 workers at the occupied CIPLA plant in Joinville, Brazil. He was invited to speak on Workers’ Control and the Struggle for Socialism.

Yesterday, Alan Woods spoke at another meeting in the Camara de Vesadoria in Joinville, where around 200 workers had gathered to listen to him speaking on the general world situation. The meeting was introduced by Serge Goulart, leader of the occupied factories movement in Brazil, and present in the audience was also Roberto Chavez, the general secretary of the Bolivian Miners’ Federation.

After his successful trip to Venezuela, the editor of Marxist.com, Alan Woods, accepted an invitation to speak at an important conference of workers in occupied factories from all over Latin America. The conference is taking place this weekend in the industrial city of Joinville in the south of Brazil. It is being organized by CIPLA, an occupied plastics factory in Joinville.

The first round in the Brazilian elections can only mean further instability for the largest country in Latin America. The Brazilian ruling class looks with fear at the developing revolutions in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. At any time, over any issue, the masses of Brazil could rise up

Trezentos representantes dostrabalhadores das fabricas ocupadas do Brasil, do MST, do Centro de Direitos Humanos (CDH), representantes de trabalhadores de fábricas ameaçadas de fechamento ou demitidos, representantes de sindicatos, da CUT, do movimento popular, da juventude trabalhadora, com a participação fraterna de representantes de fábricas recuperadas na Venezuela, na Argentina, no Uruguai, na Bolívia, nos reunimos no auditório da Cipla, e discutimos democrática e livremente como organizar e mobilizar nossas forças para que nenhum posto mais de trabalho seja perdido e como conquistar a...