Challenging neoliberalism

Class struggle heats up in the Dominican Republic

By EMMANUEL SANTOS

A NUMBER of small, sporadic strikes in the Dominican Republic against the economic policies of President Leonel Fernández have been taking place uninterrupted since March, sparked by a growing discontent with his administration after two years of relative calm.

In the beginning of March, a wave of strikes spread throughout the Cibao region in the north, around the same time that the transport workers’ union conducted stoppages in Santo Domingo, the capital of the country.

The strikes were led by the Alternative Social Forum (FSA), an umbrella group of leftist parties, trade unions, student, and grassroots organizations. On February 4, a popular assembly convened by the FSA called for coordinated acts of popular resistance against Fernández’s neoliberal policies, which have wrecked what little remains of social services, while creating an unprecedented amount of wealth for the affluent few. It is estimated that 62 percent of the population lives under the poverty line.

The FSA also demanded a 50 percent wage increase, a moratorium to the foreign debt, and a constituent assembly by popular vote that would redraft the constitution, among other things.

At the forefront of pushing these demands is Force of Revolution (FR), the biggest party of the anticapitalist Left. FR is a regroupment of left-wing forces that folded after the fall of the Soviet Union. It is creating a new left-wing party in a country where the Left once had considerable support from a big layer of the population, which shifted to the right after the defeat of the Left in the mid–1980s from the pressure of growing internal contradictions and state repression.

But Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution and the widespread protests against Bush’s visit to Latin America, along with the combative protest movements in Central America that oppose the imposition by the U.S. of a destructive new free-trade agreement—known as the US-DR-CAFTA—has given more confidence to the Left and the social movements that comprised the FSA to push for radical demands that were unthinkable a decade ago.

The transport stoppages in Santo Domingo were triggered by the government’s refusal to sign a new contract that would subsidize bus fares to students, the elderly, and the handicapped as gas prices soar. The transport workers’ union also opposes the construction of a subway there, arguing that it would make their jobs obsolete. The FSA criticizes the construction of lavish, unnecessary projects (megaproyectos), such as the subway, and argues instead for the creation of more jobs and more investment on programs that meet people’s basic needs. According to Hoy newspaper, more government funds have been allocated to the construction of the Santo Domingo Metro than other areas such as health care, education, and the environment.

President Fernández has continued on the same path traveled by his predecessor, Hipólito Mejía, whose free-market policies were implemented to pave the way for the controversial US-DR-CAFTA free-trade agreement that entered into full force on March 1, 2007. The signing of the free-trade agreement with the U.S. has been criticized by the Left as well as liberal economists and small producers in the agriculture sector, who argue that the local economy cannot withstand the devastating effects of an influx of cheap exports from the U.S. and other parts of the globe.

Already the effects are being felt, as the free zone industry known as zonas francas (maquiladoras), foundered in the Santiago province leaving 37,000 people jobless. But the job loss also sent shockwaves throughout the informal sector, which is comprised of thousands of people who cater to the workers. They too lost their livelihoods overnight. The demise of the zonas francas was due in part to the export of cheap Asian textiles flooding into the U.S. market, and the in-built contradictions of a system that, on one hand, creates low-wage jobs and just as quickly destroys them.

The war of terror

In response to the resurgence of organized protest and dissent, Fernández unleashed a wave of repression leading to the arrest of several left-wing activists and unionists all over the country. Several protesters were arrested and injured during clashes with the police around the country, while more than a dozen protesters were killed.

Some of the tactics employed by the government bring to mind the Doce Años (1966–78) under late President Joaquin Balaguer, the U.S.-backed strongman who sought to physically annihilate the Left in reaction to the radicalization of thousands of young people during and after the 1965 revolution. The Doce Años—a dress rehearsal of Plan Condor in South America—is considered to be one of the darkest periods in the history of the country. From 1966 to 1978, more than 3,000 people were murdered by the right-wing paramilitary forces of the Balaguer regime.

On April 5, in a move that brings Fernández closer to Washington’s so-called war on terror, Fernández issued a decree that grants more power to the armed forces and the police, as part of his terror campaign against the Left and grassroots organizations. This comes as no surprise, as he is one of the closest allies of the U.S. in the region.

The business candidate

On April 25, the bosses and the government pressured one wing of the labor movement to sign a contract with limited gains—a 15 percent wage increase to the minimum wage, retroactive to April 1, as opposed to the initial demand of a 25 percent wage hike to be retroactive to January 1, 2007.

Both labor and the FSA called for a general strike on May 1 to win labor’s demands. Fernández needed to contain the strike, which could have cost him his political life as he faced an election within his party, the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), on May 6. (He was declared the 2008 presidential candidate by a small margin against Danilo Mejía, his former right-hand man.)

Fernández could not pass up this golden moment to anoint himself the business candidate for the coming election. He employed a two-pronged strategy to contain the general strike: first, the government and the mainstream media went full force in attacking labor for asking for too much in a time of economic crisis. Second, the government escalated its repression against the protest movement, arresting countless suspected activists, creating a climate of fear.

When a bomb was thrown at a bus carrying zona franca workers during the stoppages in the capital, injuring seven, the government proceeded to arrest, interrogate, and intimidate the leaders of the transport workers’ union. It was a clear attempt to demonize and criminalize the labor movement, the popular movement, and any form of public dissent. But the government failed to present any evidence that linked the bomb to the union leaders and labor as a whole.

At the bargaining table, one wing of the labor movement was pressured to accept a final deal, putting an end to the negotiations, and dividing the union leadership on whether or not to proceed with the general strike.

The return of the Left

The labor movement lacked a militant, left-wing rank and file that could have pushed for the strike to go forward. Indeed, a left wing within the union could have argued for why it was crucial to defeat the bosses by winning an entirely different contract that was more in tune with the demands of all working people in the Dominican Republic. Learning the lessons of this struggle as well as building a left-wing rank and file represents two of the most pressing tasks for the Dominican labor movement and ordinary people’s resistance to neoliberalism and oppression.

As the contradictions of the neoliberal model intensify, more resistance to it will come. The Dominican Republic is a country with a history of radical militancy, and the revival of new left formations are part of an important trend in Latin America and the Caribbean that will not go away any time soon.