Presented by Barbara Byers on Sunday, 14 March 2010

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen, Sisters and Brothers, Confrères et Consoeurs, and Comrades.

It is a joy and a privilege to represent the Canadian Labour Congress in this wonderful celebration. I bring greetings on behalf of our President, Ken Georgetti; Executive Vice-President, Marie Clarke Walker; Secretary-Treasurer, Hassan Yussuff; and on behalf of our staff from coast to coast to coast. One of our staff, Paulette Sadoway is here with us. Paulette is the Regional Director for the Atlantic Region.

Indeed, what an honour for Pat Riley to receive the Orden de Mayo, the highest order by the Argentine government to a non-Argentinian for an act of courage, honour and solidarity taken over 30 years ago.

It is a joy because we are also celebrating the fact that the reality of Argentina today is so different from what it was then, 30 years ago when our Argentinian Brothers and Sisters were living under one of the most repressive military dictatorships in the Americas from 1976 to 1983.

For those who aren’t familiar with the dark days of the dirty wars of Latin America, I remind you that, during the 1970’s and 1980’s the majority of Latin Americans, from Brazil to Chile, from Argentina to Uruguay, lived under brutal military dictatorships. Perhaps the best known General of the era was Chile’s Augusto Pinochet. I suspect just hearing his name still brings out chills of horror. I know it does for me.

The costs of the military dictatorship’s “Dirty War” were high in terms of lives lost and the most basic human rights violated. Human rights groups estimate that over 30,000 persons became “disappeared”(i. e. arrested and secretly executed without trial) during the 1976–1983 period. Thousands of others went into exile - many here to Canada.

This is why this celebration here today is also a celebration of the return to democracy in Argentina, a period which began with national elections in 1983. And Argentina has been building and strengthening its democracy since that time in spite of some pretty serious crises over these 25 years.

In 2001 the country went through an economic crash similar in some ways to what the world experienced last year. There was much turmoil with waves of protests by the unemployed as well as middle-class pot bangers, growing poverty and unemployment and run-away inflation. But the crises were solved by democratic means, and never was there the spectre of another military coup.

We, in the labour movement, working closely with our confrères and consoeurs in the labour movement of the hemisphere, thought we had left those terrible times behind. It seemed that democracy had been permanently restored to the Americas – through struggle and sacrifice on the part of Latin American militants, trade unionists, women, students, farmers, indigenous people, and others.

So it was with some shock and anger that we learned of events in Honduras not six months ago when a group of Honduran generals arrested the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and whisked him out of the country.

Why did they do this? Hard to believe it was because he wanted to consult his people on constitutional issues.

And he had raised the minimum wage and put a hold on approvals of mining exploration by multinational companies – some of them Canadian.

The Honduran oligarchy was so threatened by these measures and intolerant of democratic process, they had him removed.

I mention this because the whole hemisphere has been shaken by these events in Honduras because it brought back terrible memories of the “Dirty War” of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Many of the Latin American states, especially Argentina, who understood in flesh and blood terms the significance of the Hondurans coup d’état because of their history, have been carrying out a diplomatic battle at the Organization of American States to restore democracy in Honduras.

I won’t go into all the details of the 6 months of struggle to get the democratically elected President of Honduras returned to power.

The Honduran people have valiantly resisted the military intervention. They have paid a heavy cost in terms of human rights violations, arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial murders.

The Canadian government’s role in these recent events in the heliosphere has been less than exemplary.

Canada’s representative for the Americas, Minister Peter Kent was never a strong supporter of the return to democracy in Honduras and lent support to any process proposed that would sideline the return of the elected President.

The days of widespread military dictatorships may be on the wane, but now we have the dictatorship of the free market and free trade agreements.

The labour movement has been in the forefront of the resistance of this new type of dictatorship going back to the fight against the Canada-US FTA and NAFTA.

We learned many lessons in those struggles that we are applying to the current battle to oppose the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Colombia may not be ruled by a military dictatorship but the human rights violations taking place in that country are equally serious.

There, the “Dirty War” is being waged against trade unionists and leaders, who dare to organize a union, lead a strike, or oppose the government in any way. Over 2,700 trade union leaders have been assassinated in Colombia in the past 25 years, making it the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist.

The Canadian Labour Congress continues to monitor situations anywhere in the world where labour rights, indigenous rights, and human rights are under attack.

But don’t get me wrong, its not all bad news.

We live in a complicated multi-racial, multi-lingual hemisphere where some pretty exciting changes are taking place:

• where an impoverished shoe shine boy called Lula grew up in Brazil and became a national labour leader and has become one of the most beloved Presidents of his country;
• where a union leader in Bolivia named Evo Morales has become the first President from a First Nations community;
• where women are assuming high positions in government, like President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina;
• and where that same democratic government of Cristina Kirchner has made a humble effort to right the wrongs of history by awarding the Orden de Mayo to a group of Canadian trade unionists in New Brunswick for doing the right thing 30 years ago.

Ambassador Bothamley was quoted in today’s paper as saying “We are going to pay an old debt from the heart to some people who put their security at risk for people thousands of miles away”.

We should never forget our past. Today we are reminded of the importance of communities working in coalition together and the difference it can make to the lives of others. Thank you, and congratulations to Pat, the ILA and to the coalition of labour, church, environmental and community activists for taking a stand yesterday for today and for tomorrow.

They were ordinary people knowing that they were doing something to try and change the living conditions, the lives, of people a long way away. But they were ordinary people doing incredible work and taking extraordinary actions. They were ordinary people making history.

My question to each of us here is “What are we doing to make history today?”