Tijuana conference: Uniting workers in the Americas

For the seventh consecutive year, workers, union leaders, and immigrant rights and social movement activists will gather in Tijuana, Mexico, for a U.S./Cuba/Venezuela/North America/Latin America/Caribbean Conference at the Hotel Palacio Azteca on Dec. 3, 4 and 5. Registration and hotel information are available online at laborexchange.blogspot.com.

Each year the basic theme, “There are no borders in the workers’ struggle — uniting America’s working class and increasing its influence,” is filled in different ways with the living struggle and important developments that go largely unreported in the U.S. big business media.

The Friday, Dec. 3, dinner and program will focus on the case of the Cuban Five, unjustly held in U.S. jails, and the global struggle to free them. A never-before-viewed display of Gerardo Hernández’ political cartoons is planned and more. On Dec. 4 developments in international relations, especially between the U.S., Cuba and Latin America, will be discussed and particularly the imperialist free trade agreements imposed on workers throughout the Americas and the growing alterative to them in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). On Dec. 5 discussion will focus on immigration and migration.

International participants will include Carmen Godinez and other representatives of the Cuban Workers Confederation; Jacobo Torres from Venezuela’s Fuerza Socialista Bolivariana de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras; Roberto Caraspe and Rolando Semprum, representing Sindicato Metro Caracas; João Batista Lemos, Sec. Adjuntos de Relaciones Internationales of Brazil’s CTB; and from Mexico in the 200th year of its independence, the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas, which is battling privatization and more. Other labor representatives from Haiti, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Colombia and coordinators of Encuentro Sindical Nuestra América have also been invited. ESNA is a new development that involves the largest and most militant labor federations throughout Latin America.

Tijuana is just across the U.S./Mexico border from San Diego. Passports are required to return to the U.S. The conference is sponsored by the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange, the Federatión Sindical Mundial, Unión del Barrio, the International Action Center and the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five. For more information write to [email protected] or [email protected] or call 313-575-4933 or 313-355-8566.