The history of the class struggle in our country has not been - as some say - a peaceful and quiet story. The impoverished masses have given their lives in mobilizations, strikes and strikes; His blood travels all the streets of this country. The Santa Barbara massacre of February 23, 1963, turns 61 this 2024 and is one of those tragic episodes in which the bourgeois state showed what it truly is: a repression machine at the service of a capitalist parasitic class.
To the Southwest Antioquia is the municipality of Santa Barbara. There, 61 years ago, women, men and children who accompanied a strike saw their skin full of bullets; What was your crime?: Fight for a better future.
Cementos el Cairo - forth to their interests - did not exist to allow the people to cover the basic needs they need to survive, much less to give their workers better living conditions, but to gain capital, increasing their wealth through the Superexploitation of cheap labor force. This main interest of the capitalist .
Given this, how did the workers respond? On the nights of 1947, in an abandoned field and next to the river, they organized meetings for the construction of a union and managed to be granted legal status. They hardened their consciousness and discipline, thus the union broke not only with the employer control but also with the clerical and bourgeois trade unionism of the UTC and the CTC. In search of a class policy, he joined the Federation of Workers of Antioquia, which unfortunately was led by the Colombian Communist Party or "Mamerto", a party that was already respectful of the bourgeois order, since he had approved in his IX Congress « The combination of all forms of struggle », for which, the peaceful ways were part of their strategy.
In 1962 the workers decided to approve a sheet of requests to demand:
- General increase in salaries
- Holiday bonus
- School assistance
- Medical and Dental Service
- Housing acquisition loans
- Improvements in the quality of the service in the casino
- Remuneration of Sundays and holidays worked, among other aspects.
But what mistakes were made in this fight? The workers, under the direction of the "Mamerto" party, allowed the negotiation to be done separately, dividing the movement. The workers of Cementos Nare and Argos, who were also in conflict, reached agreements with their companies rather than Cairo Cairo workers; There was also a second error, the mine - Cairo Cairo Propiety - could continue to extract raw materials to supply the other cement.
How did the strike advance? On January 23, 1963, the workers - who were already 230 - of which 96 % were in the union, got tired of not receiving an answer and decided to block the passage of inputs and raw materials of Santa Barbara towards Medellín; This was achieved by installing a tent on the main road, placing studs on the road to prick the tires of the dump trucks that were guarded by military, when this did not work they threw stones at them, managing to enforce the strike.
By February 22, 1963, the Government of Antioquia, in charge of Fernando Gómez Martínez, said they were going to transport the cement and the Clínker , "It will cost what it cost"; Thus, on the morning of February 23, at 10:30 a.m. m., While the workers were gathered in the tent that hindered the passage, a military caravan arrived. The strikers, faithful to their principles of struggle, said they would let the cars that were going to bring the cement, but reiterated that they would not let them out.
In the afternoon, the governor of Antioquia got angry with the colonel of the military caravan because the strikers continued to block the passage of the trucks loaded with cement; He told him that if he could not solve the problem, he would send another who could. The colonel knew what that meant and placed the military strategically and, like rabid dogs that protect their master, began to disperse the crowd with gases, in order to catch the leaders and send them to the dungeons.
Faced with such a situation, the workers between fear, screams and rebellion, responded with stones and the public force responded with the bullets of dozens of guns, machine guns and rifles. The massacre left 12 people dead, among Maria Edilma Zapata, 10, daughter of one of the classmates - 39 were injured and 100 were arrested, including men, women and children. This bloody day became known as the Santa Barbara massacre.
Today, more than six decades later, this massacre promoted and executed by the bourgeois state still is not sanctioned, its authors did not pay any condemnation.
Did everything end there? No, despite the massacre, the workers did not return to work and at the national level there was labor and peasant solidarity. The peasants of the region held out the strikers, the Cementos Argos union lent all their funds to the Cairo Cairo Union, and on February 26 a general strike broke out throughout the country, 50 companies in Bogotá, 26 Bucaramanga and many others in Medellín entered into support and solidarity to the brave workers of Santa Barbara.
For some, Cairo Cairo strikers were stubborn; For the revolutionaries, they were brave and, despite everything, they conquered their demands. Under the pressure generated by the political strike in support of the workers of Cairo and the growing discomfort of workers nationwide, the employer was forced to accept workers' demands.
With this massacre again it was shown that the State is at the service of the ruling classes, and does not mind sending to kill those who dare to fight to demand their rights. That a revolutionary direction is required rightly by the people's struggle, explaining the importance of unity by the base and heat of the struggle, of not trusting the State or the politicians and therefore not to lower their guard in front of their class enemies, which implies the strengthening of their organizations, preparing ideologically and politically with proletarian ideas. The strike and massacre of Santa Barbara will be remembered every year by the conscious workers, since their lessons remain in force.