Quedar El Rabo Por Desollar

“Introduce yourself, please.” The man stood up. He was younger than many attending the meeting. “My name is Serafin Martinez. I am a mechanic.” “And how many do you represent?” “Myself and nine others at our shop.” “And your affiliation?” “We are anarchosyndicatists.” “And your foundational ideology?” “We believe that any hierarchy that cannot be ethically justified must either be dismantled or replaced by decentralized egalitarian control.” And so it went, one man after another standing up and declaring his trade and ideology. No two groups were exactly alike, though the overarching goals were much the same. They all sought to empower the workers and create a balanced society. Ruiz watched them and sipped his coffee. He knew from bitter experience that these minor differences would be exploited by the powerful. The divisions would be widened. Leaders would be bribed or coerced, beaten or even killed. Thus is was. Thus it always shall be. What Pegman Saw: Montevideo, Uruguay Note: The Latin American Labor Congress met in Montevideo in May of 1929 to discuss ways of improving life across all of the Latin American countries. The meeting was considered a rousing success, with charismatic leaders outlining the plans to help bring sweeping change to the region though extensive unionization and collective bargaining with corporations and oligarchical institutions. In October of that year, the American stock market crashed and took with it much of the global economy. A decade later came World War Two followed by the invention of the CIA, an organization with the principal task of enforcing the virulently anti-Communist policies of the United States (much of which orginated with American corporations who despise organized labor). Though the CIA was deeply involved in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, their principal focus was and is Latin America. At the time of this writing, 42 individuals hold as much wealth as 50% of the global population. This economic imbalance, already the greatest in the history of humanity, grows larger by the minute.  The title is a Spanish idiom meaning “the hardest part of the task remains to be accomplished.”