Damián reflects on the social inequality and social demands that led to the civil war, as well as rural organizing and the founding of the Union of Field Workers (UTC) in 1975.
- Interviewee:
- Damian
- Places:
- El Salvador
Transcription
To tell you the truth, the origins of the war in our country, as everyone knows, are in the injustices that were being committed by the very rich, who held lots of land for the few while leaving very little land for the majority. One injustice was the lack of land to work on, the wages for working in the sugar cane fields, harvesting coffee, picking cotton, etc. Workers were also paid miserable wages that weren’t enough to support a family. They were also exploited in the maquilas and factories. All that led the people to organize. So, in the countryside, organizing was driven by the high cost of fertilizers, seeds, and all the supplies people needed in their lives. There were no possibilities to get any help with some of those basic daily needs. So what happened was that people began to organize in this sector, here in the countryside. There was an organization called UTC. The Union of Farm Workers.
[What year was this, approximately?]
It started around 1975, from that point forward. But people had been organizing before then. To start bringing people together, they began by reading them the Bible, as should be done. Because the Bible, sincerely, speaks clearly, and it doesn’t hide anything. The poor—Why did Jesus come? For the poor, right? Because the rich always keep them under their heels, suffering all sorts of injustice. So people began to claim their rights in their workplaces, in the maquilas. Unions began to form to demand better wages. We began to demand better wages in the sugar cane fields, in the cotton and coffee harvests. We asked for better pay, and that we be given food fit for humans. Not like the food they gave us, tortillas that were... unreasonably... Like what you would feed to a dog. We slept badly, but we would go to work anyways because we had to save enough to rent a small piece of farmland.