In the last three months numerous activities have been built and developed in the countries that make up COTRADO ALAC in Latin America, and we would like to highlight some of them in this report. The strengthening of grassroots organisations in Latin America and the Caribbean leads us to deepen the organisation in the existing countries, and brings about the desire to expand and organise the other countries in the continent.
Our current highlights are in the following countries: in Chile through political work and in El Salvador through grassroots work. These are combined and complementary efforts that must be deepened throughout the continent.
CONATRADO Chile and its grassroots political work
Through the grassroots political work of our organisations in Chile, in August, Chilean organisations met with councillors from nine municipalities in the south of Santiago (convened by our colleague Patricia Coñoman): El Bosque, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Lo Espejo, San Ramón, Cisterna, San Bernardo, San Joaquín, Cerrillos, San Miguel to agree on the cross-cutting nature of the situation of women, gender and diversities, in relation to home-based workers, and care provided in the home, and the need for social security and recognition as workers to escape invisibility, as subjects of rights.
We were accompanied by Mayor Manuel Zúñiga Aguilar, with the participation of women from the municipalities, giving us more strength to move forward with the roadmap we are proposing, to get out of precarious employment and to defend our proposal.
Chile is going through a delicate political situation where the right and the extreme right are trying, on the one hand, to criminalise the popular movements, and on the other, to make their actions and political power invisible. The attempt to unify the representative political power, with consistent grassroots work, with its union with other progressive forces in the country, all this done with the protagonism of the working people at home, will put us on another level of strength.
That is why we welcome initiatives that join forces to build a political environment favourable to popular organisations.
SITRABORDO's organisational efforts in El Salvador
In El Salvador we would like to present something very similar, because it is entirely focused on strengthening grassroots work, without which none of the rest is possible.
We highlighted an organising campaign of SITRABORDO, and also presented a way of working for the organisation based on home visits and an intimate conversation with the workers as an expression of the excellence of this grassroots work. In addition, a specific action programme was presented, we can highlight the activity report and most importantly, in the case of SITRABORDO there was a deepening of organisational work, both in quantity and quality, with excellent accountability of activities. We can highlight that one of the biggest efforts to fully organise home-based workers is underway in El Salvador.
El Salvador shows how important organisational work in a small country can grow in the face of the challenges of expansion, but especially the organisation of home-based workers in Latin America. The political situation in El Salvador, which is also very delicate from a social point of view, with the populist right wing in power, makes the excellent basic work appear as a light for all home-based workers in the country, when they see excellence, constancy, perseverance, organisation, integral and unconditional defence of the workers, class work in the realisation of gender and minority work. All this shows how organisational work in El Salvador is an example for all work in Latin America.
Finally, what unifies the work in Chile and El Salvador is the condition of grassroots work as a prerequisite for all political work: only through broad organisation in the territory will we achieve a strong Latin American organisation from the bottom up, as a form of renewal, with prepared leaders and above all with democratic grassroots representation.
