Asociación de Trabajdores del Campo, 8 de marzo 2019
Comrades-
Warm greetings from Managua and happy International Women Workers Day to all of our comrades who organize against patriarchy and for the emancipation of women and our peoples!
Last year, the Friends of the ATC along with other solidarity organizations circulated “An Urgent Call for Solidarity with Nicaragua,” published by the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) of Nicaragua. Thanks to your generosity, we were able to raise nearly $3000 in support of youth dialogues as a strategy for bringing peace back to Nicaragua.
We sent out two updates last year (3 July & 29 December) about this fund, which the ATC has used to strengthen its youth articulation known as the the Movimiento Juvenil del Campo (MJC). In January and February of this year, three beautiful youth assemblies took place – in the department of Carazo with families who have participated in the ATC’s trade schools, in Matagalpa with members of the “Nueva Vida” youth cooperative and the ATC’s multiple coffee picker unions, and in Chinandega with sons and daughters of the ATC’s banana worker unions. The themes emerging from the discussions were remarkably similar to the 2018 assemblies in Chontales, Estelí and Jinotega, which to reiterate were:
- There is a necessity not just for political and ideological training for youth, but also the ability to grow food for one’s community. The coup organizers tried to cut off the distribution of food throughout the country, but this tactic didn’t work because Nicaragua grows 92% of its own food and most of that circulates in the popular economy, not in large supermarket chains.
- Our telephones are the new instrument of war, and we have to know how to use them wisely and for good, not violence or destruction.
- The ATC is an organization of peace and has been since its founding. The ATC played a fundamental role in the reconciliation process in the 1990s, participating in the laying down of arms and the second agrarian reform that distributed land to former fighters on all sides so they could grow food and make a livelihood.
- As youth, we should organize ourselves so that we can take better advantage of the existing social programs that Nicaragua has to offer, plus struggle for the improvement of our own lives whether that may be arguing for a just wage as a worker, starting our own family business or learning to grow food in agroecological way.
- Our task now is to work on reconciliation, starting with our own families.
The departmental youth assemblies will culminate with a national summit of the MJC, dates still to be determined.
Youth is a central front in other lines of work in the ATC, too. Last month, the ATC and its sister La Via Campesina organizations in the region opened the 2nd year of studies at IALA, the Latin American Institute of Agroecology. All students at IALA are young people who are members of La Via Campesina organizations in Central America and the Caribbean. Our new fundraiser through the Friends of the ATC is to raise $5000 by April 1st for a Mesoamerican youth encounter in IALA. This effort is being led by the participants in the January 2019 Friends of the ATC delegation. Please consider continuing to support youth organizing in Nicaragua by supporting this campaign. Donations can be made online (https://afgj.salsalabs.org/AgroecologyTrainingEncounteratIALAFundraiser/index.html) or by sending a check (made out to “Friends of ATC / AFGJ”) to:
Alliance for Global Justice
225 E 26th St., Ste 1
Tucson, AZ 85713.
Thanks once more for your support of building a bountiful, peaceful and organized countryside in Nicaragua! Please continue to stay in touch.
In struggle,
Friends of the ATC