Poland and the Peace Movement

Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Resist Newsletters Resist Collection 6-30-1981 Resist Newsletter, May-June 1981 Resist Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter Recommended Citation Resist, "Resist Newsletter, May-June 1981" (1981). Resist Newsletters. 96. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter/96 --------RESIST----- May-June 1981 - 38 Union Square, Somerville, Mass. 02143 - Newsletter #140 a call to resist illegitimate authority POLAND AND THE WOMEN IN PEACE MOVEMENT EL ·SALVADOR FRANK BRODHEAD AMANDA CLAIBORNE What are the US government's goals in Poland? The lives of women are distinctly different from the Does it want a reformed version of the present govern lives of men, and this is no less true in developing coun ment? Or would it rather have a more Western-looking tries than in the US. Any general socio-economic por or neutralist government, even if this meant risking mili trait conceals this fact, as differences in employment, tary intervention by the Soviet Union? Or would the US health, education and other areas are made invisible by in fact welcome an invasion, an event which would be "sex-blind" research. likely to result in a drawn out war, as in Afghanistan, In all countries women suffer from hardships addi and would certainly drive many neutral nations into the tional to those of men. Some of these result from sexism US camp? Certainly any Soviet move in Poland would or ''machismo,'' or whatever name it goes under; and provide a large increase in popular support for Reagan's so one is not surprised to discover legal and "cultural" aggressive foreign policy: what military responses would discrimination against women in the countries of Latin the US make to Soviet intervention? These and other America where, after all, the word "machismo" was questions make it important to think about the Polish coined. What is perhaps not so obvious is the degree to situation and try to anticipate what courses of action we which these hardships have been created by external might take to lessen the chances of war growing out of forces to serve specific interests. The role of the multi these conflicts. national corporation is particularly important and, until Recent developments in Poland must be seen in the recently, has been little studied; while, with the increas context of the series of dramatic but short-lived revolu ing "development" of the Third World, its direct role in tionary outbreaks in Eastern Europe since World War the oppression of women has greatly expanded. In the II, including the East German workers' uprising of following study, I hope to show that from birth-control 1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the to bottle-feeding, and from malnutrition to the assem Czechoslovakian reform movement of 1968. Poland's bly line, the multi-national corporation has everything own recent history includes a reform movement in to do with the lives of women in El Salvador. October, 1956, a radical student movement in 1968, and widespread strikes in 1970 and 1976. All of these WOMEN'S WORK outbreaks met with severe repression, and the strikes of One of the most striking things one learns about 1970 led to many hundreds of workers killed by the Salvadoran women is that their rate of migration to the police. Yet unlike Hungary and Czechoslovakia, cities is significantly higher than that of men. movements in Poland have not yet led to direct Soviet "Women's work" is in the cities. intervention. In the countryside, wage-work is predictably concen Because of the widespread violence accompanying the trated in the agricultural sector, largely on the coffee strikes of 1970 and 1976, which were generally success and cotton plantations that are the source of much of El ful responses to attempts by the government to impose a Salvador's wealth. There is some full-time work availa general price increase, by 1980 the Polish working class ble, but the majority of it is seasonal, harvest work. had established a kind of veto power over price This is the main source of income for Salvador's increases, at least in its own mind. Many industrial peasant population, many of whom are without land of workers, indeed most people, had also participated in their own. Two-thirds of all men make their living from two rounds of intense collective struggle; and it was agricultural work, while under seven percent of women from this fund of experience that the Polish workers are employed in this sector. (Available statistics proba drew when the government attempted to impose new · bly downplay women's contribution in harvest work, price increases - reducing the workers' standard of however. Only the head of the family (usually the man) living to repay foreign loans - in the summer of 1980. is officially hired (and paid), while in actuality the entire continued on page 4 continued on page i family, children included, will work full-time to fill the pesticide run-off. This water is used for everything from daily quota.) washing to cooking to drinking. The consequent poison Although the pay rates for harvest work are the same ing of the workers results in several deaths and thou for everyone, this is not true of the wages of permanent sands of hospitalizations each year. (See box below.) hacienda workers. For this work, by law, women are Other income-producing employment available to paid the same as boys under the age of 16, approxi rural women is in agro-industry. This includes work in mately 40 percent of what men earn. The rationalization such traditional areas as baking, clothing, candy, and for this discrimination may be that women are hired for fruit and vegetable processing, as well as in fishing and the "easier" work of planting and fertilizing, whereas the production or processing of tobacco, alcoholic men are given the "more difficult" work of clearing drinks, shoes and textiles. Many women in this sector brush, and pesticide application. are self-employed, making handicrafts or food and Living conditions for plantation workers and their drink for sale in local markets. families are horrific. Although owners are supposed to For the majority of rural women, over four-fifths of provide adequate housing, including sanitary facilities, whom are not considered ''economically active'', life is in reality this is almost never the case. The only housing no easier. A Salvadoran woman doctor who has worked available to the 300 or so people that will be employed with peasants for several years gave this description: on a coffee farm during the harvest will be an open, Their life is terrible. The average peasant woman thatched-roof shed measuring about 30 by 50 feet. The gets up at 3:30 or 4 in the morning to light the fire for only source of water available will be the drainage ditch cooking the maize. Then she pounds it on a stone, which swarms with parasites, a major cause of disease in feeds the animals, prepares the meal and washes the El Salvador, and is usually severely contaminated by clothes. At midday, she takes most of the meal to her THE PESTICIDE CONNECTION Pesticide sales to the Third World are big busi tentionally sprayed mosquito populations become ness. A handful of multinational chemical com increasingly resistant. panies like Bayer, Dow, and Monsanto, all of Why are pesticides banned for use in the US whom have distribution or manufacturing subsidi allowed to be exported to developing countries? In aries in El Salvador, supply millions of pounds of 1978 hearings before Congress which were consid pesticides to the Third World, making millions of ering implementing restrictions on the export of dollars in profits. Many pesticides, like DDT and products banned in the US, Esther Peterson, Spe Toxapheme, have been banned for use in the US cial Assistant to the President for Consumer because of their proven danger to all those who Affairs, testified that "an export policy must take come in contact with them. The US General into account economic burdens that the policy Accounting Office (GAO) estimated that over 15 may impose . A restrictive policy would exacer percent of the 588 million pounds of pesticides bate this problem [of US balance-of-trade deficit] exported from the U.S. in 1975 was comprised of through lost sales." products either never registered, or cancelled or Since 1972, the EPA has been required to notify suspended by the Environmental Protection foreign nations of any action taken by them con Agency (EPA). In the same year, El Salvador used cerning pesticides. But, according to the GAO, over 20,000 kilograms of Toxapheme and over from 1972-1978 the EPA requested notification in 11,000 kilograms of DDT. Robert Van Den only five out of the fourteen instances when Bosch, a professor of entomology at Berkeley, dis regulatory action was taken. Whether or not the cussed the effects of widespread pesticide use on EPA actually requests notification, the GAO the population of Central America: reports that the warning is seldom received by the The direct impact of [pesticides] on the human purchasing government. An official at one US population was appalling. In Nicararagua embassy told the GAO that "he did not routinely alone, there were 383 reported deaths and over forward notifications on chemicals. because it three thousand poisonings during the 1969-70 may adversely affect U.S. exporting." crop year. A study in Guatemala showed that Pesticides are not used to increase food produc ... residues in mother's milk were the highest tion in the Third World, but are used almost ever recorded anywhere. In an extreme case, a exclusively on export crops, in the case of Salva sample of mother's milk contained 244 times as dor on cotton and coffee.

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