Letters to the editor: Labor Day

When I started working, we used to call lazy people "May Day" or "Virgin Backs," in contrast to those of us who commemorated International Workers' Day on that day with huge meals, and who, after all, were the ones who ate and drank the most. But it didn't show because the economy, salaries, and living standards remained stable, and everything was passable. Time passed, words changed, inflation appeared, country risk, dollars, the family basket, devaluation, layoffs, drugs, unemployment, hunger, and misery; everything collapsed and is about to explode. Today, no one invites you to eat; the pulsed locro (a type of stew) has been replaced by rice stew; empanadas by chard fritters; barbecue by sausages or hamburgers; roast beef by roast offal; noodles with chicken by pizza; And for dessert, sweet potato jam with a little cheese for everyone; if there's poverty, let it not be noticeable. They threw away the workers' struggles for their rights and better working conditions in an eight-hour day, like that May Day when Chicago workers, in 1886, were brutally repressed for protesting. Today, there are so many cuts and layoffs that everyone complains, and when they don't react, they keep squeezing them. With the letters of the word "worker," I say in an acrostic what they mean to me today: Taciturn, Angry, Abandoned, Cheap, Hated, Trickster, Dejected, Weakened, Obsolete, and Rat. Don't take this the wrong way; that's all they've turned us into, after practicing a profession, art, or trade our whole lives, with effort dedicated to production. Men and women, who, day in and day out, put their heart and soul into it, hoping to build a better and more just world, let us not give in or resign ourselves to losing the rights we have already won! Let's make a scene! And happy workers' day!