Maquiladora workers demand release of labor lawyer arrested in Matamoros, Mexico
By Andrea Lobo
15 June 2020
In the Mexican city of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, thousands of workers at the maquiladora sweatshop plants have demonstrated to demand the release of Susana Prieto Terrazas, a labor lawyer who works with so-called “independent” unions.
The Tamaulipas state police arrested Prieto last Monday, June 8, as the lawyer, her daughter and husband left a restaurant in Matamoros. She is being held on trumped up charges of instigating an “uprising and riot” at a local labor court on March 10.
Despite our sharp political differences with Prieto, which we have presented in detail, the World Socialist Web Site unequivocally opposes her arrest and demands her immediate release. Her frame-up and detention is aimed at terrorizing the heroic workers of Matamoros and other sections of the working class, who have rebelled against the gangster-ridden Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) union and the homicidal back to work policy demanded by the giant transnational corporations and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO).
Within minutes of her arrest, which she livestreamed on Facebook, dozens of workers and supporters of Prieto took to the streets, organizing through social media, and protested peacefully outside of the police headquarters and municipal government building and then blocked the road to the airport.
An auto parts worker from Tridonex Cardone who was at the protest told the WSWS, “Some claim she is being taken to the airport. We are here at the Ministerial [Police]. It seems like she is here since human rights officials walked in. It looks like they are moving her around to confuse people.”
More:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/15/mata-j15.html
This woman should be returned alive and unharmed physically.
