STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 9 July 2012

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31. Squatting the land to rise up against unemployment

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/07/08/inenglish/1341754799_139657.html

A woman in her mid-forties, with dark eyes and skin tanned by the wind and sun, wakes up from the siesta she has been enjoying on a mattress lying on the ground. Suddenly, she sees the man mounted on a horse trampling on the vegetables she has been tending so carefully for the last two months. He begins to shout at the 30 or so day laborers, who along with her have been staging a sit in at the Somontes farm in Palma de Río, in Córdoba province.

"What on earth are you doing on that horse?" shouts the woman, who has emerged as a leader among the men.

Lola Álvarez has spent her life working in the fields, and has fought long and hard for the rights of farm hands since the days of the Andalusian Workers' Syndicate (SAT), but says she has never been through such a difficult time as this. She hasn't worked for months: the orange harvest was ruined by late frost, and there was no other work available. So, she and her fellow day laborers have decided to occupy the 400 hectares of Somontes owned by the regional government of Andalusia in Palma del Río.

They have taken up the slogan ¡La tierra para el que la trabaja!, a call to arms dating back to the days before the Civil War, and which translates as "The land for those who work it." These day laborers have taken their inspiration from the village of Marinaleda, in the neighboring province of Seville, where the mayor of 33 years' standing, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, decided back in the late 1970s to occupy unused land and work it. More than three decades later, the community is one of the few in the area with full employment. Gordillo has backed Lola Álvarez and her colleagues, as has the ombudsman of Andalusia, José Chamizo, who has visited Palma del Río in support of their initiative.