I read a very interesting article on unionism in La Jornada, the liberal newspaper from Mexico City. The article is about how dangerous it is to be a union activist in Mexico and Latinamerica in general. It comes from an international union organization from Brussels. CSI (International Union Federation-Confederación Sindical Internacional). In their annual report says that 91 unionist were murdered defending workers rights, 39 in Colombia being the highest with an ultra right government but other countries in the region like Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, Panamá and Perú. CSI represents 168 million of workers around the world in 155 countries. At the end the article states that they noticed a slight reduction on the murders in Colombia but one of the main reasons is because a lot of the murder attempts on union activists failed.
And also concerning labor facts another article about the suicide rate from 2007 in the whole country(Mexico) states that from the 4,394 suicide cases in that year, 88% were young male(between 15-24 year olds) and 1,179(26%) were UNEMPLOYED, and the other statistics do not say anything clear in particular for example that 50% were married and things like that. But it is becoming clear how economic pressure is making people take extreme measures even upon themselves. The other interesting fact in the statistics is that the division in occupations in the people committing suicides the first are workers in the industry 18%, farmers and fishermen 14%, white collar workers 12% , no mention of entrepreneurs or businessmen, at least they do not make an statistic.
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