And it happened that a Venezuelan political muralist was in Portland
for a two-week visit.
AFSCME Local 88 Vice President Mary Orr met muralist Nelson Santana
Oct. 21 when he spoke at the Local 99 Musicians Union Hall. Just
days before, her union’s staff had moved into its new office
building at 6025 East Burnside. “Could Santana paint a mural
there?” she wondered. A few days and a flurry of phone calls
later, Santana was at work on a mural adorning the lobby.
Santana, who trained at art schools in France and Spain, is well-known
in Venezuela as the painter of over 100 murals in one district of
Caracas, the capital. Murals have a long tradition in Latin America
as a marriage of art and revolutionary idealism, dramatizing social
justice struggles and glorifying popular heroes.
AFSCME has its own popular heroes, whose images now adorn Council
75’s foyer: Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated while
supporting a group of AFSCME strikers in Memphis, Tennessee, and
Bill Lucy, AFSCME national secretary-treasurer, who was with King
in Memphis.
“It’s a great way for our members to see what we’re
about when they come in,” said Gina James, office support
staffperson who helped get the mural project in motion.
Santana’s visit was part of a series of events sponsored
by the Portland Central
America Solidarity Committee (PCASC) that sparked interest in
Venezuela among local unionists. In August, AFSCME Local 88 had
given $500 to send two Portlanders to Venezuela, including former
AFSCME organizer Megan Hise, and the two reported on their trip
at the local’s October meeting.
On Oct. 29, Bernardo Alvarez, the Venezuelan ambassador to the
United States, spoke at Portland State University, and was welcomed
by Oregon AFL-CIO President-elect Tom Chamberlain.
For his mural work, Santana wouldn't accept payment, but AFSCME
paid for materials and contributed a $500 honorarium that will go
toward a school for muralists he is founding. Santana, who was born
in Caracas, is a devoted supporter of the “Bolivarian”
movement. Named for Venezuelan General Simon Bolivar, who liberated
Latin America from Spanish rule in the early 1800s, the Bolivarian
movement seeks to implement Bolivar’s vision of a united Latin
America.
The movement’s best-known proponent is Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez, a populist former paratrooper who was elected by a
landslide vote in 1998. The Chavez government quickly moved to devote
Venezuela’s oil wealth to bring up living standards for the
country’s poorest citizens. That alienated the country’s
most prominent business leaders, who led an unsuccessful coup in
2004. Since then, Chavez has emerged as an outspoken critic of so-called
free-trade agreements, such as the recently passed CAFTA which the
U.S. labor movement also opposes.
While U.S. President George W. Bush has said new trade agreements
will help Latin America reduce its poverty, Chavez has urged the
United States to do more to eliminate its own poverty.
