https://www.iww.org/taxonomy/term/24/0 All workers in tanneries and factories producing leather goods, luggage, boots, and shoes. en https://www.iww.org/node/1554 <p><strong>By Chris Arsenault, Halifax - <em>Industrial Worker</em>, November 2005</strong></p> <p><img width="230" height="392" border="1" align="right" src="/graphics/photos/bandw/events/wto_seattle.jpg" />It's been more than eleven years since the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico said 'ya basta' or 'enough' to neo-liberalism and initiated a struggle for self-determination. </p> <p>Today, the Zapatistas are creating a variety of participatory economic institutions to meet community needs: women's artisan co-ops, communal corn farming organizations, fair-trade coffee cooperatives and a non-sweatshop boot cooperative. </p> <p>On a sunny day last year, myself and a delegation of foreign solidarity activists tramped the muddy hills around Oventic Caracole, in the Los Altos region, to visit the 1st of January boot co-op. Rafael Hedez, a leading activist with the co-op, and several other compa&ntilde;eros welcomed us with Cokes and bowls of snow-tire tough beef soup stewed on an open fire. </p> <p>Inside the workshop, basically a barn with corrugated iron roof, one of the higher-end buildings in a region of thatched farm cuts, a dozen or so men busily cut leather, stick patterns and heat branding irons, large blue flames erupt as glue is melted to stick on the soles. </p><p><a href="https://www.iww.org/node/1554" target="_blank">read more</a></p> Leather Workers Industrial Union 470 Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:09:00 +0000 x344543 1554 at https://www.iww.org