May 21st, 2017, Baleizão, Beja

Once again here we are paying homage to Catarina Eufémia and to her example of dignity and selfless courage. We gather to honor this woman of struggle, a firm and resolute fighter against exploitation and oppression, for the right to bread, to work, to land, pride of the proletariat of the Alentejo countryside, pride of all Portuguese workers, pride of PCP, her Party.

Here we are expressing our respect and admiration for this woman who has become a symbol of the struggle of our people for the freedom and emancipation of the workers. Here we are recalling these dramatic events of 19th May 1954 when Catarina Eufémia, bravely confronting the fascist brute force, fell to her murderous bullets.

She carried a son in her arms and another in her womb, and with her there were so many other arms from these lands of Baleizão, on strike for better journeys, women and working men subjected to a brutal hardship of life, - lack of work, or work from sun to sun, poor wages, hunger - and the total absence of rights, in a place in which a minority of landowners dominated and concentrated the wealth of what the land produced.

Paying homage to Catarina is to honor long and heroic struggle of the agricultural workers of the Alentejo, her struggle against exploitation and the democratization of access to land, for the welfare of the working people of these vast fields. It is to remember and honor the thousands of men, women and young people who, before and after Catarina’s murder, were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

Her name is the struggle of resistance against fascism and the struggle for democracy and the freedom that is here called and present; the struggle of generations of anti-fascists who lost their lives or suffered the consequences of their choice to face the odious fascist regime of Salazar and Caetano - that terrorist dictatorship of monopolies and agrarians.

To name Catarina is to keep up the banner of the struggle for Agrarian Reform, that great dream of generations and generations of agricultural proletarians, which has momentarily become reality with the April Revolution, under the slogan “the land to whom it works” which remains as a future project, that needs to be maintained and which is still an integral part of the Alentejo development process.

A project that we will not abandon and that we will continue to fight for. An Agrarian Reform that, in compliance with the Basic Law of the Country, liquidates landed property! But to remember Catarina is to exalt by her example of dedication and dedication to the struggle, by her political conscience, by her action of enlightened communist militant, the role of women and communists and her struggle for the emancipation of women. Struggle that, as the testimonies of some of their companions say was present in her action and informed and lucid intervention.

Catarina Eufémia became a symbol of the revolt of the women who dared to say No! to the unjust and inhuman conditions of life and work imposed upon them and to the total absence of rights which fascism sought to subject them to. To recall her action and example is to recognize and value the organized intervention of women throughout the land property zone, who were an essential component of the valiant and ample struggle waged by the agricultural proletariat.

Her murder is the confirmation of how the women also became a preferential target of fascist repression as a result of the extraordinary contribution they made to the struggle in the Alentejo and Ribatejo camps, and what made it unacceptable for the fascist dictatorship that the struggle and opposition to the regime should be carried out by women that the Fascist ideology had as subaltern and inferior beings.

Her example of militancy and courage came to fruition. We have seen it in many struggles and particularly in the construction of Agrarian Reform. In this great enterprise that for the agricultural women of the southern fields meant access to work, to professional achievement and to their economic independence.

We know that the Agrarian Reform was stifled and destroyed by the governments of right-wing politics and the monopolist recovery of the land owners which meant a huge setback in the life and development of the Alentejo fields and lands.

That setback is seen in abandoned fields, desertification, unemployment, and the growing difficulties of the lives of those who only had the strength of their work. It is seen in the general setback of productive activities, with low employability, low wages, growing precariousness of work and life; in the difficulties faced by pensioners and the elderly who have very low pensions, particularly the agricultural workers.

That setback is seen in the closing of the public services that the politics of the right promoted, emphasizing the phenomena of the social regression, the demographic aging and the regional asymmetries; in the persistence and aggravation of social inequalities and in the increase of poverty.

This is the result of years and years of right-wing policy that have also led the country to the crisis and made it increasingly dependent and vulnerable. A crisis that has become more dramatic with the accentuation of the right policies of the PECs, the Aggression Pacty, from the responsibility of PS, PSD and CDS-PP.

The years of the PSD / CDS-PP Government were particularly harsh, bringing the politics of exploitation and impoverishment and liquidation of the social and cultural rights of our people to a new level. A policy centered on the uncontrolled exploitation of the labor force and the general impoverishment of our people.

The policy implemented in recent years has led, in addition to increasing unemployment, to a massive reduction in labor income, to the liquidation of collective negotiating rights and other rights, to the reduction of social benefits and their devaluation, to the replacement of social security systems with welfare measures, fiscal policy measures that alleviate profits and penalize labor.

A policy of devaluation of work and the worker is also evident in the reduction of the weight of labor income in the distribution of national income through wage cuts, in their freezing and professional progressions, in the reduction of overtime, the deregulation of schedules and their increase, particularly in the Public Administration, in the reduction of holidays and holiday time. We face a new phase of national political life today, but this cannot make us forget the consequences of right-wing politics and puts the necessity of actually breaking with this path.

As in the past, the workers and our people are fighting a great battle today to reverse this whole situation of social degradation which has led to the right policy of exploitation and impoverishment. Even today, as in the past, communist militants play a decisive role not only in organizing and revitalizing this struggle, but also in our Party taking on the vanguard of political and institutional initiative in order to secure a turning point for the defense, replacement and conquest of rights.

In this new phase of national political life, in the new correlation of forces existing in the Parliament, despite the strong constraints imposed by the European Union and the Euro, the options of the PS minority Government and the destabilizing counter-blow of the PSD and the CDS, it was possible to advance in the replacement of rights and income.

The steps are still short, but steps forward are taken in the recovery of living conditions, and the example of, among others, the increase in the national minimum wage and pensions (although insufficiently), the replacement of public holidays, the replacement of the 35 hour labor journey in the Public Administration for all workers, the end of the IRS surcharge for the lower income brackets.

Steps taken with our decisive contribution, as is the most recent case of raising the family allowance that thousands of children with retroactive to January. There are, however, many problems that need to be answered right from the point of view of workers’ rights, but also in many other areas of our collective life. First of all, in response to the serious problem of unemployment that remains at unacceptable levels, the precariousness that has become a social scourge, low wages and low reforms.

We cannot forget that a quarter of the Portuguese population lives below the poverty line and that there are still plain deficiencies in public services and in the social functions of the State, namely health and social security, in regional development. Problems that do not allow us to fold our arms waiting for any blessing that falls from the skies!

Problems whose overcoming need the struggle of the workers and the people. This struggle does not stop and continues to develop throughout the country and is an essential condition for new advances.

For this reason, we call on the participation in the great national day of struggle, called by the CGTP-IN for next 3rd of June, namely in the Lisbon demonstration already scheduled for that day.

Those problems have to be solved with a truly alternative policy - patriotic and left-wing politics, which have as their essential axis the valorization of work and workers, the object and condition of development and social progress.

A policy that requires: creating jobs, halting their destruction and combating redundancies; protection in unemployment; improving purchase power with the general increasement in wages and the increasement of the national minimum wage to 600 euros; to end the blockades to collective negotiating and to restore the rights called into question by the Labor Code and the Labor Law of the Public Administration; combating the deregulation of working hours, respecting their daily and weekly limits and reducing them to 35 hours per week, without loss of remuneration or other rights, in particular as a contribution to creating jobs and combating unemployment.

A policy that, in its implementation, also requires: ensuring stability and security and eliminating precariousness; ensure decent working conditions; guarantee an effective fight against violation of labor legislation; promote investment in an economic profile based on skilled labor; have individual and collective rights developed and effective; fight Anti-labor policies of the European Union.

It is in this struggle that the PCP is committed with initiative and with concrete proposals, such as those we have presented in the Parliament but also, and immediately, in the process of preparation and debate of the next State Budget, determined by the fulfillment of the commitments made with the workers and the people, not neglecting any situation that would improve the living conditions of the workers and the people.

That is why we will be ready to continue our struggle to solve the problems of the country and continue to guarantee, with our initiative and proposal, the maintenance of the path of restoring income and rights and raising the living conditions of the people, with our proposals for fiscal policy, elimination of cuts and restrictions of rights, but also to consider the full valorization of pensions, to attract public investment and to strengthen the human and technical financial resources necessary for the proper functioning of public services.

Bearing in mind the struggle of Catarina and the Alentejo women, let me also pay particular attention to the situation of today’s women, to the problems and adverse reality they face as a result of years of right-wing politics. That reality has introduced setbacks in the situation of women as workers, mothers and citizens.

As the women workers of the Central and Local Public Administration, who in their overwhelming majority, have their wages and career progressions frozen since 2009. As that women who have work receive the lowest salaries.

As the ones that are in unemployment and they are many. In fact, the politics of right-wing have attacked the aspiration of the Alentejo women in the access to fundamental rights, starting with the work with rights, the valorization of wages and of other important rights that ensure better living and working conditions and their participation in equality in all walks of life.

The persistence of women’s inequalities and discrimination is not overcome by attempts to isolate the struggle of women for their own rights, for equality in all areas of society, for the more general struggle of workers and people for a new course for the country. Here too, patriotic and leftist politics is the anchor for fulfilling women’s rights, ensuring equality in life and participation in equality in all areas of life.

The anchor for achieving equality in guarantee women the right to work and work with rights, guaranteeing their economic and social autonomy, and full participation in all sectors of activity.

Although with the full awareness that the solution to the problems of the country do not dispense, on the contrary, they demand this rupture with right-wing policy, we remain as we have always been, committed to finding solutions and taking measures that correspond to legitimate aspirations of the workers and the Portuguese people for a better life. It is by following the path that leads to the realization of these aspirations that we will be met, honoring our commitment of always with the workers and the people.

With the awareness that the best tribute we can render to Catarina Eufémia is to continue fighting for the goals for which she gave up her life: We reaffirm here that we will not give up the struggle and our role in defending the interests of the workers, the people and the country!