Word: peasant
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...months of determined struggle, marked by protest demonstrations, sit-ins and even threats of mass crop strikes, Poland's private farmers last week finally won the promise of legal recognition for Rural Solidarity, the 800,000-member independent agricultural union. The unprecedented agreement, signed by government negotiators and peasant leaders at an emotional ceremony in the northwestern city of Bydgoszcz, called for the union's registration...
...delayed the agreement for three more days, and tensions began to rise. On the eve of the signing, 100 farmers took over a municipal building in nearby Inowroclaw, not unlike the 100 or so other protesters who had already been occupying the Bydgoszcz headquarters of the government-controlled United Peasants' Party for a month. The breakthrough finally came when peasant leaders agreed to refrain from staging new protests and to recognize the leading role of the Communist Party in their forthcoming charter. Nonetheless, the accord had all the makings of a severe new headache for Warsaw: Poland...
...perhaps. In fact, the speaker was José Antonio Morales Ehrlich, a member of El Salvador's ruling junta and head of the country's far-reaching land-reform program. The campesinos represented 14 new cooperative farms in the area, encompassing 31,148 acres and 1,551 peasant families. They had come to watch Ehrlich swear in their newly elected representatives and hear him discuss the future of the program that had given them title to estates on which their families had labored for generations...
...family had already moved to San Salvador; the hilltop views that had thrilled Angel seemed merely confining to his heirs and their restless wives, so "when the sons did come out from the city," said one of the cooperative's organizers, "it was only to play the peasant, to walk around and impress the girlfriends for the weekend...
After the speech came the hard questions, as the peasant representatives voiced their doubts and worries. But Ehrlich was impressively armed with straight answers. The rainy season was almost here, said one man, yet no one has received any money for his labor (workers are paid $5.50 per day by the government) or for the crops. "The men don't mind working for a couple of weeks without pay," another added, "as long as they can be sure it is coming." Ehrlich answered that the central bank hoped to send out checks within a week. "We wish to promise...