Morales, September 30, 2007

It is with immense grief over the murder of my brother Marco Tulio Ramírez Portela, Secretary of Culture and Sports of the Central Executive Committee and General Secretary of the Finca Yuma Sub Divisional Committee of the Union of Banana Laborers of Izabal (SITRABI), that I write today to express my most sincere thanks to everyone for the displays of solidarity towards our family and our labor organization.

Jesus said: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”  Reassured by these words, we are certain that my brother has not died, as he lives in the hearts of all those who love him and in each of the labor activists that fought side by side with him. I believe that my brother’s blood, shed on the main street of Finca Yuma, owned by the transnational corporation Del Monte Fresh, will breed new activists who will rise to defend the social, economic and human rights of the working class.

At the wake and burial of my brother’s mortal remains, I saw how hundreds of workers who were there with us cried the loss of a fellow unionist, but also how we all committed ourselves to continue forward with our struggle, refusing to be silenced, because we are not alone: we are supported by allies all over the world.

Besides thanking you, I would like to ask you all to keep pressuring the government and the rest of the Guatemalan authorities so that they will immediately investigate and solve Marco Tulio’s murder, and punish both the material and intellectual perpetrators of this crime and their accomplices.

Fraternally,

Noé Antonio Ramírez Portela

General Secretary