The activities will begin this Thursday with a conference by Miguel Soto Roa, former president of the Metallurgical Confederation and a prominent member of other union groups, about the role of the historic leader of the working class.

Throughout the second semester “La José Martí”, as the association is known, will hold conferences, forums, seminars and other expressions with the purpose of publicizing and delving into the life, work and legacy of Recabarren.

Considered the father of the labor movement, he was the main articulator of the first workers’ organizations in the last years of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th. At that time, after the so-called Pacific War, industrial capitalism was consolidated in Chile, with main emphasis on mining, factories and port management, which gave rise to a new type of economic and labor relations.

Inequalities and poverty grew in the country, along with a sharp migration from the countryside to the cities and the indifference of the governments in power to care for the most dispossesed sectors.

It was in this scenario that Recabarren (July 6, 1876-December 19, 1924), a typographer by trade, took on the task of organizing workers with the purpose of fighting for their rights and, at the same time, promoting a press for Workers.

Since 1901 he participated in Iquique, northern Chile, in the founding of grassroots associations to develop union organizations and was also a promoter of the emancipation of women.

In 1912, together with several leaders, he created the Socialist Workers’ Party, the first political organization dedicated exclusively to the defense of the interests of the labor sector.

A decade later this group modified its statutes and became the current Communist Party of Chile.

José Emilio Recabarren was a deputy, he directed the Chilean Workers’ Federation between 1917 and 1921 and at the end of 1922 he attended the Congress of Trade Unions, held in Moscow, as the only Chilean delegate.

In May 1924, a few months before his death, the newspaper El Despertar de los Trabajadores closed, which was replaced by newspaper La Justicia. ef/ro/car/eam