Eliseo Balcazar
Eliseo Balcazar, a Guatemalan trade union activist and revolutionary, died in Melbourne on January 16 at the age of 56. His entire adult life was spent in the shadow of the Guatemalan military dictatorship.
After an apprenticeship as a shoemaker, Eliseo was active in the Guatemalan Food Workers Union and the Communist Party. He was arrested and jailed at the age of 19, when participating in an anti-government protest. This arrest was the first of many.
"One day, on the 25th of November, 1986, at midday, I was walking with my six-year-old daughter, Maria, to take a bus in a rich suburb of the city. In full view of many pedestrians, two cars pulled up, and about eight people, in civilian clothing and wearing masks, pushed us violently into a Cherokee station wagon with darkened windows.
"We were taken to a clandestine jail. I dared not move in case they hurt Maria. For the rest of my life I will never forget the face of my daughter, an innocent creature, in a moment when our lives were in so much danger."
Following continued threats and torture, he escaped to Mexico in 1987. In July 1988, Eliseo and his family travelled to Australia under the auspices of Amnesty International.
In Melbourne, ill and unable to work, Eliseo made his principal activity Latin American solidarity. He worked closely with fellow Central Americans and for five years was active in the Committees in Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean.
While his thoughts were rarely far from Guatemala, his revolutionary ideals gave him an internationalist perspective. In 1994, Eliseo joined the Democratic Socialist Party. According to the DSP organiser at the time, Sue Bolton, "Because of his union background and subsequent persecution, he had a profound understanding of the nature of capitalism. He was as solid as a rock."
Eliseo lived in constant pain, in his neck and back, from where he was kicked and beaten by the Guatemalan police. He had bullet wound scars on his wrist and hips. Worse than these injuries, however, he remained persecuted until his death by vivid memories of both physical and psychological torture.
Eliseo Balcazar will be remembered as a revolutionary of extraordinary courage whose life's work was the struggle for socialism, especially in his beloved Guatemala.
By Alan Jennings