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25 February, 2008
The President of Uruguay, Tabaré Vázquez, opened the 7th Festival of Sábalo with a greeting of welcome to the ICEM, which will hold its World Conference for the Pulp and Paper Industries from 8-10 December 2008 in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Vázquez made the statement while congratulating ICEM affiliate, the Central Union of Paper and Pulp Workers (CUOPYC), at a 7 February social event celebrating the Sábalo festival in Juan Lacaze. CUOPYC used the occasion to mark 2008 as the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed on 10 December 1948.
Uruguay President Tabaré Vázquez (right)
and CUOPYC President Walter Silva (centre)
“It is a great challenge for CUOPYC, but it is also an excellent opportunity,” President Vázquez said of the ICEM conference. “Not just for CUOPYC, but for all in Uruguay, and the national government has committed to organize this event. We declare the organization of this meeting to be of national interest.”
Vázquez commended the union for using proceeds from the festival for improvements to the Olof Palme Childcare Centre, a 20-year-old facility built in cooperation with the ICEM-affiliated Swedish Union, Svenska Pappers. Vázquez noted that Palme, the late Swedish Prime Minister who was senselessly gunned down in 1986 on a Stockholm street, welcomed to Sweden many Uruguayans in exile and “supported the solidarity of struggle of the Uruguayan people to recover their democracy.”
The Swedish-Uruguayan project is located near the FANAPEL pulp and paper mill in Juan Lacaze, west of the capital city Montevideo. CUOPYC used the Sábalo celebration to mark the importance of community involvement, as enshrined in Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”
CUOPYC President Walter Silva brought that to the festival in his address. He noted that in 1906, the first cooperative of consumers was organised in Juan Lacaze. And in the following years, he said many community projects were undertaken, including construction of the Olaf Palme Centre in 1988. He paid kind tribute to CUOPYC Secretary-General Omar Diaz, a workers’ leader, who was unable to make the 7 February event due to a severe illness.