Blackwell Reference Online

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Raúl Sendic was a Uruguayan union founder, an underground militant activist, and co-founder of the guerrilla movement Tupamaros . From the late 1950s on he organized the pauperized sugar cane workers in the northeast of Uruguay. In the 1960s he became a symbolic figure of the militant fight against the repressive Uruguayan state. Raúl Sendic was born on March, 16, 1925, a son of peasants in the central Uruguayan department of Flores. While studying law in the 1950s he joined the Socialist Party, and after he obtained his title as an attorney he worked as a trade union lawyer for rural workers. He founded several unions, such as the union of sugar cane workers, known as UTAA (Unión der Trabajadores Azucareros de Artigas). In the 1960s he organized sugar cane workers in the department of Artigas in the capital, Montevideo. During marches which took place under the slogan “For the land and with Sendic” (Por la tierra y con Sendic), protestors called for an 8–hour work day and the expropriation of fallowlying soil. The demonstrations, however, were brutally suppressed by the government. Sendic also helped found the National Liberation Movement (Movimiento Liberación Nacional) (MLN), known as Tupamaros. This group gained the sympathy of Uruguayans by robbing banks and distributing the money to the people. This was welcome relief to a population suffering under inflation, depletion, ... log in or subscribe to read full text