May Day, May Day: Miriam Zamora marches in cacerolada (pot-banging protest) fashion during yesterday's May Day march through downtown San José. The plea for higher salaries resonated with workers from various industries and sectors who are feeling the crunch of fast-rising prices on fuel and basic food items.

Ronald Reyes | Tico Times

Teachers, nurses, petroleum workers and leftist activists were among the groups yesterday that led a sparse but spirited May Day march through downtown San José, picking up where April left off in terms of public displays of people power.

For many, the tone was set by a sermon at the Merced Church by Archbishop Hugo Barrantes, who said “family wellbeing will be impossible if workers don't have fair salaries,” according to the daily La Nación. The sentiment prevailed through the orderly, peaceful march that recalled similar recent Costa Rica protests that have borne fruit, namely by public high-school teachers and firefighters.

Despite those victories – hiked salaries and slashed class sizes for the teachers, functioning fire hydrants for the anti-fire squad – many protesters yesterday, nevertheless, decried what they perceive as flagging union rights.

“I'm Costa Rican and I love this country, but this country is losing its union freedoms,” said Eliécer Ugalde, of petroleum workers union SITRAPEQUIA.

For Ugalde, a former union leader, the recent workers' gains are positive but are further signs of a “divided” labor force here, where he said lots of employees deserve higher pay in the face of fast-rising food-basket prices but seldom unify around the cause – mostly because of internal and inter-union differences, he added.

Some protest banners and speeches reminded marchers that May Day pays homage in part to the Haymarket affair, when on May 1, 1886, tens of thousands of Chicago workers walked off the job in a struggle for an eight-hour work day, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Strikes continued and flared into shootings and a bombing that injured police and protestors.

Violent clashes yesterday in Istanbul, Turkey, and Hamburg, Germany, showed that over a century later, May 1 tensions remain high.

Despite the event's North American origins, the United States does not officially mark May Day, though annual May 1 protests, such as the Los Angeles immigrant rights rally, are becoming commonplace.

In Costa Rica, poised to embark on a Central America Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), protestors played up anti-neoliberal themes, including signs and T-shirts saying “ No al TLC ” (No to CAFTA).

And rally songs of the left – among them, “ Hasta Siempre ” (Until Always), an Ernesto “Che” Guevara anthem, and a Spanish version of “We Shall Not Be Moved” – blared through speakers on the trucks that rolled slowly between marching groups.