In Memory of Maria Elina Dufau-Kramarz
By Carlos Torchia
Our beloved comrade Maria Elina Dufau-Kramarz passed away on June 10, 2003. She has left an immense vacuum in the New Socialist Group, not least because she was one of its most passionate and consistent militants. As one comrade said in the memorial meeting that the NSG held to celebrate her life: “What NSG is today as a revolutionary organization has the indelible mark of her contribution”.
Maria Elina was born in Argentina. She studied education and then worked in public education as a secondary school History teacher. Coming from a Catholic family which cared about social justice, Maria Elina embraced the cause of the oppressed from a Christian perspective very close to liberation theology. In 1976, when the military dictatorship destroyed Argentina’s formal and fragile bourgeois democracy, Maria Elina and her husband Pascual continued working to organize and “concientizar” the workers, and to distribute among rural workers a leftist literary magazine, “El Grillo de Papel” (“The Paper Cricket”). As the iron fist of dictatorship became more and more selective, Maria Elina and Pascual began to be harassed and threatened. To avoid being annihilated, as happened to many thousands of Argentineans, they decided to move to Canada. After a short stay in Sudbury, Ontario, Maria Elina moved to Toronto and entered the Master’s Programme in Theology at the University of Toronto, seeking to enhance the theoretical base of her radical social Catholicism. In 1999 she decided to continue her graduate studies at York University in the Political Science Department, seeking better answers to fortify her passionate struggle for social justice and human liberation. She dreamt of teaching in Latin America after the completion of her Ph.D. and it was at York that Maria Elina encountered radical Marxism, in the works of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci.
This encounter had an electrifying effect on Maria Elina. She was no longer satisfied only to be able to explain reality — now she also wanted to transform it. Besides studying, Maria Elina wanted to undertake concrete actions to change capitalist relations of oppression and exploitation. Shortly afterward, she joined the Toronto branch of the New Socialist Group (NSG). As more and more people began organizing against capitalist globalization, Maria Elina became attracted to the NSG view that the struggle against capitalism and for socialism must be organized from below by the masses themselves.
Maria Elina brought to the NSG both her honesty and humility. For her, every political and organizational task was important and deserved to be handled with seriousness and consistency. She was present every day on the picket line during the CUPE 3903 strike in 2001, in spite of the fact that she was not receiving any salary from the university. She was an enthusiastic and efficient vendor and propagandist of the NSG’s magazine. She enjoyed working collectively and was an ardent participator in the NSG’s affinity group, “Rosa Luxemburg”. In spite of different illnesses that started to undermine her physical well-being, she managed to take part in the massive protests against globalization in Windsor and Quebec City, and to express solidarity with the mine workers on strike in Sudbury. She was also an active participation in her union, CUPE 3903, and in the Political Science Graduate Student Association. As a Marxist feminist, Maria Elina was a firm combatant for women’s liberation, and an active supporter of the women’s caucus, in both the NSG and the Graduate Student Association.
In sum, Maria Elina Dufau-Kramarz was an authentic revolutionary, a comrade and friend whose passion for justice and human liberation was present in all aspects of her life. Our organization has lost a dedicated activist for socialism from below, as well as a great woman and comrade. Her memory and her contagious optimism will remain with us forever.
HASTA SIEMPRE CAMARADA MARIA ELINA !!!
