Today in Labor History February 28, 1525: Hernan Cortes executed Cuauhtémoc , king of the Aztecs. Bernal Diaz del Castillo wrote in his journal that it was an unjust execution, that there was no evidence the Cuauhtémoc was plotting against Cortes. Cuauhtémoc said, through his interpreter, La Malinche, “Now I understand your false promises and the kind of death you have had in store for me. For you are killing me unjustly. May God demand justice from you, as it was taken from me when I entrusted myself to you in my city of Mexico!”
February 28, 1570: The people of Ternate, Moluccas, rose up against their Portuguese colonizers.
1940s-1980s
Today in Labor History February 28, 1947: The Kuomintang government in Taiwan put down an anti-government uprising known as the February 28 Incident. They killed 28,000 civilians. And in the White Terror that followed, the government killed, imprisoned or disappeared tens of thousands more. These events helped spark the Taiwanese independence movement.
February 28, 1986: The entire workforce of the 3M factory in Elandsfontein, South Africa, went on strike. They struck in support of colleagues in the U.S. 3M had just fired 450 members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers in New Jersey.
2000-Present
Today in Labor History February 28, 2002: Mobs killed 97 Muslims in the Naroda Patiya massacre. They killed 69 more in the Gulbarg Society massacre. Both occurred in Gujarat, India.
February 28, 2004: Over 2 million Taiwanese formed a 500-kilometer human chain to commemorate the February 28 Incident and massacre.