By TaRessa Stovall

Julio Santiago spent his working life as a U.S. Merchant Marine, providing naval or military auxiliary support in times of war or national emergency. Now retired, Julio lives in Santurce, Puerto Rico on a pension of $6,400 per year. At 84, he suffers from the early stages of dementia and prostrate cancer.

Retired mariner, Julio Santiago at Puerto Hato Rey, Puerto Rico

Documentary filmmakers Al Santana and Denise Belen Santiago followed Julio on a doctor’s visit where he watches, disbelieving, as his doctor telephones a clinic in New York to find out about a prescription Julio needs to fight the cancer. The doctor is shocked and outraged to learn that the medications will cost Julio upwards of $5,000 per year.

Santana and Santiago are screening and discussing their film-in-progress, “Salty Dog Blues: The Demise of the National Maritime Union,” Saturday, April 18, from 10 a.m. to noon, as part of the Left Forum, an international conference at Pace University in New York City. The public is invited to attend.

Their goal: to raise awareness of the plight of Julio, who is Santiago’s father, and his counterparts-men and women of color who served in the Merchant Marine and hoped to enjoy a comfortable retirement after decades of paying into their pension fund. Instead, they were left to struggle with meager pensions and no health benefits when the National Maritime Union (NMU) merged in 2001 with the Seafarer’s International Union (SUI). The filmmakers explain that it was mostly people of color working for the NMU, while other unions such as the SUI “were more for whitefolk.”

“Salty Dog Blues” “might come off initially as an anti-union film but, to the contrary, the people we interviewed are very pro-union. They’ve just been blindsided by the merging of the unions, and they’ve been left out in the cold because of their age,” said Santiago.

Merchant Marine retirees ad-hoc meeting,Nuevo Shipyard, Puerto Rico, 2004

Another reason for making “Salty Dog Blues” is to connect with the veterans, who are in their 80s and 90s, living in different parts of the world. Since filming began, three of the veterans have passed away, and Santana and Santiago are working hard to capture their stories before they are lost to history. As they have gotten to know the retirees, “they’ve looked to Al and I as their advocates,” Santiago said. “A lot of them don’t have access to the Internet and they find themselves isolated in the age of technology.”

“One of the retirees is going to be on the [April 18] panel,” Santana said. “He says a lot of the problem is many of the guys affected by the merger are suffering all over the world, just scattered. We’re trying to use the film or some mechanism to notify them about what’s going on so we can bring them together.”

The crisis faced by Julio is playing out on a global stage. “One of the dilemmas is, these retirees are an international community,” Santiago explained. “We started out focusing on Puerto Rico, because my father, Julio, was a Merchant Marine, as were my uncles and just about every adult male that I knew growing up. But we expanded it because so many of these men and women of color-in New York, New Orleans, Texas, Honduras, West Africa-find themselves in a similar bind.

“A lot of these men retired in the 1970s with a pension of $250 a month and, unlike other unions that give you a cost-of-living increase, they haven’t had one,” Santiago said. “Imagine trying to live in a place like New York City on a pension of $250. Especially at this time, when they need those benefits. A lot of them are living with cancer, with dementia, and they don’t have any medical benefits when they need them most.”

The filmmakers, who have been making the documentary since 2005, are working to interview the secretary-treasurer of SIU to get their perspective.

Though “Salty Dog Blues” focuses on the Merchant Marines, it places a human face on the current 400-plus billion-dollar deficit in pension plan funding in the U.S., and raises questions about fiscal accountability, responsibility and justice. The stories of men and women who refuse to give up are universal. “This could affect everybody or anybody who is a worker,” Santana said.” There is a mantra that goes around in union circles that talks about ‘an injury to one is an injury to all,’ and that’s kind of how I perceive it. It’s like a cascade effect that could affect everybody or anybody who is a worker. It’s a worker, or labor, or union issue of people being screwed by a system that lets them fall between the cracks.”

• Learn more about the film
• Read more about African Americans in the U.S. Merchant Marines