DAY OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH THE WORKERS AND THE PEOPLE'S UPRISING OF COLOMBIA
"Cheo" Navarro, leader of the Internationalist Workers' Nucleus
“These days are a continuation of the attacks that the working class carried out in 2019 in Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile”
From the rebellious Colombia, receive a warm revolutionary greeting. For ten days, the Colombian people have been leading huge revolutionary action days that have shaken the foundations of the murderous Duque-Uribe government.
These days are continuity and part of the offensives that the working class staged in Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile in 2019, which put the governments of these countries in check. Until today in Colombia and from November 21, 2019 the great struggles are led by a new generation of workers and young fighters, who have surpassed the Stalinist leaderships that for decades betrayed their struggle.
On January 30 and 31, 2020, the National Strike Committee, made up of the bureaucracies of the workers' centrals (CUT-CGT-CTC and the FECODE teacher union), led by Stalinists, called for a meeting to continue the struggle that had began in 2019. There a brave sector of workers, young workers and students stood up against these bureaucracies, which prevented them from participating in the event in order to consummate their betrayal by negotiating with the government behind the backs of the exploited masses.
Those leaderships were surpassed. The young workers and students broke the security thugs restraining cords, pushed them back with enormous belligerence and forced them to open the access doors to allow entry. As a result of this struggle, the Social and Popular Trade Union National Coordinator emerged and was established as a pole of regrouping of the combative vanguard to coordinate and unify all the sectors in struggle.
Here and there those processes were stopped, fell back or were led to cruel defeats by treacherous union bureaucracies and collaborationist leaderships.
Colombia was no exception. The Stalinist bureaucracies of the trade union centrals, the reformist left together with the bourgeois center-left of Petro's Human Colombia, submit us to the peace pact of Havana, that sealed between the Castros and Obama, a pact of "peace of the graves", of surrender of the FARC and massacre of the exploited and Colombian fighters, with the aim of taking the labor movement out of the fight for the revolutionary general strike, the only way to get food, recover the land, the right to work and decent wages.
The betrayals of Stalinism have allowed imperialism to maintain -not only in Colombia but throughout Latin America- a fierce attack on our peoples after finally restoring capitalism in Cuba.
But we haven´t been defeated. The slogans raised in the fight for an indefinite strike at the end of 2019 are the same for which we are returning to the streets today: against the tax, health, labor and pension reforms demanded by the IMF, and to stop the massacre so that they stop killing us. Today we again face the regime, its army, the police and the murderous paramilitaries.
The exploited in Colombia have drawn the conclusion that, to achieve the slightest of our demands, they must overthrow the murderous Duque government, the government of the 9 Yankee military bases.
At this time, the leaderships of the workers' centrals and reformism, together with the bourgeoisie -including the opposition-, are once again trying to set up the trap by tying the struggle of the exploited Colombians to the current electoral campaign in development, which leads to the election of a president and congressmen in 2022.
This betrayal is ratified when in April 28 protests get out of their hands and the bureaucracies call for the immediate lifting of the national strike and to celebrate at May 1 an event by zoom. These are joined by the pseudo-left, the reformists, taking the struggle off the streets only to allow the regime and this government agent of the capitalists and imperialism to have their hands free to deepen a cruel attack, not only repressing, to impose the reforms required by the IMF.
The response of the masses was to take the struggle into their own hands, organizing themselves and winning the streets again to break those pacts of death and make the bourgeoisie tremble. To face the betrayal and go for it all, it was necessary to act independently of the bureaucracies. Now we need to structure and consolidate an organization of struggle recognized by the workers, the people and the poor peasants, to stop this attack, the theft of the Colombian land and wealth; a body that is elected from the grassroots, from the bottom up and with the free recalling of its leaders. Self-governing is a felt necessity. In most cities of the country, progress has been made in confronting the repressive forces of the regime both day and night, who, with orders to kill, have not been able to get us off the streets or Colombian highways.
We can´t stop. We must advance in the alliance and unity of a National Struggle Front of workers, poor peasants, students and young revolutionaries. That is the majority of the Colombian people. We have to put up the power of those below that will shake the Colombia of the Yankee military bases, the murderous generals and their fascist gangs.
A revolutionary regrouping of the working class ranks has become more necessary than ever. This will be developed under the fire of the class enemy in the current fighting. The Colombian revolution is part of the Latin American revolution and it´s wanted to be held down by reformism and the treacherous union leaderships. That is why we must raise a Latin American and world front of struggle. We don´t want more deaths, the life of the people matters. Dissolve the police, that the soldiers abandon the generals, that self-defense committees arise and prepare the workers' militia: these are tasks that can´t be postponed.
We Trotskyists must draw the revolutionary lessons from the current fighting at international level, especially from so many betrayals and revisions of Marxism, which have brought our world party, the Fourth International to the feet of Stalinism.
Our international current, the Collective for the Refoundation of the IV International-FLTI, is at the service of this very important task.
Revolutionary hug for all of you.
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