DAY OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH THE WORKERS AND THE PEOPLE'S UPRISING OF COLOMBIA
Revolutionary worker from the port of Buenos Aires
“Today Alberto Fernández and Kirchnerism,
the "progressives", are the ones who make us go through
the worst of miseries”
I am a worker in the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s an honor to participate in this meeting with revolutionary comrades from Colombia, Syria and all countries, who are discussing how to make our class triumph.
The struggle of the revolutionary people of Colombia fills me with enthusiasm and emotion. It reminds me a lot of 2001 in Argentina. They deceive us. We could ‘t take the power and today we are paying the consequences. Here, when the people took the streets and attacked the citadel of power, Fidel Castro came to tell the workers that they shouldn’t take power, that they had to support the supposed "progressive" bourgeoisie. He said that we had to go to work for the bourgeoisie to make money, because we workers could be fine later. The result is what the comrades of Las Heras said: workers sentenced to life imprisonment.
Then came the "neoliberal" Macri, as they say. And then Alberto, who did 10 times the things that Macri wanted to do and couldn't. Today it’s Kirchnerism, Alberto Fernández, the "progressive" governments that make the worst of miseries pass to the people in the midst of a pandemic. It was they and their “progressive” militants in the unions who sent us 1,200 policemen to kick us out of the picket line for fighting for the bread of our families.
Here they are the strikebreakers, "carneros"(scabs), as we say in Argentina. Those who sell you to the employer are called "buchones"(snitches). The "progressives" are the "carneros", the "buchones" of the labor movement, they are the ones who kick out workers from the factories. And today, in the midst of that enormous revolution that the comrades of Colombia are starting, the “progressives” in Argentina are handing over all the natural wealth, the waterways, the agro-exports to imperialism. And they made us the dock workers more precarious as part of that plan to pay the IMF's debt. The "progressives" tell the Yankees that they will pay the debt with slaves in the factories and starving people in the streets.
Those Castroites who talked about having to work with Kirchner, then entered the government and are the ones who do business, they are the bosses who attack the labor movement. That is why we are confronting the government and the Stalinists who are in government with the PJ.
Here the Trade Union Youth of the CGT (Central Tarde Unión, NT) sent a letter to Bachelet, the UN Secretary of Human Rights, asking that the UN intervene to hold a "dialogue table for peace." But the Argentine workers know that the Trade Union Youth sold our demands and our struggles out at negotiating tables like that. That is why we are filled with emotion when the Colombian people say "we don’t surrender." Today we can’t fight with you because they have sold us out. We are in the resistance in the worst of the pandemic, with thousands of fired and hungry, facing the Kirchnerists and the Stalinists who are the ones who oppress us and don’t let us fight.
When the enormous strike of the Chilean workers began, all the port union leaderships of the continent and the world called to support that struggle, silencing ours. We knew that it was very difficult to succeed because confronting the transnationals is not a task only for Argentine workers, but for all dock workers on the continent. And we couldn't defeat them.
Today the leaders who betrayed us are the interim presidents of the International Dockworkers Council, which is the one that refuses to stop all ports in support of the Colombian people. While the unions in Colombia sent support and said that the Chilean people's struggle was their struggle. We believe that there is no way to win if us workers do not fight to organize ourselves from the United States to the south of Patagonia.
All the organizations on the continent that claim to be revolutionary should call for actions and stop in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, etc. Everywhere where they lead union centrals, unions, etc., those who speak in the name of the revolution have to call to fight to help the Colombian people. It is not won by country, but in an international fight. That is why we, a small group of workers from Argentina that we have the honor to discuss in this meeting with you, have broken the LIT, the PTS to set up a revolutionary current that will serve the working class to triumph.
I want to send all of you a very big greeting and thank you for allowing me to speak at this meeting.
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