 Unemployed workers protest in the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina against paying the IMF debt, March, 2002. Photo: Bill Hackwell |
Our peoples’ struggles for political, social, economic, and cultural transformations can gain strength from one of the most important sources that we Latin Americans have: the legacy of great leaders like Simón Bolívar, José Martí, José San Martín, Benito Juárez, José Carlos Mariátegui, Farabundo Marti, Augusto César Sandino, Che Guevara, Camilo Torres, Jacobo Arenas, Jaime Pardo Leal, Gilberto Vieira, Rodni Arismendi, Salvador Allende, Omar Torrijos and many others. These leaders have given their lives in this struggle that can be summed up as the struggle for the second and definitive independence.
We say this here in Nicaragua, the land of the General of the Free, Augusto César Sandino. It is the land of a people that, with Sandino, turned Las Segovias into the beginning of a struggle that carried on the work of Simón Bolívar and of Martí by virtue of its anti-imperialist character. Bolívar predicted this when he said, “The United States seems destined by Providence to plague the Americas with misery in the name of freedom.” Sandino fought against the imperial Yankee invader and dominator of our peoples. He saw it, felt it, and lived it concretely.
What is the origin of the hated dictatorships, of coups d’etat, assassinations, sabotage, invasions, of state terrorism and dirty war? They all proceed from the same place that the criminal actions against socialist Cuba have originated from for the last 45 years. They come from the same place that the criminal actions against liberation processes like the Sandinista Revolution, that of El Salvador, of Guatemala, of the Dominican Republic, of Grenada, and others came from. They come from the same place that manufactured the Andean Regional Initiative to regionalize the Colombian conflict; that came up with the Puebla-Panama Plan to make Central America into a corridor of North American multinationals; that sponsored the FTAA to re-colonize our America; that kidnapped President Aristide; that has made various attempts to overthrow President Hugo Chávez Frías; and that has carried out all the other military projects that attempt to give free rein to the transnational corporations to take hold of the strategic resources of Our America.
It is the same source that stages criminal plans like Plan Colombia and “Patriot” Plan aiming to help the Colombian ruling class to continue the recipes of the IMF and neoliberal policies favoring the multinational corporations. The current Colombian government is carrying these measures to the extreme, surrendering our sovereignty to the United States empire.
These war plans are made by those who want to consolidate the domination and exploitation of our riches using state terrorism against the people of Colombia. They harbor the vain dream of forcing our guerrilla army to demobilize and surrender. We are a revolutionary guerrilla organization in opposition to the state and its political regime. We are proposing ways to solve the political, social, economic and armed conflict of our country. We struggle for deep transformations that our country urgently needs to achieve peace with social justice. Toward this goal we have proposed creating a new comprehensive, pluralist, and patriotic government that reconciles and rebuilds our country.
The forceful response by our people’s army against Bush’s and Uribe’s “Patriot” Plan reveals the failure of the empire’s plans. It is part of the Colombian people’s resistance to all repressive measures of the current government, which carries out repression while systematically refusing to carry out a humanitarian prisoner exchange. This refusal has prevented many prisoners of war, insurgent and government alike, from reuniting with their families. Meanwhile, the Colombian government is moving forward with negotiations with paramilitary death squad organizations that have carried out hundreds of massacres against the Colombian people and have gone unpunished.
This situation demands international solidarity with the Colombian struggle. We call for solidarity against the massacres of trade unionists, peasant leaders, human rights defenders, Indigenous peoples and the people in general. A unified struggle of Latin-Americans will allow us to confront the plans of imperialism.
Even a blind person can see what the U.S. empire has done to our peoples. How can you not see the anti-imperialism in the struggles of the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Peru and the Dominican Republic, among others. It is great that the banner of anti-imperialism is held high from north to south, from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. We can strengthen it more and more through the study of the legacy of our exalted predecessors who serve as a lighthouse in the historic mission of making Our America the “Patria Grande”-the great unified homeland that the Liberator Simón Bolívar conceived of, where we all find ourselves!
There are two aspects to the current situation. First, the people of Latin America will not surrender in the resistance struggle. Second, we see the hints of a political phenomenon: that our peoples want to be governed in a different way. They want governments that pledge to solve their needs. They want spaces to participate. And they are rising in struggle toward this goal, since it is not enough to just want change. Furthermore, except for rare exceptions, governments cannot govern as they have. The people have forced them into running and maneuvering as they are kicked out the door.
It is political nonsense to remain mere spectators or to simply think about events. These events originate in the mobilization and rising up of the people, who have made it their right to rebel for self-determination, for economic and political sovereignty, and for social justice. Winning this will earn them the benefits of our countries’ services and riches, which today are in the hands of the transnational corporations.
Why do the ruling governments say “I can’t” in the face of the people’s demands? It is not because there are no riches in the country. It is not because there is no support for the demands from the governed, from the millions suffering from hunger, without work, without roofs over their heads, without health, without schools, without the power to enter university. But what happens to the governments that interpret the popular sentiment and support and say, “Yes, we can?”
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According to the neocolonialist mentality, concepts like “class struggle” are things of the far past. Now we are “civil society”-a concept which offers no way to get involved in the struggle for your rights, no way to understand yourself as a living and active part of the social class to which you belong. That would create class hatred, according to this view. Everything changes, the story goes, and today there is no imperialism-only globalization. So what remains for you is the struggle for your citizenship. The best mechanism for this is the electoral arena, which the ruling class has today converted into a circus to take advantage of the people. It sucks the left parties and movements into a labyrinth.
If a candidate with popular support comes to power, he or she is charged with administering capitalism. The system of capitalism, on one hand, concentrates never-before seen riches while on the other hand it destroys the environment and generates more hunger, more unemployment, more misery, and more illnesses. These things cannot be defeated through charity, but only through projects based on the will of the organized people. They cannot be defeated by military campaigns or by recipes of the violators of economic sovereignty like the IMF. While the popularly supported candidate administers the capitalist economy, the media manipulates public opinion against the president and the government, who are turned into sacrificial lambs. It is curious is that almost nobody openly questions the capitalist system as the cause of poverty, of misery, and of all the problems that suffocate our peoples.
When the electoral circus provides the ruling class the expected results, then the elections are “clean” and “transparent” and supposedly consolidate democracy, institutions, established order and peace. But if the people turn the vote into an instrument of struggle, and vote the way they want-against the interests of the ruling class-then the ruling class unleashes its infernal powers and, with the support of the empire, counterattacks with all means at its disposal. This is what we are seeing in Venezuela in particular.
In Latin America, injecting forceful politics into the popular struggle is a priority. These politics, sustained in basic and imperishable ideological concepts, have to include economic and political sovereignty, self-determination, independence, and the right to create an economic system in each country that advances by its own steps and assumes the necessities of each people as priorities of the program of the government.
This is missing in the people’s struggle. What is needed is a minimal platform that may be assumed by the majority and that has as an essential element the transformation of society, its form of government, its institution, and the way that power is exercised. Thus we can ask, why have the well-known huge mobilizations and popular uprisings ended up the way they have? One of the causes is in the lack of political formation. It is in vogue to speak of the battle of ideas. That is correct, but we cannot forget that other methods of struggle (with a firm ideological foundation) exist in response to forms of rule that are characterized by brutal violence. To the extent that the resistance coming from political class consciousness is consolidated is exactly the extent by which the empire becomes limited in its capacity to maneuver. The empire is not invincible or omnipotent. Furthermore, it cannot create an exact correspondence between its military plans for domination and the expansion of its transnational corporations.
For this reason, the large popular mobilizations that impede privatizations and overthrow governments have to take up the task of taking political power and creating spaces that allow the people to establish a new political reality in accordance with their desires and hopes.
