Violent Class Struggle, Not Pacifist Prayers

"César Chávez," the movie, portrays Chávez as a pacifist hero and the struggle of farmworkers as a victory for pacifism. In the last issue of Red Flag, we exposed the ruling class lies about Chávez, including the truth about his attacks on immigrant workers, and  the militant struggle of farmworkers during that period. This letter from a veteran farmworker comrade continues this exposé.

 There were other violent incidents during the farmworkers' strike in California in the 1960's and 70's. I remember that the ranchers formed an organization of women called "Mothers Against the Strike" led by the wives of contractors and ranch owners. They promised women who joined that they would be treated with re-spect and given good working conditions—a lie.

I remember that once one of these women was working at the side of the road in front of the strikers' picket line. The strikers, tired of pleading with the woman not to break the strike, and of her not paying attention to them, began to talk to her in very strong words, but the woman jokingly answered: "Say what you want; words don't break bones." Scarcely had she spoken these words when a huge lump of hard dirt hit her in the back. She let out a tremendous shriek and walked away through the grape vines, still screaming.

Another scab crossed the picket line every day to break the strike, protected by the police. He always drove a truck covered with a tarp beneath which all his family hid. No one ever stopped him. But one day when he was working very close to the strikers, the same thing happened to him as to the woman mentioned above.

That was enough. Very early the next day he came to the strike headquarters  to talk to the person who had attacked him. He said, "Listen, Sir, I came to tell you that the beating you gave me yesterday still hurts, but here we are, me and my whole family, to join with you in the strike. We want to help." And he continued, saying "Damn, it takes this to make a person understand and blah, blah, blah."

 Another time a crew of scabs was working, breaking the strike. At about ten o'clock in the morning the strikers in this area arrived ready to run them off. The security guards wanted to stop us but they couldn't, and we all entered the field. The scabs ran like rabbits, but some were hit with rocks.

When we were already leaving, someone shouted, "There is a woman tied up!" The guards had grabbed a girl who was left behind. They handcuffed her and tied her to a post, but some other strikers quickly went and rescued her and, with the handcuffs still on, they helped her into the car. Once on the road, we wanted to take off the handcuffs but, since she had small hands, she had already taken them off easily. Someone still has the handcuffs as a souvenir.

The police were on foot. In the confrontation, they had left the keys in the car, and a striker put the car in gear and it went into a ditch.

These are not rare, isolated incidents. Where there is a strike and the strikers defend it with all their heart, they do all kinds of things, except pray, which was what many did on Chávez's orders during the strike in the 1960's and 70's.

Although these were relatively small incidents, they weren't pacifist. That is why they do not appear in the movie about Chávez. This movie was made for the youth, to win them to believe that we should not use violence in the struggle against the ruling class, against capitalism; that everything should be resolved peacefully. No! Only with communist revolution can the working class be liberated.

—Veteran farmworker comrade

Gabriel García Márquez: Bourgeois Writer

Gabriel García Márquez did not have an answer to societal problems. He was alien to all ideological contamination. He developed as a writer with the least risk possible.

He revealed injustice, but he never fought it. With his so-called magical realism he created his classic masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, an imaginary territory called Macondo in a fascinating space. He emerged with his narrative, extracting the maximum economic benefit possible, with millions of copies sold and translated into 35 languages. With this he won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982. With his literary works published by the ton, uniting the real and the unreal, or by escaping at the end we would say.

He could have generated a qualitative change in his readers, synthesizing their social concerns, but he did not dare. He lacked a strategy of struggle to support and defend the workers of the world. Unlike what Márquez portrays, social events are not mysterious or tragic. The enemies of workers, in Colombia, in Mexico and the rest of the world, are the same. The same harsh reality in the universe, the same enemies here, there, the class struggle, —the rich against the poor.

His prose was not revolutionary heavy artillery. In the ideological camp he was not combative. He never revealed his political essence. In Mexico he lived conditioned within the boundaries of conventionalism—unless Mexico is an earthly paradise for Mexicans.

He did not belong to any political party. Neither was he a militant, His prose did not openly mix in with politics, nor did he protest against this or that. Why? It is well known that to be shoulder-to-shoulder with workers' struggles creates enemies, exile, prison and even death. But he was not willing to risk any of that.

His lukewarm denouncements, full of charm and magical realism, allowed him to conquer fame among bourgeois intellectuals, who awarded him the Nobel Prize.

We can compare Márquez with writers from other periods who were more politically committed, for example Ricardo Flores Magón who helped spark the Mexican Revolution. Another, Vargas Villa in Colombia, who said, "Undoubtedly my reputation is composed more of hatreds than of sentiments; I have a pedestal of enemies. My life was one of struggles and persecutions. .I don't know how to lie to power nor how to be silent faced with duty." He fought openly against all the tyrants of Latin America, a liberal of that period, but different.

--Comrade lover of literature

"As a Communist, I am not alone"

When recently asked to join the party officially, I said "yes" right away. Not a week later I was asked, by the same individual, why I decided to join. A brief period of contemplation followed before I felt able to properly transcribe my response.

After some serious thought, I believe I joined the party because capitalism isn't pushing humankind in the direction we should be going. With no basis of justification other than greed, most of us are forced to live a menial existence in comparison to the privileged few.

Repugnant is the creature who would squander the ability to fulfill the needs of every individual even after the acquisition of basic necessities. The struggle for financial gain and elevated social status through that financial gain is not, was not, and never will be the intended purpose of the human race.

Divided we are in a time of such great dissonance, when the very future of humankind depends on our harmonious coexistence. Only through equality can we advance our civilization and elevate humankind to a more dignified species, which brings me back to why I joined the party.

Frankly, I cannot sit idly by as we thrust ourselves into a more oppressive age of wage slavery and widespread poverty. However, I am also a realist and fully aware that my efforts alone cannot bring about the all-encompassing change that I hope to witness the human race undergo. Aware am I also that for this change to come about, revolution is necessary.

Having not much confidence in my singlehanded effort to abolish capitalism through revolution, allying with a group of like-minded individuals seemed like a step in the right direction.

Presently, I am not sure what my role in the party will be or what I can offer the party for the advancement of its goals. What I am sure of is what the existence of the party does for me. It reminds me that as a communist in a capitalist world, I am not alone.

—New student comrade

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