As the plane approaches Guatemala, the passengers relax. Some even shout happily. Only one woman and her child continue to cry. It is the only family. The rest are mostly men returning to the country that forced them to leave because of racism, sexism, poverty, unemployment, State and gang violence. All products of capitalism.
They are returning to the “Third Safe Country,” according to the agreement signed by Trump and the Guatemalan government, under the threat of imposing tariffs on Guatemalan exports and taxes on remittances sent back by immigrants.
Safe Third Country?
Guatemala is one of the most violent places in the world. It’s the only country in Latin America where poverty has not been reduced in the last 20 years. Of course, one of the bloodiest countries on the continent is safe for the interests of the imperialists and local capitalists!
But, for the working class there is no safe country. Nations – together with patriotism and nationalism – were created by the capitalists to divide us, blind us, and get us to fight each other defending “our homelands,” that is, the private property of the capitalists-imperialists.
We workers have no country.
As long as capitalism-imperialism exists there will be no safe place for us. That’s why we must fight for a communist world, without borders or nations, without money or wage slavery—the material basis of racism, sexism, xenophobia and exploitation.
In a communist world nobody will be forced to emigrate in search of a job or to escape State or gang violence. Collectively we will plan what to produce, how to produce and distribute it according to the needs of each person. No one will enjoy luxuries while others lack basic necessities of food, shelter, health care and learning.
Eliminating money, there will be no drug dealers. The new communist society will treat the addicts that remain due to capitalism as sick sisters and brothers to cure and reincorporate into society. Drugs will be something of the past, along with gangs. We will not have police, prisons or courts. Communist principles will govern society. We will treat each other with respect, dignity and love.
Eliminating capitalists-imperialists, humanity will be one family worldwide. Then we won’t need wars or weapons of any kind.
To achieve this communist world, we have to join the International Communist Workers’ Party and organize a communist revolution by mobilizing the masses of workers to fight for communism and nothing less.
Guatemalan workers know a lot about armed struggle.
For thirty years they resisted the “scorched earth” policy of the fascist Guatemalan army supported by the US. Half a million Mayan farmworkers supported 8,000 guerrillas, mostly Mayan. Guatemalan capitalist fought to undermine this struggle. They destroyed more than 600 Mayan villages. They killed more than 200 thousand mostly Mayan civilians and displaced more than a million more.
Even so, the guerrillas were not defeated on the battlefield. It was their traitorous leaders who in 1992 made peace with the capitalists and abandoned the struggle. But that struggle would not have met the aspirations of the Guatemalan working class because the communist leaders claimed that the indigenous people because of their “ignorance” could not even understand the struggle for “socialism” much less the struggle for communism. Their goals were “agrarian reform” and capitalist democracy.
The peace deal that they signed was the peace of the cemetery
Trump’s agreement makes this situation worse. It stipulates that Central American applicants for political asylum will have to apply to the Guatemalan government. The applicant may remain in the country until their status is resolved. If denied, the authorities may expel them. Those who ignore this process, including unaccompanied minors, will be summarily deported to Guatemala upon arrest when trying to enter the US.
Fascism or Communist Revolution!
This makes Guatemala a wall at the service of the United States and the custodian of future concentration camps to stop the flow of Central American immigrants to the US.
The fuses of the social time bombs that are Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are getting shorter. The comrades of the International Communist Workers’ Party in El Salvador can guarantee, by helping organize the ICWP throughout Central America, that when that time bomb explodes, the struggle will be for communism.