June 3—The 5,300 workers of the Honduran Institute of Social Security throughout the country are joining the nationwide strike by thousands of healthcare workers and teachers against the privatization of healthcare and schools. This is part of the struggle against the bosses’ system and their servants like Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Public sector workers have been marching for weeks.
Roads and public buildings were occupied. Members of the Social Security Workers’ union took over the facilities. University students occupied the Francisco Morazán National Pedagogical University and buildings of the National Autonomous University of Honduras.
The Platform in Defense of Education and Health ignored the repeal announced by the president of Honduras of the decrees related to the cuts in services of the respective unions. The president of the Medical College of Honduras said that the repeal of the decrees in health and education “is a new trick.”.
As the days go by, the number of health and education workers grows at rallies in Tegucigalpa and other parts of the country, giving leadership to the masses in motion.
Friends Red Flag readers and members of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) in this country and neighboring countries must undertake the task of sharpening the organizational struggle to fight these imperialist servants.
This government represents the Honduran bourgeoisie and the US empire, which has two military bases and plans for another. They intend to use thse to suppress the discontent of the working class against the crisis of capitalism and its imperialist rivals like Russia and China.
These bosses have plunged the working class into poverty and unemployment, forcing thousands to leave the country in caravans because of violence and hunger.
No group of bosses, no matter how liberal they may seem, is fighting for our class. All obey the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The liberal bosses have not been able to move this rotten system forward. They only see ways to make more profits.
Police brutality does not stop the workers’ struggles. The determination, courage, and resistance of the working class in Honduras shows the potential for the masses to take up the alternative of replacing the capitalist system with a new system. This is an opportunity to continue the organizational and political work of the communist movement.
This working-class struggle in Honduras is not alone. It is supported by the organized labor movement throughout Latin America and the world.
Honduras today reminds us that within capitalism our basic human needs such as water, health and education will always be subordinated to the needs of capitalist production and profit. We must never forget that in capitalism everything is a commodity, from health to social relations. The initial and final objective is to generate profits.
We call on the workers of Honduras to organize for a long term and permanent struggle for a communist world. In communism, universal and quality education and health care will be based on the needs of the working class itself.
We invite you to write, read and distribute Red Flag to serve as a basis for the creation of new collectives.
We extend our communist solidarity and support to the health and education workers in Honduras. Their heroic actions and show a deep love and respect for the lives of their children, families and friends. A struggle for education and health should be a struggle for communism, for humanity and the future of our international class.
Forward Comrades, for a society free of bosses!