Colombia: Common Grave
South America: Angry Masses Need Communist Leadership
On September 11 this year, remembering the victims of the fascist Augusto Pinochet and commemorating the bloody coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in 1973, a multitude of workers, students and Mapuche indigenous people confronted the repressive government forces, sending several of them to hospital. The workers are fed up with capitalism.
Workers around the world are now more open than ever to Communist ideas. The rebellions of recent years show that the working class is tired of the bosses’ lies and deception. In South America, the workers’ restrained cry burst forth after the hiatus of the pandemic. The city workers, students, and farmworkers are rising up in struggle.
The capitalist free-market economic model established in Chile after the 1973 coup led to unemployment and poverty for many thousands of workers. The increase in the capitalists’ wealth, measured by macroeconomic indicators and the huge growth of their companies, has not been reflected in the workers’ economy. It has only favored the capitalists.
Many feel “abandoned” by the state. They denounce discrimination and abuses based on their color and racial or geographic origin. This is true of the Mapuche indigenous people. They have been at the forefront of the protests, which began in October 2019 after the government’s announcement that they would raise the cost of public transportation.
In Colombia, protests against the bosses’ economic measures began in November 2019, inspired by the protests in Chile and Ecuador. Hundreds of thousands of students and farmworkers marched through the streets. They confronted the police and the army for several days to protest against the measures to reduce young workers’ wages by up to 25% and to partially eliminate retirees’ pensions.
On September 9, 2020, thousands of workers and students resumed their protests after the brutal murder of a man by the police. During several days of heroic fighting, eleven youths were killed. More than 200 people have been injured. 194 police have been sent to the hospital, some seriously, and 40% of the police detention centers were razed.
The bosses could not contain the workers’ struggle. The pandemic they caused slowed down the struggle but did not stop it.
Now is the time to fight for a Communist Revolution. These struggles, while militant and inspiring, are not enough. Demanding wage increases or the dismantling of police forces are reformist struggles. They only favor the capitalist system because the bosses want us to think the system can function for the masses. But the bosses are only parasites who live off the labor of the working class.
It is necessary to build a mass movement led by the International Communist Workers’ Party, which leads the working class to destroy the capitalist system, and to replace it with the Communist System.