In El Salvador, thousands gathered outside a government building in the capital San Salvador Monday to demand the $300 government checks President Nayib Bukele promised to some 1.5 million households who work as street vendors and other jobs in the informal economy. El Salvador has been on a nationwide lockdown for nearly two weeks.
Workers Produce Everything—Need Communism
EL SALVADOR, March 31— “I’m hungry! We’ve been here since 3 a.m. without eating!” shouted a 65-year-old woman on March 30, in great desperation, when she went to look for $300 in economic aid for food during the quarantine, at the National Center for Attention and Administration of Subsidies that President Bukele announced at his last press conference.
Because the people had gathered and could not keep the required distance of one and a half meters and they could not get an answer, the National Civil Police sprayed them with pepper gas. This upset the people even more. They protested with tremendous outrage against the cops and the government. Some ended up in jail.
Now that the workers are at home and the economy is collapsing, they are realizing that the rich don’t generate anything, that it is the hands of the workers that generate wealth for the boss. ICWP (the International Communist Workers’ Party) and Red Flag have said so in every edition.
The government is using the information for electoral purposes, recommending that people “stay at home.” Staying at home is a class privilege. In the densely populated neighborhoods of El Salvador, sometimes up to eight people live together. Social distancing here does not work. There is also the need to go get food, since there is no pantry full of provisions to allow for a week at home.
The privatization of health care worldwide has caused the health care system to collapse. In Communism, the ICWP will prioritize humanity. Its health will not be a source of profit. This worldwide health crisis makes it clear that capitalism is more dangerous than the coronavirus for humanity.
It has also shown that it is the workers, men and women, who keep the lives of millions of people in the world functioning. But in general you can see the inequality in this rotten economic system. The truth is that this is the time for an urgent change of system.
Capitalism has failed. This pandemic will be the excuse to disguise the capitalist crisis. Governments will take advantage of this crisis to justify why they will not be able to carry out anything they had promised.
In Communism, it’s not that there won’t be situations like the ones we are experiencing, but there will be better mechanisms to handle them. Communication and education about health issues will be a priority. Medicine will be in the service of all humanity. The ICWP is fighting to make this change possible. Join ICWP. Read Red Flag! Let’s fight for Communism!
Garment Workers Discuss Communism While Waiting for Paychecks
On March 27th, a group of us workers from a factory in El Salvador were called by the bosses to collect a check as wages for two weeks we worked, after President Nayib Bukele said that the maquilas would have to close for a period of time due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We had to wait a long time to receive this check, because the boss didn’t like that production was stopped. He said, “I had to comply with the request.” He told us that he was going to ask the president in a closed-door meeting to give him a chance to finish the week’s work. That day the maquila representative had a meeting at 10:00 am so he asked the workers to wait for the response until the return of the maquila representative. We had to wait for many hours for them to give us the check.
We took advantage of the time there with the workers. Many of them commented that everything that was happening seemed like a political show without any solution, because the countries have not been able to control this pandemic or are not prepared for it. All these events were explained a little quickly to these workers for security reasons: that this system we are living in, capitalism, is not prepared for these situations, because capitalism prioritizes profits and not people’s health.
We explained that we need a new system that is Communism, where health will be primary and we will not go through these medical calamities as we do today, but that to achieve this change we must organize. Then we were interrupted, because it was time to go into the office to sign the form. We could no longer continue to explain our communist line to them. But we will continue with our struggle when the work starts soon and with those who can we continue to communicate with in other ways.
—Comrade in El Salvador
The Time Has Come to Practice Communism
EL SALVADOR— A former factory worker, fired by the bosses in retaliation for being in our party, and who now works in a school, thanks to the collective effort of the ICWP, wrote us the following: “My point of view in the face of this hard and difficult situation of the COVID-19 is that too many lives have been lost in many countries of the world. This pandemic is all over the world. In the face of this situation I think it is best to act immediately but we have not been prepared to confront this situation because we see that the bosses never care about our health much less human wellbeing.
“The bosses only care about money without thinking about the health of their workers. Why wait for a tragedy to happen, since we could avoid it first and act before regretting it. In communism we will be prepared for all these situations, not only in moments like this, which we are going through. We will take decisions that will benefit the working class and the whole world without expecting something in return. What we are going through is serious, it is not a joke. The time has come to practice communism. I call on all readers to join us; one single communist struggle and let us not stop. We have a lot to learn, but we also have a lot to give, because life every day teaches us to evaluate events.
Forward! We all have to defeat capitalism with victories for our class!”
—Former factory worker and ICWP Comrade
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