Mass May Day in Honduras-Workers Need to Shake off the Yoke of Exploitation here ♦ Message of Solidarity from Costa Rica here ♦
Mass Celebration of Coming May Day in Honduras
The Working Class Must Shake Off the Exploitative Capitalist System, Taking the Road to Communism
In recent years, large demonstrations of urban workers, popular organizations, rural workers, teachers, and others have taken place in all the major cities of Honduras. Tens of thousands of workers are concentrated in the cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.
They are fighting poverty, which is more and more a daily reality for the working class. Those who manage to find jobs get poverty wages and are subjected to greater exploitation. The unemployment rate increases every day, so that more than forty percent of the workforce is unemployed. A significant number of these choose to emigrate to the north. Society in general is subjected to living in an environment of unimaginable insecurity, with one of the highest crime rates in the world (83 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants).
Tens of thousands of workers, unemployed, teachers, farmworkers, and other social strata have marched in all the main cities of Honduras. The slogans were the same, pointing out all the calamities suffered day by day by the working class, mainly massive unemployment, oppression, discrimination, and ruthless exploitation.
During last year’s celebrations, some thought that, due to the massive nature of the reform movement, the workers would opt for the first time for one union confederation that would represent them.
But this has not been possible. Many of the unions which form part of these centrals have become conservative and pro-boss. They are not interested in the liberation of the working class from the exploitation and discrimination to which it has been subjected for many years.
Some comrades took the opportunity to have talks and interviews with several participants during these marches. We could see and hear once again that the desperation of the working class is more eloquent every day.
Moreover, in general, workers do not see in this neoliberal capitalist system an alternative solution to their serious problems, not even for subsistence. In this impasse, they are already forming proletarian class consciousness, talking about the contradictions between workers and bosses. They see how the national and international bourgeoisie is increasing its profits at the expense of workers’ labor. They see that what the wage-earner receives is no longer enough to satisfy even the basic needs required by human beings.
The comrades in Honduras see with great hope that qualitative and quantitative changes in favor of the working class are coming, but they can only occur under the slogans and ideas that we communists must push forward. The mainly economic reforms which the working class generally struggles for at present have only served to stop or delay the real struggle for total emancipation. That struggle is to shake off the yoke of exploitation imposed on us by the capitalist system and achieve a more just system: the communist society.
Workers of the world, UNITE!
Message of Solidarity from Our Friends in Costa Rica on this May Day of 2024
To the men and women workers of the world!
This May Day 2024 finds the Costa Rican working class facing such problems as:
Unemployment and deterioration of wages and working conditions.
The agricultural workers in the banana, pineapple, and coffee plantations are among the most exploited in the country.
The men and women public sector workers have seen their salaries and working conditions drastically reduced.
The pension systems are deteriorated and threatened with restructuring in ways that go against the pensioners.
The people suffer deterioration of rights and living conditions that they enjoyed in the past, such as health, education, and housing.
In the so-called democratic Costa Rica, unions do not exist in the private sector because they are fiercely persecuted.
Faced with this situation, the working class and other oppressed sectors of society develop struggles of resistance aimed at defending social gains and improving living conditions. Public sector workers have taken to the streets in defense of their rights and against privatization. Currently, the Costa Rican Social Security Fund, CCSS, is under frontal attack by this government, continuing its privatization policies. Indigenous groups have been recovering and defending their territories. In urban communities there are struggles for safe drinking water.
The worldwide panorama is not a happy one either. The imperialist powers of the world, fundamentally the United States, China, and Russia, are leading the people into new wars of plunder (market disputes). They are plundering natural resources and imposing starvation plans on their own peoples and on the peoples of the world.
From Costa Rica we call on the powerful international working class to forge the unity of the working class, fighting for the demands that we need in this country and in all countries, taking up the workers’ struggle raised since the First Communist International, for a world free of capitalist oppression and domination of every kind. As well as to coordinate and organize the present working-class struggles.
Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine!
For the defense of Palestine! Against the Zionist state of Israel!
For the international coordination of the struggles against capitalism!
—Movement of Urban and Agricultural Workers, Costa Rica, May 1st, 2024
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