From Gaza to Guatemala: Communist Solidarity here ⊠Pacifism, BDS, National Liberation here ⊠Globalizing the Intifada here âŠ
Guerilla fighters in Guatemala
From Gaza to Guatemala: International Communist Working-Class Solidarity Will Defeat Imperialist Genocide
PASADENA (USA), May 18â âWe lobbied politicians. Cities passed ceasefire resolutions. And nothing happened. We didnât know what to do next. Then the campuses exploded!â
Nearly 100 young people jammed into an independent bookstore. They came to learn about anti-fascist struggles in Palestine and Guatemala.  Most already knew that the Zionist Israeli regime defends US imperialist interests in the energy-rich Middle East. Many were shocked to learn how it also defends US imperialism in Central America.
In Guatemala, the elected Arbenz government instituted a modest land-reform program in 1952. It aimed largely at the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita). Indigenous peasants, effectively serfs, demanded and started to take more land.
US imperialismâs CIA overthrew Arbenz in 1954. The US Secretary of State and his brother, the CIA head, were on the Board of United Fruit.
An insurgency began in 1960, based in the countryside. It included workers and armed guerrillas. It was inspired by the Cuban revolution and backed (indirectly) by Soviet imperialism.
By 1977, US imperialism had lost its war in Vietnam. It was widely discredited. âHumanitarianâ President Carter decided it could no longer openly back the Guatemalan military dictatorship. He outsourced that job to Israel.
An Israeli minister of economy offered: âIn places where you cannot sell arms directly, let us do it. Israel will be your intermediary.â
General Rios Monttâs 1982 coup escalated the counterinsurgency into a genocide.  Government forces murdered 250,000 indigenous Maya and others in 626 separate massacres.
Israeli-trained Guatemalan military officers spoke of the âPalestinianizationâ of post-massacre Maya lands. With Israeli help, they forced survivors into âreadjustmentâ communities for surveillance.
An Israeli general explained: âIsrael has given its soldiers practical training in the art of oppression and in methods of collective punishment.â
The 1982 coup succeeded, Rios Montt declared, because âmany of our soldiers were trained by the Israelis.â
When US imperialism interrupted arms sales to fascist regimes in Nicaragua and El Salvador, or to Central American police forces, Israel stepped in. Military relationships with Israel helped maintain ties between Central American governments and Washington.
The Guatemala-Israel connection remains strong. The social democrat President, Bernardo Arevalo, graduated from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He spent four years as a senior official in Guatemalaâs embassy in Israel. Soon after he took office early this year, Israel and Guatemala signed a free-trade pact.
Even before Rios Montt and ever since, evangelical Christian Zionists in Guatemala have built a broad fascist base of support for Israel.
A Palestinian student presented much of this information. Her talk broadened the discussion from âFree Palestine!â to imperialism in relation to capitalism. However, the focus was on parallels and connections among indigenous peoplesâ struggles, not on an international working class confronting the same class enemy.
Another student described Israeli fascismâs role in Mexico. Specifically, the 2014 government-orchestrated kidnapping and murder of 43 students in Ayotzinapa. The Mexican rulers were early adopters of Israelâs âPegasusâ spyware. Tomas Zeron de Lucio, a key figure in the massacre, led the deployment of Pegasus to target parents and lawyers of the 43, as well as human rights activists. They feared the unraveling of the governmentâs Big Lie that it wasnât involved.
The Mexican government still massively purchases Israeli spyware. Zeron has avoided prosecution for his heinous crimes by fleeing to Israel. Israel refuses to extradite him.
Another attendee noted that the Israeli government sent arms to Azerbaijan last year to support its âethnic cleansingâ of Armenians in Artsakh.
âAs revolutionaries we must always build solidarity,â said the Palestinian presenter.
An ICWP comrade, in a breakout group, made that more concrete. âWe are fighting the same imperialist powers everywhere, so we need to be in one international party,â she said. âImperialism is rooted in capitalism, so our fight needs to be against capitalism.â
The comrade brought out Red Flag to make it clear that the party we need is ICWP. The person who spoke about Artsakh already had one. She encouraged two friends to take our paper. Another regular reader took several extra copies.
âOur weekly protests against the Gaza genocide have created space for people to think and learn more,â an organizer told the comrade a few days later. âAt first, they were just very angry. Now they are beginning to understand the bigger picture.â
 This Red Flag reader wasnât sure people in the US were ready for communism. But our experiences show us that many are. And only communism can defeat imperialist genocide.
Pacifism, BDS, and National Liberation Build Anti-Communism
We are learning valuable lessons from the hugely successful distribution of the ICWP Gaza pamphlet at the Jawaharlal Nehru University encampment. âOnly communist revolution will bring Azadi (freedom) to the working class.â This was the overwhelming response of some young people who flocked around us.
But there were contradictions also. Many of these young students believed that the âBoycott, Divestment, Sanctionsâ (BDS) movement would weaken the Israeli capitalists, opening the way for a communist revolution.
We said that the BDS movement is essentially anti-communist lies fed by the ruling class to confuse many students and workers. We need to organize our Red Army and industrial workers to communism. The BDS movement will never address how that can be done.
We gave the example of the Indian Freedom Struggle. Over a century ago, when the British capitalists ruled India, they built an iconic hotel with imposing Victorian architecture in Bombay (now Mumbai). At the entrance gate, a sign was posted: âEuropeans only. No dogs or Indians allowed.â
The anger of the Indian middle class took the shape of the nationalist freedom movement to sanction, boycott, and divest British interests in India.
The Congress Party (with Gandhi and others) led this movement. It was overwhelmingly financed by five of the richest rising capitalists. Their insistence on keeping the movement peaceful was, in reality, a violent attack on the Indian working class who were facing the brutality of wage slavery, famine, hunger, and imperialist wars.
India gained independence after the British capitalists ceased to be the top imperialists. The departure of the British capitalists started a rapid rise of the Indian capitalist class, which kept wage slavery with the ânationalistâ pride.
The Communist Party of India organized millions of workers, peasants, and students during this time, but it never had the outlook of overthrowing capitalism with communism. It became a cheerleader of the Congress Party after India gained independence.
The BDS movement is similar to the Indian Independence movement. Israeli rulers are extremely weak, defended by the US imperialists whose domination is in decline. This combination is creating the horrors of genocide. It is not because they are strong, it is a sign of their weakness.
As the ICWP leaflet on Gaza said, the working class in Gaza, Israel, and other areas can be organized to fight for a communist revolution. Only a communist revolution is worth fighting for. Anything else will keep wage slavery intact. We must reject the pacifist BDS movementâs dead-end solution, which will only reform capitalism.
Many students from the encampment movement were very receptive to what we said. Most of them did not know the history of India from the ICWP perspective. Their participation with us on May Day is a sign that we can grow and build our party.
âComrades in Delhi (India)
International Solidarity: Globalizing the Intifada
We participated in a recent conference of international solidarity with the student Gaza encampment movement. The conference called us to reflect on how to advance collectively in the political action of globalization, of the intifada, committed to the people of Palestine and self-liberation and mobilization of the masses around the world.
 Five organizers spoke from Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, and the USA (Columbia University and the University of California at Irvine). They described the struggle against imperialism that is advancing as students interact internationally to communicate the importance of the student encampments in favor of Palestine.
The conference included the interactive participation of approximately 50 people from the US and all over Latin America. But we see a contradiction between the international character of the meeting and its politics of supporting Palestinian nationalism.
We participated as members of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP). We fight internationally to unite the world working class in one party. We will not be able to establish communism through nationalism. We have the lessons of the past, of the failures of the Russian communists of the 20th century in not establishing communism directly. We don’t need a âtransitionalâ stage. Nationalism is not the solution and it is not a step or a ladder. We must fight directly for communism.
One of our comrades participated in a discussion segment. He mentioned how from the beginning, the situation in Palestine has been a project of inter-imperialist rivalry for control of the strategic area. First Britain with the Balfour Declaration and then the US imperialist intervention that is still going on. Now we have other imperialists like Russian imperialism in addition to Chinese imperialism.
“How can we ensure that no imperialism ever penetrates Palestine and that it is truly free?â he asked. âNo capitalist relations of any kind and more communist relations?” In future meetings we will continue to open spaces of ideological struggle within the group, sharpening the struggle between communism and nationalism.
The conference was a good opportunity to win more comrades to our ICWP Party. For that, we posted links to our party’s website and our Gaza leaflet.
We got contact information for many of the participants. We will follow up to win and build communist relations under our political line. At the same time, we will continue to participate in future conferences and have the opportunity to present our ICWP Party.
Struggle to Win the Masses For Communism
These encampments and conferences create openings among young students around the world for our party to build collective unity and solidarity to mobilize the masses and turn the imperialist wars into communist revolution.
We know that students, youth, industrial workers, soldiers, and sailors are essential in the global movement for our struggle against the capitalist imperialists.
We communists must be the seed that grows and stands firm in the struggle to put an end to capitalist societies that limit, oppress, exploit, and take advantage of imperialist wars for their own enrichment and power. We will put an end to their system of misery, hunger, racism, nationalist divisions, and war.
Join and fight directly for a communist society with our International Communist Workersâ Party!
Long live the communist revolution!
âRed Comrades of the ICWP
Read Our Pamphlet: Â Genocide in Gaza Demands Communist Revolution here
Articles about communism vs nationalism and national liberation :
October 2023: “Bringing Communism to Anti-APEC Protests” here
âOnly Communism Can End the Crimes of Nationalismâ here
âCritique of the Writings of Franz Fanonâ here