N 38 June August 2016 IWU-FI

The crisis of
progressive
governments

Yankee business
in Cuba
 Summary
Foreword....................................1 Cuba
Latin America
The crisis of progressist governments........2
N 38 June August 2016

Venezuela
Magazine of the UITFI
International Wyorkers Unity Fourth
International
Yankee business in Cuba................................ 24
Critical Observatory on Obamas visit....... 28

International Coordination Argentina

Offices
Mxico 1230 Venezuela in freefall............................................4
Buenos Aires The fight for elections in the oil workers
Argentina federation..............................................................6
The new gold fever: massacre and looting ...8
Telephones Scrapping the pot................................................9
+54 11 4383 7733 Chavist government persecutes the left..... 10
+54 11 4383 4047 Socialism of the XXI Century was a
fraud.................................................................... 11 Macri applies a brutal adjustment................. 28
Growth of the struggles ................................ 31
Internet
www.uit-ci.org Brazil
Refugees

Layout
Isabel Sanchez
Daniel Iglesias

English Translation
Daniel Iglesias
The PTs bankruptcy........................................ 14
Tear down the walls of Europe of capital... 31
The Democratic and Popular Program....... 15
Battle to present a class alternative............. 16
Contribution Syria
In defence of Dilmas government?.............. 18
Argentina: Ar$30
Criminal offensive on Aleppo........................ 38
Brazil: R$5
France The Kurdish movement and the Syrian
Rest of Latin America: US$2 revolution........................................................... 39
USA: US$5
Europe: 5 Bolivia
Rest of the World: US$3
Evo, his lover, the son and the Chinese
multinational...................................................... 41
After the triumph of NO............................... 43
Signed articles do not
necessarily reflect the Peru
position of the leadership of Consolidating the Broad Front .................... 45
the IWU-FI but that of their
A highly explosive situation .......................... 20
authors.
Global News.............................47
 Foreword
A strong debate has opened among the left on the
political situation in Latin America and its governments
and regimes. Hence, in this edition of International
Correspondence, we devote large space to Venezuela, Brazil,
Argentina, Bolivia and Peru.
After more than a decade of preponderance of
governments that are considered progressive or national
and popular, a sharp decline has begun. About this obvious
debacle and crisis, different interpretations are woven. Their
spokespersons justify it by an alleged conspiratorial action of
imperialism and its local agents. They speak of economic
war, of coup in Brazil or the actions of the Big Media.
In reality, the governments of class conciliation and double
discourse have entered into crisis. In Venezuela, after 17
years of Chavist government, people queue to see whether
they find something in the supermarkets with the little
they have in their pockets. In an oil producing country,
the people have no decent wages, food, toilet paper, nor
electricity. This is why the protests began and Maduro is
massively repudiated. Something similar happens in Brazil
with Dilma of the Workers Party (PT) and even with the
politicians of the bosses opposition parties. The sack-
them-all is growing. In various articles we bring our vision
given the ongoing debate; also about the entrance in droves
of Yankee business in Cuba.
From the various processes of struggle in each country,
our international socialist current raises an alternative of
workers and a solution with an anti-capitalist and socialist
program.
In addition, we highlight in this issue the mobilisation
in France of the workers and the student youth against the
law of labour flexibility (El Khomri law). The other key
issue is the plight of refugees in Europe and the situation of
the Syrian revolution. In particular, we give importance to
the call for solidarity with the rebellious people of Aleppo
given the military counteroffensive by the criminal dictator
al-Asaad and Putin.

Contacting us:
Argentina: Izquierda Socialista: opinaellector@izquierdasocialista.org.ar Bolivia: b.bolivia.izquierda.socialista@gmail.com Brazil: Corrente
Socialista dos Trabalhadores: combatesocialista@gmail.com Chile: Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores: mst_solidaridad@gmail.com
Colombia: Alternativa Socialista: alternativasocialistauitci@hotmail.com France: Groupe Socialiste Internationaliste: contact@gsi-qi.org Mexico:
POS-MAS: posmas1980@gmail.com Panama: Propuesta Socialista: propuestapanamauit@hotmail.com Peru: Unios en la Lucha: unios_cc@
hotmail.com Spanish State: Lucha Internationalista: luchaint@telefonica.net; Turkey: Workers Democracy Party: iscicephesi@gmail.com
United States: Socialist Core: socialistcore@gmail.com Venezuela: Partido Socialismo y Libertad: usi_venezuela@yahoo.com
Recomended Sites: www.uit-ci.org / www.nahuelmoreno.org / www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar (Argentina) / www.cstpsol.com (Brazil) / www.unios.
tk (Peru) / www.laclase.info (Venezuela) / www.socialistcore.org (USA) / www.mst-solidaridad.cl (Chile) / www.raetedemokratie.org (Germany) /
www.luchainternacionalista.org (Spanish State) / www.iscicephesi.net (Turkey) / www.movimientoalsocialismo.org (Mexico) / www.gsi-qi.org (France)
In Facebook: www.facebook.com/mst.solidaridad (Chile) / www.facebook.com/partidoobrerosocialista (Mexico)/ www.facebook.com/
linternacionalista (Spanish State)/ www.facebook.com/idpgirisimi (Turkey)
 Latin America
Bolivia: In 2010 the gasolinazo took place.
The crisis of progressist
governments
What prevails in Latin America is
the debate about the why of the crisis
and the decline of the ill-considered
progressive governments. The
most outstanding are the crisis of
the Maduro government and the
decline of Chavism. Last December
Maduro was defeated electorally.
This together with the serious crisis
of Dilma and the PT in Brazil, the
electoral defeats of Kirchnerist
Peronism in Argentina and of Evo
Morales in the Bolivian referendum.
They seek to blame their failures on
the campaigns of the right and
even on a coup in Brazil. What
are the real reasons for the crisis?
Given the electoral debacle of
Chavism, the first out to self-justify was
Nicolas Maduro, giving the explanation
that everything was due to an economic
war launched by the empire. Alvaro
Garcia Linera, vice-president of Bolivia
and ideologist of the MAS, assured
there is a counter-revolutionary wave
and that at risk is Latin American
2
Brazil: In 2013 the rebellion against fares hike.
Miguel Sorans
sovereignty. And this economic war
would be orchestrated by the US,
Russia and Saudi Arabia around the
issue of oil prices. Rafael Correa, from
Ecuador, even came to talk about a
new Condor Plan (Clarin, Argentina,
19 March 2016).
The Argentine professor Atilio
Boron joined Maduros justification
claiming that there is a persistent
economic war launched by the empire
(in Cuba Debate, 7 December 2015).
But he did not stop there. Rather, he
went so far as to define the elections as a
trap; but not because there was fraud,
simply by holding them, by questioning
to what extent free elections can be
organised in the conditions existing in
Venezuela. He compares them with the
suspension of elections in the UK in
1940 by the outbreak of World War II
and opens the reckless assumption that
we would need to think what other
access paths and maintenance of power
can perhaps be more effective and
reliable than the elections (sic). What
other paths? Boron already weighs up
for Venezuela and other countries no
more elections to be held and to give
self-coups to hold onto power?
The real causes of the
political crisis
In this query that Boron opens
lies the actual cause of the crisis these
pseudo-progressive governments have.
Because its causes must be sought in the
widespread anger of the masses against
the adjustments they are subjected to.
The reality is that the economic war
was unleashed by Maduro, Dilma,
Cristina Kirchner and Evo Morales
and against their peoples. Perhaps this
is why Boron, seeing they can no longer
contain popular discontent, weighs
up to go to more totalitarian regimes.
The only thing missing is for him to
set as an example the old dictatorships
of the Communist Parties he longs so
much for.
Jose Mujica, former president
of Uruguay and the Frente Amplio

(Broad Front), was a little more candid
when asked about the decline of these
governments. He did not speak of
economic war. With his folksy tone
said: The left of the region makes
blunders. For us, the blunders are the
application of anti-workers policies and
of adjustment to the people.
What is failing before the masses is
the false theory that these governments
would better redistribute wealth. It
is the failure of the message of the
construction of Socialism of the XXI
Century in Venezuela, the construction
of Andean Socialism in Bolivia or
the national and popular model in
Argentina. These governments had a
boom period between 2003 and 2010,
at a time of improving commodity
prices, which was called the tailwind.
But this situation of a relative boom of
prices, without a structural change and
all these national and popular models
being a political lie, ended up in more
profits for the multinationals versus
more poverty for the peoples.
In the last two years, it has arrived
with force to the region the economic
crisis of world capitalism, with the
falling prices of raw materials (oil, gas,
cereals, and minerals). Given this, these
governments responded to the effects of
the crisis with austerity plans against the
working class and the people. Neither
before nor after the effects of the crisis
did they change the structure of their
semi-colonial capitalist countries.
Expectations are broken
These governments had come to
power amid great expectations of the
masses and the result of a process of
revolutionary rise, which had its most
important peak in the Argentinazo of
2001. The whole region was in a process
of mobilisation and this is why these
governments channelled this rejection
of imperialism and the multinationals
and there was a left turn. In Venezuela,
the process began in 1989 with the
Caracazo, which was channelled by
Hugo Chavez. In the case of Lula and
the PT in Brazil, it was not exactly the
result of a popular semi-insurrection.
Yet a process of 20 years, since the
Latin America
1980s when
the dictatorship
fell, did exist of
demonstrations,
big strikes and the
appearance of the
PT and the CUT.
All of them huge
processes of the
Brazilian working
class.
Since 2010 the
struggle against Venezuela: In 2014, march of Sidor steelworkers.
these governments
began. A process demonstrations, for several years, for
of breaking the expectations of the state and free education.
masses begins. The highlight was
the Gasolinazo in Bolivia, which
Social confrontation and
in late 2010 produces an almost the leadership problem
revolutionary crisis that was on the One of the existing debates since the
verge of overthrowing Evo Morales. electoral victories of the conservatives
When Evo increased gasoline prices is whether there is a right turn by
and the people said: either you remove the masses. Essentially we believe that
the adjustment or you go. And Evo what prevails is a punishment vote.
Morales had to cancel it. Thereafter Millions vote covering their noses
in Latin America begins to exist, for centre-right options. Such is the
on the one hand, the application of confusion generated by the failure of
increasingly advanced adjustments and, the governments of class conciliation.
It goes without saying it is negative
on the other hand, begins a process
of struggles and mobilisations against that governments arise further to the
these governments. In 2012 the first right and pro-imperialist. But we
general strike against the Peronist believe that there is no right turn in
government of Cristina Kirchner takes the sense that it has stopped the class
place; after eight years in which they struggle. There has been no major
managed to contain and no general defeat. Latin America continues, with
strike had happened. And in 2013 the its unevenness, crisscrossed by social
first major rebellion in Brazil for fares confrontation. The mobilisation process
is generated. A popular rebellion of will continue against all governments
national character, which had peaks applying adjustments, including the
in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but conservatives like in Colombia and
which was a mobilisation of millions Argentina. This process of deepening
of workers and youth who came out social confrontation will continue. The
against the fares, but expressing the prospect is toward new political crises
social crisis and a global rejection of of governments and regimes. And in
the government. this process, we will continue battling
In Venezuela in 2014 there was a to achieve workers governments that
big strike in Sidor, formerly Techint, address the fundamental changes that
covering about 15,000 workers, Latin America needs.
with a nearly ten-month strike. Peru In that perspective, and with the
had peasant mobilisations against new failure of the political projects of
mining companies and a large youth class conciliation, the strategic task of
mobilisation, with an epicentre in continuing the fight to build a genuine
Lima, who defeated a youth labour act. revolutionary socialist leadership is
In Chile are well known the impressive raised again.
3
 Venezuela
Venezuela in freefall
The shortages of food and
medicine worsen, electrical and
water supply is rationed, state
and private companies are semi-
paralysed, inflation quickly erodes
wages, while vast urban areas are
controlled by criminal mafias. After
17 years in government, the Chavist
cycle nears its end under the sign
of failure.
The punishment vote against the
government in the parliamentary
elections on 6 December, the first
electoral defeat by a wide margin of
Chavism, came after three years of rapid
deterioration of the living conditions
of the majority of the population. In
Barinas state which has been ruled
these years by the father and a brother
of the late Hugo Chavez Chavism
lost by more than 12 percent. It also
lost in the popular parish of 23 de
Enero, one of the bastions of Chavism
in Caracas, as well as the election
4
Simon Rodriguez Porras
Long queues to find few products.
of the three parliamentarians of the
indigenous representation.
The Democratic Unity Roundtable
(MUD), closely linked to the US
government, capitalised on discontent
and won two-thirds of the National
Assembly (AN). A few weeks after the
election, various opinion polls reflected
a negative assessment of the deputies of
the MUD, because of their manifest
incapacity and demagogy.
After its electoral defeat, the outgoing
National Assembly used its last sessions
for the appointment of magistrates who
will guarantee a solid majority in the
Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ). By a
judicial manoeuvre the proclamation
of the four deputies for the southern
state of Amazonas was avoided, thereby
blocking the two-thirds majority from
becoming effective. The Supreme Court
shielded itself preventing the National
Assembly from revising the December
appointments, and blocked attempts by
the National Assembly to legislate, issue
amnesties, and to oppose presidential
decrees, such as the declaration of
economic emergency.
MUD, which managed to gather for
the first time more than seven million
votes, did not call for any mobilisation
to respond to these manoeuvres. It could
not even agree on a common strategy
to seek the exit of the government,
leaving the way clear for the parties
that integrate it to pursue different
formulas for a change of government:
to demand Maduros resignation, to
promote a constitutional amendment
to cut the presidential term to four
years, and to promote a referendum to
revoke Maduros mandate.
The government thus gets invaluable
help from MUD to stay put, although
the erosion of its base is irreversible.
The economic and social collapse
overwhelms a population that cannot
believe the official speeches about
economic conspiracies and soft coups.
Thus, in late April, a few hours after

the National Electoral Council (CNE)
authorised the collection of signatures
to initiate the process to convene a recall
referendum, hundreds of thousands of
people gathered in queues to sign.
Wild capitalism
The causes of the economic crisis
do not lay in a conspiracy. Unlike
the years 2001-2003, in which the
bourgeoisie with support from the
Bush administration gambled almost
in bloc on a coup outcome, today
many of their loftiest representatives
are allies of the government (see box
The bourgeoisie and the government
scrapping the pot). The current
Minister of Industry and Commerce
and vice president for the economic
area is Miguel Perez Abad, president of
the business chamber Fedeindustria.
Chavez also designated as Minister at
the time Francisco Natera, a former
president of Fedecamaras, the main
employers union.
The dissociation of the official
discourse is such that Maduro presents
himself as a victim of conspiracies of
the bourgeoisie, and at the same time
he boasts he has established agreements
with large national and transnational
entrepreneurs, which according to
him augur well for a speedy economic
recovery. In spite of everything, sectors
such as the current of the Argentine
Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas
(Party of Socialist Workers PTS)
converge with Chavism by stating that
in Venezuela rages divestment and
sabotage of the economy by the national
bourgeoisie (Laizquierdadiario.com,
20 November 2015).
What is certain is that Venezuelan
capitalism suffers from large
deformations, typical of its colonial
and semi-colonial history. But these
distortions have reached unprecedented
levels under the governments of
Chavez and Maduro. Beyond the
discourse with socialist pretensions, it
remained in all its fundamental features
a backwards and dependent capitalism
(see Socialism of the XXI century was
a fraud).
The opposition in the National Assembly is no solution for the masses.
Since the country went from a largely
agricultural economy to dependent on
oil exports, the cycles of accumulation
of the national bourgeoisie have been
linked to the appropriation of oil
revenues. In the Chavist period, this
dynamic became more grotesque than
ever. Through the control of currency
exchange rates implemented in 2003,
the government set exchange rates that
allowed national and transnational
entrepreneurs to acquire dollars
at below parallel market prices. In
2012 the difference between the two
exchange rates grew dramatically,
reaching a ratio of five to one. The
government took advantage of the high
oil prices to subsidise consumption
by cheap imports at the expense of
domestic production and allowed
growth in demented proportions of
the over-invoicing of imports, a fraud
mechanism to obtain from the State
cheap currency. Private entrepreneurs
and officials of state enterprises resorted
to this scheme, and according to
estimates by the government itself, in
2012 fictitious imports in the order
of US$20 billion were declared, a
figure similar to the losses caused by
the oil sabotage by the coup of 2002.
The consequences were disastrous.
In December 2015 the dollar on the
parallel market exceeded 600 bolivars,
and the official market had exchange
rates of 6.30 and 12. In April 2016 the
Venezuela
dollar in the parallel market already
exceeded 1000 bolivars.
Huge fortunes were made overnight
by the Chavist bureaucracy and the
bourgeois allies of the government.
The leaks of documents from Swiss
and Andorran banks, or more recently
the Panama papers, have revealed the
whereabouts of a small portion of
these dollars, but the overall figure for
capital flight, through legal and illegal
channels, is around US$300 billion
dollars in the last thirteen years. More
than 20-times the current international
reserves.
This patronage mechanism
was compounded by the failure of
nationalisations that the government
presented as part of a socialist
transformation plan, but which within
the Venezuelan capitalist framework
represented business opportunities
for military and Chavist officials of
the burgeoning new bourgeoisie. The
government bought telecommunication
and cement companies, banks, the
steelmaker Sidor, and agribusinesses.
Many of these companies had been
privatised in the 1990s and were
repurchased at prices well above those
of its privatisation. After acquired, the
bureaucratic and corrupt administration
took most of these companies to a
near standstill. The administration of
a state enterprise, even if it became
5
 Venezuela

The fight for elections in the oil

workers federation
In the second half of 2014 elections
were to be held in the main union
federation in the country, the United
Federation of Oil Workers of Venezuela
(FUTPV). The manoeuvres of the
Chavist union bureaucracy, with the
help of state interference in trade union
affairs through the National Electoral
Council (CNE), have influenced the
postponement of the elections. Finally,
the pressure of the workers and the
left opposition nucleated around the
Classist, Unitary, Revolutionary and
Autonomous Current (C-CURA),
managed in December 2015 to get
an electoral commission installed and
begin to organise elections for the
middle of this year.
It will be a tough battle to be
waged to uphold workers democracy Jose Bodas, General Secretary of the FUTPV
and rescue the federation. Jose Bodas,
a government of the left that vindicates process when this is done. The oil
secretary general of the FUTPV and
the working class, in actuality it has collective contract covers over 100,000
national coordinator of C-CURA,
explained in a radio interview with the been one of the governments that have workers throughout the country. The
BBC that wages in the oil industry most cut the gains of the workers and possibility that by the hand of Bodas
are the worst in the world. At the criminalises their struggles. and C-CURA the FUTPV become
official exchange rate, the daily wage is For the union bureaucracy an organisational tool for the defence
US$1.50, at the parallel exchange rate, massively rejected by the workers of the rights of oil workers, for the
less than half. The union bureaucracy and for the government much recovery of wages and the elimination
of the PSUV, who chairs the federation, is at stake. In their offensive against of outsourcing, and for environmental
has been an assistant in a policy that has the revolutionary and autonomous and industrial safety conditions is
led to a significant decline in working unionism, the military has made of crucial importance for the entire
conditions and the destruction of arbitrary arrests against Bodas and Venezuelan workers movement.
the historic achievements of the oil C-CURA activists, and PDVSAs An event of such magnitude would
workers. In the same interview, Bodas management has fired one of its key become an important impetus for
explained that government orientation referents, the union leader Bladimir the reorganisation of the trade union
responds to bureaucrats believing Carvajal, at the end of last year. These movement, currently fragmented
that [oil] workers are privileged. anti-union trends deepened with the and unresponsive to the inflation
In Curacao, the Island Refinery creation in February of a military oil adjustment with which the government
of PDVSA pays a worker between services company under the Ministry and the bosses have lowered wages to
US$3,000 and 7,000 a month, and of Defence, with which outsourcing levels not seen in over 50 years. Also,
is still profitable with international in the oil industry could expand. In it would amplify the voices of those
oil prices, and we have less than 80 spite of this, there are still grassroots calling for the nationalisation of the
kilometres away in the Paraguana committees being formed in support oil industry, now colonised by the US,
Refining Complex in Falcon, the of the elections in different regions of European and Chinese multinationals,
worlds largest refining complex, the country. through the joint ventures scheme
workers are earning less than a dollar More than 50,000 workers from established by Chavism.
a day. Beyond the fraud of calling itself 60 unions must attend the electoral SRP

6

Nicolas Maduro and Diosdado Cabello, together and without a clue
unproductive, was a path to the business
of imports and currency fraud.
A criminal adjustment
through inflation
With the fall of oil prices, the
government decided to allocate most
of the oil and mining revenues to the
payment of foreign debt. Imports
were cut, hitting consumption and
exacerbating shortages. This, coupled
with the unbridled printing of money,
with an increase in the monetary base
of more than 800 percent between 2011
and early 2016, accelerated inflation.
In a context of aggravated shortages,
extremely long queues began to emerge
at public and private shops selling food
and toiletries at regulated prices, the
only ones accessible for millions of
workers who earn a minimum wage
equivalent to less than US$40 per
month (at the official Dicom rate). In
the parallel market, the same products
are sold at prices dozens of times more
expensive. To complete the picture,
the government violently increases the
cost of urban transport and extends the
collection of income tax to millions of
workers who cannot cover the cost of
the basic food basket (equivalent to
eight minimum wages).
Only the military has obtained
in the last nine years wage increases
equal to or above inflation. The rest of
the public sector workers and most of
the private sector have suffered brutal
cuts to their real wages, by suspending
discussions of collective agreements or
the imposition of miserable increases
with help from the Chavist union
bureaucracy.
The electrical disaster
Even sectors of strategic importance
as Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA)
which is state-owned but is associated
with transnationals through joint
ventures or the electrical industry
have been preyed upon by corruption
and disinvestment.
The crisis in 2009 revealed a
significant deterioration of the national
electricity distribution grid and the
delay in the execution of several
hydroelectric projects. Blackouts of
between four and eight hours a day
triggered riots in several cities, the
closing production lines to save energy
caused damage to the productive
capacity of aluminium and steel state
enterprises in Guyana, which has not
been overcome to date. The government
invested billions of dollars in importing
thermoelectric power plants, awarding
multimillion-dollar contracts without
competitive bidding. Poor machinery
and even junk that did not work were
imported. One of the companies
involved in the embezzlement, Derwick
and Associates, created a few months
before the electricity crisis, made such
Venezuela
a fortune that it acquired in New York
an apartment that had belonged to the
magnate Aristotle Onassis, according to
press reports reproduced by spokesmen
of Chavism itself.
The drought this year has exposed
this spectacular crime. Again frequent
and prolonged outages occur in the
electrical power supply, while the
population protest in desperation in
Maracaibo, Valencia and other cities.
In late April, the government decreed
that public employees will have only
two working days a week, as a measure
to save energy. But this is not the
inevitable ravages of a drought, but the
consequences of the colossal economic
crimes of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie.
Poverty and crime on the rise
The adjustment in Venezuela has
been much more overwhelming than
those applied in recent years in Greece,
the Spanish State or Argentina. The
only economic war has been of the
government and big business against
the workers and the poor, to make
them pay the crisis. Although there are
no official figures since 2013, research
conducted last year by Venezuelan
public universities and private polling
studies, account for a significant increase
in poverty and hunger in the country.
Another consequence of the growing
inequality, poverty, and corruption, has
been the growth of organised crime
groups, similar to the Central American
Maras, which have been monopolising
large tracts of land in urban and
suburban areas.
Caracas has annually, according to
official figures in 2015, more than 50
murders per 100,000 inhabitants, one
of the highest rates in the world for a
country which is not going through
a war. The government chose to give
to these gangs as a matter of fact the
administration of penitentiary centres,
to create in the neighbourhoods areas
free of police presence called Zones
of Peace. After 2015 the government
took a turn and began to implement
joint police and military repressive
operations, in which hundreds
of arbitrary arrests and dozens of
7
 Venezuela

The new gold fever

massacre and looting
The massacre of 28 miners in early
March in the Sifontes municipality,
south of the country, shook Venezuela.
The government, which initially
attempted through Bolivar Governor
Rangel Gomez to deny the existence
of the massacre and even criminalise
the allegations made in the media
and social networks, had to backtrack
over the protests of relatives and
neighbours of the victims in the town
of Tumeremo. Finally, the Public
Prosecutor conducted a search for the
missing miners, and the corpses of 17
people were found. The incident not
only highlighted the high development
of the mafias of illegal mining, and
their bloody disputes over control of
the mines, but also the articulation of
these mafias with the civil and military
powers of Chavism, the government
and the Bolivarian Nacional Guard,
and even MUD authorities, such as
the mayor of Sifontes.
In the south east of Bolivar state,
near the border with Brazil and
Guyana, gold illegal mining is the main
economic activity. Formal government
plans, which have included a program
called Mission Piar, have failed
dramatically in their purpose to
offer economic alternatives to artisan
miners. Economic stagnation and
rampant civil and military corruption,
in a state ruled by Chavism since 1998,
have favoured the development of
powerful mafias around the mining
activity. The social picture is chaotic
to the disputes between armed
gangs for control of the mines is added
attacks against indigenous peoples in
whose territory the mining operations
are performed, and even clashes with
the military, as the attack on a group
of miners in La Paragua, in which the
Offical media ignored the denunciation of the massacre,
but protests continue
military used a helicopter gunship, in
September 2006 to murder six people.
The result of official policy has been
the upsurge of social decay, poverty
and mafia violence. These groups,
such as the one which committed
the slaughter of 28 miners, not only
control mining, but also people
trafficking networks, food trafficking,
and are linked to organised crime
groups that control the prisons.
Only a small fraction of the gold
extracted and processed in the country
comes from the activity carried out by
the state company, Minerven. Even
the military are directly involved in
mining. In a spectacular direct action,
indigenous fighters of the Pemon
people disarmed and detained 43
soldiers in an illegal mine in February
2013. The government responded
with legal proceedings against the
natives.
On 24 February 2016, Maduro
announced the delivery of huge
concessions on more than 10 percent
of the national territory, the so-
called Mining Arch of Orinoco,
to Canadian and Chinese mining
transnationals, as a manoeuvre to
obtain short-term resources given the
fall in international oil prices. This
augurs major conflicts since much of
the illegal mining mafias are nestled in
this territory over which the predatory
violence of imperialist capital has been
decreed. Moreover, environmental
predation threatens the basins of rivers
that are tributaries to the Guri dam,
the main source of hydroelectric power
in the country.
It is urgent to articulate a
broad coalition of organisations of
workers, indigenous people, peasants,
environmentalists, students and the
left around the repudiation to the plans
of mining plunder of the government
and the transnationals, for respect
to self-government in indigenous
territories, and for an agrarian reform
that guarantees access to land, finance
and technical assistance, to the poor
peasants of Bolivar state.
SRP

8

extrajudicial executions more than
200 in 2015 were made under the
name Operation Liberation of the
People (OLP). Those responsible for
these plans, the current ministers of
Defence and of the Interior, received
military courses at the infamous School
of the Americas.
A socialist solution
Currently, the workers and popular
sectors provide weak resistance to the
adjustment of the government and
The bourgeoisie and the
government scrapping
the pot
With the participation of some
heavyweights of the big Venezuelan
bourgeoisie, as Oswaldo Cisneros,
Luis Van Dam and Alberto Vollmer,
President Maduro launched in late
January a National Council for
Productive Economy. Mimicking
the Productive Reinvigoration by
which President Chavez called the big
bourgeoisie to join the construction
of socialism in 2008, and the so-
called five engines by which in 2007
the government said to advance the
political and economic transformation
of the country, Maduro made a new
call to the bourgeoisie and launched
an alleged economic diversification
plan based this time on nine engines.
Giving the rentier cycle as ended
and initiating a new stage in the
Venezuelan economy. However,
these announcements imply nothing
good for the countrys impoverished
majority.
After 17 years of walking out
the worn out paths of patronage,
corruption, and of favouring bankers
and transnationals while saying to
move towards an alleged socialism of
the XXI century, now the government,
with a destroyed economy and oil
prices around US$20 per barrel,
calls the national bourgeoisie seeking
employers. Despite the accelerated
impoverishment of millions of wage
earners, the workers movement
continues scattered and divided into
factions, which are mostly aligned to
the bosses parties of the government
and the MUD. The student movement
wanes by the de-politicisation, its
main leaders co-opted by the MUD.
Indigenous fighters and peasants have
been decimated by contract killings and
the criminalisation of their struggles.
alliances to recompose the cycle of
capital accumulation. As part of the
new productive organisation, the
PSUVs union bureaucracy quietly
endorses the manoeuvres.
The other tool of the government
to deepen the adjustment and save
the business sectors from the crisis
is the Economic Emergency Decree
issued by the same days in January.
This is a nefarious instrument, which
according to a judgment by the
Supreme Court on 11 February came
into force despite the veto of the
National Assembly, and whose main
objective is to enable the government
to evade legal proceedings when
carrying out imports and exports, as
well as to obviate legal requirements
for the award of foreign exchange
to companies. It also allows the
government to make spending and
issue indebtedness not covered in
the budget bypassing parliamentary
approval, and to take measures to
promote foreign investment. The
dangerous cocktail of corruption
and appeasement concealed in
the decree and the anti-popular
measures that the National Council
of Productive Economy prepares are
the governments response to the
deepening crisis.
Venezuela
Faced with this situation it is urgent
to coordinate the efforts of organisations
that oppose the government from the
left, as well as trade union, community,
peasant, and indigenous organisations
to unify actions of struggle. The
Socialism and Freedom Party (PSL)
has raised, to organisations such as the
National Union of Workers, Marea
Socialista and other pro-Chavist sectors
who are criticising the government of
Maduro, the need to break with the
government and to fight against the
adjustment, against the destruction of
wages, layoffs, increases in food prices
and public services.
Given the demagogy of the MUD,
which presents the revocation of
Maduro as the beginning of solving
the countrys problems, it is necessary
to oppose a left bloc to confront
both bourgeois party blocs, fighting
for 100 percent nationalisation of
the oil industry, and for the income
recovered used to shore the building of
a different economic model based on
democratic planning, which guarantees
a minimum wage equal to the basket,
and investment in health and education.
We must demand the non-payment of
foreign debt and use the money for
social and productive investment,
demand jail and confiscation of the
accounts and assets of entrepreneurs
who committed import fraud. To
repudiate the transnational looting of
Arco Minero del Orinoco, to demand
the recovery of the basic industries of
iron and aluminium, and a genuine
agrarian reform. The alternative to
barbarism in which the country is
sinking remains socialism.
9
 Venezuela

The Chavist government

persecutes the left
In early 2016 were dismissed from
the Bolivarian University of Venezuela
(UBV) the professors Omar Vazquez
Heredia and Manuel Sutherland, for
criticising the governments economic
policy. Both had been questioning
through articles and public speeches
the adjustment applied by Maduro
and the lies of official propaganda
about an economic war. Layoffs as
political retaliation are symptomatic
not only of the casualisation of labour Manuel Sutherland Bladimir Caravajal
rights in the educational centres revolutionary trade union leaders Luis Lara state. A military operation killed
controlled by the government as Hernandez and Carlos Requena, all four peasants of the National Peasant
the UBV where there is no right to militants of the Socialist Left Unity, Front Ezequiel Zamora (FNCEZ)
association, union or student. Beyond the PSL predecessor organisation. in November 2011, presenting the
what they reveal about the lack of the Just as the government appealed executions as casualties in combat
most basic guarantees for teaching to contract killers to crush the with the Bolivarian National Armed
and research in these Bolivarian revolutionary vanguard of workers Forces. All these facts, of extreme
institutions, these layoffs are part of in Aragua, coming to kill seven gravity, have largely gone unnoticed,
the persecution of the independent leaders of class unionism, it also used as they are part of a repression
left in the country.
similar methods against the main that MUD endorses silently, while
Several left union leaders have
experience of recovering indigenous grassroots Chavist sectors refuse to
been dismissed as political retaliation.
lands, headed by Yukpa chieftain consider them as expressions of an
The leaders of Socialism and Freedom
Sabino Romero in the Sierra de official policy, but value them as
Party (PSL) Orlando Chirino
Perija. After a year and a half as errors or deviations for which would
and Bladimir Carvajal were fired
political prisoners, Sabino Romero be responsible only some sectors of
from PDVSA in 2007 and 2015
and Alexander Fernandez were freed the government, which should still
respectively; Armando Guerra of the
thanks to a national campaign of be supported nevertheless.
same organisation was fired from
protest and denunciation. However, The PSL has promoted the
Hidrocapital in 2007, in all cases for
defending the rights of workers and both would be killed, Fernandez in realisation of a joint campaign for
opposing the machinations of the 2012 and Romero in 2013, without the reinstatement of Omar Vazquez,
bureaucracy. the masterminds of both crimes having Manuel Sutherland, Bladimir Carvajal
The government not only used its been prosecuted and convicted. In the and Gustavo Martinez, activist of
agents of the union bureaucracy to case of the murder of Sabino Romero, Marea Socialista and union leader
divide the National Union of Workers it has not been investigated and of the state company Caf Fama de
(UNETE) in 2006 and thus aborting punished the military involvement America, with the aim of beginning to
the process of reconstitution of the in the crime, covering the retreat of promote unity of action in the various
trade union movement, but it even the policemen who acted as hit men. sectors that oppose the government
leaned on hired killers to assassinate The documentary filmmaker Mijail from the left or that give criticism
Richard Gallardo, the only president Martinez was assassinated in 2009 even when claiming to be supporters
of a regional federation democratically for documenting the extrajudicial of Chavism.
elected, UNETE of-Aragua, as well as executions by police in SRP w

10

Socialism of the XXI
Century was a fraud
The obvious debacle of the
Chavist project in Venezuela
reopens the debate about what
happened with the so-called
socialism announced at the time
by Hugo Chavez? The right takes
advantage of it to return to the
campaign another failure of
socialism. Those who continue to
defend Chavism blame Maduro.
What has really happened?
In the May Day rally of 2005, Hugo
Chavez announced the transition to
socialism of the XXI Century. From
then until his death in 2013, Chavezs
speeches questioning capitalism and
announcing socialism caused a great
impact on people and the fighters of
Latin America and the world. Thus, the
belief grew that in Venezuela Chavism
was moving toward a fundamental and
socialist change. From the outset, our
internationalist socialist current, that
Miguel Sorans
in Venezuela has among its members
classist workers leaders like Orlando
Chirino and Jose Bodas, pointed out
there was actually no socialist measures
or project.
This debate was never easy as many
comrades continued impacted by
Chavezs speeches, his photos with Fidel
Castro and his television appearances
with phrases like expropriations.
But behind those speeches was hiding
another reality that is now evidenced
by the brutal economic and social crisis
being faced by the Venezuelan people.
Doesnt Maduro honour
the legacy of Chavez?
Given the evidence of the failure
of the Chavist government of Maduro
and the PSUV, many sectors of the
left continue to defend the Chavist
project arguing that the problem was
Chavezs premature death. And that
Venezuela
the fault lies with Maduro and his
government, which with its corruption
and bureaucracy would not continue
the legacy of Commander Chavez.
There are currents as Marea Socialista
[Socialist Tide], linked to the MES in
Brazil and the MST in Argentina that,
for example, assume that position.
A sector of this current, headed by
Stalin Perez Borges, in the elections
for the National Assembly of last 6
December, called to vote critically for
candidates of the PSUV with the slogan
Against corruption, bureaucracy and
inefficiency, lets turn the rudder!
But unfortunately, this is a wrong
version of Chavism without Chavez,
which repeats the mistake of continuing
to support a political project that never
had the goal of building socialism.
The problem is not that in life
of Chavez the project progressed to
socialism and now it is cut off because
11
 Venezuela

of the corruption and inefficiency

of Maduro and his ministers. No.
Maduro inherited a project that
was not socialist and was already in
crisis. In life of Chavez already there
were shortages, corruption, wages
were not enough, there were strikes
and protest was criminalised. Back
then the Chavist left argued that it
was not the fault of Chavez but of
the ministers who surrounded him
and the bureaucracy of the PSUV
and requested a turn of the rudder.
The current social catastrophe is the
consequence of the capitalist model
that Chavez implemented.
This is why it is a priority for
the global vanguard to draw all
the conclusions from the failure of
Chavism.
Chavez never took
steps to socialism
We want to be categorical. The so-
called Socialism of the XXI Century
of Hugo Chavez was a monumental
fraud. From the beginning, the project
did not seek to change the basis of the
capitalist economy of Venezuela.
Chavez himself defined it from the
outset: Here are the main features
of the Bolivarian Constitution, the
economic social model, the humanistic
economy, the egalitarian economy.
No, we are not planning to eliminate
private property, the communist
approach. We do not go that far, no
2006: Brochure of PDVSA and the Joint Ventures
(Chavezs speech at the presentation of
the Ten points for the Leap Forward
of dollars that entered the country? The Against what the socialist
of the New Strategic Map , at Fort
super-profits of oil at over US$100 a propaganda of the government says,
Tiuna, December 2004).
barrel for years went into the pockets of the participation of the private sector
Chavez kept capitalism by agreeing
multinationals and the shady deals of in GDP grew. For example, between
with the multinationals, the financial
sector, with old bosses sectors such as the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, and not 1999 and 2009, it went from 65 to
the Cisneros Group, among others, for the benefit of the working people 70 percent, while the social economy
and the Bolivarian bourgeoisie that (cooperatives and others) contributed
and the country.
grew from their shady deals. only 1 percent. The expropriations
Chavez did not advance in
Venezuela is one of the largest oil of Chavism did not go beyond being
nationalising oil. On the contrary, he forced purchases paid at market price;
producing countries in the world.
associated with the oil multinationals. serving the shady deals and ignoring
Oil generates 96 percent of foreign
exchange entering the country. Many This is the reality. He promoted joint the rights of its workers. There was
wonder: How can it be that in an ventures of PDVSA associated with no agrarian reform. One percent of
oil country there are shortages and multinationals such as Chevron, Total, agricultural properties concentrated
poverty? What happened to the billions Repsol, Lukoil and Mitsubishi. 40 percent of the agricultural surface.

12

Banking and foreign trade were
never nationalised. The financial sector
tripled its share of GDP between 2002
and 2012. In the period 2013/2014,
there was a transfer of capital abroad
(capital flight) of US$295,341
million despite the alleged control of
foreign exchange (account data from
International Investment Position:
private assets). In 2012, among the
first companies in the country, five
were banks and insurance companies
and four were transnationals: Movistar,
Procter and Gamble, General Motors
and Coca-Cola (data Ultimas Noticias,
25 October 2012). In Venezuela, there
are other multinationals such as Nestle,
Chrysler and Ford.
There is no socialism, or even
anti-imperialism, while agreeing
with multinationals, landowners and
bankers.
Neither can there be socialism
by persecuting those who fight, nor
by ignoring collective agreements
nor limiting the right to strike as
it happened in Sidor, Ferrominera
Orinoco, Mitsubishi and in many cases,
under the same government of Chavez.
It is not the first time that
half-measures fail
The balance sheet of the disaster in
which the Chavist project is ending is
key to the world vanguard. Because
again a project of half measures,
a supposed middle way to end the
exploitation of working people fails. The
false theory that you can redistribute
wealth by wheeling and dealing with
the bourgeoisie and multinationals.
So from the outset, our socialist
current pointed out there was no
middle ground in Venezuela. Either the
revolutionary process deepened, on the
path of socialist revolution in the style
of Cuba in the 1960s or it would go to
a new failure as it had already happened
in the case of Nicaragua after the 1979
revolution.
In Nicaragua the Sandinista Front
government shared power with bosses
sectors like Violeta Chamorro and did
not advance to socialist measures of
expropriation of the bourgeoisie, nor
Venezuela
was there an agrarian reform
and it maintained the capitalist
structure with the tale of a mixed
economy following the advice
of Fidel and Raul Castro. The
results are plain to see. Almost
40 years later Nicaragua is one
of the poorest countries in the
hemisphere after Haiti and a
capitalist government led by
former commander Daniel Ortega
who keeps talking of socialism.
The Cuba of the 1960s showed
that there was no other way than
to break with imperialism and
the big bourgeoisie to progress.
In 1961, during the life of Che,
socialism was declared and most
of the Cubans big bourgeoisie
and the Yankee companies In 1961, when Guevara was alive, Cuba
expropriated the bourgeoisie
were expropriated, repayment
of foreign debt ceased and a leader, the leftist Alexis Tsipras,
profound agrarian reform was made. betrayed workers and youth applying
Since then the Cuban people progressed an adjustment dictated by the Troika
despite the blockade and despite the (IMF, European Central Bank and the
bureaucratic manoeuvres and absence EU).
of freedoms.
Precisely the abandonment of The struggle for genuine
the socialist project by the Cuban socialism continues
leadership, after the pact with the The debacle of Chavism again
bureaucracy of the former USSR in the generates the confusion of whether
late 1960s and early 1970s, wrecked socialism failed or is unfeasible; more
all revolutionary processes; including so when millions of voters for Chavism
the one of Nicaragua. And it was defected to vote for the reactionary
the prelude to the current capitalist MUD. The first thing to be said is
restoration in Cuba, and the increasing the responsible for this right and
loss of social conquests from the early pro-US variant being strengthened is
days of the revolution. Chavism. The resounding failure of its
So the failure of Chavez in Venezuela political project contributes to adding
is the failure of the unity of Chavez more confusion in the consciousness
with the Cuban Castroist leadership. of millions on the true project of
This unity had nothing progressive or socialism. As it has happened in the
revolutionary. It is the new version, former Soviet Union or in China, once
recycled, of old reformism, of the again socialism has been dirtied.
false Stalinist theory of revolution by The str uggle for a workers
stages. The utopian and reactionary government and a true socialism
theory of class conciliation, according continues in Venezuela and the world.
to which one could advance to a We know it is not easy, but it is the
socialist future ruling for a whole first only alternative to end the capitalist
stage with a progressive sector of the and imperialist exploitation. There is
bourgeoisie. With this reformist policy, no other way out.
important revolutions in the world were In Venezuela, this struggle goes
betrayed. through the proposals the Socialism and
It is the same policy that Syriza Freedom Party (PSL) has been raising
applied in Greece, with which its for years.
13
 Brazil
The PTs bankruptcy
The vote in the plenary of the
House of Representatives for
the process of impeachment of
President Dilma is an expression
of the break, although absolutely
distorted, of the masses with
the federal government and the
PT. This bankruptcy of the PT is
not the result of any Brazilian
elite coup against a progressive
aspect of government. The PT no
longer serves the bourgeoisie to
contain the struggles of the mass
movement.
It is necessary to draw all the
conclusions about why the Workers
Party (PT) is today jeered at the
metalworkers meetings in the
important industrial sector of Sao
Paulos ABC Region and it will end
outside government through a process
14
Denis Valem (CST/PSOL-RJ)
Other times: Dilma and Temer embracing
led by deputy Eduardo Cunha (PMDB
- Democratic Movement Party of
Brazil), a corrupt politician widely
rejected by the population.
This bankruptcy of the PT is not the
result of any Brazilian elite coup against
a progressive aspect of the government.
Neither Lula nor Dilma did announce
measures that run counter to the
interests of the bourgeoisie, such as
the suspension of payment of the
public debt, agrarian reform or some
other reform threatening the profits of
the bosses. Nor did they fight against
corruption or denounced the corrupt,
rather the contrary.
The bankruptcy of the PT is centred
on the strategy of reconciliation with
sectors of the bourgeoisie. Today, the
PT is a party of the established order,
bears no resemblance to a leftist party.
It rules from almost 14 years with the
same congress of corrupt bourgeois
parties, which now decided to break
with its government against the evident
shipwreck of the PT, because it is no
longer useful to contain the struggles
of the mass movement.
In turn, the rejection and rupture of
the workers with the PT government
is the rejection of the application of
countless anti-popular measures that
worsen the lives of people, and increase
unemployment and urban violence.
In 2003, Lula implemented
pension reform (privatisation) that
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC)
of the Brazilian Social Democratic
Party (PSDB), when he was president,
had tried to implement but had not
succeeded. The so-called radical
deputies (Baba, Luciana Genro,

Heloisa Helena and Joo Fontes)
were expelled from the PT because
they voted against this reform. Then
in 2005, Lula bought support among
parliamentarians through a monthly
tip to approve the pension reform,
which became known as mensalo
[big monthly payment].
The PT privatised airports, roads
and handed over the oil from pre-salt
basins. Recently it eased unemployment
insurance, announced a new pension
reform, it is privatising university
hospitals, and year after year has been
cutting budget allocations for health
and education. Therefore, the thesis of
coup created by the PT itself and
which confuses many activists makes
no sense.
The process of impeachment
is being made absolutely within
the constitutional regime and the
parliamentarians who now judge Dilma
are the same that held up the PT over
the years.
The Democratic and Popular
Program
In 1987, the PT approved the
Democratic and Popular Program
(PDP) which happened to be applied
with more emphasis towards the early
1990s. This policy is vindicated until
today by sectors of the PSOL, but it
is the root of the political explanation
of the PTs bankruptcy.
For the leaders of the PT, the PDP
was a set of democratic tasks that were
not intended to destroy capitalism, but
to implement reforms that would help
to gather strength. In the electoral
arena, the PDP demanded to expand
the range of alliances with traditional
parties.
By applying this orientation the
PT in 1996 won 115 mayoralties
and in 1998 succeeded in electing
60 federal deputies, seven senators
On what base did the PT rule?
Since 2010 the PT governs with
its vice-president Michel Temer
(PMDB), in a coalition with virtually
all bourgeois rightist parties, many of
them only acronyms rented by money
to those who pay more. In addition the
inevitable PCdoB [Communist Party of
Brazil], formerly Communist, former
Albanian, that has the merit of being
part of any government. Those left out
are the Brazilian Social Democratic
Party of Fernando Henrique Cardoso
and the rightist and lightweight DEM
(Democrats).
The base of parliamentarians who
held the government of Dilma in
Congress from January 2014 until a few
days ago was made up of 304 deputies
(59 percent of the total) and 47 senators
(72 percent of the total).
That base at the congress approved
with the support of the PT the
Antiterrorism Law, which is an attack
on democratic freedoms. It will also
be the same base that will approve the
Complementary Law Project 257/2016
and three governors. For this reason,
and to get more allies, the PT had
to formally abandon some historical
claims of its program, although in
practice they no longer applied where
it ruled.
In addition, the parties of the
supposedly democratic and popular
field also demanded that the PT had
a good behaviour during the fights.
Thus, it was known the decisive role
that Lula, the countrys main labour
leader at the time, had in the defeat
of the 19941995 oil workers strike,
helping in the ability to govern of the
PSDB president, Fernando Henrique
Cardoso.
The PDP had as its backbone,
therefore, an organic conciliation
with the bourgeoisie and the electoral
Brazil
(PLC), authored by Dilma, which
provides for a wage freeze and increased
pension contribution for provincial
(state) employees and even dismissal
for federal employees.
At the same time, Michel Temer,
despite being accused of being the
great organiser of the alleged coup
has been Dilmas VP since the 2010
election. At the time the crisis was
increasing, he was put on the political
articulation government for approval
of the package of fiscal adjustment,
negotiating positions on behalf of the
government.
Amid the process of impeachment,
while the government came out to
agitate by the left against the coup,
it offered congressional offices and
ministries to coup plotters.
To interfere with the decision of the
Senate, Dilma and the PT followed the
same strategy: to buy parliamentarians
through portfolios, ministries and
promises. Nothing different from what
Michel Temer used to do.
process as the centre of its strategy
to gain power. That program led to
the absolute and complete distortion
of the party founded in Sao Paulos
ABC. The institutional strategy led
to an adaptation to the regime,
completely leaving behind the mass
mobilisation and betting everything
on the elections with increasingly
broad alliances. Thus, the PT was
domesticated.
More than ever it is necessary
to overcome the politics of class
conciliation that, through electoral
alliances and agreements with the
bourgeoisie and its dirty financings,
inevitably lead to the capitulation of
projects of the left or alternative.
15
 Brazil
For the workers, there is no
favourable change. Dilma and the
PT still rule and there is absolutely
no gesture that suggests changes in
economic policy. Temer already invited
Henrique Meireles, former head of the
Central Bank under President Lula and
former executive of Bank of Boston,
to chair the Central Bank, making it
clear that he will not promote changes,
should he assume the government.
Therefore, it is important to reject
them all: Dilma, Temer, Cunha, Aecio
(PSDB) and Renan Calheiros (PMDB).
All Out! The workers know that there
will be no changes with any of them.
Building a left alternative
People are not apathetic waiting
for something to happen. Millions
have taken to the streets in favour
of impeachment. The block of the
old right, led by the PSDB, tries to
channel the outrage as if it did not
defend the same policy of attacks on
the workers, destruction of public
services and corruption. Thousands
took to the streets summoned by the
PT, MTST (Movement of Homeless
Workers), sectors of PSOL (Socialism
and Freedom Party), and dragged also
The battle to present a
class alternative
In the next few days it will be
voted in the Senate the opening
of the impeachment process with
the separation of President Dilma
Rousseff (PT), giving rise to corrupt
vice president Michel Temer, of the
PMDB the party of the traditional
bourgeoisie who would assume the
presidency in the midst of a profound
questioning of the population and
severe political, economic and social
crisis. To the extent that the Supreme
16
the traditional apparatus of PTism and
the CUT (United Workers Central),
and various sectors confused with the
coup propaganda.
It is necessary to build a bloc that is
neither with the government nor with
the false opposition; a bloc to struggle
for the strengthening of strikes, the
demonstrations and coordinating the
struggle against the fiscal adjustment
package.
It seems wrong to us the proposal
of general elections as an exit to the
crisis because the elections express
reality in a distorted way. They are an
antidemocratic game won by whoever
has more money. Nor is it true that the
polls legitimise and express the popular
will. In the last elections what prevailed
was the lesser evil or a punishment vote
to reject some politician.
To defeat the adjustment and
to achieve a fundamental change is
necessary a mobilisation superior to
that which took place in June 2013. If
this rebellion were to take place, what
would be the sense of just demanding
to hold elections?
The solution is to bet on the fights
and strikes that are taking place today,
Rosi Messias (CST/PSOL)
Court has ordered the suspension of the
promoter of impeachment, Eduardo
Cunha, president of the Chamber of
Deputies.
After more than 13 years of PTist
governments in alliance with bourgeois
parties, we are living the debacle of
Lula-PTism which has lost hegemony
in the working class. On the other
hand, the CUT (Unified Workers
Central), union arm of the PT became
a bureaucratic apparatus, has lost
supporting them and surrounding them
with solidarity, in a unitary way, and
not to raise false expectations of change
through voting.
In this field, there are possibilities
to build an alternative for power. We
will dispute there the need to build a
left government, of the workers and
the people so that workers can directly
decide the course of the government,
whose decisions will be in the service
of improving the lives of the working
people and the youth. A government
to suspend payment of the debt and
allocate more resources to health,
education and state public transport; to
reverse the destruction of public services
and to value its employees; to carry out
a public works plan for the construction
of popular housing; to stop layoffs
and wage hardship; to guarantee job
stability. A government to punish the
corrupt and nationalise the companies
involved in the Operation Lava-Jato
[Portuguese for a car wash, but it is a
term used for money laundering]; to
conquer a Petrobras 100 percent of
the state and under the control of the
workers.
control of the mass movement and
despite having thousands of affiliated
unions, it has become transmission
belt of the anti-workers policy of the
PT government.
This process of the mass movement
breaking with the old bureaucratised
and pro-government leaderships opens
a huge space to build a new political and
union leadership for the working class.

That CSPConlutas convene a national plenary to discuss an independent solution
Unity and Action Space
at the crossroads
Unity and Action Space arose from
an initiative of the CSP-Conlutas
(Central and Popular Union), linked
to the PSTU, a Brazilian Trotskyist
party. It arose from the need to bring
together the political and trade unions
organisations of the left. Initially, it
played a progressive role given the crisis
of leadership of the mass movement.
Today, it is paralysed.
The reasons for this paralysis are
political, the result of the permanent
pressure of the leaderships acting to
prevent this space from becoming a pole
that agglutinates those who refuse to be
tail-enders of the PT and reject equally
the PSDB and DEM, representatives of
the old right.
These pressures made by various
leftist currents, sustain the PT and
give it a second wind. The clearest
expressions of this are the leaderships of
MTST (Homeless Workers Movement)
and MST (Landless Movement); also
the majority of the PSOL leadership,
whose national deputies are part of
an organic bloc with the government,
which is acting as a true tail-enders of
the PT.
These sectors, together with
(internal) currents of PSOL such as APS
and the LSR/CIO or the MRT (linked
to the Argentine PTS) and the PCB act
as the left wing of Lulaism and end up capitalist adjustment, the
exerting great pressure to prevent the PT and PSDB/PMDB!
Unity and Action Space from becoming
a clearly anti-government pole that can
fill the void left by the old leaderships.
From our point of view, the comrades
of PSTU/Conlutas, which could play
a decisive role at the moment, end up
giving in to these pressures with the
argument that we cannot be isolated.
This explains the lack of initiatives
and missed opportunities by Unity
and Action Space, which in September
2015 organised a strong rally in So
Paulo with 15,000 people, playing
an important role and later became
diluted. Amid the political crisis and
polarisation, Space was paralysed.
While the pro-government and old
right of the PSDB organised rallies,
Space did not postulate itself as an
alternative, limiting itself to keep a
rally in each state on 1 April, with trade
unionist and scattered slogans.
The recent rally on May Day,
centralised in the city of Sao Paulo,
despite having been properly promoted
against the rallies convened by the
pro-government unions and the old
right mounted by Fora Sindical
[Union Strength], reflected this dubious
policy of the PSTU. Although in the
grassroots there is much disposition to
fight and sympathy with the All out, the CUT, be recycled.
Brazil
Conlutas/PSTU, wrongly,
ended up signing two calls
in the same city one anti-
government on Avenida
Paulista and another in the
Praa da S, together with
sectors of the Catholic Pastoral
Action, the MTST, etc.,
who denounced the Dilma
government, which resulted
in great confusion.
Another example of this
decline was expressed at the
meeting on 2 May, after the
rally, where no continuity
was approved, nor a fight
schedule or any categorical call
to continue the fight.
Fighting the two
blocks of the
The space open at the grassroots level
by the break with the old leaderships
keeps widening.
Hence, it is up to Unity and Action
Space and, most of all, to the comrades
of Conlutas and the PSTU, to change
posture. To postulate itself without
hesitation to build a third field, an
uncompromising opposition to the new
right represented by the PT and the old
right led by the PSDB-PMDB
We need to build this alternative,
against the two bourgeois blocs;
an alternative that articulates the
realisation of a National Plenary of all
organisations of the left and militant
leaders. In order to discuss the way out
and alternative economic proposals
beginning with the suspension of
payment of the public debt, the only
way to have money to restore education
and public health and increase wages;
to demands of the unions and the
CUT to break with the PT/PMDB
government. It is also up to the Space
and organisations of the true left, the
struggle for a government of the left,
the workers and the people. This is an
ongoing battle necessary to prevent
the dispersion and to avoid the old
treacherous leaderships, like the PT and
17
 Brazil
MRT/ Esquerda Diario, Brazil
In defence of Dilmas
government?
We are living a historic moment
for the Brazilian left. The break of the
working class with the government of
Dilma and the PT took a major leap
in recent months. All polls indicate
that the vast majority of workers
and the people hate the government
and they want Dilma out. Whereas
bourgeois sectors that for the last 13
years sustained the government of the
PT abandon it. The crisis has opened a
debate on the left.
This presents great challenges
and opportunities. But the pressure
on leftist organisations is enhanced.
The PT and its satellites want to do
everything so that from this immense
crisis does not emerge an independent
workers alternative. This is why they
lie, claiming that they are victims of
a coup.
For two months, the comrades
of the Revolutionary Movement of
Workers MRT (sister organisation
of the Argentine PTS) and their page
Esquerda Diario [Left Daily], joined
the PTist discourse and its centre is
the struggle against the coup and the
impeachment. This discourse gained
some weight in the intelligentsia, in
sectors of the university youth and
small sectors of the class, which made
the MRT take up the PTist discourse
that there is an ongoing institutional
coup against Dilma.
The institutional coup and
the PT as the lesser evil
The MRT is part of the left sector
that adhered to the discourse that we
18
Diego Vitello (CST/PSOL-SP)
are facing a media and institutional
coup because the impeachment has no
legal basis. At the head of the coup
would be the media, the judiciary, and
sectors of bourgeois parties that break
with the government and the PMDB
of Vice President Michel Temer and the
President of Chamber of Deputies, the
ultra-reactionary and corrupt Eduardo
Cunha. According to the MRT, what
will come for the workers after Dilmas
fall will be something worse. This
logic inevitably concludes that Dilma
would be the lesser evil.
To justify this policy, they position
themselves against the thorough
investigation of the PT. In fact, they
are for the Dilma stay, seeking to
frighten that if she leaves everything
will be worse. Same as the PT says.
They compared Temer with Macri in
Argentina so we wonder if that is why
there the PTS has turned to tailing
Kirchnerism.
Dilma: An illegitimate
government
The MRT defends the legitimacy the left, suffer an impeachment with the
of the Dilmas government with the
discourse of any reformist: a reactionary
manoeuvre as the impeachment, in
which a small group of also corrupt
politicians highjacks the popular will
expressed in millions of votes and
demolishes an elect president. Or
through an also reactionary institution
as is justice. We, the workers, know
well that this only benefits the rich in
our country (Esquerda Diario, Brazil,
Leandro Lanfredi, 25 March).
Thus, the MRT adheres to the
discourse that the popular will can only
be expressed in the polls, hiding that
Dilma was elected lying and funded by
companies involved up to their necks in
corruption, and today the vast majority
of workers want her to go. That is, the
popular will no longer exists, and
today the will is being expressed in the
strikes and struggles, and the popular
anger, and it is for Dilma to leave.
But the comrades make a fetish of the
elections as if they did not express in
an absolutely distorted way the will of
the majority of the population, being
carried out in a field which is not ours.
About the coup: two recent
examples from Brazils history
To illustrate that there is no coup,
as claimed by the PTist conciliation
government and the MRT, we give two
examples: the fall of Collor through
an impeachment in 1992 and the
crisis of mensalo (bribes) in the first
government of Lula in 2005.
Why did Collor, who was never of
support of the bourgeois media and a
lot of pressure from essentially youth
mobilisations? Collor was abandoned
by the bourgeoisie not for being corrupt
but for his inability to implement the
plans that the capitalists needed because
he had no popular support.
Lula in 2005 had widespread
popular support when it was discovered
the bribe he paid to the deputies to
vote for Retirement Reform Act. Senior
members of the government leadership,

May Day: Dilma in the governments rally, The MRT assisted.
as Dirceu and Palocci, were convicted
but Lula was blatantly shielded.
Why was there no impeachment
then? Because Lula could still be very
useful to the bourgeoisie as indeed he
was implementing their plans amid
an economic situation still relatively
favourable. And so he could maintain
relative bourgeois stability.
A leap in the capitulation:
On May Day the MRT went to the
rally with Dilma and the PTS divided
the FIT rally in Argentina.
In Sao Paulo on May Day, there
were three main rallies. The bureaucracy
of the CUT, the PT, PCdoB, i.e. the
government, did a rally with the axis of
defending Dilma, who was the star of
the rally. It also had the support of most
of the leadership of PSOL, converted
into tail-enders of the PT.
Another sector of the bureaucracy,
Fora Sindical (Union Strength), which
supports the rise of Temer and the
impeachment, held a rally in defence
of the future government.
And the third rally was held by the
left opposition led by Conlutas (trade
union confederation led by the PSTU)
and had the support of PSOL currents,
as we of the CST, MES [Socialist Left
Movement] (Luciana Genros current)
and others. We went to the rally calling
for Against Dilma/PT, Temer and
Cunha/PMDB, Aecio Neves and
Alckmin/PSDB. With its limitations,
it was the only independent class rally.
And it showed that a part of the left
is not with any of the two bourgeois
camps.
The MRT, however, was with Dilma,
in the rally of the government and the
CUT bureaucracy, where she reported
the same thing the MRT repeats: that
she is being the victim of a coup.
If we add to this what the PTS in
Argentina did by holding a rally against
the coup in Brazil and breaking with
the FIT rally, we see that the comrades
of the Trotskyist Faction (international
current to which the PTS and the
MRT are linked) amid the biggest crisis
of class conciliation in Brazil, give a
leap in their capitulation government
and refuse to defend a classist and
independent policy.
Everybody out or Dilma
stays? What is the way to build
a workers alternative in Brazil?
The MRT comrades are tough
critics of Everybody Out. Their central
Brazil
argument is that in the absence of
an important left alternative, with
this slogan an exit by the right is
strengthened.
We reject such argument that
justifies support for the class conciliation
government of Dilma. First, we raise
an Everybody Out which includes in
addition to Dilma, Lula and the PT,
all the old right: Temer, Cunha, Renan
and Aecio.
Secondly, we have no doubt that
the solution for the Brazilian left is to
build an independent working class
alternative. And this goes through
burying the PT, which was the historic
leadership of the working class and
suffers a wear never seen. It may
still have votes, but it will never be
the leadership of their struggles and
the hope of the people in getting
improvements. And precisely at this
historic moment, when we are in a
better position to build this alternative
and overcome the PT, the MRT fights
for Dilma to stay and therefore they
went to her rally on May Day. We call
them to reverse this position which
leads in leaps and bounds to the field
of the Popular Front.
19
 France
France: A highly
explosive situation
Regional Coordination column, with GSI members carrying the banner
Since early March, workers
and young people are mobilised
in France against a government
bill (Labour Law, also called El
Khomri Law) that aims to liquidate
more than 150 years of workers
gains. This mobilisation occurs
in a context of worsening of the
economic and political crisis in
Europe and France. It translates
a movement of acceleration of
the main trends of the political
situation in France: unprecedented
institutional crisis and unheard-of
deepening of the class struggle.
This mobilisation stands out in at
least two aspects. First, it is the most
important fight since the mobilisation
against the counter-reforms of
retirements in 2010. Second, it is the
20
strongest social mobilisation in the
history of the Fifth Republic, against a
government allegedly of the left.
The crisis in France and Europe
The French national situation is
marked by the international political
and economic situation and more
specifically by the European situation.
In Europe, not only has the economic
crisis not been solved, but it has also
been placed under the threat of the
outburst of new speculative bubbles.
The economic crisis in Europe is
becoming a widespread political crisis,
which threatens to blow the European
Union (EU).
In this context of deepening of the
economic crisis, the various bourgeoisies
of the continent have to attack and
question the achievements of workers,
public services, and labour legislation.
They do so to make the workers pay the
structural crisis of capitalism.
European bourgeoisies are
coordinated by means of treaties and
EU directives to establish anti-labour
policies around two axes: reducing
public spending to repay debt and
deregulation of labour laws in the
name of competitiveness. These policies
are made for the benefit of large
financial groups that place their hand
on entire sectors of the economy
through privatisation and speculate on
sovereign debts of States.
The French bourgeoisie is no
exception in this situation, especially
considering that the inter-imperialist
tensions to conquer new markets are

especially intense with Germany and
the UK within the EU. In this context,
the government of socialist Francois
Hollande, since coming to power in
2012, has carried out an anti-labour
policy entirely at the service of the
financial markets whose El Khomri law
is the result.
At the same time, this same
government conducts an openly
imperialist policy by intervening
militarily and politically in Africa and
the Middle East in order to safeguard
their areas of influence. The French
Socialist Party (SP) is the image of their
fellow European social democrats, a
fully bourgeois party both in its policies
and social composition, entirely at the
service of its own imperialism.
But even from a capitalist point of
view, these policies are a failure. Indeed,
in early 2016 the level of GDP and
industrial production indexes were
barely higher than at the beginning of
the crisis of 2008. It is still necessary
to take these capitalist indicators
with many precautions since the
actual situation of workers is even
worse. Poverty exploded. According
to the (National Institute of Statistics
and Economic Studies), poverty in
France meant 8.5 million people in
2013 or 800,000 persons more than
at the beginning of the 2008 crisis.
The inequalities and unemployment
continue to increase (about 6 million
counting all categories in January
2016).
About a million jobs have been
destroyed in the industry over the past
10 years and in other economic sectors
hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile,
the main French transnational groups
continue to increase their profits. In
2014 the groups of the Paris Bourse
distributed more than 56 billion of
dividends to its shareholders, a record!
An unprecedented political crisis
From the violence of the attacks
perpetrated by the government of the
SP against the working class and youth,
one cannot draw the conclusion that
the French bourgeoisie is omnipotent.
On the contrary, it is facing a deep crisis
GSI members address the students meeting of Paris III University
as well as its institutions and its political
representatives. The Bonapartist regime
of the Fifth Republic, established by
De Gaulle during the war in Algeria
is undergoing an unprecedented crisis.
One of the most emblematic
symptoms of this crisis is the massive
and increasing abstention in each
election. This abstention is especially
strong among workers and youth. In
some polling stations in the working
class neighbourhoods, the abstentionist
level regularly goes over 80 percent.
Far from reflecting a certain passivity
or de-politicisation as claimed
by bourgeois commentators, this
abstention is aware and politically
active and it is expressed in an intense
activity of the class struggle. The mass
abstention corresponds to a conscious
rejection of the pro bosses and pro-
imperialist policies of the government
of the SP, and also a rejection of the EU,
its treaties and directives.
Traditional institutional parties are
particularly affected by the abstention.
In this context, the SP experiences
a particularly acute crisis. In the
regional election of December 2015,
the SP attracted less than 10 percent
of registered voters. It is a record under
the Fifth Republic. Since 2014, the
French SP has lost more than 30,000
local elective offices. Today it would
have no more than 60,000 members.
Its main federations North (Lille),
Pas-de-Calais (Arras), Bouches du-
Rhone (Marseille) have lost more
than half the members and are on the
brink of financial bankruptcy. The SP
France
is about to make a similar evolution
to the one the PASOK in Greece
went through. Under the effect of the
intensification of the class struggle, a
greater reconfiguration of the French
political sphere is underway since the
social democracy could disappear.
To overcome the institutional crisis
it must face, the government relied on
the political situation opened by the
attacks in November 2015 in Paris
instituting a state of emergency. It
reinforces the authoritarian-repressive,
Bonapartist character of the institutions
of the putrid Fifth Republic. The
government attacks on workers were
not thus limited to the economic field.
The government also questions the
democratic freedoms.
The justification for the
establishment of the state of emergency
is the fight against terrorism. After two
months of operation, more than 3,000
administrative records were carried out,
of which only four were for terrorism.
The governments goal is another. The
aim is to establish a permanent state of
emergency in order to suppress anyone
who opposes its policy. The government
uses this context to criminalise in
particular trade union action. In early
January 2016, unionists of the Amiens
Goodyear factory were sentenced to
imprisonment, something unheard of
since 1948.
But the mass movement has
already had a partial victory since
President Hollande had to renounce
to constitutionalising the state of
emergency and the deprivation of
21
 France
nationality for persons accused of
supposed terrorism. The sharpening
of the class struggle prevented him
from advancing in his plans. This is
the key element of the French political
situation.
A movement that
comes very strong
The massive strikes and
demonstrations on 9 and 31 March
(respectively 500,000 and 1.2 million
demonstrators) against the El-Khomri
law do not constitute thunder in a clear
sky. This is a profound movement that
comes from way back. For months (we
can even trace it to June 2014 with
the strike of the National Society of
French Railways) workers and youth
have been seeking ways to go on the
offensive mobilising in their companies,
in their places of study, often outside
their organisations and against
bureaucratic leaderships. They do it
to oppose a policy of the government
and the bourgeoisie who want to make
them pay the unprecedented crisis of
capitalism. Until recently, workers were
mobilising in dozens or even hundreds
of daily isolated struggles as a result, in
particular, of the divisionist policy of
the confederal union leaderships. They
are now united.
The peculiarity of this mobilisation
is that from the first demonstrations
and general mass meetings two aspects
were at the centre of the workers
aspirations. First, to explicitly turn
into reality the workers/students
unity. This was expressed both in the
students General Meeting and with
The
mobilisation
overflows the
squares!
22
Hollande is worried
the striking workers (as in the port of
Le Havre, when thousands of dockers
joined the students on 24 March and
28 April). Second, workers and young
people are conscious of the need to
mobilise united around a single slogan:
Neither improved nor negotiable, total
withdrawal of the El Khomri law!
These two aspects indicate a high
political understanding of what is
currently at play in the confrontation
between the bourgeoisie and the
working class, and a real willingness to
fight until the end, until the withdrawal
of the Labour Law.
This mobilisation is also the political
translation of the massive rejection of
the socialist government and its policy
in the service of the financial markets in
accordance with EU recommendations.
This mobilisation expresses a
deep movement of radicalisation and
polarisation of class confrontations.
The mobilisation overflows onto
the streets, imposing everywhere the
slogan of strike until the withdrawal!
The fear that the youth of the
popular neighbourhoods, more
explosive for being more oppressed
and exploited, will join with the
student and youth of the cities haunts
our rulers. Oh, the memory of the
legitimate revolt of 2005 that had
exhausted the men in arms at
the service of the ruling class and
Thousands of Airbus workers on
strike in Toulouse on 31 March,
thousands of dockers in Normandy,
staff of the Ministry for the Economy
and Finance who in the thousands
denounce the suppression of jobs and
gather in meetings of more than 600
workers, the 800 workers of Drome
(south-eastern region) that invade
the departmental Council against
budget cuts, workers at Continental
in the Midi-Pyrnes (south-western
region), workers in the construction
of the A9 motorway, near Montpellier,
or employees of telecommunications
company SFRs call centres. All demand
the withdrawal of the El Khomri law
and denounce its application before
the time. This situation of global
strike is becoming generalised despite
confederal and federal bureaucratic
leaderships who under the pressure
from the mobilisation were prevented
from retracting the slogan of a full
withdrawal of the Act.
Since early March, young people
say they are the workers of tomorrow.
In the schools, even outside the days
when demonstrations were called, even
during the holidays, there are thousands
who mobilise, sometimes in a quite
radical way. On 8 April in several dozen
institutes, they mobilised against the El
Khomri law.
The class struggle radicalises and fear
is changing camp as the government is
in crisis and crossed by confrontations.
Its uncompromising stance and the
savage repression of which workers and
youth are victims do no more than show
a rushing ahead of the government.
bourgeois state, tormenting union and
political bureaucracies!
In this context, we think that
meetings of Nuit Debout (Standing
Night) in the squares can become a
real Ghezi Park (for the movement
of Istanbul in 2013). If they can join
the labour movement, trade union
activists and the proletarianized youth
of the popular neighbourhoods, all
ingredients are gathered.
 France

Students demonstrate against the El Kohmri Law

For the general strike and plug any prospect of victory. For with the government because there is
until the full withdrawal this reason, these leaderships multiply nothing to negotiate in the anti-worker
of the El Khomri law dates without a future, the days of attacks.
mobilisation without strikes, isolated It is essential to defend in the general
While it is a fact that this mobilisation
strikes by sector, walks on Saturdays in meetings of the unions the need for
indicates a clear polarisation between
the manner of the CFDT (yellow pro- unlimited strike, immediately, all
classes, an essential question remains
reform union) and submit proposals together until the withdrawal of the law.
for workers and young people who
to rewrite the labour code. As if it For this, we need to rely on this deep
mobilise, whether militants or not:
were possible to obtain social progress wave of the class struggle to impose
how to roll back the government and
without imposing a major defeat of on the bureaucratic union leaderships
actually obtain the withdrawal of the
this government of fighting against to actually build the general strike in
El Khomri law?
the workers and youth! This policy unity until the complete withdrawal
To raise this issue is to identify
of the Interunion, which has already of the law.
the obstacles standing in the way of
led to defeat in 2010, is explained by In some sectors, in some regions,
widespread mobilisation against the El
the fact that the leadership of their the confederal and federal leaderships
Khomri law until its withdrawal. The
organisations are linked to the Socialist are overwhelmed. There are already
main obstacle is the union bureaucracies
Party and the Communist Party. many union branches that began to
at the head of which are the confederal
To combat these manoeuvres, it raise this issue and even to challenge
leadership of the CGT, and the politics
is necessary to challenge the union the bureaucratic leaderships to call
they carry out.
leaderships to actually assume their and effectively organise the general
Today the leadership of the CGT,
responsibilities and not just on paper strike immediately. Then yes, together,
those of Force Ouvrire [Workers
and really build the general strike unlimited general strike until the full
Force], the Solidaires Unitaires
until the withdrawal. We must make withdrawal of the El Khomri law!
Dmocratiques (Solidarity Democratic
Union) and the Fdration Syndicale them respect the aspiration of the vast Groupe Socialiste Internationaliste
Unitaire (Unified Federation of Trade majority of workers and young people (GSI, Socialist Internationalist
Unions) and the National Union of who want unity for the withdrawal of Group)
Students of France intend to divide, the law. This is why it is also necessary to French section of the IWUFI
demobilise, demoralise the workers require them to break the negotiations 24 March 2016
23
 Cuba
Yankee cruise ship Adonia, arriving at Havana
Yankee business in Cuba
The dizzying change in relations
between the US and Cuba had
its most spectacular expression
with the historic visit of President
Obama. He was accompanied by
a legion of entrepreneurs eager to
rush to do succulent business and
enjoy tourism on the island.
Following the historic embrace
between Raul Castro and Barack
Obama, in 2016 on either side
of the Straits of Florida measures
have accelerated to free access for
businessmen and tourists from the
United States to the largest island
in the Caribbean. So Cuban-style
capitalism, which has been building
for more than 20 years under the iron
leadership of the Communist Party and
the Castro family, is energised.1
1 See previous articles in International
Correspondence, which has been following
24
Mercedes Petit
Here are some examples. Although
Obama still did not achieve the final
repeal of the failed blockade (which
we continue repudiating) in February,
through an executive measure it was
launched the establishment of the first
direct foreign investment. Entrepreneurs
from Alabama will assemble tractors
for private or cooperative agriculture,
which will sell for about US$10,000.
The Yankee entrepreneurs have the
expectation to sell hundreds and
hundreds purchased with remittance
dollars from relatives or the support of
the many NGOs working in that area.
with extensive information the process of
capitalism restoration. Is the end of the
blockade coming? (No. 27, August 2009);
Cuba: What is behind the adjustment?
(No. 29, August 2010); VI Congress of
the CP ratifies capitalist restoration (No.
30, May 2011); Cuban style capitalism
deepens (No. 36, March 2015).
Another executive measure is the
export to Cuba of products that benefit
individuals or cooperative farmers.
This means they will be able to export
to Cuba seeds, fertilisers, pesticides,
tools, etc. Until now it was only food
products.
Between the two countries, there
were already running hundreds of
charter flights. In February, the civil
aviation agreement was finally signed
and regular flights began, reserved
exclusively for the Yankee companies.
They start with 20 daily flights to and
from Havana and 10 daily flights to
Camaguey, Manzanillo and Santiago,
among others. Although there are no
official figures, in 2015, despite the
restrictions still in place, 160,000
Yankees travelled for holidays and
several hundreds of thousands of
Cuban-Americans

Despite the blockade, when Obama
stepped on Cuban soil there were
already 490 permits from the United
States Department of Commerce to
do business for US$4.3 billion. In
addition and for quite a while there
are companies like Caterpillar, which
operates from Puerto Rico to enter
Cuba avoiding the restrictions.
The historic visit
Between 21 and 22 March a
relaxed Obama walked with his family
(including his mother-in-law) by the
beautiful Old Havana, had photos
taken with passers-by, and surely he
would have been sung Chan Chan or
Guantanamera in different places.
He was accompanied by 400 men
and women of business, of large
multinationals and other companies.
Arne Sorensen, of the Marriot hotel
chain, Ursula Burn, of the well-known
Xerox, Brian Chesky of the internet
house rental company Airbnb (which
since last year has been renting Cuban
Caribbean party for imperialist businesses
Currently, there are more than 300
official offers of foreign investment
projects, amounting to US$8.173
billion, many of them in the Special
Development Zone of Puerto Mariel.
For the self-employed (that
heterogeneous middle class that is
being developed and that Obama
would call entrepreneurs), on 13
April Granma announced that as of 2
May the government will allow private
dining cooperatives to get products
such as rice, beans, sugar, chicken,
sausage and cooking oil in wholesale
markets and at prices 20 percent lower
than in retail.
Other big changes are coming
through the sea. Since 1 May yachts
and cruises can finally navigate
between the two shores of the Straits
of Florida. That day sailed from Miami
to Havana the Adonia, the first cruise
of the largest cruising company in the
world, Carnival. It took about 700
passengers, including the president and
homes to tourists and already has 4,000
registered), Soledad OBrien of Starfish
Media Group of American television,
Spanish-American restaurateur and chef
Jose Andres, owner of several restaurant
chains. The multinational Starwood
(owner of the Sheraton brand) is already
authorised to operate since last year; it
will manage the Hotel Inglaterra and is
about to open in Miramar the Quinta
Avenida Hotel. AT&T is preparing to
install its roaming, allowing Yankee
users to make and receive calls in Cuba.
Apple and Google could not miss out.
During the visit, Brett Perlmutter
of Google and the Havana artist
Kcho opened in Kchos community
museum a small technology centre
for neighbourhood residents to surf
the net. Let us not forget that internet
access is restricted, scarce and expensive.
The two days went by very quickly,
and to put a finishing touch to the
imperialist landing on Friday 22 half
a million Cubans for the first time
the vice-president of the company. The
VP is Cuban, and was able to travel
because the government of Raul took
another step in major changes: he
allowed Cubans to come and go to the
United States by sea, so far prohibited.
The Yankee magnates fulfil their dream
of mooring their luxurious ships on the
island. Thousands of tourists will arrive
on cruise ships (which had already been
coming from Canada and Europe for
years). Cubans meanwhile have also
been authorised not only to navigate,
but also to work as crew. They will,
however, earn the US$25 of the state
employees and the rest of their wages
will be pocketed by the government.
The Yankee landing will encourage
initiatives by European companies,
which have the advantage of over
20 of experience and presence. Raul
in February travelled to France to
personally thank Hollande because
thanks to his efforts in the Paris
Club they were condoned US$8.5
Cuba
attended a concert (with free admission)
of the British Rolling Stones.
Far gone are the times when rock,
in the words of Fidel Castro (13 March
1963), was related to sexual deviancy
and debauchery in feminoid shows.
Free rein to the US imperialists
in Cuban-style capitalism
This rapid turnaround in the
USCuban relations is explained by
the process of opening to capitalism
that began over 20 years ago, and
was highly exploited from the outset
by large Canadian and European
multinationals, Spanish in the first
place. For decades an increasingly
capitalist economy has been developing
on the island, driven by joint ventures
between state and large multinationals
that dominate the major sectors of the
economy, such as tourism, nickel and
cobalt, tobacco and rum, among others.
This reality is hidden by a wall of silence
raised by the investors themselves and
their governments, and primarily by
billion, to unlock their access to
loans from the bank. The well-known
company Chanel made on 3 May
its first major fashion show in the
Paseo del Prado. Since 1999 Paco
Rabanne and other major brands
are already established. Hollywood
could not miss out and they are now
filming The Fast and the Furious 8.
The chairman of the Association of
Spanish Entrepreneurs in Cuba stated
for the daily El Pais that a barrage of
Spanish companies is arriving (10
April 2016). Yankee communications
and internet companies will have to
compete with Chinas Huawei, which
in February agreed with state Etecsa
to start multiplying access to Wi-Fi.
No information was given on rates.
Presently one hour of internet costs
a Cuban 2 or 3 CUC (1 CUC =
US$1.2), this is minimum 10 percent
of the average wage.
25
 Cuba

or on yachts and cruises

that have been authorised,
in the airlines and all
the headings, must pay
US$150 to US$200 for
their Cuban workers, and
the government pockets
the difference.
Not even China
has implemented such
a perversion. Thanks
to the growing labour
unrest, struggles and
strikes, wages in China
are US$600 average
(Clarin, Argentina, 30
March 2016), despite the
repression of the Chinese
CP dictatorship. In Cuba,
there is no right to strike
Fidel and Raul Castro at the Closing of the Communist Party of Cubas VII Congress or freedom of protest or
of trade union organisation.
the double discourse of the Castros and concepts can coexist and complement
Meanwhile, the US government,
the Communist Party about updating each other to benefit the country, as
beyond some complaints, will keep
socialism and ritual condemnations of has been successfully demonstrated in
the same pragmatism with the lack
the capitalist restoration. Never do the processes of reform in China and of
of freedoms in Cuba as it has done
those large companies, which have been renewal in Vietnam, as they qualify it.
with the dictatorship of the Chinese
operating for more than two decades, He next clarified that in Cuba they call
Communist Party.
are mentioned. Most of the world left it updating of socialism.
is totally complicit in this silence and The loudest applause was when he Given the hardships
double discourse, using unsustainable said defiantly In Cuba we have a single to come out to fight
arguments and zealously hiding the party, and its a great honour. According Raul Castro said in passing at
hard facts. to Raul: If they managed to fragment the CP Congress that wages and
us some day, it would be the beginning pensions are still insufficient to meet
Single Party and a
of the end, do not ever forget this! Hes the basic needs of the Cuban family.
great honour! right. That authoritarian single party is He also referred to the increasing
Ingloriously, on 16 and 17 April the apparatus that guarantees the senior ageing population and the risk of the
the VII Congress of the CPC was held. party officials, the officers of the armed spread of diseases such as cholera and
The authorities were ratified, beginning forces, particularly the Castro brothers dengue, previously forgotten. The
with Raul Castro, who will retire in and their families, to be a privileged evils of capitalism are rapidly getting
2018. And the emotional presence of minority that dominates directly 60 established: poverty and hardship
legendary Fidel at the closing of the or 70 percent of the economy, and for the vast majority; well-being and
congress confirmed the iron unity of most of all its fundamental pillars, the wealth for the minority of businessmen,
the Communist Party, the armed forces joint venture companies of state with officials and foreign investors. The half-
and the Castro family in the countrys multinationals. million self-employed have these two
leadership. This single party is what allows them poles as their prospects. Most of them
Reiterating the catchphrase of to maintain the current labour contract share these hardships with the state
updating socialism, once again it was system, one of the most perverse in employees.
ratified the new capitalist economy. the world. The government is the In Cuba it is raised the fight for
Raul made an explicit reference to the contractor of state workers who have an decent wages, the right to protest, the
Chinese and Vietnamese restoration: average wage of US$25 (yes, US$25!!, ending of the repressive regime of the
The introduction of the rules of according to official figures), while the single party and recovering the gains
supply and demand is not incompatible joint ventures, in tourism or whatever, made many decades ago by the socialist
with the principle of planning. Both and now in foreign direct investment, revolution.
26

Critical Observatory on Obamas visit
We reproduce fragments of
Cuban Critical Observatory page
(www.observatoriocriticocuba.
org). Those who promote it are
often censored and repressed by
the government.
Anti-imperialism is
not negotiable
(Anticapitalistic Youth Network)
[] It is impossible to maintain
normal ties with a government that
has not given up its hegemonic
vocation on Cuba; and even if it
did, the relations of subjugation that
maintains with other peoples require
us to continue the fight. []
The fact that the person symbol
of imperialism visits the country of
anti-imperialism without a trace of
civic protest can contribute to the
naturalisation of the United States as
an imperial power.
[] It is essential that the mass
organisations and other expressions
of civil society be able to carry out
political agitation given the visit of
leaders like Obama and Francois
Hollande, or given the abuses
committed by the governments with
which we have promising economic
relations. []
We need to agglutinate all our
creativity to strengthen in the popular
imagination the following positions:
Cubas solutions will never come
from the hand of US policies.
The welfare of the Central
Powers is based on the poverty of
underdeveloped countries.
Capitalism is incapable of offering
freedom and happiness permanently
to all peoples of the world.
Only by the radicalisation of
Cuban socialism we will come out of
the economic crisis with dignity.
Peoples Empowerment, grassroots
democracy, critical thinking, respect
for differences, political creativity and
Cuba
solidarity without
limits!
How well the
jigsaw puzzle
is assembled
(Rogelio M. Daz
Moreno)
[] At the
time of the Soviet
Union and when
here it was said that
foreign investment
and the dollar were
Barack Obama and Raul Castro: happy together
bad, this facet
[of the blockade as Soviet support was ended. Reforms
as an obstacle to the expansion of progressed in fits and starts, with ebbs
capitalism] was not felt. With the fall and flows, but the overall momentum
of the socialist camp, many things is unstoppable, towards liberalisation.
would change. For example, the Leasehold rights granted for a hundred
European and Chinese capitalists years; access to natural resources;
began buying the spaces that Havana, decades of tax exemptions, rights
of exploitation of a workforce with
suddenly, was eager to sell.
With the succession of economic limited labour rights. Cuban officials
crises in recent decades, more and do not cease spreading the benefits,
more capitalists began to notice a for the foreign investors, Free Trade
market at the gates of their home. Zone of Mariel port. All these sauces
Eleven million inhabitants, skilled offered willingly and in any currency;
labour, not inconsiderable natural only those from the land of the dollar
resources and an enviable geographic were prevented from coming to the
position were values that invited to the banquet by their own government!
inherent nature of capital to expand. [] The current administration in
[]. Suddenly, ideological differences Washington needs to work slowly but
highlighted by the blockade began to surely. Their selection of steps has a
be obstacles in the way of a good deal. total coherence with the logic of the
The existence of a one-party regime capitalist market.
does not take away the dream to [] It is not, then, an ultra-
potential American businessmen. leftist paranoia. There is no hidden
The experience of relations with conspiracy. It is simply the removal
China showed that even this could of an anti-capitalist policy, by the
be an advantage. Social control and capitalists who were affected. If there
governance is easier, and therefore, is a Trojan horse, it is of clear crystal,
profits are safer when a population and they enthusiastically greet each
remembers little of their traditions of other from inside and outside of the
civic insubordination and democratic beast. For in the city, the mayor does
struggles. everything possible to help it enter.
[] To the south of the Straits Keeping the forms: the discourse of
of Florida, at least a portion of the dignity, sovereignty and everything
foreign capitalists ceased to be bad else.
27
 Argentina
Demonstration against dismissals in the Ministry of the Economy (MECON) headed by General Delegate Pablo Almeida
Macri applies a brutal
adjustment
The new government of Macri-
Cambiemos 1 has deepened the
adjustment in a brutal manner.
The adjustment also applies to
the provinces where the Front for
Victory (FPV-Kirchnerism) rules.
Struggles and social unrest are
growing. There was a first rally
of the CGTs and CTAs2 but in the
1 Cambiemos [Lets change]. Electoral alliance
of the PRO (Mauricio Macris party), the
UCR (Radical Civic Union, a party which
already ruled in the 1980s and 1999/2001)
and Civic Coalition led by Elisa Carrio.
2 CGT/CTA. There are three CGTs (General
Confederation of Labour): CGT-Azopardo
(headed by Hugo Moyano, truck drivers
and other unions); CGT-Alsina (headed by
Antonio Calo of the UOM metalworkers
that brings together other industry
unions); and CGTBlue and White
(minority, headed by Luis Barrionuevo,
shopkeepers and other smaller unions).
28
Juan Carlos Giordano
frame of maintaining the truce
with the government. We call them
to abandon the truce and call a
general strike. The Left Front has
to prepare itself for future political
and social crises unitarily raising
substantive measures as part of a
workers and peoples solution to
the current adjustment.
Macri took office on 10 December
and immediately devalued the
currency by 60 percent and removed
the retentions (taxes) to agribusiness.
Then he exempted mega miners from
taxes and is subsidising the price of the
The CTA (Argentine Workers Central) is
divided into two: CTA-Yasky (headed by
Hugo Yasky of the teachers union, pro
Kirchnerist) and CTAAutonomous (lead
by Pablo Micheli, linked to the centre-left).
oil barrel to the multinationals in the
sector.
Arguing that state workers do not
work (gnocchi 3) or were placed
politically by the government of
Cristina Kirchner, Macri began laying
off thousands of state workers and to
facilitate layoffs in the private sector.
There are 150,000 workers in the street
between state and industry, including
construction, textile, and metallurgical
workers, shopkeepers and so on.
Inflation gave a leap. Prices had
already risen before the change of
government. There are daily increases
of meat, medicines, and petrol (31
percent so far this year). Macri applied
3 In Argentina, a gnocchi is a person who is
legally registered as a worker, usually for the
government, and receives a monthly wage,
but who performs little or no work. [TN]

rate hikes in public services, in public
transport (100 percent), water bills,
electricity and gas (300 to 600 percent
depending on the case). This generated
a million and a half new poor, excluding
the effects of the newly unemployed
and services hikes. Meanwhile, the
recession and the fall in consumption
continue.
In five months of government,
inflation rose 25 percent. The same
percentage Macri said would be for
the whole year. In the labour contract
negotiations, the government wanted
to set a salary cap of 20 to 25 percent
generating a huge upset. Just in April
inflation reached 6 percent. Annual
inflation will reach or even exceed 40
percent.
In Argentina, the average salary
is AR$7,000 (or US$460) while the
shopping basket for a typical family
amounts to almost AR$20,000. Half
the pensioners earn the minimum
(AR$5,000) when the food basket for
pensioners exceeded AR$11,000. Not
to mention health care plans which
have been left destitute. In this context,
to aim for wage caps in the labour
contract negotiations is to continue
with poverty incomes.
There are unions that have achieved
a 38 percent increase (cooking oil
workers). Bank workers, after a battle
plan achieved 33 percent with a trigger
clause to reopen the wage debate, plus the
reinstatement of the dismissed. Many
agreements, although insufficient, have
been made for six months to return to
discuss again according to the variation
in actual inflation.
To all this we must add that holding
hands with the bosses opposition,
Macri had a law voted to pay US$15
billion to the vulture funds (debt
bondholders, see box). An increased
indebtedness that working people are
already paying for with measures that
attack their living standards.
The conclusion is clear: the
government of Macri is anti-worker
and pro-bosses, of centre-right, ruling
for the multinationals, bankers and
imperialism. He is making the working
people pay the global and national
capitalist crisis. To such an extent that
he appointed in his cabinet Alfonso
Prat Gay (former JP Morgan Chase
executive) as finance minister, and
CEOs of transnational corporations
like General Motors, Farmacity, Lan
Chile, Shell, IBM and Telecom, among
others, in other positions.
CGT: A rally against nobody
Discontent is being felt; in the
struggles and in other facts. TV diva
Mirta Legrand in one of her famous
lunches said: Enough of redundancies!
The same was said by young host
Santiago del Moro in his Intratables
(Untreatable) program, seen daily by
millions.
The first national strike by ATE
(state workers union) on 24 February
occurred with a mobilisation of 25,000
people. An amount of mobilised that
has not been seen in this union for
years. On 4 April there was a national
strike of CTERA (national teachers)
and there is a rebellion in several
provinces, among other great struggles
(see Growth of the struggles).
The anger grew when it emerged
through the Panama Papers that
President Macri, his father and his
brother had companies in tax havens
since 1981 (during the military
dictatorship).
However, despite the wave of strikes,
union leaders leave them to chance
and do not support them, as part of a
truce they keep with the government.
To decompress, as it transpired,
they convened on 29 April to a rally
for May Day. It was not a rally of
struggle, but to demand cosmetic
changes from the government.
As it was the first street appearance
of the CGT against the new government
and the fact that it was convened by
the five Centrals, presenting it as
an unprecedented event, many might
believe it was an act of struggle or that
from there could emerge some measure
of protest . None of that happened.
In the document agreed upon by
those organisations, it was pointed out
that the rally was only a wake-up call to
the government, raising partial claims.
Argentina
The line of not confronting the
government was ratified in the speeches.
Pablo Micheli, as well as Antonio Calo
twice and later Hugo Moyano, made
it clear that the rally is not against
anyone. Everything was limited to
support a law in parliament against the
dismissals, which is not a regulation
to ban the dismissals, but to secure
a double compensation which is no
impediment for the bosses to continue
attacking jobs. The great proposal to
celebrate, according to Calo, was the
reunification of the CGT announced
for August, while saying things have
not yet been so serious to hold a strike.
For this reason, we call the CGT
leaders to break the truce with the
government and call for a national
strike and for a plan of struggle to
face the adjustment of Macri and the
governors.
Kirchnerism applies the
adjustment where it rules
Former presidential candidate of
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Daniel
Scioli, lost the election to Macri. After
12 years of government, Kirchnerist
Peronism suffered a heavy defeat. While
the difference in votes was not large,
the government received a massive
punishment vote. Millions voted for
Macri to get rid of the government of
the double discourse, that while saying
to confront corporations, the IMF
and to defend human rights, with its
national and popular model, benefited
the multinationals and bankers, paid in
cash US$190 billion of foreign debt
and got an anti-terrorism law to be
voted on advice by imperialism.
Kirchnerism suffered in the last
period several general strikes showing
the anger of millions, which was then
mirrored in its electoral decline and loss
of power, as part of the crisis of so-called
progressive governments in Latin
America; a policy which ultimately led
to a win by a centre-rightist as Macri.
After the electoral defeat, Cristina
Kirchner became a recluse in her home
province, Santa Cruz; her place in the
world as she usually says where
she has large properties and hotels. All
29
 Argentina
this amid large protests by workers and
where judicial search warrants were
conducted on the properties of Lazaro
Baez, a corrupt businessman who is
named as the figurehead of the former
presidents family, and who is currently
in prison. Baez accumulated dozens
of undeclared properties, luxury and
collectable cars. From Santa Cruz were
moved in his private jets millions of
dollars and euros that were sent abroad
via the Rosadita.1 To such an extent was
his impunity that a video showed up
where Baezs son was counting wads of
money, drinking whisky and laughing
with his accomplices. Also in prison
is Ricardo Jaime, former Secretary of
Transportation, for corruption and for
being one of those responsible for the
massacre of Once.2
Cristina reappeared recently, forced
by subpoena to testify before the federal
courts of the City of Buenos Aires.
She is accused of shady deals with the
future dollar,3 among other serious
1 So it is called the financial cave located in
upscale Puerto Madero, a neighbourhood of
Buenos Aires, a few blocks from the Casa
Rosada, where during the government of
Cristina Kirchner the money-laundering
manoeuvres were made to take the money
abroad.
2 Crash in 2012 of a Sarmiento railway
line train formation against Once Station
because of lack of brakes and the dismantling
of the railways due to privatisation. Fifty two
people were killed and over 800 wounded.
Government officials, businessmen and
union bureaucrats were convicted but only
former Transport Secretary Ricardo Jaime is
imprisoned.
3 Kirchnerism at the end of its mandate
sold dollars at AR$10 when they were
worth AR$15. They were bought by
Thousands repudiate Obamas visit
March 24 marked 40 years of the
genocidal coup of 1976. On this date
mass marches are always carried out.
This year it was no exception. For
the 40 years, and because the head of
imperialism, Barack Obama, came to
bless and support the adjustment and
the payments to the vulture funds.
Macri received him with full
honours and both washed their face
30
investigations, most of them for money
laundering. The former president took
the opportunity to hold an important
rally and later meet with allied deputies,
senators and mayors after the Front
for Victory suffering a major drain of
parliamentarians.
In addition to denouncing a
political persecution, she called to
build a Citizens Front to deal with the
adjustment. Many workers and young
people may believe that Kirchnerism
retook the role of opposition; but
where the Front for Victory rules
an adjustment is applied in the best
Macri style. In Tierra del Fuego,
Santa Cruz and Santiago del Estero
it is applied through the governors
Rosana Bertone, Alicia Kirchner (sister
of Nestor Kirchner and sister-in-law
of Cristina, in a province where the
FPV has been ruling for 25 years) and
Kirchnerist radical, Claudia Zamora,
respectively.
The Kirchnerist complicity in also
seen in the FPV supporting the law to
pay the vulture funds, together with
the pro-Macri new Peronism and the
so-called centre-left.
The crisis of the Justicialist [Peronist]
Party is daily news. Part of the honest
worker and popular grassroots
are making the experience with
Kirchnerism mainly in the struggles
and among young people. Many are
seeing that La Campora (Kirchnerist
youth group) boycotts marches for
multinationals, the rich and bankers. They
earned 50 percent, defrauding the state
of 70 billion pesos. Deal that Macrism is
continuing.
touring the Memory Park (with the
names of the missing). Cambiemos
[political coalition supporting Macri,
TN] embellished the surroundings of
Casa Rosada with US flags.
The marches of the 24 were massive.
The left and human rights agencies
independent of the governments
strongly raised the slogan: Obama Out!
Our party made a special campaign
free student fares and only makes
opposition speeches in parliament so
that the discontent does not go toward
class independence. However, in recent
decades, the Justicialist Party has been
the vehicle for the big bosses to rule
with adjustment, submission and
repression.
Postulating the FIT for
substantive changes
In the popular sectors who voted for
Macri, there is a big disappointment.
They say they did not vote for him
to apply this adjustment. The same
happens among those who voted for
Scioli and the FPV against the right
and the adjustment of Macri and now
see those same recipes are applied where
Kirchnerism rules. They wonder what
the way out is.
Izquierda Socialista [Socialist Left]
calls to face unitarily the adjustment
wherever is being applied. To defeat
layoffs, rate hikes and for wages equal
to the family shopping basket. And
together with the Left Front (FIT) to
raise a workers and peoples alternative
program with substantive measures: no
payment of the debt, renationalisation
of privatised companies, nationalisation
of oil and gas, and nationalisation of
banks and foreign trade.
As well, we call to abandon the
parties of the adjustment and to
strengthen a new political alternative,
of the left, opposed to various bosses
variants, as we are doing with the FIT
to meet the challenges given the next
political and social crises looming.
with thousands of fliers and posters.
This contrasted with the parallel
motion made by Kirchnerism with
their human rights agencies together
with La Campora [Kirchnerist youth
organisation, TN] and sectors of
Peronism where they read a document
that did not mention Obama.

Growth of the struggles
Demonstration at Tierra del Fuegos Government House
The anger is being expressed in
the growth of the struggles. The vast
majority of them are against layoffs
and for an increase of wages. There is
a great national tug of war against the
adjustment. Therefore, the struggles
are long, with prolonged strikes, strike
funds and massive marches.
In several provinces, there have been
real rebellions. In Tierra del Fuego (the
southernmost province of the world)
teachers, state and municipal workers
and retirees nucleated in the Union
of State Guilds and Pensioners have
been camping for over two months in
front of the government house against
a package of laws that remove historic
achievements, empty pension and
welfare funds, increase the retirement
age for women and set high tax hikes.
Workers face the repression of pro-
government union street gangs and
the police, which in these days have
jailed five trade union leaders in the
style of the dictatorship. A national
campaign that included a teachers
strike in Neuquen, pronouncements
of mass meetings, student centres,
trade unions, human rights and
political organisations have secured
their release.
Teachers and state workers of
Santa Cruz have been carrying out
a struggle plan coordinated by the
Argentina
defence of public health. National and
provincial state departments of ATE
face layoffs. Leading the way are the
workers of the Ministry of Finance
with its combative internal junta
led by our comrade Pablo Almeida
and of the Ministry of Labour, among
others. Coming up are staggered
stoppages by state and judicial workers
of Buenos Aires Province, the latter
with major marches. School assistants
of that district rebelled against the
discounting of the days of strike
achieving a payment schedule. Workers
in public hospitals in Tucuman and
Bureau of Trade Union Unity with state workers of several provinces are
massive marches in Rio Gallegos of striking.
over 10,000 people against the 10 In industry, there are thousands
percent increase offered by Alicia of redundancies although, for the
Kirchner. In Santiago del Estero there role of the bureaucracy and the fear
was a teachers revolt that stopped of losing the job, there are no strong
classes since the beginning of the struggles yet. The students have also
year, with mass marches exceeding joined the struggle with big marches
10,000 people. The strike, which was demanding free student fares. Given
suspended, made partial achievements. this scenario, a general strike is needed
University lecturers stopped all for the struggles to succeed.
week from 2 to 6 May
and will do again
from 9 to 13 of the
same month, with
public classes and
demonstrations along
with the students.
On January 24
and April 19 there
were two national
strikes by ATE (State Camping in Rio Grande, Tierra del Fuego, accompanied
by our national deputy, Juan Carlos Giordano
Workers Union) with
mobilisation. The
health professionals
(nucleated in
CICOP) are in their
eleventh week of
fighting, having set
up a tent in front of
Congress asking for a
40 percent increase,
better working March in Ushuaia headed by leaders of the Union of
conditions and in Guilds
31
 Argentina

Meanwhile, the debt keeps growing

Argentina paid the vultures

Macris government paid in cash
US$9.3 billion to the speculators who
had been litigating against Argentina.
It was a huge scam within the bigger
scam of Argentinas foreign debt itself.
Some of these vultures pocketed
profits of up to 1600 percent.
A new chapter closed in this
long history of looting. It ended
up revealing as absolutely false the
discourse of Kirchnerism, who for 12
years spoke of deleveraging, while
it was the government paying more
debt in cash for the entire history
of Argentina: US$190 billion. The
lie that Argentinas foreign debt was
no longer a problem, paying in
advance to the IMF (2006), making
swaps (2005 and 2010) with the
creditors who had not paid in 2001,
or paying to the Club of Paris, Icsid
and Repsol (2013). All this ended
with a government that, having taken
office with US$145 billion debt, was
acknowledging US$250 billion (and
in reality owing over US$350 billion).
And a new chapter was opened,
e x p re s s i n g t h e c o n t i n u i t y o f
this subjugation. The fledgeling
government of Mauricio Macri, by
paying the vultures, made the largest
indebtedness in a single operation
that any country has made over
the last 20 years. In one hit, he
indebted Argentina for US$16.5
billion; accepting usurious rates of
7 percent annually, which means
that the debt will double in 10 years.
Macri has a point of agreement with
Kirchnerism: he also asserts that now
we have definitely left behind the old
debt problem and that for the country
a wide field of possibilities opens to
borrow again.
Macris government clearly
states it has no plan B. Thus, the
national state, the provinces and
private companies have already set
themselves on the hunt for what
they call capital or investments,
which supposedly would come to the
country and generate employment
and development. Nothing is more
false. We cannot rule out that, with
the extremely high rates and privileges
Macrism is willing to offer, speculative
capital enter. Although today in
the context of the global economic
crisis, the trend of capital is to leave
dependent and semi-colonial countries
and return to the imperialist centres
perhaps a few billion dollars may reach
Argentina of that gaseous capital, 100
percent speculative, flowing through
the world without finding productive
placement. But even in that case, it
would only serve to fictitiously fatten
the reserves, or to grab some resources
for looting and, above all, it will
mean a new leap of the astronomical
Argentine foreign debt. The story
has a close antecedent: in the 1990s,
Menem managed to get capital
entering. None of that generated
prosperity or development. A sector
went to the privatised companies, for
their plundering. The other sector
was bonds that in a few years trebled
the foreign debt and ended up in the
2001 crisis.
This indebtedness, generated in
the second half of the 1970s by
the military dictatorship, and then
paid and accrued by all subsequent
governments, remains the main
factor of imperialist subjugation of
Argentina. The decline that the country
has experienced in these decades
materialised in deindustrialisation,
unemployment, repeated economic
crisis, poverty and marginalisation
for increasingly larger layers of the
working-class was the product of
hundreds of billions of dollars that
went into debt payments, generated
by a score of adjustment plans. The
only way to break these chains is
as shown, albeit partially, by the
Argentinazo in 2001 to stop paying
this debt, appeal to all the peoples
of Latin America to form a Debtors
Club, breaking as a whole with
imperialism and from there to place
all those resources to meet the urgent
needs of the people: jobs, wages,
health, education and housing. For
25 years the revolutionary socialists
have been advocating this path, which
shows to be more urgent than ever.
Jose Castillo

32

The left again occupied Plaza de Mayo
The only unitary rally of on the
left and the fighters on this May Day
was called by parties of the Left Front
(Partido Obrero [Workers Party] and
Izquierda Socialista [Socialist Left])
together with allied organisations
(Breaking Chains, and Revolutionary
Communism), militant trade
unionism and youth. Speakers were
rail workers leader Ruben Pollo
Sobrero and Juan Carlos Giordano
for Izquierda Socialista and Partido
Obreros deputy in the FIT, Nestor
Pitrola, among others.
It was the most important rally
of the day with several thousand
attending. Standing out were the
columns of workers in struggle,
especially state workers, teachers,
railway and telephone workers, plus
industry unions and many young
people. A major delegation of the
tyre workers union, recently recovered
by the militant opposition, attended
providing a greeting to its brand new
Secretary General, Alejandro Crespo.
Regrettably, the PTS, the other
national party of the FIT, divided the
rally and the tribune won in Plaza de
Mayo for class independence doing
their own rally the day before in front
of the Brazilian embassy to repudiate
the coup in that country. At a time
when the expectation of millions of
workers and young people with the
PT of Lula who ruled for 14 years
at the service of multinationals and
the adjustment of the people is
exhausted, the PTS now raises a policy
of support to Dilma.
Not for the first time we have
different visions of reality within the
FIT, in this case, Brazil (see pages 14-
19). What we consider a serious error
by the PTS is that, with that excuse, it
refused to make a common rally of the
Left Front (as we had been doing since
its inception in 2011). Thus, they
turned their back to a single unitary
May Day rally
Ruben Pollo Sobrero speaking on May Day rally
rally that repudiated the adjustment of
Macri and the governors, demanding
a general strike in support of the
struggles and postulating the FIT as
a political alternative to the growing
discontent against the adjustment of
the bosses parties.
On the days leading to it, Izquierda
Socialista called the PTS to not
divide. They did not listen. Thus,
PTS adds a new chapter to its divisive
and opportunist policy it has been
deploying to the detriment of the FIT;
as the pro Kirchnerist turn they have
been holding since last December.
This party has already been dividing
the parliamentary blocs achieved
by the Left Front by registering
their seats as theirs; something
that violates the unity of the left in
parliament and in the struggles. On
the other hand, it draws attention
their incorrect ultimatum for a rally
with the revolutionary left when
they have not had that criterion for
participation in united action with
Kirchnerism, for example, in defence
of Milagro Sala1 or in voting common
1 Milagro Sala is a Kirchnerist and political
leader in Jujuy arrested for making a
Argentina
proposals with the Front for Victory
in the National Congress, as it was
with the motion to carry out a popular
consultation on the issue of foreign
debt when the FIT program clearly
proposed the non-payment. Or
when late last year the PTS voted with
the FPV laws catalogued as workers
when they were nothing more than a
loincloth for Kirchnerism, still in the
government, to approve a package of
96 bosses laws.
But in the rally of Plaza de Mayo
(and in those held in the rest of the
country) the unity of the FIT was
unconditionally reaffirmed. Izquierda
Socialista even called to expand it to
other organisations and leaders who
may share their program. So the Left
Front may grow and get stronger
as a solid alternative to fighting for
a workers government in future
political and social crisis.
camp demanding social plans. Izquierda
Socialista demands for her freedom
but clearly differentiating itself from
her political and social action. PTS,
however, has mobilised in actions called by
Kirchnerism and the PJ, that claim her as
a fighter, without proper demarcation.
33
 Refugees
Governments launch repression to send back the refugees
Tear down the walls of
the Europe of capital
The images and refugees at
the gates of Europe hit every day
the consciousness of the workers.
Fences, police, coast guard, tear
gas, prisons, and deportations. The
states launch their full force against
defenceless families whose only
crime is to try to find a safe place
to survive and win a future for their
children. Most of these families
are fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq
and Afghanistan. They are war
refugees, who according to the own
European and international laws
34
Josep Llus del Alczar
deserve protection in Europe.
Neighbouring countries are the ones
who bear the brunt of the refugee crisis
caused by the war in Syria, which has
already become a major humanitarian
disaster in the world: Turkey (three
million refugees), Lebanon (nearly two
million), Jordan (more than 650,000),
and even Iraq itself (250,000 refugees).
To Europe arrive only splashes of these
crises: just 1.6 million Syrian refugees.
They are joined by those fleeing the wars
in which Iraq and Afghanistan were
plunged after the imperialist invasions,
or fleeing the Eritrean dictatorship, the
disaster in Somalia or the misery caused
by the pillaging of Africa. They are a
few hundred thousand for 28 countries
with 500 million inhabitants and
where a quarter of the planets wealth is
concentrated. To welcome these people
should pose no problem if there was
a political will to do so. Fences and
border closures pursue a political goal:
the so-called refugee crisis in Europe
is a manufactured crisis.

Merkel calls the refugees and
then she closes the door
The German Chancellor proclaimed
last spring that all Syrian refugees
would be welcome in her country.
Without hope that the war will be
resolved soon, some went on the road,
with the aim of reaching a place with
more opportunities and to start again.
Those who could consider the trip
were the young, the healthy and the
middle-class sectors with training and
sufficient resources to pay the extortion
of the mafias.
Migration is always terribly selective:
only the stronger succeed. A total gift
for Germany, a country that did not
know how it would pay pensions in
2025. Last year German health system
hired 400 Syrians doctors who had left
their country. Who wins and who loses?
In November Berlin changed policy
and began to restrict the welcome. Then
came the chain closing of borders
Austria and the countries on the Balkan
route ran to erect fences to curb the
The EU policies feed the extreme right
The Europe that builds walls feeds
the extreme right that is emboldened,
and unapologetic, even in Germany,
where neo-Nazis have burned several
refugee reception centres. Bonapartist
governments are consolidated
emulating the ultras or incorporating
them. The Nordic countries, except
Sweden, have completed the right turn
they began in Norway in 2013 with
the entry of Norwegian Progress Party
in which had been active Anders
Breivik, author of the slaughter of
the island of Utoya. Finland followed
in March 2015 with a coalition of
the Centre Party with the right-wing
Europhobes formerly called True
Finns and now just the Finns, and
Denmark in June with 21 percent
of votes for the xenophobic Danish
Peoples Party (DPP). It continued
with the results of regional elections in
problem in the neighbouring country.
Even the free movement agreements
between EU members were suspended.
To the fences erected by Hungary
followed others between Bulgaria and
Turkey, the blockades to cross from this
country to Greece, in Macedonia, and
the one of Austria with Slovenia and
the controls between Germany and
Austria. The nature EU was revealed: a
mere common market.
The current situation is reminiscent
of the Republicans after the defeat of
the Spanish revolution on reaching
France they hoped to find a democratic
country that would host them after the
heroic struggle against fascism. But
what they found were concentration
camps, repression and death. In the
concentration Camp dArgels-sur-
Mer, on a beach and in midwinter,
lived poorly over 100,000 refugees, of
which 15,000 did not survive. Today,
the Europe that gives lessons in the
world about democracy and human
rights shields itself against the hundreds
of thousands of refugees who are simply
Germany, with the dramatic increase
in Alternative for Germany. Austria
has been the scene of the last victory
of the extreme right in the first
round of the presidential election.
And in the former Eastern Countries
the horrendous legacy of Stalinism
translates directly into governments
of ultra-right, populists, and racists
in Bulgaria and Latvia; the liberals
displacing the Social Democrats in
Romania late last year, Hungary
is in the hands of the conservative
FideszHungarian Civic Union of
Viktor Orban, and Poland as exponent
of maximum ultra-conservatism with
the victory in October of Jaroslaw
Kaczynskis Law and Justice Party
(PiS).
Contrary to what the bourgeois
press says, it is not the arrival of
refugees what gives wings to the far
Refugees
trying to survive and rebuild the future.
And those are the same governments
that have turned the Mediterranean
into a huge mass grave.
The walls being erected in Europe
do not stop immigration. People
do not stop fleeing war and misery,
however many obstacles are set before
them. Fortress Europe only serves for
them to arrive all the same (except
for the 3,500 who drowned last year
in the Mediterranean), after a longer
and more traumatic journey (families
are separated, children are lost, they
get sick, suffer hunger, beatings,
dispossession, anxiety) where they
have had to spend all their savings.
They arrive all the same, but because of
the border control policy, more tired,
poorer and more broken.
Agreement with Turkey:
carte blanche to Erdogan
The agreement between the EU and
Turkey to deport to this country all
those who arrive in Greece is a betrayal
of the most elementary obligations of
right, but the policies of the States.
It is not the towns and cities with
more immigrants that give more
votes to the ultras: the fishermen
from the islands of Lesbos (Greece)
or Lampedusa (Italy) have given up
many wages to rescue the shipwrecked.
What encourages the fascist is police
violence, fences, laws of confiscation
of the property of refugees to pay for
their stay. These policies extend fears,
racism and legitimise cutting rights:
ultras just have to ask for more. With
the slogan Refugees are welcome,
the popular mobilisation with very
important demonstrations was the
best response to the reaction of the
extreme right. But this reaction had
no continuity.
35
 Refugees
European states. It is immoral and
illegal under bourgeois laws themselves.
In exchange for 6 billion, the Turkish
state becomes a jailer and guardian
of the European border. Although
Turkey has not ratified international
agreements on asylum, and daily
deports Syrian refugees who are forced
to return to war, it will be considered
a safe country for the refugees. The
treaty stipulates that for every Syrian
who Turkey readmits, another Syrian
will be resettled from Turkey to the
EU, but in reality neither do the EU
states want to reinstate or relocate the
refugees.
Erdogan also earns the European
silence to his fierce repression of the
Kurdish people and to the left. In a full
campaign of destruction and death in
Turkish Kurdistan, Merkel travelled
to Turkey to seal the deal. In fact,
they apply the Spanish border control
model, which is based on outsourcing
the Moroccan state for surveillance, in
addition to the shameful fences of Ceuta
and Melilla. For a long time images of
sub-Saharan immigrants trying to
jump the fence have hit the public. The
Spanish government reacted by placing
concertinas, a barbed wire with sharp
blades that produce deep wounds, and
which a Spanish company today boasts
of manufacturing exclusively for
Europe. Now there are almost no jumps
over the fence: Morocco is in charge of
stopping sub-Saharan Africans before
they arrive; without photos of blood
or scandal.
Propping up Bashars regime
and stopping refugees: two
sides of the same coin
After five years of war, the influx
of refugees into Europe also has a
political explanation: the agreement
between Russia and the United States of
propping up the Syrian regime, which
has been evidenced in the Geneva
negotiations. The only argument
between Putin and Obama is whether
Bashar should remain in power or it is
better if another related character heads
it. But both have said repeatedly they
want to avoid a collapse of the regime.
36
Angela Merkel with the Turkish Prime Minister: a compact against the refugees
If this plan is consummated, exile is no
longer temporary but for many years,
which pushes those who had long
been waiting for the end of the war in
Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan to knock on
the door of Europe. The more Russia
and imperialism entrench the criminal
regime, the greater the march of the
Syrian people to emigration.
Russias entry was decisive to change
the sign of the war. While doing the
pantomime of negotiations in Geneva
under the auspices of the UN, Bashars
regime practises facts consummated on
the ground, relying on Russian military
support and the complacency of the US
and European powers, which already
openly defend him as a lesser evil.
In March, Putin reduced the
intensity of the bombings, and the
streets of Aleppo and the liberated cities
were filled again with demonstrators
who turned out to the streets to shout
freedom, dignity or the people greater its despair. But for European
want the fall of the regime; the same
slogans of March 2011, but five years
later. The same slogans shouted in
Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain and which
threaten the reactionary states of the
region. This is why beyond their
different interests they all agree to
crush the revolution at any price. But
the demonstrations showed that the
revolution is still alive.
The regime, which had cut the road
through which Aleppo was supplied,
was tightening the noose while waiting
for the effects of hunger and lack of
medicine to begin having an effect on
the more than 300,000 people left in
the rebellious city, while preparing an
offensive. Now Putin and al-Assad
prepare the final assault (see Al-Assad
and Putin launch criminal offensive on
Aleppo).
The police state in Europe
grows and political
liberties are restricted
Another effect of the involvement of
the European powers in the bombings
in Syria and Iraq has been the attacks
of ISIS in Europe, which feed the
spiral of violence. This spiral, which
includes a growing Islamophobia, also
nourishes the ISIS which draws much
of its fighters from the peripheral
neighbourhoods of Paris and Brussels,
from a segregated and marginalised
youth. The greater pressure on it, the
states as happened before in the
United States after 11 September
fear managed by the power can also be
a useful policy to reaffirm an increasing
police state and a cut of freedoms.
France has been for months in a
state of emergency, and this measure has
been placed at the service of containing
the popular protest. The criminalisation
of unionism common in other
countries has been on the agenda:
first with Air France workers later with
Goodyear. This repressive policy also
 Refugees

applies to young people who come

out against labour reform, in joint
demonstrations of students and workers
or in the occupations of squares.
Today the indiscriminate repression
faced by refugees adds to the escalation
in the cutting of freedoms. It is the
denial of fundamental rights, such as
the right of asylum, but it is also an
escalation of police violence. Police
brutality against families and tear gas
against children normalises repression.
This is why the defence of the rights
of refugees is not only necessary for
a principle of solidarity, but because
it is essential to stop the increasingly
repressive state that we are living in the
Europe of capital.
What about the left and the unions?
There was complicit silence on the
official Old Left (SP, CP and others),
letting go of hundreds of thousands
killed in the war in Syria and now, after
the first demonstrations neither is there
a massive organised reaction in defence
A creation of Polish artist Jacek Wozniak in solidarity with the people of
of the thousands of refugees who have Aleppo and Syria
come out of this war.
It is the responsibility of all sectors immigration laws. Down with the walls Bashar, the ISIS and the bombings of
who call themselves of the left and of and repression in the Mediterranean Russia and NATO cause in the Syrian
the trade unions to take to the streets and in the European territory. For people. The Syrian and Kurdish people
and demand from the governments the right to asylum, housing and have every right to end a regime that
to open their borders and provide employment for all refugees. is showing what is capable of doing
protection and jobs to the refugees. We And we have been defending that to against its people to stay in power.
demand the cancellation of the Brussels give a definitive answer to the situation Therefore, for us, the defence of the
agreement between the EU and Turkey, of refugees goes through putting an refugees cannot be separated from the
the repeal of the Schengen treaty and end to the slaughter that the regime of defence of Aleppo.

The sad role of Syriza

The executing arm for the
agreement between the EU and
Turkey will be the government that
was presented as the most progressive
in Europe Syriza. After the closure
of borders that left 50,000 refugees
trapped in Greece, Alexis Tsipras first
signed the deployment of NATOs
warships in the Aegean Sea to stop
refugees. And now he has raised
prisons in the islands where thousands
are detained for the sole crime of
having emigrated and can be the
object of mass deportations. Protests
in prisons like Moria have already
been suppressed by riot police, with
the approval of the minister. And for
those who cannot be expelled it only
offers places in refugee camps run
by the army!
With public debt, Syriza betrayed
its people by accepting the third
rescue after the No in the referendum
of June; now it betrays refugees and
the most elementary principles of
solidarity with the agreement with
Turkey. And this policy of capitulation
in which no longer is there any red line
to cross has served for nothing: in June
it faces a new debt maturity and it has
a long list of adjustments dictated by
creditors on the table (pension, tax,
and labour reforms and a privatisation
wave).
CM

37
 Syria

Al-Assad and Putin launch criminal offensive

on Aleppo
In recent weeks, the regime of
al-Assad and Russian aviation have
intensified their criminal offensive
on Aleppo. In a few days over 250
civilians have died in the bombing
of the liberated areas east of the city,
the industrial capital of Syria and
one of the bastions of the revolution.
Medical centres and what little is left
standing in the city to treat the sick
and injured have been systematically
destroyed: the park of civil protection
teams (volunteers known as white
helmets, who rescue people from
the ruins of bombed buildings), the
Jerusalem hospital (where Dr Wassem,
the only paediatrician left in Aleppo
worked), the clinic Al Marja, and the
medicines store of Free Aleppo Health
Directorate. Any infrastructure that
could help to alleviate the effects of
the bombings has been razed.
The regime prepares the final
offensive, subjecting the population
and the rebel groups to a relentless
siege, cutting off all supply routes and
using hunger as a weapon of war. For
months in the rebel neighbourhoods
of the city, there is no drinking water
or electricity and the food is scarce.
Meanwhile, the United States and
the European powers keep quiet and
give coverage to the genocide. The
Geneva negotiations continue despite
the withdrawal of the opposition.
Russians and Yankees agree on truces
that leave Aleppo outside. A policy of
scorched earth and accomplished facts
that all accept, to later impose the
peace of cemeteries. The agreement
between the US, Russia and the regime
appears white on black: to defeat the
revolution and stabilise the regime of
Bashar al-Assad.
We repudiate that, taking advantage
of the offensive of the regime and the
destruction in the city, the Kurdish
militia of the YPG (Peoples Protection
Units) advance on the north controlling
the road linking Aleppo to the Turkish
38
Al-Assad bombs hospitals in Aleppo
border, accentuating the siege of the
population.
The struggle for Aleppo is decisive
for the revolution started over five
years ago. The Local Coordination
Committee sent a statement that we
reproduce. From the IWUFI we call
on all workers and their organisations
to mobilise in solidarity with the
struggle of the Syrian people and to
stop the offensive against Aleppo.
Statement by the Local
Coordination Committee
of Aleppo (Syria).
28 April 2016
Once again the criminal force of
al-Assad returns to barbarism bringing
annihilation and destruction to the
city of Aleppo: since Saturday there
are recorded 120 attacks with rockets
and explosive barrels, which have
left 170 dead, including 36 children
and 5 volunteers of the Syrian Civil
Defence, a nurse and her family
and two doctors, including the only
paediatrician who continued to work
in the city.
The numbers increase because the
attacks continue in order to submit the
Syrian people and their revolutionary
strength, to force them to give up their
legitimate right, which they have tried
to defend in the Geneva negotiations.
While the representatives of the Syrian
people negotiated in Geneva, the
regime concentrated its forces around
Aleppo and some US officials justified
it by arguing that Al Nusra was gaining
weight in the area, to give the green
light to the attack under the pretext
of fighting terrorism.
The local committees, we express
our doubts toward the supposed
friends of the Syrian people who
have opted for silence or only make
lukewarm statements on the suffering
of our people.
From these attacks only benefit
the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the
criminals of Daesh [ISIS in Arabic],
who expand their ranks with the
massacre. For as many allies this
criminal regime may have in the
world, the Syrian people will not give
up the struggle for freedom, dignity
and equality.
Long live the struggle of the Syrian
people. May the martyrs rest in peace.
Freedom for the prisoners.

The Kurdish movement
and the Syrian revolution
Extracts from the document
Global Situation by the
International Executive Committee
(IEC) of the IWUFI. March, 2016.
The IWUFI is for the Kurdish
people and has on its program the
clear slogan of the fight for the right
to national self-determination of the
entire Kurdish people. By saying the
entire Kurdish people we refer to the 30
million who are divided among Turkey,
Syria, Iraq and Iran. But there is great
confusion about the role of the Syrian
Kurds, which has led to being a great
rejection among the Syrian left, both
in Syria and in exile, about the role
played by Kurdish militias. And this is
justified because internationally there
is a strong campaign of unconditional
support to the leadership of the PKK
(Kurdistan Workers Party) and the
PYD (Democratic Union Party, a
Kurdish party in northern Syria, an
ally of PKK), on behalf of communist
parties, sectors of anarchism, Chavism
and sectors of Guevarism in Latin
America, not of support to the Syrian
revolution. This sector of the left defines
that there is only one revolution which is
the Kurdish one; without criticising the
role of Russia and the regime of Bashar
al-Assad. We reject this definition and
also that it is a revolution of the women,
because this image is used widely.
By all means, the IWUFI has
supported unquestionably in Kobane
(Ayn al-Arab) fighters of the Peoples
Defence Units (YPG), including their
women militias, which are headed by the
PKK, to defeat ISIS. But what exists in
Syria since March 2011 is a revolution
of the Syrian people, including Syrian
Kurds, against the dictatorship of al-
Assad. The regime had to fall back to the
cities and the capital. In the void left in
the predominantly Kurdish territories,
the leadership of the PYD began to
organise the territory based on popular
The Kurdish militia defeated ISIS in Kobane
communities. The PKK military bases
allowed that the self-defence units be
established as operational units. But
these units are not involved in the
struggle to end the dictatorship. Later
on, the ISIS launched its counter-
revolutionary work also against the
Kurdish territories. Often Free Syrian
Army (FSA) units fought side by side
with Kurdish militias to defend the
revolution and expel the reaction.
But the leadership of the PYD and
its militia and now it has become
even clearer has not entered into
combat against the regime; they have
only defended their territory against
ISIS. And they have accepted the unity
of action with the Free Syrian Army and
Syrian militias only to face the ISIS and
hold their positions, but not to confront
Bashar al-Assad. And this has led in the
past year to an open collaboration with
the United States and Russia to receive
weapons and maintain its neutrality
against al-Assad. It is a fact that military
contingents from the US and Russia
have taken a position and participate
in areas of northern Syria controlled
by Kurdish forces. Specifically, they are
preparing two airports for military use,
for both Russians and Americans, with
the argument of the military campaign
against ISIS. The United States are
preparing the airfield for use in the fight
Syria
against ISIS assured the Vice Minister
of Foreign Affairs of the Kurdish canton
of Kobane (Ayn al-Arab), Idris Nasan
(El Pas, January 2016).
Russia and its Minister of Foreign
Affairs Sergei Lavrov have also clearly
said it, coming to propose that in
the Geneva meeting participate a
representation of the PYD, the party
that has the militia oriented by the
PKK. Russia appreciates the role of
the Kurds in Syria and Iraq in the
fight against terrorism and takes them
into account in her arms shipments.
It is also clearly said by Yatar Pollat, a
leader and founder of the PKK: We
have worked periodically with the
Free Syrian Army against the Islamic
State. But this agreement has not been
generalised (Lucha Internacionalista,
No. 141, January 2016). That is, they
clearly say they have only made the
unity of action against ISIS, not against
al-Assad. As an international current,
we criticise this totally wrong policy of
the leadership of the Syrian Kurdish
movement, which is the reformist
leadership of the PKK. We, both to
face ISIS as well as Bashar al-Assad,
are in favour that both the rebel Syrian
militia and the Syrian Kurdish militia
receive weapons and ammunition from
a bourgeois state, be it the United
States, France or Saudi Arabia, but
39
 Syria
without committing or politically
allying themselves with those bourgeois
leaderships.
Thence it is unacceptable that the
leadership of the Kurdish militia openly
acknowledge an agreement with Russia,
which is the boss of Bashar al-Assad, the
responsible for the genocidal bombings,
and who, on the excuse of ISIS, are
bombarding the rebel militia, including
the Free Syrian Army. This policy of
agreeing with anyone for the sake of a
possible distribution of land is a very
wrong action.
Without supporting the Syrian
revolution as a whole, the leadership
of PYD digs its own grave; given
The Kurdish
people and
the PPK
The Kurdish people are an
interstate colony, which historically
suffered its unjust division at the hands
of various empires. It is a people who
have suffered genocides and massacres,
but never stopped fighting for their
identity and independence.
The Kurdish people are considered
the largest stateless people in the world,
totalling more than 30 million divided
in four countries. In Turkey there are
15 million Kurds, who represent 20
percent of the population, in Iraq
there are six million, in Iran seven
million and two million in Syria.
In Turkey the struggle of the
Kurdish people acquired forms of
armed struggle since the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK, founded in
1978) began to fight in 1984. Since
then, there has been a war between
the Turkish state and the PKK which
already has over 40 thousand dead, a
quarter of them Kurds.
The PKK is a mass organization,
of Marxist origin. Originally it had a
40
that if the regime is recomposed the
repression against the Kurdish people
will return. The leadership of the PYD
argues that the leadership of the Syrian
revolution does not explicitly recognise
the Kurdish people, something we have
also criticised. But this stance divides
the revolution, and cannot be an excuse
to close the eyes and not denounce the
slaughter by the regime of Bashar and
Russia.
We must raise, as we have done
on many occasions, that the Kurdish
and Syrian people demand from their
leadership a change of position in Syria.
That is, to join the rebel Free Syrian
Army and other forces that fight to
Mobilisations for the freedom of Abdullah Ocalan
nationalist revolutionary program, but
now defends reformist and conciliatory
policies. The PKK leadership began
abandoning their slogan of national
self-determination for the slogan of
"democratic autonomy" in the current
states. We do not share this view
since it recognizes the capitalist states
where Kurds live and leaves aside the
historical struggle for their own state.
Among the Kurds there are other
political leaderships that reflect
Kurdish bourgeois sectors. Among
them is Masoud Barzani, leader of
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP),
president of Iraqi Kurdistan (Erbil,
the capital) and part of the Iraqi
government. A strong ally of the US,
he supported the 2003 invasion, and
the Turkish government to which he
defeat Bashar al-Assad, and to defeat
Hezbollah and the Russian military.
And that together they face ISIS but
also al-Assad and reject the Russians
and imperialist bombings. In this
context, in the IWUFI we still insist
on the right of the Kurds in Syria to
have their own self-determination, to
have their own territory, to use their
language, and so on. This should be
part of the program to defeat Bashar
al-Assad. And that this should also
be demanded from the Syrian left
and the Syrian militia, that they join
accepting a future recognition of their
self-determination.
sells oil. His military strength is the
Pershmergas, who are facing ISIS in
Iraq.
The leader of the PKK, Abdullah
Ocalan, is imprisoned in Turkey
since 1999. The Turkish government
has broken the peace negotiations
started in 2012 with the PKK and has
launched a harsh military repression of
the Kurdish people.
We call on the people of world to
support the struggle of the Kurdish
people for their right to national
self-determination, and to demand
from the Turkish government the
immediate release of Ocalan and of
the thousands of Kurdish political
prisoners, and to cease all military
action on Kurdish territories.
 Bolivia

Evo, his lover, the son, and

the Chinese multinational
Miguel Lamas

The appearance in January, by

a journalistic expos, of the birth
certificate of a child by Evo Morales
with a young female manager of
a Chinese transnational, sparked
a scandal that helped the adverse
election result for his re-election.
What was in evidence before
the people was the scandal of
corruption and complicity of the
president with multinationals.
The scandal escalated into a fictional
soap opera, with Evo Moraless lover
in prison, new allegations and denials
that the child exists, and the evidence
that Mrs Gabriela Zapata, lover of Evo
Morales, attended him for years in an
Evo Morales with Antonio Brufau, Chairman of Repsol
office of the Ministry of Government.
Evo accuses imperialism of dirty The right-wing opposition and corruption. And this is not only [the
campaign, but he could not deny some journalists speak of a blue Chinese multinational] CAMC or
the facts. The Bolivian justice system, capitalism of MAS militants who seek just Chinese companies. Nor is it only
completely subjected to the government, to dominate the economy. But this contracts without competitive bidding.
accuses only his former lover, Gabriela capitalism of MAS militants is only a The feast of contracts in favour of
Zapata. But beyond the Evo-Zapata minor fraction of the ruling class who transnational corporations under this
soap opera, it became clear that the seek to be partners albeit minor government begins with the 44 oil
mother of the presidents son, a woman in the business of the big capitalists by contracts signed in December 2006,
of only 28 years without professional taking advantage of their influence in opposed by the then oil minister,
qualifications, not even a high school government, Soliz Rada who resigned in
degree, was named manager of Chinese The oligarchs of the Agricultural protest but which was approved
Chamber of the East (CAO), Repsol, unanimously by Masist and rightist
company CAMC, which succeeded
Petrobras, and Sumitomo are not opponents in Parliament. These
without bidding in contracts worth
Masist, but indeed partners of the contracts, in fact, nullify the badly
US$560 million, contracts signed by
MAS government in the looting of called nationalisation, and give
the government of Evo Morales, for
Bolivia, as they were formerly partners huge advantages to the oil companies;
various construction works. of Goni Sanchez de Losada and of including the reimbursement of their
These shady deals, including alleged other neoliberal governments. expenses and the big pardon for
kickbacks, are hardly clarified by the Since 2006, the State Procurement breach of contract, even compensating
submissive judges. Actually, they are an System (Sicoes) reports 54,583 direct them.
illustration of what is the relationship contracts (without bidding), which Currently, after the fall in prices
with the multinationals in Bolivia: supposedly should be done only as an of oil and gas, which is tied to oil,
semi-colonial relationships that always exception and in an emergency. Only in the government issued regulations
go through rampant corruption, now 2014 there were contracts for more than favouring the oil companies. In addition
with the government of Evo Morales US$2.5 billion without competitive to repaying expenses, which is already
and during previous governments too. bidding, which lend themselves to established since 2006, now it also
41
 Bolivia
returns another portion of the Direct
Tax on Hydrocarbons (IDH) as an
incentive to invest, punishing thus
both the central state budget, as well
as departments, municipalities and
universities budgets, which receive a
portion of the HDI.
The allegations of the right or
journalistic do not mention any of
this. Nor do they mention Sumitomo,
which exploits the largest mine (zinc,
silver and other minerals), in Bolivia,
which leaves for the people of Potosi
only 3 percent and for the central state
8 percent of what it takes, but which
nevertheless has already been praised
New leadership of left opposition to the
government wins urban teachers union
The Confederation of Urban
Education Workers (CTEUB) is
the strongest union organisation in
Bolivia. It has about 100,000 members
(there is another organisation of rural
teachers of some 60,000 members).
During the past 40 years it has been
led by the Communist Party, a broken
decomposed bureaucratic apparatus,
which reconciled with the various
capitalist governments and in the
last decade co-ruled with the MAS
and virtually owns the Ministry
of Education. Their most important
opposition was URMA, teachers
current of the Revolutionary Workers
Party (POR), which claims to be
Trotskyist and for years has headed the
Federation of urban teachers of La Paz,
Cochabamba and Oruro.
At the National Congress of the
CTEUB held between 14 and 19
March in the city of Riberalta, the
Stalinist apparatus of the CP brovvke
down. The current URMA formed
an opposition front with a former
leader of the Confederation, Federico
Pinaya, who broke with the governing
leadership, and is also integrated
with the teachers leadership of the
Department of Santa Cruz. This front
won the Congress by means of a strong
dispute and despite the fraudulent
manoeuvres of the CPs bureaucracy.
42
several times by Evo and Alvaro Garcia
Linera as a model company. We could
go on and on with examples filling
pages and pages.
How many bribes did the CAO
pay for the big pardon of all forest
clearings, which are crimes punishable
by law with the reversion to the State
of the land? But there was another law
pardoning all, accepting the clearing
over 500,000 hectares and, worse,
granting permits for new clearings,
calculating the expansion of the
agricultural frontier in one million
hectares per year (there are currently
3,300,000 hectares of crops in Bolivia).
Demonstration of teachers in La Paz
A document was adopted clearly
in opposition to the government and
the Education Act 070 attacking the
conquests of the teachers, and a new
leadership formed by the three sectors
was chosen. Among the members of
the new leadership is Vilma Plata,
former leader of the teachers of La
Paz, member of the POR.
This new leadership must take
charge of the just demands of the
teachers. But for the importance of
the union and the political significance
of this victory, it has the possibility
and responsibility to lead the union
opposition in the Central Obrera
Boliviana (Bolivian Workers Centre
COB). Demanding a rank and file
And all this primarily for the benefit of
landowners, many of them figureheads
of large Brazilian or Argentine
agribusiness companies, growers of
genetically modified soybeans for
export.
Of course, the right opposition
never denounces this because they
are the direct beneficiaries of this
generosity by the government of the
false communitarian socialism.
Both the Masist government and the
old right are agents of the multinationals.
That is why we strive to implement the
October Agenda: to expropriate and
expel the multinationals.
congress to remove the leaders sold to
the government and to promote the
formation of a political alternative for
the workers, against the government
and against the old right.
In the rural teachers of La Paz
it was formed the Broad Front of
Rural Teachers of La Paz (FAM),
composed of the groups Pachakuti,
Maya, Qamasa, Qurawa, and many
rank and file teachers, which aims to
recover the La Paz Federation and the
National Confederation, removing
the leaders subjected to the MAS
government in order to achieve an
independent leadership answering
to the demands of the rank and file
through union democracy.

After the triumph of NO let us put up
an alliance of organisations to fight for a
government of the workers, the indigenous
people and the people
On 21 February there was
a referendum called by the
government to enable the third
re-election of Evo Morales. To his
surprise, since he counted on a win,
he lost. Although the margin was
relatively narrow (51.3 percent
for NO and 48.7 percent for YES),
there were hundreds of allegations
of fraud, especially in rural areas.
Sociologist Silvia Rivera estimates
that the vote for YES was actually
40 percent. That is, the government
went from a win with 60 percent
national elections in 2014 to 40
percent of votes in the referendum.
We reproduce below an excerpt
from the joint statement of leftist
organisations and workers and
popular leaders published after the
referendum.
Despite the massive fraud, especially
in rural districts controlled absolutely
by the MAS, the NO to the re-election
Bolivia: Police clashing with demonstrators
of Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia
Linera triumphed.
The old right politicians came out
to claim the victory. But the triumph
was of the working people, the youth
mobilised in the neighbourhoods and
also in social networks.
() We voted NO to the economic
policy of adjusting the people and
favouring the multinationals and NO
to corrupt leaders who call themselves
National Coordination for Change
(CONALCAM), and also a NO to
the entire political system based on
parties of the rich, subjected to the
transnationals.
The people seek a political alternative
representing those who work and strive
every day and not, as this system does,
to the domestic and foreign exploiting
minority.
Alvaro Garcia Linera said those who
voted NO would regret it. But it was
the opposite: many men and women of
Bolivia
the people, who voted YES because they
did not want to benefit the old right or
because they were blackmailed by the
MAS to harm their communities, are
now beginning to regret having given
a YES to a government which does not
deserve it because it rules with lies,
against the people and it sinks into the
corruption of a president and officers
sold to the transnationals.
The MAS, although originally
founded as a political instrument of
the peasant movement to change this
system for a government of authentic
organisations of the people, degenerated
completely betraying their rank and
file and today is another party of
this system, the new right, which
it has even incorporated fascists of
the Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC),
Banzerists of Nationalist Democratic
Action (ADN), old politicians of the
MNR [Revolutionary Nationalist
Movement}, of the MIR [Revolutionary
Left Movement], characters that come
from neoliberalism and who are its
most powerful ministers like Quintana
or Arce Catacora. The alliance with the
transnationals, the oligarchy of CAO
and CAINCO [Chamber of Industry
and Commerce] and the big bosses,
manifested in rampant corruption
displayed to us all by the Gabriela
Zapata case ()
We said NO to a system that
oppresses us, that condemns Bolivia and
the majority of its people to misery and
marginalisation, to exploitation with
minimum wages, precarious jobs, or
lack of work, and to the ruin of the rural
economy to ensure the profits of the
capitalists partners, filling the fields
with transgenic soybeans, consolidating
43
 Bolivia
Cover of the journal of the
ARPT (IWLFI)
the power of the landed agribusiness
and now with the falling prices of
mining and hydrocarbons, they have
launched a violent adjustment against
the people with layoffs, more tax hikes,
cutting health and popular education
spending, while taxes are discounted as
incentives to the transnationals and
they are presented with land to deforest
and repayable loans to the Santa Cruz
oligarchs.
These old right-wing politicians, like
Doria Medina, Costas, Revilla, Tuto
Quiroga, Carlos Mesa, the remnants of
the MNR and the MIR, now intend to
take over the triumph of the people and
make pasanaku,1 to govern them in the
same way he did the new Masist right.
And they have their puppets in
some leaders, who have come off the
MAS, as Felix Patzi, allied to Revilla,
or as Joel Guarachi, Damian Condori,
Roman Loayza, Edgar Sanchez, Rebeca
Delgado and Felix Santos, who speak
of a new political instrument but
1 Pasanaku is a basic financing system used
in Bolivia. It is based on the commitment
within a group, for which members made
financial contributions to be used in turns,
usually by lot or by a need for any of the
members. The operation is repeated as many
times as there are members in the group.
44
run to seek mentors in the traditional
parties ()
What we need is an independent
alternative, whose core and conduction
are independent organisations of
the people, and whose goal is to
conquer a government of the workers
organisations, the indigenous people
and the people, based on direct
democracy, to end this political and
economic system of parties at the service
of the rich and the transnationals.
With the campaign popular NO
born with the Alliance for Life in
Tiquipaya and in which participated the
Coordination of Social Organisations for
the NO; Alliance for Life, CODELPA,
COMCIPO (Potosi), CONAMAQ Cover of the journal of Fuerza Socialista
Organic (National Council of Ayllus Antiimperialista (Socialist Antiimperialist
and Markas of Qolasuyo), Federation Force)
of Peasant Women Bartolina Sisa We need to end this unjust
of La Paz, CONDECOB, ARPT
system serving the enrichment of
(Revolutionary Peoples Alternative),
indigenous territories of Takovo politicians and the transnationals,
Mora (Guarani) and Secure (Tipnis), oligarchs and big bosses. After Evo
CNAMIB (indigenous women), Rural come our authentic organisations,
Teachers Pachakuti, CODEPANAL, organisations of workers in the city
CODAPMA (Coordination for and the countryside, indigenous and
Environmental Defence) Santa Cruz, popular, and of the students, recovered
Federation of Urban Teachers of for the democratic decision of its rank
Cochabamba, Federation of Urban and file that we have to win, without
Teachers of Oruro, Federation of the corrupted, without the parties of
Urban Teachers of La Paz, Federation of
the rich, to expel the transnational
Urban Teachers of Potosi, FUL UMSS,
corporations and landowners, to
National Coordination in Defence of
the University Autonomy, Students of recover our natural resources, to defend
indigenous territories, to end the
UPEA (Public University of El Alto),
looting of our country, to industrialise
Students of UMSA (higher University
to have decent jobs, health, education
of San Andres), Revolutionary Socialist
Antiimperialist Force, Coordination and end poverty ()
University UMSA, and Independent
Workers, Peasants, Indigenous, and Signatories:
Neighbourhood Organisations, united Gualberto Arenas (Secretary General
by a program to fight for NO to Workers Party), Eliseo Mamani (Rural
the re-election, NO to the old or Teachers Front Pachakuti, La Paz),
new right, NO to the transnationals Mario Peanco (former leader Youth
and NO to the corrupt and sold to of Six Federations of the Tropics of
government leaders, in order to regain
Cochabamba), Jesus Bernardo Choque
our organisations. Thus, we took a
(worker of Aceites Fino Quillacollo,
great first step. Now, after the triumph
of NO, we must give it continuity to former leader Federation of Factory
form () a real alternative, calling Workers of Cochabamba). ARPT
(Revolutionary Alternative Working
for new popular organisations, labour
unions, trade union fronts, indigenous People), Revolutionary Socialist Anti-
and student organisations. imperialist Force.

Consolidating the Broad
Front as a great fighting
movement
The results of the first round in
the Peruvian national elections are
highly contradictory and show a
deep crisis of the capitalist party
system in Peru. The second round
will be between two very similar
candidates: Keiko, the daughter of
dictator Fujimori, and neoliberal
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. The left
was reborn with the Broad Front
(Frente Amplio, FA) reaching 19
percent of the ballot, nearly three
million votes.
As in other Latin American
countries, journalistic sources speak
of a right turn. But this election
comes after several years of popular
struggles that defeated transnational
mining projects, such as the case of the
Newmont Mining Corp. in Cajamarca.
And several cases in the south of the
country, as the massive mobilisation
of tens of thousands of young people
which forced the overturn of the law
of compulsory military service and the
flexibility of youth employment law
(Pulpin law). These struggles caused
the collapse and near extinction of the
party of President Ollanta Humala
(who withdrew from the race because
he was on 2 percent) who headed
an openly neoliberal government
and in favour of the large mining
transnationals. To this, we must add
the electoral failure of neoliberal former
presidents Alan Garcia of the historic
APRA, and Toledo, both candidates.
For all of this, the talk of a right turn
makes no sense. In any case, it is a
change of the rightist ruler.
Peru
Enrique Fernandez Chacon Unios
Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the
dictator, wins (39 percent) of the votes
of the poorest and most depoliticised,
handing out little gifts, but she still
has fewer votes than absenteeism and
the flawed vote. Businessman Pedro
Pablo Kuczynski (21 percent, raised in
the United States and former Minister
of previous governments) captures a
confused and rather volatile vote since
it has no party) and was first in only
one Department.
Rise of the left
The big surprise was the Broad
Front, a union of small ecological
and left organisations, which in three
Front page of Unios journal
months goes from 2 percent to 19
percent, with the candidacy of Veronica being Shining Path (which included
Mendoza, of only 35 years, who had an extremely rare attack by suspected
broken with Humalas party. With Shining Path members to police a few
nearly 3 million votes and 19 percent of
days before the election).
the national vote, the general elections
To this, we must add another left
of 10 April placed the Broad Front (FA)
anti-mining party, Direct Democracy,
and its candidate Veronica Mendoza
which won in Cajamarca and took
in the third place nationally, also the
4 percent nationally (but by the
FA has won seven departments (south
of the country), was second in eight undemocratic electoral law was left
departments and third in nine. outside Parliament, as it did not reach
The FA was very close to reaching 5 percent and lost its registration as a
the second round, as it was only two party).
points off Kuczynski. According to Unios, the organisation of the IWL
previous surveys, the arrival to the FI, supported the Broad Front from
second round of the FA could have the outset, integrating it since 2012,
given it the victory, defeating Keiko because, despite its programmatic
Fujimori. ambiguities, it expressed organisations
This possible outcome, i.e. that fighting the depredations of the mining
the FA defeated Kuczynski in the transnationals, as well as sectors of the
first round, was only held back by a youth and the most militant workers
dirty campaign that accused them of (Workers Solidarity Network).
45
 Peru
This relationship with the struggles
was expressed in the victory achieved
by the FA in the majority of the mining
districts of the south, as Cocachacra
in Arequipa, and Challhuahuacho in
Apurimac, Tia Maria and Las Bambas,
respectively, mining districts in the
departments of Moquegua , Tacna, Ica,
Junn and Cusco.
Consolidating the FA
together with the struggles
of the exploited people
The FA has achieved the election
of 21 members of Congress, who will
constitute the second majority of the
next Congress of the Republic, with the
express mandate that the peoples who
supported us have voices in Congress
encouraging their struggles and claims.
Henceforth the challenge for the FA
and those elected is to be worthy and
deserving of the confidence placed in
us. Time and the struggle will tell.
The victory we celebrate today of
coming in third place, nobody gave it to
us, has been a political battle that broke
the siege of media disinformation,
rigged polls, black campaigns of slander,
harassment of the yellow press, and
devious attacks from rivals, enemies of
If you dont change everything, nothing changes
We must enrich the FA program
by discussing with its social grassroots,
taking up their demands and needs
without any ambiguity.
The anti-mining struggle is a
fundamental constituent base of
the FA. It is enough to look into
districts where it won an absolute
majority, in the south of the country.
The FA should be steadfast on the
unconditional defence of the claims of
the people, demanding the definitive
expulsion of mining projects affecting
agricultural areas or water.
The FA has to be at the forefront
of the recovery of the labour rights
46
the actual changes and transformations
that our people need and demand.
The secret was the popular
turnaround that widely overflowed all
that we, the groups that make up the
Front, could do well or poorly.
Today, the responsibility has
increased, we have come out unscathed
from this first leg and we hope that we
will manage to live up to expectations,
since not only our voters but all the
Peruvian people hope to reverse the
policy of dispossession and appeasement
that characterises neoliberalism and the
governments that implement it.
It is now necessary to promote this
great movement, giving control of
the Broad Front to the popular, anti-
miners, workers, and young people
movements to take in their hands the
Broad Front.
We are aware that this clashes
with a bureaucratic conception of
tying the Broad Front to a group
of cliques, including organisations
that were against it, which boycotted
the Broad Front and which now seek
to enter. The Peruvian Communist
Party and the Social Force grouping
of Susana Villaran (former mayor of
Lima) applied to join the FA. These are
additions that subtract. Because they do
annulled by neoliberalism, promoting
and supporting the organisation
of democratic trade unions and
workers struggle, demanding full
trade union rights and the right to
strike, minimum wage according to
the family basket, and protection
against dismissals.
The FA has to be at the head of
the demonstrations to break with
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
Agreement,1 a semi colonial treaty
subjecting Peru even further to the
1 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement
of economic cooperation was signed by
Pacific Ocean countries like the United
States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New
not enter to make the FA a movement
of struggle of the people, but on the
contrary to use its huge electoral base
as currency to better sell themselves to
the bosses parties of the right as they
have always done. And they still do
now; Susana Villaran has just given
her support to the candidate Pedro
Pablo Kuczynski and wants the FA to
do the same.
We c a l l t o k e e p t h e t o t a l
independence of the FA, annulling
the vote in the second round. Neither
Keiko nor Kuczynski!, as determined by
a majority of the FA national meeting.
For all these reasons, we are against
the admission of these groups, and
instead, we call to register massively, to
structure the Broad Front in each place,
and to incorporate in its leadership
representations of the rebellion of the
peoples and the workers.
To get to where it has arrived, it has
cost all the militancy blood, sweat and
tears. The task ahead, from our point
of view, is to strengthen organic and
politically the FA, making a reality the
need to build a front that unifies the
struggles of the social movements, from
the grassroots, as it was pointed out in
the call to build the Broad Front.
transnationals, to courts controlled by
imperialism, and which will end up
destroying what is left of the domestic
industry, condemning Peru to live in a
mining extractive economy that preys
on nature.
There is no national development
of the hands of transnationals. Peru
can only regain its sovereignty and
control of its destiny, recovering its
national wealth, and ruled by the
working people, their democratic
organisations and not by the agents of
transnational corporations.
Zealand, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia,
Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
 Global News

Workers face the outsourcing plans of

the transnational, which include the
outsourcing of semi-slave labour in
Mexico and the Philippines, and plans
to cut pensions. Verizon has resorted
to thousands of scabs to replace strikers
and suspended health insurance to
the strikers to weaken the fight. The
United States: strike at Social Democrat pre-candidate Bernie
Verizon Sanders, racing Hillary Clinton for the
Democratic nomination, sympathised
with the strike. The right to strike is
severely restricted in the US.

Strikers on the street
Almost 40,000 workers of the Yankee
monster telco Verizon went on strike on
13 April. It is the largest strike in the
history of the company and is convened
after eight months of unsuccessful
contract negotiations. The two unions
representing company employees
scattered around the East Coast of the
US that convened the struggle measure
were the Communications Workers
of America and the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
After three weeks of strikes, workers
have begun to get allocations from a
strike fund of $400 million. In 2011
a strike of similar dimensions was held
at Verizon, for a period of two weeks.
Poster of solidarity
Trotsky in China
In the heat of the struggles of
workers and popular sectors, it is
slowly emerging a sector of fighters
who question the official view of the
CP. Marxist literature publications,
including books of long banned Leon
Trotsky, begin to be available.
After the purges of Trotskyists in
the Communist Party of China in the
1930s and 1940s, very little was known
about the Russian revolutionarys
political thought in Maos China. It
would not be until the advent of the
Sino-Soviet conflict in the 1960s, in
which accusations of Trotskyism flew
against the Chinese bureaucracy by the
CPSU, that Deng Xiaoping ordered
the publication of a representative
compilation of Trotskys ideas. After
several years collecting materials in
second-hand bookstores in Europe
and in Chinese private bookstores, 500
copies of the Extracts of the reactionary
ideas of Trotsky, also known under the
label of grey books were printed. Its
circulation was reduced to about 50
copies, only to be read by a handful of
officials with ministerial rank or higher.
Liu Renjing, a founding member
of the Communist Party of China,
who had participated in the local
Trotskyist movement and had even
met personally Trotsky in Turkey,
worked in 1963 in the state media as
a casual translator. He translated for
the official compilation works such as
The Revolution Betrayed, The Third
International After Lenin, and The
Theory of Permanent Revolution. The
editor in charge of the project, Zheng
Yifan, after the Cultural Revolution was
persuaded by Trotskys own texts of its
political and intellectual worth, and
embraced the ideas of the revolutionary
leader. Although the ban on publishing
Trotsky disappeared in the 1980s,
it would not be until the end of the
1990s that Zheng compiled a new
Chinese edition of the works of Trotsky,
and would not be published until
2008. In 1999 the three volumes of
Trotskys biography by Isaac Deutscher
were published. Since then, young
intellectuals have been approaching
revolutionary literature, and Trotskyist
works have been recently published,
as of American James P. Cannon.
By the weight of his ideas, the old
revolutionary makes way into China.
The adjustment in the
United Kingdom
The steel industry in the UK is
foreign. The global price drop has
seriously affected local production.
In October 2015, Thai company SSI
closed its plant in Redcar (northeast of
the country). In February Indias Tata
announced the shutdown of its plant
in Port Talbot (Wales) with the loss
of 15,000 jobs. High prices of energy
and steel imports from China are
47
 Global News
responsible for this crisis, added to the
deficit of 450 million of its pension
fund emptied by the bosses. Something
similar happens with the famous
BHS department stores, which went
bankrupt leaving a pension debt of
nearly 500 million. Buyers are sought
but it will be the workers who pay.
The British public sector is in a
similar crisis. Medical residents have
taken to fight the governments plan
to increase the working week and
reduce coverage of occupational risks.
After several 24-hour stoppages with
emergency care, they went on to
48-hour stoppages without covering
emergencies. The BMA, medical union,
does not support. Resident physicians
believe that these measures are the
prelude to greater privatisation of the
health service and greater downsizing.
They receive strong support from the
community.
In education, the government plans
to privatise the entire education system,
destroying teaching statutes governing
the entry, stay and teacher employment
regime. The NUT (the countrys largest
teachers union), as well as ATL (private
schools) and NAHT (headmasters) are
organising actions against these plans.
Egypt: journalists
threaten to strike
The journalists union demanded
on May 4 an official apology and the
dismissal of Minister of Interior Magdy
Abdel Ghaffar after suffering a raid
on Sunday 1 May, the first since its
founding 75 years ago. In the action
were arrested journalists Amr Mansour,
Ismail Badr and Mahmoud Hosni
48
Demonstration of journalists in Cairo, Egypt
to protest the arbitrary detention
Mohamed Gad, known for their role
suffered on 1 April, and his torture
in the revolution that overthrew the
by Moroccan thugs. Brahim Saika
Mubarak dictatorship in 2011. Other
was leader of the Coordination of
journalists have been arrested on 15
Saharawi Unemployed, a group facing
and 25 April, as part of an offensive of
discrimination in employment as part
the dictatorship of el-Sisi against the
of the fascist-like regime of colonial
press. Journalists established a period
occupation to which the Saharawi
of one week for the satisfaction of their
people are subjected.
demands, which include the release
The authorities did not attend to
of dozens of colleagues under judicial
the health of the political prisoner,
frame-ups. Else they go on strike.
very serious after torture. Only on 6
The union denounces US meddling
April was he admitted to the hospital
in Egyptian politics and has called
in Gulemin. He was then transferred
not to comply with legal provisions
to Agadir, to let him agonise. At death,
establishing censorship. During the
the authorities refused to perform an
mass meeting of journalists that decided
autopsy, leaving a blanket of doubt
the measures, with the participation
about the cause of his death. Protests by
of two thousand union members, the
Saharawis for this crime were savagely
regime moved civilians to demonstrate
repressed. Currently, languishing in
in front of the union headquarters.
Moroccan dungeons there are dozens of
El-Sisi is hated in Egypt and the
Sahrawi political prisoners, and hunger
Arab world but has the support of
strikes are recurrent. There are also
imperialism, Russia, Castroism and
hundreds missing since 1976.
Chavism. Cuban state news agency
Morocco has occupied most of
Prensa Latina criticised in a review
the territory of Western Sahara for
the union actions, describing them as
40 years, after the departure of the
disproportionate.
Spanish colonialists. Thanks to the
unconditional support of France, the
Spanish State and the US, it holds with
Western Sahara: an iron hand the colonial occupation of
Sahrawi political this African territory.
prisoner Brahim Saika
dies
Saharawi trade unionist and
political prisoner Brahim Saika died
on 16 April at a hospital in Agadir,
Morocco, after holding a hunger strike Polisario troops, Western Sahara
 The papers are not of Panama,
they belong to imperialist
companies and their
domestic lackeys
On the left, Priscilla Vazquez, leader of Propuesta Socialista
We reproduce extracts of the
statement by Propuesta Socialista
(Socialist Proposal, Panamanian
section of the IWUFI), on April
2016
US imperialism has made Panama
their colony since the submission of the
[Panamanian] bourgeoisie in 1903. Not
only did they take the area around the
canal but they decided to intervene in
the isthmus to maintain order and at
an economic level they also invaded us
with their companies. In 1927 it passed a
corporation law, less than two years after
the military occupation of Panama City in
October 1925. It is clear that this law has
to do with business that their companies
had been doing in the country.
The aforesaid law allows doing business
without putting your own name, hence
corporation. The shares are of the bearer,
allowing to be passed from hand to hand
without anyone knowing who owns
them. The application of it had a first
modernization in 1948 when the Colon
Free Zone was created. Its main purpose
is to pass through the isthmus products or
goods from their home country without
paying taxes to Panama. With this the
named triangulations began. The product
leaves a country with a price, comes to the
Free Zone and then goes to one or more
other countries with another price. Thus,
the so-called witch companies appeared.
At the time of Torrijos, the Panama
Banking Centre or international financial
centre is created. The triangulations are
no longer just goods but of the financial
capital.
Brazilian sociologist Herbert de Souza
explained that the (witch companies)
act taking Panama as a strategic centre
of a triangular operation through which
multinational companies make all kinds
of financial, fiscal and trade operations
Now they call them Off Shore. The
law office of Mossack-Fonseca said to be
the second in the country administering
thousands of companies. This is an
imperialist activity in Panama, is part of the
tasks assigned to the country and the Sepoy
bourgeoisie accepts to collect the crumbs,
through lawyers offices or the income of
paperwork to legalise businesses, thus
in Panama there are many corporations as
Economically Active Population. They are
legal businesses that everyone knows where
they end.
 FRANCE
Workers and youth against labour
reform