Argentina - September 1st, 2024

Alejandro Villarruel, Trotskyist worker leader of Democracia Obrera (LOI-CI) and of the Collective for the Re-foundation of the Fourth International / FLTI, has passed away

As a result of the worsening of a serious disease, today Sunday, September 1st, our comrade Alejandro Villarruel has passed away.

We, his militancy comrades and his family, are receiving a lot of solidarity messages from groups, currents, delegates and workers of the Rio Santiago Shipyard, where comrade Alejandro worked for over 20 years. We are also receiving fraternal greetings in solidarity from revolutionary groups of South Africa, Zimbabwe, France, Syria, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Italy, Peru, Bolivia, alongside which Alejandro and our current have been fighting to re-found and recover our world party, the Fourth International.

Alejandro was a good comrade, loved by everyone and at the same time respected, since never during his lifetime he surrendered his ideas. He was a relentless fighter for the interests of the Argentinean and international working class. He was a socialist that understood that without a worker revolution there would be no way out of this rotten capitalist system.

While over the last years in Argentina he took part in the struggle of the Rio Santiago Shipyard struggle, he was a distinguished promoter of setting up the self-organized movement there, confronting the trade union bureaucracies and the boss politicians.
Alejandro fought for class independence and worked relentlessly for the unity of all the naval industry workers. He received the solidarity of the laid-off dock workers of Terminal 5 of the Buenos Aires port, to whom he unconditionally supported for their 3-year-long struggle to keep their jobs, after being left onto the street by the Fernandezes government and betrayed by the trade union bureaucracy.

Comrade Alejandro was an internationalist worker. When he was prosecuted in 2019 because of the Shipyard workers’ struggle, for calling the workers to fight against the factory closure that Macri government had sought to impose, comrade Alejandro received a huge solidarity from workers organizations around the world.
His “crime” had been to speak at an assembly saying that the main task the shipyard workers had ahead was to go back to the path opened with the 2001 revolutionary uprising. He was accused of being “insurgent” and prosecuted by the judges of the capitalist state and the boss politicians.
The workers of the big auto factories and sugar mill industry in Iran made a great campaign and painted the streets of Tehran with slogans for the freedom of their political prisoners and for the dropping of all charges on Alejandro Villarruel.
The workers in struggle in Cadiz Bay in the Spanish State, who had the shipyards paralyzed, had received the solidarity of our comrade and from there, they also promoted the campaing to drop all charges on him, endorsed by the dozens of workers and human rights organizations of Argentina.

Within our international current, Alejandro played an outstanding role in collaborating with the Trotskyist nuclei in Colombia that were in the front lines against the murderous Uribeist government of Duque. He was part of the organization of revolutionary currents in Bolivia and Chile, and also in Peru, where he promoted the Latin American solidarity with the Struggle Committee of the Regions that reached Lima to fight against the Dina Boluarte coup.
We are saying goodbye to an internationalist leader, a militant for the Fourth International. Comrade Alejandro, a lifetime worker, got the hatred of the oppressors, their “justice”, the trade union bureaucracies and the reformist currents that have long ago renegaded from the struggle for the socialist revolution.

Saying goodbye to Alejandro today is to talk about the more-than-two-decades-long struggle for building up our revolutionary international current, since he was, as a conscious worker, a distinguished encourager. He fought his whole life under the banners of the Fourth International and confronted those who sold it out and left it at the feet of Stalinism and the trade union bureaucracies.

Alejandro was part and a spokesperson of our current when we paid tribute to the founder of Trotskyism in Syria and the Middle East, comrade Abu Al Baraa, who was killed in 2016 by the counterrevolutionary forces of Putin and the fascist al-Assad that were supported by all the currents of the treacherous reformist left that are still in debt with the martyrs of the Middle East revolutions, in a moment when  the Palestinian masses are suffering a massacre just as the Syrian genocide or worse.

Today we say goodbye to our leader and comrade. We know that the four decades fight he waged in his militant life is not and will not be in vain. A new generation of revolutionaries is being forged in the great struggles of the world working class, drawing lessons and learning from harsh defeats and huge betrayals the masses have suffered.

Today, we pay tribute to a great internationalist worker.
Alejandro was a fighter for the militant internationalism and the workers solidarity across the world. This is the decisive and particular character of his struggle. He fought in the Shipyard and in Syria; he fought in Terminal 5 and in Colombia; he helped the revolutionary movement in Chile and Bolivia; he was a leader of an international current that fights for the world socialist revolution. This is how we say him goodbye and we pay our tribute.

We want to highlight that he was a brave revolutionary. He never stopped fighting for his ideas and convictions, first of all, inside his organization, directly and with loyalty. This is how he was formed as a worker to confront all the leaderships that betray our class and to be loyal with the masses.

Villarruel knew his ending was near. The very serious deterioration of his health announced it. Some days before his passing away, speaking to his lifetime comrade, he told her that he wanted the Fourth International flag, the Syrian revolution flag and the Palestinian flag (where one of the main battles of the world working class against imperialism is underway) to be with him in his final breath.

These flags will be with him, as they were always with him, because he rose them up and adopted them.

Alejandro kept his militant activity until his last day. He never abandoned his revolutionary struggle, even in serious health conditions. He kept on participating in meetings with his comrades and just a week ago, from the group of workers he led, Avanzada Obrera (Workers Advance) of Rio Santiago Shipyard, an interview with him was published and distributed inside the factory. His call to recover his beloved worker and militant shipyard, setting up a self-organized and workers democracy movement of coordination of the struggles that the trade union bureaucracy sells out and divides is being discussed nowadays in the factory by the advanced and perceptive workers that are organizing the resistance against the Milei government, a puppet of the US embassy in Argentina.
His relentless struggle, as it is expressed in this interview, calling the workers to trust in their own forces and to break any collaboration with the bourgeois government of Kicillof (who keeps the shipyard paralyzed and is taking it to ruin, like Vidal had done years before), to be able to confront and defeat the Milei government with the unity of the whole working class, is an unfinished task that has to be carried on by the workers if they want to keep and recover their jobs. His fight keeps total validity today.

Comrade Alejandro, your fight has not been in vain!

Till the international socialist revolution, forever!

In the moment of your departure, we pay tribute to your life fighting under the banners of the Fourth International.

International Secretariat of the Collective for the re-foundation
of the Fourth International / FLTI

 Internationalist Workers League – Fourth International (LOI-CI)
DEMOCRACIA OBRERA