Chile - February 15th, 2022

While thousands of Venezuelan migrants on the Bolivian and Chilean border ask to enter Chile to escape from hunger and repression that they would suffer under the allegedly "progressive and anti-imperialist" government of Maduro

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PINOCHET REGIME CLOSES THE BORDERS AND DEPLOYS THE MURDEROUS ARMY TO STOP THE ENTRY OF STARVING MIGRANTS!

WE ARE ALL MIGRANTS!
Because we are all looking for jobs, we are unemployed and we are hungry!

Open the borders! Decent papers, healthcare, jobs and housing for all migrants!

With the excuse of "crime", the Chilean government wants to legitimize the militarization and xenophobic attack against migrants. Thus, on February 14, Sebastián Piñera’s government declared the state of exception in northern Chile and the regulation of the migration law was approved in the Chilean provinces: Tamarugal, El Loa, Arica and Parinacota, closing the Chilean border with Bolivia and Peru. That is why the Chilean government has reinforced the border by air and land with regiments the Armed Forces and Carabineros.
Thousands of Venezuelan migrants, including children and women, are begging to enter Chile as they escape from hunger and repression that the government of Venezuela (Maduro) has subjected them to; such government was shown by the Left as a ‘progressive and anti-imperialist’ government". So far this year at least 20 migrants have died, including a six-month-old baby who was carried by her mother, died mainly due to the cold and inhumane conditions suffered by migrants at the borders living in precarious tents.
The Chilean government uses a xenophobic, discriminatory and nationalist speech, based on two days of strikes and mobilizations of Bolivian and Chilean truck drivers who demanded more security on the roads and the curbing of migration through clandestine paths, after the death of a transporter last Thursday, during an alleged confrontation with a group of foreigners. Today, the Pinochetist government shields the borders and gives way to xenophobic attacks by fascist groups towards migrants, and it has deepened the expulsion of foreigners, sending them back to the border with Bolivia.
These events follow what happened in last September, when Piñera’s government cracked down brutally on the migrants in Iquique (in Plaza Brasil) with its carabineros (Chilean police, TN) and the next day, reactionary sectors of that city mobilized, where the fascists unleashed their xenophobic and racist fury burning the tents, mattresses, blankets used by Venezuelan migrants to sleep and survive in the squares and beaches. Likewise, this attack is not different from what Biden did with the Haitian migrants, with the massive deportations applying the “Trumpist” migration plan against the exploited. That is why, this attack is not only against Venezuelan migrants, but it is an attack on the entire working class and warns us of what these regimes, supported by fascist sectors financed by the bourgeoisie and imperialism, are capable of.
These governments shown as "progressive" by the reformist Left, like Evo Morales and his partner Arce, have only made the Bolivian working class endure the full weight of the crisis, forcing them to emigrate to Argentina, Brazil and Chile to work. They are forced to work in conditions of slavery in the sewing sweatshops or in the country. He treated the 10,000 Venezuelan refugees who were in Bolivia even worse; 40% of them were women who suffered hunger and super-exploitation, which is why they emigrated to Chile or other countries driven by misery. Arce continues Añez’s work, who mobilized the Armed Forces in 2020 to protect the entry of Bolivians in the border with Chile (Pisiga). This is also what the so called "progressive" governments like Castillo in Peru, Maduro in Venezuela that are brave to crack down on workers and poor workers, but they are extremely coward to confront imperialism and the IMF to whom they never "closed the borders" as they deepen colonization plans.
This situation takes place a few weeks after the Boric’s government inauguration (which the left also painted as "progressive" and even called him to vote against the Chilean "right"), however he shook hands and met with the murderer and hated Piñera who ends his mandate beating up migrants. The damned civic-military regime seeks to wash its clothes with Boric as its new administrator, but he comes to keep the regime intact with his genocidal generals and the U.S. FTA the who bleed the nation dry and seek to deepen the looting by the transnationals and the Chilean copper.
That is why it is a fundamental task of the Latin American working class to fight:
May the borders be open! Jobs, decent life, papers, equal trade union and civil rights, housing and decent wages for all migrants and refugees!
May the unions and labor organizations of Chile-Bolivia affiliate migrants and refugees as honorary members, so that they can fight together with their class siblings throughout Latin America against the governments and regimes that starve the people!
Migrant committees in all unions!
So that everyone can work: sliding scale of wages and working hours!
One more shift in all the factories for the unemployed and migrant workers to be able to work. We want decent jobs for everyone now!
They close the borders to us migrants, but they open the borders to the transnationals! Out with the IMF!
Down with the xenophobic governments, the Bolivarian governments that are supposedly "progressive and anti-imperialist" and that serve imperialism, applying the worst attacks to the working class in Latin America, crowding the refugees and Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, Haitian migrants into real concentration camps and ghettos!
Stop expelling and cracking down! For self-defense committees of the workers and popular organizations to defend our migrant siblings from the repression of the murderous cops and the fascist gangs!
From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, the same class, the same struggle!
For the workers and exploited of the world to live, imperialism must die!

Socialist League of Internationalist Workers of Bolivia (LSTI)
Workers' Democracy of Bolivia
Adherents to the Collective for the Refoundation of the IV International / FLTI