August 2020

Tribute to Leon Trotsky, 80 years since his assassination by Stalinism

Greetings from Grupo Comuneros of Cali, Colombia “In this tribute to Trotsky we also want to pay tribute to two comrades that have fallen in recent days at the hands of the paramilitaries”   We wanted to be part of this tribute to comrade Trotsky 80 years after his assassination, the vile assassination perpetrated by Stalinism and imperialism. For us it is an honor to be here and tell you that we continue on the battlefield against reformism, against opportunism and national-Trotskyism. At the same time, we want to pay tribute to two of our comrades who were pre-militant cadres: one is Comrade Harold Díaz Hernández. The comrade was a driver, a worker for the Llano Verde jeep transport company from a neighborhood here in Cali. The partner died in an attack in which there were 15 more wounded, including a 10-month-old boy. Today the last comrades left, those with the biggest fractures, very serious fractures in the legs and arms, and who are members of the Resistance Committee and, at the same time, of the Transporters Cooperative. We want to pay tribute to those comrades. They took part of the mobilizations and carried the flags of the Syrian Revolution and the Fourth International. The same happened to comrade Jaime Monge, from ASOCAMPESINA. In these days, the Popular and Trade Union Coordinating Committee had sent the letter of ASOCAMPESINA being part of the struggles and mobilization of these sectors. There was our comrade Jaime Monge, who was assassinated by paramilitary and government hitmen and to whom we also want to pay tribute on this day. Unfortunately we are doing it to fallen comrades. But despite that we continue in the struggle and go on raising the flags of the Fourth International, of the Transitional Program. For us, the central axis is the support for world struggles, for the struggles of the Syrian people, of the Lebanese people, the struggle of the Palestinian people, the struggle of the resistance of black workers in the United States and just as we also propose it for our colleagues from France, the Yellow Vests and the Black Vests. Also for the struggle of the comrades from Bolivia and Ecuador, who have been savagely repressed and no one denounces it. And we are for the freedom of political prisoners from all over Latin America and the world. Here in Colombia 7000 political prisoners were left unprotected, abandoned by the defectors and bandits of the FARC and the CP, just as they left the struggle and the organization of the movement, which today is headless. We need to reorganize it to continue the struggle and finally unify the struggle of the labor movement and the poor peasants’ movement. Now, we are for the expulsion of the military bases in Colombia, which started an operation to control the market. The gringos landed troops in the northern area of ​​Santander and they are doing the same in the southern area, controlling the exit areas, to the south and north, for Europe on the side of Venezuela. We believe that there will be no invasion. What will be there is, simply, control of the market, of drug trafficking, as they did in Afghanistan for the control of opium for the large pharmaceutical multinationals. So we are for the expulsion of the Americans from Colombia. The fight against reformism and against national-Trotskyism must be waged openly. And organizational forms are necessary for the popular sectors, starting with self-defense, such as the militias, because we are not going to allow them to continue massacring us in this way with impunity. We know that with fascism there is no negotiation. We have the answer and it is only one. The other is the fight for land. We are calling on the peasant movement to be part of that task, for the recovery of land and the restitution of the lands expropriated by the paramilitaries and landowners. We are for an agrarian reform for the peasants, which gives them land and credit. And we work for the mobilization and the fight for those conquests, which we know will not be achieved if it is not on the basis of the revolution, even more so in these conditions of world crisis and misery that we are reaching here in Colombia, with the increase of 5 million unemployed. And the most serious thing is an offensive inter-bourgeois dispute for control of the few miseries that remain and they are being stolen. It is a dispute between them to gain control and the leadership of the state itself. In the midst of this, those who are paying the consequences are the masses and those are the massacres that we are experiencing. We wanted to congratulate the FLTI comrades. They had an extraordinary event. We were very attentive. Our humble intervention is this. And we hope that we continue to fight together.

Dock workers of Buenaaventura on strike Protest on 11/21/2019