August 2020

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

Buenos Aires, Argentina Message of Lourdes Hidalgo, survivor of the migrant-workers massacre of Luis Viale textile workshop in the 80th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky “Today, the silence is broken. We won’t keep silence. No justice, no peace (…) we demand this place where the massacre took place to be a space for memory for the migrant workers and workers in struggle and we can organize ourselves there”   Comrades, I send you a warm hug to the comrades, 80 years after the assassination of our comrade Leon Trotsky. My name is Lourdes. I am a textile worker, survivor of the textile massacre of Luis Viale Street in Argentina (…) I will never get tired of repeating what the migrants live here in Argentina. On March 30 2006, there was a fire in the textile workshop where I was working and the workers and children, who had been victims of labour exploitation, lost their lives. 65 people, 25 children were in that house. We worked 16 to 18 hours a day and we had only one toilet (…) The place was transformed into a migrant storage. This damn justice covered up the ones responsible for their deaths, Geyler and Fishberg (the owners of the workshop). They were free of charge for lack of evidence. We, migrants, will be chased all over the world, as days ago our brothers from Senegal were suppressed and incarcerated. Their‘felony’ was to go to sell and make a living (…) If we get to the streets to fight, we are chased. If a migrant is killed, there is no justice for us (…) Today we have 14 years of impunity of the massacre of the textile workers and their children. We are still standing. We won’t surrender. We will keep on fighting. We won’t let the place to return to the bosses’ hands, despite the justice has already given them the keys to the place where the massacre took place. I ask you comrades to raise this banner of the workers all together (…) Let’s break the borders. No more stepping on our rights (…) Today, the silence is broken. We won’t keep silence. No justice, no peace (…) We demand this place where the massacre took place to be a space for memory for the migrant workers and workers in struggle and we can organize ourselves there (…) I ask you to send us a letter in support to this struggle we have been carrying out (…) as well as a picture with a sign. Thank you very much comrades. A warm hug to you all.

Lourdes Hidalgo