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To the workers and the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean
Capitalism in the acute phase of imperialism, in order to increase their rate of profit, augments its worldwide attacks on workers, particularly on our Latin American Continent and on the
At present, the plunder on our natural resources to try and get out of the deep political and economic crisis that capitalist system has been undergoing, is overt and brutal. The rich soil getting impoverished together with the people that inhabit it. We witness unlimited extraction of wealth, raids on biodiversity, the thriving of agribusiness which leaves streaks of poverty and blood wherever it goes. It drives our people out of the countryside forcing them to wander through cities suffering the anguish of unemployment. They privatise our mineral wealth and hand it over to the multinationals. There is absolute degradation of the environment, destruction of forests, woods, rivers, seas and airs. The scourge of famine looms over mankind with the crisis created through the prices of food imposed by the policy of imperialism, the multinationals and national bourgeoisies of using great extension of land for growing crops intended for production of bio fuels, encouraging monoculture and increase of price of food, further deteriorating the already precarious purchasing power of salaries and wages.
Capitalism transforms what should be benefit for all into benefit for few. Attempts at privatising drinking water are a clear expression of that.
Apart from shockingly exploiting cheap labour, the capital imposes the loss of previously acquired rights. Imperialism and their junior partners, national bourgeoisies, demand neoliberal reforms and servile governments comply. By increasing the time of service through provisional reforms, they have practically impeded workers from retiring. With the flexibilisation of labour laws, they have made work precarious and put an end to regulation of labour day. In many countries work under shot term contract prevails and a great many workers survive on informal jobs With the reform at all levels of our state-owned education out youth is transformed into labour for immediate consumption while control and discipline of the new generation accrue. Whole countries are being transformed into exporting platforms, with a workday regime that is similar to slavery.
Workers shed their sweat, their health and even their lives on the assembly lines due to hallucination pace of work. The numbers of workers with work blemishes are staggering. In the countryside, one can often see farmhand die, often worn out due to the extenuating work in the agribusiness or, on other occasions, in struggle to obtain a tiny plot of land where to live and bring up their children decently.
Cultural features of our people undergo outrage for capital does not admit the diversity of our nationalities. To the eyes of imperialism we are nothing but standardized mass for exponential exploitation. An expression of that can be found in the recent European directive to return all the immigrants of all the parts of the world, who arrive there in quest of jobs and a decent livelihood.
The toiling masses are exploited as class and in that exploitation it is women, Negroes and native peoples who suffer most.
The foreign debt, obviously immoral and impossible to pay, suffocates the region financially and prevents its economic development.
The governments that come one after the other are accomplices of this situation, for they are responsible fro the application of the plans dictated by the international financial organism. They are direct or indirect representatives of imperialism, whether American, European or Japanese.
They snatch away workers’ right to work, turn their jobs precarious, the take land away from peasants; they reduce the obligation of the State with respect of the poor population through privatisation of public services, outsourcing civil servants and the call to reduce State to a bare minimum. The state turned minimum for the poor and maximum for the rich.
The application of the so-called compensatory policies, such as “family bag” in Brazil or “plan emergency” and “plan equity” in Uruguay have been proposed by World Bank in order to contain social explosion. They are crumbs that fall from the rich people’s tables packed with food and so eternise poverty.
But in spite of all these attacks and also because of them, the application of these imperialist plans did not take place in a peaceful haven. Our people resist heroically. The toiling masses find the most diverse manners of confrontation. The Argentine teachers of Neuquen and
More often than not, these struggles are betrayed by most of the traditionally constituted leaderships who have long ago abandoned the struggle for they no longer respond to the needs of the class. They are old bureaucratised leaderships that have settled down in the trade union apparatus and become useless as tools and, since they opt for class conciliation instead of class struggle, they have become functional to the apparatus of capitalist domination. In order to control workers movement and trade union, these bureaucracies joined the great world apparatus (the CSI, daughter of the SILOS and the CMT, and in the region, the CCA daughter of the CLAT and the ORIT, old pro imperialist and pro employers) centrals.
The struggles are atomised, without the necessary unification in each sector, mobilisations are produced in an isolated way. However, these struggles are often radicalised, of great courage. This is perfectly valid proof that what is needed is consistent leadership capable of drawing all those struggles together.
Young students have been protagonists of memorable struggles with massive demonstrations. They are university students, high school students and students of technical schools and the occupy streets, squares, campuses, schools and deaneries demanding improvement of their curricular programmes committed to thorough changes, because education is not merchandise.
Trying to contain these struggles, our rulers attack workers and youth of the region brutally. They deny them the right to strike and negotiation, impede the right to join trade unions, dismiss workers and use police brutality and all the state repressive apparatus. How many times has the soil of our land been stained with blood of our people shed by official or paramilitary weapons! On other opportunities our activists were dragged away to tribunals and jails as part of an attempt at criminalising movements of demands and resistance reaching such extremes as the genocide in Colombia.
So as better ensure the exploitation of the wealth and cheap labour, imperialism is militarising the continent. In some countries, with the implantation of American military bases, with joint manoeuvres in the countries of the South Cone and reactivating the IV Fleet.
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Economic, political and military imperialist interference in the national life of the countries of the region is so brazenfaced that we can assert that there is no sovereignty in the Latin American and Caribbean countries, something that is evidence with the attempt of dividing
We understand that, in order to put an end to the exploitation and poverty, it has become necessary to declare the second continental independence, a real independence that will free the working class of the capitalist yoke, that will transform Latin America and the Caribbean into a territory free of oppression and exploitation, that will turn our people into a sovereign nation. A second continental independence heading towards the construction of a society without exploiters and exploited.
There is no intermediate way: to break off with imperialism it is necessary to break away with capitalism and advance towards socialism with the expropriation of the multinationals and the interruption of payments of the foreign debt to the bankers.
For all the above stated facts, the ELAC call for unity of all the fighters of the continent to resist attacks of the capital, whether imperialist or national. We call for integration in the struggle of all the organisations that are protagonists of these confrontations in the cities or in the countryside. This Encounter has started building of a Latin American and
We are many voices, a sole struggle, and a sole people!
1) Against the exploitation and oppression of the workers and the people
2) For decent jobs for everybody
3) Against the criminalisation of social movements. Down with the repression of struggles and organisations of workers, against layoffs and threats. We expose penalisation, persecution and genocide in
4) For Class independence. For workers’ organisations autonomous and independent from imperialism, the bourgeoisies, the State, the governments and the parties. For freedom for trade unions.
5) Unity of workers all over the world
6) Economical food for all. Land reform. Nationalisation under workers’ control of foreign trade of food
7) Against the discrimination of native peoples, women, negroes and homosexuals
8) Against neoliberal reforms
9) For nationalisation with no indemnity and under workers’ control of natural resources of Latin America and the Caribbean (hydrocarbons, precious metals, iron, water, biodiversity, and others) No to joint ventures and for re-nationalisation without indemnity and a hundred per cent national
10) Against privatisation of public services, education, health, social security, state owned companies, water and re-nationalisation of all privatised companies.
11) For the non payment of foreign and home debt
12) Against the Free Trade Agreements (FTA) or similar ones (TIFA, Treaties of protection o investments, etc) in Latin America and the
13) Against collaborationist central
14) Our with foreign troops from
15) Out with imperialism from Latin America and the Caribbean, from
16) For a second independence, real and sovereign. For self determination of all the oppressed people.
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKERS OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE
LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF THE PEOPLES OF THE REGION!
LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF WORKERS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD!
