BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, May 2 — Colombians celebrated the International Workers’ Day with huge demonstrations in the country’s most important cities. They were larger than in previous years. Seventy thousand people marched here and more than two million marched nation-wide.
As usual, PLP carried our communist message to workers and political fighters, trying to develop closer ties, selling CHALLENGE and distributing more than 2,000 Party leaflets. We started the march chanting our slogans: “Who are we? Working class! What do we want? Solutions! What will we do? Revolution!” “Down with sexism, long live communism!” “One working class, one communist world, one Progressive Labor Party!” and many others against racism, wage slavery and the upcoming electoral farce. PLP led these chants.
We marched enthusiastically, carrying defiant signs, waving red flags and chanting our slogans, “If you want to change capitalism, don’t vote; organize for communism!” “Against the fascist state: communist revolution!”
As usual, the sellout trade unions proclaimed their opposition to the government of the goon Uribe Velez, and their support for the candidate Gustavo Petro, who represents their aspiration for bureaucratic posts and economic privileges for their leaders. Amid some young peoples’ dances there were satirical skits ridiculing presidential candidates; signs denouncing murders and political disappearances, high taxes and the cost of public services; and opposition to U.S. imperialism’s military bases.
Alcohol and carnival are never missing from some of these large demonstrations, particularly when organized by sellout trade unions bent on demonstrating their political backwardness. Unfortunately, they are often broken up by police repression, and by groups of anarchist youth who attend these marches for the sole purpose of confronting the cops. The ensuing chaos is characterized by rock-throwing, heavy banging and explosions, tear gas, water cannons and police rubber bullets that scatter protesters.
Undeterred, we continued marching, attempting to reach Plaza Bolivar with our chants but increasing chaos, and police harassment with motorcycles, cars and mounted cops prevented us from getting there. There were block-by-block confrontations around the Plaza that lasted several hours, with more than 30 injured participants and 250 arrests.
We see that it’s imperative to rethink the organization of this demonstration because electoral opportunists turn it into a carnival to defend capitalism. We support young people’s militant actions, but without communist politics everything turns into spontaneity and negative experiences for the working class.
Decaying capitalism produces these reactions, particularly amongst the young, whose life of misery pushes them to take wrong paths that hinder their political development. We are attempting to struggle ideologically with many of these young people and workers and hope that in the not-to-distant future we can turn these demonstrations into practical schools for communist revolution.
We’re committed to work even harder to take advantage of these moments to politicize and teach dialectical materialism to students, workers, youth, the unemployed and to the whole working class, to strengthen our party, PLP, internationally. We understand that this is the only way to put an end to this capitalist hell. Greetings to all our comrades of the world!