MAY DAY: BOGOTA

Approximately 50,000 workers participated in this well-attended march, defying bad weather and police threats. They occupied both sides of Seventh Avenue and adjacent streets, harassing and frisking workers. Union leaders carried signs with no messages, and whined about a better functioning capitalism. Peasants and indigenous groups denounced the genocide, against them during the last 50 years, because of the bosses’ thirst for maximum profits. 

There were groups of retirees fighting against the reduction of their pensions, neighborhood mothers fighting for their jobs, workers marching with whistles and horns and all types of opportunists cackling about peace, sovereignty and social justice. 

PLP arrived early. We distributed our literature, sold CHALLENGE and let marchers know about our revolutionary program. A Coca-Cola worker we knew and some veteran operators of Bavaria beer, encouraged by our meeting, introduced us to their co-workers and invited us to attend their meetings and to inform our readers about their conflict with their bosses. We chanted our slogans against wage slavery and for a worldwide communist revolution. We explained that while capitalists get richer from our sweat, we’ll be the ones who’ll bury them. Then we organized our group to raise our flag and chant our slogans as we marched. 

Some youth and workers joined our group as a comrade called out the slogans and directed the group with a bullhorn to help us chant as a single voice: “Democracy is a capitalist farce, Let’s organize a communist revolution,” “One working class, One communist world, One Progressive Labor Party,” “Don’t support any capitalist, We offer communist leadership,” and 30 other slogans. Our chants generated interest amongst the marchers because we rejected reformism, wage slavery, fascism, nationalism, electoral politics, the capitalist dictatorship, racism, imperialism — always presenting the internationalist communist revolution as the solution.

We marched with revolutionary pride, with raised fists, demonstrating our hatred of the class enemy, finally arriving at Plaza Bolivar, where we sung the Internationale. We highlighted the organization and discipline of our comrades and their active participation, and left in well-organized groups to prevent arrests by the bosses’ repressive apparatus.

At the end of the march 160 people were arrested, some youth severely beaten and local businesses damaged. Shock bombs, pepper spray, water cannons and explosives emptied the Plaza. The march was also reduced by arrests of dozens of youth before it began, starting from different points in the city, in Soacha, Bolivar, and Restrepo.