Colombia: Pacifism Can’t Defeat Bosses’ State Power

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, March 12 — When Attorney General Ordoñez dismissed Bogota’s Mayor, Gustavo Petro, on December 9, he laid bare the capitalist farce behind the current crisis. It clearly demonstrates to the workers that under capitalism we cannot hope to live humane lives, or, as Petro himself claims, to mutually co-exist without the big tycoons hoarding everything and leaving only a few crumbs for the working class.
That’s why the corrupt Colombian state, represented by the Attorney General, deposed a mayor who had become a royal pain because of his attempts to eliminate some of the unfair benefits enjoyed by the country’s owners in his attempts to reduce the bleeding of “public” coffers. That was exposed in the garbage collection contract whose cost infinitely exceeded its real value, in addition to similar rotten contracts he uncovered.
That’s why the organized mafias retaliated by taking advantage of the 1991 Constitution which gave supreme powers to the Attorney General. He can act autocratically, investigating, judging and sentencing, clearly exposing the nature of this “democracy.” Even more pathetic is that Mayor Petro, in his defense speech, underscored the role he and others played in writing that Constitution as something positive for peace and democracy in Colombia.
Petro asked for peaceful ways to express discontent and suggested the formation of committees of indigenous communities, peasants, students, workers, environmentalists, LGBT and anti-bullfighting groups to defend the “Humane Bogota” on behalf of a “democratic” revolution. Aida Avella, a survivor of the genocide launched against the UP (Union Patriotica), also argued, like Petro, for a pacifist struggle to defend “democracy” and praised Nelson Mandela as an example of the “possibility of social change through peaceful means.”       
Progressive Labor Party advocates many forms of struggle and in this case supports many workers organizations, but we clearly don’t believe in the false capitalist “democracy,” and even less in this “peace” being promoted since our class is murdered with bullets and misery on a daily basis.
Leaders like Mandela and Gandhi become capitalism’s useful tools in exchange for some apparent gains and a comfortable position while doling out crumbs to the working class. Just look at India and South Africa where the working class is exploited by the big mining corporations after the pacifist leaders abandoned any real struggle.
To the contrary these same “leaders” expose their commitment to pacifism by repressing the working class, as did Petro himself when he used the police to defend the “Rights of States.” Such was the tragedy for the working class.
That’s why we must organize the working class around PLP’s communist program, take advantage of all workers’ struggles, clarifying what must be the final objective, the elimination of capitalism. Then the working class, led by its communist party, can determine its own destiny and bury the handful of exploiters of our labor.  
Red Worker