Bogota, Colombia, May 1 — We celebrated one more International Workers’ Day on May Day. Early in the morning, close to 40,000 workers from the countryside and the city prepared their banners and got ready to march.
PLP distributed more than 150 Challenges and 3,000 revolutionary flyers that explained our communist line. We carried red flags symbolizing workers’ power and chanted slogans that generated curiosity amongst participants. Our chants included: “Against capitalists’ rule, advance communists’ ideas!” and “Peace between classes only serves criminal bosses!” Many others chants were vocalized by dozens and dozens of enthusiastic comrades, friends, and supporters.
Unlike the chants of reformist groups and politicians, our slogan, “The history of the working class is not a carnival parade,” was well received by the participants. Many trade unions called for peace, social justice and economic reforms, and members of the phony left presented themselves as saviors, to which we responded that “Peace is capitalist rule, we must organize communist revolution!”
There was a strong state military repression to suppress and provoke the participants. They broke the march with tear gas and truncheon blows, and injuried 16 protesters. Many were also arrested. We responded to these attacks by chanting, “Against the fascist state, communist revolution!” We remained together as a group until we reached Bolivar Plaza, where we folded our banners and separated, given that union leaders took over the stage with nationalist and reformist speeches in response to our slogans, “Down with capitalist nationalism, long live communist internationalism!”
We met a good number of people who asked us about the racist fascism against our Black, Latin, Asian and migrants sisters and brothers in the United States and worldwide. We met a group of beer factory workers who, tired of their bosses’ abuses, organized a trade union and gave us their addresses so we could send them our literature.
Afterwards, we evaluated this great experience in order to continue forging the unity of the international working class around the line of PLP and its revolutionary program that aims to to crush the current capitalist dictatorship and build a new communist society.