Colombia Strike, liberal misleaders, & workers’ rage

COLOMBIA, December 4—Latin America is on fire. There have been national strikes in Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, and now Colombia. More than 10 million workers launched a national strike began on November 21 against the  austerity attacks the Colombian government plans to launch at workers. The Progressive Labor Party  (PLP) has joined these militant protests, peppering them with communist politics.
PLP was part of these marches, giving leadership to some with our chants of “To Struggle, to win, workers take power”, “Capitalism is the abyss”. We have been participating in local “cacerolazos” (protests where workers bang on pots and pans) and student and community assemblies. In addition, we support the marches, seizures and blockades, while trying to win the workers in struggle to strengthen our party as the leading force of the proletariat.
Workers snatch DESAFIOs
PLP distributed leaflets and we didn’t have enough DESAFIOs. Workers were snatching them from our hands. At times we felt like we were millions. We were inspired  and we could see the potential for revolution.
A positive development in this moment is the mass participation and combativeness of young students and of rural and urban workers. They represent our hope and their struggles influence our revolutionary program.
President Duque
President Ivan Duque intends to implement his regressive measures to benefit the big financial bosses at the head of the International Monetary Fund, OECD, politicians, exploitative employers such as Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, Santodomingo group, Antioqueño commercial group and others.
The government want to do away with pensions for future generations. They want to change collective bargaining, especially on hourly pay, vacations, health, sick pay, holiday pay, etc–  in other words, end all the benefits won by the working class through generations of bloodied struggles.  
The strike was massive, with workers, students, unemployed and home workers participating. They struck from the Carribbean coast to the Pacific. Five of the major cities were on strike, including Medellin, Bogata, and Cali.
The strike was organized by the big union federations, environmental activists, representatives of peasant and indigenous groups, student organizations, neighborhood associations and opposition political parties.
The strikes were full of anger, anger because there have been 800 leaders murdered, people are hungry, they have no access to education, health or jobs. It is tiring.  We can’t take it any more; neither can we take the extreme exploitation and repression of the capitalist system that can’t solve any of our problems.   
Liberals are our enemies
 Liberal and nationalist opportunists crawled out of their holes asking for calm to save Colombia. They proposed to recycle some leaders and put an end to corruption. PLP was present in many demonstrations distributing CHALLENGE, talking and debating with workers and offering them a communist solution. We also tackled the pillars that maintain capitalism: racism, sexism, individualism, wage slavery and imperialist war.
The struggle continues, but the fake leftists are a danger. At some point we had to confront them because they were saying that the president shouldn’t resign, that we needed a dialogue amongst all the organizations on the “reforms.” What we, in the Party, are saying is that there are no lesser evil capitalists, that they can’t solve the existing problems. Only through a communist revolution, only when the workers take power, will we be able work out all our problems.  Talking about solving our problems by voting for another political party is not going to solve the capitalist crisis. We have to make a communist revolution.  
Infiltration during the marches
The paramilitary, who are still organized to repress the working class, along with the police organized in small armed groups, went to different headquaters of social organizations, and homes of some social leaders, whom they already had inteligence on. They destroyed everything and killed anyone who was there. There are hundreds of videos showing the police attacking demostrations, police paying homeless people to break windows, or paying Venezuelans up to 50,000 pesos to ransack store fronts. With that they added to the racism aganist Venezuelans, blaming them for our problems.  The media did their job creating fear amongst the population, emphasizing all the “terrible things happening” and reminding us of the curfew.
Govt seizes pots and pans
About the looters the police did nothing. But the protesters were violently repressed with killings, beatings and imprisonments. All of this for demanding rights that had been won previously. This shows that capitalist bosses fear when workers unite and fight to politically oppose their dictatorship. The bosses would rather kill us before giving us any rights.
 A funny thing happened one night. Some people decided to go home and others decided to create the “cacerolazo” by banging pans to which the government responded by seizing the pans!  Yes, it is funny, and it happened.   
There were instances when masses of people would seize a cop’s motocycle and destroy it, showing us that our strength, defense and future  are with the masses.
There were times when the fake left asked the students to be peaceful, peaceful while the police were hitting them with their batons.  We were organized to attack, and we were able to pull a student away from the police during a struggle. It sounds like a small feat but to us it was wonderful. We were able to do something!
The struggle continues
As CHALLENGE goes to press, the strike rages on, and students of the main universities are calling for a continuation of the strike.  
We communists do not believe that the murderous capitalist system can be reformed to serve the needs of our class. It’s very important and inspiring to be active in these mass demonstrations. These struggles and discussions help us build class consciousness and the relationships necessary to understand that the international proletariat can truly destroy capitalism.
We in PLP see the opportunity; we have everything to win. We will continue on the streets, fighting arm in arm with students and workers. We will fight until the day of the workers’ dictatorship, until we build a communist system, where all workers will have everything we need. Join us!
Long live the strike. Long live communism. Long live the struggle. Fight to win workers’ power!