Colombia: May Day and workers’ fightback

COLOMBIA—The marking of May Day this year resonated with protests and masses of workers taking the streets. They are rejecting the proposed anti-worker tax reform that prioritizes President Ivan Duque and his capitalist masters represented by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Inter-American Development Bank. These bloodsucking financial bosses conspire to attack us workers and try to completely ruin the international working class.
The historical commemoration of May 1st was sharpened with this elevation of class struggle. The so-called labor “leaders” are unable to organize and convene the working class, which is more and more rejecting the calls to surrender and conform to the current state of capitalist dictatorship and wage slavery. In northern Bogotá, we have made a presence in these protests, due to the close proximity of our residence, even though our collective has been affected by the cuts in transportation and the dangers of Covid-19.
Our role in these marches has been to spread CHALLENGE and our flyers as well as talk with friends and protesters, showing them that the road to victory is the unity and organization of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and its international communist line. We are building the fight for workers’ power and the organizing all of society according to the needs of our class.
Our participation in these protests have been very enriching, because there is great involvement of militant youth and workers with great enthusiasm, bold leadership and many proposals for advancing revolutionary struggle. However, there still remains an acute need to politicize the masses with class consciousness and a defined revolutionary strategy, so as not to fall naively in folklore and the defense of the bourgeois constitution, nationalism and the state’s rotten "democracy.” To fight for the bosses’ ideas is to continue a vicious circle, where our class fails to become the main protagonist of these struggles.
The murderous capitalist system makes clear its criminal objectives and attacks us with police brutality, paramilitaries, mercenaries and assassins. In the recent uprising they have killed at least 54 protesters while committing over 20 cases of sexual abuse against women. There have been dozens of disappearances and cases of torturing. More than 50 people have lost their eyes and more than 1000 fighters against the tax reform have been imprisoned. These brutal bosses continue to exercise their armed state power, demonstrating their racist, fascist and sexist character against the working class.
After more than 30 days of protest and much political discussion we continue linking with the masses, supporting reform demands while emphasizing that the victories of these struggles must be political in order to be long-lasting. To help present our line, we share our revolutionary slogans, "Against the capitalist virus, communism is the vaccine” and "With or without pandemic, capitalism only gives misery!”
We struggle daily with these protesters to break the ideological blockade that capitalist culture has submerged us in. We need to be aware of who the enemy is and what their tricks and false ideals are, so as not to fall into the error of defending the bosses and their deadly profit system.
We will demonstrate that the fight of the workers knows no racist borders! Onward fellow workers, everything we do counts.