Latin America: Garrahan [Argentina] fights for all Latin America

In Argentina today a crucial struggle at the hospital of Garrahan for a monthly wage of $1800 is underway. It is a struggle that can be won by the workers but only if they break with the treacherous leaders of the unions, and the sellout ‘left’ parties that serve the bureaucratic bloc in the WSF containing all the struggles in Latin America behind popular front or Bonapartist regimes posing as popular, anti-imperialist governments. Condensed from Workers Democracy 9/8/05


Imperialism has contained the struggles for now

Imperialism and the pro-imperialist bourgeoisies of Latin America have won a breathing space. The working masses and farmers who only months ago, overthrew with their revolutionary action Mesa in Bolivia and Gutiérrez in Ecuador, have been contained momentarily.

In Bolivia, the World Social Forum led by Chávez and Castro, Evo Morales, Solares, Quispe, and the liquidators of Trotskyism that today play the role once played by the old Communist Parties of Latin America, have forced a truce with the government of Rodriguez and the Bolivian bosses’ regime. By this means they prevented the creation of a dual power organ of the workers and farmers and of a centralized militia, and blocked the recalling of the national congress of delegates of the Original Popular Assembly.

By this means they legitimated the illegitimate government of Rodriguez and the puppet parliament of the mine owners. They reversed everything that the masses had done in 16 days of heroic struggle, and made a truce until the elections in December. For that reason, in El Alto and La Paz, there are appearing graffiti saying “Solares you sold out” and “Robert De La Cruz we will hang you" (a reference to the Castroite labor leader Solares, and Roberto de la Cruz, a leader of the COR of El Alto).

All of them, as a continental bloc, supported Palacios - the successor of Gutiérrez- in Ecuador. The result: today Palacios sent the army to ruthlessly repress the masses that rose up in Amazonia, taking 200 oil wells, confronting the Western Yankee monopoly (Oxy) that robs petroleum from them, paying $12 a barrel which it then sells for almost $70! More than 60 were injured and the army remains occupying Amazonia: [See Venezuelan oil workers statement above] This is the result of the suppression of the revolution in Bolivia and the fight of the Ecuadorian masses!

The new treachery that the workers in Latin America face has important consequences. For the Central American workers, the region has been transformed by the US under CAFTA into an enormous assembly plant with the complicity of Ortega (leader of Nicaraguan Sandinistas), Shafik Handal (leader of the Salvadoran FMLN) and all the old "commanders" living today as yuppies, servants of the restorationist Castro bureaucracy.

For the Chilean workers, it means the slavery and the flexibilisation of work under the TLC. This is the "anti-neoliberal model" of Lula, Kirchner, Chávez, Tabaré Vázquez and other servants of imperialism, and the one supported by the reformist left of WSF that back these agents of imperialism! For that reason, imperialism and the national bourgeoisies can breathe freely again.


In Argentina the struggle has been strangled

In Argentina, the big wave of workers fights for higher wages, that began last December, including the Telephone, Subway, rail, education, public sector and metal workers, was strangled by keeping the disputes divided, with separate contracts, and inflation destroying any wage gains. Meanwhile, with poverty line pensions and Work Plans [work for the dole] and with public sector workers wages frozen, with the health and education budgets the lowest ever, the bosses are raking off a huge fiscal surplus to pay the IMF external debt on time.

Thanks to this treachery of the union bureaucracy of the CGT and the CTA, which once more could count on the collaboration of the reformist left (that was thrust into the leadership by the workers in those fights), today the bourgeoisie breathes easier and admits that it " continues to do good business"

Under these conditions, the struggle of the workers of the Garrahan is at the head of the fightback and faces the concerned attack of the employer's association, the government and the union bureaucracy.

The reformist left met this attack by opposing all independent class actions opposed to the hated regime of the social pact. It destroyed, as soon as it was born, the Intersyndical, an attempt to link all sectors in struggle such as the Subway workers, because it challenged the bureaucracy to break the wage freeze imposed by the employer's association and backed by the union bureaucracy. . .


The World Social Forum promotes ‘democratic’ imperialism

It is the left of the World Social Forum, that made the truce with Palacios in Ecuador and Rodriguez in Bolivia; that is now led by the supposedly "nationalistic" Colonel Chávez, who supplies Venezuelan oil to the US despite the US massacre in Iraq, and who has not threatened the interests of the rich 31 families in Venezuela or the imperialist monopolies that control the Venezuelan economy.

It is the same left of the WSF that trusts the Parliamentary Commissions for "investigating" the class traitor Lula, the greatest servant of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and of imperialism in Latin America. The same left which with Tabaré Vázquez and the Communist Party of Uruguay, is ready to pardon the genocidal military in that country today, as Menem did in Argentina yesterday.

Thus, this policy of continental class collaboration tries to throw water on the fire of revolution to defeat the masses, so that the multinational companies and finance capital can retain in control of the hydrocarbons, and other resources and super-exploit the masses of our continent and oppress our nations.

But to successfully put out the fire, they need the renegade Trotskyists and their parties – that for decades in Latin American led the combative proletariat – to be used like “squeezed lemons” to sell to the most militant workers this bosses’ politics of oppression and plunder.

We are thus witnessing in Latin America the cynical and treacherous politics of class collaboration promoted by the Castro bureaucracy and all the liquidators of the Trotskyists Fourth International who have gone into the popular struggles armed with their collaborationist programs to contain the proletarian revolution.


The Resistance Continues!

But, just as in Iraq, the heroic resistance continues. The laws of history are stronger than any political apparatus, and will not leave unpunished the currents that in the name of the proletariat have gone over to prop up the citadels of power of the enemy, their states and regimes, promoting the "peaceful road to socialism", calling to fight for "what is possible", and supporting "from the left" all the collaborationist union bureaucracies of the continent, hated by the masses.

At the same time, a picket has been set up in front of the ranch of Bush in Texas, United States. There, hundreds of demonstrators spend days and nights, next to the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, who blames Bush for his death and demands the immediate return of the troops. It is a symbol, a symptom of the awakening of the North American working class. In this awakening, which can bring about –along with the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses – a new defeat of its own imperialistic bourgeoisie, which as in Vietnam, and open up the way out for the working class and the exploited people of Latin America.

They confront and resist the deceptions, the traps and the frauds of the treacherous leaders of the workers organisations, showing the way for the revolutionary movement. It is the Trotskyists, refounding the [Trotskyist] Fourth International that will rub the tinder to create the spark that sets the prairie on fire. . . .


Garrahan is the rallying call of the workers!

"They are too left", "they follow political objectives", "They cause too much discord", "are politicized", "they will not enter dialogue", "they are terrorists", are the way the bosses’ politicians try to discredit and isolate the heroic fight of the Garrahan workers and to the militant piquetero movement [unemployed], in order to defeat these workers in struggle. Cynical gangsters!

These are the people who are going to bring to Argentina in November, the greatest terrorist in the world, the genocidal Bush, while every day they serve him in the super-exploitation of the oppressed nation! This is the government and the employer's association that "are radicalized" against workers who request a miserable basic wage to be able to scratch a living from the family shopping basket while they work all their lives in the Hospital!

They are those who "are radicalized", paying to the IMF thousands of million dollars a year, and favoring the businesses of the slave driving employer's association! They are campaigning in the election "making politics" against the workers to boost their profits! And the workers have no right to fight politically for a living wage! No more begging! No more asking for permission to strike! No more any obligation to explain ourselves! . . .


The working class must win Garrahan!

The victory of Garrahan must be the victory of the whole working class. What this heroic fight and all the others underway need is a true and authentic class politics that opposes the regime and the government of the exploiters and its policy of wage slavery and sacking. It is a political fight in defense of public health and public education whose budgets have been plundered to pay to the IMF. For that reason, to win sufficient spending on health and education, wages, work, etc., it is necessary to confront and defeat the economic plan of the government, the employer's association and the IMF, uniting the struggles of the Garrahan with those of the teachers and university students who mobilized themselves in their tens of thousands in Cordoba and which are conducting militant campaigns in Mendoza and other provinces.

· All to the Garrahan to coordinate now!

· Enough! Out with all the bosses and the traitors!

Yesterday, thousands of workers in Brazil marched against the treacherous Lula to the shout of "the workers speak: out with all the bosses and the traitors!".

This is the shout that we must raise today in the militant vanguard of the Argentine working class, and this is the commitment of the international Trotskyists of Workers Democracy.


· Living wages and real work for all!

· For a basic wage of $1800 and month and real jobs for all!

· For a national committee of struggle to defeat the union bureaucracy!

· For a Plan of Action and a National Strike!

Article Condensed from:
WORKERS DEMOCRACY Nº 9 9th August 2005

From Class Struggle 63 Sept/Oct 2005