Americas

The second day of the Pan American Conference provided a real taste of the most advanced workers’ struggles in Brazil and other countries in Latin America. Peasant leaders, Bolivian miners’ leaders, factory leaders, all spoke about the terrible conditions and expressed their determination to struggle. The idea of factory occupations as an answer to the bosses’ closing of factories dominated the discussion, as did a deep-seated desire to struggle for international socialism.

On Friday one thousand workers gathered in the Cipla plant in Brazil and decided to reduce the working week in the factory to 30 hours. The factory is run by the workers and they are doing it in a very efficient manner, an example to workers in all countries. Workers can run factories and therefore they could also run society. Alan Woods was among the comrades who addressed the meeting, getting a rapturous applause from the workers present.

On Wednesday Alan Woods spoke to 200 workers at the occupied CIPLA plant in Joinville, Brazil. He was invited to speak on Workers’ Control and the Struggle for Socialism.

Yesterday, Alan Woods spoke at another meeting in the Camara de Vesadoria in Joinville, where around 200 workers had gathered to listen to him speaking on the general world situation. The meeting was introduced by Serge Goulart, leader of the occupied factories movement in Brazil, and present in the audience was also Roberto Chavez, the general secretary of the Bolivian Miners’ Federation.

After his successful trip to Venezuela, the editor of Marxist.com, Alan Woods, accepted an invitation to speak at an important conference of workers in occupied factories from all over Latin America. The conference is taking place this weekend in the industrial city of Joinville in the south of Brazil. It is being organized by CIPLA, an occupied plastics factory in Joinville.

It is clear that Castro is now very ill. The fact that he has not appeared in public for some time would seem to confirm this. The capitalists of the world are now looking eagerly to the post-Castro era where they hope to make deals with some sections of the Cuban state bureaucracy to introduce measures favourable to the return of capitalism. But the swing to the left in the whole of Latin America and especially in Venezuela is working against this.

With a resounding victory over his rival, Rafael Correa was elected president of the Republic of Ecuador in the elections on November 26, 2006. The Ecuadorian people have obtained an important victory over the groups which hold economic and political power. However this is just a first step. The masses must be ready against any attempts of the counter-revolution.

Hundreds of thousands gathered once again in the Zocalo Square in Mexico City on November 20 to celebrate the swearing in of the real winner of the presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The movement in Mexico is revealing a resilience and determination to go on. All the conditions for revolution exist, if only the leaders would take advantage of these.

Pickets in solidarity with the struggle in Oaxaca took place in several countries yesterday. Today we provide reports on pickets in London, Moscow and Athens with more to follow soon.

After occupying Sanitarios Maracay, the workers have created new organisational forms for the running of the factory. The Assembly of workers is the highest decision making body, and has elected a 21-member Factory Committee, who are subject to the right of recall at any time by the Assembly, to organise production at the plant. The workers have also held meetings with workers from occupied factories in Brazil and Venezuela in order to learn from the experiences of other workers in the occupied factory movement.

The central thesis of this book from beginning to end is the following: that the Bolivarian Revolution can only succeed if it goes beyond the boundaries of capitalist private property, expropriating the oligarchy and transforming itself into a socialist revolution. The Revolution has begun, but it is not finished.The old state apparatus is still largely intact and a number of key economic levers (including the banks and the land) remain in the hands of the Venezuelan oligarchy.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 8, some 50 Twin Cities residents rallied outside the Mexican Consulate in St. Paul, MN.  The protestors demanded that Ulises Ruiz be removed and that all power be transferred to the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).