Americas

Yesterday, some 40 activists gathered in front of the Mexican embassy in Brussels. Young people and veterans of international solidarity work joined with Mexicans, Chileans and others to protest against the brutal repression of workers and peasants in Oaxaca.

The armed forces have been used against the working people of Oaxaca in Mexico. The real face of the Mexican ruling class has been shown to the masses. Here we publish a statement by the comrades of the Marxist tendency, Militante, in Mexico on what measures the movement should take now.

On 12th September 1998, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González, were arrested in Miami. They were combating reactionary exile Cuban terrorist networks. The US authorities ignored this and later the 5 received severe prison sentences. Only international solidarity and continuous and unrelenting action can end their imprisonment.

What is a revolution? Trotsky explained that it starts when the mass of ordinary people who normally are not interested in politics, rise up and start to take their destiny into their own hands. This is clearly what has been developing in Mexico over the recent period.

Yesterday's Morning Star published an interview with Celia Hart. "If revolutionaries manage to capitalise on this [revolutionary] process to our advantage, a new era of socialist revolutions will begin worldwide. But history won't wait for us and we in the organised left-wing ranks must grasp the rich and splendid process now open to us."

With its 1.4 million members, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters could well be America’s strongest union. This fall, Teamster members will be able to vote for either Jimmy Hoffa Jr., current president of the Teamsters, or Tom Leedham. A victory for Leedham could potentially be a starting point to build a more militant union, run from the bottom up.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan take a toll out on workers both in the US and overseas. How much more can the world working class take?

This November, millions of American workers will go to the polls to exercise their democratic right to vote. But since in most cases this means selecting which of the two bosses' candidates will rule their district, millions of others will stay home, unable to stomach such "choices."

Governmental crises, general strikes, mass movements and revolutions have characterized the situation over the last six or seven years in Ecuador. Now national attention has been focused on the presidential elections where former Finance Minister Rafael Correa has emerged as self-proclaimed standard-bearer for the downtrodden masses.

On Thursday October 5, violent confrontations broke out in the mining city of Huanuni, Oruro, in Bolivia, which left 16 dead and scores of others injured. Clashes started as 4,000 "cooperativistas" tried to take over the main Huanuni mine, and the 1,100 miners who work there, organised in the powerful Bolivian Union Federation of Mine Workers, FSTMB, defended the mine.

The Bolivian revolution is at the crossroads. The government has moderated its policies and retreated on many fronts. The reaction manoeuvres against the government and any of the reforms its attempts to implement. There exists a mood of confusion and anger amongst the masses, which at any moment could explode into a fresh insurrectionary movement.