Late on Wednesday night the terrible news of the macabre assassination of comrade Robert Serra and his partner María Herrera was announced. According to the Minister of Interior and Justice, Rodriguez Torres, the two bodies were found in their home in La Pastora, Caracas.
Lucha de Clases (Class Struggle) – Marxist Current of the PSUV declares:
1. - The assassination of comrade Serra is further proof that the ruling class will not stop until it is able to smash the revolution, even if this means in blood and fire. Last night it was comrade Robert, and before him Eliecer Otaiza, but we do not know which comrade will be targeted tomorrow.
2. - Therefore, any attempt at dialogue with the so-called “more democratic” sections of the ruling class, who one day play at supporting the guarimba riots and the next day play at sitting down in Miraflores (the presidential palace) with our government to “talk” about the problems of the country, is a crass and naïve mistake which we cannot continue to make. At the end of the day these two sections of the ruling class want one thing, to see our revolution die.
3. - There should be a general mobilisation of the revolutionary people, and particularly of the labour movement, to condemn such terrible fascist action – to put a stop to this renewed fascist offensive in our country and to let the fascist right wing know that they should make no mistake, that our patience has reached its limits.
4. - What allows the ruling class to continue carrying out fascist, violent and terrorist actions of this kind, is the fact that it still holds economic power which allows it to finance it.
The assassination of comrade Robert Serra is not a “job” that is paid for with a few cents, but with millions. Only powerful businessmen, such as prominent bankers and industrialists, have that kind of money. We need to ask ourselves: Where did Saleh get the money to pay the snipers he was planning to bring to Caracas, from the opposition supporting owner of a corner bakery? No, comrades, the big bourgeois and imperialism finance these actions.
6. - Therefore, the revolution must finally take over the banks and large industries, nationalise them and put them to produce under workers’ control. Either we expropriate the oligarchy or it will end up defeating us.
7. - The struggle to eradicate the rotten paramilitary fascist corps from our country, requires the nationalisation of the big latifundia landed estates in the border states such as Zulia and Tachira, where under the protection of respectable latifundista gentlemen, Colombian paramilitaries are trained, hidden and find refuge.
8. - To do this it is necessary to reorganise, arm and mobilise the peasant militias in order, together with the National Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB), to occupy the latifundia, with the aim of seizing and expelling all the paramilitary elements, to prevent them from coming back and put them to produce under the control of peasant councils organised as Social Production Units or cooperatives.
9. - In the cities, the war against the paramilitaries, hired guns and drug war-lords must be carried out by the organised people. The FANB, under the control and with participation of the communities, together with the National Bolivarian Militia, which should be strengthened and armed, must proceed to cleanse our communities of the paramilitary tumour.
10. - It is necessary to find and arrest not only Robert’s killers, but all the mercenaries that have been imported by the ruling class from our neighbouring sister country Colombia to attack the revolution. They have played a dreadful role in the last few years in increasing day to day violence in our communities.
11. - The horrific assassination of comrade Robert Serra, is proof that the ruling class still holds substantial economic and political power. This in turn reveals that we have not yet defeated it in the class struggle. The only way to put an end to the fascist and terrorist actions of the ruling class against our people and against our revolutionary cadres and social fighters is by radicalising the revolution along socialist lines.
12.- Not to do so and to continue to call for peace and “dialogue” with a ruling class whose only aim is to take power back, by peaceful or violent means, would be a serious mistake which sooner or later will lead our revolution to a tragic defeat.
13. - If we do not want to have more martyrs, more fallen brothers and sisters, more assassinated peasants, more comrades suffering the same fate as Robert, Eliecer Otaiza, Sabino [the Yupka native leader killed by the land-owners in 2013], of Richard La Rosa or Argenis Vasquez [auto worker trade union leaders killed in 2013 and 2009], then there is no other road than to radicalise the revolution and defeat the ruling class once and for all. Comrades, it is time to rise up to the challenge!