Archive for the Category 'Latin America'
The international campaign against the firing of Venezuelan trade union leader Orlando Chirino has been successful!
Below is a translation of the statement by the class-struggle tendency of the Venezuelan trade union movement:
On November 18 at 10 am, Venezuelan trade union leader Orlando Chirino received a directive issued by the Ministry of Labor which orders that he be reinstated at the job he occupied at the state oil company PDVSA until he was illegally fired in late 2007. »»»»
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An open letter to the Trotskyist left of Venezuela (USI, LTS, UST), and not to the “Trotskochavista” left (Marea, Militante etc.), from the independent youth organization REVOLUTION
Dear comrades,
We are writing because you are the political groups that have refused to capitulate to Chavismo and its new state party, the PSUV. You have have made a brave stand for the class independence of the workers in Venezuela. »»»»
Greetings to the 2nd Congress of the Federation of University Students (FEU) of Columbia
Estimados compañeros, we send you fraternal greetings.
Students around the world are inspired that you, in the face of the most brutal repression by the state and the bourgeoisie in Colombia, continue the struggle for your rights. »»»»
An activist from REVOLUTION spent one month in Venezuela and wrote a number of reports about the class struggle there. He visited workers’ protests and factory occupations, and discussed with Chavistas, Trotskyists and also “socialist” capitalists. These reports were published in the Summer 2008 issue of Permanent Revolution. They were also translated to German by the Revolutionary Socialist Organization and published on Indymedia Germany. »»»»
For the last 15 months the workers of the Venenzualan steel works SIDOR have been fighting for a new collective contract and the re-nationalization of the factory. There have been at least eight strikes, multiple demonstrations and a national assembly of solidarity. On 14 March, a demonstration by SIDOR workers was brutally attacked by the national police, leaving more than 50 workers under arrest and more than a dozen injured. »»»»
The independent youth organization REVOLUTION supports the following petition against the firing of Orlando Chirino from PDVSA in Venezuela
Orlando Chirino, a leader of the workers’ movement in Venezuela, has been fired from his job at the state oil company PDVSA. This decision by the PDVSA leadership and the Labour Ministry – under the direction of the the “socialist” government of Hugo Chávez – is just the latest in a series of attacks against the independent workers’ movement in Venezuela. With the firing of Chirino, they hope to weaken the left-wing in the trade union UNT and to bring the entire workers’ movement under government control. »»»»
How should we assess the government of Hugo Chávez?
You have to admit one thing about the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez: he knows how to get headlines of the international press. A lot is written about his anti-imperialist speeches (he called George Bush “the devil” in front of the UN assembly) and his unusual measures (he created a special time zone for Venezuela so school children could sleep longer). »»»»
What kind of party is the United Socialist Party of Venezuela?
“The Association of Socialist Capitalists” is just one component of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The PSUV, which is still awaiting its often postponed founding congress, has one in four Venezuelans signed up for the party, and of all the parties in the world claiming to be socialist, it is second in size only to the Communist Party of China. »»»»
On December 10, the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died. He seized power in 1973 when his army organized a bloody coup d’état against the democratically elected, left reformist president Salvador Allende of the „People’s Unity“ (Unidad Popular). Thousands of people died or were tortured under Pinochet’s rule, while millions of others suffered from wage cuts, drastic increases in unemployment, the breakdown of social systems like health care and education, and the spread of disease and malnutrition in the country. That’s just an introduction to „Chile’s savior from communism“, as he is called by the conservative and fascist right. »»»»