Organized by the PTS, together with fraternal organizations and leaders from Latin America and Europe on the seventieth anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky, thousands of workers and students filled the Racing enclosed stadium in Avellaneda. The internationalist meeting was the main tribute in Latin America to the Russian revolutionary, founder of the Red Army and the Third and Fourth International.
From the country where Leon Trotsky was exiled, the Mexican Sandra Romero, former leader of the General Council of the university strike at UNAM, a current contact person for the Pan y Rosas group of Mexico, who participated directly in Honduras by supporting the struggle against the coup, spoke on behalf of the broad delegation from countries of Latin America that went up on the stage in the name of the Trotskyists of Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Venezuela, Uruguay and Brazil. Then Juan Carlos Beica, from the Convergencia de Izquierda passed on a greeting, claiming the call the PTS made to all the organizations that claim the legacy of Leon Trotsky to hold a joint meeting in tribute to him. Afterward, comrade Stephan, a militant of the RIO group of Germany, greeted the meeting; he announced their intention of forming a Liaison Committee with the international tendency that convened the meeting [i.e., the Fracción Trotskista]. Then Santiago Lupe, from the Spanish State, spoke and condemned the way the capitalists want to unload the impacts of the crisis onto the workers, and he announced the call to an international day of support for the general strike called in his country for September 19. After a greeting from Comrade Louise, a militant of the CLAIRE tendency of the NPA of France, the presence of the French workers’ leader from the Philips television factory and member of the dissident wing of the CGT of France and of the New Anti-capitalist Party NPA, Manu Georget, was outstanding; he spoke with a Zanon cap, which he displayed as "a symbol of a history of struggle." The leader at Philips Dreux was a major figure in 2010 in "the first experience of workers’ control in France since the 1970’s," and he emphasized that they are "firmly resolved to build a tendency in the New Anti-capitalist Party with the program of the workers’ and socialist revolution."
In turn, Javier Hermosilla, from Kraft, announced that "we are preparing for a big national meeting in November, to discuss jointly with our brothers from Zanon, from the class-conscious group of subway workers, with the railway worker comrades who are fighting against outsourcing, and with so many others, with whom we are part of what is called `grassroots trade unionism’ in Argentina."
Diana, a member of the leadership of the strike by the workers at the University of São Paulo and a leader of the LER-QI of Brazil, explained the intervention in her union’s big strike, that confronted not only the state government of PSDB (a party that is now running Serra in the presidential elections), but also the policy of Lula’s administration and the PT, of rejecting the workers’ demands and docking their pay for the days on strike, as a punishment of the workers.
Raúl Godoy, from Zanon, pointed out "the struggles of the working class in China and southeastern Asia, like the heroic struggle of the 800,000 women textile workers on strike in Bangladesh, where there are four million textile workers, most of them women, one of the most exploited proletariats on the planet. The battalions of cheap labor are threatening to turn into the gravediggers of capital, as Marx would say."
It was a very moving moment when comrade Elia Espen, one of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, asked for the microphone to announce a very important act: the presentation of her own scarf, with more than 34 years of struggle, to Victoria Moyano, the returned daughter of parents who disappeared, a member of the [human rights’ organization] CeProDH and of the PTS, who acknowledged this recognition with great emotion, by taking the scarf as a big commitment to fight. Invited to come up on the platform, Cachito Fukman, a member of the Asociación Ex Detenidos Desaparecidos, also defended the generation of revolutionaries of which they formed a part.
After seeing and hearing a greeting transmitted from Mexico by Esteban Volkov, Leon Trotsky’s grandson, the conclusion of the meeting at Racing was the responsibility of Christian Castillo, the leader of the PTS. He began by saying that we paid homage to one of the great revolutionaries, together with Lenin, from the international working class, by making a broad critical account of the history of the development of the Marxist and working class movement through the twentieth century. He concluded that "Historical experience shows that the working class is not going to allow the new and renewed attacks by capital to make workers pay the costs of the crisis, to pass without a fight. But it also shows us that if they do not have a revolutionary leadership, a real commanding staff of the working class, the energy of the masses will disappear, if the leadership is in the hands of those who seek conciliation with capital. This is the reason for the construction of a world party of social revolution, for which Trotsky fought by founding the Fourth International."
|