Torture sites and mass graves reported in Colombia as repression intensifies against mass protests

The Marxist party is not a human rights organization that simply documents the crimes of the government. After a month of protests, the government repression has failed to subdue the workers and youth. The role of the Marxist must be to urge the demonstrators to defend themselves with weapons. The advanced communication networks should allow them to respond with timely force where the police have attacked pacifist demonstrators. They should keep a tally of police and paramilitary injuries and deaths as well as a tally of damage to police buildings, cars, and jails. In addition, the road blocks have cost the Colombian economy a large amount, and this should show up as a sum total, especially as it has harmed oil production. Showing a reduction in oil production would also help the cause of the revolutionaries as it ties the Colombian movement to the global economy, allowing it to influence and give rise to an international movement.

A revolutionary situation in which 15,000,000 people, almost 1/3 of the country, participated in protests calling for Duque’s removal from power, only a short time after the Chilean protests which brought down the Piñera government and began the task of rewriting Pinochet’s constitution and the Brazilian movement that brought down Rousseff’s government and threatened to do the same to Temer’s, a revolutionary such as this puts forward with the greatest urgency the task of building a revolutionary party. That task falls to the SEP and the ICFI. Failing to build the party will hand the power over to the fascists, leading to horrific massacres that reverberate throughout the world. The United States itself faces the growing threat of a violent coup leading to a military government that would openly torture and murder political dissidents.

The extraction of surplus value from the workers takes place at the moment of exchange, when the two sides reach an agreement. This means that the accord that the strike committee reaches with the government absolutely holds great importance for the future of the socialist movement. The workers must demand that the committee work as transparently as possible, publishing its statements prominently as well as providing video footage of their official meetings. Only in this way can the workers promote their demands within the negotiations as a way of strengthening their position in any future struggle. The protests initially demanded the resignation of Duque, but apparently with the help of Petro this demand was dropped. The decision to exclude key sectors from participation in the strike must have arisen from somewhere, and the workers should demand a response from the committee on this question.