Versión en castellano

Capitalists should pay for the crisis. Throw imperialism out of Latin America. Out with the IMF; no payment of foreign debts. Long live the struggles of workers and precarious youths. No layoffs or wage cuts. Down with racism and police violence and repression. For a working class solution to the pandemic and the capitalist crisis.

The parties of the FIT-U of Argentina have decided to hold a virtual Latin American and US Conference on August 1st. The Conference will be preceded by three debates, to be held on July 30 and 31. This Conference takes up the initiative agreed upon at the beginning of the year by the FIT-U parties and which was suspended as a consequence of the pandemic crisis. This time, given the process of rebellion unleashed in the United States, the Conference will also welcome fighting organizations from the United States. The political and programmatic bases on which we reconvene this Conference are embodied in the declaration “A new scenario in Latin America and the need for a socialist and revolutionary solution”, in the text “The Latin American Conference called by the FIT-U is postponed”, in the “FIT-U statement for International Workers’ Day”, and in the present text. There, important agreements are expressed as well as nuances and differences that exist between the convening organizations.

The new scenario created gives the continental initiative promoted by the FIT-U parties a new urgency.

The rebellion in the United States, which has shaken the planet and corners Donald Trump, has a favorable impact on the masses of the world, generating actions of solidarity and conditioning the international scene. The outrage and rejection of the police violence and racism that erupted in the face of the brutal murder of George Floyd, are linked to the growing discontent and despair of the masses, due to the combined effect of the pandemic and a deep recession. The impact of the largest capitalist crisis in the United States led to nearly 49 million workers applying for unemployment insurance in just 16 weeks. Low wages and a paid health system push homeless, unemployed, precarious and informal workers to death. All this has been the breeding ground for the great popular rebellion that takes place there. The Democratic Party is trying to divert this imposing protest movement towards voting for Joe Biden, the establishment candidate, in the November election, to prevent radicalization. The rebellion not only represents a huge blow to the Trump government, but also gives notice to all Latin American governments that in one way or another pay tribute to Yankee imperialism, and is a call to action and fight for all peoples of the subcontinent.

The pandemic has highlighted the antagonism between workers’ and popular majorities’ health and life, on the one hand, and the capitalist system, on the other. Billionaire bailouts have privileged the rescue of capital, while economic aid to the population has been reduced to a marginal proportion. The world has confronted the coronavirus with drained and deteriorated health systems, victims of drastic cuts as a result of years of adjustment applied by all governments, while allowing and encouraging the continuity of the profit of private health.

What has been prioritized in the midst of the pandemic is capitalist profits, forcing workers to continue production, with total disregard for their lives and physical integrity. This is exacerbated in Latin America where conditions of extreme poverty create a fertile field for the spread of the virus, which has been wreaking havoc in popular neighborhoods.

The coronavirus’ outbreak has aggravated a capitalist crisis that was preexisting. The world is going into a depression, only comparable to the one after the crack of 1929. The ILO is already talking about 480 million unemployed. The rescue of the big businessmen, banks and multinationals aims to be financed with more adjustment, layoffs, increasing misery, inequality unprecedented social and environmental disaster. We are facing a deep crisis of capitalism that has its roots in the Great Recession of 2008. Wide sectors of workers and the youth around the world are beginning to draw the conclusion that this system is not working.

The new speculative cycle that followed the bailouts has not stopped capital flight in Latin America, which is combined with the payment of fraudulent and usurious debts by governments and which goes hand in hand with austerity plans under the tutelage of the IMF in order to give repayment guarantees to creditors.

In a commercial war scenario promoted by Yankee imperialism, particularly against China, the US seeks to reinforce its dominance on our continent, not only with economic extortion but also through direct interference, as seen in the aggressive policy against Venezuela, a fact that we repudiate beyond our profound differences with the Maduro regime. At the same time, we denounce that both the United States and China seek in their dispute to seize the natural and strategic resources of our region through partnerships with extractive capitalist corporations.

In this scenario, Latin America has become one of the centers of the pandemic crisis and also of the social crisis. Under the far-right Bolsonaro government, Brazil is one of the countries most hit by the pandemic. Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador have also suffered this scourge on a large scale, under governments located to the right. In Mexico and Argentina, the ‘national and popular’ governments have been very far from touching the interests of the big employers to confront the situation of sanitary emptying and the social crisis. On the contrary, they have maintained a line of subordination to imperialism, as López Obrador demonstrated in his meeting with Trump, and Alberto Fernández with his submission to the precepts of the vulture funds and the IMF. The IMF also seeks a “social pact” with the business leadership that will imply that the workers are the ones who pay the costs of the crisis.

In this panorama, it’s clear that the social contradictions that motivated the Latin American popular rebellions in 2019 have become more acute. Therefore, the opening of a new phase of great struggles and rebellions of the exploited is reconsidered, as revealed by the new national protests in Chile, the demonstrations in Ecuador against the monetarist Lenin Moreno and the growing disagreement of the Bolivian masses with the coup-backer Añez, the expressions of satiety against Bolsonaro in Brazil, the reaction of the student movement in Colombia, the new situation in Paraguay sibce June 22, the resumption of still molecular protests in Nicaragua as well as the resistance of the worker and precarious youth going on in Argentina.

The Latin American and US Virtual Conference is thus framed in a moment of historical characteristics, which poses gigantic challenges for the working class, calling to fight for emergency measures to combat the pandemic and adjustment plans that hit workers, to fight so that the crisis is paid by capitalists in the perspective of a socialist and workers’ way out. We invite the classist left, the militant workers’ movement, the rebelling youth, the feminist and environmental activism, and committed intellectuals, to be part of this Conference to debate the bases to fight under the flags of class’ independency, for governments of the working class and for the socialist unity of Latin America.

Schedule:

· Debate: “World crisis and the rebellion at the Empire”. Thursday, July 30 at 6:30 p.m. (GMT-3)

· Debate: “The Latin American labor movement in the face of the capitalist crisis and the pandemic”. Friday July 31 17hs (GMT-3)

· Debate: “The Latin American situation”. Friday, July 31, 7:30 p.m. (GMT-3)

· Latin American and US Virtual Conference Saturday August 1 2:00 pm (GMT-3)