English

12/12/2018

The struggle for the migrants, international workers.

  1. Migratory waves in Latin America, with thousands of Salvadorians, Hondurans, Guatemalans and Venezuelans escaping from the penuries of social misery, are the most accurate expression of the incapacity of capitalists governments across the spectrum to offer an exit to the impoverished masses of their own countries. On the contrary, these governments have taken care of discharging the capitalist crisis on the laborious masses. The deep social and humanitarian crisis that thrusts migration affects all from Honduras – which since 2009 is governed by rightists emerged from the coup orchestrated by Yankee imperialism – to Venezuela, governed by the most radical expression of Latin American bourgeois nationalism. The attending organizations of the Latin American Conference convened by the Argentine’s Partido Obrero and Uruguay’s PT (Workers’ party), declares us unconditional defenders of the rights of migrants from all countries. We repudiate the xenophobic expressions and actions, and compromise ourselves in the practical struggle that migrants pursue for their survival against the anti-migratory policies of imperialism and the governments of the continent. We do so, raising the flag of the international solidarity of the working class and the struggle for the Socialist Unity of Latin America.
  2. The picture of migration presents chilling figures. Refugee applications in Mexico triggered to a 1,000% in five years, to almost 15 thousand in 2017. The government only approved a tenth part of those applications last year (El País, 10/23). New caravans part from Honduras and have more than 7 thousand people (according to the attached spokesman of the UN, Farha Azis Haq, quoting an estimation from the International Organization for Migration). In contrast with the harassment from governments, xenophobia and the trampling over circulation rights by the capitalist governments, the caravan receives every time more solidarity from the peoples it goes through. Inhabitants remember the support them very selves received from migrants in opportunity of a devastating earthquake that took place in 2017. A correspondent from the Mexican La Jornada (11/2) reports of blankets and clothes donatives in the northern border, where the security forces prevent migrants from passing as part of a training facing a possible arrival of the caravans. More than 3000 Nicaraguans have asked for asylum in Costa Rica running away from the protests repression by Daniel Ortega’s government or the brutal unemployment provoked by the political crisis.


Venezuelans migration is over 2.3 million since 2014, due to Venezuela's rapid deterioration and its hiperinflation which has deepen departures. Venezuelan migrants take the southern road towards the Ecuador, Perú and Argentina; they travel by bus more than a thousand kilometres on the Venezuelan – Ecuadorian border. On the Brazilian side, some political groups foster xenophobia, putting forth a closure of borders and even the expulsion of migrants. Even before Bolsonaro's raise to power, there have been attacks on migrants camps, particularly Venezuelan. Bolsonaro's speech ignited attacks, mounted on the stigmatization of Venezuelan migrants; there may be a great offensive ahead.


  1. Trump announced he will order the arrest for indefinite time of migrants that cross the border illegally and that those who cross without papers won’t be able to ask for asylum. He also anticipated the construction of large refugee camps. Moreover, he doubled his attack against the migratory caravan that aims at arriving in the United States. He announced he will deploy 5 thousand soldiers on the border and that those troops – which will join some hundreds from the National Guard – will be instructed in order to act. The Mexican government plays a key role in what was called a stopper operation, preventing the advance of the caravan from Mexico to the US. This reactionary service to imperialism counted with the consent of the elected president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which even before assumption anticipated the reactionary and pro-imperialist perspectives that his government will assume. It is also pertinent to point out that the Democrats were the ones that started to build the wall with Bill Clinton and that the very same Obama beat every record in deportations matter (violence against migrants is a State’s policy of Yankee imperialism).


Nowadays, the main caravan that was going towards Texas, changed its course and it’s going through the safest crossing in the area of Tijuana, directly to California, due to the bands which act in the region who are operating in the way, which have kidnapped some hundred migrants, among them around 65 children, as it was denounced at Puebla's district attorney's office. The migrant caravans suffer from the most extreme vulnerability, more than a half of them are women and children which are in risk of falling victims of mafias.


 


4- The new migratory process in Latin America has its precedent in the European migrations, where thousands of migrants and refugees escaped from the penury of the war and the misery that its peoples were led to. In Argentina, historically, different jobs as construction, textile, agriculture, were done by neighboring countries workers. The bourgeoisie uses the migratory processes in order to advance in labor flexibility. We have that in Argentina with the case of the Venezuelans and Colombians which are leaving their countries because of the economic difficulties they are living. After the necessity and urgency decree 70-2017 against migrants, the raids against Senegalese people,  the increasing blockages to residency paperwork and the non-stop raise of deportations, express expulsions, etc., in the last few weeks official and opposition started a competition in xenophobia matters, accentuated after Bolsonaro's victory. Macri as well as the security minister Bullrich insist on an alleged link between migrants and crime. Pichetto from the PJ (Peronist) block, also on this line, attacked 4 young men from Paraguay, Turkey and Venezuela, who were arrested the day of the mobilization against the budget, demanding their deportation and afterwards he questioned the opening of humanitarian help for the Venezuelan exiled. Anti-migrant policy was a detour axis from the failure of Macrism and a factor of concealment of political repression.


Today migrant workers show they are class brothers because EVEN under these conditions, they are struggling side by side with us, the best example is constituted by the apps workers which are giving a strong fight for their rights.


5- The course of the construction of the EU is determined not only because of its internal disequilibrium, contradictions and interest conflicts of the member states, including its relation with the hegemonic state, Germany, but above all, because of the development and sharpening of the unresolved global contradictions which are the engine of the world crisis of capitalist economy. The wave of refugees in Europe is a symptom of the disastrous consequences of the imperialist war in the Middle East and Africa; the Central American caravans are a clue of the devastation of the “backyard” by the imperialism, which encouraged the genocidal regimes that spread the region with hundreds of thousands of deaths. This situation of barbarism and political brutality is the best evidence that the capitalist system is exhausted.


In Germany, the far right of Alternative für Deustchland –AfD-, which turned itself now into the second stronger party with 92 parliamentary seats, initially began as a group of intellectuals fiercely conservative in extreme who fought the monetary European union and demanded, firstly, an immediate Grexit, the forced expulsion of Greece from the Eurozone and the EU in order to defend the German contributors. Later, migration turned into the main propaganda objective. Its main reasoning is that immigration is incompatible with the German Welfare State and would destroy the living standard of the diligent German citizens. It must be noticed that the majority of the political predominant members are educated men from the higher class, coming particularly from liberal professions (doctors, lawyers, professors, etc.) (Timothy Garton Ash, It’s the Kultur, Stupid, New York Review of Books December 7-20, 2017, Vol. LXIV, Number 19, p. 4) and are socially different from the lumpenage that dominates the  Nazi “Golden Dawn” from Greece.


  1.  Without the unconditional defense of migrants, refugees, and all harassed minorities, without open-border policies and the fraternization of all oppressed groups, the emancipation of the working class is not possible. The revolutionary role of the working class rooted in the production and in the social relationships of bourgeois modernity may be completed only if it acts as a universal class, who cannot free itself from capitalist exploitation without abolishing all oppression relationships, yoke and humiliation from one human being to another.


“We migrants are not criminals, we are international workers!” is one of the deep slogans from whom take part in this caravan. The unity of the workers without border distinction is decisive in order to defeat the xenophobic tendencies that governments impulse with the purpose of strengthening their oppression.


  1. We call for an international solidarity campaign with migrants. Such campaign is a strengthening factor of the class consciousness of workers and strengthening of the unity of the working class and proletarian internationalism. In Argentina our party intervenes directly in the organization and struggle of migrant workers from the whole world that develop in Argentina their struggle against xenophobia and racism.


  • All our support and solidarity to the Central American Migrant caravan
  • Down with the persecution and provocations from the fascists against the Venezuelan refugee camps in Brazil
  • We repudiate the antimigration laws and denounce the campaigns which aim to abolish existing rights, e.g. the debate over “reciprocity” laws
  • It is necessary to impulse an international campaign in defense of migrants’ rights. We call all combative workingclass organizations from all the continent to take this struggle in their hands.
  • For the international unity of workers, for the Socialist Unity of Latin America


(Voted for by the Plenary of the Migrations Commission)