In the early hours of last Thursday, September 17, we were consternated to learn about the death of our loved comrade and friend Pablo Rieznik. He had been struggling against cancer, and he did so with the same weapons he used during his whole life: strength, full consciousness, and also irreverence.

 

Pablo belonged to a young generation who was shook in mind and soul by the upheavals of the "Cordobazo" years. In those days, he played a decisive role in the development of our youth organization, in schools and universities. Those who arrived a little later were educated under the imprint of his firmness, his polemic ability, his courage.

 

In the years in which bourgeois nationalism wanted to seize the perspective of political independence of the working class that the Cordobazo had opened, Política Obrera and the UJS (the party youth) of Pablo Rieznik always stood firm, with him at the helm, leading intellectually and physically the young generation that defended working class political independence.

 

Today, when the revolutionary struggle pretends to be converted into action without memory and without a political program, Pablo's figure stands proud as an expression of the opposite: as the thread of a history and an experience, which recognizes its roots in more than a century and a half of working class struggle and organization.

 

The military dictatorship had no mediations with Pablo: he was brutally kidnapped, and we could liberate him through a determined political action at an international level. In exile, he intensely contributed to the development of Brazilian's revolutionary left and increased even more his brilliant intellectual condition.

 

His actions in classrooms and in the political arena were never separate: his wonderful books made thousands of students sympathize with Marxism, and trained several generations of revolutionary militants. He studied and practiced the science of revolution, and put science under the severe scrutiny of historical materialism, in various extraordinary works.

 

Dear Pablo, this Partido Obrero would not be what it is now without your huge mind and heart!