Class struggles rage on amid more fascist repression here in Colombia. On August 15, a heavily-armed death squad called Los Rastrojos entered the house of Pablo Bolaños, a poor peasant, in a rural area of the State of Cauca. Several days later his mangled dead body was found with his nails pulled out and his tongue and the soles of his feet cut off.

He was murdered in the Argelia municipality, totally militarized by an Army Infantry Battalion. Cops covered the area. Clearly the death squads operate freely, backed by the Army and police.

In the municipality of Soacha, 20 youth were found buried in a common grave. People there say they saw soldiers and civilians jointly recruiting youth to work in another region with higher wages. The bosses’ media said these young people were all “guerrillas killed in combat.” But their relatives and friends labeled this a blatant lie. There have been up to 200 youths murdered recently throughout Colombia under similar circumstances.

Hundreds of youth have been slain to try to crush any kind of organizing against the bosses and their death squads. Some victims were involved in fighting in the neighborhoods and towns. One was a revolutionary-minded worker who was offered a well-paying job as an electrician in another town. He was brutally killed, along with another worker, and their bodies dumped in a town near Bogotá.

Guillermo Rivera, while taking his daughter to school, was one of 42 union activists killed so far this year. A video camera showed Rivera being forced into a police car and taken away. His dead body was found four months later.

But these fascist murders have not halted the class struggle. Indigenous people have been blocking highways during several days of mass anti-racist protests in the State of Cauca and other rural areas, demanding an end to the repression, and that land seized by the landlords’ hired death squads be returned. They have not fallen for the government’s slander of being “infiltrated by guerrillas.” An Army attack failed to stop their nationwide mass march on October 21.

On October 23, 500,000 workers, mostly state employees and teachers, went out on a 24-hour general strike called by the CUT union federation to protest the state of emergency declared by the government to smash a long strike by judicial system workers. Some 56,000 marched in Bogotá as well as thousands in other cities.

Amid the current global capitalist meltdown, the rulers’ attacks are bound to sharpen since Uribe has tied Colombia’s economy much closer to that of the U.S. Building for the general strike, on October 16 tens of thousands of public school teachers in the State of Sucre demonstrated against recent layoffs and a government plan to downgrade their health plan. It was part of a national day of protest by teachers against government attacks on their jobs.

Some 9,000 sugar cane cutters have been on a month-long strike in Cauca, affecting the ethanol and paper production industries. The strikers are demanding better pay and working conditions.
So it’s clear that the capitalist rulers’ fascist attacks, using their hired killers in and out of uniform, cannot stop the class struggle. The anger and militancy of workers and youth here offer our PLP group great opportunities if we redouble our efforts in bringing them our communist politics, exposing the reformists, union sellouts and others who say Uribe is the problem instead of the entire capitalist system. Using DESAFIO as our revolutionary ideological weapon is crucial for our Party to make serious inroads among workers and youth in the near future.

A Comrade, Colombia