Americas

The recent municipal elections in Brazil have revealed a contradictory process, with the PT gaining in smaller towns and rural areas but losing ground in its traditional industrial urban strongholds. But there were some exceptions: where the Marxists of the PT stood the party vote went up massively and several were elected.

As 100,000 workers and peasants arrive in La Paz, this article by Darrall Cozens, written as the march was setting off, explains the issues that are pitting the Bolivian workers and peasants against the oligarchy.

Yesterday we reported on the repression of the indigenous in Colombia and the strike wave of workers in the juridical and sugar cane sectors. Today, we have received reports of further repression and a call for a national strike on 23 October against the state of emergency. We call for solidarity with the Colombian workers and peasants that are facing repression.

Canada has another minority government. Both the Conservatives and the union-supported New Democratic Party increased their support at the expense of the Liberals. However, none of the parties were able to give any answer to the current financial crisis. Faced with a lack of real solutions, workers stayed home in historic numbers with only 59% coming out to vote. The polarization in the electorate is an indicator of increased class struggle as the world heads into economic turmoil.

We have received news of a stand-off between the Colombian police and a 9,000 strong assembly of workers and peasants in Colombia in the region of Cauca. The workers and peasants are in grave danger as the state is moving in to dislodge them from the Pan-American highway that they have blockaded in the South-West of the country.

The International Marxist Tendency in Quebec has released the following statement on the federal election. "It’s time to break with the parties of the bosses, in French and in English. Whether at the provincial or federal levels, we have to rise above national differences, refuse to be divided, and insist on a single, united socialist movement across Québec and Canada. Only a united, internationalist movement can overthrow capitalism and lay the basis for a truly free, socialist Québec."

As the crisis of world and American capitalism continues to unfold, continued attacks on the living standards of the working class will eventually lead to militant strikes and protest movements. Labor activists and young workers will rediscover the traditions of the past. In this process they will break with the Democrats and move towards building their own party.

Millions of US families are being threatened with eviction from their homes, some because they cannot pay their mortgages and others because their landlords cannot pay theirs. Now a County Sheriff in Illinois, has refused to carry out any more evictions.

It was not the immediate crisis on Wall Street that has “caused” the public outrage against the Big Business bail out. This was only the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” This has simply brought to the surface deep-seated discontent that had been brewing for years.

We received an interesting letter from a reader of Marxist.com, an ex-minister of the Catholic Church, about the case of Nixon Moreno. Nixon is the leader of a Venezuelan right-wing students' movement. He has been "studying" for 12 years at the Los Andes University (Merida) where he set up his movement called M-13.

Last weeks' rallies in New York against the proposed bail-out of failed banks revealed a very angry mood. Comrades of the Workers' International League were on the rallies and they provide here an interesting insight into the real mood that is developing among US workers as capitalism plummets into crisis.

The much ballyhooed movie There Will Be Blood is supposedly based upon Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, but it surely miscasts Sinclair’s focus and technique. The movie limits itself to a study of a manic, ruthless oil prospector, more a personality study, but the novel is a much wider socialist attack on corporate power and labor suppression, top-to-bottom government corruption, and corporate control of war, universities, and Hollywood . The social and economic concerns read just like the present even though it is set in the World War I and 1920s era, mostly in the early California oil fields. 

A recent screening of Part Two of The Battle of Chile (The Coup d’État) in Bolivar Hall in London highlighted the events that led to the September 11, 1973 coup that removed Allende from power. That experience is full of lessons for today’s revolutions in Bolivia and Venezuela, and beyond.