Americas

Alan Woods spoke at a second meeting in Puebla, presenting Reason in Revolt. The meeting was a great success, and shows the growing thirst for revolutionary ideas in Mexico.

On Thursday May 24 the supporters of the Mexican Marxist Tendency Militante and the Frederick Engels Foundation in Puebla organized a very successful public meeting to launch the book Bolshevism: the Road to Revolution.

In the advanced capitalist countries people take water almost for granted, or at least they did until recently. Now more and more of us have to pay huge bills for our water. In the underdeveloped countries, however it is much worse, with over one billion having no access to safe water. Water will become a source of class conflict, as the experience of Bolivia has confirmed.

Chavez has announced sweeping measures of nationalisation. This represents a big step forward for the Venezuelan revolution and would be a serious blow against capitalism and imperialism. Big enemies are lining up to stop this process, the most dangerous being inside the Bolivarian movement itself. It is now time to go all the way and put an end to capitalism in Venezuela and spread the revolution to the rest of Latin America.

Using the old and tested mechanism of organising economic sabotage from within, the Venezuelan oligarchy is consciously manoeuvring to organise “food shortages”. The government has imposed price controls and is attempting to set up publicly owned food industries, but in order to successfully combat this sabotage it must go all the way and expropriate the oligarchy as a whole.

Just six months after Calderon assumed the presidency and the anti-fraud movement and the APPO were defeated, the situation in Mexico is heating up again. The previous showdown over the elections and the revolutionary struggle in Oaxaca solved nothing. The bourgeois, foolishly, perhaps believed that the working class was finished, and that the struggle was over. They will not be able to maintain that opinion any longer.

In the U.S., Labor Day is officially celebrated in September, and has all but lost its original political and class character. But the real origins of May Day can be traced right to the United States and the bitter struggles of working men and women for better wages, rights, conditions, and the eight-hour day.

We wish all our readers a red May Day! Here we briefly look at the historical origins of this day of struggle. 

Few people know about the true history of the abolition of slavery in Brazil. The veteran revolutionary and leader of the Black Socialist movement in Brazil, José Carlos Miranda, puts the record straight. Also available in Portuguese.

The decision by the US authorities to release the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles exposes before the eyes of the world the hypocritical attitude of the United States government to terrorism.

On Sunday, April 15, the masses of Ecuador delivered a blow against the oligarchy and imperialism by voting massively in favour of calling a Constituent Assembly. In the face of opposition of all the parties over 81% voted Yes. The situation in Ecuador is going in the same direction as that in Venezuela.

A recent event in Portland Oregon highlighted the interest that average people have in the ongoing events in Oaxaca, showcasing the dormant political energy that many are desperately trying to direct into action.