The third week of March 2020 began with an avalanche of measures to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus in Mexico. The figures in the state of Quintana Roo, given by the mayor of Benito Juárez on 25 March from her official Facebook page, are around 22 cases in this municipality alone, and a total of 27 in the entire state. Four in Solidaridad and one in Othón P. Blanco.

We republish here an article Alan Woods wrote on 9 February 2002 as a polemic with the Argentinean Partido Obrero (PO - Workers’ Party) on the question of the slogan of a Constituent Assembly. The debate took place in the aftermath of the Argentinazo: the powerful uprising on 19-20 December 2001 against the government of De la Rúa, under the slogan of ¡Que se vayan todos! (Kick them all out). The mass uprising managed to overthrow one president after another and clearly posed the question of who ruled Argentina: the official institutions or the masses on the streets.

Amidst the global turmoil unleashed by the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. has decided to ramp up its imperialist aggression and interference in the Venezuelan government. On Friday, 27 March, the U.S. Department of Justice filed charges of drug trafficking, corruption and the promotion of terrorism against Nicolás Maduro, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and 13 high-ranking state officials, all in an attempt to legitimise any future acts of intervention and insurgency in Venezuela. On 25 March, Jorge Rodriguez, Minister of Communication, also presented the country with evidence of a new conspiracy, organised in Colombia, to traffic arms into Venezuela,

Venezuela has entered another week under preventive social quarantine, following the government’s announcement on Friday 13 March that the country’s first cases of coronavirus had been detected. A terrible burden is being borne by the working-class and poor, who were already facing a dire economic crisis before the sanction-strangled healthcare system faced the prospect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coronavirus has arrived in the immense favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The number of cases of contaminated slum dwellers is difficult to know, because counting and recording have been done based on the officially recognized neighbourhoods, which do not cover the slums.

13 March marked the anniversary of an insurrection by a small party in 1979 – with the popular support of the masses – who ousted a dictator and attempted to throw off the shackles of imperialism. This insurrection was carried out by a party known as the New Jewel Movement (NJM), self-described “Marxist-Leninists”, who set about making a series of positive gains in a country suffering from a legacy of imperialism and slavery. Democratic structures, measures to liberate women, improved healthcare and education earned popular support for the revolutionary party in the early stages of the revolution – an inspiring episode in the history of the Caribbean.

The following open letter was issued by workers of the Hotel Transamérica chain in Brazil, who are putting out a series of demands to ensure their safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio’s treatment of the NYC Public Schools is an indictment of capitalism’s prioritization of profits over the wellbeing and safety of its youth and workers.

In order to understand what is to come it is necessary to understand what came before. In January and February 2020 the Fightback editorial board drafted the following perspectives document. This piece outlined the general processes in Canadian politics and economy in order to orient the activity of revolutionaries. Most notably it detailed the coming economic crash that would impact Canada especially hard. We said that all this crash needed was a spark to set it off, but we didn’t know what that spark would be or exactly when it would strike. Now we know that the spark was the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the end of 2019, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) announced a drop in unemployment from 12.3 percent in 2018 to 11.9 percent in 2019, that is, a 0.4 percent reduction. This change is not only insignificant, it’s also distorted: over the same period the number of discouraged workers, who gave up looking for work, increased by 1.4 percent. Informal workers – those without any kind of contract or self-employed – increased significantly, reaching a record number of 41 percent of workers who have some occupation. In practice, this means that unemployment has not decreased. On the contrary, it has led to discouragement or dragged workers into a precarious work

Workers from the Alimentos Salva Foods Company – located in the port of La Guaira – which packages food products coming from abroad that are later distributed by the Local Committees of Supply and Production (CLAP), have sent an denunciation to the editorial board of Lucha de Clases about the unsafe and unhealthy conditions in which they have been forced to work.

The Argentine comrades of Corriente Socialista Militante discuss the economic and social impact of the coronavirus. The workers cannot be made to pay for this disaster! They will not die so the bosses can continue to enrich themselves!

This statement by the El Salvadorian comrades of Bloque Popular Juvenil criticises the limited measures taken by the government to fight the coronavirus, particularly those that undermine democratic rights. Non-essential production must be halted, health services adequately supported, and the population protected. Make the bosses pay!

"We are facing one of the greatest challenges in our history," said Iván Duque on Sunday, 15 March referring to the health alarm the country is facing due to the increase in cases of people infected with the COVID-19 virus. The disease, already declared as a pandemic by the WHO, has crossed the ocean and surpassed our borders to settle in Colombian lands.

While the AMLO government has taken some preventative measures against the COVID-19 outbreak, Mexico’s response to the pandemic has been hampered by the corrupt capitalist system.