From one end of South America to the other workers and farmers are resisting the deepening capitalist social and economic crisis. The impact of capitalism’s growing world disorder in this hemisphere, which has been felt most sharply in Argentina, is now spreading to other countries--from Brazil, to Uruguay, to Paraguay, to Peru to Bolivia.

In Argentina, strikes and protests against rising unemployment and the growing impoverishment of the working class led to the resignation of four presidents in a two-week period in December. Now the several months grace period for president number five--Eduardo Duhalde--is over, and workers and farmers are once again taking to the streets in militant protests in defense of their rights. The police killing of two young workers has only deepened the protesters’ resolve to fight for jobs and justice, and down with the Duhalde government. Duhalde, for his part, has responded by moving up the elections so he can step down much earlier.

A significant aspect of the recent election in Bolivia is the strong showing of a candidate who repudiated Washington’s "market reform" policies and privatization moves, which the Bolivian rulers since the 1980s have aggressively implemented with disastrous results for workers and farmers in that country.

The massive foreign debt the imperialists have imposed upon these countries and the entire semicolonial world--now exceeding $2 trillion dollars--serve as a mechanism for transferring wealth out of the hands of workers and farmers of these countries and into the coffers of the banks in the imperialist centers. The U.S.-funded banking institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank demand deeper cutbacks in the social wage of working people as a condition for floating new loans to meet the rising interest payments on the old ones.

Under the guise of fighting drugs, Washington is deepening its military intervention in these countries as well--from Columbia to Bolivia to Peru.

Workers and farmers in the United States can back the struggles of their class brothers and sisters in South America by demanding that Washington and other imperialist governments cancel the foreign debt and lift all tariffs and other obstacles to trade erected by the U.S. rulers. By leading a fight around these issues working people in this country can strengthen our unity with toilers of these lands and together build a movement against our common enemy, the imperialist ruling families who exploit us all to maintain their wealth and power.
 
 
Related articles:
Argentine cops kill two in unemployed protest
Bolivian farm leader rejects U.S. ‘anti-drug’ intervention  
 
 
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