The Latin American Conference called by the parties of the Left and Workers´ Front – Unity, for May 1, 2, 3 and 4, has been postponed to a date to be confirmed. The rise of the coronavirus pandemic on our continent makes the it impossible – due to the closure of borders, quarantine measures, etc. – to hold the Conference on schedule.
We want to make it clear that this is only a temporary suspension until conditions allow us to hold the event. The FIT-U´s initiative has acquired an even greater importance in light of the health crisis unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic and the qualitative exacerbation of the capitalist crisis, and its devastating social consequences for working people.
In the framework of profound social inequality, increasing poverty and public health systems deteriorated by decades of cuts, all Latin American governments, from the most right-wing to the self-styled “national and popular,” have acted in defense of capitalist interests to at the expense of the preservation of the health and life of the people. U.S. imperialism, for its part, despite the fact that the United States has become the epicenter of the world health crisis, has used the pandemic to re-launch a new criminal crusade against the peoples of Venezuela and Cuba.
The bourgeoisie, most of it hit by the forced economic paralysis, unloads its crisis on the backs of the working people and takes advantage of the social upheaval to advance with salary reductions, layoffs, labor and pension reforms. In turn, political crises increase and governments strengthen repressive apparatuses, anticipating new uprisings by the masses, instead of investing all resources in favor of sanitary equipment. As a consequence of all this, the enormous social contradictions that motivated the great popular rebellions of 2019, far from having subsided, have become more acute. We are already seeing signs on our continent and around the world of resistance by sectors of the working class against the bosses’ offensive. Our Left and Workers´ Front Unity published a declaration a month ago with a program and an orientation for this historical crisis to be paid for by the capitalists and not by the working people.
This scenario reinforces the need to hold the conference when there are conditions to promote the struggle of the working and peasant masses against the devastating consequences of the capitalist crisis and the coronavirus. More than ever, the strategic task is the fight for workers’ governments and a Federation of Socialist Republics of Latin America.
Holding the Latin American Conference, in turn, will be a fundamental instrument to promote this perspective.
Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores (MST) – Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS) – Partido Obrero (PO) – Izquierda Socialista (IS)