Against the business mafia lead by Chaves
The National Front of Struggle (FNL) grows and becomes stronger in the midst of a clear reorganization of the popular sectors
By Adrián Jaén España and David Morera Herrera, sociologists, members of the Central Committee of the PRT
For more than 16 years now, since the defeat of the gigantic popular struggle against the FTA between the US, Central America and the Dominican Republic, the fraudulent referendum of October 7, 2007, the labor and people’s movement, with ups and downs, has been going from defeat to defeat. We are experiencing a long cycle of setbacks.
The FTA tied the country to a neocolonial treaty that has implied a constant deterioration of public services and of the historical social conquests of our people, in energy, telecommunications, health, education, and housing. At the same time, the guidelines imposed by the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, with the chorus of support from all the parties of the great rich, have led to a devastating social inequality, a systematic attack on the wages and incomes of the working class and their right to freedom of association.
In the PAC government of Carlos Alvarado, supposedly “progressive”, this onslaught was intensified with the Fiscal Combo, the public employment law that freezes salaries, the anti-strike law and was crowned with the violent repression of the National Rescue Movement, while the bulk of the union bureaucracy bowed to the divisive and false maneuver of a Social and Productive Dialogue Table that did not address a single popular demand in that administration.
We maintain that today, on the eve of the national day of struggle on October 25, this prolonged setback of the workers’ and popular movement aims to be reversed. The creation of the National Front of Struggle (FNL), largely at the initiative of the self-convened Movimiento Unidos por al Caja, is the most advanced political-organizational expression so far of this process in the making.
A global framework of colossal crisis and war winds
The world situation is becoming more and more heated. On the one hand, a deep economic crisis that has been worsening since 2008 and shows no signs of improving; on the other, the increasingly likely prospect of a third world war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has marked the world geopolitical scenario during the last year, and has been exacerbated by the Zionist Nazi genocide of Israel against the heroic Palestinian people, tends to generalize solidarity, not only expressed by massive demonstrations in the Arab countries, but also in the cities of Europe and the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Latin America.
The political and economic situation of Costa Rica, a small dependent country in the waist of America, cannot be understood without this international geopolitical framework. But the world crisis is refracted in Costa Rica, as everywhere else, in a particular way. The Chaves government is the culmination of a long process of internal struggle to impose the agenda of the neoliberal period, dictated by the international financial organizations of the world capitalist system.
Tensions in the hights of power
It is clear that the bourgeoisie that wins and is strengthened, as in many other countries in the world, is the fraction of the financial bourgeoisie, which manages to break the monopoly of the banks; but with the approval of the FTA the monopoly of insurance and the opening of telecommunications is also broken, which allows the entry of transactional companies that associate with local capitals to manage and promote new businesses.
The losing sectors are to be found above all in agriculture and, in general, the sectors that produce for local commerce. Another sector that is being strengthened is that of the importing bourgeoisie, due to policies that favor bringing in products from abroad that are supposedly cheaper.
THE government of the neocolonial mafia
In the background, the dissatisfaction provoked by the application of the neoliberal measures of the two consecutive governments of the PAC disguised as “progressive”, the multiple denunciations of corruption in which it is involved, as well as the weariness of the confinement during the pandemic prepares the ground for the triumph of Chaves, who presents himself as a new face against the candidate of the traditional bourgeoisie of the PLN, José María Figueres.
The Chaves government emerges as an expression of a voracious business mafia that comes to deepen the neoliberal austerity. Its manifest objective is to privatize and dismantle everything it can in order to pay punctually to the imperialist financial organizations the swindle of the foreign debt, as well as to the local capitalist bondholders of the internal debt at high interest rates.
But to date, not only have the contradictions within the ruling class worsened, but also the indexes of support for the Government have been falling. According to the Report of Results of the Public Opinion Survey of the CIEP of the University of Costa Rica, carried out between September 6 and 11: the approval of the government’s management falls from 71% to 53% while rejection grew from 9% to 24%, each new CIEP survey, since November 2022, yields data that show a sustained deterioration of popular support for the Chaves administration.
The Chaves government, to a large extent, is an expression of the decomposition of capitalism which is reflected in our country. The bourgeois sectors that support this government are mafia sectors and agents of the US corporations, who are pressuring for measures that guarantee them advantages, perks and privileged access to the plunder of privatization and other shady deals that are orchestrated behind the scenes. It is a government that bets on creating chaos and trying to navigate over it. It is a government with authoritarian overtones, with a thuggish and intransigent president, who removes subordinates who are not subservient to him and bypasses bourgeois legislation to impose, in practice, arbitrary decisions.
Polarization and inter-bourgeois crisis
The correlate of the Chaves government is a strongly fractioned parliament, which reflects the social polarization, but which, in spite of the differences and conflicts, acts in a coordinated manner in the defense of the interests of the bourgeoisie and against the working class.
The only dissident voice is that of the Frente Amplio, but on some occasions, because of its reformist position and its confidence in the increasingly crumbling bourgeois institutionality, it is dragged along by the majority current. Such is the case of the FA’s affirmative vote for the national budget, including an increase in resources for the militarization of the police forces. More clearly, with the approval with the votes of the bloc of the Frente Amplio of a declaration condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization, in the midst of Israel’s massacre against the Palestinian population in Gaza, which now extends to the West Bank and southern Lebanon.
In spite of the existence of a deep inter-bourgeois crisis and in spite of the authoritarian style of President Chaves, there are also some agreements between the different bourgeois factions on issues which unify them vis-à-vis the working class, such as, for example, the imposition of the 12-hour working day (with the opposition of the FA), the contracting of new debts with the IMF and the European Union (with the support of the FA). Although there are discussions, especially related to cuts in certain sensitive sectors, such as housing or health, and also when it comes to favoring certain sectors such as bus groups or importers, there is agreement on policies to contain or repress the working class.
What to do?
Day by day, international economic conditions, which continue to tend towards inflation caused by the war, the restriction of credit due to rising interest rates, generate more difficult conditions for the working class. The government’s policies, which privilege the payment of the debt over social investment, are generating an explosive breeding ground. In this context, the National Front of Struggle (FNL) is a breath of fresh air. Moreover, it is not the only element that indicates that there is a reorganization of the popular organizations: the mobilizations for agriculture, for the defense of the CCSS and for education, although weak and fragmentary, are signs that there are some sectors that are beginning to fight to confront the government measures described above.
If the FNL really takes root and becomes a seedbed of cadres and organizations, a movement that advances with a democratic method and grows in determination and political clarity, it could be the seed of a new phenomenon that would open the way to a new social and political situation. But if there is no upturn in the mobilization and struggle, it is most likely that the situation will become increasingly reactionary, that the far-right sectors will advance and that the authoritarian course of the government will be strengthened. This is why the work being done in the FNL, which involves proposals for mobilization, as well as its territorial expansion, forming local committees of the FNL (bases have already been established in the Kina Kichá Cabecar territory, in Heredia, in Purral de Guadalupe and in Alajuelita) is an urgent and fundamental task. From the perspective of the PRT, we, the people’s and leftist sectors, need to strengthen this popular counteroffensive, from the opposite side of the street, from the sectors of the working people in their wide diversity.
LONG LIVE THE NATIONAL FRONT OF STRUGGLE!
FIGHT, CREATE: PEOPLE’S POWER!