revolutionary translation: May Day report from Colombia

[ for original Spanish & pictures, see below text; unofficial translation by me; source Revolutionary Communist Group of Colombia, their page is here ]


COLOMBIA -- 1 May 2006

Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched this 1 May in the principal cities of Colombia. Although, because of the nearness of the presidential elections, the bulk of the marches in the whole country was characterised by anti-Uribe sentiment and support for the candidate of the traditional "left" (Carlos Gaviria), not all was yellow, the colour of the Alternative Democratic Pole, Gaviria's party. The class-conscious proletariat made itself felt in close to ten cities big and small. From Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali passing through Bucaramanga, Cúcuta, and Pereira, to Barrancabermeja and Sincelejo the internationalist and revolutionary block tinted the landscape red.

Despite the environment of growing fascistisation, of control of the marches by anti-riot police and army, of cameras everywhere, dozens of anti-imperialists and revolutionaries, including Maoists marched raising banners and agitating slogans against imperialist exploitation, oppression, and military aggression in the whole world, as well as in support of the peoples struggles in the whole world, principally the people's wars.

In Bogotá, Medellín, and Pereira the internationalist and revolutionary block, composed primarily of worker, unemployed, and student youths, amongst them many women, numbered more than a hundred people in each of those cities, carrying banners of the World Peoples Resistance Movement (WPRM), the Anti-imperialist Brigades (BA), the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), and in the case of Bogotá, a hundred of the 1 May posters of the Revolutionary Communist Group [of Colombia] (GCR).

In the majority of the cities, a good part of the participants in the internationalist and revolutionary block were wearing red shirts with the hammer and sickle or images of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, or shirts with the WPRM symbol and in support of the Nepali revolution, which has been very much popularised in the midst of the current Latin American [speaking] tour in support of the revolution in Nepal, which in April came to some cities and rural zones of Venezuela and at the end of May will be in Bolivia.

In cities such as Cúcuta and Barrancabermeja, under strong control of the paramilitary death squads, the masses participating in small marches (between 1000 and 1500 people) valued and became animated at the appearance of detachments of Maoists which were spreading the WPRM and GCR flyers.

Tens of thousands of GCR and RIM flyers were handed out in the whole country not only during the marches but also in the preparatory events carried out in the ghettos and universities.


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