Americas

In the three articles that Luis Oviedo has written in answer to my article published on January 7 (Marxism versus Sectarianism - Reply to Luis Oviedo) a number of very important issues are raised. These questions deserve the most careful consideration by Marxists in Britain, Argentina and internationally. However, in order to clarify the issues raised and to educate the cadres (which ought to be the aim of every polemic) it is necessary to avoid heated language, distortions and personal attacks that only serve to divert attention away from the political questions. Such an approach will only confuse matters

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The world's largest producer of aluminum, Montréal-based Alcan, announced on January 22, 2004 that it was closing its Jonquière Soderburg smelter in Arvida, Québec. In order to protect their jobs, the unionized workers of the smelter have seized it and demanded that it either remain open, or that Alcan replace the smelter with a new one.

There has been yet another general strike in a Latin American country. There is now an endless list of countries experiencing serious social and economic crises welcoming the Dominican Republic into their ranks. Haiti’s neighbour has joined the French-speaking country that is suffering social convulsions and putting the entire island into deep unrest.

The national enlarged meeting of the Bolivian Workers’ Union (COB) gathered in Cochabamba on January 22, and decided to call for an indefinite general strike with road blockades in twenty days time if Mesa’s government does not concede the demands of the October insurrection and continues with its announced austerity measures. The COB meeting “ended with the decision to take power, by closing down Parliament." This decision marks the end of the truce given by the worker and peasant leaders to Carlos Mesa’s government.

Guantánamo Bay, an American army base containing 3,000 US military personnel, is located at the southern end of Cuba. It has over the past two years been used as a prison for 660 detainees from the ‘War on Terror’.The use of the base as a prison for ‘enemy combatants’ has generated a great deal of controversy. This term‘enemy combatants’conceals the fact that the prisoners have no rights whatsoever and exposes the hypocrisy of the US government.

The crisis in housing is a product of the capitalist system. Yosef Mikhah looks at the effects it has on working people, and the need for a socialized plan of quality housing for all. From the latest issue of the US Socialist Appeal

On December 23, 2003 the US government officially acknowledged the outbreak of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in a herd of cattle in the state of Washington.This is officially the first case of mad cow in the US, but is in reality the second case of an outbreak in the integrated Canadian and US cattle industry.  The farming and cattle crisis is at root a reflection of the crisis of capitalism worldwide and a result of "globalization".

Bush's new plan for immigration "reform" will benefit only the ruling classes of the US and Latin America, Mexico in particular.  Working people will only see their conditions of life further deteriorate while big business pockets big profits. 

We publish here the statement of the founding of the Revolutionary Marxist Current in Venezuela. This country has been living through a revolutionary process for the last five years, the roots of which can be traced back to the semi-insurrection of 1989, popularly known as "Caracazo". The programme of moderate reforms and national sovereignty of president Chavez (land reform, literacy programmes, no privatisation of state companies, and above all no privatisation of the oil company) has clashed with the interests of the local oligarchy and imperialism. In this period of capitalist crisis and intensification of imperialist exploitation they cannot allow any country to apply even the

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Haiti celebrated the 200th anniversary of its independence on January 1, 2004. The history of Haiti is a long history of colonial struggle against imperialism and has recently been the scene of deep political and social unrest. It is not yet clear what the outcome of the situation in Haiti will be, what is clear however, is that the workers and peasants of Haiti can only rely on themselves to solve the problems they face.

Greg Oxley looks at the life of this labor pioneer and lifelong fighter for the working class.

There are an astonishing 44 million Americans without healthcare. Those who do have healthcare have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for it, and even then, they have to worry about co-payments, deductibles, etc. Never mind SARS and influenza - the entire for-profit American health care system is diseased.

My attention was recently drawn to an article signed by Luis Oviedo, entitled The Counterrevolutionary Position of Socialist Appeal(in Prensa Obrera nº 826).Having read the article, I could not decide whether it was the product of bad faith or simple ignorance. Certainly, the method used is contrary to every basic principle of Marxism and above all Trotskyism, which comrade Oviedo and the Partido Obrero (PO) claim to defend.

The brutal repression of the teachers' protest in Ecudaor in December highlights the fact that the period of waiting on the part of the Ecuadorian masses is over. The movement of 2000 brought Lucio Gutierrez to power, but he has merely continued with IMF policies. Now Ecuador is poised for a new movement on a higher level, comparable to that of Bolivia.

The election of Carole James as leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party represents a victory for the status quo. James ran a campaign that concentrated on one thing and one thing only… Carole James. What we did not see were any commitments to actually do anything—no commitment to renationalize the Liberals’ sell-off of public assets, no commitment to reverse the Liberals’ regressive tax hikes (sales tax, medical plan fee, etc.) or negate the $2 billion tax cut to the rich, and definitely no commitment to do anything that would go beyond the position of the previous NDP government. This is of course intentional; the view of the party bureaucracy is that the BC NDP was

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Since 1993, more than 4,000 women - workers and students - have disappeared in Ciudad Juarez. According to Amnesty International, 327 of them have been found tortured, raped, mutilated and murdered, after having been kidnapped in the centre of the city at the end of their workday in the maquilas [assembly plants in the US border region], or leaving their computing academies, their bodies abandoned on vacant land.