Freedom Road Socialist Organization salutes the heroic Colombian people’s fight for national liberation from U.S. Imperialism.
We denounce the role of U.S. corporations in Colombia such as Coca-Cola, BP Amoco, Occidental Oil, and Drummond Coal. They hire death squads to repress the militant trade union movement and try to divide up Colombia’s resources in their own interests. The U.S. Government pours over $2 million a day into the war in Colombia in the interest of protecting big oil. The oil workers’ union, USO, is leading a militant and heroic strike against attempts by U.S. and British oil companies in collusion with Colombian President Uribe to privatize the national oil industry. We salute the union oil workers and their brave leaders!
We support the Colombian people’s right to arm themselves against the government. We support both the armed and unarmed insurgency—they are two fronts for the same cause. The Colombian Government and its paramilitary death squads are responsible for countless crimes against the people. We denounce the daily murders, disappearances, and threats to trade unionists, human rights workers, indigenous people, students, and peasants. We denounce the Colombian Government’s use of massacres and fumigation as collective punishment for communities who support the right to organize for social justice. The Colombian Government, with the fascist terror of the paramilitaries, protects only the interests of a handful of Colombian capitalists and foreign corporations. They must be removed from power.
The Colombian people’s struggle is an inspiration to revolutionaries around the world, but especially in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The resistance to U.S. Imperialist Globalization and Neo-Liberalism is strongest in the northern countries of Latin America, and revolutionaries are uniting. The White House sneaky plots and dirty plans for both Colombia and Venezuela have failed miserably. The Bolivarian Movement for sovereignty and national independence in the nations of the region is growing and consolidating. The coming revolution in Colombia promises to turn all existing social relations upside down and put the workers and peasants in power.
We denounce the U.S. Government’s support of the Colombian Government through Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia provides military training, personnel, intelligence, attack helicopters, guns, planes, equipment, and fumigation chemicals for the Colombian Government’s war against their own people. $3 billion in U.S. tax dollars has gone to a dirty war in Colombia. We say “No More U.S. Aid! No More U.S. War!” Freedom Road Socialist Organization will continue to build the movement against Plan Colombia and U.S. corporate greed.
The FARC-EP and the ELN wage a courageous fight against imperialism for the Colombian people’s control of their own land, labor, human rights, and for their very lives. Congratulations to the FARC-EP on 40 years of struggle for peace, sovereignty and social justice!
