From Brazil - hommage to comrade Tonhao

Homenagem ao companheiro Tonhão

 

 

Reproduzimos este artigo da Liga Operária em homenagem ao companheiro Tonhão, falecido recentemente. A reportagem de A Nova Democracia cobriu o ato realizado em Belo horizonte em sua homenagem e publicará um artigo sobre a sua vida e luta nas ‘Figuras da Classe Operária’ na próxima edição.

Por Liga Operária

O Companheiro Tonhão foi, acima de tudo, um revolucionário, um combatente da classe. Como tantos heróis anônimos do proletariado, Tonhão não é uma figura conhecida. Ele nunca buscou reconhecimento pessoal, sempre se dedicou inteiramente à causa de libertação de nosso povo e do socialismo.
Filho de uma família de operários revolucionários, nasceu em 3 de outubro de 1947 no povoado de Marinhos, município de Brumadinho, em Minas Gerais. Viveu, trabalhou e lutou a maior parte de sua vida em bairros proletários das regiões industriais de Belo Horizonte e Contagem.
Sua mãe, uma camponesa que ao vir para a cidade nos anos de 1940 se tornou uma proletária, foi o primeiro membro da família ao ingressar nas fileiras do Partido Comunista e conduziu todos seus filhos para a militância.
Em meados da década de 1960, Tonhão e um grupo de companheiros romperam com o PCBrasileiro dirigido por Luiz Carlos Prestes, fundaram a Corrente Revolucionária e, logo em seguida, aderiram à Ação Libertadora Nacional, dirigida por Marighella.
Atuou na histórica e vitoriosa greve dos metalúrgicos da Belgo e Mannesman em 1968, que obrigou os generais a ceder um aumento aos trabalhadores.
Participou de diversas expropriações de bancos e outras ações armadas, entre elas se destacou a expropriação do Banco de Minas Gerais, também em Ibirité, ação na qual foi preso após enfrentar o cerco policial para possibilitar a retirada de seus companheiros. Cumprindo uma orientação da ALN de não se entregar vivo aos verdugos do regime militar, Tonhão deu um tiro no próprio peito, mas sobreviveu. Ainda no hospital foi torturado pelos covardes carrascos militares. Passou anos na prisão e manteve irredutível posição de defesa da luta armada e da revolução.
Após ser solto, enfrentou diversos problemas de saúde, mas continuou apoiando como pôde a luta de nosso povo. As sequelas físicas e mentais provocadas pela prisão e torturas debilitaram muito a sua saúde. Suportou e enfrentou todas essas dificuldades com firmeza e dignidade.
Em 19 de janeiro, na sede do Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos de BH/Contagem e Região, foi realizado um ato em homenagem a esse bravo companheiro que faleceu em 2 de setembro do ano passado, após enfrentar um câncer e uma grave cirurgia para reparar problemas circulatórios resultantes de um tiro que recebera em um enfrentamento com a polícia nos anos de 1960.
Várias pessoas entre familiares, companheiros de luta, dirigentes sindicais e representantes de organizações classistas compareceram ao ato convocado pelo Movimento Feminino Popular e pela Liga Operária. Com canções e poemas revolucionários, depoimentos sobre a vida e luta de Tonhão rendemos nossa sincera homenagem reafirmando nosso firme compromisso de prosseguir com a sua luta.

Publicado por dazibao rojo en 12:29 a.m. No hay comentarios:

in the next days issue of acts with all interventions of international conference support people's war hamburg 24 november

A presentation of these acts will be organised in various countries with the presence if International Commitee
News about new phase of actions in the world will be presented and debated
all peoples, parties and  organisations that want to realise these events

info-contact
csgpindia@gmail.com

Unofficial traslation

The meeting of the International Committee to support people's war in India was held in Italy on January 19th to assess the great success of the International Conference held in Hamburg on November 24 last year.

All the forces part of the Committee attended the meeting or given their support in various forms.To them were added other participants from Spain and Brazil.

After the introducing speech and the debate, the meeting has made several decisions, in all fields of activity, that will be included in the report being prepared that will submitted internationally for the discussion, by sending directly to all the participating and interested forces.

The first decisions are:

1) The issuing, within this month, the booklet of the Conference in English, Italian and Spanish, and, in the next months, relying on the forces that wish to take up this task, in French, Spanish, other languages (Turkish, Hindi, Arabic, etc..).

2) The participation of the Committee in different countries at the international initiatives for 8^th March and 1^st of May.

3) To promote a new militant international day of struggle, to be held within springtime, in forms coordinated with the Committee, in as many as possible countries in the world. The date will be agreed following the consultation with all the forces of the international conference.

The meeting calls all forces and the comrades to join more and more in the ranks of the International Committee under the slogans and spirit of the great International Conference of Hamburg.

International Committee to support people's war in India
January 2013

csgpondia@gmail.com

France : Manifestation à Lille pour Georges Abdallah

Quarante personnes,  ont manifesté ce dimanche pour la libération de Georges Abdallah. La manifestation a traversé les marchés d’un quartier populaire de Lille avec de terminer devant la préfecture. Appel a été lancé pour le samedi suivant.

¡Abajo la intervención imperialista en África!

Apenas acaban de retirar las tropas (de combate) de  Afganistán (aún quedan 1.400 efectivos para "formación" y "logística"), cuando el imperialismo francés ya interviene en Mali.

Al hablar de intervención militar:

·         No podemos olvidar que son los imperialistas americanos los que han apoyado las fuerzas reaccionarias en Afganistán para luchar contra la invasión del social-imperialismo soviético.

·         No podemos olvidar que es la intervención imperialista americana la que ha destruido Iraq y sembrado el caos.

·         No podemos olvidar las resoluciones ignoradas de la ONU contra la política colonialista de Israel en Palestina.

·         No podemos olvidar las diferentes intervenciones imperialistas en los países árabes apoyando las nuevas fuerzas reaccionarias, para conquistar los mercados y círculos de influencia y confundir la justa revuelta popular.

África se ha convertido en el campo de batalla económico entre los imperialistas occidentales, los nuevos imperialistas (China, Rusia) y los países emergentes (Brasil e India). Los antiguos imperialistas  que conservan intereses en África gracias a la colonización y al colonialismo moderno  quieren  defenderlos a toda costa, mientras que los nuevos imperialistas y los países emergentes buscan conquistar a todo coste otros nuevos.

Es en este contexto que el imperialismo francés interviene regularmente de diferentes maneras en  África para proteger sus intereses, como ha ocurrido recientemente en Costa de Marfil. También se está preparando para reforzar su presencia en Somalia. Muchos países están incluso preocupados por las cláusulas de confidencialidad de intervención francesa en caso de desestabilización del poder.

El imperialismo francés, que sostiene los antiguos perros guardianes de Mali, tiene hoy como objetivo proteger los intereses de Francia, es decir, continuar y ampliar el saqueo organizado de materias primas. La intervención contra los grupos islamistas es el pretexto que utiliza Francia para justificar su intervención militar.

Por supuesto que las fuerzas fundamentalistas islámicas son reaccionarias y enemigas del pueblo, utilizando la miseria causada por el imperialismo. Pero es importante darse cuenta de que la "amenaza islamista" es tan sólo un pretexto usado por los imperialistas para neutralizar las revueltas populares en África y desviar la ira del pueblo en Europa y otros países. Es una maniobra más para enfrentar a una parte de la clase obre a contra otra e implantar una salida fascista de la crisis. Con el tiempo no se excluye la movilización para una nueva guerra de reparto a nivel mundial. El objetivo de los gobiernos, de izquierdas y de derechas, es mantener a toda costa la dominación del capitalismo sobre todos los pueblos del mundo.

Pero hay fuerzas en el mundo que se oponen a los explotadores y opresores y que dirigen la guerra popular bajo la dirección de partidos comunistas  maoístas como está ocurriendo en India, Filipinas, Turquía, mientras que en muchos países crecen y se reconstruyen los nuevos partidos comunistas maoístas para preparar y extender la guerra popular contra los imperialistas y perros guardianes, independientemente de la máscara bajo la que  se esconden, laicos o religiosos.

Como se declaró en la Conferencia Internacional de Apoyo a la Guerra Popular en la India, que reunió a representantes de fuerzas revolucionarias de 20 países, el mejor apoyo posible a los pueblos en lucha es el de desarrollar la lucha revolucionaria en nuestros respectivos países. Aquí en Francia, nuestra primera tarea consiste en oponerse a nuestro propio imperialismo. Esta es la única manera de acabar con el imperialismo, el sistema capitalista de explotación y opresión, la única manera de poner fin a la guerra.

¡Abajo la intervención y las maniobras del imperialismo en África!

¡Viva la lucha de los pueblos contra los perros guardianes y los reaccionarios de todo tipo!

Partido Comunista  maoísta de Francia

Organizaciones maoístas y organizaciones antiimperialistas en varios países europeos realizando varios programas en solidaridad con la Guerra Popular en marcha en nuestro país – son todos fenómenos favorables.

“¡Oponerse a las brutales ofensivas de las clases gobernantes indias! ¡Intensificar la Guerra Popular y derrotar la `Operación Green Hunt´ - `Guerra contra el Pueblo´!" - Comunicado de Prensa de la Comisión Militar Central del Partido Comunista de la India (Maoísta) – 30 Noviembre 2012 (Extracto)

La  crisis financiera del capitalismo mundial se está profundizando y extendiendo aún más. Los imperialistas se enfrentan entre sí para saquear todo tipo de fuentes (humanas, materiales) en los países atrasados además de aumentar la explotación sobre los trabajadores y las clases medias en sus países a fin de superar esta crisis. Los ataques sobre los sijs, asiáticos orientales, surasiáticos, musulmanes y árabes aumentaron enormemente mientras el racismo aumenta desmesuradamente en los países imperialistas. Los obreros, jóvenes, mujeres y clases medias se movilizan en varios países europeos contra estas políticas económicas neoliberales. Los partidos proletarios y organizaciones populares progresistas vuelven a cobrar fuerza. Las luchas antiimperialistas se intensifican en varias formas en todos los países atrasados. Mientras gobernantes pronorteamericanos han alcanzado nuevamente el poder tras la Primavera Árabe bajo otro disfraz, el pueblo está comprendiendo inevitablemente la necesidad de escoger el camino revolucionario. Las luchas de resistencia de las nacionalidades oprimidas continúan en varios países. El pueblo musulmán se alzó como una tormenta por todo el mundo contra la película norteamericana que insultaba al Islam. El avance de las Guerras Populares en Filipinas e India, las fuerzas revolucionarias separándose del PCUN (M) en Nepal oponiéndose a su línea revisionista; fuerzas maoístas actuando en países como Turquía, Perú, Bangladesh, etc. Organizaciones maoístas y organizaciones antiimperialistas en varios países europeos realizando varios programas en solidaridad con la Guerra Popular en marcha en nuestro país – son todos fenómenos favorables.

Nota: La traducción al español es responsabilidad de Gran Marcha Hacia el Comunismo (Madrid)

Foreign Troops, Out of Mali! - (From the Partisan No. 33)

As the France-led military intervention in Mali goes into its second week, our Canadian government has been more than happy to help out in the western imperialists’ plot to secure its exploitative access to the region’s energy and mineral resources.
Since January 17, the Canadian government has been flying in troops, military supplies and machinery to aid the French military’s fight against loosely-allied forces of Islamist militants that have taken over much of northern Mali and some cities in the south.
While many Malians in the South despise these rebels, the conflict is far from being one our government wants us to believe: Islamicist terrorists versus a terrorized population. Many of the rebel groups have significant support from the population, especially in the country’s north. In fact, many analysts say the conflict is less about a push for Islamic rule and more about self-determination for the Tuareg desert people, who live in the region including Mali, Algeria, Libya and Niger and have been continually marginalized and dispossessed as international and national bourgeois forces pursue their insatiable appetites for the region’s gold, uranium, oil and natural gas.
It is the region’s resources alone explain the West’s interest in Mali. The reality that instability in Mali can trigger instability in surrounding weak states, thereby threatening France and other government’s prioritized access to cheap resources, adds to France’s motivation.
France is notorious for locking governments of its former colonies, including Mali and many of its neighbours, into woefully unfair financial and resource deals. Mali’s currency is partly controlled by the French and the French own huge shares of key industries in Mali and other former French colonies.
This military intervention is nothing new. France is also known for continuing a close military relationship with its economic friends in power; in recent years, the French have shored up capitalist dictators in Ivory Coast, Gabon, Chad, Niger and the Republic of Congo.
So why has Canada gotten involved in this intervention? Let’s throw the terrorist threat justification out the window. The idea that these small, extremely fractious groups could enact terrorism on an international scale is laughable. Besides, numerous recent interventions around the world, including in Libya and Afghanistan, prove that morality or ideology have nothing to do with military policy, it comes down to securing economic footholds.
As our comrades at the Parti Communiste Maoïste de France (PCMF) explain in a statement on the intervention, “The ‘Islamist threat’ is used as a pretext by the imperialists to fight the popular revolts in Africa and deflect the anger of the people in Europe and other countries [away from their own governments and toward Islamacists].”
Canada feels responsible to support the Western imperialist bloc in Africa as it competes with other imperialist blocs. “Africa has become the economic battlefield between the Western imperialists and new imperialists (China, Russia) and emerging countries (Brazil and India),” the PCMF adds.
Canada itself is reaping heavy profits from mining in the continent (including the displacement and destruction of communities and livelihoods). In volatile African countries that pose many challenges to quick-and-dirty profits, imperialist allies know they need to help each other out once in a while.
For the capitalist imperialist forces, invading a weak country like Mali is relatively inexpensive and brings huge economic rewards. The cost comes to the people of Mali —they’re the ones who suffer as their government hands over its resources at rock-bottom prices to the French and other imperialist overlords.
* * *

workers struggle in India

>GurgaonWorkersNews no.54 - January 2013
>
>www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
>gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk
>
>For the January 2013 issue of GurgaonWorkersNews we translated reports of
workers employed at two Kelvinator/Whirlpool fridge factories in Faridabad,
which in the early 1990s accounted for 40 per cent of India's total fridge
production. The reports were published and circulated between 1989 and 2000 by
the still existing workers' newspaper Faridabad Majdoor Samachar. They describe
the struggle against the re-structuring process in a multi-national white wares
manufacturer, the difficult relation between workers' initiatives and trade
union representation. The reports reflect the political consciousness of
workers concerning the main contradiction in capitalist society: the increase
in productivity causing greater relative immiseration of the producers. The
reports could therefore stand by themselves as workers' collective memories and
be passed on to workers engaged in current struggles.
>
>The re-structuring process at Kelvinator/Whirlpool in Faridabad took place in
a wider context. Under the pressure of the 1990 global slump and subsequent
'neo-liberal offensive' the production of fridges, washing machines and other
long durable consumption goods experienced a massive concentration process and
attack on the work-force in terms of speed-ups and on their wage levels. We
stumbled across material written by Franco Barchiesi and Andries Bezuidenhout
on the re-structuring and final closure / re-location of Kelvinator fridge
factory in South Africa in the late 1990s. We also dug out older reports about
the struggle against re-structuring at Bosch Siemens washing machine factory in
Berlin, written by comrades of wildcat in the mid-2000s, telling the story of
re-structuring and struggle since the 1980s. 
>
>If we relate these global experiences to each other a picture emerges which
questions the quite wide-spread leftist assumption that 'neo-liberalism' post-
1990 was an 'evil policy', a greedy scrapping of former welfare or charity or
an expression of wrong political decisions on the (inter-)national level: the
leftist critique of the ANC's 'broken promises' in South Africa, or of the neo-
liberal BJP model of 'Shining India' or the 'New Labour' 'German Model'. We can
see that it was a contradictory structural response to the 'global profit
crisis', which had it's main reason in the undermined, but still substantial
collective power of the working class on shop-floor level in the 1980s. In the
workers' reports we find traces of this power.
>
>At Kelvinator fridge factory in Faridabad workers organised weekly visits at
management offices in rotating groups of 20 to 30 workers of different
departments in order to enforce safety measures. This collectivity survived
into the early 1990s: "In July 1992 a three years agreement was forged between
union and management. For the workers in the lamination division the agreement
meant that for a 170 Rs monthly wage increase for the first year their fixed
daily target increased from 1,400 to 1,800 rotor stators. The agreement also
meant that for the lamination workers the 250 to 500 Rs monthly incentive bonus
was also done away with - consequently the 170 Rs wage 'increase' of the
agreement results in 80 Rs to 330 Rs monthly wage loss. Workers have started to
fight back. They say that they don't want the new agreement, they want wages
according to the old rate. Both management and union insist on the new
agreement. In reaction, in January 1993, workers in
> the skewing, die casting, welding departments undertook some steps. In
January 1993 all workers started to curb their production output to the fixed
target defined by the management's time study. Management was very troubled by
this fact and started to dish out charge-sheets (for future suspensions) and
issued warnings. This tug of war continued for five months when finally on 28th
of May management gave in. Management started to pay the old incentive scheme
of 250 to 500 Rs per months again. "
>
>We find a similar situation in Berlin in the 1980s: "In the beginning of 1987
young second-generation Turkish workers organised a slowdown strike against the
steady rise in unit-quotas at the assembly line. They did this so well that
that the employer couldn’t enforce the new quotas, not even with foremen, spare
men, snitches and forced transfers of workers around the factory. After a while
the workers even reduced the quota. Finally they agreed on more spare men at
the line. The workers learned a great deal during their struggle, they could
flip the cooperation at the line at their will. When they had idle time during
reorganisation they could force their ideas about how many machines they wanted
to produce. Since fall 1987 they didn’t need to protest against legally
obligatory overtime: they just subtracted the machines they had produced in
overtime the days after from the “normal units”. “If we wanted to, we just
reduced the units
> anytime”."
>(Bosch Siemens Hausgeraetewerk - Washing Machine Factory in Berlin)
>
>The attack in the 1990s on this workers' collectivity had various forms. The
re-structuring on the shop-floor level by changes in work-organisation and
automation was only enforceable through the 'credit financed' redundancy
programs (severence payments, early retirement schemes), which let to a general
increase in unemployment and subsequent casualisation. The old work-force was
then surrounded by a growing mass of temporary employment. The threat of 're-
location of production' to low wage regions was in the air - to Eastern Europe
in the case of Germany, Swaziland in the case of Kelvinator in South Africa - ,
financed by neo-liberal 'cheap money' politics. Most of the features of neo-
liberalism in the 1990s (share-holder options, company consultancy,
marketisation of inner-company relations, trade liberalisation) have to be seen
in this regard of 'softening' workers' strongholds.
>
>Between 1994 and 1999 Kelvinator/Whirlpool in Faridabad reduced the 
workforce by 40 per cent, the company paid 50 crore Rs (1 crore = 10 million)
as 'voluntary retirement money' to 2,075 workers. This was possible after a
lost struggle in 1991 and nearly six months of lock-out of workers. We find a
very similar situation in South Africa and Germany. In all cases the re-
structuring was co-managed by the trade union institutions. In Faridabad the
unions negotiated first the increase of production targets through incentive
schemes, then subsequently the lay-off money for superfluous work-force. The
NUMSA at Kelvinator in South Africa agreed to two-tier wage systems on the shop-
floor in the mid-1990s in order to 'save the company'. In Berlin, in 1992
management decreased production. In the three years which followed more than
1000 workers left the factory, mostly with seemingly 'handsome' compensation
payment. The IG Metall union actively tried to isolate
> the attempt of workers at Berlin washing-machine factory to extend their
protests against further layoffs in the mid-2000s. As legal and
sectorial/national institutions the trade unions had no means to stop the
attack of the 1990s, which lead first to their own erosion and then to their
collaboration.
>
>As a system of social (re-)production the 'victory of capital' in terms of
undermining workers' power and increasing productivity aggravated it's inner
contradictions. The mountains of cheap washing machines and fridges grew as
fast as structural unemployment and the masses of working poor. While promising
proletarian women that their entry in the wage labour market will be
compensated with 'appliances' reducing time for housework, the 'deluge' of
cheap washing machines in the global north was accompanied with a demise of
'the family' as a re-productive unit. At Bosch Siemens in Berlin 2,100 workers
produced 450,000 machines a year in the mid 70's. In the mid 90’s 2,500 workers
produced more than one million washing machines and more than 200,000 tumble-
dryers. During the same period structural unemployment increased by 10 per cent
and temporary work proliferated rapidly. In South Africa the amount of
households owning fridges increased only slightly
> between the end of 1970s (670,000) to 2001 (770,000), despite 'cheap
production and cheap imports'. In India the demise of the peasantry throughout
the 1980s and 1990s produced such large amounts of urban poor that given the
wage levels of house servants it seems uneconomic for most middle-class
families to consider buying a washing machine. Even with a 'double income', at
a monthly wage level of around 5,000 Rs for industrial workers, a new Whirlpool
fridge for 20,000 Rs is out of reach. 
>
>The crisis continues. Whirlpool, announced in October 2011 to cut 5,000 jobs,
about 10 percent of its workforce in North America and Europe. The crisis hits
a production system which has become globalised throughout the 1990s, fridges
are produced by young workers in SEZ's in Poland under similar conditions as
their are produced in other parts of the globe. Compared to the crisis in
1990/91 the crisis in 2008 has deeper structural characteristics: further
discovery of 'low wage regions a la Pearl River Delta or markets a la former
Eastern Bloc seem unlikely and the Toyotist (holistic team-work with company
anthem in the background) or robotic alternative has lost its sheen during the
1990s - it is back to old-school Taylorised drudgery. The following reports
demonstrate that the working class was beaten during the 1990s mainly because
their struggle was not able to overcome the legalistic and company-limited /
national framework. This poses challenges
> for the future and reiterates the importance of continuous organisational
and internationalist efforts like Faridabad Majdoor Samachar.
>
>Continue reading on website...
>
>1) Kelvinator, India
>2) Kelvinator, South Africa
>3) Bosch Siemens, Germany
>
>News from India's Special Exploitation Zone -