Translated “Avante!” article by Albano Nunes, Member of the Secretariat of the CC

History issues remain in the centre of the ideological struggle between capital and labour, social progress and peace, reaction and war forces. To review history, prevaricate and falsify processes and major events, erase , diminish and slander resistance and the workers and peoples liberating struggle, is how, currently, the dominant class proceeds and behaves. The struggle towards historical truth is a major component of the struggle against the great capital and imperialism, at worldwide level, and , in each front, in which this struggle unfolds throughout all continents, from Syria to Brazil, from Korea Peninsula unto Austral Africa, from Ukraine to Bolivarian Venezuela.

One ought to observe the Colombia case, which, upon more than four years of negotiations in Havana, between the Colombian government and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces – People’s Army, a peace agreement was achieved, upon half a century of wars and brave popular struggles, along an original process, in which, all forms of struggle were combined creatively, opening up a new perspective of peace and social justice, for the people of Colombia. Naturally, many powerful reaction forces and the tenebrous Colombian oligarchy , that, in a plebiscite with huge abstention, the agreement did not obtain, by a minimum margin, the majority of the expressed votes. But, it is evident that the people of Colombia want peace and to prove it, are the great popular demonstrations throughout the country, demanding its implementation.

Within this framework of sharp political struggle, president José Manuel Santos nomination with the Peace Nobel Prize has objectively valorised the efforts for peace, contradicting the war forces that, using state terrorism and fascist pro-military bands, always have, pure and simply, smashed the revolutionary guerrilla, that, together with the USA, put in practise the “Colombia Plan”, assassinating thousands of trade-unionists and members of the Patriotic Union, nurturing sinister business among the most celebrated narco-traffic cartels, in the world. The FARC-EP publically commented on the prize, that ostensibly discriminates them, holding an ambiguity degree, not to be ignored, facilitating history reviewing on the Colombian conflict, its socioeconomic and political roots, those responsible for so many deaths and suffering, of those , who effectively struggled, not for cemetery peace , but for peace and social justice. One ought not to forget that the great landowners ( that currently have lost with the compromise, the Peace Agreement contains) and the political power that unleashed terrorist violence against land plundered peasants. The peasant self-defence and the FARC-EP were created as an answer to reactionary violence that, in an endless spiral, filled prisons and cemeteries with those who fought against dictatorship, through an heroic struggle for democracy, progress, social justice and national sovereignty, in which communists, closely with the people, had and still have the central and greatest merit.

When reaction seeks to subvert and liquidate the peace process, the Portuguese communists defend the historical truth, by rejecting the attempt to criminalize resistance, reiterate their solidarity with the communists, revolutionaries and the people of Colombia, in their struggle for the achievement of peace and social justice.