Translated "Avante!" article by Albano Nunes, Member of the PCP Secretariat of the CC
For a long time, one has been used to receive news on the persistent and courageous popular struggle, side by side with the cruel terrorist repression, in an endless spiral, from Colombia. These recent days, more news has arrived.
From Havana, where the negotiations process between the FARC and Juan Manuel dos Santos government, is in progress. A process, which in itself, is already a Colombian progressive and revolutionary opposition success, through the melt pot of all forms of struggle - legal, semi-legal, pacifist and armed - and has forced the government to recognize the legitimacy of a movement, which the dominant class has tried to attach the infamy label of “drug-terrorist”. An inseparable process of the social and political forces’ action, which, throughout the country, develop an intense activity towards peace and democracy, with the aim of ending the Army’s and Police Forces’ crimes, the AUC Fascists bands, hired killers at the service of landowners and drug dealers. An extraordinary difficult process, as all those the revolutionary forces defend at the negotiation table, holding the very same objectives they pacifically proclaim on the streets, within institutions or through armed resistance. A process which, upon the already achieved agreements during the two agenda’s first chapters, ought to be probably hindered by the most reactionary sectors‘ resistance.
They arrived from the inside of the country, where the destroyed Patriotic Union regained legality, but the intimidation and repression actions against the popular and democratic movement, trade-unions, those elected for the Democratic and Alternative Pole, the Pacifist March activists, the Colombian Communist Party, which, during dawn, on the 20th January last , had its headquarters attacked by the Metropolitan Police, having imprisoned and tortured its guard. Within a framework, that in a period of one year, 26 March militants and 25 CUT unionists were assassinated and numerous imprisonments took place, the total number of political prisoners being 9500, currently. These are concerning news which, on one side, show the Colombian people’s struggle great vitality, and on the other, shatter all hope issued during the Havana peace conversations.
The solidarity with the Colombian communists, revolutionaries, democrats and patriots struggle is required in order to eradicate state terrorism practices, criminalizing all forms of resistance and mass assassinations as during the Alvaro Uribe’s government, currently dealing with direct involvement with drug dealers and assassin pro-military systematic actions. And in opposition with the outrageous North-American imperialism interference, which makes Colombia the toehold of its offensive against the Bolivarian Venezuela and the Latin America countries which try hard to pursue a path unto sovereignty and social progress.
But there is one more reason to appeal to our solidarity: the extraordinary persistence, courage and determination of the people of Colombia, being of major justice to highlight the communists irreplaceable historical role. So many decades of very hard struggle, repression and bloodshed during many generations of fighters, accidents and turning points, along this suffering country’s history: and the struggle goes on. And together with the “ tactics of combining the various forms of struggle, the essence of our party’s policy, which aims and practises all methods of mass struggle, according to the concrete circumstances”, as stated by Gilberto Vieira, the prestigious Secretary-General of the Colombia Communist Party, during the International Conference of Communist and Workers Parties, in 1969.
And proving, together with the originality and own creativity of the genuine revolutionary processes, the extraordinary diversity of the paths unto social progress and socialism.
