May Day statement from the PCMLE of Ecuador

En Marcha #1647 Organ of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador April 25 to May 1, 2014 May Day Manifesto Only the Struggle of the Peoples Will Break the Chains of Capitalist Domination and Exploitation! Workers! The memory of the heroic deeds of the Chicago martyrs, who 128 years ago gave their lives to win the 8-hour work day, once again calls us to march together this May 1 to let the world know that we the workers and peoples of Ecuador have rights to gain and, above all, a new world to win. In our country the real economic, political and social changes are yet to come, or rather, we must win them with a genuine revolution! The caricature that goes by the name “citizens’ revolution” is being further unmasked each passing day as a political project of a bourgeois faction that supports a modernizing capitalism to take advantage to the maximum of the profits that society provides only to the ruling classes and foreign capital. Beyond the stifling government propaganda that tries to show the fiction of an Ecuador that is advancing and progressing for the good of the neediest, and that now pompously presents itself as “the Ecuadorian miracle,” there is little that is useful and much to reject. What miracle do Correa’s forces speaks of if, despite having had years of economic prosperity because of the high prices of oil on the international market and the chain of taxes that punish the workers and peoples, that have mortgaged the country to foreign capital with loans reminiscent of the periods of the sell-out neoliberal governments? More than $14 billion of foreign debt hang over Ecuador today, but the greed for economic resources has led the government to resume the external debt with the World Bank, about which he said in October 2007 that “the farther we are from it, the better it will be for us.” Not content with the billions of dollars in credit that the international body has given him, he shouts to raise it to five billion. What happened to the supposed patriotism, dignity and sovereign attitude of the citizen’s revolution? He tries to justify the return to the arms of the IMF and World Bank with the argument that now the agency has not imposed conditions. He did not need it because the government had announced beforehand the adjustment policies: the elimination of the gas subsidy and consequently the raising of its price, which we reject. To prevent 200,000 youths from entering the universities, to make thousands of workers and public employees unemployed, to repress anyone who protests and put in prison and / or on trial two hundred Ecuadorians on charges of terrorism, to waste millions of dollars in propaganda and to allow government officials to steal further millions and provide them with impunity, is this part of that miracle? The Ecuador in which we live, work and struggle every day is very different from the fantasy country that the government shows us in its propaganda. That is why social discontent is growing and every day more people are distancing themselves from government demagoguery. This is shown by the results of the February 23 elections, in which Rafael Correa, the Government and Alianza Pais suffered a severe defeat and could not fulfill its aim of eliminating the electoral registration of leftist organizations such as the MPD and Pachakutik. The pro-Correa forces are aware of the loss of support, which is why they do not want to allow the demand for a referendum to determine whether or not to exploit the oil in the Yasuni-ITT. The Government and the National Electoral Council are trying to make a mockery of the will of more than 750,000 Ecuadorians who signed the petition for the referendum. We must not allow this mockery. Let the people’s voice be heard and their will respected! Workers Nothing of the little that this capitalist society gives us came by the will of those who live from the exploitation of our labor; on the contrary, we have won it with enormous effort, in street battles that have often cost the lives of the people’s fighters. With this experience we must continue to fight to defend our rights, which they want to violate, to win our essential demands, which cannot be postponed. Our best weapons for this are unity, organization and action. Our Party welcomes the efforts of the social organizations to deepen their joint work and recognizes it as essential to maintain the unity of the trade unions in the FUT [Workers’ United Front]; calls for strengthening the organizations such as UGTE [General Union of Ecuadorean Workers], UCAE [Union of Peasant Organizations of Ecuador], FESE [Federation of Secondary Students of Ecuador], FEUE [Federation of University Students of Ecuador] , CONAIE [Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador], UNE [National Union of Educators], FEUNASSC [United National Federation of Peasant Social Security Affiliates], the Popular Front, etc. and to develop joint action of the leftist parties and movements in the Plurinational Unity of the Left. The government is making enormous efforts to control and / or destroy the independent popular organizations: we must not allow this! May 1 is a day of worldwide celebration, in which the workers and peoples of the world express their rejection of the domination and exploitation of capital and anticipate their emancipation. Together with them, our Party raises its internationalist banners to reaffirm its commitment to work to bring to victory the social revolution in our country, as a contribution to the victory of the world proletarian revolution. Particularly, this May 1, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador commemorates two transcendental celebrations this year: the 50th anniversary of the founding of our party and the 20th anniversary of the formation of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO), which coincide on August 1. These are reasons to redouble our efforts to make the victory of the revolution and socialism a reality. Long live the struggle of the working class and peoples of Ecuador! Long live the struggle of the workers of the whole world! Only the struggle of the peoples can break the chains of domination and exploitation ! Central Committee Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador