Americas

In the last few weeks, there has been a growing offensive on the part of the Colombian ruling class against the government of Gustavo Petro. Some have even talked of the danger of a coup, like the one that removed Pedro Castillo in Peru in December last year. On 7 June, thousands of workers, peasants and youth came out onto the streets to defend Petro’s proposed reforms. Comrade Galeano – from Colombia Marxista, the IMT group in Colombia – draws a balance-sheet of these events.

This year, on 19 June, Trinidad celebrates 50 years of Labour Day (first marked in 1973). The roots of this occasion, however, can actually be traced 36 years earlier to one of the most outstanding events in Trinidadian history – the 1937 general strike.

The second-largest forest fire in British Colombian history. The town of Chibougamau, Quebec, evacuated in the middle of the night. A Halifax suburb burned down. Toronto and Montreal covered in smog. All of this occurring as early as May and June.

The election of Lula in Brazil and Petro in Colombia in 2022 have led to increased noise in both the media and left-wing circles about a second ‘pink tide’ in Latin America. This is a reference to the wave of so-called ‘progressive’ governments that ruled for a number of years in several countries of the continent between 1998-2015. It is perhaps apt that these governments are described as a ‘pink’ tide, as they are certainly far from being socialist ‘red’. It is necessary to examine the character of that first wave, the reasons that allowed it to last as long as it did, why it came to an end, and the different conditions facing this new wave.

The leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the governing party in Venezuela, is moving towards the decisive phase of its plan to undermine the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). On 21 May, a group of hired agents held a fraudulent ‘Extraordinary Congress of PCV branches’ in Caracas, usurping the acronym and symbols of the Communist Party and preparing the ground for future attacks on the party by the state.

On June 3 and 4, some 230 communists gathered in Philadelphia for the largest-ever National Congress of Socialist Revolution, the US section of the International Marxist Tendency. The atmosphere was electric throughout the entirety of the event, which featured no fewer than a dozen thunderous standing ovations.

A former leading paramilitary officer has given explosive, public testimony on the close collaboration between the right-wing thugs under his command and the Colombian capitalists and landowners, who for decades relied on these forces to terrorise the workers and peasants.

Joining the massive wave of labor action on campuses throughout the country, academic workers at New Jersey’s largest public university went on strike on April 10. Over 9,000 workers represented by three unions took to the picket lines in Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick. A first since the school’s founding in 1766, the strike lasted five days with energetic rallies and pickets, before a tentative framework, brokered by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, put the strike on ice, diverting the struggle to the bargaining table. As of May 8, some 93% of members had voted to ratify their contracts. Enormous potential was on display during this inspiring strike and important lessons for the

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Around 250 revolutionaries gathered in Toronto on May 20-22 for the 2023 Congress of Fightback and La Riposte socialiste, the Canada and Quebec section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). The latest congress took place as global capitalism faces unprecedented crisis on all fronts, from rampant inflation and debt to the war in Ukraine to the

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In recent days, a series of public announcements have been made about Russian investments in Cuba. "They are giving us preferential treatment, the path is clear," declared Boris Titov, the head of the Russian delegation at the closing of the Cuba-Russia Business Economic Forum. The conditions offered to Russian capitalists are very favourable to them: 30-year land concessions – longer than those that have been in place until now – tax exemptions on machinery imports, and the repatriation of profits.

The deadline for reaching a deal on the US debt ceiling is just days away, and Capitol Hill is deadlocked. On or around 1 June, the federal government will no longer have the money to continue paying its bills, potentially resulting in an unprecedented default that would send catastrophic shockwaves across the world economy.

Guillermo Lasso, Ecuador's banker-president, has used Article 148 of the Constitution – known as the “muerte cruzada”or “mutual death” – to shut down the National Congress just two hours before the vote on his impeachment trial for corruption was due to begin. Elections must now be called within six months to renew both the executive (the president) and the legislature (the Congress), but in the interim, the president remains in office and rules by decree without parliamentary oversight. It is therefore a power grab or, as some have described it, an autogolpe (a self-coup).

Hollywood is known as a “dream factory,” but for film and television writers it’s become simply a factory like any other, with all the drudgery and exploitation that entails. Sea changes in the industry brought about by streaming and artificial intelligence (AI) technology have made writing all but untenable as a career. To confront what it calls an “existential crisis”, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) presented the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) with a list of demands including major changes to how writers are paid, staffing guarantees, and safeguards against being replaced by AI. After six weeks of negotiations, the AMPTP refused to even counter many of

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