CELAC, a lot of smoke and mirrors to align with the US master

The CELAC summit took place last Tuesday, January 24 in Buenos Aires. It was a summit marked by the crisis of the governments of the countries members of the forum, several political crises against the background of the world crisis, the shadow of economic stagnation and the resurgence of militaristic tendencies as a result of the war in Eastern Europe.

First of all, the summit took a position of complicity with the savage repression of the Boluarte government in Peru, which has already claimed more than 60 fatal victims. Only the Chilean Boric (after having been the first to align himself with Boluarte and US policy) made a very warm condemnation and the Mexican representation sent by AMLO, with equal cynicism, proposed a resolution to free Castillo and put an end to the repression that he knew beforehand was not going to be approved. Meanwhile, the rest of the leaders aligned themselves without protest to the imperialist orientation that tries to close the crisis through the defeat of the spontaneous insurrection, led by the working class and peasant population, through the mechanisms of the established institutions of the Peruvian semi-state. The presence at the Summit of the Peruvian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ana Maria Gervasi, was repudiated by self-convened Peruvian residents and by the left in an act in which we participated. But to limit oneself to this makes the tree cover the forest: it is only the most brutal and stark expression of a general orientation towards the arms of imperialism on the part of the governments of the region.

Another notable point was the active policy of the Brazilian government, with Lula at its head, to position itself as the leader of a regional order, which would allow it to negotiate with Europe and the US the price of such alignment. For this purpose, CELAC itself is too broad and diffuse an organization, so it first sought the support of the Argentine government in the need to revive UNASUR by rescuing the moribund MERCOSUR. This would make it possible to leave aside the (for these sepoys) uncomfortable Caribbean countries, including Ortega, focusing on the South American "sub-region". The "order and progress" motto has a content: to lean on the US and support Biden's militarist foreign policy. Not for nothing, two of the main discussions of the forum, the alleged single currency SUR and Lacalle Pou's rants, dealt with the problem of China's influence in the region. The other major issue, that of human rights and democracy, aims at using Venezuela as a bargaining chip now that Biden and the White House have been forced to negotiate with Maduro under the pressure of an international energy market strained by the war between Russia and Ukraine.

In a finer detail, the Brazilian Minister of Economy Haddad clearly explained that for the time being the only agreement between Argentina and Brazil that exists is a 365-day financing by official banks to companies of each country for bilateral foreign trade operations. And he was explicit: this will allow Brazilian companies to enter the gas pipeline business, from which, otherwise, they would be inevitably left out by Chinese competition. Massa, his Argentine counterpart, indicated that this mechanism will prevent a further drain on the Central Bank's reserves for a year, probably with the elections in mind. Of course, this is not an integration of abstract "nations", but rather the viability of certain businesses for a handful of Brazilian and Argentine monopolies, associated with the Yankees and the EU.

Lacalle Pou's bravado, based on the defense of democracy and human rights (although not for Peru), does not end up hiding the defense of the Uruguay-China FTA, which is a stone in the shoe of Lula's line. For this reason, Lula readily crossed the Rio de la Plata to try to negotiate the organization of a broader agreement between MERCOSUR as a whole and China. He set the condition of signing beforehand the agreement with the EU, showing not a "Eurocentric" sympathy but to the bourgeois business to which his government responds.

The invitation to the summit to the US government leaves no doubt that this attempt (because for now it is no more than that) of Brazil to place itself as a privileged interlocutor in the negotiation of the regional sub-bourgeoisies with the imperialist master has the support of Biden. The Yankees know what they want, as revealed by the scandalous declarations of the head of the Southern Command, Laura Richardson, on the strategic resources of the region such as lithium, rare earths in general, gold, oil, gas and aquifers. The bilateral negotiations (country by country, not by blocs) that Trump had promoted in his turn not only opened gaps for China to integrate several countries of the region to the Silk Road, but also generated a multiplicity of conflicts and processes of institutional disorder that also impact on the rotten imperialist institutional structures. It is true that China is currently in serious economic problems as a result of the war and the resurgence of the pandemic, but it is evident that Biden follows Trump in this and intends to push back its "strategic competitor" (China) as much as possible, and the Brazilian sub-bourgeoisie is postulated as the main partner in this task. Not without internal contradictions, since we must not forget the seizure of the federal buildings in Brasilia carried out by the Bolsonaristas and with the support of sectors of the armed forces and the bosses.

For the United Socialist States of Latin America and the Caribbean

The decadent revival of the 2000s staged by the governments of the region has as its content an attempt to weather the profound decomposition of the Latin American semi-states and their institutions, part of a world situation marked by the general decomposition of the capitalist system in its imperialist phase and the assimilation (increasingly violent) of former workers' states such as Russia and China. The advance of imperialist penetration decomposes the institutions and makes the sui generis Bonapartisms even more farcical. However, the most nefarious role of these "semi-democratic" governments is to give rise to the misleading of the proletariat by their bureaucratic leaderships, which unfortunately have their flank covered by Trotskyist centrism which limits itself to putting forward a democratic line against "the right wing", "anti-fascist" or at most of "anti-imperialist unity" without putting forward a workers program which would allow the proletariat to set itself up as the leader of the oppressed Latin American nations. Thus, the currents of the region like the FT, LIS, UIT, LIT, etc., uncritically raise the slogan "free and sovereign constituent assembly", which the movements in struggle in Peru maintain, and raise the rejection of the "coup" government... in order to defend the supposedly democratic institutions of the country. They see coups opposing democracy to dictatorship everywhere, when in reality the bourgeoisie has not yet taken that course because it counts on the institutions, of course totally collapsed and in crisis, of the semi-states to carry out its maneuvers against the masses and to support its most bloody offensives, exercising the dictatorship of capital. This does not mean that we should not raise the slogan "down Boluarte" in Peru, quite the contrary, but not to go towards a solution within the frameworks of capitalist institutionality, but to impose a workers and peasants government based on the organizations of the workers and the poor people that will impose measures to attack imperialism in the region, expropriating the mining companies and the big landowners, imposing workers' control of the industries and strategic services, calling on the workers' movement throughout the continent, above all in the U.S., to support the struggle against imperialism in the whole region. There is no democracy in Latin America without agrarian revolution and the expropriation of foreign industries and banking. Any monopoly of foreign trade, or currency agreement, or nationalization of banking is a swindle without these measures based on ousting the class enemies from power by imposing the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is clear that the very dynamics of the class struggle based on the economic/social structure of the region will lead to the extension of the revolutionary process to the whole continent, but without a conscious proletarian leadership, it will be the imperialist counterrevolution that will be able to strangle our class. Therefore, we fight for the United Socialist States of Latin America and the Caribbean, preparing a workers internationalist leadership. For this, it is urgent to advance in the reconstruction of the Fourth International. We urgently call on the currents that defend the program of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to a Latin American conference to discuss the program and the political and organizational measures to advance this objective.

COR Chile – LOI Brasil – COR Argentina