Draft Manifesto Proposed by the Youth Organizations of the Partidos Obreros (Trotskyist) of
Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay to the First Latin American Youth Congress
58 To the working class, peasants, students, employees, intellectuals, to all the exploited and oppressed sectors of society -COMRADES:
The First Latin American Youth Congress, meeting in davana, the epicentre of the Latin American revolution, and enthusiastically salutes the exploited and oppressed sectors of Latin America and of all the world for the heroie struggle they are carrying on for the national and social liberation of all peoples.
From within this enthusiastic and vigorous ambience created by a revolution on the march, based on the militia of workers, peasants, students, women, and 6oldiers, who with strength and optimism are challenging the most powerful imperialism in history, we especially salute the Negro population of South Africa and the Congo who have secured for Africa a vanguard place of historical importance in the colonial revolution, through heir unequal and ver victorious struggle for the national and social liberation of the colored people.
We salute the Algerian revolution, we salute free and independent Algeria, which, at the risk of its own physical extermination, has inflicted an irreversible defeat on French imperialism.
We salute the triumph of the workers, peasants, students of Japan. whose struggle has struck a decisive blow at world imperialism. We salute the peoples of Korea and Turkey, who by their fight against dietatorships, are ripening the conditions for the expulsion of imperialism, and are joining the colonial revolution.
We salute the workers, peasants, and exploited sectors of Bolivia, who are furnishing a wonderful example of revolutionary vigor by carrying on for eight years a permanent struggle for the defense and extension of the conquests of their revolution; we especially salute the Bolivian Trade-Union Confederation for its recent resolution deciding to send its workers' and peasants' militia in support of and solidarity with the Cuban re-
We salute the people of Chile, who in the recent coal strike have shown that they art keeping their morale and lighting spirits high despite the tragedy brought by the recent cataclysm, from which they have suffered most, owing 1o the incompetence, negligence, incapability, and contempt for human values shown by their bourgeoisie.
We salute the peoples of Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Guianas, Guatemala, Panama, Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, and Paraguay, and reassert our determination to carry on to the end the struggle for their liberation. We salute the workers and peasants of Peru and Argentina, who are vi. gorously facing the combined offensive of their mational bourgeoisies and oligarchies in alliance with imperialism, and we send them our solidarity.
We warmly and enthusiastically salute the conquests, advances, and triumphs of the Soviet masses, of People's China, and of the workers' states, objectively allies of our
We salute the comrades delegated to this Conference who are now imprisoned in Argentina, and express delermination to fight to free them from bourgeois jails.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
We warmly salute the exploited women who in Latin America and in all the world have moved up to vanguard posts in the revolution by forming women's brigades in the We pay homage to all the militants in the world killed in the fight against exploitation and privileges, for the destruction of the outlived structures which oppose and hinder the progress and development of mankind. WORKER AND YOUTH COMRADES OF LATIN AMERICA: We have met at this First Latin American Youth Congress in a moment of exceptional historical importance. We are witnessing a process of deep economic, social, and political transformation. In the present stage such a deep structural transformation is being carried out through the direct intervention of the exploited masses. This intervention is fundamentally responsible for the great instability and the deep crisis. It is in these conditions that our first Congress is being held. The fundamental duty of this Congress, its specific task, is to discuss thoroughly the revolutionary crisis of Latin America and the entire world and to decide that the youth must participate in this struggle and play a vanguard role in the fight which the exploited masses are carrying on against imperialism and capitalism. As youth we have the responsibility and the duty of leading struggle to overthrow imperialism and capitalism. can find no solution to its specific problems within the limits of this rotten society. We shall find the only real solution by boldly, dynamically, and resolutely joining in the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle of the exploited peoples all over the world.
The world has entered a new stage, the most dynamic and revolutionary stage so far known by mankind, stage of the violent rush of the masses towards the means for controlling their own fate." The development of the productive forces paves the way to unsuspected progress for mankind; human ingenuity and science are showing themselves to be capable of freeing and controlling such extraordinary forces as to permit man to set out on the conquest of space. While such feats are being undertaken, however, in Latin America and all over the world three fourths of the population live in inhuman living condiwithout the right to own the land they till, with miserable housing, or underfed, to the effects of earthquakes or floods, on the edge of the chasm of a nuclear war.
in Latin America and in the colonial world, prisoners of their own contradictions, are incapable of providing such a development and entrench themselves in defense of their petty class interests and of the old outlived feudo-bourgeois structures which oppose and hinder such a development. Powerless, they writhe irreversible crisis, keep the masses in a state of starvation and superexploitation, revise their apparatus of repression, on both the national and international scale, and prepare a counter-revolutionary war.
But while the ruling classes are impotently selling out, entering into alliances with imperialism and becoming its pawns, in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the whole world we see an increasing consciousness,
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL termination, and readiness of the masses to fight to conquer power and solve the problems of development of their countries through a planned economy. The masses prove to be capable of achieving what the ruling classes could not. In Cuba, Bolivia, Algeria, the Congo, Korea, and Turkey the oppressed and exploited sectors of society are setting out to solve the problems which should have been solved by their ruling classes and combine these tasks with their own specific aims. The armed workers and peasants here in Cuba have in only one year made such substantial progress in agrarian reform and in expelling imperialism as the native ruling class was not able to accomplish in a century. People's China, in only eleven years, with the mobilized force of her workers and peasants, with her youth, by the conquest of power and the establishment of a planned economy, is overcoming the destitution and backwardness inherited from centuries of imperialist domination, and advances along the road to becoming the most formidable power in history. The Cuban people, relying on the strength of their workers', peasants', and students' militia, which defeated Batista's army on the very doorstep of imperialism, is now taking possession of the properties owned by imperialism and its national allies.
People's China is showing with unquestionable persuasiveness how to advance along the road of progress, and her youth is in the forefront. The First Latin American Youth Congress reasserts its will and determination to keep up its vanguard role on the road which still lies before us. WORKER AND YOUTH COMRADES OF LATIN AMERICA:
The whole of Latin America, whatever the peculiarities of its countries may be, is facing the same problem of imperialist domination: economic and social backwardness, crisis of growth, need to carry out a radical agrarian reform, industrialization, expulsion of imperialism, nationalization of foreign trade, and economic planning with workers' control. To accomplish these tasks it can rely on the enormous force of more than 200 million peasants, students, and exploited people. It is necessary to unite these forces against the common enemy and for the common aims of all the workers' and people's organizations of Latin America. The First Latin Ameriean Youth Congress calls on all these organizations to form a great LATIN AMERICAN ANTI-IMPERIALIST UNITED FRONT and decides to appoint a ProMoTIng CoMMITTEE for this front.
In this struggle for a radical agrarian reform, for the expulsion of imperialism, for industrialization, for national and social conquests, the working class has played and is still playing a leading role. This First Latin American Youth Congress calls on the Latin American working class to form a Proletarian United Front to lead the anti-imperialist struggle on the basis of a worker-peasant alliance and to deepen the revolution by establishing immediately an All-Latin-America Trade-Union Organization, as proposed by the Cuban Irade-Union Federation and voted by the Chilean United Federation of Workers, the Bolivian Trade-Union Confederation, and the Trade-Union Confederations of Venezuela and Ecuador. The first Latin American Youth Congress urges an immediate answer to this appeal.
This Congress calls on the working class organized in trade unions to form, in the countries where it does not yet exist, a SINGLE UNITED TRADE-UNION ORGANIZATION.
Sectors of young students, in Cuba and in other Latin American countries, play a great role in this process. The students quickly bridge the gap that separates them from the workers' movement and are fighting, in one single front with the masses, to solve the economic, political, and social problems of Latin America. Like all the youth,
59 students have, besides their own specific problems, the furidamental responsibility of answering the imperative demand of this epoch: to fill, shoulder to shoulder with the workers and peasants, the advanced posts in the revolution. The First Latin American Youth Congress calls on the students to establish in each country a broad Nations in a great Central Latin American Sudese socia- tional Students' Association and to unify these tion. The problems of teaching, education, and culture are not problems peculiar to the students; they are general problems of society as a whole. The crisis of Latin American culture is the crisis of the feudal-bourgeois society of Latin America, the crisis of world capitalism. The workers and peasants are the power, the motive force, and the leadership which will have to overcome this crisis. This fact is recognized by this Congress which urges the students to fight for the integration of students in the workers' and peasants' unions, and to advocate the need student-and-worker control of teaching, education and culture. WORKER AND YOUTH COMRADES OF LATIN AMERICA:
The example of Cuba also shows that world imperialism is not willing to remain impassive in face of the determination of the peoples to conquer their right to freedom and self-determination; it answers with econo. mic and even military aggression. Imperialism proposes to strangle the colonial revolution economically. The colonial revolution must throttle and defeat imperialism economically. The Congress appeals to the working class and to the youth to answer the US boycott of Cuba's economy by struggling to promote the establishment of a Latin American Raw-Materials Pool. Latin America must absorb Cuba' production and furnish Cuba with what she requires, under the control of organizations of the workers, youth, and the people. The Congress proposes that Venezuela and Mexico furnish Cuba with her oil requirements, with workers' control established on the production and marketing activities of the nationalized enterprises; such enterprises as those in Venezuela which are in the hands of imperialism and its national allies must be nationalized. The Congress calls for a boycott of imperialism. The workers should refuse to unload imperialist goods, and to load even one ounce of sugar meant for the U S A. These are the measures that will permit advaneing toward the constitution of a Federation of Socialist Republics of Workers' and Peasants' Councils in Latin America. But the defense of Cuba requires something more. We shall carry on the real fight against imperialism to the exent to which we destroy the bases of its domination, which relies on semi-feudal structures.
These are the structures which we must destroy. We appeal to the peasants, the motive force of the revolution in Latin America, to rise, organize themselves in unions, occupy the land, and defend it, as the Cuban peasants are doing, by forming peasant militia, occupying and distributing the land of the big landlords, organizing rural communes with their own management and administration, and allying themselves with the working class in their fight for expropriating imperialism, establishing the peasants' communes joined with the workers' councils in the factories and city districts. We urge the peasants to form their own militia in Latin America. The Latin American bourgeoisies — relying on their respective armies,
For subjected to them — defend the existing structures by imposing states of siege and martial law, and by installing real dictatorships such as those of Trujillo, Somoza, et al. The First Latin American Youth Congress appeals to the working class and to the students to follow the example of Cuba, by defeating and breaking up the bourgeois and imperialist armies, by forming workers' and students' militia under the control of the trade unions, and by fol-
federation by turning she livia Or de defense or political tartery depends
60 COMRADE WORKERS:
The Soviet Union, People's China, the workers' states, and the whole of the colonial revolution have expressed their sympathy with our Latin American revolution. Their and presence is a fundamental factor far prevented imperialism from launching an Imperialism, however, cannot tolerate the existence of the danger represented by our revolution and is preparing counter-revolutionary aggression. Imperialism workers' states, and therefore will attempt to attack us. The First Latin American Youth Congress calls on working class, the people's and students' organizations, and the youth to take a stand for and organize the inconditional defense of the workers' states and to demand diplomatic recognition of People's China and her admittance to the UNO. In face of the manœuvres in the Organization of American States which are preparing aggression against Cuba, the Congress calls for organizing great Latin American Conference of Workers' and People's Organizations for the defence of the Cuban revolution and for the expulsion of imperialism, formation of the Latin American brigade of armed workers, peasants, and students for the abrogation of Río de Janeiro against the South Atlantic Pact, against all pacts that tie the Latin American masses to imperialism. WOBKER AND YOUTH COMRADES OF THE UNITED STATES:
Our struggle for national and social liberation is part of your own struggle against exploitation by the same capitalist trusts. Our revolution and our fate are closely tied up with your fate. We are aware that you are not participating in the plans for aggression, war, and world plunder, of the bourgeoisie of your country. We are aware that you have carried on great struggles for keeping and extending your gains. We know that the North American people is stifling in the atmosphere of corruption, decadence, and degeneration of capitalist society. We are aware that you, like uls, are longing for a world of peace, harmony, and progress, and that your conscious sectors reject the racial discrimination which has poisoned the rest of the American people by setting them against 21 million Negros who live in your country and who are as much exploited as you are. We are aware that you are bearing the weight of the crisis of capitalism and its war plans. that, above the chauvinism of the capitalist leaderships, you feel a vibrant spirit of fraternity and international proletarian solidarity. For these reasons this First Latin American Youth Congress urges you to establish leaderships in the A FL-CIO who give the answer to this historical necessity of an international alliance of the masses by joining your struggle to ours. We urge you to deepen your struggle against our common exploiter to establish a true workers' democracy in a planned economy with workers' management and a workers' government. NEGRO AND NEGRO YOUTH COMRADES OF THE UNITED STATES:
The First Latin American Youth Congress salutes you. You are the extension of the African and world colonial revolution in the very heart of metropolitan imperialism. On your organization, on your combative action, on the development of your political consciousness the future
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL political maturity of the North American proletariat as The bourgeoisie has poisoned the North American proletariat by setting people against people. In order that you may win your own political, civil, and social equait is essential that you replace the fight of people against people by that of class against class. WORKER AND YOUTH COMRADES OF LATIN AMERICA The First Latin American Youth Congress observes with rejoieing and enthusiasm the great progress made in the last few months in the struggle against imperialist domination. Imperialism has been forced to retreat and shows its tremendous weakness. It shows itself for what whose base begins to disintegrate under the blows of the masses all over the now optimum conditions for pushing forwand, consolidating, our conquests on the road to the building of a new society. But imperialism will not surrender without fighting. It is ready all the strength of its repressive apparatus to save its system of exploitation, and threatens to bring mankind to the disaster of a nuclear war. The First Latin American Youth organization of the struggle for disarmament, for the destruction of nuclear weapons, and for the peaceful use of nuclear energy under the control of the trade unions and of the workers' and people's organizations of the entire world. For this, it calls for the organization of a world conference of these
Here, in Cuba, the Congress vigorously reasserts its determination to liquidate the aggressive military bases of imperialism by expelling it from Guantánamo (Cuba), Ezeiza (Argentina), Fernando de Noronha (Brazil).
The First Latin American Youth Congress resolves to invite all the participating organizations to fight for this programme and appeals to the trade-union organizations, to the basic structures where the workers and peasants of Latin America are carrying on their struggle, to constitute the fundamental basis for the political intervention of the Latin American population, and to call a world congress of political, trade-union, student, and cultural organizations to organize the world-wide struggle against imperialism, for a planned economy under the control and management of workers and peasants.
ong uve the cuban revolution ong live the United Trade-Union Oramization of Lati
America! Long live the Proletarian United Front of Latin America! Long live the United Trade-Union Organization of Latin
America! Long live the workers', peasants', and students' militia! Long live the alliance between the workers and the peasants! Lome ial an Latin American revolution! live the alliance of the workers' states Long live the unification of Latin America in a Federation of Socialist Republics of Workers' and Peasants'
Councils of Latin America!
For the YOUTH ORGANIzaTions of the
POR OF ARGENTINA: Angel Fanjul POR OF CHILE: Hernán Pardo POR OF MExIcO: Felipe Galbán POR OF URUGUAY: Luis Naguil POR OF PERU: Manuel Zegarra 26 July 1960
This draft Manifesto was also approved by the Youth Organizations of the POR of BrazIl and Bolivia, which have not been able to send delegates to this Congress.
From the Archives of Marxism