Source: International Press Correspondence, Vol. 11, No. 40, July 30, 1931
Transcription/Markup: Paul Saba
Copyleft: Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2018. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons License.
August 23, which follows the August 1st International Anti-War Day, is the anniversary of the brutal murder of Sacco and Vanzetti by Yankee capitalist justice. It is an Anti-Imperialist Day throughout Latin America, a day of struggle against imperialism, especially American imperialism.
The defiance by the capitalist class of the United States of the international protest of the world revolutionary proletariat v in 1927, that sought to prevent the electrocution of Sacco and Vanzetti, was taken up as a challenge by the Latin American oppressed masses. It became a day of revolutionary tradition when the oppressed workers and peasants of Latin America express their solidarity with the working class of the United States and demand in huge demonstrations their national liberation from American imperialist domination. The same imperialist class that murdered Sacco and Vanzetti keeps under its iron heel the millions of downtrodden, starved workers and peasants in Latin America, particularly in the Caribbean region. The same imperialist exploiters of the American proletariat murder and jail the militant workers and deport the foreign-born (Mexicans, etc.).
Thus the struggles of the exploited workers of the United States are intimately linked up with those of the oppressed of Latin America. The combined forces of the exploited in the centres of imperialism and in the subjected countries is the. only guarantee for the final success of the world revolution. The workers of Latin America, under the leadership of the Communist Parties, have already taken the first practical steps to bring together the oppressed colonial peoples with the revolutionary proletariat in the United States by setting the 23rd of August as a day of struggle against imperialism.
The anti-imperialist day this year takes place in the midst of a revolutionary upsurge of the oppressed peoples in the Caribbean, in an attempt to liberate themselves from the yoke of American imperialism.
The revolutionary liberation movement in Nicaragua and Honduras has taken a new course this year. The armed forces under Sandino have been swelled by ruined peasants and unemployed workers from the Yankee lumber and fruit companies. Of tremendous importance is the coming to the forefront of the workers in Nicaragua and Honduras against the military control of the plantations and lumber camps. This lays the basis for the organisation of the Communist party and revolutionary trade unions in Nicaragua, and imposes upon the Communists in Honduras the task of the independent leadership of the revolutionary struggles of the masses.
Within the National Guard officered by American marines, great discontent is prevailing and signs of revolt of the rank and file in refusing to shoot their brothers are clearly visible. The movement is taking on considerable proportions, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts. The Washington government has answered the recrudescence of the armed struggle in Nicaragua with warships, more marines, machines guns and airplanes. In Honduras, the guerilla warfare in the districts surrounding Tela, Progresso has been going on for weeks. Workers and peasants from the United Fruit Co.. Indians and detachments of workers from the cities are fighting against the Yankee-dominated government of Mejia Colindres.
These-liberation movements are as yet chiefly under the leadership of petty-bourgeois chieftains such as Sandino in Nicaragua and General Ferrera in Honduras, But the strengthening of the Communist movement in Honduras and the formation of. the Communist party in Nicaragua will raise ’the struggle in these countries to a higher level, leading to the establishment of the hegemony of the proletariat in the anti-imperialist agrarian revolution.
August 23rd of this year will find the masses of Cuba in huge protest against the Chadbourne Plan and the Yankee-Machado regime of terror and starvation. The Communist Party of Cuba is becoming more and more the leader of all oppressed. Under its leadership the workers are now organizing and fighting for unemployment relief, against the emergency taxation law and against the Guggenheim-Machado-Menocal peace pact. The leadership by the Communist Party of the present daily struggles of the masses, especially against unemployment, will enable the party to become the leader of the revolutionary fight for national liberation.
The Caribbean countries will greet this year the formation of the Communist party of Venezuela which, under the most difficult conditions by the bloody terror of the. tyrant Juan Vicente Gomez, has led unemployed demonstrations in Caracas. The great strides made by the Communist Party of Colombia in cleansing itself of corrupt and opportunist elements, its leadership in the independent strike struggles of the. workers and plantation workers, make the party the leader for the uncompromising fight for national liberation.
Anti-Imperialist Day will be a day of struggle against the Pan-American Federation of Labor, the reformist traitors who in Latin America are the bulwark and defenders of Yankee domination and oppression. The American Federation of Labor is working against the freedom of Mooney and Billings, is helping to railroad the 9 Negro young workers of Scottsboro to the electric chair. In the Caribbean, the Pan-American Federation of Labor (social fascists of the CROM) and the anarcho-syndicalists work hand in hand with the fascist governments, against the national liberation of these countries.
The revolutionary workers, particularly the Communists, must rally the workers in the plantations, in the mines and oil fields, in the city and the countryside around the slogans of complete independence, against Yankee imperialism, against the assassins of Sacco and Vanzetti, against the electrocution of the 9 Negro young workers, and for the solidarity of the oppressed of Latin America and the workers of the United States.