The cholera epidemic is spreading in Haiti following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Matthew. While the hurricane was a natural disaster, the cholera is not. It is a disaster caused by capitalist profit and the United Nations. Pharmaceutical companies were “unable” to produce enough vaccine and still make a profit. So they didn’t. Also not profitable were the building of clean water and sanitation systems to prevent the epidemic. So they weren’t built.
Six years later “… cholera is stalking the areas gutted by the hurricane, …where clean water was already hard to find, long before the storm...Without clean water or disinfectant, the people are defenseless...The toll from cholera is unknowable” (NYT, 10/15).
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence and international outrage, it was not until this past summer that the UN admitted that its troops (MINUSTAH) brought cholera to Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. It is a crime against humanity that neither the UN nor its public health arm, the World Health Organization (WHO), have taken decisive action for six years to bring relief to Haitian workers suffering and dying from this very treatable disease. Since 2010, there have been over 800,000 cases and over 10,000 deaths. Haiti now has one of the highest rates of cholera infection in the world. Before the hurricane, the WHO was reporting 770 new cases of cholera each week and now their website is reporting an even faster increase.
From 1794 to 1804 the enslaved people of Haiti rose up and succeeded in smashing the chains of slavery, thereby becoming the beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world. Ever since then, the imperialist nations have acted to punish them. The occupation of Haiti by the U.S. from 1915–1934 was particularly brutal and racist, putting the banks into receivership to the Rockefeller (now) Citibank and changing the Constitution to allow foreign ownership of property, while killing, raping, and instituting forced labor.
After the workers rose up once again to overthrow the Duvalier puppet regimes in 1986 that the U.S. had installed and supported, the imperialist powers initiated the modern era of the UN occupation. The MINUSTAH “peacekeepers” have unleashed their own terror on the Haitian working class, ensuring continued racist exploitation, and further plundering of the island’s natural resources.
Healthcare, a Profit Industry
Since 2010, the global health community demanded that the UN/WHO initiate a vaccination program in Haiti. The big pharmaceutical manufacturers were unwilling to comply. That it was not profitable to produce the vaccine stands in sharp contrast to a communist society that will exist explicitly to serve working people. Seeking profit will be a relic of the past. In its drive to serve the needs of the working class and our allies, a worker-led communist world will use science and technology to eradicate disease and its causes.
The demand to vaccinate was a small part of the more comprehensive and unfulfilled demand that the UN build adequate healthcare treatment facilities throughout the country, and most critically, install a nationwide clean water and sewage system. This would be the only effective means to stop the cholera epidemic.
Following the latest devastation by Hurricane Matthew, the WHO announced it would send 1 million vaccines to Haiti. This is much too little, much too late. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
Cholera vaccines...are of limited usefulness. In field trials conducted in areas with endemic cholera, vaccines have been only about 50% effective in reducing the incidence of clinical illness for 3–6 months. They do not prevent transmission of infection.
Depending on the type of vaccine used, any protection from infection, in addition to lasting only three-six months, would not be realized for 2–3 weeks. Inevitably, many more would contract the disease and die before vaccines were actually administered. Even those who get the vaccine will be exposed to risk of infection when the immunity wears off.
In the words of a man from Port Salut, desperately trying to pitch in and help feed and shelter the surviving members of his neighbor’s family, “If we survive, they will survive. If we have only one loaf of bread to eat, we will share it with them” (NYT 10/8).
PLP believes this to be the inherent communist thinking that many working class brothers and sisters aspire to around the world. It is in this spirit that we are building one mass international party that will eventually smash this global capitalist system and break the chains that bind us, once and for all. Join us.

NEW YORK CIY, October 11—A local rally denounced the racist displacement of working-class families.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are active in a community organization that is confronting evictions and dislocation. Members of the community organization were frustrated and angry. A community coalition led by evangelical pastors organized a march supposedly against gentrification. In reality the purpose of the march was to win the community to religion and to their churches. They actually discouraged any kind of fightback, as a sound truck blared out religious music and people distributed church cards.
They boldly chanted, “Tenants, yes. Evictions, no,” and distributed 800 flyers calling on tenants to fight back. The contradiction was obvious to all. The working class in the area grabbed the PLP flyers, saying, “This is what we need.”
The financial system and the real estate industry, which are directly tied to the New York City government, are attacking working-class neighborhoods across the city. The result is dislocation of largely Black and Latin tenants from the South Bronx, Harlem, East New York, Bushwick and elsewhere.
two PLP comrades distributed 160 copies of the revolutionary communist newspaper, CHALLENGE. Some of the Party’s friends told a comrade that the “real political march” they had gone to was PLP’s May Day march last spring. When the pastors stopped at the local precinct to pray for the police a comrade shouted, “We should be fighting police violence and supporting the families of the two black men killed by police in Oklahoma and North Carolina.” People cheered.
The rulers’ strategy, based on profiteering and racism, is to build “mixed income neighborhoods” where working-class families are reduced to 10 percent low income, 30 percent medium income and the rest high income. In some new rezoned buildings the minimum income to even apply for a new apartment is $48,000 a year, even though more than 30 percent of the current residents earn $25,000 and less.
The rulers want to break up long-term Black and Latin neighborhoods to divide the working class. They pack in three or four mainly white students into small “renovated” apartments, while middle income families end up paying huge rents between $2,500 and $3,500 a month. We need to unite and fight back!
A World without Landlords
PLP members are committed to continue our work in the community organization. We are exposing capitalism, racism and calling for sharper struggle. We expose the dead end of reform struggle led by the politicians. We call for an egalitarian communist society where the working class will organize housing for our class; no landlords! As we get to know people we are building our PLP study group and expanding readers and networks of CHALLENGE distributors, who also give donations to support our paper. The working class is open to the ideas in CHALLENGE and slowly and steadily we are building a solid group of friends and supporters. Our friends have many questions about the successes and failures of the old communist movement. As the capitalist ruling class is trying to bury us in racism, sexism and anti-communism, PLP is boldly answering workers’ questions and raising working class consciousness as we fight back. Our Party has confidence in the working class because our class is smart and strong. What we do now counts on the long road to communist revolution and workers’ liberation.

On October 2, the peace deal between the Colombian government and the fake leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was narrowly defeated in a public vote, leaving a 50-year conflict in limbo. While the deal may still be revived, the “no” vote—like Britain’s Brexit vote in June—exposes the limits of imperialist control by the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, which had pushed for a settlement as a tool to expand its presence in Colombia.
As communists, we know that life under capitalism is anything but peaceful for the international working class (see history of fake left movements in Latin America on page 4). However the deal in Colombia sorts out, it will be no victory for workers. Instead, it will enrich a section of the Colombian ruling class while opening new opportunities for imperialists from the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Local Bosses’ Fight Spoils Deal
The peace deal’s failure also exposed a split within the Colombian ruling class. On one side is President Juan Manuel Santos, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who represents the “international” wing of the local ruling class. These bosses, mainly in the banking, mining and oil sectors, want to open Colombia to more international trade and investment. According to Stratfor, “If the deal wins approval, Colombia’s rural areas will become more accessible...and Bogota will begin considering how it can attract foreign investment to the regions” (8/16).
The opposing wing, led by Alvaro Uribe, the former president linked to paramiltary massacres, represents local landowners who are fighting to hold on to territory seized during the war with FARC. In Colombia today, less than half of one percent of the population controls half the land (Guardian, 10/3). This faction is also fighting to keep money flowing into the paramilitary forces and a militarized Colombian state. With the support of U.S. imperialism, paramilitary death squads have killed thousands of Colombian workers over decades (New York Times, 9/10).
U.S. Bosses’ Ulterior Motives
The 21st century has seen the U.S. ruling class lose a lot of ground in Latin America. This was a region where U.S. capitalists once created a new country in1903 (the part of Colombia that became Panama) to secure a canal for U.S. strategic and economic interests. But more recently, the rise of Chinese and Russian involvement in the region has changed the dynamics.
Since 2000, under the guise of a “war on drugs,” the U.S. has given Colombia over $10 billion. That money bought the most secure U.S. ally in the region, and the U.S. wants to make sure it stays that way. In anticipation of an eventual peace deal, the Barack Obama administration pledged to increase aid next year “from $300 million to nearly $500 million, with funds for removing land mines, replacing illegal mines, and other rural development projects” (Washington Post, 9/27), along with a $390 million aid package for post-conflict recovery. With oil imports from Colombia rising modestly of late, U.S. bosses are eyeing substantial future profits from infrastructure development.
Colombia is a strategic location for the U.S.’s military’s South Command. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “During the FARC detente, the United States can increase offshore interdiction activity without evoking feelings of Reaganesque Latin American policy,” a reference to former U.S. President and death squad funder Ronald Reagan (9/20).
China Challenging U.S. Power
Other imperialist powers are also planning for life after the Colombian peace deal. The European Union pledged an aid package of $638 million USD. Though China has pledged a mere $8 million, they are now Colombia’s second-largest trading partner. Once it is settled, the peace deal will open up more opportunities for the Chinese bosses and sharpen their rivalry with the U.S. China already has strong economic and political ties with Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. A stronger relationship with Colombia might give the Chinese rulers access to its ports in the Pacific.
As the fight for Latin America intensifies, the U.S. clearly has the most to lose in Colombia.
Our Struggle Is for Communism
Whether or not the peace deal passes, workers in Colombia will remain mired in inequality, poverty, unemployment and war. Whether the country is nominally ruled by Santos, Uribe or FARC, workers will be under the bosses’ thumb. Only a communist revolution can bring power to the working class.
The Progressive Labor Party in Colombia is building a base in the working class as an important part of our international fight for communism. We have young women and men in the factories, neighborhoods, and schools who are fighting each day to reach our goal, a communist world.

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FARC – No Friend of the Working Class

The FARC was created in 1964 as the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party to fight against inequality, poverty and land consolidation.  Its attachment to Marxist politics reflected the influence of the international communist movement as the answer to imperialism and the exploitation of billions of workers around the world.  But FARC quickly turned into its opposite because of political weaknesses in the old communist movement. “Revolutionary nationalism,” the reactionary idea that elevates one country’s “people” over the international working class, led many groups to collaborate with “lesser evil” capitalists. Millions of brave fighters were derailed from a revolutionary path.  
FARC was not immune to this decay. Its leaders turned to the drug trade to finance their army.  Capitalist media accounts have estimated that FARC was responsible for 90 percent of the cocaine on the world market (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November 2014). These are the same drugs that have destabilized working-class communities throughout the world and led to the incarceration of thousands of Black and Latin workers in the United States.
FARC was also responsible for kidnapping minors into their army and other terrorist activities that hurt and killed working people in Colombia. As the state-terrorist Colombian bosses, backed by the U.S., damaged FARC economically and militarily, the group’s anti-worker acts only got worse.
The Progressive Labor Party believes in winning workers to fight for an international communist world.  We renounce terrorism as the bosses’ strategy. Only through the mass violence of a communist revolution can the working class take power. Join us!

Since the evening of the hurricane, our comrades were out to help people in danger. In one provincial town in the South that was hit hard by Matthew, we kept in phone contact until the networks went down. We warned against going out because of flying debris from roofs. During the night, the brother of a comrade, himself close to the Party, facilitated the evacuation of several disabled people.
During the storm, one of the comrades welcomed several people who had been flooded out into his already crowded house. Then, we organized several young people to help out at a local shelter. After the worst of the storm passed, we helped the family of a comrade to clean his flooded house. And we continued to meet with young people to see what needed to be done for the victims. We discussed the ideas and actions of the local bosses, who seemed incapable of providing leadership in this time of crisis. And we talked about why this storm was so violent and why we, as working people, had not been able to resist the ravages of the storm. Poverty and racism are “natural” under capitalism, and this storm was not a “natural disaster” but rather the capitalist disaster of a system that doesn’t deserve to exist.
Early the next day, under violent winds, heavy rains and flooding, we accompanied young people to patrol the area to see who needed help. We responded as best we could to appeals for food and water from both young and old. Another comrade, whose own house had been flooded, took in a dozen people who lost their home to flooding. Many others did the same, showing the solidarity of the working class in times of trouble, sharing food or some money. We also participated with a team in removing downed trees from the public square.
We spoke with our friends and neighbors about the bad decisions of the bosses and politicians, who had no “disaster plan” to protect the residents of this town or anywhere else in Haiti.
For now, one comrade is working with some who want to help in projects in the town, for example, in direct action for free drinking water (today you have to buy clean water in Haiti or risk cholera and other diseases).
We are in the process of building a base for PLP in this town, and building the confidence of the masses in us, and our confidence in them. People are seeing more clearly than ever how the system is the cause of this damage. Any help from the government and NGOs will not solve the problem of capitalism. Awareness continues in all our discussions and meetings. And that is part of winning.
Progressive Labor Party is a revolutionary party, not an NGO or a bourgeois political party that shows up in a crisis or wants to take advantage of disasters to be seen and buy votes. Our comrades are integral parts of the working class who try to fight capitalism every day.