(Photo credit – Nueva Democracia)

We at New Labor Press are glad to present a PDF containing our own translations of three important May Day statements and editorials from Latin American comrades we feel are very much worth highlighting and studying. Originally written by revolutionary proletarian organizations in Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, respectively, we felt it was worth sharing our own English translations of these particular articles because they directly address pressing questions for revolutionary members of our class like: How do we approach the struggle for reforms while also combating opportunism, reformism, and revisionism? What types of trade union organizations and movements do we go to and develop, and why? From what basic principles do we attempt to lead and construct the proletarian united front?

In the PDF linked here you can find translations, and links to the original Spanish versions, of the following texts that attempt in their own unique ways to briefly address and put forward slogans on these questions. We leave you with a preview of key selected quotes from each of the works:

“Even though one may believe the opposite, this disillusionment with the government that has been occurring is very positive for the people. It gives us the task of reorganizing and remobilizing our organizations and movements from below [desde la base], in order to lead the struggle under our interests and demands, basing the hopes and possibility of conquering victory on our own forces and not on trust in laws and State bureaucrats. The central issue today, as Lenin said for the Russian workers movement, is to develop and to apply a class line within the popular movement.

That is to say that, the popular movement, with its organizations, following its rich historical experience, has the task of taking the revolutionary path and through it, leading the struggle for its rights. It has to put forward its own agenda, its own program, and its own slogans. It is from below that it must define its demands and from the rank-and-file, from below that it must define its methods…

Each government, including the present one, has attempted to use various methods to suffocate rebellion and promote peace. It is thus also worth emphasizing that a very valuable historical lesson that we have learned, and that is elevated to the category of law, is that only independent and combative struggle will give us the possibility of achieving victories. Our struggle does not fit within the narrow margins that the state is anxious to impose on us.”

– Cast Aside Illusions, Take Up the People’s Struggle from the publication Nueva Democracia (Colombia)

“If we do not fight revisionism and opportunism, we will have done nothing! There cannot be construction without destruction; there is no room for the generation of new unions and people’s organizations if we do not destroy the old electoral unionism along the way. We must crush the bureaucrats, the ones who traffic with the organizations of the people and our class.

There are three fundamental principles that must be observed and applied by the new trade unionist current in our country; being anti-electoral, anti-imperialist, and consciously serving the fundamental tasks to unleash the development of New Democracy, as always, at the service of the World Proletarian Revolution; because outside of these tasks, there will never be anything new under the sun.”

– May 1st in Ecuador from the Front for the Defense of the Struggles of the People – Ecuador

“Regarding this 1st of May we consider that the organizations of the proletariat and the workers, particularly the independent and democratic unions which for decades have given life to the working class labor movement of our country, and which in the most tragic hours of tyranny and repression knew how to firmly maintain the struggle of our class, should today more than ever, unify their tasks around the construction of a powerful Proletarian Unity Movement that breaks with parliamentary cretinism and class collaboration. That is: break with opportunism, reformism, and revisionism of all types, which act as firefighters against the revolution within the workers movement.”

– Raise High the Banner of Boycott Against the Electoral Farce! from the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Mexico