Christmas and New Year greeting from FARC-EP (Second Marquetalia)

This, especially at a juncture in which the manipulation of citizen opinion, with lies and interventionist actions that strike the self-determination and sovereignty of nations, continue to cause the deplorable destruction of fundamental rights, with imperial perfidy by the United States, through frontal actions of destabilization, while pointing to the victims as the cause of the evils generated by neoliberalism and presenting the social protests that are proliferating on the continent today as threats to the supposed democratic order.

We cannot silently allow the propaganda of deception that disguises and conceals the inequality, misery and exclusion generated by neoliberalism to the detriment of wages, job insecurity, environmental deterioration, health, education, and pensions systems, access to water and minimum living conditions, increasing rates of violence and social conflicts, while destabilizing anti-neoliberal governments and repressing those who rise up against pro-imperialist regimes, murdering social leaders, young people, students and common people in general.

Let the powerful not deceive themselves, because historically the peoples have always found ways, usually unexpected and unique, to seek alternatives, to rethink in new terms the course of their daily lives, to remake paths, to create new relationships between past, present and future, and when least expected, to revitalize emancipatory struggles, revolutionizing the social order of submission that undermines their rights.

That is why we can only congratulate and follow the example of those who advance on the continent and other latitudes of the world, against neoliberalism and against the omnipresence of imperialism, which in no way can be considered impossible to defeat. We have the weapon of truth and, certainly, with greater legitimacy than ever before, the universal right to rebellion in all its forms, including armed rebellion, because as we have said on other occasions, people cannot be condemned to fight with their bare hands and breasts in order for their struggles to be recognized, while their terrible exploiting enemies do not neglect the military aspect of the class struggle, each day arming themselves more and more, subordinating knowledge, science and technology to their interests. 

It is no exaggeration to say that, in the midst of the crisis of progressivism, neoliberalism is dying in Latin America, and that it is necessary to give it the final stroke. The promises of milk and honey from the countries of “advanced capitalism,” and their gangster institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, as well as their spokesmen and propagandists, are hopelessly collapsing. The farce of the Chilean system, for example, exposed as a looting machine, was demolished by massive demonstrations, unprecedented in the history of the southern country of Our America. Not only is Sebastián Piñera unmasked, but the whole false paradise of capitalist consumerism, which feigns democracy but is proven to be robbery, concealed by the media machinery that helped create the deception of a bonanza that never existed.

Those who, in Latin America, have come out to protest against neoliberalism with discontent and fury, have also done so with more than sufficient reasons. To the displeasure of the triumphal oracles of the status quo, who rushed to denounce them as “vandals,” “terrorists,” “misfits,” and even “aliens,” according to the obtuse perception of the wife of Chilean President Piñera, have shown that the violent reaction of the offended is nothing more than a response to the terrible violence of their exploiters, of the plutocrats, who have condemned them to misery and the most abominable humiliations insofar as they have plundered and degraded national wealth by handing it over to the transnational corporations.

Colombia does not escape from this reality, where the ultra-neoliberal right has already begun to suffer devastating blows in the recent elections, or with the marches happening now in which the people, who are sovereign, have spoken, have taken the floor, to say firmly that they are tired of being looking over their shoulder, that they continue to be ignored, disrespected, abused, victimized and teased with every statement and every broken negotiation. Because if any victimization of the highest dimension has occurred in our country, it is generated by the inequality, misery and exclusion imposed by the regime on the whole of that humble and subjugated people.

A president dissociated from reality, diminished to the role of Uribe’s and Washington’s puppet, also captive of his own ineptitude and clumsiness, it seems that he will not be able to tackle a serious dialogue to solve the needs and demands of those on marches and cacerolazos who have shouted their outrage by calling for the dismantling of ESMAD, that corruption and impunity be curbed and punished, that economic policies of hunger be stopped, that life be respected, that peace agreements be fulfilled and that so many commitments with the social movement no longer be mocked. Hence our insistence on opening the way for an initiative to summon all parties, political and social movements, and all the living forces of the country to conclude a great NATIONAL POLITICAL AGREEMENT aimed at defining institutional reforms and adjustments necessary to meet the challenges that peace demands, putting in place a new framework of coexistence that, after an open and truly democratic constituent process, will allow us to emerge from the deep national crisis that overwhelms us.

Do not forget, people of the past and guardians of the old order, that when the custard, the fritters and the carols pass after December 31, rebelliousness will multiply and every day the determination of the crowds will be more fervent, to confront and throw on the trash heap of history its class enemies, the arrogant empire and its accomplices.

This is a difficult task, but not impossible. We are sure that the times are pregnant with great potential for change. And as at every turning point in history, surprises could happen in capital letters. In the hour of the furnaces, the “neutrality” of the “neutrals,” the “politically correct language” and good manners of the lukewarm, will be worthless.

As long as there is a will to fight, there will be hope of winning!

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) – Second Marquetalia

December 2019

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