REVOLUTIONARY MILITANT
The following statement was issued November 17 by the Secretariat of the Liga Socialista
(Socialist League), a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Mexico.
The process of recomposition in the workers movement will most probably be accelerated in coming months. National wage negotiations begin in January. If the Social Democratic bureaucracy yields to the employers' demands or accepts government intervention to bring about a "zero solution, " the SF and the CP will gain further ground. Already several CP-controlled local unions and the Formandsinitiotivet have threatened to call for a general strike against any govemment intervention in the wage negotiations. The way the workers answered the message of Anker Jorgensen on November 26 indicates that such a call would get a big response. Just before going to press we received the news that the Danish government has called a new election for January 9, 1975. Some days after the NovemOur comrade Antonio Maldonado Franco and two other students of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Puebla (UAP — Autonomous National University of Puebla) have been murdered in Tlaxcala City by a gang known as "Los Gavilanes" (The Hawks). One of the students was Guillermo Ramirez; we do not yet know the name of the other compañero who was murdered. The three were teaching in the Rafael Ramfrez normal school in Tlaxcala City, which has been sub¡ected to repeated attacks by the "Gavilanes," who represent a faction in the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional - Institutional Revolutionary party), the government party in Mexico. The "Gavilanes" serve as a goon squad and have been trying to drive radical activists out of the Rafael Ramírez normal school. The first victim was Guillermo Ramirez, who was kidnapped at the end of October, Later he was found dead. His funeral was marked by a mass demonstration in the city of Puebla. The second and third victims were our comrade Antonio and another student at the UAP. They were kidnapped on October 24 during a "demonstration" organized by the government. It was one of the traditional rallies organized by a faction of the PRI to back its candidate for the gubernatorial nomination. The approach of elections for the governorship of Tlaxcala has unleashed a wave of violence in various parts of this state. 46 ber 26 demonstration the government presented a plan to parliament calling for a total freeze on wages and prices, a reduction in cost-of-living increases for the workers, and a halt to increases in dividends. After having seen the reactions of the working class, the Social Democratic and trade-union leaders decided to come out against the plan. The SF and the CP also opposed it. The government used this stated opposition to the plan to call for a new election before the plan comes to a vote in parliament. This can be considered a direct result of the massive working-class protests, which forced the Social Democrats to take a stand ageinst the proposed incomes policy and state intervention, even though they themselves had previously called for such a solution. D MURDERED When the "demonstration" passed near the Rafael Ramfrez normal school, the thugs grabbed Antonio and the other compañero from the UAP. The details remain unclear, since the news only reached us many days later by way of activists from the normal school who brought the report to Puebla. We did not know what had happened; our comrade had simply vanished. However, one of those kidnapped on October 24 had to be Antonio, since the description fitted him perfectly (the clothes he was wearing that day, the description of him, etc.). After being kidnapped, Antonio was taken to the building of the Instituto de Estudios Superiores (IES - Institute of Advanced Studies), which had been seized by the "Gavilanes. " We do not know how he was killed. When the police went into the building on November 12, it was reported unofficially that two bodies were found. So far the authorities have tried to cover up this crime. The police have not even allowed the bodies to be identified. Nonetheless, it is obvious to all that Antonio Maldonado and the other compañero were murdered. Comrade Antonio Maldonado Franco was eighteen years old. He went to work in the Rafael Ramfrez normal school as a volunteer instructor when the state authorities withdrew the teaching staff, claiming that there was "no money in the budgef" to pay them. The repressive government bears the full responsibility for his murder. In Puebla the UAP activists have mobilized to demand punishment of those guilty of these three murders.O
SPAIN cont'd. from pg.48 The Spanish Communist party's total absence of responsibility for these acts has been affirmed and defended by all the workers organizations, which were agreed in denouncing this aspect of the campaign of the dictatorship. But in the defense of the ETAV - whose responsibility in the affair has never been proven and was finally denied by the organization itself - a defense that was just as necessary and justified as the defense of the CP, there was much reticence on the part of certain organizations; reticence, if not silence or even implicit accusation. For those who have been the main victims, those who most directly suffered and continue to suffer the effects of the police campaign, only two or three organizations assumed the responsibility and honor of defending them unconditionally against the bourgeoisie, without letting themselves get caught up in the atmosphere the police had succeeded in creating against them among public opinion, sticking to the principle that has guided the revolutionary solidarity of communists in all epochs: Against bourgeois repression a revolutionary is always right! If today the lives of Eva Forest and Antonio Durán are threatened in the "Carrero affair, " if is because solidarity with them was insufficient, because the dictatorship thought that they had been abandoned, left without any support. These militants could barely find a lawyer to defend them. That is why they were chosen as propitious victims; that is why today their lives are being used as bargaining chips among the various political factions of the Spanish bourgeoisie. There is now an attempf to make of them a bloody "retribution" for the execution of Carrero, a retribution demanded and required by the most reactionary political sectors, those who for that very reason had identified themselves most closely with "the odmiral." To abandon these comrades to their assassins would not only be a crime; it would also be an encouragement to new crimes, an encouragement to repression; it would strengthen the effects and impunity of these new crimes. And this increased strength would end up by hitting all those fighting against the dictatorship, including those who are now encouraging the dictatorship by their silence. If anyone thinks that we are exaggerating, that the death penalty will not be requested in the "Carrero affair" or that if it is requested it will not be granted, lef them recall Salvador Puig Antich! If anyone believes that the danger of the death penalty exists but that it can be averted by gathering signatures on protests and petitions, let them also remember Salvador Puig Antich! If anyone thinks that nothing can be done, that if the dictatorship wants to murder Eva Forest and Antonio Durán it will do so, let them remember Izko and his comrades!
Yes, it is possible to save the lives of Eva and Antonio; we can do it. But every minute counts. Not a second must be lost; the broadest and most combafive campaign of national and international so lidarIty must be organized! Right now we must begin organizing a united struggle of all parties, all workers organizations, all bodies of the vanguard in the factories, universities, institutes, liberal professions, in the Workers Commissions around the slogan: DOWN WITH THE CARRERO TRIAL! Let us struggle for the FREEDOM OF EVA FOREST AND ANTONIO DURAN! Let us thus move forward to the formation of a United Front Against Repression in order to begin a permanent struggle against the War Councils, the bloodiest instruments of Francoist repression, the most striking example of the role played by the army in the dictatorship, the most tangible evidence that the mass movement can expect nothing from the army but the most brutal repression. AGAINST THE TOP (Public Order Tribunal), renamed the "Tribuna! Central de lo Penal" by the new Organic Law of Justice, the "incarnation, " according to its author, of the principles of July 18. " AGAINST THE LABOR TRIBUNALS, AGAINST ALL THE REPRESSIVE APPARATUS OF FRANCOISM! For the release of political prisoners, for solidarity with their struggles, which will open the way for the release of Eva Forest and Antonio Durán, for the return of the exiles! Thus, the struggle against the repression will fake the important place it deserves in the struggles of the mass movement, in the present preparation of the general strike leading to the revolutionary general strike that will overthrow Francoism. The struggle to save the lives of Eva Forest and Antonio Durán can and must be an important step in this direction. The Carrero trial is a new challenge to the working class of our country thrown at it by the dictatorship. Let us rise to the challenge: Let us organize the response and call for international solidarity! Who will intervene to defend these "terrorists"? the dictatorship asks itself. We answer, and we will answer in action: We will, the workers, students, doctors, professors, teachers, women Eva Forest and Antonio Durán are our comrades. We do not believe your lies. We have seen them at our sides in the struggle. We have seen them in the 1968 strike in Pegaso, in the solidarity struggles with the Vietnamese revolution, in the construction strikes, in the struggle against the Burgos War Coun cil four years ago. We will not abandon them! DOWN WITH THE CARRERO TRIAL! FREEDOM FOR EVA FOREST AND ANTONIO
DURAN!
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