Some Notes on Struggles in Latinamerica
In Peru, on December 9, relatives of the victims of the 2022 Ayacucho massacre protested. After two days of commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho, (December 9, 1824), a key date in South America’s struggle for independence from Spanish crowns rule, relatives of those massacred in 2022 protested in front of the Coronel Alfredo Mendívil Duarte airport, awaiting the arrival of President Dina Boluarte. She did not arrive at the airport, citing weather conditions, and instead gave a speech from the government palace in Lima.
The Ayacucho massacre was committed by the Peruvian army on December 15, 2022, the day after Boluarte gave the military expanded powers to respond to demonstrations. At least ten protesters were killed and 61 more were injured.
According to the investigation results, the official story was that the military fired on a group of protesters who were allegedly violently trying to take over the airport, and that the soldiers supposedly did not use lethal ammunition. According to the actual facts, the massacre was planned and carried out by the military. Among the injured, 90% had live ammunition wounds, and those killed had been shot in the head or chest. At least six of the dead were chased and then shot by the army. Nine of those massacred were proven killed by lead bullets from official army weapons.
Different kind of organizations have condemned the authorities’ excessive use of force, and the Minister of Culture and the Minister of Education resigned from post in the government, while the rest of the government and the bourgeois media have denied and kept quiet about what happened.
Anyhow, the process of resistance against the Boluarte coup government continues to this very day, and the sharpening of the contradictions in Peruvian society (including the contradiction between the masses and the old state) fuels the spirit to struggle among the people’s masses.
On December 8, four boys aged 11 to 15 disappeared from Guayaquil, Ecuador, after being arrested and mistreated by a military patrol. The children’s bodies have been found and it has been confirmed that the children were killed and their bodies burned.
As we reported: The government and the military initially denied that soldiers were involved in the disappearance, but surveillance videos show the children being captured and beaten in a van full of air force soldiers. Sixteen soldiers have been charged with abduction. They have now admitted taking the children to Taura, 46 kilometers from Guayaquil, and abusing, undressing and humiliating them, but claim they released them alive.
Four charred bodies were found on December 24 in a swampy area in Taura, near an air base. On December 31, it was confirmed that these were the missing children. Different organizations then held a protest outside the Cuenca prosecutor’s office, demanding justice and clarification of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance and death of the minors.
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The Front for the Defense of the People’s Struggle (FDLP) issued that the incident does not surprise them, since such things happen daily in Ecuador, that the old power of the big bourgeoisie and the big landlords is supported by two closely linked pillars: the armed forces, the national police and other paramilitary groups on the one hand, and their entire bureaucratic apparatus on the other. These two structures are rotten and broken, and contrary to what the bourgeois press says, they are not infiltrated by drug trafficking – they are drug traffickers and terrorists. From generals in the army and the police to their troops, they have been identified as members of criminal gangs of various kinds. They have become assassins, executioners and murderers in uniform. Today, they represent the clearest and most powerful expression of the bankruptcy of bureaucrat capitalism.
The FDLP further wrote that the armed forces are the bastards of the United States: servile, oppressive and criminal, without honor or dignity. Lately, they have been feeding on Zionist tactics and strategies, copying their methods. They kidnap, commit selective assassinations, blow up the homes of their victims and criminalize poverty. They humiliate and demean their prisoners. They wear uniforms and weapons of Zionist origin, and many receive salaries directly from institutions such as the CIA or the DEA.
