Source: Daily Worker, Vol. VI, No. 161, September 12, 1929
Transcription/Markup: Paul Saba
Copyleft: Internet
Archive(marxists.org) 2018. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons License.
The presidential election campaign is in full swing in Colombia. While the workers and peasants are called upon to vote for either the conservative or liberal candidates, they are deprived of their rights to select their own. The farce of bourgeois elections is clearly shown in Colombia, particularly at this time where the country is going through a deep economic crisis. The national bourgeoisie will not take the chance to allow the workers to have their candidates. The Archbishop of Colombia has approved and given the Papal blessing to the bourgeois Wall Street candidates, Valencia and Cabo. The drowning in blood of the recent banana plantation workers’ Strike has not solved the problems in the Magdalena Region, but, on the contrary, rendered them more pressing. The United Fruit Company has increased its exploitation and is ruling with an iron hand. The workers are again up in arms, determined to fight starvation wages, jailings, assassinations. Their best leaders are rotting in jails, but new ones have sprung up. Over 7,000 railroad workers have joined the strike and the government is unable to cope with the situation. Thousands of workers in the oil fields are participating in the general struggle against wage cuts and oppression. The dictatorial w y with which the election campaign is being handled by the national bourgeoisie, with its determined will to an annihilate any vestige of working class independent political action, is forcing the workers to rise against the state. At this critical period the liberal-socialists–as it is expected–have sided with the bourgeoisie. The Communists in Colombia are the most persecuted. They are the leading elements in this almost general upheaval directed against the state dictatorship which rules under the orders of American financiers. In this struggle the workers of Colombia are learning to sharpen their instruments with which they will wipe out their imperialist oppressors and ruthless dictators.
The militant workers of South America are demanding in huge demonstrations the release of Radowitzki, who is in a critical condition within the four walls of Usuhaia prison, Buenos Aires. Radowitzki has been in jail since 1909 after he confessed killing Colonel Falcon, arch enemy of the workers who conducted a wholesale execution of workers on the First of May, 1909, at a peaceful demonstration in Plaza Lorea. The young revolutionist who eye witnessed the massacre under the direct orders of the dread Falcon, decided on the following November to take revenge for the victims of Plaza Lorea. While the workers of South America recognise the fallacy of individual acts of terrorism and that the efficient struggle against the hangmen is a mass struggle and the organizatlons of the workers and peasants for the overthrow of capitalism, Radowitzki is today the symbol of the heroic act of an ardent fighter for the cause of the workers. Radowitzki must be freed. The workers of the United State must demand the freedom of this agonizing fighter. We must help our brother workers of South America in this huge campaign for the freedom of Radowitzki. To the rescue of Radowitzki!