Henry RuÃz, Commandant of the Revolution, a member of the historic national leadership of the Sandinista Front (FSLN), is a quasi-legendary figure in Nicaragua. He was one of the leaders of the main rural guerrilla front. He spoke with the magazine Envio on the situation in Nicaragua and called for abstention during the presidential election of November 6, 2017. Envio transcribed his remarks and published them in full in issue No. 414, September 2016. This is an edited version. [1].
Trump Makes Early Enemies
3 February 2017, byPresident Donald Trump and his alt-right advisor Stephen Bannon—“President Bannon” as he is being called—are making enemies fast, and lots of them. Leaders of some of the country’s largest corporations have come out against Trump’s Muslim and refugee ban. Some Christians, including Evangelicals, object to the ban’s privileging of Christians. Trump’s statement on the holocaust, which failed to mention Jews, offended major Jewish groups. Workers, workers’ centers, and labor unions, which represent many immigrants, have also spoken out against the Muslim ban.
From the Women’s March to the International Women’s Strike
2 February 2017, byThe organizers of the January 21 Women’s March on Washington were expecting a large turnout, but the almost 3m people who decided to take to the streets around the country, and in a number of cities around the world, went well beyond the most optimistic expectations and represented a serious embarrassment to Donald Trump. The most notable fact about the Women’s March is the massive participation of people with no previous political experience, nor participation in protest. This fact alone, regardless of the political limitations that have characterized the call for the march and its public representation in the media, should be a reason for optimism, as well as an invitation to think seriously about how to maintain momentum and about the ways in which women’s mobilizations can work as a trigger for the birth of a mass movement; tackling not only the aggressively right wing policies of the Trump administration, but also the effects of neoliberalism and institutional racism on the life of millions of women and the working class more generally.
Against Trump and Peña: unity from below and without borders
1 February 2017The following statement was published by the Revolutionary Workers’ Party, PRT, Mexican section of the Fourth International, as the U.S. President, Donald Trump, signed his executive order to begin work immediately on a wall along the border between the two countries, and repeated that Mexico would have to pay for it. As a result, the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, was forced to cancel his planned visit to the White House on 31 January.
Footnotes
[1] Staying for nine years in the mountains, he was baptized "Modesto" by a peasant fighter because of his personal qualities. After the triumph in July 1979, he was appointed Minister of Planning, then Minister of External Cooperation, in direct contact with the international solidarity movement. After the electoral defeat of the FSLN in February 1990 (Daniel Ortega lost the presidential election to Violetta Chamorro), he assumed the responsibilities of international relations and the treasury of the party until the extraordinary congress of the FSLN in May 1994. Defending the criterion of "internal democracy" within any revolutionary force, he was then candidate for the post of general secretary and was defeated by Daniel Ortega in a proportion of 7 votes against 3. Promoter of the "necessary renovation of Party "during the intensification of the internal crisis of Sandinism (from September 1994 to February 1995), he continued to participate in the leadership of the FSLN. He left the FSLN in 1999