 Welcome everyone, good morning to this discussion on Latin America. It's very timely. I don't know if anyone's been watching the news in the last few hours, but yesterday, you won't see it on the BBC or on the Guardian, but yesterday there was a demonstration in Santiago, the Chile, with over 1.2 million people against the government and approximately perhaps another half a million or another million people demonstrated in other cities and towns across the country. You have to take into account that Chile is a small country in terms of population. I think it has about 17 million inhabitants. So we're talking about over 10% of the total population being on the streets. Also, this is not any demonstration. It's a demonstration that takes place after a week of militarization of the country, where the government has used the national security law for the first time since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, where there has been a curfew in the main cities of the country since last Saturday night, Friday night last week. And where the police have shot dead about 20 people in the last week, there's been more than 2,000 people arrested. And nevertheless, 1.2 million people came out to a demonstration that was built up for as the largest demonstration in Chile, and it was. This is the largest demonstration in Chilean history, even bigger than the 1988 closing rally for the no campaign against the Pinochet referendum in 1988, which had a million people at that time. So what we are witnessing in Latin America is not normal events. This is not just a few protests against particular measures taken by the government. What we are witnessing in the last few weeks, really, is an insurrectionary wave. It's a situation in which people take direct action. We're talking about hundreds of thousands, millions of people coming onto the streets. They are not caught by repression, and there has been repression in Ecuador and in Chile, 10 people were killed in Ecuador in the protests. 20 people already have been killed according to official figures in Chile. Thousands have been arrested, injured, detained, tortured. These are demonstrations that are not just about single issue questions, but they challenge the whole of the status quo. They put the governments against the ropes, and in both cases in Ecuador and Chile, which I will deal in more detail, there are elements of dual power that is the masses on the streets start to organize their own committees, take their own decisions and challenge the monopoly of violence on the part of the bourgeois state. And this is not happening in one country or in two countries. It's happening in a country after another. So it's not just an isolated event that's got to do with the particularities of Chile or the particularities of Ecuador. It's a continental wave. You could say, you could trace it back to the months of June and July where there was a huge mass movement in Puerto Rico, which whether we like it or not is still U.S. soil, U.S. territory. A huge mass movement, which started also accidentally, which sparked that movement was the leaking of some WhatsApp conversations between the governor and his immediate clique, and people were very angry at what they heard, how the governor dismissed everyone in the country, and they came out on the streets and started protesting. And for four or five weeks they were on the streets, the protests were growing, repression was not stopping them. Finally they forced the resignation of the governor. These movements have achieved also partial, at least, victories. In Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, we have seen a mass movement or rather like the third wave of a mass movement which has now lasted for six weeks up until this day. With mass demonstrations, the police shooting people on the streets, a movement which is against corruption, against inequality, the economic policies of the government which is considered to be illegitimate, is a puppet government of the United States and the people in Haiti and not stopping there on the streets trying to overthrow that government. Ecuador at the beginning of this month, in Chile now, but also in Honduras at the beginning of this week, the brother of the president was indicted in a U.S. court on charges of narco trafficking, and these allegations involve his brother who is the president, illegitimate president of Honduras elected in a rigged election after a military coup backed by the United States in 2009. And as of this week, at the beginning of this week, the joint opposition forces have called for permanent mobilization until the overthrow of the regime. And the people are on the streets. In Colombia, there's also been the build-up of a movement against cuts in education budget. There were huge demonstrations of university students and also more generally against the proposed counter-reform of the labor laws. There was a big day of action last week and there is a national strike being called for the 21st of November if I'm not wrong. So it's not just one country, as I was saying. It's one country after another. This is not just a casual accident. It's a trend. It's a generalized feature. And of course, if you are here, this week you will hear also about other countries where similar things are happening around the world. In Sudan, in Algeria earlier this year, continuing now in Hong Kong, in Catalonia, a whole number of countries where there's been eruptions of mass movements with different characteristics. In some cases, very confused leadership. But the main feature is the masses are taking direct action on the streets. They are not cowed by repression. They are led by the youngest of the young. In the case of Chile's secondary high school students started this movement. I will go more in detail about the general implications of this, but I think it's important to go into the details of these movements to try to understand their scope. None of these, or most of these, has not been reported in the mainstream capitalist media. For good reason. They don't want people to take notice and follow the example. In Ecuador, we had on the 2nd of October the government of Lenin Moreno, unfortunate name. The government of Moreno introduced and announced a package of IMF-inspired measures. It signed a letter of intent with the International Monetary Fund. And we all know this story. We've heard it before. The aim is to cut the budget deficit, to cut the national debt, build the reserves, the foreign reserves of the country. A country whose economy has been dollarized for now nearly 20 years. And of course, the way to do this is to cut on social spending, take money from the poor and the workers and give it to the wealthy, give it to the bankers, the capitalists, the banana plantation owners that dominate the economy and so on. Amongst these measures, but this was only one of them, was the lifting of subsidies on fuel, which meant an immediate overnight increase in the price of gasoline by 70% and the price of fuel by over 100%. But there were a lot of other measures. There were 13 economic measures, nine counter reforms of the labour law measures, including tax breaks for the rich, the lowering of import duty, cuts in public sector wages by 20%. Cuts in holidays for public sector workers from 30 days a year to 15 days a year. A special tax on public sector workers, who's supposed to be privileged, of one day's wages a month and general assault on wages, conditions, the deregularization of the labour market, the introduction of casual labour across the board. 23,000 layoffs in the public sector is a massive program. The first measure that was already introduced, some of these had to go through Parliament, but the first measure that was introduced was the increasing of subsidies on fuel. And this immediately, this was on the 2nd of October. On the same day, there were already protests in the capital Quito. You have to remember that this government of Lenin Moreno was elected only two years ago on the basis of being the continuation or the inheritor of the government of Rafael Correa, a progressive government that had carried out many progressive reforms over a 10-year period. But immediately he turned against his mentor. He made an agreement with the United States, which included, incidentally and very important for us here in Britain, the handing over of Assange was in refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to the UK authorities, in effect to the US authorities. And then the signing of this Declarator of Intent with the IMF in exchange for a 10 billion US dollars loan from international financial institutions for the Ecuadorian economy. The protest started with the national stoppage, road blockades across the country, the transport owners paralyzing the country. And then two days later, the government decided to use repression. Moreno started by introducing the state of emergency and a core field in the capital. None of that stopped the movement. If anything, the movement grew bigger in the face of this provocation. The Conaia, the national organization of indigenous peoples, declared their own state of emergency. They said, in the territories that we control, there's a state of emergency. Any agents of the law that come in will be arrested. This is a challenge to the monopoly of violence on the part of the state. And they were not just talking. They did it in a place near Kotopaxi, where there's a big volcano. They arrested 47 members of a special rapid intervention unit of the Ecuadorian army. And they arrested them. And they didn't want to let them go. Finally, after many negotiations, they were released. Only then, to be arrested by a nearby community, wasn't part of this deal to release them. When the government, very interestingly, when the government sent the army on the streets and they sent them to different regions in the country to remove the road blockades, the peasants, the workers, the indigenous people that were in these blockades argued with the soldiers. They said, you are also sons of the people. You also come from the people. Don't shoot at your own brothers and sisters. And in many cases, the soldiers fraternized with protestors. They downed the arms. And they escorted these peasant protestors onto the capital. They marched on the capital by tens of thousands. Nothing could stop the movement. The demonstrators in the capital marched on the presidential palace. And the government had to flee the capital. The government of Lenin Moreno had prepared a press conference. The journalists were quickly rounded up, evacuated from the palace. And the government had to flee in a helicopter to Guayaquil coastal city. This is amazing, since this is an insurrection. It's not just a protest movement. It's an insurrection. They also had to close down the national parliament. On October the 9th, the week after, there was a general strike, which had mass following throughout the country. On October the 10th, there was a short lift attempt to take over the national assembly by the protestors and install their own parliament. This is a direct challenge to bourgeois rule. On the 11th of October, there was the most extraordinary since. I have to tell you, it was in the office watching this being broadcast live. And I was shouting at everyone, look at this, this is amazing. There was a huge demonstration. After it had been massive repression, seven people had already been killed. There was a huge mass assembly in a place called the Agora of the Casa de Cultura in Quito. It must have been 3,000 people, representatives of the movement. And on the stage, there were the leaders of the movement. Together with nine police officers they had captured and disarmed. They forced them to take the boots off, to take the weapons off, the bulletproof vests, and they threatened to put them at the front of the demonstration with the aim of marching onto the presidential palace. They also forced the journalists present to broadcast this assembly live on all TV channels, which had been up until that time, up until that time it had been blocking the movement and lying and distorting its real content. This is workers' power. This is the establishment of an alternative source of power. It's not only that they were protesting and demanding something from the government, they were taking the law into their own hands. And this is very dangerous. In fact now, after an agreement has been reached, people have been demobilized, the government is prosecuting them for these very reasons. The movement set up its own indigenous and popular guard, people with shields armed with sticks and stones and whatever they could find in order to protect the demonstrations in the clashes with the police. They also made an open appeal to the army not to obey the orders of the government. They are now being put on trial for sedition. Of course it is sedition, but these charges are not going to go through. I don't think because they'll provoke another explosion. And then when everyone in this assembly was shouting and they also demanded that the government release the bodies of the people who had been killed. The government were denying anyone who had been killed, but the people knew. On to the medical examiner's office. They brought the bodies into the assembly. On the shoulders of some of the police officers that had been detained, shall we say, and they paid homage to them. And everyone in that assembly was shouting, down with Moreno. And they could have done it. But the leadership of the movement, of the Conaia, the leaders of the peasant indigenous movement, which were at the forefront of this movement, they didn't have a perspective for power. And so they agreed on the day after to have talks with the government. Withdrawing some of the conditions they had put previously, the government decided to withdraw the decree lifting fuel subsidies, which was one of the sparks of the movement. And the leaders of the movement agreed to call on people to go back home. So this is the situation we have now in Ecuador. They could have taken power. If at that point, instead of saying, yeah, we're going to talk to the government, the leaders of the movement, they would have said, no, we're going to set up a people's assembly and assembly of the people, which they talked about. An assembly of the people is going to be the only power in this country, and we're going to take the decisions. We're going to challenge who rules the country. That's what was posed at that time. This is why we say these are insurrectionary, revolutionary events. This is not just a protest movement, which didn't go all the way for the lack of a clear leadership. But it went quite a long way along this path. And they managed to achieve the withdrawal of the decree. But the rest of the measures are still in the letter of intent, and they're going to be passed through parliament soon. And this is going to provoke another explosion of the movement. Already the peasant leaders have withdrawn from the negotiations. They're saying the government is not acting in good faith. It's persecuting and arresting peasant leaders and so on. And what is at stake in Ecuador, really, is not one policy or, as some say, we need to change in the model of economic development. No, no, what we need is the overthrow of capitalism. This is capitalism in crisis, and there's no other way capitalism in crisis is going to act in these circumstances. But what we've seen in Ecuador in the last few weeks is the development of a revolutionary situation, one which was not successful for the lack of a clear leadership. The government was clearly against the rules. The first thing that Moreno did after getting the people to back down was to remove the chief of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces. He was clearly not sure that the army was going to act on his instructions during the movement. The second, and in Ecuador, the masses have a proud tradition of overthrowing governments. In 1997, they overthrew the government, 1997 they overthrew the government of Abdullabu Karam. In 2000 they overthrew the government of Jamil Mahwad. In 2005 they defeated the government of Lucio Gutierrez. And now they could have overthrown this government. But it's not just a question of overthrowing a government, but overthrowing the capitalist system. This is the main task of the day in Ecuador, as it is in other countries. Chile, the movement also started with an accidental question. On the 6th of October, the government introduced a rise in transport fares, which are already very high. For a person on a minimum wage, transport in Santiago represents 13.8% of the monthly wage. There's a lot of money. People in London will be familiar with the feeling. And this immediately provoked a movement of school students, secondaries. They started with what they call evasiones, that is mass jumping over the barriers, not paying the tickets. And they were joined soon, they were joined by the rest of the population, who thought this was a very good idea if the students are taking the initiative. We're also jumping over. The government had an extremely provocative attitude. At the beginning one of the ministers said, well, if people think it's very expensive, they can wake up a little bit earlier, because there's cheaper fares earlier in the morning. Just basically saying people were lazy, couldn't get up in the morning. There was mass demonstrations. This then led to a day in which mass movement had been called mass... This is not just individual actions. This is an organized movement without a clear leadership, but a mass movement in the whole of the capital. On the 18th of October last Friday, there were mass demonstrations outside metro stations, and the government decreed the closing down of the metro system for the weekend. People couldn't even come back to the places of residence, and there was burning of the stations. The government declared the state of emergency, the militarization of the country, and a curfew. When people couldn't even really come back to their homes, because there was no transportation. On the same day, President Piñera, a right winger, he was seen and he posted pictures on Instagram of himself with his son having dinner or lunch, can't remember, in a very upmarket pizzeria in the richest neighborhood in the capital. Another provocation, completely out of touch with the mood of the people and saying things like, we are facing a very powerful enemy. We are at war. This is a bunch of radicals, violent vandals. They manipulated by Maduro and Castro. The FARC guerrillas in Colombia are involved in this kind of language, which was also used in Ecuador, by the way. It's typical, the ruling class can't see the processes that are going on in front of their noses. They think it's outside agitators, can't be in any other way. But this was a movement now that spread nationally to other places where there had not been a fair increase. There were mass demonstrations against repression and people started adopting the slogan, no es por 30 pesos es por 30 años. It's not about 30 pesos increase in the fair. It's about 30 years. 30 years of what? Chile had been an experiment in unbridled market economics. Some people call it a neoliberal experiment. So I don't like to use this word neoliberal because it implies that there is some other kind of model. This is capitalism at its most brutal. This is what capitalism looks like when there's no controls, no regulations. The privatization of the water service, the privatization of pensions, the complete deregulation of the labor market, the privatization of everything that's not bolted to the ground. A policy that created a society which is extremely unequal. Chile has a per capita GDP of $23,000. This is not bad. It's one of the highest in Latin America. At the same time, it's one of the most unequal societies in Latin America. The pensioners earn about half of the minimum wage which is already very low in comparison to prices. Prices are almost like European prices in Chile. The distribution of wealth. This is the second most unequal country in the OECD. 0.1%, not 1%, but 0.1% of the richest in the country own 20% of the wealth. While the 50% poorest control only 2%. This is what's driven this mass movement, this inequality and what was known as the oasis of Latin America where there were no movements, nothing was happening. This was already not true. There have been very big movements in the last few years in Chile, the students, the dog workers, the copper miners, the women, the youth, everyone, the movement against the private pension system, everything. There's been massive movements over the last few years building up into this massive social explosion which was only aggravated by repression. On the 21st, there was a spontaneous call Monday after the repression on the weekend where people were already being killed, a scene of the army on the streets in a country like Chile which has a very recent memory of the Pinochet dictatorship. And these soldiers on the streets, they were shooting at people randomly for no reason. A person was arrested. He was then shot on the leg. Reports started emerging of torture, for instance, in the Bakedano metro station which was converted into a detention center. The allegations that torture was carried out there, people were restrained with plastic restraints, beaten up, there was threats of sexual violence against detained women. About 10% of all those detained, and there's been about 3,000 arrests, underage people, young men and women as part of this movement. There was another case in the Peñalo then 43rd police station of the Carabineros where there's an allegation that people were tied by the wrists onto an antenna, a metallic antenna in the station and led to hang from there for hours. And despite this, people were only getting angrier and angrier and on the Monday there was a spontaneous call, Monday the 21st there was a spontaneous call for a general strike. The dockers put themselves at the forefront of the movement. They declared parallelization of work from Monday. And then finally all the official organizations were forced to put themselves at the front of the movement. Movement that they did not control, they had not called for, and they have no authority over, but they called for a two-day general strike on Wednesday and Thursday, which was again massive. Remember that all of this is happening while the army is on the streets, but young people are surrounding the soldiers, chanting slogans, talking to them. This has already had an impact, even in an army like that of Chile, it's had an impact. There's one soldier whose name is David Veloso, but David Veloso called Ocedo, who was stationed in Antofagasta far from the capital. He was told he was going to be moved to Santiago and he refused. He's now been arrested. And this is just an indication of what might be going on through the minds of these soldiers. Finally, yesterday there was this demonstration, the largest demonstration in history. In Valparaiso there was also a large demonstration. National Congress, which is based in Valparaiso, had to be evacuated because the protesters were threatening to take it over. And in the meantime, during this week and last week, this movement is spread throughout the country and to every single section of society, not just the poor working class areas, but also the middle class and even some of the upper class areas that's been protested. There's been some attempts by the far right to come out, but they've been swiftly dealt with. Yesterday there was a call for a right wing demonstration. They had to call it off. A few days earlier, some fascist beat up one protestor, but they were beaten up so hard in Maipu, they won't have any inclination to come out again very soon. In the meantime people have been setting up cabildos, like open meetings, territorial assemblies, that is organisms that emerge in any revolutionary situation like they did in Russia in 1917, the Soviets, which have been starting to coordinate this movement. Now yesterday was the peak of the movement so far, but it's difficult to know what's going to happen next because what people are saying now, in fact yesterday what people were saying is, Iacayo, Iacayo is already fallen, referring to Pinera. But in reality the government is against the ropes. There's reports that the armed forces are overwhelmed, they can't deal with a movement like this. There's reports that he attempted ministerial reshuffle, but nobody wanted to take the position. No surprise. So at this time, if there was a revolutionary leadership, what would they say? They would call for a national coordination, national assembly of delegates from the cabildos, from the territorial assemblies to meet and to take power or to challenge for power at least. What will be the program? The program will be the renationalization of all privatized utilities, the renationalization of copper, the renationalization of the banks, the abolition of private pension system, free health care, free education, free state pensions for all, a program of socialism which will now connect with the feelings of millions of people in Chile who've had enough. However, this leadership doesn't exist and therefore the movement might go down, might exhaust its own strength at some point. There is a lot of talk. On the 22nd, early this week, the Financial Times, mouthpiece of the ruling class, had an editorial demanding a ministerial reshuffle and that the government should invest masses of money into social programs. What the government had announced at that time was nowhere near enough and they had to introduce many more concessions to the movement in order to calm people down. But at this point, it's a situation where repression doesn't work, concessions don't work, but the movement is limited by the fact that it doesn't have revolutionary leaders. Some people have talked in Chile about the constituent assembly, this social unity, the alliance of all the student trade union organizations that call the general strike. This week, 48-hour general strike, they talk about we need a constituent assembly to change the model of the economic model of Chile. But in reality, this is a trap because at some point, faced with revolutionary overthrow, the government might decide to go for some sort of constituent assembly. And a constituent assembly will be just an election of people to a body, like a bourgeois parliament, to decide about something. They have no control over it. It's true that in Chile, the constitution still has many elements of the old Pinochet era, the dictatorship constitution. It's an extremely undemocratic constitution from a bourgeois point of view. But the question is not just to make a more democratic constitution. This is not what people need. What people need is control over the natural resources and a fundamental change in the balance of power and property over the economy. So that's a possible trap. When people in the streets say, yes, we want a constituent assembly, what they mean is we want a fundamental change of everything. But when the ruling class might constitute a constituent assembly, what they want is something completely different. Let's channel this into safe constitutional channels. For a constituent assembly, that might take place in a few months' time when people are no longer on the streets, etc. It's a trap. It's a dangerous trap. And we should say, instead of a constituent assembly called by the same regime in order to clean its face, what we want is an assembly of the working people. That's what we want, a revolutionary assembly to take over the control of the country. Yesterday, Piñera tweeted something just unbelievable after the demonstration, which was against Piñera. He said, the mass joyous and peaceful march today where Chileans are demanding a fairer and more solidarity Chile opens great ways of future and hope. We have all heard the message. We have all changed with unity and with the help of God. We will go along this path towards a better Chile for all. This is a demonstration against him, right? But you can see the outlines of what might happen in the next few days. There will probably be a ministerial reshuffle if they can get one. Even Senators from RN, the far-right party directly linked to the dictator, they are asking for a constituent assembly. There might be a call for negotiations. Yesterday some leaders were called to the minister of whatever social development office for talks. There will be national unity. There will be a change in economic policy. They will try to divert or tire out this movement along safe constitutional lines. It is possible that they will succeed because the movement at this particular time has no leadership. But out of this movement, lessons will be learned. People will be learning very interesting lessons. And if there was a revolutionary leadership at this point, even a small one, they could grow in leaps and bounds. What we see is, in reality, the limitations of movements without a clear leadership. What's lacking in these movements is that a revolutionary leadership that can take them to victory. But in any case, all revolutions have like dress rehearsals, if you want. Russia had two, 1905, February 17. The difference is that in these countries, these dress rehearsals were used to build a revolutionary leadership that then could prepare for the taking of power. This is the main task of the day. Not only in Ecuador and Chile, where movements have already started, but everywhere, and in our case, particularly in Britain, where these big events, which will take place in Britain, too, have not yet fully developed. My last point, and I'll finish on this. For years now, for maybe the last three years, we have been subjected to a barrage of propaganda on the part of the bourgeois media, Jorge Castañeda writing in the New York Times, on the part of cynical and demoralized, sceptic, so-called left academics and commentators. And I'll mention one. Mike Gonzalez, member of the British SWP, who's just very untimely written a book called The App of the Pink Tide in Latin America. The setbacks for the left. A barrage of propaganda saying, what we see in Latin America is a conservative wave. The masses have moved to the right. The left governments have failed. And what we see is a conservative way, the coming to power of fascism in Brazil and so on. And the events in just a few weeks have completely demolished this idea. In reality, what we had in Latin America over the last few years was the realization of the limitations of progressive reformist governments, which were in power from 2005-2015, approximately, in many Latin American countries, which carried out many social programs, lifted the people out of poverty and so on, on the basis of a high-price cycle in commodities, oil, copper, tin, and other export goods that these countries are based on, were able to carry out these policies without challenging the capitalist system. And therefore, when China started to slow down, which was the main pull for raw materials and sources of energy from this region, these prices have gone down, these countries' economies have been badly hit, and therefore these governments have been overthrown in one way or another through elections, constitutional tricks and so on. That doesn't mean a shift to the right. Most people didn't go from voting for left governments to voting for right governments. In fact, in Ecuador, for instance, they thought they were voting for a left government. What's happened is that we've seen the limitations of reformism, and this is the main lesson that should be learned. People are not happy with the situation, and people are quite prepared to come out on the streets to defend their rights and conditions against the attacks that have been unleashed. In Brazil, we've seen a general strike. In Argentina, we've seen a number of general strikes, and I don't have time to go into all the details. I just concentrated in these two countries because I think these two countries show the future of Latin America to other countries where the process is going in the same direction. What we have is not a conservative wave, but a wave of insurrections and potentially revolutionary situations emerging in one country after another. When I still stayed in Cuba, I thought, in one language, I speak with the people in the Greek region. Obviously, my English is very bad, but I don't want to speak in English because for us in Cuba, the English main imperialism were Hungary, Panama, Vietnam, us. But later, I remember something. For me, we have one point in common. Obviously, we speak in Spanish, and obviously we are Marxists, too, but we have in present a very good friend, Celia Maria Hans Santa Maria, a very hard concrete Cuban trustee. If Celia sees me think that she's saying to me, remember, we don't defend Cuba, we defend the socialism in Cuba, we defend the revolution in Cuba, and the worker class is all the worker class. You must speak in English, but don't forget Nelson Mandela, a more special than speaking English. But my English is very bad, and I need to be afraid. The situation we have today in Cuba is very complicated. If capitalism is restored in the island, it will not be via imperialist invasion. Before, we had it more dangerous. In any moment, thousands of people might die. But today, the enemy is on the inside. In 2011, the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba was celebrated. In that Congress, Raúl Castro entered formally to be the General Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party. Raúl is the successor of Fidel. Raúl is the successor of Fidel. With what I'm saying, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I would betray the revolution or anything like that. But from that Sixth Congress onwards, there entered a series of policies that would stimulus the concentration of riches. In November 2011, the buying and selling of real estate property was authorized. Two years later, the buying and selling of cars. In 2013 as well, it was authorized to travel outside without the permission of the state. What was wrong with that? Nothing, no? But who was going to buy the houses? Who was going to sell the cars? And where was that money going to? That money was the start of wealth concentration. That's the birth of the bourgeoisie in Cuba. The bourgeoisie in Cuba, the rioters of the means of production don't have a major economic force now. At this point, not to topple the revolution, nor that is what they're trying to do. Their birthplace is through the Cuban Communist Party because they thought they needed them to make the economy more dynamic. But what the Communist Party of Cuba forgot, a party of which I'm a member of, but what they forgot is that a class, the bourgeoisie, is not only birthed in an economic sense, but that they also have a political, a social, and a cultural expression. In April of 2010, there were a few municipal elections that, at the global level, were characterized by low participation. In Cuba, it was 95% of the citizens and 92% were supported by the state. In 2019, in an act as important as the constitutional referendum, in 2019, in an act of such importance, such as the constitutional referendum, 90% of the population turned to the ballot. 9% said no. 4.15% made their ballot void. And it was approved by the 78.3%. The quantitative comparison is evident. 92% in 2010 and now 78.3%. But the most important thing is that in 2010 there were some municipal elections. And now, the destiny of the country was being decided. What happened? The Communist Party of Cuba is still in control. Raul Castro is still the General Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party. And Fidel is still, even though he is not present in person, the indisputable leader of the revolution. The bourgeoisie was born. The bourgeoisie comes with their way of living. The bourgeoisie comes with their culture. The bourgeoisie, being at its birthplace in the Cuban Communist Party, are a counter power within the socialist state. The bourgeoisie, as a counter power within the state, starts generating their own counter powers. And they grow via taking the new spaces that come up and they take those spaces that already existed where the state was either weak or delegitimized. That space, in its own, as a whole, is civil society. It started happening that in Havana, these spaces for entertainment started in a place where they had not been before. Restaurants, bars, cafes. Electualidad, artista, fotógrafo, escritores. And amongst them, as proprietors of these places of entertainment, was this intellectual class, artists, photographers, writers that brought with them a cultural capital that served as a legitimacy for this nascent bourgeoisie. This phenomenon became very attractive to university sectors, to students. What happened as well, that this petty bourgeoisie and this nascent bourgeoisie have the better conditions to make their sons and daughters successful in that sense. What happened is that in the socialist Cuba of today, we all have the same opportunities but not the same conditions. What's happening now is that most of the people that go to university in Havana are people of the sons and daughters of this petty bourgeoisie and this nascent bourgeoisie. The state as well started seeding the space of the cultural realm to this nascent bourgeoisie that started controlling art galleries and such. There was the birth of independent producers of cinema and there was this cultural, this parallel cultural politics and policies being implemented. It's very positive that there exists free creative creation. The problem is who controls that cultural production. Before the revolution, one of the most central neighborhoods in Havana, El Vedado, was controlled fully by the bourgeoisie. With the birth of the bourgeoisie, they have started buying those old homes from the workers that now own them and have started gentrifying the neighborhood again. This cultural bourgeoisie has a massive demolishing impact on the youth, on the university, and on the culture of Havana. This cultural bourgeoisie has a massive demolishing impact on the youth, on the university students and on the culture in Havana. And it creates these massive spaces for delegitimizing socialist ideas. This is the central problem we are facing in Cuba. As a class, in their economic foundations, they're very easy to defeat. Recently, and historically in Cuba, we have been submitted to horrible sanctions that right now have created an oil crisis. The state put their vehicles on the exposition of the workers. And they broke the monopoly of the private sector in transport in Havana. When I talk about this monopoly, I talk about that the taxi service was wholly owned by the private sector. This is a further demonstration that the state is able, with their power, to control and control the bourgeoisie in Havana. In July, the state put the wages up for public sector workers. We were very worried because we knew the bourgeoisie would respond to that by hiking up the prices and generating inflation. But the state, as a socialist and a worker's state, implemented these measures, sanctioning those companies that would hike up the prices, hence controlling inflation. As you see, I have many examples of this. They're too long and I will not be able to tell them all to you right now. It is obvious that the socialist state is still very strong in Cuba, both economically and politically. Because, among other things, that true power lies on the Communist Party that's a single party, the main problem is that we are losing the grasp of the cultural and ideological fight. A revolution can triumph in which if the working class is not desenagena... If the alienation of the working class is not removed, the same old forms will come back. The same old forms and the same old system of capitalism will come back. An alienated working class that is, hence, alienated will restore the bourgeoisie and capitalism. This example is being seen in Venezuela and Ecuador and Bolivia where the working class was not fully conscious on its own and is not knowing how to assume the situation. In Venezuela, the government of Chávez created enormous conditions for the working class. When the working class had this possibility of having an improved situation, they started behaving as a petty bourgeoisie and started shifting their ideological and political realm. This happened even more strongly in Brazil and in Ecuador because the attempt to create this class consciousness from the left-wing governments were much more weaker. Since the triumph of the revolution in 2009, the focus and the obsession of Fidel Castro was eliminating this alienation of the working class, bringing culture to the people, bringing ideology to the people, having them develop this consciousness. For the working class to realize in themselves a class and their relationship against the bourgeoisie, we have returned a lot of space in that because we thought that was already achieved. That is today the main problem we are facing. The great battle is right now in Cuban civil society. During the constitution of referendum, the main debate was whether the word communism would still be in the constitution or whether the word private property would come in. If the word communism was out of the constitution and private property entered, it would guarantee the bourgeoisie that their means of production would not be expropriated. The bourgeois press was very happy about this internationally. But without anyone directing this, a major number of communists both within and outside the party in Cuba reclaimed and fought for the word communism and the word came back in the constitution. It was not about having the word communism as an adjective or a source of our noun. It was the word communism to tell the bourgeoisie that the Cuban communist party and the working class in Cuba would expropriate their means of production but we will do so and construct communism in the island. The bourgeois class is not afraid now. They are not interested in taking power directly but they are climbing up and occupying very important spaces. With this data I was presenting to you I wanted to demonstrate that the Cuban situation is not the same situation that's been presented internationally. This is not a restoration of capitalism in simple terms. It's a permanent revolution within the Cuban revolution. It's the encounter of a working class that has developed this class consciousness along 60 years of revolution against a bourgeois class that both recognizes their own power and feels protected by the state. The worst of all is that the socialist state is trying to play a conciliatory role. There is nothing set in hard stone now only the daily class struggle will tell. Thank you.