Everyone who reads or watches any media today will see that the world is in turmoil. Everywhere the foundations of the “world order established after the Second World War” is tumbling. All the promises of the bright future in this imperialist system have dusted away due to the heat of the class struggle of the proletariat and the struggles of the peoples of the world.
What is left from BRICS? Those countries who supposedly should challenge the US imperialist hegemony? Nothing but misery for the Peoples - and embarrassed faces of the finance king pins of the world. What is with China? And those who spoke about the tripolar world? The true face of trumpism is not in a mere backward section of the American people, as the bourgeois propagandists in the world try to portrait it, but in the very fact of the naked uncovered face of power of Yankee imperialism. So, what was that about BRICS? The “emerging States”, the “hope of the development of capitalism”? They all have one thing in common: They face crisis. And nowhere is that more evident as in the state of Brazil.
“Imagine”, to quote John Lenon and Bob Avakian, that Brazil would be “better off then the south of Italy”. That Brazil would equivalent to an imperialist country of western Europe. There where those who tried to argue that based on the “fundamental thesis”. Those who never understood the limitations, the revisionist positions of the RIM declaration. Those who never understood the criticism on ideological and political level of the Communist Party of Peru on the RIM.
What is the reality? The reality is, that Brazil is not a symbol of progress but putrefaction.Brazil is a symbol of how, at the cost of the people, the imperialists, the bureaucraticlackeys and the feudal landlords always seem to come out with the upper hand. In other Latin American countries - not all, but many - the landlords had to engage in intrigues, had to stage court cases (for those who are into literature:Study “El mundo es ancho y ajeno” – Ciro Alegría). This scenario is not the case in Brazil. In the Brazil of today the landlords simply kill the peasants. That is the situation in the country side. And in the cities, including cities that are bigger and far more populated than any western European city (in fact, and any European city at all) the reign of white terror is so present, is so “natural”, that no one questions it.
Let’s take a city like Rio, where the gringo tourists buy the bodies of the Brazilian People for a dime and a nickel under the safety of the police force. A police force, that kills everyone from the favelas that attempts to raise trouble in this wonderful beach of Copacabana. And that is normal! No one considers it strange. It’s everyday business. But then, in this BRICS countries, in this hope of the international finance capital, there are voices, voices of the poorest of the poor. A voice of those ones, who know the worth of a grain of rice. A voice of those ones, who know what black beans are. From those ones, for which Mandioca is life. There are voices like that. There are voices, who know what it means to grow up in the crossfire between police officers and the paramilitary forces of the drug trade. There are voices, who know what it means to live in a state, so utterly corrupt and rotten to the bone, that no one expects help or salvation from this system. And this voice has a name. Its name is Igor Mendes.
Of cause, anyone who had the privilege of knowing comrade Igor Mendes, knows his humbleness, his deep love for the people, that never allowed him to be better then anyone else. But among those 23, who are now charged, he still is a particular case. Because, like no one else, he is recognized to be one of those voices. He has experienced what it means, not to be a leader going into parliament, but – as a matter of fact – to be among the first of many who are going to jail. When we defend Igor Mendes, we defend all the 23. And we raise a single case, to show that the rebellious are not an anonymous mass, but are an acting, thinking and struggling unit that brings forth leaders. In that sense, every action for comrade Igor is an action for the 23.
As Communists in the Germany, we know the worth of a Bebel. And today, how many Bebels are there? There is Varavara Rao, but then? There are Turkish comrades. But most of them are like Haluk Gerger – mostly above the limits of party. So they are not Bebel, because Bebel was Party. And therefore Igor Mendes is not only a young revolutionary from Brazil. He is something more. He is something, we have not had for decades: He is a recognized leader of the revolutionary youth in Brazil. He is – and we are not critiques of literature, but think so anyway – the most distinguished revolutionary author, that has published in the century. But that is not enough to describe him, because he is something far more important, “just like Bebel”: He is a tribune of the people.
Therefore, every antiimperialist, every revolutionary and all the communist in the world must defend the comrade against this current aggression. On every wall from Billstedt to Chhattisgarh, on every wall from Santiago to Rinkeby, on every wall from Huanca to Milan, it must say: Igor Mendes, son of the Brazilian people, fighter of the international proletariat, is not alone!
Freedom for Igor Mendes!
Freedom for his comrades!
Freedom for the 23!
It is Right to rebel!
Collective of writers of Dem Volke Dienen
