Manifest of the Southeast/South Conference

To the working class, other workers and oppressed youth

The VIII Southeast/South Regional Conference, on February 8, 2025, is being held in the face of an abrupt worsening of the global crisis. Trump took office on January 20, issuing hundreds of executive orders that, taken together, constitute a government program of attack on the lives of American workers, aggression against competing countries, intensification of imperialist oppression of oppressed nations and threats of military intervention.

The day after his inauguration, Trump began arresting and expelling thousands of immigrants, announced the increase in import tariffs on countries such as Mexico, Canada and China, reaffirmed his goal of taking over Greenland and indicated that the Panama Canal should be under US control. He pointed out that Europe should align itself with the US trade war against China and that NATO should increase the contribution of member countries to its military budget by 5%. He threatened retaliation against countries that resisted the United States’ decisions, especially against the weakest and most dependent on US financial and monopolistic capital. This is what he did with Mexico and Canada, using them as an example. China, as an economic powerhouse, responded by raising tariffs on certain products that are essential for US production. Trump’s reaction is expected, with the aim of increasing tensions in the ongoing trade war.

The repatriation of immigrants gave the first sign of conflict with the Colombian government’s resistance to accepting the conditions dictated by the White House. President Gustavo Petro had to back down from his position in the face of Trump’s threats. President Lula lamented the “inhumane” way in which Brazilians were deported under handcuffs and humiliation, but practically did not react. Trump went further by reactivating the Guantánamo prison, set up on Cuban territory, which has a history of torture and murder of Islamic jihad prisoners. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, received a proposal from the bloodthirsty Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, to take in prisoners from the United States in order to increase the prison budget. El Salvador is home to the largest prison in Latin America – the Center for Confinement Against Terrorism (CECOT) – whose methods of treating inmates resemble those of Nazi concentration camps. This country, one of the most backward in Latin America, reflects the decomposition of capitalism and the advance of social barbarity.

It is therefore not unexpected that the United States has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council and suspended funding for UNRWA, an agency that provides assistance to Palestinian refugees. Trump is implementing his Republican policy, which differs in some aspects from the policies of the Democrats. Fundamentally, both variants represent the interests of the North American bourgeoisie and imperialist domination. Trump intends to be more incisive and comprehensive, acting on several fronts at the same time with the policy of domination of monopoly and financial capital. However, its epicenter lies in the confrontation with China, which has been gaining economic prominence throughout the world, and in particular in Latin America, which has historically been the “backyard” of the United States.

Trump is determined to prepare the conditions for a major confrontation with China and Russia. It is unacceptable for the world’s greatest power that China should lead an independence movement in the face of the United States’ determinations, in conditions in which the clashes between productive forces and relations of production, and between those and national borders, are becoming more acute. Trump points the finger at the BRICS. The North American hegemony built after World War II cannot be called into question by the rise of China.

It is in this context that Trump’s program must be understood, supported by the “America First” directive and the objective of recovering the ground that has been lost over the last two decades. On February 4, Trump received the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, whose press release was a frontal attack on the Palestinians’ struggle to end the carnage in the Gaza Strip and to assert their right to self-determination. The President of the United States stated, without mincing words, his intention to occupy the Gaza Strip, expel the Palestinians and impose an order in accordance with the power of money and weapons. He made it clear that the time had come to take advantage of the weakening of Iran and its nationalist allies to resume the Abraham Accords and realign the forces of the Arab feudal bourgeoisie around the objective of further strengthening the military power of the Zionist State of Israel. In the Middle East, the United States has been acting systematically to remove the influence of Russia – an influence inherited from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – and, mainly, of China, which has been projecting itself into the region, trying to reduce the chasm created between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The overthrow of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad was one of the last events that served the imperialist policy of the United States and the colonialist policy of the State of Israel. Trump assumed the presidency precisely at a time when the forces of nationalist resistance to American domination and the annexation policy developed by Zionism were retreating. He took advantage of this to impose the three-phase ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, with the prospect of placing the Gaza Strip under its control. This step, which favors the United States and Israel, serves the strategy of preparing an open confrontation with China.

US imperialism has in its favor the subservience of the Arab feudal bourgeoisie and the absence of a revolutionary movement driven by the oppressed majority, under the leadership of the working class. This is the contradiction that will become clear in light of Trump’s actions.

Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine quickly. However, this issue has been put on the back burner for now. He has hinted at the possibility of the United States mediating an agreement between Zelensky and Putin. Everything indicates that Trump intends to keep China on the sidelines, although he has presented a proposal for discussion about ending the war, a proposal supported by the Lula government. After three years of war, the United States and the European alliance were unable to prevent Ukraine’s defeat without NATO intervening directly and spreading the conflict throughout Europe. Trump needs an agreement, even if provisional, since his government is preparing a major clash with China.

The program that responds to the war of domination and national oppression is that of social revolution. And the corresponding tactic is the organization of the anti-imperialist united front under the revolutionary policy of the proletariat. In the coming period, the banners of “United Socialist States of the Middle East” and “For a Socialist Republic of Palestine” will gain importance. As for Ukraine, the banner of the proletariat is that of peace without annexation, under a revolutionary government of the proletariat, based on the oppressed Ukrainian majority.

The first symptoms of resistance emerged in the global movement against the genocide in the Gaza Strip and for the end of the war of intervention by the Zionist state. This did not happen in the face of the war in Ukraine, although there were, at the beginning, isolated demonstrations in Europe. The movement in defense of self-determination in Palestine must be resumed, expanded and strengthened in the fight against the objectives of domination presented by the Trump government. The strengthening of this resistance will certainly be reflected in the exploited people of Ukraine, Russia and other European countries. In the United States, the protests in the streets, albeit in the minority, against the expulsion of immigrants and the demonstrations in Panama against the impositions of US imperialism and against the subjugation of the José Raúl Mulino government are indications of the course that the exploited should take. In Brazil, the movement to defend the self-determination of the Palestinian people is on the verge of being resurrected. It is important to note in passing the demonstrations in Germany against the alliance between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party around the anti-immigrant project. Trump embodies the fascist tendencies that have been growing in Europe and organizing in Latin America. Confronting this political tendency depends on the working class and its class-conscious vanguard taking up the fight anti-imperialist, under the method and strategy of the social revolution, which, by its class nature, is proletarian.

It is in this context of the global crisis that the national crisis is taking shape in Brazil, as well as throughout Latin America. A few days before the start of the VIII Southeast/South Regional Conference of the Revolutionary Workers Party (POR), the new presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies were elected, further strengthening the power of the old bourgeois parties, the subservience of the Lula and PT governments, and the presence of the oligarchic parties in the broad front government. The impotence of the PT’s national-reformism and its left-wing allies favors the predominance of the bourgeois forces of the right and far right.

Lula’s policy of maintaining the counter-reforms of Temer and Bolsonaro, as well as promoting his own counter-reforms, pushes the poorest layers of the middle class to the side of reaction. The collaboration of the union bureaucracy with the broad-front government, in turn, hinders the revolt and struggle of the working class. The economic and social crisis will continue to rise, conditioned by the global crisis and the offensive of US imperialism under Trump’s leadership. It is clear that the Lula government does not have the capacity to use Brazil’s potential against the attacks of monopoly and financial capital, launched from abroad and strengthened internally. The struggle under the banner of “Revolutionary Opposition” to the bourgeois government of Lula has been guiding the POR’s policy and the defense of the program of demands of the exploited through direct action and independent organization.

The POR Regional Conferences of the Southeast/South and Northeast embody the task of organizing the exploited on the ground of class independence, under the strategy of social revolution and the tactic of the anti-imperialist united front. They are committed to overcoming the crisis of leadership, strengthening the Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the World Party of the Socialist Revolution, the Fourth International.

Long live the 8th Conference of the POR of the Southeast/South!

All the strength to the national construction of the POR!