Behind the insecurity and hardship facing working people in Argentina is that country's unpayable and immoral $67.6 billion foreign debt. The country's wealth goes into the coffers of the imperialist banks first. Argentina offers a glimpse of the future facing every country held in economic bondage to world finance capital.

"For Autonomy, Against Occupation, Against Privatization," read a hand-lettered sign greeting participants at a conference in Haiti against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and "neoliberalism." The capitalist rulers sitting in Washington, London, Tokyo, and Bonn often put the squeeze on their victims in the name of the IMF, which dictates many of the austerity measures governments in the semicolonial world are expected to impose.

Enormous pressures come down on bourgeois governments in the semicolonial world to devalue their currencies and impose other austerity measures - wreaking havoc on the standard of living of working people and broad layers of the middle class.

Since the rise of imperialism at the opening of this century, the basic workings of the market system - unequal terms of trade, underdevelopment of industry and agriculture, bank loans that can never be repaid - end up warping the economies of Third World countries. They become more, not less, dependent on capital, technology, and imports from imperialist countries. None of the so-called emerging nations has or will emerge from their enslavement to the big banks and strong currencies of the imperialists, as long as capitalism holds sway.

This is the natural consequence of how this system works. It means devastation for millions of workers and farmers the world over. But it also contributes to conflicts and instability among imperialist countries. The big lenders are fixing their tentacles into every powder keg around the world. The stability of the imperialist countries themselves is more than ever interlinked to crises and breakdowns in the Third World.

Working people throughout Latin America have begun to stand up and say no to the imperialists' drive to boost their sagging profit rate, increase their market share, and collect on their debt at the expense of workers and peasants - from Argentina to Mexico and Brazil. These struggles offer working people around the world the opportunity to link up and demand cancellation of the Third World debt. The same rulers who want to squeeze every drop of blood from the working class in Argentina are driving to cut wages, social benefits, and working conditions of workers in the imperialist countries as well. Capitalism itself is driving more and more of us together to defend our interests as an international class. The resistance to privatization, austerity, and attacks on national sovereignty confirms what our class is capable of. These fighters deserve our support.

As the debt crisis mounted in Latin America, Asia, and Africa in the 1980s, Havana led the call to cancel the debt. The Cuban revolution continues to be a beacon for working people looking for ways to oppose imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation and find a way to build a new society. Our answer to the economic and social crisis must be to defend the Cuban revolution and demand: Cancel the Third World debt!  
 
 
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