Dear comrades,

In this 50th edition of your Odigitis festival, we send greetings to all your KNE militants and to the international delegations who are present at this valuable event.

This year is immersed in a panorama of imperialist war on a global level, where monopolies seek to squeeze out maximum profits at the cost of the lives of millions of workers in the world. It is in this context that the only thing that the capitalist mode of production can offer to working youth is: hunger, unemployment, precariousness and death; reasons why, today, communists have an immediate historical task, that of overthrowing the rotten system and building a new world, a socialist-communist world.

Comrades, we have a huge responsibility with the working class, so we will not allow ourselves deviations or political distortions that eliminate the contradiction between capital and labor or abandon the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

The period of imperialist war is becoming more acute by the day, and the bourgeoisie has increasingly perfected its methods of repression against the working class, and in particular against those who organize and maintain the revolutionary struggle. Today, monopolies rule Mexico, despite the fact that the national discourse and the international press report that the MORENA government is that of the people. During the six years of López Obrador’s mandate, the country has been militarized through the National Guard, normalizing the presence of the army in the streets and acting as a containment force against the insubordination of the working class that protests against injustice.

The social democratic agenda agreed in 2018 to update the Free Trade Agreement between the States of North America and it was Obrador who agreed to renegotiate it as an agreement that benefits only business groups from Canada, the United States and Mexico with the institutionalization of nearshoring and the legalization of outsourcing as new forms of contracting that make the working class and especially the youth precarious.

During this administration, strong budget cuts were made to the public agenda, social programs for women, education, youth and migration were eliminated, and a strong anti-immigration policy was established to prevent the flow of caravans through the territory.

It should be added that, this coming September 26, it will be 10 years since the forced disappearance of the +43 students from the rural normal school of Ayotzinapa, a crime orchestrated by the army and covered up by all the forces of the Mexican State during the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto.

Obrador promised justice, he promised punishment for the guilty, but today, with the end of his administration, there has been none of that. On the contrary, the attempt to dismantle the rural teachers’ colleges has intensified, and the repression of organized students who go out to protest for decent conditions of education, for it to be free, scientific and at the service of the working people, has been strengthened.

On October 1st, the next president of Mexico will be sworn in. Claudia Sheinbaum will be the new representative of the interests of capital in our country, and proof of this are the meetings she has orchestrated with the national bourgeoisie and the international monopoly groups. Sheinbaum, with a progressive speech, has announced that this will be a feminist administration and that it is “time for women,” but the numbers say otherwise, since more than 21.5 million women do not have paid employment and another 17.5 million could not have one because they are dedicated to domestic care, without any type of social security, without omitting that violence against women continues to rise since, every day, 11 women are murdered in the country.

Just like Obrador, Claudia Sheinbaum has used the demands of the working class as a political springboard and once in power, she will continue the same policy of exploitation, since the interests of the MORENA party and the rest of the bourgeois parties are positioned on the side of the monopolies, the armed forces and organized crime. Despite the fact that they present themselves as a leftist government and claim to be the people in action.

As communists, we clearly know that this type of action serves a purpose of demobilization and in a context of generalized imperialist war we are certain that we are living in a period of sharpening of the class struggle, where it is essential that communist youth work firmly to organize the working youth and the popular sectors, organizing ourselves through student unions, neighborhood organizations, women’s organizations, sports and other broad fronts, acting with determination against the opportunist policies that confuse our class and that seek to unite forces with the exploiters. Our task above all is to work to strengthen our ranks to be able to face our role as class vanguard.

In Latin America, the crisis of the international communist movement is evident, so the ideological deviations of the left that consider only the United States as an empire and not under the Leninist conception of capitalism in its highest phase have deeply undermined the class organization of the proletariat. Comrades, we take this opportunity to send our solidarity to the JCV and the PCV, which has been criminalized and deprived of its initials by the authoritarian and bourgeois government of Nicolas Maduro.

Finally,

Comrades, we trust that this Odigitis festival will allow the KNE to swell its ranks in qualitative and quantitative terms. We recognize with great respect and admiration the militant tasks that they carry out day after day for the strengthening of the youth and the communist party (KNE and KKE) in their country, and proof of this is the success with which this 50th edition will unfold. We remember with an embrace of proletarian and international solidarity the struggle that they have given during these years of political construction, their work is an example that calls us to keep the flame alive, for the fight against imperialism, for a revolutionary alternative for the working class.

Long live the Communist Youth of Greece!

Long live the Odigitis festival!

Long live proletarian internationalism!