Pedro Fuentes: Socialist Strategy Around the World

East Bay DSA is thrilled to present a talk and Q&A with veteran Marxist organizer and founding member of PSOL in Brazil: Pedro Fuentes.

Recommended reading:

Brief notes on the world situation:
http://portaldelaizquierda.com/en/2017/01/brief-notes-on-the-world-situation/

Notes on Latin America:
http://portaldelaizquierda.com/en/2016/08/notes-on-latin-america-the-end-of-a-stage-and-cycle-and-the-beginning-of-another-and-also-a-cycle/

Pedro’s Bio:
Pedro Fuentes was born in Pergamino, Argentina and began his activism there as a teenager, when he and his brother joined a high-school student movement to reform the schools called Movimiento de Accion Reformista. Later, in the 1960s, he joined Palabro Obrera, led by the Argentine Trotskyist Nahuel Moreno, and organized in the factories in his city. In 1971, his older brother, Luis Enrique Pujals, was one of the first to be “disappeared” by Argentina’s dictatorship for his activity in the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT). Soon after, Pedro was forced to flee Argentina and lived in exile for the duration of the dictatorship and beyond, traveling across Latin America and Europe and embedding himself in socialist movements wherever he went.

Eventually he moved to Brazil and in 2000 began organizing with Movimento Esquerda Socialista (MES), then a tendency in the Workers Party (PT). In 2003, the PT introduced anti-worker pension reforms supported by Brazil’s right wing parties. A number of dissenting PT deputies, including MES leader Luciana Genro, voted against the reforms and were subsequently expelled from the PT. Pedro joined these expelled leaders in founding PSOL as a left alternative to the PT. For many years he served as PSOL’s secretary of international relations, though he has recently stepped back to enjoy his old age