The following is a speech given during the Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) Summer Project at the  border.
Capitalism is a system that tries to prevent us, workers and students, from living fulfilling lives. Imperialism is a stage of capitalism, a system under which the capitalists move their money and power all over the world in order to control more of it. Imperialism, and particularly U.S. imperialism, has proven many times over that it cannot and will not provide for decent lives for the international working class. Racism, sexism, wars for profit, theft of the value of our labor, destroying the environment, and national borders—all are the product of capitalism.
I’m from Puerto Rico and I can speak of the many ways capitalism ruins our lives. The island has been a colony of the U.S. since 1898. The colonial economy has produced, among many other terrible things, an overall debt of some $74 billion, approximately $40,000 for every single Puerto Rican: child, retiree, worker and maybe even dead folks.
We are presently confronting a sharpening crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border that has trapped workers escaping imperialist-created misery primarily in Central America. The conditions that are forcing workers and their families to flee right now date back to colonial times, when these countries were colonies of Spain. The current U.S.-Mexico border crisis reflects conditions for the working class throughout the hemisphere, and beyond, as workers from the Middle East and Africa migrate to Europe to escape war and poverty. There are currently an estimated 244 million international migrants (3.3 percent of the world population, iom.int/wmr/2018).
As communists, we do not recognize capitalist-created borders! We say: “Workers of the World, Unite! Smash All Borders!” Communist education teaches us to understand our reality as members of class society. We currently live under the capitalist profit system. And the capitalist rulers have created colonies in many parts of the world, where they extract super-profits.
The workers in all colonies are coerced militarily, they are displaced by war, their traditional means of earning a living are destroyed. When they can no longer tolerate these conditions, they are forced to migrate. This is what is happening now in Central America. But let’s be clear about this. Most of us would overwhelmingly prefer to stay in our countries of origin. But because of imperialism we end up elsewhere.
The ruling class bears all responsibility for these conditions because of its drive for profits. This is capitalism’s reason for existence. It is invasive, oppressive and provides only the absolute minimum for the working class to live on, while the bosses and their lackeys grow rich.
Imperialists penetrate
 borders at will
The imperialists have ignored—or created—national borders when it serves their own class interests. The U.S. has a long and bloody history of penetrating the borders of other countries in the hemisphere to support its claim for hegemony in the region.
Guatemala: The U.S. CIA backed a coup in 1954 against elected president Jacobo Arbenz in order to support the interests of the U.S. owned United Fruit Company. In the ensuing 36-year civil war, thousands of workers and their families were massacred by the U.S. trained and equipped fascist military.
Honduras: The U.S. crossed the border in 1890, to enable U.S. fruit companies as they turned the country into one large banana plantation. By 1914, they had acquired one million acres of the best agricultural land, carrying profits back to U.S. banks, and turning Honduran peasants into landless rural workers. The U.S. later dominated banking and mining sectors. In the 1980s, Honduras became the U.S.’s military base to train and arm the right-wing Contra forces to counter the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Mexico: The U.S has disputed Mexico’s sovereignty since colonial times. Later, in 1910, it intervened in Mexico’s affairs to prop up dictator Porfirio Diaz for 31 years. It supported the creation of death squads that killed some 3,000 communists and tortured another 7,000 during this period. These interventions resulted in the drastic reduction in wages and impoverishment of the working class in Mexico. Another byproduct of U.S. intervention is the flowering of the maquiladoras factories that produce textiles and electronics while paying Mexican workers starvation wages. Another cross-border activity is the U.S. oil companies’ partnering with Mexican drug cartels to steal tens of millions of dollars in oil from government pipelines.
Clearly, when the interests of the imperialists are at stake, borders mean nothing. It’s only when their actions force workers to try to cross those very same borders to save their own lives that national borders become sacred!
To close, I would like to quote a piece of writing I found in CHALLENGE newspaper. It summarizes what we must do. “To liberate ourselves, an ember of class unity must be fanned into the flame of class consciousness.”