Pedro Fuentes

Pedro Fuentes

Pedro Fuentes born circa 1943 is the war name of Alberto Pujals. In Brazil, where he has lived for almost 20 years, everyone knows him by Pedro Fuentes. He works at Portal de la Izquierda en Movimiento - Left on the Move which is affiliated with the Fourth International. Lives in Boston, Massachusetts From Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Revolutionary life

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) and his leadership in the Proletarian Revolutionary Army (ERP). 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.

Pedro Fuentes was the founder of the Argentine MAS and PSOL, party of which he was his first secretary of international relations and where he acts as leader of the MES, Left Socialist Movement, current of which he is founder.

Education

Studied at Universidad de Buenos Aires

First line against Trump

The official topic at the first Brooklyn Jacobin reading group held after the 2016 election was socialist politics in Brazil, but the conversation kept returning to Trump.

“I think you should be in the first line against Trump,” said Pedro Fuentes, a visiting speaker and official in Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL). Around the room heads nodded. “Anti-Trump. This is the first task you have.”

Supporting Sanders

According to Lance Selfa of International Socialist Review Pedro Fuentes and Tiago Madeira (PSOL), leaders of a revolutionary current associated with radical parties such as the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) in Brazil and Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide) in Venezuela, raised support for Sanders to a crucial test for the international left:

In our opinion, we must support Sanders. For us, the debate in the US, with its specific characteristics, is similar to what we face in the rest of the world. Will Trotskyists, without losing sight of our strategy, intervene in events and real political movements—however contradictory they are—to contend for influence? Or, owing to these contradictions, or because these developments can’t be fit into our “program,” will we stay on the sidelines so that we can criticize them when they fail? That’s what’s at stake in the debate about whether to support Sanders. It’s more than a tactical issue. It’s a discussion about what political orientation we take to new political processes that, of course, aren’t “Trotskyist” or even sympathetic to Trotskyism. We are talking about building new organizations, new parties—democratically and loyally built—and respecting their leaders, even if we disagree with them. Having open debates about what’s the best strategy. This is hardly “entrism” or whatever other strategy small groups of Trotskyists can come up with to justify being part of the campaign.

Not understanding this condemns a group to isolation and propagandism. It will never become a “vanguard” if it refuses to take part in what exists. Neither will anyone listen to that supposed vanguard if it isn’t alongside others in that process. In Greece, would it have been possible to build the Left Platform with half of the central committee and possibly the majority of militants, from outside of Syriza?

DSA NTX connecting with Comrades in Brazil

At our May 26th 2019 meeting, the Democratic Socialists of America - Collin County Skyped in three comrades from Brazil who are members of the PSOL (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade or the Socialism and Liberty Party) to talk with us about their organizing efforts against the current proto-fascist president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. Thanks to Mr. Pedro Fuentes of the PSOL, Ms. Alice Domingues, a student organizer, and Mr. Bruno Silviano, an organizer with the teachers union.

One of the most important things we learned from our comrades in Brazil was that opposition to Bolsonaro is huge in Brazil right now. At the most recent demonstrations against Bolsonaro before our conversation (which happened around the same time as DSA NTX and other area socialists, communists, anarchists, LGBTQ people, labor, and antifascists were protesting against Jair Bolsonaro’s visit to Dallas, sponsored by Trammell Crow and other area wealthy businessmen) the Bolsonaro supporters’ mobilization was greatly outnumbered by the mobilization of Brazilians opposed to Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro’s cuts to education and the university system have caused a huge backlash. The public education programs in Brazil have, as Alice told us, allowed many people in Brazil to be the first in their families to go to university. One interesting tactic we learned about in response to the cuts was the professors and students taking classes out into the streets, so people could see what education funding is used for and share in the classes.

We asked our comrades in Brazil what we in the U.S. can do to help — the big ask right now was to boost awareness in the U.S. of the huge protests against Bolsonaro and show our solidarity. The next big protest against Bolsonaro and his cuts to education which our comrades told us about on the 26th happened yesterday on the 30th. So now we’d like to share some of the photos and videos from yesterday’s protests which our comrades passed on to us yesterday.

Solidarity with the working class and oppressed of Brazil against fascism! And our Collin County and NTX elected delegates to the DSA national convention in Georgia look forward to meeting Pedro and Bruno there in person in August!

Report from DSA 2017 national convention

Mariana Riscali and Pedro Fuentes (MES/PSOL)

DSA is the fastest growing anticapitalist and socialist party in the last six months. It went from 8,000 to 25,000 members. We had a responsibility to participate as PSOL delegation in DSA convention, which took four days. We went along with Jeremy Corbyn’s Momentum, Bloco de Esquerda de Portugal (Left Bloc of Portugal) , Mélenchon’s France Insoumise and Podemos from Spain, the other internationalist organizations invited.

Our participation was not casual. PSOL is an acknowledged organization known by the new socialist organizers emerging in the US. The presence of some militants as well as Luciana Genro and Mariana Riscali’s at the “Peoples Summit”, which gathered about 4,000 participants who voted Sanders’s candidacy for 2020 last June; the presence of eight guests from the US in the international youth camp organized by Juntos; All of this contributed to open relations with DSA.

Marxist training course

Cris Lacerda· May 5 2019.

Junto com a galera de luta, mais um curso de formação marxista do MES foi concluído.

Along with the fighting guys, another marxist training course of the month has been completed.

— with Theo Louzada Lobato, Silvana Louzada, Guilherme Wamburg, Merope Messias, Douglas Goncalves, Hugo Carneiro, Maria Fernanda, Linna Ramos, Vitor Hugo Macedo, Josemar Carvalho II, Camila Souza Menezes, Pedro Fuentes, Vanderlea Aguiar, Marcelo SantAnna, Juliano Niklevicz Teixeira, Zeneidelima Santos, Leandro Tavares Fontes, Felipe Aveiro and Fabiana Amorim at Sinpro-Rio.

PSOL

Camila Goulart March 30, 2018 ·

Opening of the international point of the vi National Conference of the month being made by the Pedro is our living and pulsating tradition, our roots, experiences and also political boldness for the future. I am very proud of military next to this great fighter who pride us and strengthens.

— with Mariana Riscali, Israel Dutra and Pedro Fuentes.

Carlos Maradona September 27, 2016 ·

Salieron las empanadas e hicieron furor. Grande Juan en la empanada y Aye en el repulgue. Y el budin de coco de Marcos impresionante.

— with Ayla Vicosa, Joao Ezequiel, Julio Camara, Mariano Cata, Adria Meira, Malu Villaverde, Pedro Fuentes, Bernardo Correa, Israel Dutra, Mel Sabrina, Giulia Tadini, Tiago Madeira and Marco Novak.

DSA/ISO event

Ella Mahony is with Pedro Fuentes and Carrington Morris. November 3, 2018 ·

Event in solidarity with the Brazilian left, with militants of dsa and ISO, and beautiful words by Pedro Fuentes. Against fascism we have unity yes! Psol 50 Movimento Esquerda Socialista