It is with great sadness that we have just learnt comrade Alberto’s death. For those amongst us who knew him, who had have the honor and the privilege to fight by his side, and even to develop close friendly personal relationships, the emotion is considerable.

The comrade was coming from a small village of Oaxaca in Mexico. With his brother Vic and his family, they had to exile themselves to Mexico City for having opposed to local small ’caciques’ who tried to kill them – for anyone who knows B. Traven’s novels and his description of the almost feudal social relationships in the Mexican countryside (at least up to the 1990’s), it will be easy to understand what the comrades lived through.

Once in Mexico DF, Alberto and his brother became factory workers. Confronted directly with capital, they carried on compromising and struggling against injustices and misery in different workers circles and groups. Finally, they participated to the setting up of the Grupo Proletario Internacional. This group, mixing leftist positions and class positions, took contact with the ICC in the 1980’s. From the first encounter, this one insisted that the comrades engage a discussion process in order to reject the leftist positions and to really politically break with the bourgeois camp. Amongst the 4 members of the Central Organ, Alberto, always discreet, speaking little but calmly and in a clear-cut way, was the one within the divided central organ who made tip the balance so that the great majority of the group members ended up breaking with leftism and engage a discussion process of the ICC positions. At the end of this difficult and painful process because the resistance within the very group (some of its militants refused to follow this path and the split was violent), around 20 comrades joined the ICC and set up its territorial section Revolucion Mundial. Later on, Alberto related us how, during the intense discussions which lasted all night (while most of the comrades were factory workers with exhausting conditions of work), he used to chew hot chili peppers not to fall asleep and hold out !

Unfortunatly, 2 years later, the comrade was hit by a cerebral stroke which made him handicaped for ever. After big efforts and endless administrative procedures, he got a miserable handicaped pension hardly enough to survive if he wouldn’t have got his family and brother Vic’s support as well as the comrades’ of that time. He never regained all his physical abilities up to the point he could not express and read but with big difficulties. However he remained an active militant within the ICC and was known in the street demonstrations for his active and militant diffusion of the communist press.

During the ICC 2001 crisis, he was amongst the few comrades of the Mexican section who refused to give in to the panic, to the blackmail of dissolution of the section and to the vile provocations and lies that the new leadership of the ICC (sent to Mexico) exerted in a scandalous manner on the section and its stunned members at a ’pan-American’ conference that will remain in the memory of those who attented it for its violence and its extravagance : the section, second in number of militants for the ICC, was remaining in largely majority defending the ’internal’ and external orientations adopted... unanimously through out the years 1996-2001 and which were (silently) liquidated in the name of the ’struggle against the so-called clan’. In the midst of the general hurry-scurry and the pathetic political capitulation for the most, he was one amongst the few who remained faithful to the ’internal’ and external orientations adopted. This says a lot about the strenght of his political convictions and commitment despite his handicap... while he doubtless was one of those for whom the break with his comrades, and often of long time friends, represented most sacrifices at the level of his social life (loneliness).

Member of the Internal Fraction of the ICC, he carried on being a militant – one could always see him diffusing the bulletin and the leaflets of the fraction in the street demonstrations, included to the ICC members who had rejected, slandered and denounced him publicly. In 2009, during the split between the internal fraction and what was going to become the Fraction of the International Communist Left, Alberto, his brother Vic and comrade S. sided for the IFICC continuity. Unfortunatly this group did not succeed to develop and the comrades stopped little by little any political activity. For the ones who had known him, we did not dispaired to see him coming back to our side in the fight for communism.

A few months ago, we were informed he was sick and that he would not win this last struggle.

While writting this few words, the writer holds back with difficulty his emotion and his tears. Comrade Alberto, we greet you and will carry on your fight, the one to which you dedidated your life, the very one of the international proletariat and exploited of the capitalist world. There are many unknowns as you whose memory, by greeting you, we greet. We know that it is the way you considered your communist commitment, far for any personalization, any carreerism, any ’ego’, within our class. Alberto, for the comrades who had the privilege to struggle at your side, it’s a part of themselves you’ve just deprived them. In our memories you are, in our memories you’ll remain, and will reinforce our convictions and commitment.

To comrade Vic, his brother, and his family : we share your distress and we bring you all our fraternal support.

The IGCL, August 21st 2014.