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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 35, 31 August 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghanfor ETOL.
Friends, Comrades: In the first instance I want to comment upon some rumors to the effect that the body of Leon Trotsky will be taken away from Mexico to be kept away from Mexico. Representing the widow and those who have fought shoulder to shoulder with Trotsky for his ideas, I wish to assure the Mexican people and those who represent the Mexican people, that no matter where the body might go temporarily, it will ultimately remain here in Mexico, the country that he loved and with the people whom he loved. Justice demands that the country which gave him asylum at a time when every other country slammed its doors in his face, should be the country where the remains of Leon Trotsky will stay, as an honor to the Mexican people and to the government of President Cardenas, who gave him this asylum.
Throughout the world, at this moment, all the poor people, all the oppressed, all those who toil for a living, must weep. For they have lost their greatest champion; they have lost him when they need him the most.
In this, the darkest hour in the history of mankind, when tens of millions of human beings are being sacrificed upon the altar of a war which is not a war of the common people, the one individual who could penetrate the darkness was slain.
The great mind of Leon Trotsky, the mind that pushed aside everything inconsequential, the mind that went to the heart of things, is no more with us.
The voice that represented human progress has been silenced. The pen that wrote so convincingly for right and for justice will write no more.
But even as our grief is profound, so deep is our rage and our hatred – our hatred of the monster who, from his throne in the Kremlin, plotted and ordered the murder of Trotsky, a man whose character and ideas were diametrically opposed to the Kremlin despot.
We shall never forget, and the future generations will never forget that the betrayer of the great Russian October Revolution – the revolution that represents the beginning of the liberation of all mankind – is the murderer of Leon Trotsky.
Stalin and his fellow bureaucrats, yes, all the tyrants of the world are happy now. They can sleep more soundly tonight, for the man who was their mortal enemy has gone from this earth.
But let not Stalin be unrestrained in his joy, For the man whom he murdered has left ideas, and ideas cannot be murdered. These ideas will grow more and more powerful, for they are ideas representing the future of mankind. Millions of toiling masses – the peasants and the workers of the whole world – will ultimately embrace these ideas, and then Stalin, Hitler and all the tyrants will be helpless. For the millions of masses suffering the agonies of war and of poverty will one day destroy the world of Stalin and destroy the world of Hitler. They will build a new world – a world based upon the ideas of Marx, of Engels, of Lenin and of Trotsky. They will build a new world of peace, of true equality, of brotherhood, of real democracy – a world of Socialism.
We pledge our loyalty to the ideas of Trotsky – to fight for those ideas, no matter what the consequences may be. And in this fight against all tyrants, against all forms of oppression, the ideas of Trotsky will conquer.
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Last updated on 23 May 2020