04/14/2025
Carlos Petroni (August 8, 1947 – April 13, 2025)
Revolutionary. Organizer. Fighter. Mentor.
Carlos Petroni, a lifelong revolutionary socialist, internationalist organizer, and writer, passed away on April 13, 2025 at the age of 77. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he dedicated his entire life to the cause of the working class—not in abstraction, but in the mud, blood, and glory of real struggle.
A leader of the Morenoist current of Latin American Trotskyism and a close collaborator of Nahuel Moreno, Carlos helped build and lead workers' movements across Argentina, Central America, and the United States. From the underground PST during Argentina’s dictatorship to the battle-scarred terrain of the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran revolutions, he was never far from the front lines. He organized metal workers, printers, meatpackers, and social workers—not from behind a desk, but shoulder to shoulder, risking everything for justice.
In the wake of the 1973 Chilean coup, Carlos was involved in the covert evacuation of leftist militants, union leaders, and activists fleeing Pinochet’s regime. He personally helped many cross into Argentina, placing their safety above his own. Decades later, he would recount these stories to high school students—not as distant history, but as lived experience. His visits to classrooms were marked by urgency and principle, always reminding young people that what they were learning was not theoretical. It had a body count. And it had heroes.
Exiled under threat of death by the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), Carlos survived assassination attempts and emerged as a key witness in the historic trials that later exposed the right-wing death squads as perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
In the United States, he continued his work with immigrant rights, founded SF Frontlines, and ran for public office—not to win but to make socialism visible. He authored ballot initiatives, including the pioneering Proposition F for African American reparations, which garnered widespread support and attention long before such ideas entered mainstream politics. His pen names—Leon Perez, Nicholas Kramer, Simon Morales—were used not to hide, but to multiply his revolutionary voice.
Carlos was a founding member or leader of revolutionary parties on three continents, a builder of the International Workers League (LIT-CI), and later a founder of the Left Party in the U.S. He published newspapers, managed campaigns, and trained generations of organizers—many of whom, like myself, counted him as a friend, a comrade, and a mentor.
He was also a man of relentless humor, quiet stubbornness, deep kindness, and encyclopedic memory. He could quote Lenin, challenge a room full of liberals, recall a forgotten strike in Mar del Plata, and still remember your birthday. He never stopped writing, never stopped organizing, never stopped believing.
The revolutionary Carlos Petroni worked with special emphasis on building an alternative to barbarism, which not only includes environmental catastrophe but also humanitarian crises and waves of reaction around the world.
Carlos Petroni taught us that socialism is not a dream. It’s a duty. And we carry that duty forward.
Hasta la victoria siempre, compañero Carlos.
