 |
Articles From
 Mexico |
| Not One Step
Backwards! We Demand:
Complete Repeal of the
Capitalist “Education
Reform” Mexico: “Dialogue” with the Government of Murderers? No! Forward to a National Workers Strike, Now! Break with All Bourgeois Parties: PRI, PAN, PRD, MORENA and the Rest! Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! The CNTE strike is the biggest struggle by Mexican labor in decades, and the first that could defeat three decades of privatizing, “neo-liberal” style free-market policies. But it can’t do so with traditional methods and a narrowly sectoral strategy. The educational counter-reform is an integral part of an attack by the bosses against all the working people of Mexico. We are at a key juncture in the teachers strike that has thrown the country into turmoil for months. Those who today are preaching about “toning down” the strike and giving in to the new ultimatum are preparing the road to defeat. We insist, as has been the battle cry since the beginning of the strike, on the complete repeal of the educational reform of capital. It is incumbent on all working people to mobilize in defense of the insurgent teachers. Teachers and students throughout Mexico must join the CNTE strike in order to defeat the scabbing by the corporatist SNTE, the labor cops of the capitalist state whose task is to prevent the rise of a genuine independent labor movement. In order to emerge victorious in this struggle, what’s needed is to unleash a nationwide workers strike to bring the murderous Peña Nieto government to its knees. Rather than capitulation and a sham dialogue, it’s necessary to extend the strike to the heavy battalions of the working class, which requires forging a class-struggle leadership capable of waging revolutionary struggle against capitalism. Mexico: “Dialogue” with the Government of Murderers? No! Forward to a National Workers Strike, Now! (1 September 2016)  |
| No More
Ayotzinapas! No More
Nochixtláns! Workers to Power from Brazil to Mexico and the U.S.! Tri-National Day of Solidarity Action with Mexican and Brazilian Teachers On August 17, demonstrations were held in three countries and four cities in solidarity with the Mexican teachers who have been waging a courageous strike for more than three months. They are fighting against the bogus “education reform” that is a capitalist attack on public education and teachers unions, in Mexico and around the world. In Rio de Janeiro, Oaxaca, Mexico City and New York City, protesters demanded “Stop Repression of Mexican Teachers.” During the strike of the CNTE (National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers), teachers in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacán have braved murderous police attacks, including the June 19 massacre in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca. The tri-national action was initiated by the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil teachers union, the SEPE-RJ, which had just come off a determined strike lasting more than five months, the largest and longest in its history, which won important gains. In Rio, in the middle of the Olympic games, over 100 teachers, students and activists marched to the Mexican Consulate where they faced a line of Shock Battalion Military Police. In Oaxaca the solidarity demonstration was at the gate of the state education department, which was shut down by some 200 CNTE strikers, and in Mexico City it was held at the teachers tent city where 60 teachers participated. In New York, several dozen protesters picketed the Mexican consulate, including members of the newly formed Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (Class Struggle International Workers). The August 17 action underscored the importance of international struggle on a revolutionary class program. Tri-National Day of Solidarity Action with Mexican and Brazilian Teachers (18 August 2016) |
| June 5 Elections: NO to All the
Bourgeois Parties! Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! Mexican Teachers Strike at a Crossroads: Deepen, Radicalize, Broaden It to Win! The national strike of the independent teachers movement, now into its third month, has come to a decisive moment. As the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) appeals repeatedly for dialogue, the government slams the door shut and responds with repression. The strikers have responded with massive marches of tens of thousands, a blockade of the Oaxaca airport and occupying highways, gas stations and town halls in Chiapas. It is expected that the repression will intensify in the wake of the June 5 elections. Then the rulers who are seeking to impose an education “reform” in the service of capital will go all in. In this context, where it is necessary to deepen, radicalize and extend the teachers strike to powerful sectors of the Mexican proletariat, the leadership of CNTE’s militant Section 22 in Oaxaca instead called to cast a “punishment vote” against the government parties and in favor of the bourgeois populist Movement for National Regeneration (MORENA) led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The popular-front policy of a “punishment vote” for the bourgeois opposition has been used before, in 2006 and 2010, to derail outbreaks of sharp class struggle. The Grupo Internacionalista calls for proletarian opposition to all capitalist parties and politicians, for turning the teachers walkout into a real national strike, and for a revolutionary workers party fighting for a workers and peasants government. Mexican Teachers Strike at a Crossroads (2 June 2016) |
| Mexico:
Grupo Espartaquista Boycotts the Class
Struggle The Grupo Espartaquista de México (GEM), part of the International Communist League (ICL), published a front-page article in its magazine “rectifying” its timid support of the boycott of the June 2015 elections and polemicizing against the Grupo Internacionalista on the issue. In its corrective, the GEM/ICL write that they “should have argued and frankly warned against the use of this tactic under present conditions.” One of the many innovations introduced by the ICL in its zigzag course in the post-Soviet period has been to convert the program into a recipe for inaction. To shore up its position that an electoral boycott is impossible short of a revolutionary crisis and imminent insurrection, they put forward a series of fraudulent assertions … and a distorted quotation from Lenin. On top of this, in the face of the attempt by the murderous government to shut down the rebellion which has wracked the southern states ever since the September 2014 massacre and disappearance of teachers college students, the GEM blames the rebel teachers, students and parents of the Ayotzinapa 43 for bringing down repression with their call for a boycott. The Grupo Internacionalista, in contrast, actively participated in the struggle against the electoral farce, at the same time as it warned that to put a stop to the bloodbath and assault on the teachers would require a national strike involving key sectors of the Mexican proletariat. Mexico: Grupo Espartaquista Boycotts the Class Struggle (March 2016) The Battle of the Electoral Boycott in Guerrero (March 2016) |
| For
a National Strike Against the
Privatizing “Reforms”! Defeat the Union-Busting Attack on Mexican Teachers Against the Bourgeois Government of the PRI, PAN and PRD, Fight for a Workers and Peasants Government! Early on July 21, the city of Oaxaca was the scene of a police and military operation worthy of a preventive civil war. As in 2006, when the state of Oaxaca rose up in rebellion against a government attack on teachers, once again the entire force of the state was applied in an attempt to break the combative Section 22 of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE). The aim of the military mobilization was to impose the educational counterreform ordered by the imperialist financial institutions, which seeks to privatize public education as much as possible and to break the power of the teachers unions. It is a centerpiece of the tripartite government of the Pact for Mexico of the PRI, PAN and PRD and almost all capitalist sectors. But the hard-bitten resistance of the dissident teachers of the CNTE has hindered the implementation of the privatizing and union-busting plan. As we have emphasized since the first round of the battle for public education in 2013, in order to win against this offensive of imperialist capital, carried out by a united Mexican bourgeoisie, it is necessary to break with all bourgeois political forces and launch a genuine national strike against the privatization reforms. Defeat the Union-Busting Attack on Mexican Teachers (August 2015) |
| Troops and Federal
Police Out of Oaxaca! No Police in
the Schools! Drop All Charges
Against Teachers and Leaders of
Section 22! No to the Militarization of Oaxaca and Education! The march of Oaxaca teachers on August 14 reverberated with calls of “Oaxaca no es un cuartel, fuera ejército de él” (Oaxaca is not a barracks, Army get out!). In reality the attack on Section 22 has little to do with education and a lot to do with an attempt to impose by force the unrestricted domination of the decaying bourgeois regime, that seeks to eradicate all past labor gains and to annihilate the independent workers movement. At the head of the “new IEEPO” is its director general, Moisés Robles Cruz, who also headed the “old IEEPO.” Lacking educational credentials, what Robles Cruz does have is a predilection for José Vasconcelos, the country’s first secretary of public education, who became one of the ideological promoters of Nazism in Mexico. Welcome to the new era of education under the military/police boot which seeks inspiration in the spokesman for native fascism. No to the Militarization of Oaxaca and Education! (August 2015) |
| From Election
Boycott to Nationwide Strike Mexico: Down With Elections Under the Military Boot! For Workers Action to Defend the Teachers of the CNTE and CETEG! Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! The crisis in Mexican politics that erupted with the police massacre of the normalista (rural teachers college) students in Iguala, Guerrero last year has deepened on the eve of Mexico’s midterm elections. Parents of the 43 kidnapped and murdered students from the Escuela Normal of Ayotzinapa have called for an active boycott of the polls in defiance of the murderous government. Dissident teachers organized in the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE) have joined the mobilizations to stop the electoral farce with the demand to annul the infamous education “reform” that would persecute teachers and undermine public education. In this worst crisis of bourgeois “governability” that Mexico has seen in the last half century, the Grupo Internacionalista (GI) stands with the struggle of the teachers and parents of the disappeared students against the fraudulent elections, at the same time as we warn that an electoral boycott, justified as it is, cannot put an end to the bloodbath and the assault on teachers. what’s needed is a working-class mobilization throughout the country, a nationwide strike drawing in key sectors of the Mexican proletariat, on the road to a socialist revolution to bring down the capitalist regime that has turned Mexico into a giant cemetery. Mexico: Down With Elections Under the Military Boot! (5 June 2015) |
| Ayotzinapa:
To Get Justice, Fight for Socialist
Revolution Massacre in Mexico: It Was the Murderous Capitalist State For the last six months, Mexico has been thrown into turmoil over the murder and forced disappearance of students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College. Hundreds of thousands have poured into the streets to demand that the 43 kidnapped normalistas be brought back alive. Guerrero is a bonfire, with state offices burned down, mayors on the run and city halls occupied, while the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán is still aflame. Despite the announcement by the federal attorney general of the “historical truth that supposedly drug traffickers were responsible, the demonstrators won't let themselves be hoodwinked and unanimously cry out, “It was the state”. In reality, the massacre is the continuation of the dirty war which has already lasted half a century, and which in Guerrero never stopped. It is also, and above all, the product of the privatizing assault on public education masterminded by the imperialist financial agencies. Investigative reporting has established that the repressive apparatus at every level participated in the slaughter, including the federal police and army. But the fact that massacres such as that in Iguala keep on occurring demonstrates that it is not just the government of the day, whether of the PRI, PAN or PRD, but the capitalist state that is planting bodies all over Mexico. Appealing to the imperialist “human rights” agencies will produce nothing, the call for a constituent assembly will only serve to divert the struggle. There will never be a democratic Mexico under capitalism. Only by fighting for socialist revolution can we avenge our fallen comrades. Massacre in Mexico: It Was the Murderous Capitalist State (March 2015) In Guerrero, the Dirty War Never Ended (March 2015) |
| Protests
Sweep Mexico Huge Outrage Over Guerrero Massacre For a National Strike Against the Murderous Government! Over the last week there has been a deluge of outrage throughout Mexico and worldwide at the police murder of six people, including three students of the Ayotzinapa rural teachers college, and the disappearance (and possible execution) of another 43 in Iguala, Guerrero. On October 8, there were protests in at least 63 cities in 27 states of Mexico, and protests at Mexican diplomatic offices in 15 countries. In Mexico City, 25,000 marched, in the capital of Guerrero, 50,000. The state of Oaxaca was paralyzed by militant teacher unionists, who shut down the schools and blockaded highways, bridges, shopping centers and a key oil refinery. In New York City, there were two protests outside the Mexican Consulate, initiated by the Internationalist Group, on October 5 and 8. The Trotskyists emphasized that militarization in Mexico is “made in U.S.A.” and ousting a mayor, a governor or even Mexico's president will not stop the massacres and “dirty wars,” which have taken 100,000 lives in the last eight years and will continue until capitlaism is overthrown. The massive fury shown in the streets points to the need for a national strike against the murderous government pointing to international socialist revolution. Huge Outrage Over Guerrero Massacre (12 October 2014) Once Again: Bloodbath, “Disappeared” Victims and Impunity Mexico: Massacre in Iguala Calls for Mobilization and Workers Revolution PRI, PAN, PRD: Murderous Parties of the Bourgeoisie Forge a Workers Party That Fights For Socialist Revolution! Following the discovery of mass graves on October 4, the massacre in Iguala, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, has become news worldwide. International organizations piously call for a “transparent investigation” and the Mexican government cla+ims to comply. Against the official hypocrisy, the relatives of the murdered and disappeared students of Ayotzinapa along with their comrades and the militant Guerrero teachers have called for marches and strikes nationally. In these mobilizations it is vital to put the responsibility for the crime in Iguala on the Mexican government and its imperialist masters. The smokescreen about drug trafficking is nothing but an attempt to wash the blood off the hands of the regime, for it is the capitalist state that should be on trial. Guerrero has long been the scene of militant mobilizations of “those on the bottom,” and also an infernal cycle of masscres, dirty war and repression on the part of “those on top” – the capitalist ruling class. Yet from the peasant guerrillas of the 1960s to the teachers mobilizations last year, these struggles have been isolated from the power that can defeat the bloody capitalists: the urban working class. On behalf of Ayotzinapa, a class mobilization of the working people against the blood-soaked capitalists is urgently needed, to shut down key sectors of the economy and point toward socialist revolution. Mexico: Massacre in Iguala Calls for Mobilization and Workers Revolution (8 October 2014) Striking Mexican Students Send Solidarity to CUNY Protesters In Mexico City, tens of thousands of teachers have been on strike since mid-August against a government assault on public education. On September 13, police drove strikers out of Mexico City's main square. That night, students at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) occupied their campus in solidarity with the teachers, and continued to do so for the next week. While on the barricades the ENAH students voted a motion of solidarity with the student proteters against militarization at CUNY who had just been attacked by NYC police. Striking Mexican Students Send Solidarity to CUNY Protesters (18 September 2013) No to the Trap of "Dialogue" with the Strikebreaking Government! Mexican Powder Keg Turn the Teachers' Walkout Into a National Strike Against the Reforms Answer Repression with Hard-Hitting Workers Action Everywhere! The CNTE Should Finally Bury the Corporatist SNTE! Since mid-August, the battle-hardened teachers of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE) have thrown Mexico City into turmoil with furious, massive, combative protests of a kind never before seen in the capital. They reject the privatizing education “reform” orchestrated by the federal government of the “Pact for Mexico” of the three main capitalist parties – the PRI, PAN and PRD – following the dictates of imperialist financial organs. Despite the ranks’ will to struggle, the teachers leaders have fallen into the trap of a supposed “dialogue” with a government that vows that its drive to destroy teachers’ rights is “irreversible.” To defeat this onslaught by the entire bourgeoisie, it is necessary to fight for the complete class independence of labor from the capitalist state, and in the first instance to break the stranglehold of the corporatist SNTE which is acting as the spearhead of the union-busting offensive. At the same time, it is vital to mobilize the “heavy battalions” of the industrial proletariat which can bring the capitalist machinery of production to a grinding halt. The key is to break with all the bourgeois parties, politicians, coalitions and political tendencies and to fight to forge the nucleus of a revolutionary workers party. Mexican Powder Keg (29 August 2013) Impose Workers Control in Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (August 2013)Abstentionism, Lies and (Somewhat) True Confessions ICL Clueless and Gutless in the UNAM Strike In Their Own Words In 1999-2000, the 250,000 students of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the largest in Latin America, carried out a ten-month strike that despite massive arrests succeeded in blocking the government's attempt to impose tuition on orders of the World Bank. Tens of thousands of strikers occupied the huge University City day and night and marches against repression brought out hundreds of thousands. Electrical workers mobilized in support of the students and, at the initiative of the Grupo Internacionalista, formed worker-student defense guards that blocked army intervention. It was the most convulsive social struggle in the country in decades. Yet the Mexican affiliate (GEM) of the International Communist League deliberately and shamefully abstained from the strike while claiming in public to be active participants. Explosive ICL documents reveal in their own words how the ICL leadership demonstrated “complete ignorance” of Mexico's social reality, “sabotaged” and “betrayed” the struggle while carrying out “false, abusive, demagogic and humiliating ‘fights’” blaming its Mexican section for a policy emanating from the top. Yet in public the ICL and GEM continue to peddle their lies. ICL Clueless and Gutless in the UNAM Strike (August 2013) Fake Trotskyists Can't Tell the Difference Between a Workers Union and a Death Squad SL on Corporatism in Mexico: Games Centrists Play The Internationalist has reported on the militant struggles of Mexican teachers against the government and against the corporatist pseudo union (the SNTE), which for decades has acted as labor cops, integrated into the state apparatus, to prevent the rise of independent workers unions. The Spartacist League and its local affiliate have come to the defense of the SNTE even as combative teachers stone its offices. A recent polemic by the SL's Workers Vanguard against the Internationalist Group shows that the latter-day SL can't tell the difference between a workers union and a death squad, and is supporting the main agency for union-busting in Mexico. A detailed exposé of WV's lies underscores how the SL has renounced their own Trotskyist heritage on the struggle for union independence from the state. SL on Corporatism in Mexico: Games Centrists Play (July 2013) Corporatism in Action in Chiapas (30 June 2013)Smash the Capitalist Education Counter-Reform Mexico: For a National Education Strike! For over two months, teachers of the state of Guerrero have been on strike against the educational counter-reform ordered by Mexico’s president and backed by the government of the three main bourgeois parties, PRI, PAN and PRD. This “reform” does nothing to deal with the disastrous state of Mexican education. Instead, it focuses on punishing teachers, laying the basis for mass firings. The bosses' government's idea of “dialogue” is with riot clubs and bullets. This has not stopped the courageous teachers of Guerrero, who have repeatedly shut down key highways, besieged the state Congress and attacked offices of the ruling parties, government agencies and corporatist pseudo-unions pushing the anti-teacher “reform.” But the Guerrero teachers alone cannot win against a united ruling class: a national education strike is urgently necessary. Moreover, this free-market counter-reform was ordered by imperialism, via the OECD. In order to prevail, the struggle against the capitalist attack on public education must extend into the imperialist heartland of the United States. Mexico: For a National Education Strike! (May 2013) Defend the Independent Teachers of Guerrero! (May 2013)For a Nationwide Strike to Smash Capitalist Education “Reform”! Mexican Government Busts Its Labor Cop Gordillo to Crush Teachers’ Resistance Peña Nieto, Hands Off the Teachers! Let the Government Agent Gordillo Go, So Teachers Can Try Her for Murder The arrest of the “president for life” of the corporatist National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), Elba Esther Gordillo, in a massive military operation was obviously a settling of scores at the highest levels of power. For misappropriation of funds and obscene corruption you could arrest nearly the entirety of the country’s rulers. At the same times, Elba Esther Gordillo was the perfect target in order to promote Peña Nieto’s privatization agenda. especially his education “reform.” The “Elbazo” was intended to crush any resistance from the side of the teachers, and thus its real targets are the dissident teachers of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE). The CNTE leadership, however, has made a monumental error in cooperating with, and even egging on, the attorney general’s “investigation.” This reflects its political subordination to the bourgeois opposition of the PRD and MORENA. All of Gordillo’s crimes – and they are much worse than the official charges – were extolled by, or committed in the service of, the same criminal state that now wants to try her. We insist that this state criminal should be tried by the colleagues and family members of the teachers who fought against corporatist control, and because of this were gunned down, tortured and disappeared on the specific orders of the clique of state agents. The installation of a new government flunky as leader of the SNTE after an interview in the interior ministry underlines the nature of this pseudo-union as labor police for capital. The goal of class-conscious educators should be to build a genuine education workers union, completely independent of the state and without any political ties to any of the bourgeois parties. Labor Cop Gordillo Busted to Crush Teachers’ Resistance (March 2013) Mexico: Defeat the Bourgeois Repression of the PRI, PAN and PRD! Workers to Power! No Vote to Capitalist Parties and Politicians! Break with López Obrador's Bourgeois Popular Front! Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! The sudden appearance on the political scene of the movement #YoSoy132 (I am 132) a month ago has shaken up the previously listless campaign for the July 1 elections. By questioning the media coverage of the Televisa-TV Azteca duopoly and opposing the "imposition" of EnriquePeña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as president, the students have thrown a wrench into the works. By denouncing the undeniable authoritarianism of PRI rule while barely mentioning the more than 60,000 dead in the "war against drugs" of President Felipe Calderón, it is attempting to prettify the present government of the PAN. Meanwhile, various groups of the opportunist left who habitually tail after every new "movement" are trying to clamber aboard the brand new student movement. The fact that even students of the well-off petty bourgeoisie are mobilizing, both in Mexico and southern Europe, indicates the depth of the world economic crisis. But in order to really fight against oppression and poverty, they will have to break their ties with the ruling classes and take their place along side the proletariat and the oppressed in the class struggle. Mexico: Defeat the Bourgeois Repression of the PRI, PAN and PRD! Workers to Power! (June 2012) Not One Vote for Any of the Bosses' Parties! Mexico Electoral Farce 2012: Militarization and Anti-Worker Attacks No to the PRI-PAN Rotation and the “Loving Republic” of López Obrador Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! The six-year term of Mexican president Felipe Calderón, of the clerical-reactionary National Action Party (PAN), is nearing its end with a balance sheet of 60,000 violent deaths, unprecedented militarization, real unemployment of around nine million jobless and a record-setting pace of attacks on the working class, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in half a century. Moreover, large sections of the country are a literal war zone, a war that the government is not winning. Twelve years of “rotation” in power have not brought the “democratization” that many had hoped from the displacement of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from the federal executive. Both the PRI (which is leading in the opinion polls) and the PAN promise savage repression. For his part, López Obrador, with his talk of “love of the family ... love of the fatherland,” seeks to “lovingly” reconcile the exploited with the exploiters, while at the same time proposing to carry out Calderón's militarist policies with a federal police trained in “techniques of excellence in police work.” In these elections, the working people and oppressed have no representation. Not one vote for the bourgeois parties and politicians! Mexico Electoral Farce 2012: Militarization and Anti-Worker Attacks (May 2012) “War on Drugs” = Capitalist War Against Workers and the Poor Mexico: Against Militarization, Fight for Workers Revolution In early May, a March for Peace with Justice and Dignity arrived in Mexico City demanding an end to the violence which during the first four years of Felipe Calderón's presidency has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people. In recent months, clandestine mass graves have been discovered holding hundreds of dead, many of them Central American immigrants. Although diverse sectors are participating in the march, including unions and leftists, they all call on the state to put an end to the violence. Yet the source of the violence is precisely the capitalist state, and in order to combat it we must wage a class war against all wings of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary communists call for the elimination of all laws against drugs, for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, for the expulsion of imperialist agents and, in times of sharp class struggle, for the formation of workers self-defense groups. Ultimately, the only way to put an end to the violence perpetrated by the ruling class and its state is through socialist revolution extending into the imperialist heartland. Mexico: Against Militarization, Fight for Workers Revolution (7 May 2011) Popular Front
Diverts Workers into Legalistic Dead-End
En
español: México:
¡Cananea no debe estar sola! (1°
de febrero de 2008)
See also: New York
Picket Protests Repression Against Mexican
Miners (12 January 2008)
En español: Piquete en Nueva York repudia represión contra mineros mexicanos (12 de enero de 2008) From the Great Miners’ Strike of 1906 to Today: Revolutionary Leadership Is Key Cananea: A Century of Internationalist Class Struggle June 1, 2006 marked the centenary of the copper mine strike at Cananea. The conglomerate that now operates the mines, Grupo México, tried to prevent the commemoration; the militant miners of of Latin America’s largest copper mine responded by going on strike. Now they have gone on strike again, as they have almost every year since 1999. This history of militancy goes back to the 1906 Cananea miners strike, one of the key events leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17. Much has been written about the 1906 strike from the standpoint of Mexican nationalism. But contrary to nationalist myths, that proletarian revolt was a joint effort by anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary minded Mexican and American workers, who carried red flags at the head of their marches. In the recent strikes as well as one hundred years ago, the key factor is the need for a class-struggle leadership, a revolutionary internationalist party. Cananea: Century of Internationalist Class Struggle (December 2007) Mexican Miners Strike for Safety, Against Anti-Worker Attacks Copper miners in Cananea, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, have been on strike since the end of July over the deadly dangerous working conditions and anti-worker attacks by the management and government. Cananea, the largest open-pit copper mine in the world, has been owned by the billionaire Germán Larrea and his Grupo México since it was privatized in 1990. The criminally negligent safety conditions at the mine and smelter have been documented by an international commission of medical and industrial safety experts. The miners are facing the full force of Mexico's corporatist system of state control of labor, including the national miners’ “union” which in the past has repeatedly sided with the government and the bosses against its own members.The “independent” unions which politically support the opposition PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) have notably failed to back the striking miners.Class-conscious workers in Mexico must defend the striking miners, while fighting to break the corporatist stranglehold, build workers unions free of all ties to the bourgeois state and capitalist parties, and forge a revolutionary workers party. Mexican Miners Strike for Safety (15 December 2007) Against the Tortillazo, Impose Workers Control! Mexico's Tortilla Crisis, Product of Capitalism 2007 began with a spectacular increase in the price of tortillas, a staple of the Mexican diet, as basic as bread in the United States. President Felipe Calderón then announced a “voluntary” price ceiling which was in fact a 40-percent price hike. The opposition led by the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is calling for a trust fund to subsidize tortillas, but only for the neediest. The aim of the AMLO/PRD popular front is to keep protests limited to the capitalist framework. Yet the drastic price increases, which are literally taking food off the tables of Mexican poor and working people, are the product of the capitalist market. To combat the tortillazo (the tortilla attack), the Grupo Internacionalista calls for worker-neighborhood supply committees with the power to shut down businesses which do not respect the specified price, as well as to seize stocks from hoarders; for workers control over the whole chain of production and workers inspection of the accounting books of the agro-industrial giants. In order to smash these monopolies and expropriate them in the interests of the working people, what’s required is a struggle for a workers and peasants government. Mexico's Tortilla Crisis, Product of Capitalism (21 January 2007) |
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