Mexico: CHALLENGE’s Exposure of Flood Risk Draws Rulers’ Wrath

MEXICO — Around 120 families in the 12 districts to the east of Valle de Mexico are at risk of flooding. The area where we live sinks about half a meter a year, because of the extraction of water from the subsoil through the fourteen wells installed in the area since the 1980s. The ground has sunk 15 meters from its original level and by 2020 may sink up to 19 meters. 

The politicians did not want us inhabitants to know about the problem, so they tried to sabotage meetings and to discredit CHALLENGE when it informed us about the risk. They sent agitators to break up the neighbors’ meetings. They paid for advertisements on buses warning the population about “an organization that is trying to deceive them and manipulate them.” They weren’t successful, since it was clear that CHALLENGE serves the interests of the workers.

Because of the constant attack from the bosses against our class, we have to be organized in a party that is not electoral, a party that unites and leads millions of workers to a communist revolution. Electoral parties only look to benefit the bosses that sponsor them and the politicians that lead them. Elections are a fraud for all workers and will never lead us to a change that will benefit us.

The government used another weapon when they realized that its strategy of provocation failed. It brought a group of college researchers to create the idea that something can be done without a struggle. At first they were successful in creating an atmosphere of passivity, but it was reversed when CHALLENGE was proven right and some of the neighbors spoke about the importance of being organized.

The governing politicians explored two alternatives to “solve” the problem: the first is to evacuate the population located in the area of highest risk, and the second is to conduct hydraulic work to decrease the possibility of flooding. In reality that area should have never been populated, because of its risks. Capitalism forces workers to live in regions of high risk, like in places where lakes or rivers pass by hills. Capitalism is the problem, and the solution is to organize and fight to destroy it. 

While hundreds of thousands of inhabitants in the poorest parts of Mexico City lack water, thousand of liters coming from the Sierra Nevada are sent to the river and end up drained in the city of Pachuca. CONAGUA (Mexico´s national water commission) began studies to take advantage of this water, a project costing an estimated one billion pesos. They expect to store the water in a lake in Xico, make it drinkable and channel it to Mexico City. The project doesn´t specify if it will avoid the risk of flooding. For now it only exists on paper. 

No one forgets the scenes in 2000 and 2010 when thousands of families lost all of their belongings to sewage flooded from the channel. The government sent police to suppress them when they demanded help. Once again we see the hatred that the bosses and governments feel towards us workers. Capitalism is a racist system, which destroys the lives of all workers, but especially of the poorest.

We also don´t forget our class brothers who died or were affected in Tabasco, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz and Tamaulipas. The government says climate change is the reason for the disasters. The reality is that these phenomena become tragedies because of the permanent risk workers live under in this system. Capitalism is the disaster. Only a society led by the working class can give us safety. 

The risk of flooding and the lack of water in the eastern area of the Valle de Mexico show that the capitalist system doesn’t work for the working class. The only alternative is to be organized in a communist party, PLP, to destroy killier capitalists and build a society led by the workers.