Mexico: Striking Teachers Battle Fascism

MEXICO CITY, October 13 — The fascist repression against the striking teachers of the National Coordinating Committee (CNTE) unleashed by the bosses’ government of President Enrique Peña Nieto reveals the criminal and anti-working class nature of the capitalist system.  The complicity of Miguel Angel Mancera, the mayor of Mexico City, also illustrates how politicians of all the electoral parties — PRI, PAN, PRD, or PT — are capitalists’ loyal servants bent on turning education into a profit-driven business during their global crisis.
The brutal eviction from the city center carried out on September 13 by thousands of federal cops and Federal District riot police, and the subsequent military occupation of the city center, exemplify the fascism the bosses will use to impose their plans.
CNTE teachers’ courage in resisting fascist repression (see CHALLENGE, 10/2) as well as the attacks from the bosses’ media, has inspired thousands of teachers nation-wide, to go on strike, occupy public squares and fight the cops.
Fascist Dictatorship and Imperialists’ Interests
In two CNTE-sponsored discussions about education reform, columnist Luis Hernandez Navarro presented the paper “The Counter Education Reform,” describing how the ruling class, represented by businessman Claudio Gonzalez, outlined for Peña the content of the reform, and how to pass it into law.
The September 13 fascist repression demonstrates the role of the police and the army as enforcers of their law. That apparatus serves the interests of the class in power, the bosses, as do the executive, legislative and judicial branches, at the federal and state level.
As long as the bosses hold political power, the laws and the might of the state will be used to impose the interests of the ruling class on the working class — a dictatorship of a minority of millionaires oppressing an impoverished majority.
In the U.S. the education market is valued at $1.3 trillion. For the multimillionaire Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, the business of education in the U.S. represents an “opportunity” of $500 billion (La Jornada, 1/3/13).
U.S. bosses are enacting reforms to destroy public education and turn it into a lucrative business. It’s the same plan being implemented in Mexico; Claudio Gonzalez is advisor to private schools and is connected with Televisa, the media conglomerate.
We Need A Revolutionary Party
Labor, education, energy and fiscal reforms are all interconnected, responding to the needs of the imperialists and local capitalists. It means more oppression, fascist control and exploitation for the working class, and more profits and power for the capitalists. Trade union struggles are limited in confronting these interests and their leaders defend the system.
We must fight these attacks, which affect all workers. But we need to be organized as a class to destroy the capitalist system that’s behind these attacks. It’s in the bosses’ interest to separate these reform struggles and separate those involved in each one.
Working-class liberation can only be achieved by seizing political power through a communist revolution, led by a workers’ revolutionary party, not a bosses’ electoral party. Only a revolutionary party can tie these struggles together, not just to fight the bosses’ attacks, but to smash the capitalist dictatorship and build a workers’ dictatorship.
We must unite as a class internationally since similar reforms confronting us affect workers worldwide.
We’re calling on all teachers in struggle, and to the working class as a whole, to join Progressive Labor Party. The best lesson teachers can give their students is to join the struggle for a socially just society: communism! That’s REAL education.