MEXICO CITY, September 30 — It’s been a month since teachers from states throughout Mexico, organized in the National Coordinating Committee (CNTE), struck against the rulers’ attack on workers in the guise of education reform. Now the struggle has spread throughout Mexico as other teachers, parents and diverse groups of workers and students join the fight.
The bosses’ government, headed by the criminal lackey of imperialism and the local capitalist class, President Enrique Peña Nieto, is pushing this reform. It will privatize schools and put them out of reach for most working-class children.
When teachers nationally learned of this cruel news, their struggle grew through massive actions in areas normally controlled by the sellout leadership of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), along with the Mexican bosses’ three largest parties: PRI, PAN and PRD. The national strike of workers and students grew from 300,000 to 500,000. More than 300,000 protesters occupied the Mexico City center. Huge marches have blocked the international airport there. Numerous actions at the state level have strengthened the movement to squash these latest fascist laws.
No Peaceful Retreat
September 13 marked the historic battle of the Heroic Children of Chapultepec against the 1847 invasion by U.S. imperialism. The Mexican ruling class spent millions of pesos on this “patriotic holiday” in a crude attempt to mobilize people to cheer the president — and as a pretext to send 4,000 federal cops to brutally evict the CNTE from the city center. These fascists expected us to peacefully retreat on our knees. Instead, teachers, neighbors and students courageously resisted the attack. The goons injured hundreds and arrested 32 CNTE members. But many cops who “lost” their weapons got what they deserved. While the cops emptied the plaza, the bosses’ campaign to build Mexican nationalism and patriotism failed.
This is how the dictatorship of the ruling class works. The capitalists disguise it as “democracy” and use their laws, ideology, and repressive apparatus to impose their interests on the working class. When that doesn’t work, they resort to more open fascism — to military dictatorship and state terror.
The violent eviction in Mexico City, far from diminishing the struggle, sparked a nationwide expansion. CNTE grew stronger. On September 19 and 20, it organized a 48-hour national civic strike. Twenty-eight of 58 union locals, including SNTE members, joined militant actions. They effectively shattered the control of the sellout leadership headed by Juan Díaz de la Torre.
Trade unions and peasants, university students in Mexico City and parents, community police in Guerrero and Michoacán — all have joined the struggle. They have blocked roads, ports and airports. They have taken over custom offices, bridges and government buildings.
Bosses Scapegoat
Teachers
Since August, the liberal capitalist dictatorship, masquerading as a democratic government led by Peña Nieto, began implementing a series of “structural reforms,” a pro-capitalist and anti-working class project. They are backed by the leadership of the main bourgeois parties (PRI, PAN, PRD and PVEM), grouped in the so-called “Pact for Mexico.” They are also supported by the mafia of goons and pimps who compose the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
The treacherous Pact for Mexico first cooked up a criminal plan to impose labor reform and privatization of the education sector. They launched a huge media campaign to extol the virtues of the reforms. At the same time, they waged relentless attacks against the SNTE and teachers in general, blaming them for the backwardness of education in Mexico. Local 22, the militant Oaxaca local, was particularly targeted for a media lynching by the media.
Televisa fired the first shot with “De Panzazo” (“Belly Flop”), a mediocre film produced by the deceitful Carlos Loret de Mola and sponsored by the Mexicans First Industrial Group, whose main interest is to turn education into a lucrative business. This pack of hounds was joined by TV Azteca, the press, radio and other media owned by the ruling bosses.
Constitution: For and By the Bosses
The Mexican Constitution legitimizes capitalism, a system designed to serve the capitalists and exploit the workers. In a move to maximize their profits, the bosses’ stooges recently amended Articles 3 and 73. These changes legalize repressive measures in education and steal back the gains we have won through the blood and lives of thousands of fighting workers in this country and worldwide, including the SNTE teachers’ strike and numerous struggles by the CNTE over the last 30 years.
After militant CNTE members trapped them in their legislative chambers, these thieving deputies hid in the Banamex executives’ auditorium. There, protected by their capitalist masters, they passed the secondary laws that were later approved by criminal-in-chief Peña Nieto.
Under capitalism, education is constructed to serve the needs of the bosses. It teaches students a full curriculum of bad ideas, from individualism to competition among workers. Now the bosses are determined to make a bad system worse. They have the legal justification to strike the final blow against education workers’ employment and labor rights, and to eliminate free, secular, public education. Through the punishing mechanism of standardized evaluation, they are making teachers’ employment conditional on passing the test. The tests will lead to temporary contracts without labor rights or job guarantees.
Over time, the bosses plan to lay off 1.5 million workers, teachers and school support personnel. In rural areas, education will be under municipal control. In cities, it will be privatized and controlled by private companies and universities. Televisa and TV Azteca have already established a competitive education project. Parents and students will be forced to pay high enrollment fees. Families who cannot pay will go without. Educational inequality and illiteracy will soar.
The workers’ growing resistance movement has the potential not only to repeal the bosses’ nefarious reform laws, but also to remove the sellout SNTE leadership. These would be positive steps, but they are not enough. The only true solution for teachers, students, and parents is to overthrow the fascist government that oppresses us and to establish a communist society under the leadership of a mass Progressive Labor Party.
Beyond Reform Struggles, to Communism!
Trade union struggles may achieve temporary benefits for workers. But these gains are inevitably reversed by the rulers as they move from one capitalist crisis to the next. Reform movements, no matter how militant, cannot destroy capitalism. The working class must go beyond nationalist, pacifist groups like Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement, which seeks to benefit local bosses. Workers must reject armed nationalist movements, like those in the Middle East, that serve the imperialist powers. We must recognize that today’s “socialism” is a state-capitalist fraud led by a new class of oppressors and exploiters. As we have learned from hard experience in the Soviet Union and China, socialism does not lead to communism.
Our fight must be directly for communism, for a new system of production and distribution without oppressors and exploiters. In a communist world, we would study and work collectively for the common good, to serve the needs and wellbeing of the whole working class. This is the goal of the Progressive Labor Party. Join and build it!
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