Mexico: Workers, Students Sharpen Class Struggle

From the moment the vicious murders of the Ayotzinapa teachers took place, PLP members in Mexico have participated in the massive protests. At these protests, we distributed flyers criticizing the Mexican government, and every reformist and electoral “alternative” group being promoted among workers. The attack, which took place in Iguala, Guerrero State last September 27, is a reflection of the violence that the ruling class is willing to use to enforce its plans against the working class as the bosses consolidate and assert their power. Six other people, three of them students, were killed in a police and paramilitary attack. To this day, 57 youth are still missing.
Events like this become more frequent as the global capitalist crisis deepens and imperialist rivals, the U.S., Russia and China, get ready to fight World War III. We place all blame for the murders on the capitalist system, and call for the working class to organize for communist revolution.
A group of Party members participated in a demonstration of striking IPN (National Polytechnic Institute) teachers and students, who are fighting the consequences of the Mexican bosses’ education reforms. They distributed 2,000 flyers.
Ruling Class Needs Behind Ayotzinapa Massacre
The Mexican ruling class needs to discipline the workers’ and other ruling class rivals in controlling tax revenue and educational policy.
Energy reform allows the U.S. to have more control over energy resources like oil, which is vital to the U.S. military in the event of war. The education and labor reforms are designed to a cheap labor force. They represent more oppression and exploitation for workers.
The changes that the bosses are trying to put in effect at IPN are part of the education reforms, which are designed to suppress political participation in the polytechnic community, to make higher education more technically oriented and to reduce teachers’ benefits. These reforms respond to the needs of the capitalist system to reduce enrollment in public education to benefit the business of private education. It also turns public schools into cheap labor factories, where trained and docile workers don’t require the training of a highly qualified technician.
The approval of these reforms was framed by terror against the working class by the army, the police and the crime cartels. Against this terror, all of the electoral political parties to encourage passivity of the working class, while helping build unity of the most powerful ruling class groups in Mexico and the U.S. Due to their deep unpopularity with the workers, the bosses resort to using terror to blunt the workers’ resistance, which has a rich history in Mexico, especially in 1968, when IPN students played a key role in the anti-imperialist student movement.
Under capitalism, education is a business, and one of the most important means to indoctrinate youth with nationalist, sexist, individualist, and racist ideology. The attacks confronted by IPN teachers and students will not end as long as there is a capitalist system. It is essential for capitalism to destroy the living conditions of the working class because that’s one of the ways they maximize their profits. Capitalists will try, by any means, to cut salaries, retirement pensions,   health and education services.
Growing Worker-Student Unity Key as PLP Strengthens
Under these conditions, the massive protests of the IPN students against changes to administrative regulations and curriculum is very significant. This struggle is part of the entire working class resistance to the reforms imposed by the ruling class.
The struggle of the Polytechnic students is developing unity with workers and students in other schools like UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), UAM (Autonomous Metropolitan University), and UAEM (Autonomous University of Mexico State). This uity will be crucial to defeating attacks by school authorities and the ruling class.
We need to keep organizing the international revolutionary communist PLP, not an electoral party, to lead millions of workers in a communist revolution to abolish the oppressive capitalist system and build a new communist society. Workers’ power is the goal that in the last century inspired millions of workers around the world, including many of those who were part of the worldwide 1968 movement against imperialism. We honor their memory by renewing our commitment to the fight for a just and egalitarian society.
Our flyers were written collectively among our comrades and friends following lively debates about the causes of these attacks and their relation to global imperialist rivalry. Our friends participated in the discussion and helped distribute literature during the demonstrations.
One of our weaknesses was not quickly developing a plan for this struggle, which has already lasted months. We could have involved our friends in more than just passing our flyers. We plan to organize a group to participate more actively in the demonstrations with banners and flags, and organize conferences to put forward PLP’s position. From Ayotzinapa to Ferguson, the struggle of the working class for its liberation will put an end to capitalist oppression!