MEXICO, June 13—Hundreds of teachers and other workers carried on the fight as they beat back the fascist attacks of the Mexican ruling class’s armed thugs in Oaxaca. United, workers blocked road access, burned down a police station and hotels used by snipers. The many years of the country’s militarization along with the rulers’ organized political crimes are used to oppress the working class by all three parts of the government. At the same time the electoral parties show a total submissiveness and collaboration with the police state we face. The mass movement led by the CNTE (the national teachers union) is one of the few with the strength needed to face the bosses’ attacks. It is no coincidence that the capitalist class is trying to annihilate this movement so they can advance their multimillion projects.
The police started the criminal attack against hundreds of teachers who defended themselves with sticks and rocks, putting up barricades, and blocking the road from Nochixtlan to the city of Oaxaca. Police shot at the crowds, killing more than 10 and injuring more than 50. The bosses’ henchmen thought it would be easy, but as soon as nearby workers realized what was happening, they joined the teachers to repel this criminal attack. “The longer they were there, [the] more people came to confront them, the police retreated, some of them beaten by the people,” a journalist said.
The population jumped on them and the hordes of murderous cowards retreated. Everywhere, on the way to Oaxaca, they met with workers’ resistance. That first night, the troops occupied the first square of the city of Oaxaca, but the following morning thousands of teachers and neighbors were out on the streets forcing them to retreat. The ruler’s strategy of exhaustion, discrediting the teachers in the media, and police repression did not scare the CNTE. The CNTE is stronger amongst all the teachers’ throughout Mexico. They are tired of the impunity, the corruption, the government and their genocidal politics.
The popular movement led by the CNTE is reformist—it defends labor and popular rights. While at this moment it is playing a crucial part confronting the police state, reforms of capitalism don’t work for workers. The capitalist system will never meet the basic necessities of the working class, like education, health and housing—but will reduce salaries and labor rights. The capitalists’ government’s rejection of the demands from this popular movement shows once again that capitalism has no interest in solving workers’ problems. The CNTE has a few anti-capitalist positions but it does not organize to destroy the root cause of our misery and suffering: the whole system. This is the job of communists in PLP.
The education reform the teachers are fighting against is racist privatizing of the education system and leads to the firing of thousands of teachers. It also leads to even more oppression of teachers and indigenous communities. The economic background of these reforms is that the ruling class and their imperialist partners need to destroy popular opposition in order to take large extensions of communal land in the south and center of the country. The development of projects and infrastructure will affect thousands of the indigenous population. It might be thought that the expansion of the Lázaro Cárdenas and Chiapas ports and the creation of the oil industrial corridor Coatzacoalcos-Tabasco-Campeche could bring wellbeing and improve the conditions in the region, but because of the capitalist nature of maximizing profits to compete in the imperialist market, we know that these projects will only bring evictions and dispossessions of thousands of farmers and miserable salaries.
Right now, the seven-week strike and mobilizations by the teachers and population in the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán, and Oaxaca, has the rulers on the defensive. What they really want is to protect companies like PEMEX, Walmart, ADO, Moctezuma and others, which have been affected by the strikers’ road blockades. Osorio Chong, Government Secretary responsible for the repression in Nochixtlan, is preparing another attack in the next few hours, or days.
PLP has taken an active part in this movement, discussing and spreading the communist analysis through flyers and CHALLENGE. This mass movement gives us the opportunity to make significant advances, to develop our organizing for the communist revolution. We can win many people tired of the hellhole of capitalism. Let us take the challenge—let’s win more young workers, teachers, farmworkers, and students to the fight for a communist revolution.