Mexico: Indigenous workers fight mining bosses

OAXACA, November 6—In response to the inability of the government to comply with its obligations and to provide justice, indigenous workers of Oaxaca submitted the state and mining companies to a popular community trial. The Progressive Labor Party has initiated a participation plan within the movements that convened this trial. We want to show that only through a communist revolution can we end the attacks against the workers, the environment and the indigenous workers here.
The brutal process of looting through mining, human exploitation and destruction of nature started 500 years ago with the arrival of Hernan Cortés and other mass murderers sent by the Spanish Catholic monarchs Isabel and Fernando to Mesoamerica, now Mexico. The bosses teach us that this was all in the past and that we currently live in an independent, democratic, progressive and wonderful country.
What has been happening in Mexico particularly in Oaxaca, shows the hypocrisy of the neoliberal governments and their accomplices of the fake left in the bosses’ parties of Institutional Reveloutionary Party(PRI), National Action Party (PAN), and so on.
Recently, the Assembly of the Central Valleys against Mining has been organized to fight in defense of the Earth; it is made up of 30 peasant communities. It denounced the fact that a total of 322 mining concessions have been granted in Oaxaca that cover some 160 thousand hectares of gold, silver, copper, zinc and molybdenum in the process of being extracted. Authorities, citizens and organizations of the native peoples of the region declared that for a decade their territories were granted to foreign mining companies without prior consultation, as stipulated in Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Oaxaca is the entity with the largest number of mining projects in the country; all of them are operated by foreign companies according to an academic study conducted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
The Mezinal Atlas prepared by academics and experts of the University Program of Studies of Cultural Diversity and Interculturality of UNAM, states that most of these projects are financed by Canadian, U.S and British companies. Of the 13 projects destined for Oaxaca, most will operate in the Valles Centrales Region, very close to Oaxaca, the capital city. This amount surpasses Sonora, the Mexican state considered to have the greatest boost to mining in the country, in which a total of 11 projects are developed.
The foreign companies involved in mining exploitation in Oaxacan territory are: Gold Resources Corporation (United States), Hochschild Mining Plc / Hochschild Group (England), Lake Shore Gold Corp (Canada), Fortuna Silver Inc. (Canada), Sundance Minerals (Canada) and Arco Resources Corp (Canada).
Some mines and neighborhoods where precious minerals are extracted are: Mina Yautepec, from San Bartolo Yautepec, Tlacolula; Minas Altagracia and El Aguila, San Pedro Totolápan, Tlacolula; Cobre Grande, San Dionisio Ocotepec, Tlacolula; Mina Natividad, Ixtlán de Juárez; Tres Hermanas, Zimatlán de Alvarez; Mina El Fuego, Santiago Lachiguiri, Isthmus of Tehuantepec; The King, San Jerónimo Tlacochauaya; The Margaritas, San Pedro Totolápan.
These imperialist companies not only continue to steal the natural resources of the indigenous workers, but they also continue to superexploit the poor peasants and slaughter them; they also destroy the ecology by poisoning the earth, water, air, flora and fauna.
Fighting back against exploitation
Last October, the Popular Community Trial Against the State and Mining Companies convened by the Central Valleys Assembly against Mining was held, in which social and civil organizations, indigenous peasants, and human rights defenders of the territory and of natural resources, and national and foreign social activists all participated. There was also representation from the teachers of Section 22 of Oaxaca CNTE-SNTE. In this event, the consequences and atrocities of the mining exploitation were denounced and condemned. This destruction are a product of the economic ambitions of foreign businessmen and the capitalist government of Mexico. Photographs of deformed fetuses, children with skin infections, adult men and women with cancer, etc. were presented.
The Encounter of Peoples in Defense of Land and Territory has been formed with organizations, collectives and activists to fight and reject foreign businessmen. However, the State, through its repressive apparatus, has responded with repression and death. Five militants of the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) of the Sierra Zapotec South have been murdered for defending the beaches and their territory; they were murdered by hired assassins, police and the same army and navy that keep them under siege.
The Unified Front of Trade Unions and National Organizations (FUSION) also plays a role in these struggles. We have participated in some of their activities.
Unity is our weapon, CHALLENGE is our tool
As militants of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), we have initiated a participation plan within these movements to fight together; our main purpose will be the construction of the revolutionary communist party using our newspaper CHALLENGE, as our organizational and ideological tool for the destruction of this murderous capitalist system and the establishment of communism.
Communism will mean that the working class will govern to meet our needs without having to exploit the workers. Since we will be the ones who will organize all production, there will be neither imperialist capitalists nor their national partners who are interested only in profits and preparations for their next wars. These concepts and much more are what communists can contribute to these mass movements. To victory!