On September 19 a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico’s Pacific coast. Two days later a 6.8 quake struck the same area. Earthquakes in Mexico have been devastating to the working class. To many, the destruction and death after earthquakes appears to stem directly from these natural phenomena, but the true cause is the bosses’ disregard for workers' lives, allowing them to live in substandard housing. Capitalism can never keep the working class safe from so-called “natural disasters” because the bosses' drive for profits is the root of what’s causing them. We can only confront this horror with revolution and the building of a worker-led communist society.
Mexico sits in a seismic zone, on five tectonic plates whose rearrangement each year causes hundreds of low intensity tremors and dozens of very strong earthquakes. And in the last 30 years, two devastating earthquakes left thousands dead in a gigantic wake of destruction. A severe earthquake called the Michoacan earthquake of 1985 led to widespread death and catastrophic damage to the infrastructure in Mexico City. The electricity was knocked out, leaving many workers without public transit or working traffic lights.
The president of Mexico, Miguel de la Madrid, and his advisers rejected international aid, while working people evacuated neighbors from fallen buildings and organized distribution of supplies themselves (Brittanica, 9/22).
The only true help and protection comes from the solidarity and unconditional support of the working class itself during and after most earthquakes, crises and disasters. The mobilization and solidarity of the international working class is immediate, spontaneous, and unconditional, making it clear that only workers can save workers, showing that our class has the capacity and potential understanding to be able to organize and lead a new communist society of equality.
It is no coincidence that destruction and death are most extreme in working class neighborhoods and worksites, which are unprotected and more vulnerable to natural phenomena. The capitalist class protects its houses and large, modern buildings with anti-earthquake systems. Capitalist inequality is the real cause of these tragedies after earthquakes and is why we need to destroy this capitalist system and build a new society based on communist social equality.
On top of already vulnerable conditions of poverty, lack of preparation and corruption allow construction that does not meet safe standards and a preventable scarcity of resources to help those affected. The politicians and their electoral parties profit from the suffering of the people, blaming each other to win votes. No more electoral circus, all power to the workers!
Working class solidarity and organization always exceed the official, capitalist response, which is slow, inefficient, lazy and manipulative. This working class solidarity scares the bosses who, instead of helping, deploy police to control neighborhood operations and to protect the properties of the capitalists. They even resort to media fabrications to divert workers from neighborhood sites to sites controlled by security forces. Most notoriously, after the 2017 earthquake, the media created the story of Frida Sofia, a fictional child reported to be alive in the rubble of a collapsed elementary school.
Despite the danger of recurring earthquakes, workers are more afraid of the insecurity and death created by ruling class criminal gangs that the bosses use to terrorize the working class. Intuitively, the masses see more danger in capitalism than in natural phenomena.