At the beginning of February, the Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) convened a meeting of left-wing organizations called the "Resistance Conference" to promote social protest. Many groups expressed disenchantment with the Fourth Transformation policies of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and argued for the need to resume struggle and resistance.
Two comrades from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) attended the meeting where we handed out a few dozen CHALLENGE leaflets detailing why capitalist reforms are a dead end for our class. The content of those leaflets is reproduced below. The plan is to continue to participate in future meetings:
The liberal fourth transformation (4T slogan of the Mexican government) managed to renew the hope of some reformists that capitalism could be reformed to serve the interests of the masses. However, in just three years, this government showed its true anti-working class nature and subservience to the interests of big capital. The patronage structure set up in the 4T social programs has paved the way for the government’s imperialist megaprojects: the Interoceanic Corridor, the Mayan Train, the Dos Bocas Refinery and the new Mexico City Airport.
A combination of cronyism, cooptation, assassination of social leaders and militarization disguised as the National Guard on top of an economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic has allowed bankers to reap record profits of 162 billion pesos (La Jornada, 2/3). For example, the profits of the county’s largest mining company, Grupo México, soared 70 percent in 2021 reaching 3,868 million dollars (La Jornada, 2/2). In the last couple of months, the capital of the mega-rich in Mexico grew six times more than the country's economy. The fortunes of these millionaires increased 27.3 percent (La Jornada, 11/30/21).
With all this, the AMLO government has managed to demobilize workers and to dismantle the opposition into supporting its megaprojects. For example, the re-election and legitimization of Ricardo Aldana, the corrupt union leader of the Mexican oil workers (PEMEX), serves to maintain control over the workers and reveals the anti-worker, pro-capitalist essence of the 4T.
During the last three years, in Mexico, conditions for the working class have worsened. In Latin America, one in four people lost their job and to date they have not recovered it. Employment fell from 76 percent to 62 percent, with an increase in informal work from 48 percent to 53 percent. At the beginning of the pandemic, 12 percent of households had been without food for at least a month. This proportion doubled in a year and a half of the health crisis and was accompanied by lower incomes and deteriorated working conditions (La Day, 12/30/21).
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the inability of the capitalist system to meet the needs of the working class. The profit-based health system continues to be overwhelmed by the number of patients. The capitalists focus on saving their companies over the lives of workers. The imperialists prioritize competition and their global geopolitical interests over the solidarity and collaboration between countries necessary to confront the health crisis. This individualistic, racist and sexist approach has had lethal consequences for our families and has allowed the virus to mutate causing more outbreaks all over the world.
The effects of Covid-19 were felt more intensely by working women, who are twice as likely to lose their jobs as men. In the first months of the pandemic, 38 percent of working women lost their jobs, and this doubled for mothers, reaching 40 percent unemployment. Likewise, during all these months, the unpaid workload increased, since taking care of the sick and children was added to domestic work.
In Mexico, 94 percent of those who died from Covid-19 were women who tended to their homes, pensioners, and workers (https://covid19comision.unam.mx/?p=89342), which reflects the sexism of the capitalist system and the need to prioritize industrial production over the lives of workers. Many of the deaths were concentrated in industrialized regions (especially in the border area with the U.S.). The maquila workshops never closed and some operated clandestinely without medical or job security. A recent study has shown that workers with lower incomes have a five-fold higher risk of death (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S 2667193X 21001113? via %3Dihub), demonstrating the inequality that the capitalist system promotes and maintains.
The sectors of society (mainly the working class) that have historically resisted the onslaught of capital must resume resistance actions to confront the capitalists, including the liberals of the 4T. We need to unify as a class through a non-electoral revolutionary party (Progressive Labor Party) to seize power from capital and build a communist society.