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Bloody Repression, Hard Class Struggle

For the last four months the Oaxacan teachers and their supporters have been engaged in a hard and protracted class battle, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in Mexico in several decades. On June 14, the governor sent an army of 3,500 riot police to evict strikers camped out in 52 blocks in the heart of the state capital. The repressive forces let off repeated volleys of tear gas (and rifle fire), burned the strikers’ tents, invaded the teachers union headquarters, destroying the strike radio station, and brutally beat anyone they came across. But after a tenacious struggle, tens of thousands of teachers retook the city center.

Two days later 300,000 people marched in solidarity with the teachers. Ever since, the entire city has been in the hands of the teachers and their allies. Police, often masked, periodically sneak into town for nighttime incursions in unmarked vehicles. After one such raid in late August, in which a strike supporter was shot to death by a marauding “caravan of death,” more than 500 barricades were thrown up all around Oaxaca city. The city hall, state legislature, supreme court and governor’s office are all occupied, as well as several radio stations and the state government’s TV channel.

Upon receiving phone reports from our comrades of the Grupo Internacionalista in Mexico about the bloody June 14 cop attack on the striking teachers, the Internationalist Group in New York called an emergency protest outside the Mexican consulate on an hour’s notice. The IG initiated a second demonstration at the consulate the following day which was joined by a large contingent from the PSC. Photos of that demonstration were published in the Mexico City daily La Jornada and in Noticias in Oaxaca, the widely read daily newspaper which is supporting the teachers.

Over the next two and a half months, militants of the Grupo Internacionalista were in Oaxaca almost constantly, distributing thousands of leaflets to the strikers and talking of the need for a national strike against the murderous government, the formation of workers defense committees and fighting to forge class-struggle unions to break the stranglehold of the corporatist “unions” which for decades acted as labor police for the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). A particular focus was the GI’s call to break with the popular front around the bourgeois-populist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) led by presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, widely known by his initials AMLO.

In August, a youth leader of the GI addressed a mass meeting of 1,500 strike supporters in Oaxaca called by the APPO, declaring that there would be no “democracy” under capitalism for the poor and working people, women and indigenous peoples, denouncing the role of the PRD, and calling for a revolutionary workers party. As PRD supporters attempted to shout him down, our comrade held his ground, while a number of teachers called out to “let him speak.” In the end he got more applause than a PRD senator. Striking teachers crowded around to see photos of the June 14 and 15 protests in New York City and effusively asked IG supporters to convey their thanks to NYC teachers for their solidarity. 198 copies of a new issue of the Mexican edition of El Internacionalista were sold as strikers lined up and called out for copies.


The IG had a stand at the annual West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn on September 4, selling copies of The Internationalist with several articles on the hot struggles in Mexico. A well-attended forum was held by the Hunter Internationalist Club on September 7 showing a just-completed video produced by the Internationalist Group on “Class Battles in Mexico” (copies of the video are available for sale). On September 9, several hundred leaflets calling for the protest along with a fact sheet on events in Oaxaca were distributed and dozens of endorsements for a protest gathered at the Labor Day parade, despite the wretched Democratic (and in some cases Republican) politics of the pro-capitalist union tops.

On September 14, a “report-back” meeting was held at the City University Graduate Center, sponsored by the Association of Latino and Latin American Students and endorsed by the PSC, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Doctoral Students Council. In a room packed to overflowing with more than 60 people, CUNY faculty who recently were in Oaxaca recounted the struggle there and segments were shown from a video shot and being edited by Professor Tami Gold of the Hunter Film Department. After the presentations there was a lively debate with more than a dozen speakers in the audience over the role of the PRD, the nature of the corporatist “unions” in Mexico and the need for solidarity action in the United States.

On September 17, flyers were distributed and 50 copies of El Internacionalista sold at the Mexican Independence Day festival in New York. As momentum built for the picket, an IG spokesman gave an interview on WBAI radio emphasizing key aspects of the struggle in Oaxaca, including the important issue of racism against indigenous peoples. The Hunter Internationalist Club held a sign-making session making dozens of signs. In Mexico City, the Grupo Internacionalista held a forum on the teachers’ struggle, with students who traveled from Oaxaca speaking, at the CCH-Sur preparatory school which was attended by over 100 students. Meanwhile, in Brazil, supporters of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brazil, section of the League for the Fourth International, were pushing for the teachers union there to demonstrate support for the Mexican strikers. In all three countries, the Internationalist video was shown.

These intense efforts prepared the way for the successful September 21 protest. At the picket, an Internationalist Group leaflet was distributed with an update from Mexico on the “Threat of Heavy Crackdown in Mexico.” At the end of the hour-long protest, the crowd was addressed by a number of the participants. An executive board member of TWU Local 100 spoke of the battle for the right to strike and against the union-busting Taylor Law, after which demonstrators again chanted to fight for the right to strike. A prominent member of the PSC spoke of how teachers in Oaxaca had inspired teachers in New York, and of the need for the working class to become active against the war. Protesters chanted “For workers strikes against the war!” and “Defeat U.S. Imperialism!” An activist from the UFT told how the consulate refused to receive the letter from the NYC teachers union, with 150,000 members, against the repression in Oaxaca.

There were also speakers from Grassroots Haiti, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs, the International Socialist Organization, the League for the Revolutionary Party, Progressive Labor Party and the Spartacist League. The speaker from the Internationalist Group emphasized that the key issue is revolutionary leadership: the Oaxacan teachers have certainly shown tenacity and courage, and have massive popular backing, but the strike is undercut by the leadership’s support for the PRD, many of whose members have been scabbing on the strike and whose legislators are now calling to bring in the Mexican federal police to dislodge the strikers. The fight against massive poverty, to defend immigrants’ rights, to defeat the imperialist war on Afghanistan and Iraq, both in Mexico and the U.S., require the leadership of a revolutionary workers party.

The demonstration ended with vigorous chants to fight for the right to strike, denouncing death squad repression, and proclaiming “¡Viva la huelga de los maestros oaxaqueños!” .

http://www.internationalist.org/nycoaxacasolidaritypicket060921.html

No to the PAN, PRI and PRD, Parties of the Bourgeoisie!
Break with the Popular Front – For a Revolutionary Workers Party

The Grupo Internacionalista, Mexican section of the League for the Fourth International, has issued the following update on the situation in Oaxaca, which was distributed as an Internationalist Group leaflet at the September 21 picket in New York against repression in Mexico and in defense of the Oaxaca teachers.

SEPTEMBER 20 – In the last several days, an escalating series of events points toward the possibility of imminent large-scale repression against striking teachers and their supporters in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. This underscores the urgency of mobilizing workers solidarity actions throughout Mexico and internationally.

In New York City a protest initiated by teachers and labor activists will be held tomorrow, September 21, outside the Mexican Consulate. Arrangements have been made to broadcast directly from the picket to Oaxaca on Radio Plantón (Sit-In Radio), the strikers’ radio station. Also tomorrow, in Brazil, the educational workers union (SEPE) local of the city of Volta Redonda will be marching in a strike demonstration in Rio de Janeiro with a banner calling for workers strikes in solidarity with the Oaxaca teachers.

On Monday, a delegation arrived in Mexico City with a resolution of the state legislature calling for the dispatch of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) to oust the strikers from the state capital, where tens of thousands of teachers have been camped out since late May. On June 14, an army of 3,500 state police attempted to evict the teachers’ plantón (encampment) with a brutal attack, but after hours of clashes in the streets the strikers retook the city center. Ever since, the capital and many towns throughout the state have been in the hands of the teachers and their allies in the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).

Having waited out six weeks of protests in Mexico City over the fraud-ridden national elections, the government of Vicente Fox is gearing up to move. Felipe Calderón, the candidate of the right-wing PAN (National Action Party) who was declared president-elect by the government’s hand-picked election tribunal, is demanding that Fox put an end to the conflict in Oaxaca. The resolution of the Oaxaca legislature was brought to the Interior Ministry (Secretaría de Gobernación) not only by legislators of the PAN and the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which ruled Mexico for seven decades, but also by the deputy leader of the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) in the Oaxaca chamber of deputies.

This morning’s newspapers (Noticias in Oaxaca, La Jornada in Mexico City) are reporting an “urgent call” by 42 organizations in Oaxaca appealing for human rights organizations to be on “maximum alert” for an imminent operation by federal forces in the state, codenamed “Global 5.” Mexico’s National Security Council has authorized dispatching 8,000 federal troops and police to Oaxaca. Several hundred PFP paramilitaries are already in the state, guarding the itinerant legislature that has been hiding out in luxury hotels, wandering from town to town. In the last two weeks, army units have reportedly entered northern Oaxaca. Now troop trucks from the town of Miahuatlán, south of the state capital, have been sighted moving toward Oaxaca city.

Yesterday, interior minister Carlos Abascal, a member of the secretive fascistic group El Yunque, declared that it was up to President Fox to decide when to send in the PFP, “according to the situation,” but that troops would not be sent in as long as talks with the strikers were continuing. This afternoon talks in the capital between the strikers and Gobernación broke down as teachers rejected Abascal’s ultimatum to resume classes and turn over vehicles seized from the police. The courageous strikers know what to expect from the cops. In August, five strike supporters were assassinated by police and death squads.

The bloody June 14 attack on the striking teachers came after murderous assaults on striking steel workers at Lázaro Cárdenas (Michoacán) in April and on peasants and town dwellers in Atenco, near Mexico City, in May. In each case, police under the command of all three of the main bourgeois parties (PAN, PRI and PRD) participated in the repression. The Grupo Internacionalista has insisted that the response must not be limited to local demands, such as ousting the governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz (to be replaced by whom?), but requires the formation of workers defense committees and a national strike against the murderous government. This call is now more urgent than ever.

The response must also be a political struggle for class independence. Although leaders of the teachers union and the APPO issued a backhanded appeal to vote for the PRD in the July 2 elections (calling to vote to “punish” the PAN and PRI), this capitalist party has not supported the struggle of Oaxaca teachers. Quite the contrary, a group of PRD-affiliated teachers (the CCL) has been scabbing on the strike. PRD state legislators voted before June 14 to use police against the strikers, and now they are calling on Fox to send in the hated PFP. This paramilitary police force was set up in 1999 to repress the ten-month-long strike by National University (UNAM) students to defend free public education, eventually arresting 1,000 strikers.

Nationally, the PRD often postures as a friend of the workers. It is backed by a number of “independent” unions that have taken leave of the corporatist regime that characterized PRI rule. Various of these unions have joined the “Broad Progressive Front” launched at the “National Democratic Convention” called by the PRD that drew several hundred thousand participants to Mexico City’s Zócalo last Saturday, September 16, to proclaim PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador the “legitimate president.” But while this popular front chains the workers organizations to the bourgeois PRD, López Obrador’s party represses the workers.

Oaxaca is the poorest state in Mexico, where 30 percent of the population receives no schooling at all and 27 percent of women are illiterate, where a third of the population has no access to running water, 40 percent of the homes have dirt floors and two-thirds of the households subsist on incomes of US8 a day or less. No wonder this state is the largest exporter of immigrant workers to the rest of Mexico and the United States: much of the Oaxaca countryside has been depopulated of men. Tens of thousands now live in Oaxacalifornia, in the Central Valley of California around Fresno, where they face the constant threat of deportation.

The concerted capitalist attack on the workers movement in Mexico underscores the need to break with the popular front around the PRD and forge the nucleus of a revolutionary workers party on the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution. Facing the threat of massive repression, what’s needed is powerful workers action. In July 1999, the SME electrical workers union came to the defense of the UNAM strike, setting up a hundreds-strong defense guard that staved off army intervention for several months. The Grupo Internacionalista pushed for this workers defense guard, and calls for such measures today to defend the Oaxaca strikers.

The horrendous inequality and massive poverty in Oaxaca cannot be overcome under capitalism. Mexico is a semi-colonial country under the boot of U.S. imperialism. From the 1968 massacre of striking students in Mexico City to the current wave of deadly attacks on workers and peasants, repression in Mexico has always been underwritten (and often prepared) by the government of the United States. In the U.S., the Internationalist Group calls on labor to mobilize against immigrant-bashing vigilantes and to fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, as the Grupo Internacionalista does for Central American immigrants in Mexico.

We urge unions to forcefully make clear that any crackdown on strikers in Oaxaca will stir up a hornet’s nest of protest internationally. Rather than the dead-end of bourgeois nationalism, what’s required is proletarian internationalism. It will take international socialist revolution to put an end to this misery, and class-conscious Mexican workers on both sides of La Línea can play a key role in forging the revolutionary vanguard required to lead it.