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Following
is a joint declaration of the Mexican Workers' League for Socialism
-Against the Current LTS-CC and the Socialist Unity League,
condemning Nov. 25 attacks by the government against the people of Oaxaca.
Yesterday
[Nov. 25], after a massive megamarch condemning Ulises Ruiz [Ortiz, or
“URO,” the governor of Oaxaca state], thousands of federal police (PFP)
agents, supported by interior department agents and PRI death squads,
cruelly attacked the brave comrades of the APPO [Popular Assembly of the
People of Oaxaca], in what was the most violent day in the last six
months of this struggle.
Our
comrades in Oaxaca, besieged by the PFP, were attacked with shots fired
from rifles, tear gas, rocks, and tanks, and the encampment of Santo
Domingo was burned down. A paramilitary group attacked from two pickup
trucks, firing more than 100 shots and assassinating three comrades
(taking away the bodies of two of them).
Furthermore,
as we write this, more than 100 have been arrested and dozens have
disappeared.
Throughout
the night the police tanks fired at anything that moved in the streets, arresting
people left and right while URO's assassins ran through the streets with
their sub-machine guns. The PFP gangs broke into the hospitals to take
away the wounded comrades, but were prevented from doing so by the
valiant defense actions of the health-care workers.
According
to the government and the PFP, their objective is to "restore
order" by carrying out all the arrest warrants on members of the
APPO, which has become a veritable witch hunt characteristic of the
methods used by the old PRI governments of the 1960s and 70s.
Nevertheless, our comrades are trying to regroup and resist the brutal
attack.
This
is how the government of [outgoing Mexican President Vicente] Fox and the
PRI are showing that they intend, by means of the most merciless repression,
to silence the heroic people of Oaxaca, which is still on the march.
There
is a reactionary pact between the PAN and the PRI to liquidate this
movement, preventing it from becoming an example for the workers,
peasants, and youth of the whole country (and for the sectors that are
struggling to defend their rights, like the sugar-cane workers and the
high school students).
With
this repression, they want to create the conditions allowing the new
sell-out pro-imperialist government of [Felipe] Calderón to take power
without any troubles this Dec. 1, leaving the way open for the PRI and
PAN politicians to go ahead with their designs against the masses in the
national legislature. And also to prevent the hated oppressor Ulises Ruiz
from being brought down by the resistance of the people, so that later on
they can make a deal for an institutional hand-over that preserves the
PRI and the anti-democratic institutions in the state.
Against
this malicious aggression, the Oaxacan people must resort to its own
legitimate self-defense measures and reorganize itself to respond to this
wave of murder and repression orchestrated by the Secretary of the
Interior, the federal government, Calderón, and the PRI. Active
solidarity in the streets is urgently needed throughout the country.
Only
the mobilization of workers and poor people will put a stop to the
repression against the workers, peasants, indigenous people, and students
of Oaxaca. Massive and forceful actions cannot be put off another minute.
The
big unions that represent thousands of workers across the country must
make effective their class solidarity with our Oaxacan sisters and
brothers. The leadership of the SME (electrical workers), the UNT (a
union federation associated with the PRD), the miners' union, the CNTE (a
teachers' union movement) at the national level must call for a
nationwide general strike now to prevent a bloodbath, with a program of
demands linking the primary and urgent struggle against the repression
and in support of the APPO with the demands of the various sectors of the
workers against the government (such as the struggle against rising
prices of milk and gasoline, against the privatizations).
These
union leaders must show that they are on the side of the workers and stop
the brutal offensive against the people of Oaxaca. Likewise, the unions,
the "Other Campaign" [initiated by the Zapatistas], and the
working -lass and leftist organizations, as well as the organizations
that call themselves democratic and all those who recently demonstrated
against the repression (like the National Democratic Convention, the
CND), must organize the mobilization against the repression, with a huge
march in solidarity and actions all across the country, putting all our
forces at the service of the fundamental task of defending the people of
Oaxaca.
Let
us put forward a united nationwide plan for mobilization, led by the
unions and poor people's organizations, to stop this attack, starting by
forming a national coordinating committee against the repression and in
defense of the people of Oaxaca.
Down
with the repression and the death squads against the people of Oaxaca!
Repressive forces out of Oaxaca! Ulises Ruiz get out! Drop all charges
against the members of APPO! Return all our disappeared comrades alive!
Immediate and unconditional freedom for all political prisoners!
Fraudulent
elections
Manipulated
and fraudulent elections have been the keystone of the capitalist state
in Mexico since the end of the revolution in 1920 and in particular since
the liquidation of the gains of the revolution, beginning in 1940 and
culminating in the 1980s with the adoption of a neoliberal agenda.
Mexico
is now seething with revolt against fraudulent elections, in particular the
election of the PAN (National Action Party) candidate for president,
Felipe Calderón, in this year’s presidential election The rise of the PAN
is in itself a symptom of the growing political crisis, since it has
historically been a minority party, which never held the presidency
before 2000.
The
Constitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was the governing party from
1928 to 2000. It was similar to the Communist (Stalinist) parties of
Eastern Europe and China in that it served as an organization for controlling
society from top to bottom, including the trade-union movement. But by
2000 the PRI had become so discredited that the Mexican bourgeoisie
decided to hedge its bets, and allowed the National Action Party (PAN) to
take the presidency.
The
PAN was a Catholic party that arose out of the reactionary opposition to
the Mexican Revolution. In fact, since the 2000 election, the PAN and PRI
have worked hand in glove, like the Democrats and Republicans in the
U.S., shattering illusions that the PAN offered an alternative.
The
PRI and the PAN have been working together to crush the mass movement in
Oaxaca, where the state government that is the target of the mass
movement is held by the PRI.
Oaxaca
is a salient example of a surviving totally corrupt PRI government, in
this case presided over by Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO). His sending the
police against an encampment of protesting teachers in June ignited
long-smoldering resentments against his misrule and led to the formation
of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), a united
movement based on the social organizations. APPO is demanding his removal.
The
Oaxaca state police proved incapable of crushing the mass movement. Then,
on Oct. 27, the federal government, held by the PAN, sent the national militarized
police, the Policia Federal Preventiva, into Oaxaca to “restore order.”
Since then the PFP, along with the state police and right-wing
vigilantes, have been deepening the repression, with attacks on APPO
encampments, many arrests, and “disappearances” of APPO activists.
The
statement on this page by two Trotskyist organizations in Mexico calls
for mass mobilizations in support of the besieged movement in Oaxaca. — The Editors
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