Mexico

“Alive we want them back!”

On 26 September, students at the Mexican Normal de Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Iguala, Guerrero were planning to go to Mexico City to join a protest. The students peacefully took over three buses, common for protests in Mexico, and were asking fellow passengers for money to fund their trip when they were ambushed by the police who started shooting indiscriminately. Attacks from police and gunmen in civilian clothing left six dead including one student who was skinned and was left with no eyes. Five were gravely wounded (one is now brain dead) and 43 became “disappeared” comrades...

Sixteen Years Of Stalinist Terror and the Murder of Trotsky

The Struggle Begins THE murder of Leon Trotsky culminated an epoch. It marked the end of the epoch of Old Bolsheviks, for Leon Trotsky was the lone survivor of that grand school of revolutionary Marxists. His murder at the same time was the final personal victory of Cain Stalin, and, if any more evidence was required, of the irrevocable counter-revolutionary degeneration of his bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and therewith the Communist International. The struggle in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between the Russian Left Opposition and the Stalin regime was accompanied by the...

Terror on the US-Mexico border

There’s not a clean, pleasant capitalism in one place –— glitzy, high-tech, full of good food and happy people — and a separable, unfortunate area of poverty, unemployment and misery. The whole system contains both. Capitalism’s scientists create fantastic drugs that are then denied to people who haven’t enough money to pay for them; amazing electronic gadgets are made by people paid pennies; shiny new products are produced, as rivers and skies are polluted and the planet heads for meltdown. Jammed up against the 3,200km US-Mexican border, on the Mexican side, is an area which appears to...

Terror on the US Mexico border

There’s not a clean, pleasant capitalism in one place – glitzy, high-tech, full of good food and happy people – and a separable, unfortunate area of poverty, unemployment and misery. The whole system contains both. Capitalism’s scientists create fantastic drugs that are then denied to people who haven’t enough money to pay for them; amazing electronic gadgets are made by people paid pennies; shiny new products are produced as rivers and skies are polluted and the planet heads for meltdown. Jammed up against the US-Mexican 3200km border, on the Mexican side, is an area which appears to...

Mexico's miners' strike moment?

From the US socialist journal Against the Current . Published under the title "Mexico's PATCO moment?" - PATCO was the US air traffic controllers' union smashed by Reagan in 1981. The Mexican electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for its life. The union’s struggle has rallied allies in the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and solidarity from throughout the country and around the world, but if it is to survive the union and its supporters have to take stronger actions than they...

Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights For Its Life

Dan La Botz has warned that the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), one of the most important in Latin America, is fighting for its life.

On the night of October 10, the Mexican President ordered federal police to seize the power plants, while he simultaneously liquidated the state-owned Light...

Oaxaca teachers demand political freedom

Two years after the great uprising, in Oaxaca, Mexico, Section 22 of the Sindicato Nacional de los Trabajadores (SNTE) teachers union has mounted a fresh 21 day long strike demanding an end to political repression and the democratisation of their union and local schools. On 22 May 2006 teachers led by Section 22 took strike action demanding increased pay, better conditions and investment into food and uniforms for students. On 14 June Governor Ortiz deployed one thousand state police officers to break up the strike. Two days later tens of thousands of Oaxacans, backed by trade unions and...

NUT Conference - The Case for Solidarity

From Workers' Liberty Teachers NUT conference bulletin 2007 For many years the ‘International Section’ of conference has been dominated by motions and amendments offering various interpretations of the world situation. Most of these have focussed exclusively on the crimes of Western imperialism or the actions of Israel alone. Little to no comment has been offered on the brutality of regimes such as Iran or movements like Hamas and Hezbollah. Oppression is not a one-way street. Murders are not the sole prerogative of US or Israeli guns and bombs. The world is not divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad’...

Can Trotsky on Cardenas' Mexico tell us anything about Venezuela and Chávez?

By Paul Hampton In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez has nationalised companies in telecom and electricity privatised by previous administrations. Chávez says he wants to form a new Bolivarian socialist party. And he has announced the extension of communal councils and even “workers’ councils” as a means of recasting the state. These measures and others such as co-management in workplaces deserve to be assessed on their own terms, something we will continue to do in the AWL. However Chávez’s plans are not without precedent and much can be learned from the attitude earlier Marxists took to comparable...

Trotsky on Cárdenas

Trotsky had been expelled from the USSR by Stalin in 1929, and spent the rest of his life trying to find a country which would let him stay. He arrived in Mexico on 9 January 1937. A longstanding Mexican Trotskyist, Manuel Rodríguez, suggested the asylum to his boss, General Francisco Mujica, a member of the Cárdenas cabinet (and his predecessor as governor of Michoacán). For Trotsky it became a life-or-death matter in November 1936, when it looked as though the Norwegian government might hand him over to the USSR. Thanks to the efforts of other Mexican Trotskyists, such as the muralist Diego...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.