MEXICO--The working class of the world needs to know that within the capitalist system, any reform struggle for small improvements is not a real solution. The struggle of the teachers' unions in Mexico is an example of this. Their struggle dates back to the Mexican Revolution (1910 to 1917), when thousands of teachers joined the insurgencies of Zapata, Villa, Carranza and Obregon. In 1943, with government intervention, the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) was formed.
In 1979, a mass teachers' movement developed, from which was founded the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers and Democratic Organizations (CNTE), in which several different political organizations came together, identified with Maoism, reformism, opportunism, Trotskyism, and others, all demanding reforms within capitalism.
The SNTE, since its foundation, has been influenced and led by the government, responding to the interests of the bosses and the State. The CNTE has carried out some alternative education projects, built from the pedagogies of liberation, land, resistance, of social movements, among other intentions.
Their reformist projects foster the illusion among the children and youth that capitalism could improve. These plans include erroneous ideas about liberation for the working class. For example, they push nationalism, the superiority of a certain ethnic group (racism) and the defense of ownership of land (the essence of capitalism) and of natural resources.
In recent years, the CNTE has led struggles against the reform of the ISSTE law (Social security- health care system), against the reforms of the Alliance for Quality Education and recently against the Education and Energy reforms of the Pact for Mexico.
The struggles of the Mexican teachers (through CNTE) have taught us that even with massive mobilizations and protests, they have only won crumbs of wage increases that in following years are taken away again. The rulers, puppets of the capitalist bosses, have all their "legal" machinery to approve and modify laws to continue maintaining their empire. Some teachers say that with almost 35 years of struggle in the CNTE, they have only won negligible increases in wages and benefits that in a short time become less than enough to survive.
Several teachers in Mexico are learning the urgency of a real change. They know ICWP and want to spread communist ideas (see Red Flag, page 1, Vol. 4 #18). We are also learning that the teachers are interested in communism and want to know more about it. Men and women teachers in the CNTE are understanding that it is not through democratization of a union that we can liberate the working class from capitalism. Better leaders and new unions will not resolve the problems of the working class. Unions are an instrument for political control of the workers; the union leaders preach anti-communism and maintain the ideology that capitalism can be reformed in the workers' interests. The teachers of Mexico and everywhere in the world must struggle to destroy capitalism. Fully satisfying the needs of all humanity will only be possible with communism.
Today's most powerful bosses, the US and China, are making reforms to their system to have a working class that is educated, trained and controlled to operate their system and to fight in their coming local and world wars over control of the world. This bosses' dream comes at the expense of the workers' dream. It's either the bosses or the working class. There can be no harmony for both classes in capitalism. Our system is communism. In ICWP we want many teachers to become communists, so that they help to spread communist principles and build communism in their classrooms. They need to bring the ideas of mobilizing the masses for communism to these reform struggles, like those against Education Reform and the other reforms in the Pact for Mexico.
Even though we have distributed and sold hundreds of copies of our manifesto Mobilize the Masses for Communism and thousands of Red Flag newspapers to teachers in the CNTE, our efforts must increase. We need more teachers to increasingly join us to make this titanic task possible. The bosses' days are numbered. Join ICWP.