Conflict Between Ruling Classes = Attacks On Working Masses
Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico, March 2019. Hundreds of Haitian, Cuban and other migrants blocked immigration offices for three hours, demanding their transit visas.
MEXICO CITY, June 22 — At the end of May, Trump threatened to impose a 5% tariff from June 10 on all Mexican products if the Mexican government did not stop the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.
On Friday, June 7, both countries agreed to suspend tariffs on the condition that Mexico intensifies its control over migrants. An important section of the US ruling class, led by US auto makers, opposed the tariffs all along.
The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) presented the agreement as a huge victory for Mexico. The masses of migrants in Mexico have nothing to celebrate.
As part of the agreement, Mexico has started to deploy 2400 members of the newly created National Guard on its border with Guatemala. The remaining 3600 National Guard members will be deployed throughout Mexico. This enforcement plan also requires Mexican citizens to carry official identification on interstate transportation.
Trump’s Wall Begins in Southern Mexico.
The persecution and harassment of migrants are nothing new. In April, the offices of the National Migration Institute (INM) in Tapachula in the state of Chiapas were closed. This ended the visas that AMLO had offered in January 2019.
Thousands of people from Africa, the Caribbean and Central America have been left in limbo. Some try to survive on the streets of the city. Others organize rebellions against the INM. Others look for more remote and dangerous routes to cross the border.
AMLO promotes nationalist ideology to present his diplomatic “victory” as an act of dignity and sovereignty. It is a lethal trap for the working class to defend any of these “nations.” We must expose these conflicts between bourgeoisies and show how the masses, especially the migrants, are the most affected by them.
Mexican government officials and the intellectuals of MORENA (AMLO’s party) defend their actions as the “immediate solution to the problem”, the “possible”. They cynically mock those who denounce as fascist their attacks on migrants.
This should serve as a lesson to us in fighting the illusions some of our friends have about AMLO. The officials and intellectuals, will, like all ‘leftists’ in the bourgeois state, justify all their measures to manage the crises of capitalism.
The Problem is Capitalism, the Solution is Communism
The land where the Mexican, U.S. and Central American working class live has enough resources for all of us to have our basic needs met, and for any migration to be voluntary and for the benefit of humanity.
Let’s not be fooled by fascist arguments coming either from the extreme right or from social democracy. The problem is not the lack of resources. The problem is production for profit and capitalist social relations of production.
But the communist movement does not yet have the strength to mobilize the masses for a revolutionary way out of the crisis. To become a serious threat to capitalism and its rulers, we have to fulfill the tasks dictated to us by the historical moment and the development of our organization. We have already made a step forward with the international mass distribution of our pamphlet “Fight for the Day When No Worker Is Called Foreigner.”
In the State of Mexico, the advance of our core group is modest, disproportionate to the crisis that our migrant brothers and sisters are suffering. The immediate need is to recruit more members who understand the long-term task.
That task is to transform our party collectives into a mass International Communist Workers’ Party that one day will incorporate the whole working class. Although the task is titanic, the need, more than the dream, of a communist society should motivate us to expand our limits.
The suffering of the migrant masses as a result of bourgeois rivalry shows the need for revolution. Let’s fight for the ideological and political reconstitution of Communism among the masses.
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