Mexico

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blindpig
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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 23, 2019 12:50 pm

EZLN announces creation of new rebel autonomous municipalities
Online Conference | Saturday, Aug 17, 2019 10:18 PM Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The EZLN command and its bases on the 25th anniversary of the armed uprising. Photo Victor Camacho
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Chiapas The Zapatista Army of National Liberation published a statement in which it reports on the creation of rebel municipalities, in different locations in the state of Chiapas.

In the text, published on the page http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx , they address the issue of members of the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Council of Government who have been killed during the current federal administration, including Samir Flores , whom they identify "as a brother very respected by the Zapatista peoples."

Following the full statement of the Zapatista organization:

TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO:

TO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD:

TO THE INDIGENOUS NATIONAL CONGRESS-INDIGENOUS GOVERNMENT COUNCIL:

TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SIXTH:

TO THE SUPPORT AND RESISTANCE AND REBELDING NETWORKS:

BROTHERS, SISTERS AND SISTERS:

COMPANIONS, COMPANIONS AND COMPANIONS:

Here we bring you our word that is the same as before, today and tomorrow, because it is resistance and rebellion.

In October 2016, almost 3 years ago, on its 20th anniversary, the sister towns organized in the National Indigenous Congress, together with the EZLN, pledged to go on the offensive in the defense of the territory and of the mother earth. Persecuted by the forces of bad government, chiefs, foreign companies, criminals and laws; counting dead, grievances and mockery, the native peoples, the guardians of the earth, we agreed to go on the offensive and spread the word and the action of resistance and rebellion.

With the formation of the Indigenous Government Council and the designation of its spokeswoman, Marichuy, the National Indigenous Congress was given the task of bringing the word of warning and organization to brothers and sisters in the countryside and the city. The EZLN also went on the offensive in its struggle for word, idea and organization.

Now the time has come for us to report to the CNI-CIG and its spokesperson. Your people will say if we have complied. But not only to them, we also have a duty with organizations, groups, groups and individuals individually (especially from the Sixth and Networks, but not only), which, in Mexico and the world, care about the Zapatista peoples and , in its time, geography and mode, regardless of its distance in kilometers, regardless of walls and borders, or the fences that put us, continue with their hearts beating next to ours.

The arrival of a new government did not deceive us. We know that the Mandón has no more country than money, and rules in the world and in most of the farms they call "countries".

We also know that rebellion is prohibited, as dignity and anger are prohibited. But all over the world, in its most forgotten and despised corners, there are human beings who resist being eaten by the machine and do not give up, do not sell and do not give up. Many colors have, many are their flags, many languages ​​that dress them, and gigantic are their resistance and their rebellion.

El Mandón and its foremen build walls, borders and fences to try to contain that which they say is a bad example. But they cannot do it, because dignity, courage, anger, rebellion, cannot be stopped or locked up. Even if they hide behind their walls, their borders, their fences, their armies and police, their laws and decrees, that rebellion will come to ask them sooner or later. And there will be neither forgiveness nor forgetfulness.

We knew and we know that our freedom will only be the work of ourselves, the original peoples. With the new foreman in Mexico, the persecution and death also followed: in just a few months, a dozen colleagues from the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Government Council, social fighters, were killed. Among them, a brother very respected by the Zapatista peoples: Samir Flores Soberanes, finished after being pointed out by the foreman who, in addition, continues with the neoliberal megaprojects that disappear entire villages, destroy nature, and convert the blood of the peoples originating in profit of the great capitals.

Therefore, in honor of the sisters and brothers who have died, are persecuted, and are missing or in jail, we have decided to name the Zapatista campaign that culminates today and we make public as “SAMIR FLORES VIVE”:

After years of silent work, despite the siege, despite the campaigns of lies, despite the defamations, despite the military patrols, despite the National Guard, despite counterinsurgent campaigns disguised as social programs In spite of oblivion and contempt, we have grown and become stronger.

And we broke the fence.

We left without asking permission and now we are again with you, sisters and brothers and brothers, companions, companions and companions. The government fence was left behind, it did not work and will never work. We follow paths and routes that do not exist on maps or satellites, and are only found in the thoughts of our oldest.

With us, we, Zapatistas, in our hearts also walked the word, the history and the example of our peoples, of our children, elders, men and women. Outside we found home, food, hearing and word. We understood how only those who share not only pain, but also history, indignation, rage understand each other.

We understood, thus, not only that fences and walls only serve for death, but also that the buying and selling of government consciences is increasingly useless. They no longer cheat, they no longer convince, they oxidize, they break, they fail.

So we go out. The Mandón was left behind, thinking that his fence, fences kept us. From afar we saw their backs from National Guards, soldiers, police, projects, aid and lies. We went and returned, we entered and left. 10, 100, 1000 times we did it and the Mandón watched without looking at us, confident in the fear that his fear gave.

Like a dirty stain, the fencers were left, surrounded by them in a now more extended territory, a territory that transmits rebellion.

Herman @ s , Compañ er @ s :

We appear before you with new Caracoles and more autonomous Zapatista rebel municipalities in new areas of southeastern Mexico.

Now we will also have Autonomous Resistance and Zapatista Rebellion Centers. In most cases, these centers will also host snails, Good Government Boards and Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipalities (marez).

Although slowly, as it should be by name, the 5 original snails were reproduced after 15 years of political and organizational work; and the MAREZ and its Good Government Boards also had to raise and watch them grow. Now there will be 12 snails with their Good Government Boards.

This exponential growth, which today allows us to leave the fence again, is mainly due to two things:

One, and the most important, is the organizational political work and the example of the Zapatista women, men, children and elderly support bases. Of outstanding way, of the women and young zapatistas. Companions of all ages mobilized to talk with other sisters with or without organization. The young Zapatistas, without abandoning their tastes and desires, learned about science and the arts, and thus infected more and more young people. Most of that youth, mainly women, take office and soak them in their creativity, ingenuity and intelligence. So we can say, without sorrow and with pride, that the Zapatista women not only go ahead to, like the Pujuy bird, mark the way for us and not get lost: also on the sides so that we do not deviate; and back so we don't delay.

The other is the destructive government policy of community and nature, particularly that of the current self-styled "Fourth Transformation" government. Traditionally partisan communities have been hurt by the contempt, racism and voracity of the current government, and have gone into open or hidden rebellion. Who thought that with his counterinsurgent alms policy, he would divide Zapatismo and buy the loyalty of non-Zapatistas, encouraging confrontation and discouragement, gave the missing arguments to convince those brothers and sisters that it is necessary to defend the land and nature.

The bad government thought and thinks that what people expect and need are monetary alms.

Now, the Zapatista peoples and many non-Zapatista peoples, as well as the sister towns of the CNI in southeastern Mexico and throughout the country, answer him and prove that he is wrong.

We understand that the current foreman was trained in the PRI and the “indigenist” conception in which the natives yearn to sell their dignity and cease to be what they are, and that the indigenous is a museum piece, multicolored crafts for the powerful to hide The gray of his heart. That is why his concern that its walls-trains (that of the Isthmus and the badly called "Maya") incorporate the ruins of a civilization into the landscape, so that they delight the tourist.

But the natives are alive and rebellious and resisting; and the foreman now intends to reissue one of his caporales, a lawyer who was once indigenous, and who now, as throughout world history, is dedicated to dividing, persecuting and manipulating those who once were his fellow men. The holder of the INPI is carved everyday conscience with pumice stone to eliminate any trace of dignity. He thinks that his skin is whitened and his reason is that of the Mandón. The foreman congratulates him and congratulates himself: there is nothing better to try to control rebels than a repentant, turned by pay, into the puppet of the oppressor.

- * -

During these more than 25 years we have learned.

Instead of escalating the positions of bad government or becoming a bad copy of those who humiliate and oppress us, our intelligence and knowledge was dedicated to our own growth and strength.

Thanks to the sisters, brothers and sisters of Mexico and the world who participated in the meetings and seedbeds we summoned at this time, our imagination and creativity, as well as our knowledge, opened up and became more universal, that is, more humans. We learned to look, listen and speak the other without mockery, without condemnation, without labels. We learned that a dream that does not cover the world is a small dream.

What is now known and public, was a long process of reflection and search. Thousands of Zapatista community assemblies, in the mountains of southeastern Mexico, thought and looked for ways, ways, times. Challenging the contempt of the powerful, who dismisses us as ignorant and foolish, we use intelligence, knowledge and imagination.

Here we name the new Centers of Autonomous Resistance and Zapatista Rebellion (CRAREZ). There are 11 new Centers, plus the 5 original snails, 16. In addition to the original autonomous municipalities, which are 27, total Zapatista centers are 43.

Names and location of the new Caracoles and Marez:

1.-New snail, its name: Collective the heart of rebel seeds, memory of the Galeano Companion. Its Board of Good Governance is called: Steps of history, for the life of humanity. Its headquarters is La Unión. Earth recovered. On one side of the San Quintin ejido, where the army headquarters of the bad government is. Official municipality of Ocosingo.

2.-New Autonomous municipality, it is called: Hope of Humanity; Its headquarters are in: the ejido Santa María. Official municipality of Chicomuselo.

3.-Another new autonomous Municipality, is called: Ernesto Che Guevara. Its headquarters are in El Belén. Official municipality of Motozintla.

4. New Caracol name: Spiral weaving colors worthy of humanity in memory of l @ s fallen. Its Good Government is called Seed blooming with awareness of l @ s fighting forever. Its headquarters are in Tulan Ka'u, reclaimed land. Official municipality of Amatenango del Valle.

5.-Another New Snail. His name is: Blooming the rebel seed. Its Good Government Board is called: New dawn in resistance and rebellion for life and humanity. Its headquarters are in the Pueblo Patria Nueva, reclaimed land. Official municipality of Ocosingo.

6.-New autonomous municipality, it is called: Sowing awareness to reap revolutions for life. Its headquarters are in: Tulan Ka'u. Earth recovered. Official municipality of Amatenango del Valle.

7.-New Snail. His name is: In Honor of the memory of Companion Manuel. Its Board of Good Governance is called: The rebel thought of the original peoples. Its headquarters are in: Dolores Hidalgo. Earth recovered. Official municipality of Ocosingo.

8.-Another New Snail. His name is: Resistance and Rebellion a New Horizon. Its Board of Good Governance is called: The light that shines on the world. Its headquarters are in the New Jerusalem Village. Earth recovered. Official municipality of Ocosingo.

9.-New Snail, is called: Root of Resistances and Rebellions for humanity. Its Board of Good Governance is called: Heart of our lives for the new future. Its headquarters are in the Jolj'a ejido. Official municipality of Tila.

10.-New Autonomous Municipality, it is called: December 21. Its headquarters are in Ranchería K'anal Hulub. Official municipality of Chilón.

11.-New Caracol, is called: Jacinto Canek. Its Board of Good Governance is called: Flower of our word and light of our peoples that reflects for all. Its headquarters are in the Community of CIDECI-Unitierra. Official municipality of San Cristóbal de las Casas.

We take this opportunity to invite the Sixth, the Networks, the CNI and the honest people to come and, together with the Zapatista peoples, participate in the construction of the CRAREZ, be it obtaining materials and economic support, be hammering, cutting, loading, orienting and living with us. Or in the way and way they see that suits them. In the next few days we will publish a letter explaining how, when and where they can register to participate.

- * -

Herman @ s and Compañ er @ s :

AlCNI-CIG we summon you to meet and know the work we have committed to, share the problems, the difficulties, the blows, the fainting, but also the seeds that serve to harvest better from the fight, and the seeds that we see not it gives us a better harvest, which leads us to the opposite, so that we no longer do that. To meet those who are really wanting the organizational struggle, that we meet to talk about the good harvests and the bad ones too. Specifically, we propose the joint realization, in one of the Snails, of what could be called FORUM IN DEFENSE OF THE TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH, or as you see better, open to all people, groups, groups and organizations that insist on that fight for life. The date we propose to you is in this month of October 2019, on the days that you see most convenient. Likewise, we offer one of the Snails for the meeting or assembly of the CNI-CIG, on the date that suits them.

We call the SIXTH AND THE NETWORKS to begin the analysis and discussion for the formation of an International Network of Resistance and Rebellion, Polo, Nucleus, Federation, Confederation, or whatever it is called, based on the independence and autonomy of those who form it , explicitly renouncing to hegemonize and homogenize, in which mutual solidarity and support are unconditional, share the good and bad experiences of each other's struggle, and work on the dissemination of the stories below and to the left.

For this, as Zapatistas we are, we will convene bilateral meetings with groups, groups and organizations that are working on their geographies. We will not hold large meetings. In the coming days we will announce the how, when and where of these bilateral meetings that we propose. Of course, to those who accept, and taking into account their calendars and geographies.

TO THOSE WHO MAKE ART, SCIENCE AND CRITICAL THOUGHT YOUR VOCATION AND LIFE, we will invite you to festivals, meetings, seedbeds, parties, exchanges, or whatever those shares are going to be called. We will already know how, when and where they could be done. This includes the CompArte and the “Puy ta Cuxlejaltic” Film Festival, but not only. We think about making special CompArts according to each Art. For example: Theater, Dance, Plastic Arts, Literature, Music, etc. There will be another edition of the ConCiences, perhaps starting with the Social Sciences. Seedlings of Critical Thinking will be held, perhaps beginning with the theme of the Storm.

AND, ESPECIALLY, TO THOSE WHO WALK WITH PAIN AND RABIA, WITH RESISTANCE AND REBELDIA, AND ARE PERSECUTED :

We will convene meetings of relatives of the murdered , disappeared and imprisoned , as well as organizations, groups and groups that accompany their pain, their anger and their search for truth and justice. It will have as its only objective that they know each other and exchange not only pains, but also and especially their experiences in that search. The Zapatista peoples will limit ourselves to being hosts.

The Zapatista companions will summon a new Meeting of Women who fight, in the times, places and modalities that they decide, and will let them know when and by the means they say. Once we let you know that it will be only for women, so you can not give more information until they say

We will see if there is a way to make a meeting of others, with the objective that they share, in addition to their pains, the injustices, persecutions and other chingaderas that make them, their forms of struggle and their strength. The Zapatista peoples will limit ourselves to being hosts.

We will see if a meeting of groups, groups and organizations defending Human Rights is possible, in the form and modality they decide. The Zapatista peoples will limit ourselves to being hosts.

- * -

Compañ er @ s and herman @ s :

Here we are, we are Zapatistas. To be looked at, we covered our faces; to be named, we deny our name; we bet on the present to have a future, and, to live, we die. We are Zapatistas, mostly indigenous with Mayan roots, and we don't sell ourselves, we don't give up and we don't give up.

We are rebellion and resistance. We are one of many mallets that will break the walls, one of so many winds that will sweep the earth, and one of many seeds from which other worlds will be born.

We are the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

From the mountains of the mexican southeast.

On behalf of the men, women, children and the elderly, Zapatista support bases and the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the

Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.

Mexico, August 2019.

https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/soci ... -9255.html

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:47 pm

Words from the Zapatista Women at the Opening of the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO

December 27, 2019

Compañeras and sisters:

Welcome to these Zapatista lands.

Welcome sisters and compañeras from geographies across the five continents.

Welcome compañeras and sisters from Mexico and the world.

Welcome sisters and compañeras from the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion.

Welcome compañeras from the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Governing Council.

Welcome compañeras from the National and International Sixth.

Welcome compañeras from the Zapatista Bases of Support.

Welcome compañeras who are milicianas and insurgentas in the EZLN.

Sister and compañera:

We want to report that as of yesterday, December 26, 2019, registration for this second gathering came to:

3,259 women
95 little girls
26 men

From the following 49 countries:

1. Germany
2. Algeria
3. Argentina
4. Australia
5. Austria
6. Bangladesh
7. Belgium
8. Bolivia
9. Brazil
10. Canada
11. Cataluña
12. Chile
13. Colombia
14. Costa Rica
15. Denmark
16. Ecuador
17. El Salvador
18. Spain
19. United States
20. Finland
21. France
22. Greece
23. Guatemala
24. Honduras
25. India 26. England
27. Ireland
28. Italy
29. Japan
30. Kurdistan
31. Macedonia
32. Norway
33. New Zealand
34. Basque Country
35. Paraguay
36. Peru
37. Poland
38. Puerto Rico
39. United Kingdom
40. Dominican Republic
41. Russia
42. Siberia
43. Sri Lanka
44. Sweden
45. Switzerland
46. Turkey
47. Uruguay
48. Venezuela
49. Mexico
Sister and compañera:

We are very happy you were able to come all the way here to our mountains.

And for those who were not able to come, we also greet you because you are watching what is happening here in the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle.

We know very well what you had to do to get here: we know you had to leave your family and friends; we know the effort and work you had to put in to come up with the money to travel from your geography to ours.

But we also know that your heart is a little bit happy because here you will meet other women who struggle. Maybe something you hear or learn here about other struggles will even help you in yours. Whether or not we agree with these other struggles and their forms and geographies, all of us benefit from listening and learning. This isn’t about competing over which struggle is best, but about sharing our struggles and ourselves.

So we ask you to always be respectful of different ways of thinking and doing. All of us here, and many more who aren’t here, are women who struggle. It’s true that we all have different ways of struggling, but as you can see, as Zapatistas we don’t think that it makes sense for everyone to think and act the same way. We think difference isn’t a weakness, but rather that it is a powerful force when we respect each other and agree to struggle together but not on top of each other.

So we ask you to share your pain, your rage, and your struggle with dignity, and to respect other pains, rages, and dignified struggles.

Compañera and sister:

We have done everything possible so that you can be happy and safe here. It may seem easy to say that, but we all know all too well that there are very few places in the world where we can be happy and safe. That’s why we’re here: because of our pain and our rage at the violence we suffer as women, for the crime of being women.

As you will see over the next few days, men will not be allowed in this space. It doesn’t matter if they are good men, or more or less normal men, or just whatever kind of men, they will not be allowed here for the next couple days. This place and these days are only for women who struggle—that is, not just for any woman.

The compañeras who are insurgentas and milicianas are in charge of taking care of us and protecting us here over the next few days. We have also made sure that you will have a place to sleep, eat, and clean up. In this respect, in terms of rest, food, and bathing, we ask you to treat the “wise” women among us, that is, the older women, with respect. It’s important to respect them because they are not new to this struggle. They didn’t get their gray hair, their illnesses, or their wrinkles from selling out to the patriarchal system or by giving in to machismo. They didn’t get any of those things because they gave up their way of thinking about struggle for our rights as women. They are who they are because they haven’t given up, given in, or sold out.

To the older women—wise women as we call you—we ask that you also respect and greet the younger women, whether they are adults or children, because they have also dedicated themselves to this struggle with determination and commitment. If we haven’t let our geographies divide us, then we certainly won’t let our calendars do so. All of us, no matter the calendars we have marked or the geography in which we live, are on the same path: the struggle for our rights as the women that we are.

For example, our right to live. This point makes us sad because now, a year after our first gathering, the report is not good. All over the world women are still being murdered, disappeared, abused, and disrespected. This year the number of women raped, disappeared, and murdered keeps rising. We as Zapatistas see this situation as very serious, and that is why we organized this second gathering around one theme only: violence against women.

Sister and compañera, you who are here and you who couldn’t come:

We want to hear you and see you, because we have questions:

How did you get organized? What did you do? What happened?

Remember that at our first gathering, we all committed ourselves to get organized in our respective geographies, to organize against the murders, disappearances, humiliations, and disrespect. But we see that the situation is actually worse now.

They say there is now gender equality because within the bad governments there are an equal number of bossmen and bosswomen.

But we are still being murdered.

They say that now there is greater pay equity for women.

But we are still being murdered.

They say feminist struggles have made great steps forward.

But we are still being murdered.

They say now women have more voice.

But we are still being murdered.

They say women are now taken into account.

But we are still being murdered.

They say that now there are more laws that protect women.

But we are still being murdered.

They say that now it’s quite fashionable to speak well of women and their struggle.

But we are still being murdered.

They say there are men who understand our struggle as women, and even that those men are feminists.

But we are still being murdered.

They say that women occupy more spaces now.

But we are still being murdered.

They say there are even super-heroines in the movies now.

But we are still being murdered.

They say that now there is more awareness about respecting women.

But we are still being murdered. More and more murdered women. Murdered more and more brutally. With more and more cruelty, fury, envy, and hate. And with more and more impunity. With more and more macho men who get away with it, without punishment, as if nothing had happened, as if murdering, disappearing, exploiting, using, assaulting, or disrespecting a woman was no big deal.

We are still being murdered and they still ask us, demand of us, order us to behave ourselves.

Think of the unbelievable scandal created by a group of workers blocking a highway, or going on strike, or protesting, as if they’ve violated the rights of commodities, cars, and things, and the press is immediately filled with photos, videos, reports, analysis, and commentary criticizing their protest.

But if a woman is raped, it’s just another statistic. And if women protest, if they graffiti the monuments important to those above, break windows important to those above, shout their truths to those above, then that is scandalous.

But if we are disappeared or murdered, it’s just another statistic: one more victim, one less woman. It’s as if the powerful wanted it to be crystal clear that what matters is profit, not life. Cars matter, so do monuments, windows, and commodities. But life doesn’t, especially if it’s a woman’s life.

That’s why we as the Zapatista women that we are, anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal, think about why the system works like that. It seems that our violent deaths, our disappearances, and our pain come out as profit for the capitalist system, because the system only allows what benefits it, what produces profit for it.

That’s why we say that the capitalist system is patriarchal. The patriarchy rules, even if the overseer is a woman. So we think that in order to fight for our rights—the right to live, for example—it’s not enough to fight against machismo or the patriarchy or whatever you want to call it. We have to fight against the capitalist system. They go together as we Zapatista women say.

But we also know there are other ways of thinking and other forms of women’s struggle. Perhaps there is something we can learn and understand. That’s why we have invited all women who struggle to this gathering, no matter what their thinking or form of struggle.

What matters is that we fight for our lives, which now more than ever are at risk everywhere and all the time. Despite the fact that they declare and predict that women have made great strides, the truth is that never in human history has the fact of being a woman been so fatal.

You see, compañera and sister, they’re going to want to tell us which job or profession is the most dangerous—if it’s being a journalist, or forming part of the repressive security forces, or being a judge, or occupying a position in the bad government. But you and we know that the most dangerous thing in the world to be right now is a woman.

It doesn’t matter if she’s a little girl, or a young woman, or an adult woman, or an older woman. It doesn’t matter if she’s white, yellow, red, or the color of the earth. It doesn’t matter if she’s fat, thin, tall, short, pretty, or ugly. It doesn’t matter if she’s from the lower class, middle class, or upper class. It doesn’t matter what language she speaks, or what her culture, religion, or affiliation is. When the violence comes, the only thing that matters is that she’s a woman.

Sister and compañera:

As the Zapatistas that we are, we know that they will give us many examples of women who have advanced, triumphed, won prizes and high salaries—who have been successful, as they put it. We respond by talking about the women whom have been raped, disappeared, murdered. We point out that the rights they talk about above are won by a precious few women above. And we respond, we explain, we shout that what is lacking is the most basic and most important of rights for all women: the right to live. We’ve said it many times, compañera and sister, but we’ll repeat it again now:

Nobody is going to grant us our right to live and all the other rights we need and deserve. No man—good, bad, normal, or whatever—is going to grant these to us.

The capitalist system is not going to give them to us, regardless of the laws it passes and the promises it makes.

We will have to win our right to live, as well as all our other rights, always and everywhere. In other words, for women who struggle, there will be no rest.

Sister and compañera:

We have to defend ourselves, to take charge of our self-defense as individuals and as women. Above all, we have to be organized to defend ourselves, to support ourselves, to protect ourselves, and we have to start now.

My fellow compañera coordinators of this gathering have delegated me to communicate this to you because I’m the mother of a little girl, who is here with me. Our duty as women who struggle is to protect and defend ourselves, especially if the woman in question is just a little girl. We have to protect and defend ourselves with everything we have. And if we have nothing, then with sticks and rocks. And if we don’t have sticks or rocks, then with our bodies, with teeth and fingernails. We have to teach our little girls to protect and defend themselves when they grow up and have their own strength.

That’s how things are today, sister and compañera, we have to live on the defensive, and to teach our daughters to grow up on the defensive, and we have to maintain that practice until they girls can be born and grow and mature without fear.

We Zapatistas think that the best way to do this is to be organized. We know that there are those who think this can be done individually. We as Zapatistas do it through organization, because we are women who struggle, yes, but we are Zapatista women.

That is why, compañera and sister, our report back to all of you this year is that among us, there has not been a single murder or disappearance of any of our compañeras. We do have some cases, according to our last meeting, of violence against women, and we are in the process of deciding how to punish those responsible, all of whom are men. That punishment is partly the responsibility of the autonomous authorities, but also ours as Zapatista women.

We also want to be totally honest and say that at times we fight among ourselves, compañera and sister, and about stupid things. Maybe these dumb fights are a waste of time because we are all alive and safe. But there was a time in which we only lived death. And truthfully, looking at the way things are in your world—and please don’t be offended sister and compañera—but we hope that someday you all also fight over who is prettiest, youngest, smartest, best-dressed, who as more boyfriends or girlfriends or husbands or wives, or why you’re wearing the same thing, or whose kids are better or worse, or any of these things that happen in life.

Because when that day comes, compañera and sister, it will mean that just staying alive is no longer a problem. And maybe then we can all be equally idiotic about men and gossip and stupid stuff.

Or perhaps not, perhaps once you all are alive and free, your problems will be different, with different arguments and fights. But until that day comes, sister and compañera, we have to take care of each other, protect each other, defend each other.

As you know well, compañera and sister, this is a war. They are trying to kill us, and we are trying to stay alive, but alive without fear—alive and free, that is.

We want to shout to the world our pain and this rage at the fact that we cannot live freely. And we also want to shout our encouragement to struggle to each and every woman who is abused, either physically or however else. As Zapatista women, we want to send a special embrace to the families and friends of disappeared and murdered women—an embrace that lets them know that they are not alone, that in our own way and from our own place, we accompany their demand for truth and justice.

That’s why we’re gathered here, sister and compañera: to shout our pain and rage, to accompany and encourage each other, to embrace each other, to know that we are not alone, to look for paths of help and support.

These are our words for you today, sister and compañera. The insurgentas and milicianas have prepared a talk to present also, and in that one we will remind you of the little light that we gave you in the first gathering. Later we will begin the work of this gathering, dedicating the entire day today to denunciations—an entire day for denouncing the violence that we suffer, all of us together, with an open microphone. We’re going to take turns speaking and venting our rage and our fury about everything they do to us. And we are going to listen to each other with attention and respect. Nobody else is going to listen to what we have to say—only we as women who struggle and who are here present. So do not be ashamed, sister and compañera, express clearly your pain and your anger, scream your rage. And be assured that we, at least we the Zapatista women, will make a place in our collective heart for you, and through those of us present here, thousands of Zapatista indigenous women will accompany you.

Tomorrow we will share the ideas, experiences, and work that all of you bring in order to seek paths that we can take to end this nightmare of pain and death. The last day of the gathering will be dedicated to culture, art, and fiesta. So one day we will shout our pain and rage; the next day we will share ideas and experiences; and the third day we will shout our strength and joy.

Because we are women who suffer, but we are also women who think and who organize ourselves and above all, we are women who struggle.

That’s how the gathering will play out, and as you already know, you are welcome here, compañera and sister, you who could come and you who couldn’t but are here in your heart.

-*-

In the name of all of the Zapatista women of all ages, on December 27, 2019, at 1:57pm Zapatista time, we officially open this Second International of Women Who Struggle here in the mountains of the Mexican southeast.

From the semillero “Footprints of Comandanta Ramona,” Caracol Whirlwind of Our Word, Zapatista Mountains in Resistance and Rebellion,

Comandanta Amada
Mexico, December 2019

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https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/201 ... -struggle/
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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Sun Mar 15, 2020 2:19 pm

In Mexico giant march and general strike demand justice for murdered women
By Candice YanezMar 14, 2020

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One contingent in the giant women’s march in Mexico City March 8. Photo: Alan Roth.

Millions of women in Mexico went on a historic, nationwide strike on March 9, boycotting workplaces and other spaces, like schools and marketplaces, to protest gender-based violence and the government’s impunity in face of the country’s surging femicide rate.

Workplaces and public spaces−parks, libraries, and public transport−were nearly empty with only men present because women joined the 24-hour protest, called “Un Día Sin Mujeres” or “A Day Without Women”. It is the largest women’s strike in the history of Mexico, whose past is rich with mass labor and student strikes.

The mass protest was organized to demonstrate how the absence of women impacts society. In an interview with the Guardian, Sandra Reyes a biologist at the National Cancer Institute, who participated stated, “In some ways, it’s a taunt: if you do not want us out here in the streets, we’ll disappear.”

80,000 march in Mexico City

The 24-hour anti-femicide strike followed a series of protests nationwide March 8 to mark International Women’s Day and to demand justice for victims of femicide. The march in Mexico City was at least 80,000 strong, making it the largest such action in Mexico’s history. Women in every age group and from every walk of life participated. Mothers brought their daughters. Indigenous women marched. In the crowd were family members of those who had been killed and disappeared.

Femicide an international issue

A huge demonstration and general strike also took place in Chile March 8 and 9, with women raising related issues. Killing of women, usually by intimate partners, is being called a global pandemic. In the U.S., for example, three women are killed every day, mostly by intimate partners, and trans women are murdered at even higher rates.

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The sign reads, “I did not kill myself! You killed me!” Photo: Alan Roth

Protests follow a spate of femicides in Mexico

In Mexico, the watershed moment of major protests and a strike was triggered by an upsurge of fury and outrage over the grisly murders of a young woman and a seven-year-old girl in February, the latest in a spate of gender-based murders.

The woman, 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla, was stabbed, skinned and disemboweled, and the girl, 7-year-old Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett, was kidnapped from school; her body was later found wrapped in a plastic bag.

Media sensationalizes the deaths

Gruesome photos of the mutilated body of Escamilla were leaked to the press and published on the front pages of tabloids, provoking even more outrage and anger.

Pasala, one of the tabloids, published the photo with the headline “It was Cupid’s fault” − implying that the murder was an act of love instead of an act of brutal misogyny.

Subsequently, leaked photographs and videos showed a bloodied man who apparently confessed to stabbing Escamilla after what he claimed was a heated confrontation, before reportedly skinning her to destroy evidence.

“The distribution of images of criminal acts, as a form of advocating crime involving sensationalism, viciousness, mockery, and morbidity, causes revictimization, banalizes violence, and threatens the dignity, privacy, and identity of victims and their families,” the National Institute of Women stated.

Other deaths demonstrate not only the global pandemic of violence against women, but also the attack on women activists. In January, Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre, a Mexican anti-femicide activist and artist, was murdered in Juarez.

Following these and other killings, on February 14, scores of activists, many wearing green handkerchiefs symbolic of women’s rights, gathered outside Mexico’s presidential palace to protest violence against women. The women protestors were chanting “Not one more murder” and sprinkling blood-red paint on one of the massive, ornate doors and the words “femicide state.”

Violence against women is so widespread, that nearly two-thirds of girls and women have reported experiencing violence at some point in their lives. In recent years the incidence of femicides in Mexico has escalated. In 2019, 1,006 such killings were reported by Mexican authorities, a 10 per cent jump over the previous year. This means that in 2019 there were 10 women killed per day. In February, Mexico’s attorney general said femicides have risen an unprecedented 137 percent over the last five years, four times higher than the general homicide rate.

Since few cases are ever prosecuted and punished, the number of femicides is possibly higher. Experts at the University of San Diego said the majority of femicide murders are being handled with “systemic immunity.” Too often, the justice system remains unresponsive. Reports state that 98 % of cases go unpunished.

Protests target president’s inaction

Many feminist activists and collectives have criticized President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for being dismissive and condescending in his responses to the protests.

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This girl’s sign reads, “I march today so they won’t march for me tomorrow.” Photo: Alan Roth

In early February, Obrador said at a press conference “Look, I don’t want the topic to be only femicide,” he said. “This issue has been manipulated a lot in the media.” He sought to dismiss the femicide crisis on what he called the “neoliberal policies” of his predecessors. Neoliberal policies do hurt women, but many feel that Obrador is using this to shield himself from criticism about his inaction.

In face of the pandemic, Obrador has put no policies or referendums, or any measures of any kind in place to protect women from sprawling sexist violence. Instead, Obrador has buckled-down and stated at one of his daily news conferences that he will not make changes to governmental policy on gender-based violence and that he will not give into the demands of feminist protesters.

“The message he’s sending women is I don’t care,” said Maricruz Ocampo in an interview with the Guardian, an activist in the state of Querétaro. “They’ve all had the same attitude toward the problem,” she said. “This is a Mexican problem, not a women’s issue.”

The strike demonstrates the labor power of the women workforce. If all women participated in the strike, the action could cost the economy up to $1.37 billion. According to Mexico’s National Chambers of Commerce Confederation, women make up around 40 per cent of the country’s workforce.

U.S. neoliberal policies leave Mexican women vulnerable

Mexico’s skyrocketing number of femicides and gender-based violence cases have a direct correlation to neoliberalism and the patriarchy.

The United States has imposed a free trade agreement on Mexico that is gutting the Mexican economy while enriching the U.S. capitalist class.

Under the neoliberal model, women are vulnerable, especially poor and indigenous women, to exploitation and violence. It is common for women to travel from their rural Mexican colonias, where unemployment is high and industries scarce, to work at maquilas, American-owned transnational factories, at the border.

Hundreds of femicide victims in Mexico, especially near the borders, were in fact factory workers. Often, the women employed at these factories are subjugated to extremely low wages−on average $5 a day−and excruciatingly long hours.

To transnational companies, the safety and welfare of women workers are of little concern. Commonly, the women working in the maquilas, must commute by foot at night in remote city areas.

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The sign reads, “For me, for my daughters, for my nieces, for my cousins, for my neighbors, for my friends, for my acquaintances, and the disappeared #NotOneMore.” Photo: Alan Roth

In one case from 2001, 20-year old Claudia Ivette González was found brutally murdered in Juarez a day after she was forced to walk home from the maquiladora she worked at after being fired. González was fired for being a mere four-minutes late for work!

#ADayWithoutWomen comes amid a global upsurge of women fighting back in the streets, organizing and building movements that are exposing the world pandemic of gender-based violence and sexual assault. Across Latin America alone, a record-breaking 8 million women marched on International Women’s Day. Protesters across the globe performed en masse “A Rapist in your Path” −a Chilean protest song that denounces misogynistic and political repression.

There is an international struggle going on right now to eradicate misogynistic violence and to demand that justice prevails. Millions of women around the world have taken up this call and will not back down until victory is achieved!

https://www.liberationnews.org/in-mexic ... rationnews
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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 23, 2020 5:12 pm

MEXICAN MAQUILAS GO ON STRIKE AGAIN
23 APRIL, 2020 · NEWS> NORTH AMERICA> MEXICO

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MATAMOROS, MX. "UNIONS AND FIIRMS KILL THE WORKING CLASS"

Mexican maquilas, the protagonists of last year’s largest mass strike in the whole world, are on strike again. They are striking outside of the trade unions’ control, and their platform of struggle is the sharpest version of the slogans that are mobilizing workers from hundreds of companies around the world these days.


As confinement spread around the world and energy demand dropped, lowering oil prices, it became clearer that AMLO’s “fourth transformation” was over and that the budgetary principle of not raising public debt even for emergency plans was going to be a very costly move. It is always expensive to abandon the majority of the population to their fate. The lumpen, by now the most socially sensitive faction of Mexican capital, saw its opportunity. This is the time when the lumpen can show themselves as effective replacements for the state. AMLO’s half-pathetic half-buddy image, asking the cartels not to distribute aid but to stop killing, completed the picture of a bourgeoisie and a state whose last resort is always the imposition of violent rule and helplessness.

But the outbreak of strikes in the maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez and from there to Mexicali, Matamoros, Nogales and Gomez Palacio, adding up to more than 30 large companies, has shown a universal alternative: shutdown of non-essential production, full payment of wages to the workers in case the plants close, and health services, measures for protection and food supply and basic consumption for all.

The universal sense of the struggle became clear when the US began to put pressure on Mexico to force the government into reopening the maquiladoras. The US military industry has even threatened to relocate production back into the US if the factories in Chihuahua do not reopen immediately.

This is the time when workers in the US military industry plants should also break the trade union siege and join the struggle under the same platform, which describes and defines their interests as clearly as it does for their Mexican comrades. But the information blockade in the US about strikes that are fully integrated into its industrial chains is even more effective than that of the Mexican media. In the end these information blockades respond to the same class interests.

Few cases are so clear regarding the need for the most conscious workers to organize politically and act centrally in a global way. It’s not a question of coming together to congratulate ourselves for having realized that we live in an anti-historical and anti-human system, the objective is not to be smarter than anyone else or to re-enact the Matrix; it’s not a question of thinking that we are better at organizing the best seminars, class organizations are not meant to be a popular university. It’s about being useful to the real struggles of our time. And there are many.

http://communia.blog/mexican-maquilas-g ... ike-again/

"unions and firms"....goddamn trots
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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Sun Apr 26, 2020 5:17 pm

CP of Mexico, Before Phase 3 of the Covid-19 in Mexico
4/24/20 9:40 AM
Mexico, Communist Party of Mexico COVID - 19 Is North America Communist and workers' parties
Before Phase 3 of COVID-19: The Federal Government is clear for whom it governs.



Now that Phase Three of the Pandemic has been declared, the government is reaffirming the criteria that prevail to go through this stage: the economy of monopolies above the health of the working class.

Amid the economic and health crisis, labor-management conflicts have increased, which far from being resolved are ignored by the federal government; Thus, López Obrador is worn out day by day in praise for business groups, even when they do not comply with the measure of sending workers to take cover in their homes in the midst of quarantine, maintaining a policy of support for the bourgeoisie, which he wants to disguise. of popular politics, but explicitly denying at all times the existence of the class struggle. Even when the essential industry and the foolishness of the bosses not to stop non-essential production show that it is the mass of workers who keep society on its feet, while the protection of the bourgeoisie does not imply a substantial change in the economy.

Little has been said about women workers in workplaces who are still active or who have been forced to do work from home; whose children have had to leave the classrooms and have been in their care, their condition complicated; dynamic in which the fantasy of idyllic family life is far from becoming a reality in a context where if you are not exploited you do not eat.

The popular sectors are far from receiving calls for "solidarity" like those made by López Obrador to the big monopolies; for them there is the use of force through the National Guard in collusion with the state or municipal police and fines for carrying out the tasks that support them; For the popular sectors are the corporate leaders who have grown rich at their expense and who now, in the cities, agree with the governments the temporary cessation of the spaces in which hundreds of self-employed workers work and live daily. There was no need for Phase Three either: for several weeks, harassment of smallholders has become a constant, which is notoriously in contrast to the Federal Government's preferential treatment of monopolies such as Grupo Salinas, and its Elektra stores,

But not satisfied with the preferential treatment they have received, with their fiscal incentives, etc., the business Chambers continue to cry out for government aid through increasingly leech-like proposals such as those made by COPARMEX; and which urges the workers to demand from the President the implantation of the "solidarity salary", under the threat of "that or being out of a job", so that the Federal Government will pay half the amount of the salary that companies pay their workers - as long as they are not working due to quarantine - as if federal resources were not also the result of the production of wealth by the working people. Furthermore, the solidarity salary proposal, made by Coparmex,

A scenario of greater offensive arises with regard to the health care of workers and popular sectors. The last days have served to confirm that above health is the objective of guaranteeing capitalist production. And, at the same time that the new phase is announced, it flirts with the affirmation that the quarantine has to end by the end of May, that is, when we are still under the effects of the massive pandemic and that it implies greater contagion between the population. As of today, the bourgeoisie and its government managers, led by AMLO, plan to normalize productive activity regardless of the number of infected and deceased workers as a result.

Along these same lines, we declare ourselves against the bioethical guide presented by the General Health Council, which violates the rights of older adults and patients whose life expectancy is less than that of another patient; because it is not only discriminatory based on age and physical condition, it is also based on class condition, since it is well known that it is those who have worked all their lives who carry on their backs a lower life expectancy based on the wear and tear that daily exploitation has on health. And who are also those who do not have the resources for their treatment in a private hospital.

We call for the unity of the industrial, services and agricultural working class, to forge the anti-capitalist and antitrust alliance with the popular sectors, in the midst of a panorama where the law of the strongest is implemented and imposed to see who gets richer from the misfortune of the people. And in a circumstance in which monopolies and private owners do not hesitate to close ranks as the ruling class to safeguard their power and group together against the rights of the most impoverished, of the workers and of the working class.

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

The Political Bureau of the Central Committee

http://solidnet.org/article/CP-of-Mexic ... en-Mexico/

More dupes I suppose....
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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Fri May 29, 2020 3:01 pm

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Following Mexico’s Worker Strikes, the US Steps in to Keep Border Factories Open
May 28, 2020 orinocotribune AMLO, coronavirus, COVID-19, maquiladoras, Mexico, reopening, too close to the US
By David Bacon – May , 2020

In Washington, D.C., President Trump is trying his best to reopen closed meatpacking plants, as packinghouse workers catch the COVID-19 virus and die. In Tijuana, Mexico, where workers are dying in mostly U.S.-owned factories (known as maquiladoras) that produce and export goods to the U.S., the Baja California state governor, a former California Republican Party stalwart, is doing the same thing.

Jaime Bonilla Valdez rode into the governorship in 2018 on the coattails of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And at first, as a leading member of López Obrador’s MORENA Party, he was a strong voice calling for the factories on the border to suspend production.

López Obrador himself was criticized for not acting rapidly enough against the pandemic. But in late March, in the face of Mexico’s rising COVID-19 death toll, he finally declared a State of Health Emergency. Nonessential businesses were ordered to shut their doors, and to continue paying workers’ wages until April 30.

Bonilla’s Labor Secretary Sergio Martinez applied the federal government’s rule to the foreign-owned factories on the border, producing goods for the U.S. market. Again, only essential businesses would be excepted.

When news spread that many factories were defying the order to close, Bonilla condemned them. “The employers don’t want to stop earning money,” he said at a news conference in mid-April. “They are basically looking to sacrifice their employees.” But now, a month later, he is allowing many non-essential factories to reopen.

Explaining the about-face are two competing pressures. At first, workers in the factories took action to shut them down, a move widely supported in border cities. But as the owners themselves resisted, they got the help of the U.S. government. The Trump administration put enormous pressure on the Mexican government and economy, vulnerable because of its dependence on the U.S. market.

Now as the factories are opening again, the deaths are still rising.

Strikes Start in Mexicali
Although Baja California is much less densely populated than other Mexican states, it’s now third in the number of COVID-19 cases, with 1,660 people infected. Some 261 have died statewide, and 164 in Tijuana alone. That’s more deaths than 131 in neighboring San Diego, a much larger metropolis. Fifteen percent of those with COVID-19 in Tijuana die, while only 3.5 percent die in San Diego. As is true everywhere, with the absence of extensive testing, no one really knows how many are sick.

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“You can imagine how desperate we are, since we’re so poor, and without a law to protect us. Here, if you have no money, the government won’t enforce the law. We really have very good laws in Mexico, but a very bad government.” Veronica Vasquez spoke these words in the middle of a dusty street in Tijuana. “Companies come to Mexico to make money. They think they can do anything they want with us because we’re Mexicans. Well, it’s our country, even if we’re poor. Not theirs.”DAVID BACON



In Tijuana, most who die are working-age. Since one-tenth of the city’s 2.1 million residents work in over 900 maquiladoras, and even more are dependent on those factory jobs, the spread of the virus among maquiladora workers is very threatening.

https://orinocotribune.com/following-me ... ries-open/
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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 19, 2020 1:54 pm

The US sanctions Mexican companies for their relationship with Venezuela: AMLO in its sights
Mission Truth

Jun 19 · 6 min read

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico. Photo: Archive

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department added three Mexican citizens to its blacklist and a total of eight companies registered in this country linked to the oil-for-food exchange program with Venezuela.
According to the official website of the Treasury Department, these are citizens Joaquín Leal Jiménez, Olga María Zepeda Esparza and Verónica Esparza García, and the companies Libre Abordo and Schlager Business Group, who, from now on, are prohibited from doing business in United States and the use of its assets in the North American country.
Six other Mexican companies related to Libre Abordo and Schlager were sanctioned , and two new oil tankers were also included, one with the Panamanian flag and the other with Liberia.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the move in a celebratory tone. Through his account on the social network Twitter, the senior official stated :
“Today, the United States took steps to prevent the Maduro regime from stealing oil from Venezuela. These sanctions target the illegitimate "oil for food" scheme that had no intention of providing food to the population. We are with Venezuelans in their search for freedom and prosperity. "
These new pressure measures reinforce the ongoing economic and financial siege on Venezuela, a Caribbean country that is fighting the Covid-19 pandemic amid blockade and embargo actions that seek to limit its health response.
In early June, the company Libre Abordo filed for bankruptcy , and through a statement to public opinion, reported that it suffered various pressures from the US authorities to cancel the oil-for-food exchange program agreed with the Venezuelan government, even when the Mexican entity claimed to be protected by the Treasury Department licenses that authorize the exchange with Venezuela for humanitarian reasons.

The oil-for-food exchange agreement consisted of sending 210,000 tons of corn, among other supplies, to Venezuela. Photo: Archive
Libre Abordo asserted that the intimidation received from the United States and the fall in international oil prices pushed it into bankruptcy.
For a month, the Reuters agency had been reporting that the FBI was working with the US Treasury Department to dismantle the Mexican companies that participated in the Venezuelan oil exchange.
The information of this underground persecution was accompanied by threatening rhetoric from Mike Pompeo, Elliott Abrams and the hawk Mauricio Claver-Carone, aimed at inhibiting PDVSA's relations with international oil companies.
Since the end of 2019, the exchange program with Libre Abordo and Schlager Business Group, whose purpose was the import of food and other basic goods in exchange for crude oil, had begun to operate .
Washington realized and quickly mobilized its intelligence apparatus in order to break the agreement, thus showing that the sanctions, far from the usual narrative of "cutting Maduro's finances", are designed to generate the greatest possible suffering for the Venezuelan population .
After the sidereal failure of Operation Gideon in early May, the Trump Administration reoriented its actions on the cheek of the international economic war. Indeed, the financial blockade has worsened in the last month, confirming that it is its main instrument of power to shore up Guaidó and sustain the regime change agenda, in the absence of a coherent strategy.

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Photo: Media

Proof of this was the intimidation against Iran by the shipment of five ships loaded with fuel and chemical additives in order to reactivate Venezuelan refineries and thus replace the scarce gasoline inventory that had paralyzed the country for a month.
But these new sanctions have come to respond to other international factors.
On June 15, the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) affirmed before the media that he was willing to supply gasoline to Venezuela.
AMLO expresó:
“He has not made any requests to us. In the event that he made the request to us and it was a humanitarian need, we would (...) Mexico is an independent, sovereign country, we make our own decisions and we do not meddle with the policies of other countries, it is the self-determination of the peoples (...) No one has the right to oppress others, no hegemony can crush any country. "
These statements represent the first formal position of the AMLO government against the sanctions applied to Venezuela, and the Trump Administration has responded with a new round of coercive measures against Mexican companies.
Officially, the AMLO government is being pressured through economic instruments to inhibit its independent foreign policy from Washington.
On the other hand, a few hours ago , Mexico's return to the United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent member was confirmed , after 10 years of absence.
Mexico's participation in the Security Council implies a notable increase in its influence on international politics and the development of an approach to dialogue and respect for national sovereignty that has broken with Washington's complacency from previous administrations.
Regarding this, the Ambassador to the United Nations, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, affirmed that the Mexican position in the Security Council will enforce international law, betting on dialogue as a resolution mechanism in international conflicts.
Since January of this year, Mexico assumed the pro tempore presidency of CELAC, an international organization promoted by President Hugo Chávez in 2010 with the purpose of creating a regional alternative to the dying Organization of American States (OAS).
Venezuela, through its sectoral vice president of Communication, Tourism and Culture, Jorge Rodríguez, made an appearance , in January 2020, at the meeting held in Mexico to make official the transfer of the pro tempore presidency of the multilateral organization.

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Photo: Twitter

The act put into effect the distancing of the AMLO government from the coup attempt led by Guaidó and promoted by the United States.
A few days ago, AMLO presented a document that reveals an opposition plan to his government, where economic and media groups also participate, with the aim of displacing the current president from political power.
The basic idea is to "promote the Opposition Block to advance in two moments: win the majority of the Chamber of Deputies in 2021 and withdraw AMLO from the Presidency of the Republic in 2022 by revoking the mandate," as reported by La Política Online. .

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AMLO presents the plan that seeks to overthrow his government. Photo: Infobae

The parallelism with the coup leaders' strategy in Venezuela is remarkable.
Washington seems to be working on two strategies in parallel: the one of the internal coup while pressuring AMLO to try to align it to the economic and financial persecution against Venezuela.

https://medium.com/@misionverdad2012/sa ... 6331aefd71

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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 06, 2020 3:48 pm

Fight of monopolies for control of the Electricity Market in Mexico
IVAN LIMA 23.Jul.20 National News

The underlying problem beyond the context and technical explanation is actually a fight for control of the Electricity Market between the state monopoly of CFE and private monopolies, mostly with a high component of foreign capital. Currently the tacit market share agreement for CFE and private companies establishes a relationship of 54% -46% ...

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Electric power is vital for the development of a nation, it is an essential and strategic activity for the development of its productive forces, as evidenced by the fundamental role that electrification played in the development of heavy industry in the Soviet Union and in the forceful advance of the five-year plans that accelerated the transition from an eminently agricultural society to a highly organized industrial society. Lenin was clear about the fundamental role of electrifying the country since the eve of the triumph of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, to the point of almost becoming an obsession that was reflected in several of his works and reports from this stage, among which stands out his Report on the Work of the CEC of February 2, 1920, in which he makes clear the strategic nature of the technique to consolidate the new mode of production of socialism: “The era of steam was the era of the bourgeoisie; the age of electricity is the age of socialism. We must have a new technical basis for the new economic building. This new technical base is electricity. On that basis we have to build everything. This will be the work of many years ... We must make the peasants see that the organization of industry on a high modern technical basis, based on electrification, that links the city with the countryside and ends with the contrast between the two ... " We must have a new technical basis for the new economic building. This new technical base is electricity. On that basis we have to build everything. This will be the work of many years ... We must make the peasants see that the organization of industry on a high modern technical basis, based on electrification, that links the city with the countryside and ends with the contrast between the two ... " We must have a new technical basis for the new economic building. This new technical base is electricity. On that basis we have to build everything. This will be the work of many years ... We must make the peasants see that the organization of industry on a high modern technical basis, based on electrification, that links the city with the countryside and ends with the contrast between the two ... "one

Just over a century has passed since electrification was the main catalyst for industrialization in the USSR, a growth that led the budding country to move from occupying fifteenth place in the world in the production of electrical energy in 1920, to occupying the second in 1950, behind only the United States of America 2. Similarly, although at different levels of technological development around the world, humanity witnessed a rapid technological race that began with small electric generators based on oil, coal and steam of less than 1 kilowatt, until it developed and built huge millions of kilowatt power plants whose technological base is supported by the latest advances in science such as nuclear fission, geothermal energy, photovoltaic and wind energy, among others.

Mexico, like the ex-USSR, is a country with vast sources of hydrocarbons and renewable resources, among which heavy crude oil, natural gas and the privileged geographical position in the belt of high solar radiation stand out. This availability of resources also allowed our country to reach a level of electrification (several decades apart) that made it possible to supply electricity to 99% of homes in the national territory according to the latest national survey on energy consumption in private homes (ENCEVI) of INEGI. On paper, this high level of electrification in homes should be the consequence of a comprehensive and modern Electric System, however, at an industrial level the reality is very different. Mexico does not yet have an electricity network robust enough to trigger the development of the most remote areas and with less possibilities of building infrastructure under traditional private investment schemes. In this context, and as the main product of the disastrous Pact for Mexico signed by the leaders of the main political forces, in 2013 the Energy Reform was born, which modified the CFE's vertically integrated monopoly model, turning it into a productive company of the State and dividing it into 10 subsidiary companies to separate the activities of the Electricity System into three different sectors: Generation, Transmission and Distribution. As a main consequence of the Reform, the Generation sector was opened to the participation of large private monopolies.3 .

At the current juncture of the confinement and suspension of non-essential activities by COVID-19, the differences between private monopolies and the state monopoly on electrical energy have worsened. During this health crisis, electricity demand decreased by just over 10%, which sparked a debate about the impact of renewable energies (intermittent) on the grid in low demand scenarios, and which led to the National Center for Energy Control ( CENACE) to suspend all operational tests to connect new intermittent plants to the electrical system, arguing that these would put the safety of the network at risk. Subsequently, the Ministry of Energy announced a new system reliability policy that it published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, skipping the entire Regulatory Impact process, which gave arguments to the private to protect and stop said agreement. In essence, the agreement establishes, based on a very weak technical argument, that the criterion of security and reliability in electricity supply has priority over any other criterion. To understand what this change of criterion implies, it is necessary to give a little context about the current operation of electrical networks in the world. All electrical networks require delicate and sophisticated real-time control, since it is necessary to maintain a balance between generation and instantaneous demand at all times. This is mainly explained by the level of technological development that has not yet made possible the large-scale implementation at a reasonable cost of network storage. In every electrical system,

The current installed instantaneous generation capacity is almost 70% higher than the demand in real time, a difference that is also common in other countries due to safety and maintenance criteria (Not all plants operate with the same availability factor). This means that it is necessary to choose by criteria which plants enter first to dispatch. Currently, this criterion is of economic merit, which means that the plant with the lowest marginal cost enters the network first. What the Ministry of Energy is proposing in practice is to change the criterion of economic dispatch to a criterion of system reliability, which means giving priority to plants that can offer base load, which are thermal and combined cycle plants in their majority owned by CFE.

The underlying problem beyond the context and the technical explanation is actually a struggle for control of the Electricity Market between the state monopoly of CFE and the private monopolies, mostly with a high component of foreign capital. Currently the tacit agreement of market shares for CFE and private establishes a relationship of 54% -46%, which is not supported by any rationale or economic planning that prioritizes the technological development of strategic areas that could really benefit from an investment in electrical infrastructure and in the development of new technologies applied to agro-industrial processes and secondary economic activities. The real interest of this administration is for CFE to recover its market share through the indirect subsidy to PEMEX so that through its "Must Run" plants they make viable the use of fuel oil, which is a secondary derivative of the oil refining process, the use of which For maritime transport it has recently been banned worldwide due to its high sulfur content and its high polluting potential. On the other hand, the main interest of private monopolies is to intensify their capital appreciation process through energy purchase and sale contracts with industrial consumers that often belong to the same groups of investors and share the same economic and class interests. whose use for maritime transport has recently been banned worldwide due to its high sulfur content and its high polluting potential. On the other hand, the main interest of private monopolies is to intensify their capital appreciation process through energy purchase and sale contracts with industrial consumers that often belong to the same groups of investors and share the same economic and class interests. whose use for maritime transport has recently been banned worldwide due to its high sulfur content and its high polluting potential. On the other hand, the main interest of private monopolies is to intensify their capital appreciation process through energy purchase contracts with industrial consumers who often belong to the same investor groups and who share the same economic and class interests.

We are witnessing a fierce struggle for control of the electricity generation sector in the context of a new version of capital's cyclical crisis. Crisis that once again will act as an escape valve for the denunciations of the liberal progressives in turn, be it social democracy, neoliberalism, conservative or liberal party. One more opportunity to suggest new and innovative forms of financial regulation, new adjustments to the salaries of senior managers, new marginal increases to the minimum wage, and promising income distribution policies. All these measures will contribute to socializing the notion that the crisis was tough, yes, but that in the end everything turned out well, that the financialization of the economy is something desirable as long as it allows us to continue believing that the contradiction of labor-capital has a solution in the reformist framework that encourages us to vote in the next elections for the newest option and that we like the most about Capitalism A, B, or C. A green capitalism that saves us from ourselves, that calms and appeases our honest concerns for the environment with a blind trust in clean energy. Technologies that will be limited to fulfilling the function of balm as long as the mode of production that demands growth does not change that soothes and appeases our honest concerns for the environment with a blind reliance on clean energy. Technologies that will be limited to fulfilling the function of balm as long as the mode of production that demands growth does not change May it calm and appease our honest concerns for the environment with blind trust in clean energy. Technologies that will simply fulfill the function of balsam as long as the mode of production that requires growth does not change ad infinitum of GDP to maintain its profit margin, while simultaneously continuing to reduce the share of organic capital, its source of all value. As long as the organized and conscious rupture with this logic of perpetual growth is not materialized by substituting state monopoly capitalism for a State and rational socialist planning, we will continue to believe that a new regulation, with a new technological advance will suffice to overcome the following crisis, we will continue to have unshakable faith that everything will be fine as soon as the new normal returns.

Notes:

1.Report on the Work of the All-Russian CEC and the Council of People's Commissars, represented at the first session of the All-Russian CEC of the VII 2.Legislature; February 2, 1920.
3.The Energy of the Soviet Country; Editions in Foreign Languages; Moscow 1957
Report from CENACE to the Energy Commission of the Senate of the Republic; May 19, 2020.
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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:29 pm

The working class in Mexico, a first statistical approach
HÉCTOR MARAVILLO, MEMBER OF THE FJC POLITICAL BUREAU 18.Aug.14 Virtual library

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Introduction

Nowadays it is common to find speeches according to which talking about the working class is an anachronism. Whether from the academy the death of the proletariat is theoretically argued, or from the? Left? talk about the "new emerging subjects", all agree in denying their existence and / or their revolutionary potential.

And yet the workers continue daily coming to their work and producing the material base of society; To paraphrase Galileo Galilei: ?? and yet they move ??. In this sense, the Slovenian philosopher SlajovZizek is right in exhibiting as a current phenomenon the need to remove the production process from the public eye, as if it were an? Obscene indecency? something to be done ?? underground ??. In this way, while Western countries can afford to babble about the "disappearing working class," there are "millions of anonymous workers sweating in third world factories". (one).

Although each of these discourses appears with different nuances and foundations, they tend to coincide on one or more of the following points:

?? The nonexistence of the working class or its tendency to disappear, in quantitative terms. For example, the theories of deindustrialization, outsourcing, the growth of the middle class, the increase of social mobility, etc.

?? The displacement of the capital-labor contradiction as the guiding and explanatory axis of the social economic system. For example the theories about ?? post ?? societies. (post-capitalist, post-industrial, post-Fordist), the knowledge economy. As Zizek would say, this is the postmodern way of rejecting the importance of class conflict (2)

?? The disappearance of the revolutionary capacity and political potential of the working class. For example, when talking about the "new emerging subjects", the struggle of the "citizen".

At other times there have been criticisms from Marxism-Leninism to the different positions that they try to ?? assassinate ?? theoretically to the working class. For example, the book by Peter Mertens (member of the Belgian Labor Party) The working class in the era of multinationals (3), where he criticizes the fallacies of Antonio Negri about the ?? disappearance of the working class ?? and it shows that the growth of the tertiary sector is not at the expense of the proletariat, as argued, but of the rural population. In a more limited sense, his article can be reviewed for the International Communist Magazine (4) or, in the case of Mexico, the article by comrades Jesús Saavedra and Miguel Kun from number 3 of El Machete (5). Following this line, in this little work,

To speak of the working class in its totalities, it is necessary to consider it in its opposition to other classes, because as Marx and Engels would say in The German Ideology? Different individuals only form a class as soon as they are forced to sustain a common struggle against another class. , because otherwise they themselves confront each other, hostilely, on the level of competition ?? (6). But this does not mean that subjective factors (?? class for itself ??) cannot be abstracted and focus only on their objective determinations (?? class itself ??); always considering them as indissoluble but analytically separate moments. Gramsci correctly describes these different moments or levels of the study of the class struggle under historical materialism in his text Analysis of Situations. Relationship of forces ??:

?? 1] A relationship of social forces closely linked to the structure, objective, independent of the will of men, and that can be measured with the systems of the exact or physical sciences. On the basis of the degree of development of the material forces of production, we have social groupings, each of which represents a function and occupies a given position in production itself. This relationship is, and nothing else: a rebellious reality; no one can modify the number of companies or their employees, the number of cities with the corresponding urban population, etc. This fundamental strategic division makes it possible to study whether the necessary and sufficient conditions for a transformation exist in society, that is,

2] A later moment is the relationship of political forces, that is: the estimation of the degree of homogeneity, self-awareness and organization reached by the various social groups. This moment can be analyzed in turn by distinguishing in it various degrees that correspond to the various moments of collective political consciousness as they have manifested themselves up to now in history. (??)

3] The third moment is that of the relations of the military forces, which is the immediately decisive one in each case. (??) two degrees can be distinguished, the military in the strict sense, or technical-military, and the degree that can be called political-military. ?? (7)

We would place ourselves at the first level, by carrying out an analysis of the working class in quantitative terms, based on the data offered by the latest state censuses in our country. Statistics are used here only to give an idea of ​​the economic and quantitative importance of the working class, that is, to speak of it in terms of its potentiality according to its objective conditions; Well, as Lenin would warn ?? Statistics should illustrate the socio-economic relationships established with a complete analysis, and not become an objective in itself (8).

The development of the concept of the working class

The most general notion of the working class or proletariat is that given by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifestoas the class of modern wage laborers, who, deprived of their own means of production, are forced to sell their labor power in order to exist? (9). This definition has its limits. Being the most general expression of the development and contradictions of capitalism, the existence of the other classes in transition that are supposed to be disappearing has been abstracted. But in our country this class structuring is not shown in its pure state - or anywhere else - but rather in a motley juxtaposition and mixture of situations that prevent us from seeing the working class at first. Keeping the initial definition in this context would only serve to hide the essence of the concept, and politically fall into serious errors of confusion. For example, could be reached the absurdity of considering soldiers or company managers as? proletarians? for the simple fact of being salaried workers, without analyzing the social function they fulfill.

Marx explains in the first volume of Capital that "from an economic point of view, he can only be called" proletarian ". the salaried worker who produces and values ​​(capital) ?? (10). This adds a determination to the concept that you did not previously have. Not only is it enough to know its relationship with the means of production and the type of property it has, it is necessary to take into account the ?? position in the production process ?? What is it that defines how is the ?? articulation of society in classes ?? (11) In this way, following the characteristics that Lenin mentions to locate a social class, the workers are characterized by being:

?? Salaried workers. That is, they receive the part of the social wealth that corresponds to them through wages.

?? People ?? free ?? in two senses, free from all ownership of the means of production and free to sell their labor power for a living.

?? Direct producers, that is, they have ?? a more or less direct intervention in the handling of the object on which the work falls ??; Although depending on the degree of capitalist development, they do not need to have a direct manual intervention, it is enough to be part of the ?? organ of the collective worker, to execute any of its divided functions ?? (12).

?? Their place in the production system is that of being productive workers in the capitalist sense; that is, in addition to producing merchandise, they must (directly) produce surplus value for the capitalist (13). This excludes, for example, the production of goods by the artisan or production for self-consumption.

So far it is clear that the workers, technicians and assistants of the different branches generally considered as secondary sector, belong to the working class; we refer to mining (14), the production and distribution of electricity, water and gas, construction and manufacturing industries. However, there are a series of economic branches that are commonly considered to be of the tertiary sector, such as “services”, but that in a strict sense, are as capitalist as the previous sectors.

To explain this it is necessary first to understand the difference between the sale of labor power and a service. The difference lies in the fact that while in the first case, what the worker sells is his work capacity to integrate himself as a living factor into the production process; in the second case, what he sells is the product of his labor as action, but which is consumed as use value, not to be incorporated into the capitalist production process. The buyer is interested in the product or the execution of the specific work, and not in increasing his capital (15).

Strictly speaking, the production of surplus value, supposes the production of merchandise, and therefore the objectification of labor in? Products separable from the workers? that they exist independently of themselves as autonomous commodities? (16). However, it may be the case where the useful effect of a commodity is inseparable from its production process, it can only be consumed during it. This would be the case of the communications industry, which in Marx's time was the only one with economic importance, including the specific industry of transporting people and goods such as the mere transmission of news, letters, telegrams, etc. . ?? (17). Currently we could include the electrical industry, the telephone industry - telecommunications in general - or the hotel and restaurant industry.

This is the general definition of the concept of the working class. But so far we started only from the point of view of production, missing to consider the distribution process, and its dynamics as a whole, which ends up unfolding the concept. Furthermore, as Marx explained throughout Capital and mainly in the unpublished Chapter VI , capitalism is in constant change, therefore it is possible to historically locate different ?? phases ?? of capitalist development, for example, formal or real subsumption, which ends up modifying and contributing new elements to the concept of the working class.

Let's start with the first situation. Until now, the definition had only considered production, based on the contradiction between capital-labor, expressed in the relationship between industrial capital and the industrial worker. And it was assumed that this capital and the worker were in charge of all the necessary functions, that is, not only of production but also of the realization of capital. However, historically the different functions of capital tend to unfold to complete the other moments of the capital cycle and fulfill the functions of commercial capital and money-capital. Of these new functions, we are interested in knowing what happens to your new workers. In this sense, Marx tells us in Volume III that
?From one point of view, this commercial worker is a salaried worker like any other. In the first place, because his labor is bought by the merchant's variable capital and not by money spent as income, this means that it is not bought simply for the private service of the purchaser, but for capital appreciation purposes. Second, because the value of their labor power and, therefore, their salary, is determined, as in other wage-earning workers, by the cost of production of their specific labor power and not by the product of his work.

However, between him and the workers directly employed by industrial capital must necessarily mediate the same difference as between industrial capital and commercial capital and that which exists, therefore, between the industrial capitalist and the merchant ?? (18)

Commercial workers are those workers who are dedicated to capturing surplus value (produced by their colleagues the industrial workers). He agrees with the other workers in selling his labor power to capital and not the product of his labor (a service). But, the commercial worker does not directly produce surplus value, therefore the circulation expenses that appear for the industrial capitalist (in which they are accounted for) appear as dead expenses. For the merchant, on the other hand, they are the source of his profit, therefore for the commercial capital his expenses in these workers supposes a productive investment, are they? For him [for the mercantile or commercial capital], a directly productive work? ? (19).

The fact that commercial workers belong to the working class by the first condition described, allows this to translate into the possibility of a joint struggle between salaried workers in commerce and industrial workers, for example, in a struggle for generalized increase of salary. As they are not direct producers of surplus value, but simply its captors, their salary does not have a necessary relationship with the mass of profit that it helps the capitalist to realize. What it costs the capitalist and what he gets out of it are two different magnitudes? (twenty). This situation generates a series of problems that hinder the development of their class consciousness and the organization of this stratum of workers. For example, As they are the best paid workers, they tend to spring up unionist political positions or close to the petty bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the unnecessary relationship between the profit of commercial capital and the salary of the commercial worker, causes the contradiction between them, to be generally indirectly based on a series of mediations, and not frankly and daily as between the worker and industrial capital.

Now if we approach things from the historical point of view, it is observed that there are a series of economic activities in which the factors of production act under the direction of capital ?? in order to obtain more money from money ?? (21), but without being under the properly capitalist technical base. For example, the case of the production of books, pictures, and in general of artistic products, which Marx considered as a ?? form of transition towards the only formally capitalist mode of production ?? (22). In this sense, we could include professors and doctors who are under the direction of capital in order to increase it; and in an even more rudimentary sense, pedicab, taxi or minibus gangs, under relationships in transition to capitalism. These sectors, strictly speaking,

There is a division that crosses the entire working class according to the technological base (technical-organizational) on which the particular production process is sustained, which constitutes the expression of the forms and phases through which the development of the capitalism in the industry of a specific country ?? (2. 3). The main phases of this development are three: small mercantile production (small industries, preferably peasant ones), capitalist manufacturing and the factory (large machined industry). Marx explains these phases in the fourth section of Capital (chapters 11, 12 and 13), of which Lenin makes an excellent synthesis:

??Small mercantile production is characterized by a completely primitive manual technique that has not changed almost since time immemorial. (??) Manufacturing introduces the division of labor, which brings about a sensible transformation of the technique, turning the peasant into an operator, into a “worker who makes specific pieces”. But manual production is preserved, and on its basis the progress of the modes of production is inevitably distinguished by great slowness. The division of labor occurs spontaneously, it is also adopted by tradition as peasant labor. Only the great mechanized industry takes a radical path, jettisons manual art, transforms production on new, rational principles, systematically applies the data of science to production. (??) Small mercantile production and manufacturing are characterized by the predominance of small companies, of which only a few large ones are engaged. The large machined industry definitely displaces the small companies. In small industries too, capitalist relations are formed (in the form of workshops with wage laborers and commercial capital), but they are weakly developed here and do not crystallize in sharp contrasts between the groups of people involved in production. Here there are still neither large capitals nor vast layers of the proletariat. In manufacturing we see the formation of one and the other. The gulf between the owner of the means of production and the worker is already reaching considerable proportions. (??) But the multitude of small companies, the preservation of ties with the land, the preservation of traditions in production and throughout the life regime, all of this creates a mass of intermediate elements between the extremes of manufacture and slows the development of these extremes. In large machined industry all these brakes disappear; the extremes of social contrasts reach higher development. It seems as if all the shadowy sides of capitalism are concentrated: the machine gives, as is known, an enormous impulse to the extension of the working day without measure; women and children are incorporated into production; the reserve army of the unemployed is formed (and according to the conditions of factory production), etc. But the socialization of work, which the factory carries out to an enormous extent,?? (24).

To each of these phases of development, corresponds a particular type of worker, thus there would be artisan or manual, manufacturing or workshop and factory workers (25). In addition to these large sectors of the proletariat, subgroups of workers can be classified based on the technical and organizational characteristics required by the different industrial branches and their specific production processes, for example between agricultural proletariat and transporters (26).

This logical-historical unfolding of the concept of the working class leads us to its most developed form, the industrial or factory worker, which in turn corresponds to large mechanized industry. It is only from this highest form of the working class that the concept can be understood in its full extent. Marx would say referring to this methodological principle that ?? The anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the monkey. Consequently, the indications of the higher forms in the lower animal species can be understood only when the higher form is known. The bourgeois economy thus provides the key to the old economy, etc. ?? (27). It is only in large machined industry where all the social contradictions of capitalism reach their maximum development, therefore, the class of factory or industrial workers,

Finally, the emergence of large industry opens the way to a new stratum of the working class, the industrial reserve army, as the other side of the coin. Marx explained in Chapter XXIII of Capital, how capitalist accumulation implied a relative decrease of variable capital in the face of constant absolute growth of the working population, that is, the appearance of a relative overpopulation, a working population that was excessive for needs. means of exploitation of capital ?? (29) This relative overpopulation occurs in different ways. On one side is the contingent of workers unemployed fluctuatingly according to the needs of capital (of its cycles) in some branch or region. On the other hand, those workers who are active but with a very irregular work base are also included, with a standard of living and a minimum wage and maximum working hours; thus becoming docile instruments of capital exploitation (30). The other two forms in which the reserve army presents itself (latent overpopulation; and the ?? ragged proletariat ?? or ?? lumpenproletariat ??) although they are also the result of capitalist accumulation, their elements do not constitute part of the working class, rather, its origin is the impoverishment of other social layers.

Conformation of the working class in Mexico

In the last population census, 112.3 million inhabitants were counted in our country (31). Of these, approximately 25% are children under 12 years of age, so (abstracting the 850,000 boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 13 who worked in 2009) we can assume that they live at the expense of the other 75% (32). In turn, of this 75%, only half, that is, 42 million, is the employed population, while the other half lives on pensions, remittances, government or family support, or bank interests. Without looking at the data from the point of view of ?? position at work ?? provided by official statistics, we can get a very general idea of ​​the size of the working class, starting from the first definition, since 68% of the employed population is reported as salaried workers (28.8 million people); versus 3% (1.2 million) of ?? employers ?? and 24% of self-employed workers (10.3 million).

Regarding the workers producing surplus value (industrial workers), data are generally presented on the quantity and proportion of workers by large economic sectors to show the? Disappearance of the working class? and ?? outsourcing ?? economic, as in the following chart.

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Under these data, it seems that the proportion of the working class is not very important, only a fifth. However, a study at this level tends to hide more than it reveals. It is necessary to go down in the analysis to the different economic branches to observe the importance of the different social groups of workers. In the following graph (33), the number of people employed by economic sector is represented, differentiating the role they occupy, either as workers and technicians (including subcontracted workers), as employees or as owners.

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From here two issues are observed:

?? There are strictly industrial workers who are considered in the service sector by official statistics. For example, workers in the business support services sector. that mostly correspond to the branch? employment services ?? (outsourcing, outsorsing) which in turn are mainly found in the manufacturing industry; and a good part of the communication workers as mentioned above.

?? That service workers correspond to sectors that do not agree with the idea of ​​"outsourcing the economy". For example, the sector with the most workers corresponds to ?? other services except government activities ?? and it has 2.6 million workers and technicians; of which 2 million belong to the branch ?? households with domestic employees ?? and about 300 thousand to the branch of ?? repair and maintenance of cars and trucks ?? (In this sector also highlights the branch ?? beauty salons, public baths and bolerías ?? with almost 200 thousand people employed). The other important sectors are the teaching profession, the bureaucracy, and health workers.

That is to say, that? Service society ??, of the ?? information age ?? or ?? postindustrial ??, would have its main representatives in the owners of grocery stores, workers in supermarkets or fast food chains, mechanics, repairmen of washing machines and irons or stylists.

From the data and the different characteristics of the strata of the working class considered in the previous section, we can build a first statistical approach of the number of people that each stratum groups.

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In this way, at least 16 million people in Mexico (along with their families that we are not considering here) belong to the working class, which corresponds to 34 of the total employed population in 2008, and 43% of the total salaried workers in the country.

While its most developed nucleus, industrial workers represent 13% of the total number of employed persons. To these we could add other social groups that are on the borders of the working class:

Subcontracting (outsorsing): 2,062,009 million people (these may have been double counted by the elaboration methodology)

Teaching: 2,214,849 million people

Health, cultural and recreation workers: 1,133,157 million people

Industrial reserve army: more than 2.5 million people (35).

In total, these forms of transition or on the edge of the working class, add up to approximately 8 million people, that is another 17% of the total employed population.

Finally, from the point of view of economic importance, it stands out that production is the one that has the greatest contribution of value. For example, if industry is considered in its typical sense, as the sum of mining, construction, manufacturing and electricity, water and gas; It appears that it contributes 37% of the country's Added Value, and if transport and telecommunications are added to this, it reaches 45%. For its part, commerce only contributes 15% and banking matters (financial, insurance, real estate, corporate and professional services) reach 18%, while the rest of services add another 18%.

Concentration of industrial workers in the Valley of Mexico.

To illustrate what has been reviewed so far, the case of Mexico City and its metropolitan area can be analyzed; to show the importance and concentration of industrial workers.

The economic censuses register 560 thousand workers in the manufacturing industry, of which 317 thousand correspond to factory workers in companies with more than 101 employed persons. That is, 7% of all employed persons or 11% of salaried workers in the Valley of Mexico are factory workers in large companies, that is, at least 1 in 10 workers in the Metropolitan Area of ​​the VM they are industrial-factory workers of the great machined industry.

But this is not all, not only do they represent an important proportion in terms of numbers, but also from the point of view of their economic contribution. For example, the large industry of the ZMVM (considered here, as a statistical approach, to companies with more than 101 employees) contributes 5% of the country's gross domestic product ($ 534,496 million); In other words, what is produced in the large industrial factories of Mexico City, exceeds the total gross production of states such as Guanajuato or Coahuila. This illustrates the degree of concentration of capital and workers there is with respect to the number of companies, where a small number of factories employ the majority of industrial workers and contribute most of the production of their branch.

Regarding the concentration of workers and industrial capital geographically, two maps are offered with the distributions by workplace and by housing area. This way you will be able to locate the regions of labor concentration, both those people who ?? do not see ?? to the workers they can go looking for them, as for those who commonly carry out political work with the workers know where to concentrate their batteries.

The first map represents the distribution of industrial factories (with more than 101 employed persons) as white points, which in turn assumes a distribution of workers by workplace. In turn, the bars by municipality and delegation reflect the type of company they are in. The black bars are the number of workers employed in factories with more than 501 workers, while the white bars are those in factories with 101 to 500 workers.

Based on the map and the information provided by the 2009 economic census and the Statistical Directory of Economic Units (DENUE), we know that:

?? The highest industrial concentration is found in the north of the city, followed by the east and south of the DF, and finally a dispersion of factories in the center and the southeast.

?? The northern zone is divided into three corridors that follow the transport routes, and stands out in branches of food processing, chemicals, plastics, automotive and electronic products. In the first place, the area constituted by the junction of the Tlalnepantla, Azcapotzalco and Naucalpan corridors (to a lesser extent the Miguel Hidalgo and Atizapán de Zaragoza delegation). In total there are 168 thousand industrial workers. This area is the one that contributes the most industrial added value in Mexico City and the one that concentrates the most industrial workers, having as its center the Pantaco railway terminal, the most important nationwide. Next, the corridor around the México-Querétaro highway that crosses the municipalities of Tultitlán, Cuautitlán Izcalli and part of Tepotzotlán and Cuautitlán stands out. This zone concentrates 23 thousand factory workers with more than 501 employed persons. Finally, there is the Ecatepec corridor, around the Vía Morelos, with the second place in added value of the ZMCM and with the highest concentration of industrial workers of more than 1001 employed persons (more than 9,000 thousand workers).

?? The East zone (Iztapalapa and Iztacalco) has several industrial parks, Iztapalapa being the territorial delimitation that concentrates the most industrial workers per workplace (more than 70 thousand), however most of the companies are medium or small in size. The predominant branches are food processing, textile factories and maquilas of metallic or electrical products.

?? The southern zone (Xochimilco, Coyoacán and part of Tlalpan) has a low concentration of workers working (24 thousand in the first two mentioned delegations), however a third of these are in factories with more than 1001 employed persons (8 thousand ). These companies are mainly pharmaceutical companies that are located around the Tlalpan Calzada Light Rail line and correspond to the second zone of the ZMCM that provides the most added value.

?? There are much smaller industrial zones around the highway to Toluca (Cuajimalpa) and around the highway to Puebla (La Paz, Ixtapaluca and linked to these in Chalco). These are presented as future poles of industrial growth, but for the moment they are insignificant compared to the other areas. In addition, there is a great dispersion of factories in the downtown area of ​​the DF (Benito Juárez, Cuahutémoc) that correspond mostly to textile maquilas and printing companies.

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Regarding the workers according to their place of residence, an estimate has been made represented in the following map. For this, the employed population by Basic Geostatistical Area (AGEB) was multiplied with the percentage of workers in each delegation with respect to the total of its employed population. It is based on the assumption that the proportion of workers per AGEB is homogeneous in each delegation; Although this is not necessarily true for all boundaries, it does allow us to get an idea of ​​the areas where there is a greater concentration of workers.

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Starting from the map, where the darker areas represent more workers per AGEB, and vice versa, a lighter gray corresponds to a lower number of industrial workers; the following observations can be obtained:

?? The areas with the highest concentrations are in the periphery. In the municipalities of the State of Mexico that surround the Federal District. And to a lesser extent in the inner periphery of the Federal District, forming a south arch and a north arch.

?? The areas where the greatest concentration of workers is observed in a smaller area is in Nezahualcóyotl-Chimalhuacán (160 thousand workers altogether) and in Ecatepec (163 thousand).

?? In second place, the areas of labor concentration on the outskirts of the city stand out. Mainly in the southeast (Chalco, Valle de Chalco, Ixtapaluca, 103 thousand workers) and various areas in the northeast of the Federal District, with an interval of between 33 thousand and 80 thousand workers per municipality (Nicolás Romero, Atizapán, Tlalnepantla, Cuautitlán Izcalli and Tultitlán)

?? Within Mexico City, the areas are more dispersed and with less density due to AGEB; mainly in Iztapalapa and Tláhuac (190 thousand workers). Then Azcapotzalco and Gustavo A. Madero (118 thousand), and finally a southern arch from Álvaro Obregón to Xochimilco (154 thousand).

Combining the observations of the analysis of the distribution of industrial workers by workplace and place of residence, the following hypotheses can be suggested:

?? The most strategic area in terms of labor concentration (in the two aforementioned senses) is the northeastern corridor, which begins in Azcapotzalco and ends in Tepotzotlán, around the road to Querétaro and with its respective branches. By concentrating workers in factories and in the colonies, it can be assumed that it is a space where a directly proletarian discourse crystallizes. Ecatepec has characteristics similar to the previous zone, only limited to a single municipality; therefore we can assume the same as for the previous point. We name this set of areas as the northern region.

?? On the other hand, the south-east region has a lower concentration and density of industrial plants (a pharmaceutical corridor in Coyoacán-Xochimilco, a concentration center in Chalco-Ixtapaluca and a dispersion of industrial parks in Iztapalapa-Iztacalco-Tláhuac). In turn, the concentration of population by place of residence has not been so marked (except for Nezahualcóyotl-Chimalhuacán), rather it is distributed throughout the delegation, this makes it difficult to carry out a work focused on certain areas. Therefore, we can suppose that in this region the popular urban discourse in the colonies and towns is more likely to have greater acceptance.

?? Finally, the central region of Mexico City is the one with the greatest dispersion of workers, which is why it is irrelevant in any planning of political work with the workers, compared to the other two regions.

Bibliography

(1) Zizek, S. (2000). Welcome to the desert of the real.
http://comunidadmecs.files.wordpress.co ... textos.pdf , 7-8.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Mertens, P. (2011). The working class in the era of multinationals. ?? Jaime Lago ?? Cultural Association,
http://www.jaimelago.org/sites/default/ ... nacionales. pdf .
(4) Mertens, P. (2012). The end of the working class ?, International Communist Magazine. 3,
http://www.iccr.gr/site/es/issue3/the-e ... class.html .
(5) Saavedra J. and Kun M. (2013) The end of the working class? A Study on the composition of the working class in the State of Mexico, El Machete, 3, 24-35.
(6) Marx, C. and F. Engels (1974) The German Ideology. Mexico: Popular Culture.
(7) Gramsci, A. (1981). Political writings (1917.1933). Mexico: XXI century, 346-349.
(8) Lenin, VI (1957). The development of capitalism in Russia. The process of the formation of an internal market for large industrialists. Buenos Aires: Cartago, 506.
(9) Marx, C. and F. Engels. (1978). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow: Progreso, 30.
(10) Marx, C. (1999a). Capital: Critique of Political Economy I. 3rd ed. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 518
(11) Lukács, G. (1969). History and class consciousness. Grijalbo: México, 49
(12) Marx, C. (1999a), 425.
(13) ?? Within capitalism, only the worker who produces surplus value for the capitalist or who works to make capital profitable is productive. (??) The concept of productive work does not simply entail a relationship between the activity and its useful effect, between the worker and the product of his work, but also implies a specifically social and historically given relationship of production, which converts the worker into a direct instrument of capital appreciation. ”Ibid., 426.
(14) Although this sector produces an income, it also generates a production of surplus value.
(15) Vid. Marx, C. (1985a). Capital Book I Chapter VI Unpublished. 12th ed, Mexico: Siglo XXI, 80
(16) Ibídem, 78 y 85.
(17) Marx, C. (1999b). 50-51.
(18) Marx, C. (1959). Capital: Critique of Political Economy III. 2nd ed. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 256.
(19) Ibídem, 293-294.
(20) Vid. Ibid, 293: ?? This salaried worker does not pay the capitalist directly by creating surplus value, but by helping him to reduce the costs of realizing the surplus value, doing the work, partly unpaid, necessary for this ??
(21) Marx, C. (1985a). 54.
(22) Ibídem, 88. Own underlining.
(23) Lenin, VI (1957). 456.
(24) Ibid., 542
(25) Marx, C. (1999a). 373
(26) ?? For example Lenin for the situation of 1899 classified Russian wage workers into the following categories: 1) agricultural wage workers, 2) factory, mining and railway workers, 3) construction workers, 4) Laborers , loaders, workers in the lumber industry, workers in excavation and laying of railways, and 5) workers employed at home in a capitalist way? Lenin, VI (1957). 578-579
(27) Marx, C. (1985b). General Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy 1857. 13th ed. Mexico: XXI century, 55-56.
(28) Vid. Lenin, VI A great initiative.
(29) Marx, C. (1999), 533.
(30) Ibid, 544-545
(31) INEGI. (2010). Population and Housing Census 2010.
(32) INEG-I (2009). Child labor
(33) The data from the Input Product Matrix carried out by INEGI in 2008 has been used, and not the data from the Economic Census of the same year. While the MIP-2008 does not work with ?? real data ?? but with the estimate of the number of workers that the branch employs per year. Its advantage lies in considering temporary, subcontracted and informal workers, therefore its total number (47.4 million) is closer to the 42 million employed persons registered by INEGI in its 2010 Population and Housing Census. 2009 Economic Census, although it works with real values ​​of employed personnel, its own methodology restricts it to only 20 million employed persons, leaving a bias of 22 million unaccounted for.
(34) Workers are considered to be those who are classified in the statistics as? Technical workers? and ?? staff supplied by another company name ??. As for industrial workers, the following sectors are included: Mining. Electric power, water and gas. Manufacturing Ind. Transport, mail and storage ?? except freight auto transport-. Information in mass media.
(35) The National Survey of Employment and Employment estimated 2.5 million unemployed people and 5.9 million people ?? not economically active ?? but available, that is, the week before the survey they were neither working nor looking for work.

(36) Marx, C. (1999b) Capital: Critique of Political Economy II. 3rd ed. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 50-51
(37) Marx, C. (1999a) .373.

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Re: Mexico

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 21, 2020 3:44 pm

Social Democratic Hand Washing Tutorial: The Case of Product Labeling
GUILLERMO UC 31.Jul.20 National News
The bourgeois government of AMLO tries to leave all the responsibility to the consumer for the damages to their health, and not to the monopolies ...

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In recent days, a new regulation has been announced that establishes a warning labeling on those products that contain a high amount of fats, sugars or other ingredients that are harmful to health. Although this regulation had already been discussed and approved since last year, the reality is that its partial entry into force that (will become total on October 1) falls like a glove to the government of the social democracy of López Obrador, to the be overcome by the catastrophe it faces due to the spread of COVID-19 in Mexico.

The bourgeois government of AMLO tries to leave all responsibility to the consumer for the damage to their health, and not to the monopolies such as Bimbo, Femsa, Gruma, among others, which for years have poisoned the working class of this country and their families, offering products full of sugars, salts and fats that contribute nothing to nutrition, but rather contribute to the development of chronic degenerative diseases.

With this gesture, the State washes its hands and raises the discourse that if deaths from COVID-19 do not decrease in incidence, this is not due to the poor state of the health sector, nor to the government's incompetence due to ensuring a hospital service that reduces deaths, or the fact that, to preserve the profits of the monopolies, the working class has been thrown back to work at the height of the pandemic, but it will be because the consumer is irresponsible and he does not take care of what he eats, generating complications that will take him to the grave in the event that he becomes infected with the virus. At the end of the day, he has already been warned that what he is going to buy will kill him, and it remains for him and only him to decide whether to consume it or not.

In this way, another step is taken in placing the blame on the population for not reducing deaths from the virus, something that is not new, since with the well-known slogan of # QuédateEnCasa, repeated daily by the under-secretary López Lacayuno -Gatell, elevated to a national hero by the most lukewarm and reformist sectors of the “left”, the state's effort to wash its hands of the issue became clear. It is striking that these sectors, acting as the furious first line of defense for social democracy, do not even demand that the government close or shut down these companies, which cause serious damage every day to the health of a country that, according to 2019 data , ranked second in the world in obesity, followed only by the United States. Apparently for them, the problem is solved with a label on the packaging.

The so-called “responsible consumption” under the margins of capitalism is a fantasy of the petty bourgeoisie in a double sense: on the one hand, all capitalist production is drenched by the exploitation of the working class that is squeezed daily by the bourgeoisie, at the same time that it destroys all nature to achieve its ends. On the other hand, a worker whose salary is only enough to survive and feed his family, who has only a few minutes to go to work and who, after leaving his job exhausted, does not have time to prepare food that is nutritious for his family, He does not have the freedom or the possibility to choose what he eats and has to settle, in most cases, with junk food which is what he can afford. Well, organic or quality food is reserved,

The workers' power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, not only would have zero tolerance with the excessive elaboration of junk products that contribute to the deterioration of the health, both of adults and children, pursuing only the desire to accumulate capital, but also that the State The proletariat would establish the guarantee of healthy food for the entire population, with the introduction of collective canteens, supervised by the workers themselves, ensuring that the people only receive food of excellent quality that does not adversely affect their health. While today the bourgeois state, regardless of the party, continues to assign responsibilities to the monopolies, and their coriphees celebrate and settle for the sole labeling of products,

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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