NEWS FROM
THE FOURTH
INTERNATIONAL
FINEWS
4
An important congress for the
PRT
IN THE CONTEXT of economic crisis and rising mass struggles, the Fifth
Congress of the Partido
Revolucionario de los
Trabajadores (PRT,
Mexican section of the
Fourth International) was a particularly important one.
It marked the growth of an organization that began ten years ago with a nucleus of radicalized students into a small mass party with thousands of members and many thousands of followers. By the same token, it marked the emergence of the PRT as a visible political alternative for Mexican working people in the run-up to the Mexican presidential and congressional elections next June. The congress itself was the illustration of the kind of political
26 alternative the PRT offers.
International Viewpoint • November 9, 1987
66i reing or to enge ORE THAN 3,500 people
meeting of the congress Rouge, the paper of the French section of the Fourth International, noted in its October 8 issue. "The amphitheater in the Palace of Congresses was full to overflowing. There were huge banners with pictures of Che, Leon Trotsky, Zapata [the radical peasant leader of the Mexican revolution]. Dozens of messages carne from mass organizations in the four corners of the country. Our comrades of the PRT could not have had a better start in undertaking the work of their Fifth
"For a whole week after this meeting, from July 27 to August 2, the 350 delegates took up the congress debates, which reflected a particularly rich political and social situation. Two organizations, each with hundreds of members, joined the PRT at the time of the congress.
Two groups fuse with
"The Marxist Workers' League [LOM, an organization belonging to the Lambert current decided to fuse with the PRT order "to advance in building a mass workers' party in Mexico' and 'to build the Fourth International. This move was made with the agreement of the leadership of the PCI [Parti Communiste Internationaliste, the major organization in this international current] in France. (A part of the LOM took some distance, but the others remain organized in a tendency in the
"The congress also welcomed in the activists of the Revolutionary Left Current (CIR), an organization that left the PMT [Mexican Workers' Party], when the latter fused with the PSUM [a regroupment involving the Mexican CP] to form the PSM [Mexican Socialist Party]. (See IV126,
*The PRT has been involved in all the struggles in recent months, and PRT activists were in the leadership of the student mobilization last spring. It is widening its influence in the urban people's movement and the peasant movement, playing a leading, in building the Workers', Peasants, and People's General Union [UGOCP].
"The congress also reaffirmed the PRT's struggles throughout the world, its support for revolution in Nicaragua and Central
America, and its firm commitment to building the Fourth International."
Unanimous resolution on women's liberation Internationalen (the paper of the Swedish section of the Fourth International) a visitor at the congress, Lars Kjellander, described some of the congress' discussions:
"The demand not to pay the foreign debt was seen as especially important, since that was a problem common to all sections of the mass movement and could build bridges between the various groups that
"The discussion on building the party was especially interesting, since the PRT
"How can new members be integrated rapidly into the party's growth? How can the party be set firmly on its own feet economically? (Over 90 per cent of the party's income today comes from the monies paid by the state to the six members of parliament that the PRT has had since the 1985
"How should the party relate to the Christians who are more and more beginning to involve themselves in social questions, inspired by liberation theology in Latin America? On this point, the resolution adopted declared that the place for such believers was in revolutionary work
"The women's resolution, which was adopted unanimously, gave a thorough picture of the way that women were being hit especially hard by the crisis. The congress decided, therefore, that special measures were needed in the party to assure that more women participated in leadership
"The discussions on every point were very long and exhaustive. Most of the delegates talked about their experiences, everything from land occupations and strikes to work among the young in the 'youth leagues,' a special phenomenon in big city life in Mexico. Unemployed youth join together in strong gangs with their and often engage in semi-criminal
A party with real roots among the people
"It was clear that the PRT is a party with real roots among the people."
One of the PRT's most important areas of work is in the peasant movement. This year on April 10, 1987, the anniversary of the murder of Emiliano Zapata, the UGOCP succeeded in organizing 17 major land occupations at various points in the country. In its October 8 issue, Rouge published an interview with Fausto Leon Uriarte, done at the PRT congress. Uriarte is a member of the Central Committee of
the PRT, who described what happened after the April 10 land occupations:
"On May 6, repression was unleashed against several leaders of the UGOCEP in Sonora. Picked up in the streets, they were taken away in cars to be questioned for an hour or two and then released. José de la Cruz Castro was arrested by the judicial police, taken to Santa Ana and tortured for
"He was released when his family managed to find out where he was being held. He had to be taken to the Social Security Hospital, because he had serious injuries in his ribs, hands and neck.
"On June 20, in Navojoa, the brothers José Maria and Esteban Palomino Urbalejo were picked up. On Monday the 24th, Jose Maria was released, but Esteban, who was tortured continually, was only freed on July 4. He was released on bail and on condition that he declare publicly that he was breaking with the UGOCEP. He did that, saying that he had been manipulated by enemies of the system.
"After April 11, the press published
Peasants fight for land statements by the prosecutor who certified that we were in violation of the law and that he was going to prosecute me in particular. I will be prosecuted for various crimes: damage, theft, thief by violence, criminal association and I don't know what else. Comrades arrested have seen a list of 193 UGOCEP members sought by the
"At the end of June we organized a demonstration in Navojoa and distributed leaflets in Hermosillo. When the deputy Isidro Leyva denounced the repression on the floor of Congress and called for solidarity, the PRI [government party] members replied that they would not support any ille-
"On July 1, the UGOCEP published a statement signed by more than 60 organizations (including the National Front Against Repression, unions, the most important student unions, the electrical workers' union, the garment workers' union, the National Coordinating Committee of the Urban Popular Movement and the United Coordinating Committee of Earth-quake
"We decided to organize a march on the party from every locality where the UGOCEP is active to demand an end to the repression and a solution to the present conflicts.
"Positive results have been achieved 365 hectares of irrigated land were ceded [to the peasants] in the locality of Moncarit and authorization was given for the occupation of 5,200 hectares of pasture land in Bejamin-Hill. But other conflicts have still not been resolved...The fight continues."
TIBET "Brutal Repression against Tibetan people" LA GAUCHE, the French-language paper of the Belgian section of the Fourth International, commented in its October 20 issue on the recent clash-
The protest demonstrations against Chinese policy in Tibet and the ensuing repression (at least seven deaths and hundreds of people sent into internal exile) represent a serious political setback for the regime in Peking.
In recent years, China has made considerable efforts to give Tibet a modern infrastructure — roads, hospitals, schools, factories and so on. These investments are part of an attempt to make up for the gross errors committed by the Maoists in the preceding period.
The military occupation of Tibet, which was motivated by strategic considerations (the border with India), provoked an uprising of the Tibetan people in 1959. Armed resistance was organized but it was crushed by Chinese military power. More than 100,000 Tibetans fled their country at the time (out of a population of 2 million!). The Cultural Revolution brought new Chinese brutality, temples destroyed, monks persecuted and oppositionists executed in public.
The Chinese bureaucracy's economic gifts to the region (which moreover are not disinterested, Tibet is rich in uranium) do not carry a lot of weight against a record
Promoting a certain economic growth is not sufficient to resolve harmoniously the question of national minorities in a non-capitalist country such as China. The minorities have to be given real possibilities for self-government, for developing their culture, for practicing their religion and for safeguarding their traditions. This means the right to self-determination, which can go as far as independence.
Especially in a backward region such as Tibet, the combination of both factors — economic development and respect for national rights — is indispensable for fostering among the local population an alliance of workers and peasants that will fight the ancient monastic system. Such an alliance in the final analysis is the only lever for lasting change, because it comes from the
The Sandinistas in Nicaragua have understood this. After making their errors with the Miskito national minority on the Atlantic coast, they made a self-criticism and changed course radically. A real autonomy statute was not only "given" to the minority, but discussed thoroughly by the minority population itself.
The attitude of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is very differ-
FINEWS ent. This leadership keeps repeating that "Tibet has been part of China since the seventh century," as if this made it possible to dismiss the demands of the Tibetans. They had to wait 15 years for Peking to recognize their country as an autonomous region and the boundaries of this region still do not embrace all of Tibet.
Peking's failure shows up clearly at the level of cadre policy. Forty years after the 1949 revolution, all the leaders are Chinese, and the Communist Party has proved incapable of finding a Tibetan leader to take the reins of the "autonomous region." The result is that instead of turning away from the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans are turning towards him.
It is clear that the Chinese Communist Party is demonstrating the same inability as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to resolve harmoniously the question of the national minorities. This is not only explained by the "weight of the past" (the immemorial chauvinism of the Han Chinese and the Great Russians). It is also explained by the fact that China, like the USSR, is ruled by a bureaucracy. These bureaucracies tolerate no challenge to their monopoly of political power, whether from the workers, the students or the national minorities. That is the great difference between the regimes in Moscow and Peking
There is an indissoluble link between union freedoms, the right to strike, political pluralism and the rights of national minorities in a non-capitalist state. All of this makes up a whole that is called "socialist democracy," or just socialism, because the dictatorship of the bureaucracy is only a caricature of socialism. * Alain Tondeur
Gauch
27 November 9, 1987 • International Viewpoint
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