Class struggle is opening up, as Romo recognizes, and a polarization is developing between proletarian methods and the proletarian solution for the crisis and the solution sought by the bosses and De la Madrid's government.
Caught as they are in this blind alley, it remains to be seen what the trade-
Mexican government slaps the hand offered by the union bureaucrats union bureaucracy, the top echelon of the CTM, and the Congress of Labor will do. In the Congress of Labor, differences are already beginning to come out into the open between the poles represented by the CTM on the one hand and the Confederacion Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos (CROC - Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants) on the other. However, despite
Mexico, the second largest country in Latin America, is running neck and neck with
Brazil, the largest, for first place among the world's debtor countries.
the biggest and most industrialized economies in the colonial and semi-colonial
But in the context of the world economic crisis, the growth of a large-scale economy threatens to lead now to a massive disaster.
Because of the gains of the Mexican revolution, economy, and an elaborate policy of patronage to buy off the leaderships of the mass organizations, Mexico has been one of the most stable countries in Latin Am-
Now that relative political and social stability is also threatened, since there are no longer the resources to buy off or pacify even the privileged sectors.
The following articles from the June 20 issue of Bandera Socialist, weekly paper of the Revolutionary
Workers Party,
Mexican section of the Fourth International, describe the rising tensions in the Mexican trade-union movement.
On June 14, Arturo Romo, a senator and leader of the Confederacion de Trabajadores de Mexico (CTM — Mexican
Confederation of Workers) announced that the confederation had decided to withdraw the offer of a social made by Fidel Velazquez on May 31.
Romo explained that the reason for
"lack of interest on the part of the government and management" in such a pact. He added that the CTM would not continue to push the question, although if the Labor Congress considered it worth talking about, may take another look at it." However, the Congress of Labor, which was supposed to convene that day, was postponed for lack of a quorum.
clared that without a pact nothing would hold back the "class struggle."
The rude rejection of this proposal by the president, Miguel de la Madrid, is unprecedented in the relations between the government and the CTM. It raises some
In the first place, the government's rebuff came in the midst of a wave of thousands of strikes that were stimulted by the strike notices filed by the CTM leadership. When Fidel Velazquez proposed social pacts on May 31, he was not just trying to gain time so as not to have to actually call strikes but he was also offering his services to the government.
the relative development of the While the social pacts have been nounced as unacceptable by the left, they can be a face-saving way of getting out of the conflicts created by the filing of strike notices.
De la Madrid, nonetheless, rejected the
And he rejected it despite the strikes. He wanted thereby to show that he was taking the hardest possible line against the demands put forward by the striking trade-unionists.
Secondly, proved what we on the left have been pointing out - the utopian nature of such social pacts. By calling those who proposed this solution "demagogues," the president was pouring cold water on all the dreams of the reformists and concil-
De la Madrid was declaring war on them too. He is not going to accept the compromise solution proposed by the usual conciliators.
But thirdly De la Madrid's harsh rejection of Fidel Velazques's proposal in the midst of thousands of strikes also gives an indication of the sort of austerity policy he wants to keep pushing. He was not satisfied even by the CTM's offer, which Romo presented as "a magnificent crisis in a way that would avert the dangers of a resurgence of class struggle." Quite simply they are out to smash the workers movement. The secretary everything, Fidel Velazquez had to leave the country rather than stay here during the negotiations over the following ongoing and postponed strikes.
It would be foolish to think that the battle that has opened up between the trade-union bureaucracy and the government does not concern us. who look at things from a position of petty bourgeois and moral against the undemocratic practices of the bureaucracy, the defeat of the CTM is even cause for jubilation. Reflecting this attitude, in recent days the well-known editorial writer Miguel Angel Granados Chapa wrote:
"The CTM has been an obstacle to the development of the workers movement. Its position most recently shows clearly that its rhetoric is empty. Nobody is going to lament over its loss of strength... unless the result is, as it appears it will be, a reinforcement of the anti-popular tendencies in the government's orientation. Since the CTM puts its own interest above that of the nation, it's a good thing that it got its comeuppance." not the time for administering lessons to the CTM. What is necessary now is to understand what it represents socially.
The smashing of the minimum resistance put up by the CTM bureaucracy would certainly involve either the loss or the limitation of the only instruments the workers movement has for defending itself against the offensive of the bosses, the unions. What is at stake is not the bureaucracy. In any case, it is condemned to die a natural death relatively soon. What De la Madrid wants is not Fidel Velzaquez's head; the president's rebuff to the CTM leadership is only the manifestation of a deeper conflict. to destroy the capacity of the workers movement to resist.
Pursuing this objective, the government is not prepared to rely even on
leaders such as Fidel Velazquez. The proof of the problems the CTM poses for the government and the bosses is that finally some of the CTM strikes are being negotiated and settled while Fidel is out of the country. They are being settled in poor conditions but they are being settled. On the other hand, those strikes led by independent trade unionists are being dealt with in a more arrogant and intransigent way. These strikers do not are not proposing some new form of political conciliation with them. it does mean is that together with the unions the bureaucrats are the unions they cannot maintain their
In the last analysis, they have to defend the unions, even if only to maintain their benefits.
We can work with them to some exmade the point that a strike wave is a natural phenomenon in a democratic society, but simultaneously confirmed the scope of the strikes, in general terms, when it noted that 35 per cent of the strike notices led to actual strikes, another 35 per cent were postponed, and the remaining 30 per cent ended with a settlement.
While it might lead to exaggeration to calculate the number of strikes that even get any offers.
To recognize this fact does not mean having illusions in the bureaucratic leaders nor forgetting their betrayals. We are only digging their own graves faster.• tent now in defending the unions if they are prepared to mobilize and fight. they are not prepared to do that, they
ABAJO AUSTERIDAD PRISTA PRT demonstrates against austerity (DR)
actually broke out on the basis of these figures and the 170,000 notices originally issued - which would lead us to a figure of 60,000 actual strikers - what is certain is that thousands, or even tens of thousands of people went out on strike. And their numbers were further increased by those who struck afterwards, on June 17 and 18.
We are living through one of the most important moments of the process of recovery and reorganization of the Mexican workers' movement. The government and bosses succeeded in keeping the wage increases minute, and in postponing them into the future, so as to meet the commitments they made to the International Monetary Fund. But even so, these days of struggle, preparing for strikes, and actually striking, have greatly increased the confidence and organization of the workers, and they indicate that a general fightback is beginning against the austerity plans.
In the heat of the struggle, the isolated strikes at DINA at the start of the year led in a few days to joint actions, to coordinated strikes, and culminated in the formation of regional trade-union coordinating bodies and workers-unity pacts.
These are the most valuable fruits of the struggle, and they must be preserved and developed. Such achievements were won in opposition to the bosses, the government and also to the trade-union bureaucrats, who tried to hold back the
The alternative that has arisen to the
Mexican workers forge unity in social pacts between bosses and workers proposed by the Mexican Labor Confederation (CTM) and rudely rejected by the government are unity pacts between trade unions engaged in struggle.
The postponements have given way to more and more actual strikes.