Like all years in these dates, all the cities of the country show the patriotic colors. On balconies and windows, the tricolor flags flicker. This year, the sadness for the dead, mutilated, and the immense damage of the earthquake and the anger by the abandonment and cynicism of the government cross the throats of millions.
By GSO – Socialist Workers’ Group, Mexico.
As usual, the president and other “authorities” are preparing to commemorate the Call of Dolores in 1810, which began the war for Independence of Mexico. They prepare their false speeches full of “national fervor” and empty phrases, as they crouch before the gringo master to continue colonizing Mexico with NAFTA. We invite all working people to reflect on that lost independence that they celebrate, and to develop a program to recover it.
At dawn on September 16, 1810, it was the priest Miguel Hidalgo & Costilla who took the famous initiative of calling the people of Dolores, Guanajuato, to popular insurrection. Addressing the assembled crowd, he asked them: “Will you liberate yourselves? … Will you recover the lands stolen from your ancestors by the hated Spaniards for three hundred years?” … And the cry of Hidalgo and the mobilized ones was: Death to the bad government! … Death to the Spaniards ! … Viva Mexico! … Long live the independence!
Long and painful was the war for independence for the popular and peasant masses. Since then, different rich sectors and different imperialist powers have implemented “bad governments” to re-colonize Mexico and sack it in a thousand ways, exploiting, oppressing, and murdering its working people.
Today, Mexico is increasingly colonized
Today, we are almost a colony, mainly subjected to the United States. It is disgusting to see Peña Nieto – as before, Calderon, Fox, or Salinas – kneel before Trump and other representatives of foreign powers, while still giving away the wealth and effort of the Mexican people to the largest multinational corporations: GM, Ford, VW, IBM, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Nissan, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Hewlett Packard, Kimberly Clark, Oxxo, Wal-Mart, Mc Donalds, Citibank, Santander, Inbursa…
Industry, commerce, and finance are dominated by imperialist capital by 90%. In Mexico, we live in extreme inequality today: 1% of its inhabitants own 43% of the country’s wealth.
NAFTA is an economic example of Mexico’s colonial subordination. To hide the embarrassment of total surrender, they now decided to “modernize” it in “confidential” negotiations. That is, the delivery in silence, behind the people’s back!
And we are tied with political and military neocolonialism, with OAS and TIAR. Trump orders – as before, Obama and Bush – and the PRI and PAN respond “yes, Sir!”. The Merida initiative, signed before Bush in 2007, was deepened by Hillary Clinton in 2009. Pentagon personnel, the FBI, and the NSA operate as they please in Mexican territory, centralized from their command on Reforma Avenue… a few meters from the “Angel of Independence” statue.
But one of the greatest examples of colonial looting and loss of Mexican independence is the fraudulent and illegitimate scam they call: the foreign debt.
Today, this debt with the IMF and other international loan sharks continues to grow, with the EPN government. The forecast is that, by the end of the six-year term, it will represent 55% of GDP. However, since 2000 the governments of Mexico paid 7 times the value of the debt at that time.
And with his 5th address, EPN follows the nauseating farce: “The relationship with the new US government must be based on irrevocable principles: sovereignty, defense of the national interest and protection of our compatriots.”
Trump annulled DACA and threatened to deport or marginalize more than 800,000 young Mexicans, “dreamers,” and the regime has not taken any sovereign action against such aggression by the US government.
This 16 of September of 2017, we propose to the workers, peasants, and indigenous our scream:
Today, the struggle for independence will not be headed by clerics, nor rich “lords” like Slim, Bailleres, or Romo Garza, nor their political servants. Today it will be us, workers, peasants, and indigenous people who will take the path of Hidalgo and Morelos to establish our sovereign government. And this struggle will be uniting us on both sides of the border, with our migrant brothers and with the exploited and oppressed black, native, and white of all America. Our call today is:
Death to the bad government, footman of the gringos! Out with Peña! Not to NAFTA!
No to the payment of the usurious foreign debt!
Plan of public works of reconstruction of the regions affected by the earthquake, financed with increasing tax to the great local and foreign capitalist groups!
No to privatizing counter-reforms! Defend education, not punitive evaluation! Defend public health, free for all!
Let’s recover our natural resources with the nationalization of oil and mining, under the control of its workers!
Statization of banks and foreign trade!
Ayotzinapa lives, the fight goes on! Justice for Nochixtlan, Ostula, Tlanixco…!
Let us fight for a Second and definitive Independence!
