Patricio de La Cruz Marcos, a 25-year-old worker from the Autoliv factory, was murdered. His lifeless body was found on Saturday, March 30. Local media and social networks that support the workers spread the news, interviewing their brother Fredy and other relatives, who ask for help to collect the 35 thousand pesos needed to transport the body to Veracruz, his homeland.
By CST-Mexico
Several witnesses, who say they saw him beaten by state police, are not willing to file a complaint. Patricio and Fredy arrived a few years ago to work in the maquiladoras. Fredy and his family approached the strike camp in front of Coca-Cola, which has become the center for gathering and disseminating the resistance of activism in struggle, to appeal to the solidarity of the working people of Matamoros. There , Juan Luís Gaitán, spokesman and leader of the Coca-Cola strike expressed the need to organize worker self-defense to avoid these attacks in the face of total mistrust in the “investigations of the authorities”.
This murder is part of the repressive wave led by PAN governor Cabeza de Vaca, to defend the interests and dictates of the imperialist bosses established in that border state. It is clear that this murderous viciousness is related to the brutality shown by the managers and bosses at Coca-Cola (see note) and also at the site of the Mecalux, FluxMetals, Agrochemicals and Scientific Advances factories by an army of state police and riot police to violently displace the workers’ pickets. One of the companies expressed orally that it was willing to accept the demands. But the employer-government pact was stronger and they refused to sign it.
We have no doubt that this anti-worker plot is not only at the state level but also at the federal level. And that the government is more concerned about the interest of “investors” and “labor peace” at any price , than for the justice of workers’ demands. There is plenty of data: private meetings of the president with the main CTM charro , trips by the Secretary of Interior to meet with hangman governor Cabeza de Vaca, rejection of the strikes and indifference and passivity before the almost 5,000 workers dismissals,by Local and Federal Labor agencies …
What else is needed to see which side they are on?
These are heroic struggles that have lasted more than 70 days, arising from the grassroots, overcoming soldout union charros . An independent trade union organization is proposed. The workers of Matamoros are a torch that marks the way for the rest of the Mexican working class. That is why the capitalist class and the governments that serve it, including the so called “Fourth Transformation”government , want to liquidate this movement as soon as possible ,because it is a nightmare for the owners of power and money on both sides of the border with the U.S. Because the workers in their heroic struggle are pointing little by little to what is the true necessary Transformation and what kind of government Mexico needs.
For all these reasons, from the CST of Mexico and the IWL, we call on all national and international organizations to redouble the moral, political and material solidarity with the workers of Matamoros at this critical moment. Lets condemn the cowardly murder of Patricio de La Cruz and the brutal repression of the state police.
Demand the Mexican government and president AMLO not to continue their complicit silence, while trying to crush a genuine movement of a part of the people who voted for him and believed his promises.
