Mike Kimel: The Upcoming Liberation of Mexico (and Parts of Africa)

Mike Kimel writes about The Upcoming Liberation of Mexico (and Parts of Africa).

All of this, taken together, suggests that Mexico is an awful place for Mexican and non-Mexican people alike. And yet, the land has so much promise. Plus great weather. The humane and socially aware solution is obvious: the government of Mexico must be overthrown. Ideally, it would be replaced by indigenous, peaceful, inclusive, tolerant, non-racist, intersectional, organic and home-grown Mexicanx policies and traditions. Obviously, in Mexico, that would be a social structure derived from Aztec culture. That would be the ideal outcome. However, given the conditions people in Mexico are willing to tolerate to get to and live in the US, the bar is very, very low. That means the odds of making things worse are infinitesimally small.

So for this operation, the likelihood of success is large, the probability of failure is tiny, and the benefits are huge. What’s not to like about regime change in Mexico? Furthermore, the benefits of this regime change wouldn’t accrue just to Mexicans and African refugees who are currently trapped in Mexico. Even white supremacists — who because they are in the majority in the US would bear the bulk of the cost in blood and treasure — would have a benefit: penance. The karmic load they carry would diminish slightly, and they might even develop some empathy. Some white supremacists might stop and think about how the world could have turned out but for their accident of birth. With a different history, America’s white supremacists would have all ended up in Mexico. Conversely, the Mexican population (together with America’s minority population and the few white Americans who are racially aware) might have ended up living in the US, perhaps even a US operating along pre-Columbian Mexican norms.

Now, this opportunity for racist white people to achieve some small measure of redemption doesn’t have to stop with Mexico. In fact, it shouldn’t stop with Mexico. From the LA Times article, it is clear there are people in countries in Africa who could be spared having to flee their homeland if the white supremacists in the US would develop a small measure of humanity and overthrow their governments too. Now I know what you’re thinking… we heard a similar “we will be greeted as liberators” line about a decade and a half ago. But it was different then. The motives were selfish. Our leaders thought they were acting to make Americans safer, and to make matters worse, they didn’t even bother to differentiate between the safety of the racist majority who should just die already and those who are worthy of such safety.

Emphasis Mine

Kimel is being sarcastic here. The US government currently loves the Mexican and African governments. If the US government did not, the CIA would be busy trying to overthrow these foreign governments.

The litany of US interventions to overthrow unfriendly governments can be found here.

The US government does not give a fuck about ordinary people whether they are white, black, brown, yellow, red, etc.. All Capitalist governments want to divide us by race, gender, sexual preferences, culture, history, language, nationality, etc..

It is up to we workers to develop our own consciousness about how the current world is constructed to benefit the rich and screw over the poor.

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Mexico: Missing student struggle reflects deeper issues

David T. Rowlands writes that Missing student struggle reflects deeper issues in Mexico.

Post-NAFTA Mexico is an increasingly apocalyptic wasteland of crony capitalism and violent state-directed political repression. The embattled, chronically under-funded network of rural teacher training colleges, to which thes abducted students belonged, represents one of the last remaining bastions of the progressive ideals of the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution.

Addressing the problem of structural, ethnically-based inequality, a problem common to all Latin American societies, was one of the key aims of the revolution.

At the core of the revolution, which started in 1910 as an armed revolt against an autocratic ruler, was a strong vein of democratic aspirations and social reform.

Many of leading activists recognised that building a strong public education system was one of the essential keys to bringing the impoverished and largely indigenous masses into the fold of a new and fairer nation. Close to 50 normal rurals were established in the 1920s to train the children of illiterate farmers from small communities to become teachers.

After graduating, these normalistas — often the first members of their family to receive any sort of education — returned to their villages and towns to helping to educate the next generation.

Politically, these colleges have always been associated with left-wing political views. The students see themselves as the vanguard of a revolutionary wave that would undo the indigenous dispossession that was the founding sin of modern Mexico and Latin America in general.

When a student is selected to attend one of these colleges, they are inculcated with the idea that a public educator is by their very nature a social activist, dedicated to the improvement of the lives of others.

Emphasis Mine

This is why Capitalist fear free, public education: it creates people who want to change the system, instead of compliant workers and consumers.

But therein lies the contradiction in the current Capitalist economy—the jobs that compliant, unthinking workers can do are disappearing as the jobs are being automated or sent off-shore. The well-paying jobs that remain require a highly educated workers who are creative and flexible thinkers. The problem for the Capitalists is how to control these workers?

As always, when the state runs out of incentives to maintain control, it reverts to naked force.

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Mexico: 2014 saw a resurgence of the broad opposition movement

Dan La Botz writes Mexico: 2014 saw a resurgence of the broad opposition movement.

Moreover, it should be remembered that the United States government will never permit: 1) the coming to power of a left government, either through election or revolution; 2) a military coup; or 3) a total breakdown in social order. The United States must maintain a nominal democracy in Mexico, because it cannot preserve democracy in North America and in its “own backyard” (as Mexico is always so disrespectfully called), it will lose credibility throughout the world. To say nothing of the billions of dollars of US investments in Mexico that must be preserved. Consequently, Washington has spent $3 billion in the last six years on the Mérida Intiative, a border security, counter-narcotics and counterterrorism program established by the George W. Bush administration in 2008. The US Defense Department also spends millions of dollars to train the Mexican military. The United States will not permit Mexico to go South.

…

With the resurgence of a broad opposition movement in Mexico, the last four months of 2014 represented a dramatic turn in the fortunes of the government of Enrique Peña Neto and his PRI party. The Ayotzinapa solidarity movement and the call for a constituent assembly to “refound” Mexico represent serious social and political challenges to the president, the ruling party and to the existing political system.

At the moment, the working class remains on the sidelines, more a spectator than a participant. Social change in 2015 will depend in large measure on resurgence of working-class activity as well.

Emphasis Mine

Democracy is always dangerous for the Capitalists for people with the wrong ideas could get elected and start doing harm to the interests of the Capitalists. So, we have the facade of democracy while real power is concentrated in the bureaucracy, barracks, and board-rooms.

We can never have true democracy until all of the organs of power (state, military, and economic) are answerable to the popular will.

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Mexico: Can worker-owners make a big factory run?

Jane Slaughter investigates Mexico: Can worker-owners make a big factory run?

Slaughter asks:

How does a workers' cooperative with 1050 members function? It’s hard enough for workers' ownership to succeed at any size, because any company that competes in a market is subject to the same cost-cutting rat race as a capitalist firm. Workers are impelled to hammer themselves and cut their own pay or be driven out of business. And most workers here have just a middle-school education.

Yet the TRADOC co-op translation: Democratic Workers of the West—is thriving. Enthusiastic worker-owners have modernised their plant, increasing productivity and quality through their skilled work. Those factors together with their admittedly low prices have made it possible for them to compete on the world market.

The workers have done away with foremen because they supervise themselves. The management of the plant is at three (3) levels:

1. “TRADOC holds a general assembly only twice a year, but that assembly holds veto power over important decisions such as selling assets, making investments and buying machinery.”
2. The day-to-day running is handled by an administrative council consisting of:
• Cooper Tyre of Findlay Ohio has four (4) members;
• TRADOC Co-op has three (3) members
3. A general manager who is not a member of the co-op.

Despite what Slaughter portrays, TRADOC is not really a worker-owned factory. The co-op is a minority shareholder with a capitalist firm as the majority shareholder.

Slaughter concludes that:

But once the co-op started: it’s a pleasure to relate that workers really do run a factory better than the bosses. Not only do they control the plant floor, with no need for overseers, they come up with ideas to improve production in both senses: more and better tyres, less scrap — but also fewer backbreaking jobs.

This the same experience as the FASINPAT Zanon plant in Argentina as reported in Argentine Factory Wins Legal Battle. However, the Mexican experience has not exposed the workers to the same political battles as seen in Argentina.

The Argentine experience is more interesting politically because the workers expropriated the property of the Capitalists. They had to be more politically conscious to do this. They were assisted in their struggle with the Capitalists by the local government. So, a true workers' movement has not been born yet. But the workers can reflect upon this experience.

It would be interesting to see how Pope Francis I interprets this Argentine experiences in his teachings.

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