From Aurora Roja, the voice of the Organización Comunista Revolucionaria, Mexico.

“The State Is Not Negligent, It Is Criminal!” Proclaimed During the 5th National Week of Resistance “Stop the War Against the People!”

November 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

They are killing, disappearing, torturing, and repressing in unprecedented numbers we women, activists, journalists, youth, immigrants, poor people, LGBT people, and people in general. We must resist, we must unite, we must say no more, we must stop this war against the people. We cannot let them get away with it, we cannot let them reduce us to people who are frightened, paralyzed and demoralized, trampled under the boot of those at the top. No! ... We need to double down in the struggle, and we need to forge an independent movement opposed to the state, the ruling classes and the criminal system, which without hesitation calls out their criminal nature, and strives to develop the consciousness, militancy and organization of the people in order to stop this reactionary war and contribute to finally put an end to the current inhuman system in which we live.

In response to this “Urgent Call to Action for the 5th National Week of Resistance” from November 6 to 12, there were several actions in the Mixteca in the State of Oaxaca and Mexico City, as well as agitation and leafleting in the state of Puebla and the city of Oaxaca, with the central slogans of “Stop the War Against the People!” and “The State Is Not Negligent, It Is Criminal!”

An important advance this year was the participation of a wider range of forces in the Week: National Network of Resistance “Stop the War Against the People!” (RNRAGCP), Magisterial Commission on Human Rights, SNTE Chapter 22 (COMADH), Movimiento Popular Revolucionario (MPR), Organización Comunista Revolucionaria, México (OCR, M), Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente (FPFVI), Norma Esther Andrade, Unión Popular de Vendedores y Ambulantes “28 de Octubre” (UPVA-28), Carmen Zamora Foundation, General Assembly of Workers (AGT), Representative and Sectorial Coordinator of the National Union of Education Workers Chapter 22, Sector 01 Tlaxiaco, Students of the Teposcolula Experimental Teachers Training School.

In addition to distributing thousands of copies of the Call for the Week, thousands of copies of the analysis of the Organización Comunista Revolucionario, Mexico, were also distributed, analyzing the war against the people, which has meant more than 200,000 murders, 30,000 disappeared, and 7 femicides a day, “a kind of preventive counterinsurgency, in which hundreds of thousands of people are being killed, before a mass insurgency has emerged.”

In Oaxaca, the Week began with a speakout forum in the Teposcolula Experimental Teachers Training School, with the participation of the students, giving the welcome and with a student playing the role of MC. She read parts of the Call at the beginning and during the course of the forum, which included presentations by a representative of the Sectorial Committee of the Teachers Union of Tlaxiaco, a woman from the Committee in Defense of Education, a representative of the Teachers Training School committee, a teacher representative of workers of the school, and an activist of the Movimiento Popular Revolucionario [MPR]. Approximately 30 people attended, most of them women students, some with their babies.

On Thursday, there was a screening, in the municipal esplanade of Tlaxiaco, of a documentary about the massacre by federal and state police in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, on June 19, 2016, with film of scenes, testimonies of wounded people, children who suffered from the tear gas, and one who lost his father from police bullets. Before dark, teachers and MPR people placed a clothesline around the pavilion on the esplanade to hang posters and reports of various crimes that military forces, federal and state police have committed such as Ayotzinapa, Nochixtlán, Tanhuato, Tlatlaya, and others, as well as other crimes, like femicides that state institutions are covering up. There were about a hundred people at different points watching the screening of the documentary, including students, teachers and others.

On Friday, November 10, an enthusiastic political-cultural event was held with the participation of youth from the urban culture, Break Dance, Hip Hop, and Rap, with another clothesline of posters with exposures and banners with the two main slogans of the week and another, from the MPR, of “What Humanity Needs: Revolution, and the New Synthesis of Communism.” Among the various cultural presentations, parts of the Call were read.

The week closed on Saturday, November 11, with a rally and march from the Tlaxiaco plaza to the public prosecutor’s office, with the participation of some 200 demonstrators, mainly teachers. The march through the streets was militant. From the beginning teachers and MPR people did agitation and exposure of the crimes by state forces. They were chanting slogans such as: Stop the War Against the People!; The State Is Not Negligent, It Is Criminal! What do the people who died in Nochixtlán want? Justice! What do the missing students of Ayotzinapa want? Justice! What do women want who are raped and murdered? Justice!; The problem is the system, the solution is the revolution! Faced with the criminal state, nationwide resistance! There were people coming out of the businesses to watch the march and get the flyers. The rally was concluded with the participation of the MPR and a teacher from Chapter 22 of the teachers union. Among other cases, people called out the recent repression of young education students in the city of Oaxaca and the crime in which a student from the Rural Teaching College of Tamazulapán was denied medical attention after an abortion. The education students are demanding the dismissal of all the authorities at this school, who are guilty of the death of this young woman.

In Mexico City, the Week began with a forum at the Autonomous University of Mexico City, San Lorenzo Tezonco campus, with a student as moderator. In the forum, Carmen Zamora called out the crimes against women in Ecatepec, State of Mexico, pointing out that it is a criminal state because they cover up for the aggressors, and when the women call out the officials of these institutions, the women themselves become the ones who are threatened and harassed by the police. She also said that through the mobilization of the people, they managed to retrieve an adolescent girl who was kidnapped and forced into prostitution in a network of trafficking in women, although the institutions of (in)justice drag their feet, covering up the criminals.

A compañera also spoke in representation of the fathers and mothers of the 43 disappeared education students from Ayotzinapa. She said that they have been calling out and fighting against the state for more than three years as the guilty party in the murder of three students and in the disappearance of the other 43. In this fight they have learned about many more cases where the state is committing crimes such as the “femicides that are on the rise in Mexico, the disappearance and murder of many young people. In Guerrero, that is happening and people are leaving their communities because they cannot live there anymore.” She pointed out that the state is criminal because in the case of the education students who have been murdered and disappeared, “it has been demonstrated and it is known that the army and the police were involved in all this.” She made a call to support the struggle, and noted that “we are determined to get to where we have to go, we call on you to continue accompanying us to demand justice, punish the guilty and find out what happened with our young people, to get to the truth.”

A compañero from the Movimiento Popular Revolucionario spoke to the dimensions of this war against the people. For example, during the government of the criminal César Duarte [ex-governor of the State of Chihuahua], they were saying that there were only about 500 disappeared, but later it was found out that there were up to 3,600. This state is not negligent, it is criminal because many times they commit these crimes or cover them up: it serves the mainly capitalist system, where a handful of national and foreign capitalists and landowners exploit and oppress the majority of the people. In this situation it is both necessary and possible to generate a resistance that opposes this state and its system. In order to put an end to these crimes and many others that are being committed against the people, communist revolution is needed. A communist revolution that can create a new socialist society, and for this revolutionary struggle we have the guidance of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism, and we also have the Organización Comunista Revolucionaria, Mexico.

From the auditorium one person said: “You talked about the source of what is causing all these crimes. What do the compañeras hope to get from their cases, do you think that they will be solved, and those of so many more people? Or should we get to the root of things in order to get rid of them?” In response to this question, the MPR person stated that it is important to stand up and fight together with the thousands who are already doing so, and to be able to generate a movement of growing resistance that calls out without hesitation the state as criminal and which opposes this state. You need militancy and struggle. And this contributes to the communist revolution that is the only thing that can definitely end these crimes and many more that are being committed against the people. Two things are needed: resistance opposing these state crimes, and to urgently prepare for the revolution that can free humanity from this capitalist-imperialist system.

A rally for justice was also held for Carlos Sinuhé Cuevas Mejía (a political murder that the Mexico City government is still trying to cover up) and Victoria Pamela Salas (a young woman brutally murdered last September), on Friday, November 10, at the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office. Some 60 people participated, including people from the General Assembly of Workers, the MPR and relatives of Diana, a young woman murdered in Chimalhuacán, a State of Mexico municipality on the outskirts of Mexico City. In front of the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office, all the speakers called out how in different ways the authorities have been covering up the criminals. Among other speakers were: Lourdes Mejía, Carlos’s mother, who has been demanding justice for six years. The family members of Luís Roberto Malagón also participated. His father called out the authorities of Mexico City and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), who are trying to file away the case of his death as a suicide, when there are signs of murder. They have started a fight to demand that the truth be uncovered in the crime against their son, who was a student at the Law School, who was found unconscious on the campus. He died on August 23, 2017, after being in a coma for five days. His father asked everyone for support in this fight against the authorities that are covering up this crime; his mother did the same thing at the close of the Week in front of the federal Attorney General’s Office.

The Week of Resistance culminated in Mexico City with a march and rally from the Palace of Fine Arts to the federal Attorney General’s Office, in which some 65 people participated, importantly people from barrios of the Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente, as well as some people from the General Assembly of Workers and the Movimiento Popular Revolucionario. Lourdes Mejía and the relatives of Luís Roberto Malagón also participated.

In the course of promoting the National Week of Resistance, other crimes were learned of, for example in Veracruz, where the police and the army have been part of the disappearances and the murder of youth. In one of these cases, eight young people, all of them athletes, were arrested by the police in 2009 and are still missing. One of their friends witnessed the arrest by the police. Shortly afterwards, at the police headquarters, the sister of one of the young men, accompanied by the witness, demanded to see the detainees and be told the reasons for their detention. However, the police denied detaining the youths. Since then, she has been fighting against these state forces that cover up their own crime by slandering the victim: they repeat time and again that “maybe he was involved in something.” The relatives themselves are the ones who are investigating and finding evidence that prove the police are guilty, and deny the criminalization of so many murdered and disappeared youths.

In another case in Veracruz, a woman reported that a young man appeared before the civil authorities to complain that he faced threats from organized crime for his refusal to get involved with them. Soon after, members of the military tracked him down in order to tell him, “You don’t know anything!” When he insisted that he did have information and that he was threatened, the soldiers raised their tone, threatening him: “You don’t know anything!” These soldiers, as well as the police and civil authorities, are criminals in collusion with other criminals. And this not only happens in Veracruz but it happens in different ways throughout the country.

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