Mexico: The New President Will Be the Head of the Same Criminal State and Will Have to Serve the Same Evil and Obsolete System

September 3, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The following statement from the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico, was translated from Spanish by revcom.us; the original article appeared at aurora-roja.blogspot.com.

1. The victory of AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador, recently elected president of Mexico] and Morena [AMLO’s electoral coalition] in the elections is fundamentally the product of the sharp contradictions that are tearing this society apart.

2. This is the product, on the one hand, of the anger of large sections of the people facing an increasingly unbearable situation: The intolerable repression and the devastating violence against women, indigenous peoples, young people, journalists, and the people in general; growing inequalities and relentless poverty; almost absolute impunity; corruption and unchecked degradation of the ruling authorities and institutions; racist attacks against immigrants and Mexicans by the fascist regime in the United States, with the vile conciliation of the Mexican government; as well as so many other unconscionable crimes. All this led millions to reject the main political parties in power, and approximately 30 million voted for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in search of a change that they thought would bring some hope. Every honest person has to feel a little satisfaction for the beating suffered by the mainstream parties of the “old guard,” but as we have already analyzed in detail, the AMLO and Morena government is not going to lead to any fundamental change in the current intolerable situation for the people (see “Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico: We Need to Overthrow This System, Not Try to ‘Democratize’ It: AMLO, the EZLN and the Revolution We Need”).

3. Furthermore, AMLO’s victory was the product of the convergence of powerful forces seeking the stability of the current, predominantly capitalist system against the anger of broad sections of the people. At bottom, it was these representatives of the ruling classes who controlled the electoral process and determined the outcome. The group around former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, guilty of so many crimes against the people, refused to remove José Antonio Meade Kuribreña [presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party; PRI] from the electoral competition even when it was clear that he was not going to win and several big capitalists asked him to drop out of the competition in order to unify the opposition to AMLO around Ricardo Anaya Cortés [the presidential candidate for the PAN, National Action Party]. The clashes and rivalries among the “old” (and most hated) representatives (from the PRI, PAN and PRD [Party for the Democratic Revolution]) of the big Mexican capitalists and foreign capitalists favored Morena (the “newcomer” representative of the same ruling classes), and their defamation campaigns also led to increased support for AMLO. Before the elections, an agreement was reached between AMLO and a group of big businessmen that AMLO previously had called the “mafia in power” and who in turn had called him “a danger to Mexico.” Several imperialist banks and economic performance rating agencies stopped sounding the alarm, and conceded that given the “fedupness” in society, perhaps AMLO was the best option. Even the fascist Trump/Pence regime in the U.S. fell silent, did not move against AMLO and then expressed its approval for the results of the elections. All in all, AMLO convinced important sections of the ruling classes that he was not going to harm their interests, but instead he would work for them to prosper in an environment of greater stability and “social peace,” by means of the “social approval” that would be enjoyed by his government.

4. Neither AMLO nor Morena, nor any change of rulers in charge of the same system will lead to a fundamental change, and claiming that he will do so is a cruel deception that will only result in demoralization and prolong the horrors that we have been suffering. Who would be so deluded as to imagine that now we are going to see the end of the horrendous wave of femicides, much less an end to the patriarchal system and the oppression of women? To imagine that the centuries of oppression of the indigenous peoples will be overcome and the death projects of mining, energy, tourism and the rest will be stopped? To imagine that poverty will be eliminated? To imagine that there will be real justice for Ayotzinapa, Nochixtlán, San Fernando, Nuevo Laredo, Tlatlaya, Tanhuato, Apatzingán, and many other crimes of the state? All these horrors, and many more, are the product of the same dynamics of the world capitalist-imperialist system and of the predominantly capitalist system under imperialist domination in Mexico, and no change of rulers is going to fundamentally change these dynamics.

This system is based on the most cruel exploitation of the people and ruthless competition among capitalists (big businessmen) for maximum profit—of either eat or be eaten—and hence it generates all kinds of corruption, vileness and selfishness. What politicians and the mainstream media call “the market” actually represents all this: a system that exploits and destroys the lives of billions of human beings, and destroys nature and other species, in its incessant race to accumulate more wealth and beat out its competitors. It is a system that promotes and protects wars for empire of the big powers and their domination of the bulk of the countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

AMLO and Morena, like the other electoral parties, are representatives of this system and will fight for it “to function well,” without any important transformation of basic economic relations, which in turn determine class differences in society, and set the framework and limits for everything else. They will not bring any “fourth historical transformation” for Mexico, but rather, at best, some very limited changes in order to achieve greater stability for a deadly system and get a little more for the big Mexican bourgeoisie.

5. Revolution and new communism, and not elections controlled by the ruling classes, are the real path towards a radically different and much better society, and finally the emancipation of all humanity.

The big businessmen, the whole range of the electoral politicians, and the mainstream media bombard us with the chorus that this “great celebration of democracy” has expressed the “people’s will’ and demonstrated that Mexico is a “mature democracy.” So “democratic” was the electoral process that it was marked by the assassination of at least 130 candidates and local authorities, repeated onslaughts of rumors and defamation spread by the media, wholesale buying of votes by all the electoral parties, coercion of voters with the threat of losing jobs or benefits of social programs and, especially in Puebla, the armed robbery of ballot boxes and burning of ballots to impose, as governor, the wife of the former fascist governor Rafael Moreno Valle Rosas.

But none of that matters to the representatives of the ruling classes, because, for them, the deal is getting us to accept the continuation of their oppressive system as the “will of the people,” while, in reality, even in the most democratic capitalist countries, their elections give the people, at best, the “right” to choose which political representatives of the big capitalists and their system will continue to repress and oppress the people. “So long as society is divided into classes, there can be no ‘democracy for all’: one class or another will rule, and it will uphold and promote that kind of democracy which serves its interests and goals. The question is: which class will rule and whether its rule, and its system of democracy, will serve the continuation, or the eventual abolition, of class divisions and the corresponding relations of exploitation, oppression and inequality.” (BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, 1:22)

The only real and liberating solution is a revolution whose final goal is to end all class divisions, all forms of exploitation and oppression, in Mexico and finally in the entire world. This is the communist revolution, guided by the new communism developed by Bob Avakian, who has learned from the great advances but also from the mistakes of the past. By applying this more consistently scientific method, we can forge the truly communist leadership and the revolutionary people needed to make this revolution.

6. Many people yearn for a change in the face of many horrors being lived by the people. The new government, by representing and defending the same system, will necessarily dash those hopes. We must show people the possibility of a profound and true change and organize their determined struggle for a real revolution and a much better world.

—Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

July 2018

 

Deportees protest outside the transition house of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, waiting for Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, July 13, 2018.