National Week of Resistance in Mexico: "Stop the War Against the People!"

5 December 2017. A World to Win News Service. The following is from Aurora Roja, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization (OCR), Mexico (aurora-roja.blogspot.com). It has been slightly edited for length.

They are killing, disappearing, torturing, and repressing us in unprecedented numbers, we women, activists, journalists, youth, immigrants, poor people, LGBT people, and the 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 we live under.

In response to the Urgent Call to Action for the Fifth National Week of Resistance 6-12 November 2017, there were several actions in the Oaxaca Mixteca [an area in south-central Mexico that is part of the homeland of the Mixteca indigenous people] 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 Isn't Negligent, It's Criminal!"

An important advance this year was the participation of a wider range of forces in the Week, including the National Network of Resistance "Stop the War Against the People!" (RNRAGCP), Teachers' Commission on Human Rights, National Union of Educational Workers Chapter 22 (COMADH), Revolutionary People's Movement (MPR), Revolutionary Communist Organization Mexico (OCR, M), Francisco Villa Independent People's Front (FPFVI), Norma Esther Andrade, 28 October People's Union of Street Sellers and Peddlers (UPVA-28), Carmen Zamora Foundation, General Assembly of Workers (AGT), Representative and Sectorial Coordinating Committee of the National Union of Education Workers Chapter 22 Sector 01 Tlaxiaco and students at the Teposcolula Experimental Teachers Training College.

In addition to distributing thousands of copies of the Call for the Week, thousands of copies of a text by the OCR, M were also distributed, analyzing the war against the people that has meant more than 200,000 murders, 30,000 disappeared, and 7 femicides [killings of women] 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 College, with the participation of the students, who were welcomed by the MC, a woman student. She read parts of the Call at the beginning and during the course of the forum, which included presentations by a representative of teacher and student organizations, and an activist of the Revolutionary People's Movement. Approximately 30 people attended, most of them women students, some with their babies.

In a public space in the small city of Tlaxiaco there was a screening of a documentary about the massacre by federal and state police in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, on 19 June 2016, with film of scenes, eyewitness accounts by people who were wounded, children who suffered from the tear gas, and one who lost his father to police bullets. Before dark, teachers and MPR people placed a clothesline to hang posters and reports of various crimes that military forces, federal and state police have committed and other 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. The next evening, an enthusiastic political-cultural event was held with the participation of urban youth culture performers. Another clothesline of posters and banners featured the two main slogans of the Week and another from the MPR: "Humanity Needs Revolution and the New Synthesis of Communism!" 

The week closed on Saturday, 11 November with a rally and march from the Tlaxiaco plaza to the public prosecutor's office, with the participation of some 200 angry demonstrators, mainly teachers. They chanted slogans such as: "Stop the War Against the People! The State Isn't Negligent, It's 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! Nationwide resistance against the criminal state!" People came out of businesses to watch the march and take the flyers. 

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, in the state of Mexico, pointing out that it is a criminal state because they cover up for the aggressors. When women call out the officials of these institutions, the police harass and threaten the women themselves. She also said that through the mobilization of the people, they managed to rescue a teenage girl who had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Although she was kidnapped by traffickers, the institutions of (in)justice drag their feet, covering up the criminals. A woman activist also spoke in representation of the fathers and mothers of the 43 disappeared education students from Ayotzinapa. She pointed out that the central 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, saying, "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."

An activist from the Revolutionary People's Movement spoke to the dimensions of this war against the people, giving examples of people disappeared by the state security forces or whose disappearance the state has covered up. He said the state serves the predominantly capitalist system where a handful of Mexican 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 system and its state. What is needed to put an end to these crimes against the people and many others is a communist revolution. A communist revolution that can create a new socialist society. For this revolutionary struggle we have the guidance of Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism, and we also have the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico.

From the auditorium one person said: "You talked about the source of what is causing all these crimes. What do you 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 definitively 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 for Carlos Sinuhé Cuevas Mejía (a political murder the Mexico City government is still trying to cover up) and Victoria Pamela Salas (a young woman brutally murdered last September) was held on 10 November 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, Lourdes Mejía (the mother of Carlos) and family members of Luís Roberto Malagón, a student found unconscious on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His father opposed the authorities' attempt to close the case on his death by claiming it was a suicide.

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, including, importantly, slum dwellers from the Francisco Villa Independent People's Front as well as some people from the General Assembly of Workers and the MPR. 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, eight young athletes were arrested by the police in 2009 and are still missing. The police have denied detaining and slandered the victims, declaring that maybe they were "involved in something" (criminal activity). The relatives themselves are the ones who are investigating and finding evidence that prove the police are guilty and who oppose 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 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 happens not only in Veracruz but in different ways throughout the country.

(Just before the Week of Resistance, on 4 November, people chanting "Away With Trump, Away With [Mexican President] Peña Nieto, Down With the Whole System!" demonstrated in the streets of Puebla, Tlaxiaco and Mexico City, in unity with the militant demonstrations in 24 cities in the United States demanding, "This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!")