MEXICO, May 27—"I no longer have faith, this is horrible...I am demanding a public apology from Smith Medical and they must assume responsibility for destroying my family...They are scoundrels," said Juan, a Tijuana worker, who was tearful, who lost his wife and 25-year-old daughter, both to coronavirus. Mother and daughter both worked in the company and did not receive adequate and timely medical attention. Despite having all the symptoms of COVID-19, the doctor at the plant told them it was a simple flu. He only prescribed pain relievers to get them back to work. Until, both worsened and died in a Social Security hospital, just over a week apart. This news was released weeks before the peak of the pandemic and shows that neither companies nor the government care about the lives of workers.
No solutions under a profit system
On March 31, the General Health Council of the Mexican government decreed a health emergency because of COVID-19. Therefore, non-essential activities in the public, social, or private sectors should have been suspended. Many businesses did not comply with that provision and the government let it be. In the state of Baja California, largely due to worker protests at some plants, some 50 companies that were not performing essential activities were successfully suspended. But, the governor and businessman Jaime Bonilla, who is a member of the ruling party Morena, reopened them on May 4 saying that they were part of the supply chain of essential products.
The Progressive Labor Party mourns the death of our working-class sisters and brothers. We also mourn the deaths of all the workers who have died from the inability of this criminal capitalist system to care for their lives and health. We honor their memories with courage to fight this murderous system and build a new society where no worker dies for the profits of a few. We fight for workers like Juan N. to regain confidence in their own class and in a future of social equality.
Unfortunately, the case of Juan N, his wife and daughter are not isolated. As of May 16, in Baja California, 519 people had died from COVID-19, of those 432 were maquiladora workers. At the national level, the State ranks second in deaths and third in infections. While the maquilas hide the outbreaks, the workers are the ones who report their health and that of their colleagues. A worker at the U.S. subsidiary Breg, Inc., which manufactures medical supplies, said she contracted the virus at the plant where she worked. Although there were positive cases within the company, the bosses did not apply any measures to prevent the workers in the factory and their families from becoming infected.
Communism is the cure
Under capitalism the lives of the workers do not matter; we have no value; we are disposable. The only thing that matters is the bosses' profits. The bosses use their state power to appropriate the wealth workers produce when they transform raw materials into merchandise.
Under a communist society led by the working class, our lives and needs will be the main social interest. Under communism, if necessary, all activity to protect the lives of workers would be stopped; social organization and the strength of the communist state would guarantee that this would be the case.
This was the case when workers in the Soviet Union and China faced and eliminated many diseases that continue to plague millions of people in the world today and others that re-emerge such as tuberculosis and leprosy.
Even in the current pandemic, there are workers organizing collectively to face the virus. Lessons from this period are nuggets for building a new communist society. We encourage all workers to read CHALLENGE and build social ties with workers on the basis of fighting for a better world.