TAMAULIPAS, MEXICO — Capitalism has murdered, through one of its criminal gangs, 72 immigrant workers. From the moment immigrant workers cross into Mexico they are harassed and extorted by the immigration authorities, criminal gangs, and the police. These criminals steal immigrant workers’ money or kidnap them to force their relatives in the U.S. to pay a ransom that can range from $1,500 to $5,000. Some are forced to work as slaves in clandestine factories, drug fields, prostitution, or as servants in criminals’ dens. Many who refuse are brutally murdered, as was the case here, or are killed while running away from immigration cops or gangs. It’s a true descent into hell.

The worldwide capitalist crisis has added seven million more to the number of the poor in Mexico alone. Modern capitalism concentrates wealth in fewer and fewer hands. The majority of the wealth of the world has become concentrated in a few countries, like the U.S., and that’s why many of our brothers and sisters, in spite of all the risks, are forced to migrate in search of jobs.

Only a communist revolution that smashes all borders and unites our class can put an end to this living hell for all workers. The death of our brothers and sisters motivates us to fight even harder against this criminal system.

Every year, close to 600,000 immigrant workers, mainly from Central and South America, cross the borders from Mexico into the U.S. Almost 20,000 are kidnapped. These workers are desparate to escape the misery, crime and unemployment of their home countries, harshly learning that under capitalism there is no escape. Many die; the rest find more exploitation and poverty. The essence of this system, in any corner of the world, is to extract the maximum profit from workers’ sweat. The only escape is revolution.

The reaction of the Mexican government to the murder of the 72 immigrants was hypocritical. They blamed narco-traffickers and approved an empty plan that pretends to protect immigrant workers. The drug trade is one of the most profitable businesses in Mexico which couldn’t be the case if there was truly an effort to combat narco-trafficking. The actual purpose of their “war on drugs” is to terrorize workers, build the military to counter workers’ rebellions and to support those criminal gangs allied with the government. When innocent people die in their confrontations, Calderón and his accomplices mockingly say that they were “collateral damage.” That’s what workers’ lives means to them.

The bosses’ media hyped the accounts of the massacre as part of their terrorizing propaganda. They pushed the nationalist idea of “unity of all Mexicans” as if workers and migrants have anything in common with their billionaire bosses. They shed crocodile tears for the slave-like conditions of immigrant workers, but hide or deny the wage slavery endured by millions of workers in this country and around the world.

In the U.S. the bosses and their media organize racist government and right-wing militia attacks that attempt to blame immigrants for the capitalists’ own financial crisis and runaway unemployment.

In some communities, mainly in the southern region of Mexico, people have organized to provide food and shelter to immigrant workers. This worker solidarity shows it is possible to defeat the racism and nationalism that divide us. This type of organization is the only thing that the government will try to destroy through its recently-approved agreements of protections for immigrants.

We must take the communist ideas of CHALLENGE to those communities and help transform that solidarity into a fight to destroy the cause of the problems: that the only way to escape this hell is through a communist revolution that would sweep away misery, all borders, and racism. That’s the best way to honor the death of our 72 brothers and sisters. J