MEXICO, November 20 —  Tens of thousands of workers and youth demonstrated in several cities across the country and around the world on the anniversary of the 1912 nationalist Mexican Revolution, in what has been called the Fourth Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa. This was one in a series of protests demanding the return of the 43 student teachers disappeared on September 26 in that city. The local police with the complicity of the government, who then handed them over to the drug cartels.
The largest demonstration took place in Mexico City, where students, trade unionists, and mass organizations marched in three caravans led by the parents of the disappeared students. Members of Progressive Labor Party participated in this march, distributing 2,000 leaflets to Guerrero teachers, electricians and other workers marching in their mass organizations. Our assertion that communism is the only answer to capitalist terror was important in this protest because nationalism was the predominant ideology. The dismissal of president Peña Nieto and his cabinet is considered a solution.
For decades, rural teachers have earned the sympathy of the working class because of their commitment to their communities. For this reason, the bosses of Mexicanos Primero and the capitalist media like Televisa and TV Azteca have publicly accused rural schools of being guerrilla training places that must be eliminated. However, these accusations are really a cover to ensure the approval of the lucrative education reform, which will generate huge profits from turning education into even more of a commodity and will benefit the bosses who promote it.
Guerrero is one of the poorest states in the country with a long tradition of insurgent movements. The ruling class in this state has set up a sophisticated repressive apparatus involving the police, the military and drug lords. These groups, some of them trained and financed by the U.S., are responsible for the murder and disappearance of our youth.
According to the World Bank, 60 percent of youth in the world lack education and job opportunities; in Mexico that number is 70 percent. Conditions for the remaining youth are not much better: existing jobs are precarious, offering miserable salaries, with little or no benefits. They work long, exhausting hours, with some working 12-hour days, seven days a week. Mexico is one of the countries were the working class works the most hours per year.
Under these conditions, some youth end up involved in organized crime, or the use of drugs or alcohol. The ruling class has used this to criminalize them all and justify their police and military apparatus that in collaboration with organized crime has been terrorizing the working class.
Destroy the Capitalist System that Kills and Disappears Our Youth!
Ayotzinapa is not an isolated case of police terror. Thousands of unarmed Black and Latin youth are killed by the police in the U.S. Even in those instances when those crimes were videotaped, the police always argued they feared for their lives, and were sure they were threatened by “a drug-dealing, Black rapper youth,” a racist caricature. On the other side of the world, immigrants in many European countries are massacred by the police, as was the case of the Brazilian murdered by the racist British police, because he “looked like an Arab attempting to commit a terrorist act” in the city subway.
The murder and disappearance of our student-teachers is the product of a capitalist system that has nothing to offer our youth. The massive protests in Mexico and condemnation around the world show how painful crime is for the international working class.
The electoral political parties will not lead the working class to overthrow the capitalist system. Instead, they’d try to make us believe that only a few “corrupt” politicians are the only ones responsible, and that if we get rid of them and elect different politicians, all our problems would be solved and we’ll get justice. That’s a lie! Capitalism systematically kills and disappears our youth.
A system that has nothing to offer youth must be destroyed through a revolution led by a communist party. We workers must organize more workers and youth to be organized in our international communist PLP to lead a communist revolution to put an end to capitalist oppression and imperialist war. We are organizing additional Party members and friends to participate in the upcoming protests. We are also organizing meetings in our work areas to put this brutal crime in the context of imperialist war and the crisis of the capitalist system.