MEXICAN TROTSKYISTS CAMPAIGN FOR
DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM, SALVADOR AND POLAND
This interview was given to Gerry Foley in Paris in mid-January by Manuel Aguilar Mora, a leader of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT), Revolutionary Workers Party, Mexican section of the Fourth International. The transcript was translated and edited.
Question. The campaign that the PRT is running for the Mexican presidential elections that will be held on July 4 is the first major national election campaign that the Mexican Trotskyists have undertaken.
What is the social and political context of this election campaign?
Answer. The relative stability that has existed in the country is beginning to break down.
On the economic level, Mexico is starting to be drawn into the world recession, which up till now, thanks to the oil boom, it has been able to avoid. The economic crisis here will certainly be very deep.
The oil boom started in 1977. Mexican petroleum exports went from almost nothing to nearly two million barrels a day. The boom lasted until 1980. But in 1981 it started to wane. In May of that year, the U.S. succeeded in the first phase of its operation to break the back of OPEC. It forced down the price of oil by four dollars a barrel.
It is estimated that the cut in the oil price cost the Mexican government ten billion dollars last year. That is about one fourth of its total foreign debt. Mexico is now deeper in debt than Brazil, which had had the most massive debt of any country in the world.
What this loss of income means for Mexico can be seen if you consider that the other industries have been stagnating for some time and despite heavy investments in agriculture, the country is still obliged to import substantial quantities of grain and other foodstuffs. In particular, the oil income had been subsidizing the development of agriculture and food imports.
Q. What is the inflation rate?
A. It is running at about 30%, that is, three times that of the U.S. A devaluation of the peso is almost inevitable.
Q. How is the government respond ing to these difficulties? 14
A. For the first time, the government finds itself caught in a tight corner from which it can find no way out. It has to reduce its social spending, all the benefits that it has traditionally parcelled out as a means of social control. The vast bureaucracy of the government, the official party, the unions, official peasant associations, and so forth is based on this system of social benefits. So, the horizon is dark for the government.
2. What sort of impact has the revolutionary upsurge in Central America had on Mexico?
A. The main impact of the Salvadoran revolution is among workers and among the peasants. This is much more true than in the case of the Nicaraguan revolution. It is a thousand times more true than in the case of the Cuban revolution.
The Cuban revolution never had an important influence in Mexico outside of some student circles.
In the case of the Nicaraguan revolution, sections of the democratic and progressive bourgeoisie had considerable weight in the solidarity movement.
But the base of the movement of solidarity with El Salvador is essentially the worker and peasant masses.
The impact of the Salvador revolution is particularly strong among the poor masses in the Mexican states that border on Central American countries.
Take Chiapas, for example. This is the most important of the border states. It is very backward. The conditions there are quite similar to those in the Central American countries.
There is a large Native American population, many of whom do not speak Spanish. They are to a large extent part of one Mayan nation that extends throughout the area. And so they identify very closely with the struggle of the Native Americans in Guatemala in particular, who are their people.
The Mexican government is promoting the slogan, "Chiapas Is Mexico, too. " Our slogan is "Central America Starts in Chiapas."
2. Are there concrete links between the peoples of Central America and the people of Chiapas?
A. There are a lot of Guatemalan refugees in Chiapas, and organizations are developing to aid them. The Mexican government is obviously getting worried about the area. They have pumped in a lot of money. They started public works programs.
The government is also starting to move against the Central American refugees. Last year, it carried out a scandalous action. It deported hundreds of Guatemalan refugees back to certain death. The entire left has gone on a campaign to denounce this.
Q. How much repression is there in the rest of the country?
A. The government has been developing a system of kidnapping people, starting with former guerrillas, and holding them in secret prisons, and often assassinating them. This system was tested on a grand scale by the rightists in Argentina. We have been building a mass campaign against this. Our candidate, Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, had a son kidnapped years ago. She has not heard anything about him since. She heads one of the organizations that represents the families of the "disappeared ones,"
The general location of some of the secret prisons is known. We have held election rallies in some of those towns and there have also been protest meetings against the existence of secret prisons in the area.
Q. When did you start your campaign?
A. Formally our campaign started in the middle of November. We had a kickoff rally that was attended by four thousand persons. It also inaugurated our electoral coalition, the Frente Obrero, Campesina, Popular (The Workers, Peasants, and People's Front).
2. What is the background to your presidential campaign? How was it prepared politically?
A. Last March, our party decided that the best presidential candidate for the left would be Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, since she had distinguished herself as one of the main leaders of the fight for democratic rights, which would have to be one of the main axes of a campaign by the left.
In our country, because of the traditions of the Mexican revolution and the government's methods of social control, the issue of democratic
rights is very closely tied to the problem of building effective mass organizations that can really represent the people.
Besides the right of free speech and assembly, the right of free association and the right to belong to organizations and parties of your own choice is central. The government tries to force all workers and peasants to belong only to organizations it controls and to force them to affiliate to the government party, the PRI. Attempts by the workers and peasants to form their own organizations or fight for control of the established ones have often been suppressed by armed force.
Q. Does that mean that you proposed Rosario as a united-front candidate?
A. Yes. This election will be something quite new in Mexico. For the first time, two left parties that oppose the government will be on the ballot, the United Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM), which includes the old Communist Party; and the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), Mexican section of the Fourth International. For the first time, there is the possibility of putting forward a credible alternative to the government party. We believed that the two registered parties had a responsibility to the workers movement and to the masses to present a united candidate around which the entire movement could rally.
Q. What was the response of the PSUM?
A. They were not interested. In November, they named Arnaldo Martinez Verdugo, former general secretary of the Communist Party as their candidate. They did not bother even to discuss this with us or anyone else. They did it unilaterally.
Q. So, what did you gain by offering to collaborate with the PSUM in a united-front campaign?
A. We thought that it was important for the left to know who was responsible for the fact that the two left parties did not run a united campaign against the government in the elections.
In any case, Rosario's candidacy was the first proposed, and so from March until November the discussion of a campaign by the left centered around her. She is clearly a much more popular candidate than Martinez Verdugo. And since her candidacy was proposed earlier she had had more time to become known.
2. Have you been able to get the support of other forces for your campaign?
A. Yes. We got the support of two other parties, which did not have ballot status. They joined our electoral coalition. They were the Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo, which comes out of a Maoist tradition; and the Union de Lucha Revolucionaria, which comes out of a split in the Socialist Current.
Besides this, other groups support us without being formally in the electoral coalition. One is the Organizacion Comunista Proletaria. This group is based primarily among electrical workers and includes nuclearindustry workers and steel-workers. It is a purely workers organization. The origin of it is the struggle waged by the Democratic Tendency in the Electrical Workers Union.
2. What are the central issues in your campaign?
A. Our campaign has the following focus. It is a campaign for working-class independence from the government and from its official party. That means that its main objective is to expose the way the government and its party have coopted the workers movement and made it serve their pro-imperialist policy.
Our campaign centers on pushing the demand for the working class to break with the official party and found its own mass party independent of the bourgeoisie.
In this framework, we are putting forward a program calling for basic democratic rights, Because here one of the main obstacles to the workers forming their own party and even their own unions is the government's imposing its own organizations by force.
We support the new peasant organizations that have arisen in recent years and are united in the Coordinadora Campesina Revolucionaria Independiente and the Coordinadora Nacional "Plan de Ayala." And we support their demands of land to the tiller and cheap and easily available credit. The right of association is an important demand for the peasants, too, because the government tries to control them through its peasant organizations.
The demands of the shantytown dwellers are also very important, because the Mexican cities are mushrooming.
In Mexico City, for example, it is estimated that roughly half the population live in subhuman conditions. They are fighting for the right to organize, for minimal municipal services--lighting, drainage, etc. - - and for recognition of their right to the 3s. land on which their homes are built and for recognition of their elected
(DR)
Q. Do any of the shantytown dwellers organizations support your campaign?
A. Yes. Some of them do so through the Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo, which is in the electoral coalition, There are also others that are supporting us and have been represented at rallies.
2. What about trade unions?
A. No unions are supporting us as such, although we have the backing of a number of influential activists.
We have been the first political organizations to hold rallies for trade unionists. For example, at the start . of the campaign to get the PRT on the ballot, we held a rally for the Electrical Workers Union, to show that our campaign was going to be based primarily on unionists.
A central theme of the campaign is the need for a mass democratic workers party based on the unions. Everywhere we have the strength, we hold meetings in the unions, among the electrical workers, the oil workers, and the steelworkers.
We also expect that our campaign will enable us to link up with the large number of democratic and class-strug gle tendencies in the unions that oppose the PRI union bosses, the infamous charros.
Q. What kind of results have you gotten so far from your campaign?
A. We started the campaign in Guerrero, This is a very important state because the repression there has been intense. So, we thought that it would be good for Rosario, an outstanding fighter against repression, to begin her campaign there.
In fact, the first stage of the campaign had to be a bit impromptu. The posters that we had were for the previous period, before Rosario was officially our candidate.
We visited the cities of Chipancingo, Tasco, Acapulco, Atoyac, and held very good rallies in all those places.
Despite the fact that we were not properly prepared, our campaign was every bit as effective as that of the PSUM.
The second stage of the campaign
15
started in January. A hundred thousand posters have already been printed.
Q. What sort of media coverage have you gotten?
A. We have been putting on one TV program a month since September. Also Rosario has been very widely interviewed on TV, radio, and in the press. The one that is to be put on this month will be largely devoted to Poland. We estimate that it will be viewed by two million people.
Q. What sort of international issues have been important in the cam-
The main ones are El Salvador and Poland. We dedicated our second program to the Salvadoran revolution. The Communist Party companeros told us that they thought this was not very good electoral politics. That was because it gave the image of a party supporting an insurrection, supporting a revolution.
Beginning last January, coinciding with the FMLN offensive, we started a major campaign in support of the Salvadoran revolution, We are: completely immersed in this work. Right now we are involved in building a world forum on solidarity with El Salvador that will be held in Mexico City at the end of March and will be attended by representatives of organizations from a very wide range of countries.
From the beginning, we linked defense of the revolution in El Salvador with defense of the revolutionary process in Poland.
Q. Did this cause you any problems in your El Salvador work with representatives of the Cuban and Nicaraguan government or forces that follow them?
A. No. The Cubans and Nicaraguans play no apparent role. They do not have any political influence here, and are in fact quite isolated in Mexican society. What was important was that linking El Salvador and Poland was popular with Mexican workers, who feel the issue of democracy very keenly.
Q. What was the response in Mexico to the crackdown in Poland?
A. We organized a small demonstration outside the Polish embassy on December 15 and issued a press statement. We were the first party in Mexico that came to the defense minent role. There was a small group from the CP, about ten companeros.
I think that this was the first large political demonstration against Stalinist dictatorship in Latin America. The only other large protest against a Stalinist crime I know of was the turnout for Trotsky's funeral. But that was largely a personal tribute and an expression of moral outrage.
2. The Mexican CP is sometimes called "Euro-Communist." Could you describe its reaction in more detail?
A. The PSUM did not take a position on Jaruzelski's action until quite late, almost a week afterward. Basically they came out for Jaruzelski, although they tried to cover this up to some extent by saying that they were concerned but that it was a Polish internal matter. •Their position was about like that of the French CP.
We learned later that there was a very sharp fight in the PSUM Central Committee between a majority that supported Jaruzelski and a minority that was more favorable to Solidarity. The more pro-Stalinist won.
The result was the appearance of signs of resentment, lack of confidence, and demoralization among the ranks.
One expression of this came at the festival held yearly for the publication Oposicion, which represents all the groups that united with the CP in the PSUM. A small group of young party members demonstrated in support of Solidarity. The group was quickly broken up by the party defense guard.
Q. Is there much confusion about the character of Solidarity on the left?
A. The government and the rightwing union bureaucrats are trying to create as much as possible. For example, Felipe Velasquez, the top union bureaucrat said that the supression of Solidarity showed the definitive failure of Communism, but that it had no importance for us because the Mexican labor movement is anti-Communist already.
Q. But you think the example of Solidarity is a positive one for the Mexican workers?
A. That's right. Building a movement in solidarity with Solidarity can clarify the nature of socialism itself,
Q. The Mexican workers have been through a similar experience haven't they, of state control of all mass organizations?
A. Yes, they know what that means.
Q. What effect do you think the repetition of the Kremlin slanders against Solidarity by the Cuban and Nicaraguan official press will have in Mexico?
A. A very bad reaction from the Mexican masses. It will deepen the isolation of the Nicaraguans and Cubans in Mexico.
Q. Is it true that even before the events in Poland one of the major Mexican polls showed that PRT as likely to get at least as large a vote as the PSUM?
A. Yes. But we are not taking anything for granted. We think that we will get a good vote and that this will be important. But we do not expect to get the half million votes that would be necessary to stay on the ballot. There is no such thing as permanent ballot status in Mexico anyway. You have to get a high vote in every election.
For us the important thing is to build a stronger party that will be more able to take on the tasks we have ahead of us.
We expect to triple our membership during the campaign. We have already taken steps to transform our publishing operations.
We have bought and installed a word-processing system in our print shop. We intend to publish many more pamphlets also and to begin a theoretical journal. We are also planning to set up a regular publishing
2. What indications do you have of the way that the party is growing through the election campaign?
A. Well, you know the problem of communications in Mexico. We have no statistics. That will take quite a while. But we do have indications.
In cities such as Atoyac in Guerrero, cities of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, we had rallies of five and six hundred people.
In Ahatlan, which was the first stop in the second phase of the campaign, in the northeast, we had no organization before, and now we have a cell there. We are seeing this in of Solidarity.
of workers democracy, of the democ- a number of cities on the tours.
On December 17, we called a demonstration in the center of Mexico City. Two other Trotskyist groups joined with us, the Marxist Workers
League and the Socialist Party.
About four thousand people participated. There was also one Communist Party deputy who played a pro-
16 ratic socialism we want in Mexico.
There are many lessons the Mexican workers movement can learn from Solidarity, about workers democracy, about self-management of industry, about independence of the labor movement from the state and from political parties.
In Chiapas, for example, we have had cells in various towns such as San Cristobal and Tuxla Gutierrez, the most important ones. Now we are developing a relationship with a group of peasants living right on the border. They will certainly participate in the campaign.