election campaign. She first came to prominence after her son, Jesus Piedra Ibarra, was kidnapped by Mexican cops and disappeared the early 1970s. initiated a committee of relatives of poliactivists who had been exiled, imprisoned, or "disappeared" by the government. Since then, she has waged a vigo. rous struggle against government repression, making her the most prominent woman political figure in Mexico. In the struggle, Rosario Ibarra came to revolutionary and socialist con-
More than a year ago, the Revoluachieved ballot status after a long battle, proposed that Rosario Ibarra run for president as the joint candidate of all the working-class parties, even though she did not belong to any of them. The other main workers party, the Communist Party (now known as the United Socialist Party of Mexico, or PSUM, following a time CP leader Arnoldo Martinez Verdu-
The PRT's proposal was nevertheless supported by various other organizations to the left of the Communist Party. Rosario Ibarra's personal history, her dynamic and charismatic speaking style, and her forthright revolutionary message helped to transform the PRT's campaign into a major event in Mexican politics. The impact of the campaign was further magnified by the stepped-up ruling-class offensive against the Mexican toilers-the peso was devalued at the beginning of the year and prices skyrocketed-and by the repercussions of the revolutionary upsurge in the Central American region.
The dimensions of the campaign can be gauged by the fact that the PRT's windup rally was front-page news in every major newspaper in Mexico City, with stories and photographs of the march. El Universal carried a lead story and banner headline reading "The oppressed and dispossessed want a change: Rosario, across the top half of the page.
To hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Mexicans, Ibarra has become the symbol of their aspirations for a country free of exploitation and oppres sion. This explains the explosive response of the crowd when Rosario made her ap-
NOT A SINGLE VOTE FOR After the PRT leaders had gotten march stepped off, making its way down the contingents back into the Paseo de la Reforma, one of the city's main thoroughfares. The people marched four lanes across in a sea of red flags that stretched along the boulevard as far as the
9
ple's Revolutionary Movement (MRP), politics, but, Montes noted, "It has also
Rosario Ibarra de Piedra (DR) eye could see. In the front lines, arms linked, were Rosario Ibarra, accompanied by her husband, Jesus Piedra, and central leaders of the PRT and other groups supporting her candidacy.
Next came the Committee of Relatives of Political Prisoners, the Disap peared, and Exiled, holding a banner more than 30 feet long completely covered with photographs of victims of governmental repression. They were followed by a contingent of the more than 300 candidates running for seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies on the PRT slate. Next came a marching band from the northern state of Zacatecas, loudly playing the international workers song, Bandiera Rossa, and popular Mexican fanfares along the whole route of the demon. stration. The enormous banner held aloft over this first section of the march read: "Vote PRT-for a workers and peasants government."
After scores of contingents of workers, peasants, and students organized by the PRT came those of the other, smaller groups that had joined with it to form Workers, Peasants, and People's Unity, an electoral alliance that supported Rosario's campaign: the Union of Revolutionary Struggle (ULR), the Peo10 and the Proletarian Communist Organization (OCP).
But the overwhelming majority of participants marched in the PRT contingents, easily noted by thousands of red flags bearing a hammer and sickle and the marked off by huge banners identifying their region, union, or peasant tion and calling for a workers and peasants government or denouncing govvernment repression, unemployment, and inflation, or demanding trade-union democracy or workers democratic rights.
A contingent of hundreds of peasants from the PRT-led Worker-Peasant Coordinating Committee of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico sang: "In a golden cage, up on a balcony, Lopez Portillo is screwing the country." (En una jaulo de oro, sentado en un balcon esta Lopez Portillo, chingando
A group of workers from Ecatepec, industrial suburb of Mexico City,
"Workers should govern, yes sir; death to the PRI, yes sir!"
Whole blocks of marchers shouted, "Not a single vote for the PRI!"
The dominant message of the slogans and banners during the march, and of the speeches at the rally, was that Mexico's working people need their own government, a workers and peasants govto solve the pressing problems The single most chanted slogan was "Struggle, struggle, don't stop struggling for a workers, peasants, and people's gov-
Lucha, lucha, no deges de luchar; por un gobierno obrero, campestno, y popular.)
Other slogans were "Forward, forcompaneros, building the workers movement" and "Workers, peasants, the entire people to power!" (In the political language of Mexico and Central America, includes not only manual workers and small farmers, but also a large section of the masses that are neither exactly proletarians nor peasants. Unemployed shantytown dwellers, office workers, tea. chers, students, street vendors, small merchants, artisans, and so on; it does not inindustrialists, absentee landowners, top government functionaries, or highly privileged professionals.)
Thewally at Tlatelolco Plaza did not until after nightfall because the march from the Monument of the Revolution took so long. Chairing the rally was Margarito Montes, general secretary of the Independent Revolutionary Peasants Coordinating Committee (CCRI) and a member of the PRT's Political
SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINIAN PEOPLE clear internationalist character from the start," Montes said. It has been a campaign around the big issues of Mexican been a campaign against imperialism, in solidarity with all those struggling around world for their liberation. And we want to dedicate this wind-up rally in a special way to expressing our solidarity with the Palestinian people, a people who today are being attacked and massacred by the Zionist troops of Israel, the army put together by U.S. imperialism in the Middle East." point by shouts of, "Death to Yankee Imperialism!" He went on:
"We want to express our most sweeping and deepest solidarity with
Palestine Liberation Organization, and with the Palestinian guerillas who are resisting the massacre in the Middle
We want to say that the Palestinian people are not alone, that they the solidarity of the Mexican revolutionaries. And, trom this platiorm, we demand that the Mexican government stop sending the 80,000 barrels of oil a day with which it supports the Zionist dictatorship in Israel."
Montes then introduced the various speakers: Edgar Sanchez of the PRT, and representatives of the other political organizations that supported the campaign. He also read greetings from other political and community organizations, from Mel Mason, independent candidate for governor of California.
Edgar Sanchez underlined the symbolism behind the decision to hold the rally in Tlateloleo Plaza: "We have returned today to Tlatelolco because we have a historic commitment to a whole generation of fighters. In Tlatelolco are our origins, renewed origins following the defeat of the peasant armies of Villa and
Tlatelolco is our source of inspiration, our example, and our ery for
MASON DENOUNCES U.S. IMPERIALISM In his greetings, Mel Mason denounced "the U.S. govenment's merciless offensive of hunger and war against the workers and farmers of the United States, Latin America, and the world." Mason, who is also a member of the National Committee of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, sister organization of the Mexican PRT, went on to denounce the Reagan administration's war policy Central America and the Caribbean:
"Through its puppet government, the Reagan administration is massacring the Salvadoran people. It is increasing its aid to the Guatemalan dictatorship Mercenaries controlled by Washington are carrying out a full-scale war against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. U.S Marines shamelessly carry out dress rehearsals for an invasion of Grenada.
"And not a single day goes by without the U,S. rulers expressing once again their hostility towards Cuba, the first free territory of the Americas."
Mason's statement also denounced U.S. corporate domination of Mexico. "We know that Mexico, like the other
countries of Latin America, is a victim of Yankee imperialism.
"Just a few weeks ago in California and across the United States, we saw la migra (the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service) round up thousands of Mexican workers, whose only crime was being workers. We join with you in de. manding: Stop the mistreatment of undocumented
Stop the deportation! Full rights for undocumented workers!"
"We also want to express here, "our solidarity the struggle of the Mexican people and with Rosario Ibarra's campaign workers and peasants government and for the definitive national and social liberation of Mexico."
After Montes read Mason's greetthe crowd broke into applause, while members of the PRT took up the
"You can feel it; you can feel it, the Fourth International is present!" (Se siente, se siente, La Cuarta esta pre-
A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE final speaker was Ibarra de Piedra. Despite the late hour and intermittent showers, nobody had left. Throughout the rally, the crowd had broken out in spontaneous chants of, "We want Rosario!" and "Rosario, Rosario, Rosario!" When she was finally introduced, the crowd went wild, shouting slogans for a workers and peasants government and, "Rosario, for sure, hit the PRI hard." The band struck up Bandiera
As Rosario walked to the platform, people who had been sitting down stood up and remained standing throughout her speech. crowd stopped. The entire demonstration of thousands listened in rapt attention, reporters from major capitalist dailies included.
Rosario began by calling for a minute of silence for the hundreds of students massacred by the government in this same Tlatelolco Plaza on October 2,
The entire plaza was silent. When the minute was up, Rosario shouted ang rily, her fist in the air, "Remember October 2!" and thousands of voices took up
"October 2 is not forgotten!" (2 de Octubre no se olvida!)
Rosario's 20-minute terrupted contunually by applause and
It reiterated the key themes and explained the main lessons of the cam-
"We have learned," she said, "that the people of Mexico are learning that it is not enough to fight for immediate demands, that it is not enough to shout that we want higher wages, that we want a plot of land, that we want food, that we are hungry, that prices are high, that there is a lot of unemployment. not enough. The people have understood that only when they link their struggles through solidarity, that only when the
Breakthrough! The Mexican government has not yet released any official returns of the elections. It is known, however, that the slate supported by the Mexican section of the Fourth International got at least between 2% and 3% of the vote; that it gained legal status, and that it will have representation in parliament.
The Mexican Trotskyists, thus, have achieved a qualitative breakthrough on the national political level, visible to the Mexican masses as a real factor in national politics and as an alternative. This was achieved on the basis of a Trotskyist program that gave a focus to a broad range of fighting movements in Mexico. We will take a closer look at the results in the coming issue. workers, the peasants, the shantytown dwellers, men and women, students, all together, decide to advance hand in hand and organize, then the scattered econo-
La revolutionary struggle for radical change in this coun-
"Companeros, we spoke with thousands of Mexicans, people who, although like me they have no party, they are going to build one. of them! We can tell you that we felt the socialism that lies waiting to spring forward from the Mexican people, a people scorned by the PRI. So much the worse for them! Because this people is going to make the socialist revolution in this con-
Rosario explained that the workers and peasants she spoke to throughout the campaign did not want a party that would settle for mere reforms or crumbs, but "a party that struggles to overthrow this system, to turn this country upside-
AN IMMORAL SYSTEM The people of Mexico, she said, "this people that lived through an October 2.. that has suffered the sadness of 500 missing, that knows that hundreds of companeros have died in clandestine jails under torture, that saw hundreds of companeros fall in guerrilla struggles; this people that admires the Cuban revolution, this people that welcomes with joy and pride the Nicaraguan revolution, and that hopes for the advance of the revolution in El Salvador and Guatemala; this people is looking fear of repression in the face, and is fighting for that revolutionary struggle to arrive here soon, very paneros, we haven't fooled anyone,* she "Throughout this campaign, emphasized. "We never made any pro-
We made commitments. We committed ourselves to struggle. We committed ourselves to take ever more rapid and ever more firm steps to achieve the victory that we are fighting for. added, as a result of the campaign, "there are now peasant coordinating tees, there are now workers coordinating committees, from Palmarillo in Veracruz, to Apoyac de Alvarez in Guerrero; from Tijuana to Venustiano Carranza in Chi-
"All this, companeros, all this that we dream of, all this that we aspire to, all this that millions of Mexicans hope for, is not going to be possible with a system like that of the PRI, no matter how much the PRI talks about the 'moral renewal of society. They talk and talk-they have been talking for years and years. These gentlemen have been saying the same thing for years! They are not even ori-
And now they tell us that their "moral renewal of society' will achieve the transformation of this country.
"No, companeros, no! The people of Mexico know this very well. It is not just that the government officials are corrupt. It is not just that. It is bad that they are corrupt. Of course, they're not
"But the worst thing of all-and that's why they won't fool anybody-is that what is no good, what is rotten, it
And it's bad, companeros, because a system that specially designs everything to squeeze the working people is immoral. A system that oppresses, that represses, that exploits, that kills millions of Mexicans, who leave their lives in the fields that they till or in the factories where they work. their whole life working and when they die they don't even have a plot of land in the cemetery so that they could be
ARISE, YE PRISONERS OF STARVATION concluded her speech by referring to the recent May Day celebrations in Mexico, which were dominated by PRI union bureaucrats and were little more than PRI campaign ral-
"We announce, companeros, that it we strengthen our steps, that if we step widely, soon, companeros, very soon, we will have the kind of May Day we want, a jubilant May Day, a May Day in which the workers will march as brothers with the peasants, the workers will march hand in hand with the shantytown dwellers, the women, and the students. And they will raise their fists and they will sing and smile and laugh, joyfully, for on the balcony of the National Palace Will be workers and the peasants and the slum-dwellers the poor of this country, real representatives. Venceremos! We shall overcome!"
The crowd burst out in shouts of "Rosario, Rosario, Rosario!" which only subsided when the band struck up, and tens of thousands of fists were raised defiantly in the air and tens of thousands of voices began to sing the International, anthem of the working class.