• May Day in Mexico City
Demonstrations led by the dissident Foro group of unions and the radical Intersindical Primero de Mayo, converged to fill the national plaza (Zocalo) of Mexico City on May 1st. Carrying hundreds of banners and thousands of placards, chanting slogans and singing protest songs, more than 100,000 workers, peasants, and urban poor demanded a change in the government's neo-liberal economic policies.
Last year, when the Congress of Labor (CT) and the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) decided to cancel the official May Day demonstration, independent unions and peasant leagues, community groups, members of the democratic citizens' movements, and opposition political organizations held the first genuinely independent May Day celebration in Mexico in decades. Hastily organized and largely a grass-roots affair, May Day 1995 had the feel of a radical social movement calling both for political democracy and economic change.
This year, for the first time, the dissident union officials of the Foro group and May First Coalition seized the initiative.
Much smaller than the Foro group, the independent Inter-sindical Primero de Mayo (May First Inter-Union Coalition) grew out of the May Day 1995 demonstration. At the center of the May First Coalition is the Route 100 bus drivers union (SUTAUR) with something like 9,000 active members led by Ricardo Braco, the union's attorney who is currently in jail on charges of embezzlement. In 1995 as part of the Mexican government's privatization of state-owned industries, the Federal District, declared Route 100 bankrupt and laid off the 12,000 workers, also eliminating their independent labor union (SUTAUR). Many unions and other organizations rallied to the support of SUTAUR, and together participated in May Day 1995, after which they joined together to form the May First Coalition. The Frente Popular Francisco Villa turned out thousands of the urban poor, including hundreds of housewives from poor neighborhoods. Supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and its new organization the
Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) turned out to march with the
May First Coalition.
Authentic Labor Front (FAT) leader
Alfredo Dominguez read a statement from Subcomandante Marcos of the
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EZLN calling for workers, peasants, and the indigenous people to join together to march against the government's neoliberal economic policies. Meanwhile, In Chiapas, 200 EZLN supporters seized a local radio station and broadcast a message from Subcomandante Marcos in Spanish, Tzeltal and Tzotzil calling for unity of workers, peasants and indigenous peoples against neo-liberalism and for the construction of a new Mexico.
Association of the Transformation Industry Renovation?
May Day 1996 demonstrated both the widespread working class opposition to the Mexican government's economic and social policies, and the increasing divisions within the official labor movement. Many commentators characterized the event as a "watershed" or "turning
CTM leadership, but also the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. This would mean massive strikes, civil disobedience, and more forceful confrontations with the authorities on a regional or national scale. But the Mexican working class remains cautious. And quiet; strikes are at an all time low. * Source: Mexican Labor News and Analysis,
The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) marched with the May
First independents, and its best known public figure, former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas spoke at aidate cuauntemoc cardenas spoke al the rally in the Zocalo calling for unity between the May First and Foro forces.
Cardenas also called for the creation of committees for the defense of the petrochemical industry.
One interesting development in the
May Day demonstration this year was the presence of two business groups, El Barzon, the organization of indebted farmers and businesspeople, and the National
Mutation and re
The collapse of Stalinism and the continuing capitalist crisis has contradictory effects. Myths and illusions connected to the restoration of capitalism in the post-
Stalinist societies have dissipated, faced with the actually cinatad fanad with the antially existing market economy. But reactions to the socio-economic crisis all too often take the form of reactionary tendencies of an ethnic, nationalist, racial or religious character. Hence the urgent need to rebuild a world-wide movement of anti-capitalist struggle, taking account of the recomposition of the workers' movepoint" in the modern Mexican union movement.
But hopes of renovation are probably novation are probably premature. Given the crucial relationship between Mexico's unions and the state, true renovation of the labor movement would necessitate union participation in a broader democratic movement which would bring down not only the CT and groupment 14th Congres of the Fourt Internationa history of the
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