The Revolutionary Situation in Mexico and Revoltion in the u.s.

The Revolutionary Situation in Mexico and Revolution in the u.s. The Revolutionary Situation in Mexico and Revolution in the u.s. By Joaquin Cienfuegos (Member of Cop Watch Los Angeles) Oaxaca, Mexico has been setting an example to the people of Mexico and to people all around the world. What started as a teachers movement against the privatization of education has turned into a popular movement against the state government. The APPO (Asemblea Popular de Pueblo de Oaxaca Popular Peoples Assembly of Oaxaca) has been where the people have been connecting through and organizing themselves. The state has assassinated and tried to repress this movement, but people have continued to mobilize and organize themselves and step up the resistance (because if they do not, the governments massacre will continue). People in Oaxaca have been taking over the means of communication, from TV stations to radio stations. Community members are defending each other with homemade weapons, rocks, sticks, and bricks against riot police, and their paramilitaries. The people set up barricades and block streets and their main demand is for the disappearance of the state government. The APPO is the democracy of the people not the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). The state government is afraid, and theyre trying hold on to their power as the people revolt. They call the popular movement subversive urban guerrilla warfare. In an article from La Jornada titled Oaxaca, magisterial y la lucha armada (Oaxaca, the teachers, and armed struggle), it talks about how armed resistance and armed struggle have been present in Oaxaca for decades. In Mexico teachers who have taken up arms have been the famous revolutionaries Lucio Cabanas and Genaro Vasquez. The situation today in Oaxaca, where people have continued to step up the resistance, where armed struggle is a tactic that is necessary when the state is murdering the population that opposes it. Armed resistance is not what has made the struggle in Oaxaca revolutionary though, but the level of self-organization, autonomy, and the community building that has raised the consciousness of the population to raise their sights and demand their self-determination from bad governments. This plays into and fans the flame of the growing revolutionary movement on the national level. In Chiapas, Atenco, Guerrerro, Michoacan, Baja California, and in other parts of Mexico there has been communities organizing themselves, building liberated autonomous communities, defending themselves from attacks from the state, and taking direct action against imperialism and neo-liberalism. Its a situation where people are raising their consciousness through seeing the corruption of the government, because of stolen elections. It is a situation where oppressed people look to more hope in the Other Campaign of Adherents to the Sixth Declaration from the Selva Lacandona, rather than the Presidential Election. This is what is called a revolutionary situation: a situation where the contradictions between the people and those in power have become so great that the state cannot hide them and keep the people in check. Revolutions are made by people, and by their popular movements. They do not happen through vanguard organizations, or professional revolutionaries, even though historically those vanguard organizations co-opt the popular movements and become the new oppressor once in power. What is happening in Oaxaca, is what indigenous people there have been doing for centuries, organizing themselves and relying on themselves. A revolution in Mexico, means a great deal to oppressed people around the world, and especially oppressed people within the u.s. The revolution in Mexico can and will spill over into the u.s. The imperialist government of the united states has always dominated politically and economically the government in Mexico. Theyre responsible for NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and other economic policies that steal resources from indigenous people and farmers from Mexico, forcing them to leave their homes and migrate to the u.s. to survive. They have always put in place the governments in Mexico that will follow their orders. The u.s. has armed and trained the militaries, police, and paramilitaries that massacre, rape, disappear, repress the oppressed people and their communities in Mexico. The u.s is the overseer in the misery people around the world suffer. At the same time oppressed people in the u.s. are being killed, repressed, raped, exploited, and imprisoned. Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and all people of color, young, working class, homeless, undocumented, unemployed, women, queer, transgender people living in the richest country in the world suffer from third world conditions. Especially us in the South West region who suffer from colonialism and neo-colonialism (as do people in the South, and other regions of the us), because we are living on stolen land and our communities are being occupied by the police departments, the courts, the prison industrial complex, an the entire police state. The struggle in Mexico is similar to our struggle, and it is our revolution. We have a responsibility to do our part, to organize in our communities, build autonomy, self-determination, self-organization and the self-defense of our neighborhoods, our people, and ourselves. We have a responsibility to bring down u.s. imperialism. Oppressed and colonized people all around the world have a common enemy, the white supremacist- patriarchal- and imperialist system and those who maintain it.