Newly re-elected U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Mexico and deport millions of migrants reflect the development of open fascism in the main imperialist power and the sharpening of rivalry with China, its main competitor for control of the world. The consequences for the working class worldwide and in Latin America in particular, are more racist attacks and nationalist traps for workers to fight and die for “their” countries of origin. Workers must confront these attacks with the struggle for international solidarity, the abolition of borders and communist revolution led by the mass Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
The Mexican government, headed by new President Claudia Sheinbaum, promotes nationalism to confront Trump’s threats. It raises a call for defense of national sovereignty and has undertaken a diplomatic and legal strategy to defend migrant workers from Mexico currently within the U.S. They say they are prepared to receive workers who are deported to offer them employment alternatives and integrate them into their communities.
This scheme pretends that conditions that caused the workers to migrate in the first place had changed, such as mass unemployment, precarious and super-exploited jobs, and the criminal and systematic violence of the cartels that act as paramilitary groups at the service of the Mexican government.
We workers must not fall into the nationalist trap; we must organize ourselves to confront racist attacks by uniting our struggles across the border to support our class siblings on both sides. This cannot be expected to happen spontaneously – we must fight to build PLP day and night as the revolutionary solution to the failures of this profit system!
Racist capitalism forces workers to migrate
The cynicism of the U.S. imperialists has no limits. Historically and in the present, the U.S. has used super-exploited migrant labor to cement its economic development and obtain higher profits, while racist bosses like Trump falsely paint them as criminals. A recent example is the case of the Uihlein family, second largest financiers of Trump’s campaign, who used migrant workers in warehouses of their company Uline, knowing that they did not have documents that would give them protections around working conditions and wages in the United States (La Jornada Veracruz, 12/23/24). The racist attacks of the Trump faction, which compete with the Deporters in Chief Barack Obama and Joe Biden, will no doubt increase migrant exploitation. But mainly, it will give a boost to the fascist discipline that U.S. imperialism needs to face the challenges of its rivals and maintain control of the working class.
In addition to being cynical, the U.S. imperialists distort reality and history. They’re the ones who have caused the migration of millions of workers in Latin America. They have sown chaos for decades throughout this region to ensure access and control of mineral, oil and agricultural resources. They use many strategies to do this, not least by promoting gangs and cartels. While they are financing these gangsters they claim to be fighting them, many times destabilizing entire governments and, in several cases, imposing bloody military dictatorships.
The U.S. capitalists have long turned Latin America into a source of raw materials and cheap labor to supply their profit-driven empire. All these actions together have created weak and unstable economies in the region, incapable of generating sufficient jobs and safe living conditions. This is at the core of why they are forced to migrate to the north. This is how capitalism and imperialism work, and why neither are any good for the working class. A communist revolution is necessary and vital to rebuild the world on new foundations, free from exploitation and unemployment.
Inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies at workers’ peril
Capitalism creates an interconnected economy, which is why the U.S. bosses cannot apply tariffs without it backfiring to their own companies. This is particularly the case with Mexico, its biggest trading partner. The main objective of the U.S. is to start a trade war with China. The drive to undermine the Chinese bosses is why many of Trump’s threats will become reality, with devastating economic consequences for workers, increasing the pressure to migrate.
Local bosses certainly play their role in attacking workers and profiting off the inter-imperialist rivalry. The liberal government of the so-called Fourth Transformation (4T), of previous president Andres López Obrador, deployed the National Guard and the army to contain and control migration from the southern border of the country, a racist assault. At the same time and in the same region, it began the development of three megaprojects: the Interoceanic Corridor (CI), the Mayan Train and the Dos Bocas refinery. These projects have investment from the U.S. and China, potentially becoming an area of imperialist conflict. They will also use cheap migrant labor from South America and southern Mexico. Both strategies of the 4T are part of the cards that Sheinbaum and Obrador use with the U.S. to control migration through Mexico, in which workers are only pawns to increase the profits of local and imperialist bosses.
Build PLP to overthrow capitalism
Beyond the horrific mass deportations that destroy working families, the greatest threat is the support of fascism by the working class inside and outside the U.S. empire. Our Party’s role is key in uniting the working class as one in the world to confront these attacks and eventually take the offensive to end capitalism through communist revolution. Workers in Mexico have demonstrated a strong will to build solidarity with migrants. Our Party’s role must maintain that solidarity and turn it into revolutionary consciousness, to prevent it from being flooded with racism by the fascist groups operating in the country and to advance the struggle to overthrow capitalism.
