STATE OF MEXICO, JUNE 1— On June 1st the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) launched a National Strike demanding the repeal of the education reform and the Law of the Social Security and Services Institute for State Workers (ISSSTE). Members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have joined their marches and blockades, where they have distributed around 600 flyers. We also organized a meeting with 15 residents from the eastern zone of the Valley of Mexico to explain the demands and ask for their solidarity with the strike. This week we will hold a meeting with teachers from an industrial zone with the same goal. The following is the text of the flyer.

Total support for the National Teachers’ strike!

The struggle of the women and men teachers of the CNTE is our struggle. Many sectors of us suffer injustice, oppression, racism and exploitation under this capitalist system we live in. The working class as a whole, and students too, must join the CNTE work stoppage and turn it into a general strike against capitalism.

Blocking the FIFA World Cup from taking place in Mexico is a strategy of struggle and political pressure to force Claudia Sheinbaum and the 4th transformation government to repeal the Peña-AMLO-Sheinbaum Education Reform, scrap the damaging 2007 ISSSTE Law, and grant a fair wage increase.

“4T” refers to the “Cuarta Transformación” or Fourth Transformation, the political project of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, continued under his successor Claudia Sheinbaum.]

To fight the privatization of education — which affects millions of students, parents, and the general public — we need to fight the repeal of the Education Reform imposed by imperialist interests and pushed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through the governments of Peña Nieto, López Obrador, and Claudia Sheinbaum.

Crooked bosses chip away at retirement accounts

The 2007 ISSSTE Law is another blow to the labor, union, and basic livelihood rights of education workers and other sectors covered by ISSSTE. Its main purpose is to benefit the capitalist owners of the national and international banks that control the Afores.

Afores — Administradoras de Fondos para el Retiro — are private financial firms that manage individual retirement savings accounts. Mexico shifted to this privatized pension system in 1997, moving away from a public defined-benefit model. This system enriches the financial sector bosses at workers’ expense.

With that law, the employer class eliminated retirement rights, forcing workers into a Voluntary Retirement system of Individual Accounts managed by private banks. The financial groups XXI Banorte (now owner of Estadio Az-teca), Citibanamex, SURA, Inbursa, Afore Azteca, and Coppel manage 7.1 trillion pesos belonging to 69 million workers. In recent months alone, these firms raked in profits of 4 billion, 72 million pesos — while workers have been denied the right to a dignified retirement.

Neoliberal reforms have only served to make the capitalists richer and the working class poorer. In this struggle waged by education workers, we see capitalism’s true face — and the role that governments, whoever is in power, play as its servants.

Ruling class ramps up fascist attacks

Faced with the teachers’ peaceful protests, the fascist response of Sheinbaum and the 4T government has been police repression by the Mexico City government and para-military attacks like those that took place in Mitla.

The capitalist media fills the airwaves with racist lies against education workers, trying to hide the sharp class struggle that the teachers’ movement has waged for decades against capitalist oppression — a struggle not only for those in education, but for the entire working class.

The decline of U.S. imperialism and the rise of China as a new imperialist power will generate deep capitalist contradictions driven by the ambition to dominate the world, producing local and regional wars and the possibility of a Third World War — where the working class will keep paying the criminal price.

That is why our fundamental struggle must be the destruction of this capitalist system and the establishment of communism, where working men and women will work together for the good of the community. Join the International Communist PLP to make this goal a reality.

Teachers, listen up — the PLP is in your struggle!

Teachers, listen up — communism is your struggle!