Introduction – The Mexican federal election will take place on June 2, 2024 and voters will choose a new president and 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies and all 128 members of the Senate. There are three presidential candidates On the right, we have Xochitl Gálvez, a businesswoman, the candidate of the “Strength and Heart,” coalition made up of three former governing parties of Mexico, thje Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that governed Mexico under various name from its founding in 1929 until 2000; the National Action Party, the party of the Roman Catholic Church and big business, which governed Mexico from 2000 to 2012, and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which originated from a reform movement founded by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas within the PRI, and which later became an independent party in 1989—but within a decade became corrupt.
In the center we find Jorge Máynez is the candidate of the Citizens’ Party, a middle-class party that claims to stand for political reform.
Finally, on the left of the spectrum we have Claudia Sheinbaum of the Party of National Regeneration or Morena, an authoritarian populist party. She is the hand-picked successor to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador,
Many in the social and labor movements and on the left believe they have no candidate in this election and they have issued this manifesto calling for the establishment of an Independent, Anti-capitalist and Anti-Patriarchal Left Bloc. – DL
In the face of the elections, let’s build an alternative for the youth, women and the working class!
Elections are just around the corner. The political forces that have clashed throughout the six-year term: the right-wing opposition made up of the old parties responsible for applying neoliberal policies and Morena, which after six years of government maintains great legitimacy, although with important contradictions, seek to win the vote and the trust of the working people, of the most popular sectors, of the most popular sectors. women and youth.
In this panorama, different organizations and collectives of the independent left see the need to form an Independent, Anti-capitalist and Anti-Patriarchal Left Bloc to strengthen the organization and mobilization independent of the government and the right. Below, we share our balance and position on the current situation with the intention of being able to open a dialogue with all those sectors that share the need to build a political alternative for the working class, women, sex-gender dissidents, indigenous peoples and all oppressed people in our country, in the perspective of conquering a true radical transformation of society.
In recent years we have entered a convulsive period at the international level, we see it in the environmental catastrophe, in the war in Ukraine and the Zionist genocide in Palestine supported by the great powers, the economic crisis, and the resurgence of the far right with characters such as Milei and Trump. On a global level, after the pandemic, we have seen the degradation of the living conditions of the great majority, and important scenarios of the mobilization of the working class of the countryside and the city, of the youth and of women against the attempts of the ruling classes to unload this crisis on the most dispossessed. In particular, we salute the international struggle in solidarity with the Palestinian people, which in recent months has shown blockades, mobilizations and strikes in repudiation of the Genocide. Today, the student movement has entered the scene in countries such as the United States and France, confronting repression and raising their voices for a free Palestine, moving teachers and students across the globe, including our country.
In this context, Mexico seems to be bucking the trend, with a relatively stable economic situation, which, however, is not exempt from the pressures of international reality and internal contradictions. After the enormous crisis of the traditional parties, PRI, PAN and PRD, in 2018 López Obrador came to the presidency with the votes of millions who saw in him and Morena important possibilities for change to end the legacy of neoliberal policies.
During this six-year term, the government of the Fourth Transformation implemented policies such as the historic increase in the minimum wage, the increase in vacations, and new labor justice mechanisms. However, it is important to bear in mind that these policies only reach a sector of the working class with stable jobs and a recognised employment relationship, leaving out the large part of the working population who work in precarious conditions, without contracts or without a recognised employment relationship, among whom the majority are women. Wage increases are reduced by inflation itself, which has generated increases in the basic basket of goods and essential goods, and have been insufficient to recover the loss of 80% of the purchasing power of the popular sectors that neoliberal policies meant. On the other hand, one of the government’s privileged policies has been social programs, which have had a positive impact on millions of people whose income or unemployment prevents them from fully covering their needs to survive, but which are a solution that does not attack the root of job insecurity and unemployment.
The so-called “republican austerity”, the government’s discourse to combat the privileges of senior civil servants, in reality, resulted in blows to state workers with hundreds of thousands of layoffs. Despite promising to put an end to outsourcing and labor flexibility, job insecurity and insecurity continued and spread during this six-year term, as demonstrated by social programs or contracts such as payroll 8, chapter 3000 or workers without the right to union digits.
In the health sector, wage increases have not affected all workers. The current government boasts the “best health system in the world”, however, workers in this sector continue to face jobs without rights and with low wages, many times they have also denounced the shortage of supplies for the care of users of clinics and hospitals.
A similar case is that of education, to whose teachers the government promised to grant a salary of 16 thousand pesos, which is still not a reality for all teachers of basic education and less for those of upper secondary and higher education, in addition the educational infrastructure maintains multiple deficits, with lack of maintenance and little investment. with overcrowding in groups, sometimes without access to water and increased administrative workload, without fully repealing Peña Nieto’s education reform and without involving grassroots teachers in the development of educational content. This explains the recent huge mobilization of the democratic teachers of the National Coordination of Education Workers in recent months.
In the public sector, workers in municipalities and agencies, in the health and education sectors are persecuted or repressed when they try to organize independently to defend their rights, despite which they mobilize and demand supplies, an increase in the budget and basification. This reality contrasts with the 60% increase in the millionaire fortunes of businessmen such as Carlos Slim and Germán Larrea during the six-year term, as well as with the enormous budget and concessions granted to the armed forces – the army, the navy and the National Guard – a budget that should have been invested in education, health, housing, investment in rural areas, etc. as well as guaranteeing decent work in the countryside and the city.
In the field of democratic freedoms, many of the most heartfelt demands in the country have not been resolved despite the government’s policies, remaining promises. For example, the return of the military to the barracks, the resolution of the case and the action of justice for Ayotzinapa, the cessation of forced disappearances, femicides and trans femicides and violence. Far from it, the government of the 4T has deployed a campaign of relegitimization of the armed forces, covering up and denying its responsibility in the State crimes of the past such as the genocide of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco and on June 10, 1971. the so-called “Halconazo”, as well as in the disappearance of the 43 students, where the army had an active participation at the time of the events and later in hindering the investigations. Meanwhile, the government tries to present itself as the culmination of popular struggles for memory, truth and justice. But militarization has deepened both in territory and functions, with the entry of the National Guard, with this government the army has conquered a control and a weight that in no previous government had achieved, granting them investment concessions and administration of megaprojects such as sections of the Mayan Train, while their lethality and abuse continue. violating the human rights of many, mainly our migrant brothers and sisters as they pass through the country. In this way, military subordination to U.S. imperialism is perpetuated, complying with the mandates of the White House to turn Mexico into Trump’s real wall to guarantee stability in his backyard, a platform for the plundering of raw materials and export maquilas.
The reality is contrary to the scenario that Q4 intends to present, without discontent or conflicts. In the six-year term, the SUTNOTIMEX strike, the protests and stoppages in the state, health and education sectors (such as the CNTE strikes in different months of 2023 and 2024, the struggle of the SUTIEMS workers and strikes such as the one at the University of Sonora) have stood out. The same happens with the struggles that peasant and indigenous populations lead for the defense of territory, common natural goods, against the dispossession and plundering of an extractivist and predatory economic model. Meanwhile, López Obrador describes as pseudo-environmentalists those who oppose his megaprojects and extractivism, thus trying to rig and disqualify any sector that confronts his policies by branding it as conservative or right-wing.
This is a separate case of the movement of women and gender dissidents against patriarchal violence and oppression, due to the enormous reach they have conquered in recent years with mobilizations of hundreds of thousands in the main cities of the country and a growing dynamic due to the weariness against violence, femicides, trans femicides and hate crimes that do not cease. The continuous irruption of these sectors shows that the increase in penalties and the classification of crimes are insufficient as long as the right to housing, health, education, decent work and basic sexual and reproductive rights such as legal abortion in all clinics and hospitals for pregnant people are not guaranteed. This implies a budget increase and many advances in access to these rights, as well as the liberation of women from care tasks. It also requires overcoming the wage gap with stable employment and an increase in wages not only compared to men’s income, but also according to inflation and the cost of the basic basket of goods and services. It is no coincidence that the two main candidacies for the presidency are headed by women, this responds to the power of the women’s movement, however, it has already been shown many times that the fact that a few manage to access positions of power does not mean an improvement in the living conditions of the bulk of working women.
In different countries we have seen how progressive governments that come to power because of the broad expectations of the population to put an end to neoliberal policies, decide not to confront the interests of big business or imperialism. Subjected to the international market, they are weighed down by the end of the cycle of raw materials that allowed the economic growth that was the basis of progressive policies. In this context, by not meeting the expectations of change and improvement in the living conditions of the population, they lose electoral support and open the way to the advance of the right wing with which they have administered and lobbied laws, and which they have not consistently confronted in the streets. Or even, they open the way to the far right, as happened in the Argentine case. However, the struggles of our peoples and of workers, youth and women have shown that rights are defended in the streets and that the right wing is confronted on that terrain as well, with our methods of struggle and without any confidence in its way out. And there are experiences such as that of the Argentine Left Front, which show that it is possible to build a political alternative between different forces organized on the principle of political independence from the government, the right and the businessmen.
In this sense, far from ignoring the danger that the return to government of the right-wing opposition (PAN-PRI-PRD) could mean for the great majorities, we believe that we have to decisively confront those right-wing variants that promise nothing more than surrender and subordination. There are those who think that in order to achieve this, you have to vote for the MORENA candidate. We understand that in the face of neoliberal parties the population sees the continuity of the Fourth Transformation as an alternative, but based on what has been developed previously, those of us who sign this statement do not grant any electoral political support to the governing party or its candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum. We think that none of the registered candidates represents an alternative for the workers, the women’s movement, the youth and all the popular sectors of the countryside and the city and that it will not be with the help of the parties in Congress that the popular expectations will be resolved. We already had the experience of AMLO’s government, which did not solve them either. We believe that the defense of our rights and the full resolution of our demands requires that we continue to mobilize in the streets and organize independently of the right and the government, as well as against the businessmen and landowners.
We are convinced of the need to build an alternative of the independent left that decisively confronts both the attacks and the sell-out policy of the right as well as the policies of neoliberal continuity maintained by the government, that confronts subordination to imperialism and that fights to conquer a society superior to the decadent capitalism in which we find ourselves. hand in hand with the working class and indigenous peoples, peasants, and with women at the forefront. On June 2, we reaffirm the need to raise a clear alternative in favor of the political independence of the most exploited and oppressed people, and a program that includes the demands and aspirations of peasants, workers and people. So we see a great opportunity to start building a broad left bloc independent of the government and the conservative, anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal opposition.
This is a call to build a broad and combative reference, in order to prepare ourselves for the challenges to come after the presidential election, for which we invite the organizations, collectives, currents and comrades that share this perspective of political independence from the conservative opposition and the current government, to sign this document. Join this call, share it and spread it.
Signers
Anti-capitalist and Anti-patriarchal Left Bloc, made up of the Lencha-Trans Commune, Committee 68, FINTRAS, Nuestra América, MAS, Coordinadora 1ro. of December, MTS, Agrupación Quiero Trabajo Digno, LUS, workers, feminists and activists.
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