Hundreds of unions and popular organizations join forces in Mexico

777 delegates from more than 200 worker unions, peasant and social organizations gathered this weekend in Mexico City and agreed to form a unified front of struggle in order to agglutinate the popular discontent that there is in the North American country against the illegitimate government and the economic model that so much trouble is causing.

Among the organizations presents there were the telephone operators' union, the UNAM (Mexico's public university) workers' union (STUNAM), the electricians' union (SME), several sections of the education workers' union (CNTE), the miners' union, the National Liberation Movement (MLN) and the National Movement for the Unity of the Left.

Some other 81 peasant and civilian organizations also signed the final declaration. Among them the movement against La Parrota dam, the National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations and the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca.

The leader of the Tram Workers' Alliance, Benito Bahena, declared that the popular organizations are not going to sit and wait if whoever comes in 2012 (date of the next presidential elections) has democratic intent or an alternative plan for the country but that they are going themselves to propose a national plan. Fighting against the oligarchy, change in the economic model and a sense of urgency (as pillars of the social state, such as public schooling, are being dismantled right now) are among the focuses that several leaders emphasized in their declarations.

They have agreed to build the Popular Power oriented towards a new Constituent Assembly, to get organized at state and federal district level, and to meet again in February 5.

I understand from the text that the new organization is named Social Congress (Congreso Social in Spanish).

And I understand from the level of the organizations involved and the kind of discourse that this is a very serious movement that is finally taking form in the country of Zapata and Villa, the country where Trotsky and so many exiles from fascism found refuge, the country from where Fidel and Che embarked to make the revolution in Cuba. 

As I have argued before, Mexico is in a pre-revolutionary situation, where the system is so deeply rotten, so extremely failed that the only alternative is to shake its foundations radically and to build anew. The people of Mexico for all I know really deserves much better than what they are getting.

I welcome the concept of building the revolutionary movement, not from above, from some intellectual bubble of self-proclaimed avant-guard, but from below, from the real organizations that are articulating Mexican society and giving battle to the oligarchies.

It looks like a movement that we will hear a lot from, a movement that can well change Mexico for the better and make an impact in American and even global politics.

Con esperanza, un saludo solidario desde este otro lado del charco, compañeros y compañeras. (With hope, a solidarious salute from this other side of the puddle, comrades).

Source: MLN, originally found at La Haine.

See also: category Mexico at my old blog Leherensuge.