To the workers of the CNTE (Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación)
Mexico
Dear comrades,
on behalf of the Central Committee and all members of the Communist Front of Italy, we express our full and unconditional militant solidarity with the struggle of Mexican education workers against the anti-popular pension reforms promoted by the Zedillo and Calderón governments in 1997 and 2007, and we salute the strike organised on 1 June by the CNTE (National Coordination of Education Workers), which saw widespread participation by workers, reaching almost 100 per cent in some regions.
The struggle led by the CNTE is just and necessary: this pension counter-reform represents an act of class exploitation disguised as ‘modernisation’ that condemns workers to meagre pensions, shifting the full burden of financial risk onto them and depriving them of the right to a dignified retirement, whilst guaranteeing rich profits for the wealth management companies. Mexican education workers are not fighting merely for themselves: they are fighting for everyone’s right to a dignified retirement, free from financial speculation. Their battle is ours.
We strongly denounce the criminalization campaign carried out by the social-democratic government of Claudia Sheinbaum and the militants of her party MORENA against the striking workers. We denounce the violence of the State’s repressive apparatus, which on the very first day of the strike already caused the serious injury of three teachers. Behind the electoral promises of President Sheinbaum — who during her campaign had pledged to put an end to the system of pension fund management companies (AFORE, Administradora de Fondos para el Retiro) — lies the same logic of those who today orchestrate police aggression against workers demanding basic rights, revealing the class nature of all social-democratic governments, which hide their role as guardians of bourgeois order behind progressive rhetoric.
LONG LIVE THE STRIKE OF MEXICAN EDUCATION WORKERS!
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
COMMUNIST FRONT (ITALY)
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee
