Sheinbaum at the feet of Imperialism
At a time when the entire planet is witnessing a new arms race, Claudia Sheinbaum declared “the prevalence of dialogue and respect” in negotiations over tariffs with Trump. This is, at the very least, a gross infamy. Trump’s policy has prevailed everywhere it has been pushed forward, and with much greater cynicism in his own backyard; proof of this is the recent agreement with Panama that legitimizes the permanent presence of U.S. military forces in the Canal. For this reason, from the White House, Trump congratulated Sheinbaum for the important work she has been doing to guarantee this policy.
In the tariff negotiations between Mexico and the U.S., what has prevailed is the domination agreement embodied in the USMCA. For decades, this treaty has served to decimate national industry, destroy Mexican agriculture, and extract the highest possible surplus value from wage labor. The renewals now led by MORENA only legitimize this treaty that subordinates Mexico to the U.S. empire, its commercial chains, and its financial capital.
With the world divided between oppressor and oppressed countries, Sheinbaum’s political demonstration in the Zócalo serves only to deceive workers by making them believe that Mexico is a free and sovereign nation. However, Sheinbaum is not only strongly collaborative with U.S. imperialism, but also wants the integration of the entire continent in order to confront “the economic and commercial advance of Asian countries.” That is, she is not only willing to make Mexico a pawn of U.S. domination, but also intends for all of Latin America to serve those interests.
Speeches about “American integration” with a world power mask relations of imperial domination. In fact, under this idea, the United States imposed dictatorships and promoted its “free trade” agreements with the rest of Latin America. This produced an increasingly cynical dependence of these nations on imperialism. As a result, ruling classes became junior partners in the plunder of their own countries, disputing the crumbs of transnational spoils, in many cases with weapons in hand. This is the sad reality of a semi-colonial bourgeoisie that has no choice but to yield to the extortion of foreign capital.
Meanwhile, transnational corporations exert their full power to continue subordinating the country. These companies strike juicy deals with the government while displacing rural populations and exploiting labor. Every year thousands of farmers’ children migrate to fill the agro-industrial workforce of Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California, Guadalajara, and other states. These routes have become true paths of death, and workers fall victim to scams, robberies, disappearances, and murders. Meanwhile, agro-industrial companies have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the “free trade” treaty. Their profits have skyrocketed, but they are built on the blood of more than 2 million farmworkers who lose their lives in the fields.
Furthermore, figures from recent decades have demonstrated Mexico’s food dependence on the U.S. Practically half of the corn consumed in the country is currently imported. Even a demand once raised by the government to limit the consumption of yellow corn (almost all of which is imported from the U.S.) was deemed unfounded because it would violate the sacrosanct “free competition” stipulated in the USMCA, despite arguments that its consumption could be harmful.
In 2022, as the government attempted to confront rising inflation, it signed an agreement with several transnationals allowing the import of food without regulation or tariffs, the only requirement being that the companies pledge to guarantee quality products free of sanitary risks. This agreement was renewed under Sheinbaum’s administration. Transnationals impose judges at negotiation tables to win disputes over corn, and now we must simply trust their word to prefer the health of the population over their profits. That is, MORENA’s policy has gone from humiliation to outright ridicule.
To the detriment of domestic producers, the MORENA government continued deepening the destruction of the countryside promoted and maintained by the PRI–PAN–PRD. Obrador eliminated financing for producers and instead provided some direct economic support and fertilizers to a small percentage of them. In this way, a suicidal policy was advanced that will ultimately deepen rural inequalities by enriching a small layer of farmers.
This order persists as disappearances increase and clandestine graves are continuously found. The case of Teuchitlán in Jalisco has made it clear that Mexico is a cemetery in plain sight. Despite attempts by the government, as with all previous administrations, to downplay, deny, or evade responsibility, the truth is that the cases of the disappeared can no longer be hidden.
Let us recall the case of the Ayotzinapa students, in which the then Attorney General’s Office (PGR) imposed its so-called “historical truth,” denying the government’s responsibility, and in which Omar Harfuch—now sent by the government to coordinate security actions with the FBI—was even implicated. Today, several former officials of that dissolved institution are being prosecuted. And Sheinbaum publicly supported the version of the Attorney General’s Office under the denounced and convicted Alejandro Gertz Manero. Such are the institutions of the bourgeois State: filled with officials who have no qualms about all kinds of corruption and then returning to public office.
Meanwhile, Sheinbaum’s government must maneuver between imperialism and the starving masses. On one side, business chambers and organizations stand with her, giving her their vote of confidence, trusting that the Armed Forces will continue keeping the country in a state of war against the poor, against social fighters, against peasants, against searching mothers, against student activists, and against any sector that slips outside the partisan control of MORENA. On the other hand, the leaders of popular organizations are tasked with maintaining the same order within the mass movement, disciplining any struggle that attempts to confront the government under the excuse of not “playing into the hands of the right.”
Faced with this situation of constant war and disappearances, the leaders of the main union federations subordinate themselves to Sheinbaum’s government, efficient collaborator of Trump and of imperialism. This policy, upheld by a layer of academics “sympathetic” to the Fourth Transformation project, has only served to disorient and disarm movements fighting for their most basic demands. Instead of seeking unity with poor peasants, farmworkers, the urban poor, and the army of unemployed, urban labor leaders prefer to seek support from some “progressive” officials to pit them against “conservatives.”
Stalinist and pseudo-Trotskyist parties function as the left leg of this regime, criticizing some MORENA leaders, attempting to “push the party,” speaking of “an organized internal revolution,” of “blocking the bourgeoisie” within the governing party, and other foolish phrases—repeating their old errors when they supported the PRD. These reformists have learned nothing and lead the masses into new betrayals and massacres.
Tell the truth, gentlemen: behind Sheinbaum’s government hide the old PRI officials, the PAN criminals, the murderous military caste, and the counterrevolution waiting for the moment to launch new massacres.
Instead of fighting for the most basic political independence of the working class from all bourgeois parties and from the government, reformist leaders hide behind MORENA’s bourgeoisie, behind its negotiation tables behind the backs of the rank and file. Enough of this policy of collaboration. This “tactic” is the reformist program that now bows its head to the bourgeoisie, but which later, some of its factions will tend toward radicalization, distancing themselves from the masses and blaming them for their passivity.
For this reason, it is necessary to recall some lines from the Transitional Program: “If it is criminal to turn one’s back on the mass organizations to content oneself with sectarian fictions, it is no less criminal to tolerate passively the subordination of the revolutionary movement of the masses to the control of openly reactionary or conservative bureaucratic cliques disguised as ‘progressive.’” Programa de Transición: «Si es criminal volver la espalda a las organizaciones de masas para contentarse con ficciones sectarias, no es menos criminal tolerar pasivamente la subordinación del movimiento revolucionario de las masas al contralor de pandillas burocráticas abiertamente reaccionarias o conservadoras disfrazadas de ‘progresistas’”.
It is the duty of the moment to combat these bureaucratic and conservative tendencies within the active fighting organisms; only thus will the path open for millions of exploited people to rise up in this semi-colony disguised as a free and sovereign nation. Only the organized proletariat can carry out an independent policy from all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois factions. Only the working class, supported by the poorest peasants, can lead the national liberation movement and push it to its ultimate consequences. With this alliance, it will be possible to confront imperialism, fighting to overthrow the collaborationist government of MORENA, PRI, PAN, and MC. How valuable people like Claudia Sheinbaum are to imperialism, reinforcing the image of an imperial power with which “respectful” deals can be made while it murders men, women, and children in Palestine.
Only by combining the democratic tasks of the bourgeoisie with those of the proletarian revolution will the rural poor obtain land, cheap credit, and justice for their children. Only then will the fraudulent external debt stop being paid; the military preparing throughout the country to commit more crimes against communities will be expelled; and the transnationals will be expropriated and placed at the service of the basic needs of the poor under their own control. We must fight for the construction of organs of power capable of bringing to justice all criminals of the State and the bourgeoisie. Only by arming ourselves adequately will we cease to be victims of the plunder and war that the ruling classes have declared on us. Only with the dictatorship of the proletariat and world socialism will all our demands be fulfilled. For this we need to refound the Fourth International, to guide the proletariat in the coming revolutions in the colonies, semi-colonies, and the metropoles of the great powers.
Down with the government of Sheinbaum and the transnationals!
Down with U.S. imperialism!
