The strike at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) clearly shows that the proletariat has kept intact its capacity to fight for the defence of its living and working conditions, despite the many difficulties and obstacles in the current situation.

Introduction

The growth of the political and economic power of drug gangs in Mexico has led the US bourgeoisie to express concern about the possibility of “contagion”, leading it to put pressure on the Mexican government. James Mattis of the US Navy stated in February 2009 that Mexico is a “failed state.” According to the US military there are similarities between Mexico and Pakistan, these states are losing control of their political and economic apparatus: in Mexico because of drugs, in Pakistan because of the tensions with India and the continued attacks by the Taliban.

Recent newspaper articles, Simon Jenkins in The Guardian, September 10 for example, have expressed some hand-wringing within the bourgeoisie recently over the question of drugs: the obvious failure of the “war on drugs”, whether to legalise this or that drug, whether to decriminalise and so on. It’s all hot air.

Capitalism in its death throes cannot offer any perspective to humanity and the planet. In fact, the longer the oil continues to gush, the clearer the bankruptcy of the system becomes.

There are many factors that confer on Mexico a particular importance within imperialist relations: its role as a reserve of raw material (minerals and oil), and especially its geographic position

We are publishing here four texts in response to the massive job-cuts facing power and electricity workers in Mexico. The first is a joint leaflet signed by our section in Mexico, which publishes Revolución mundial, and two internationalist anarchist groups, Grupo Socialista Libertario and the Projecto Anarquista Metropolitano. There are two messages of solidarity from proletarian groups in Peru. We are also publishing a further message in support of the workers' struggle, from comrades in Ecuador.

Manuel Fernandez Grandizo, known as G. Munls, died on 4 February 1989. The proletariat has lost a militant who devoted his whole life to the class struggle.

We have already, in IR 50, briefly presented the Grupo Proletario Internacionalista of Mexico, on the publication of the first issue of its review, Revolucion Mundial. We are reprinting here a text from Revolucion Mundial no 2: a critique of the "Theses of the Alptraum Communist Collective" (CCA), also from Mexico[1], which were published in IR no 40 in January 1985.

We will let the GPI present themselves to our readers:

"We came together as a political group, only a few months ago under the name GPI, and united around principles set out[2] in the first issue of our publication Revolucion Mundial. Just beforehand, we were essentially a "discussion group": a largely informal grouping from the organizational standpoint, (without a name, or rules of functioning etc.), and polit­ically concentrated and orientated in an effort of political discussion and clarification, mainly towards giving more precision to the "class frontiers", ie the principles we should defend.

We are publishing here a shorter version of a statement by Revolución Mundial, the ICC's section in Mexico, about the outbreak of swine flu which began in that country. After the first weeks of panic and doom-mongering, the new strain of flu almost disappeared from the headlines.

Throughout the world, the living conditions of the working class are under attack, whether by private bosses or the state, whether in the developed countries or the poorest. Attacks on wages, the aggravation of unemployment, lowering of benefits, growing constraints on conditions of work, deepening poverty - such is the price the proletariat pays for the crisis of capitalism. But these attacks are not raining down on a beaten proletariat, ready to passively accept all the sacrifices that are demanded of it.

On the contrary, we are seeing stronger and stronger reactions from the workers to counter these attacks. Despite the enormous black-out operated by the media in the developed countries, this is particularly the case in Latin America at the moment.

As the Memorial Day weekend neared the price of gas at the pump in New York State skyrocketed to $3.21 per gallon for regular. In the past year crude oil has risen 33 percent. The Bush administration and the mass media claim the cause is the law of supply and demand. According to them the industrialized countries are “addicted” to oil and, particularly in the U.S., as the summer vacation period approaches, demand is going up. Add to this the lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina on oil production and the refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, and the burgeoning energy needs of the booming economies of India and China and fears of political instability in the Middle East, particularly because of the continuing war in Iraq, where oil production has not returned to pre-war levels, and a possible military confrontation over Iranian nuclear ambitions, and terrorist attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria, and  the result, according to the bourgeoisie, is a classic situation in which demand far outstrips current oil supplies.