Mexico

During his election campaign, Vicente Fox, the right wing candidate of the Partido Accion Nacional (National Action Party), had promised a huge increase in employment, education, welfare, and peace in Chiapas, etc. Not only that, he also claimed that these changes would be introduced quickly. Reality, as could be easily predicted, has turned out somewhat differently.

On December the first 2000, Mexico witnessed the inauguration of Vincente Fox Quejada as its new President. The pomp and circumstance, the ceremonial unveiling of the flag, the military bands, the florid rhetoric, the servile speeches, were all nothing new.Yet this inauguration was something very new for Mexico. For the first time in 71 years, the President was not a member of the PRI - the comically misnamed Institutional Revolutionary Party which had ruled Mexico ever since 1929.

Ten years after the appearance of Militante, we see that none of the fundamental problems in our society have been improved; on the contrary, the scheme of capitalist growth continues to wreak havoc among the masses. The misery and violence of the capitalist system is more crude than ever; thus the need for a newspaper that fights for a revolutionary alternative is more urgent today than ever. The united activists at Militante, Marxist Voice of Workers and Youth, call you to join our struggle for the construction of a revolutionary alternative for the socialist transformation of society. We call on our comrades and sympathizers in the United States and Canada to...

It is now more than a month since the federal police arrested more than 800 members of the students' General Strike Committee. There are still 150 students in jail and they are only being released with very expensive of up to 5,000 dollars. Despite these difficult conditions, on March 10th, more than 20,000 students marched through the northern part of the capital and sorrounded the jail where the arrested students are being held.

The strike at the UNAM was broken up by police and thugs, but the struggle is just beginning! On 9th February, almost 300,000 people, above all workers and their families, took to the streets in defence of political prisoners and to demand a satisfactory solution for the student movement.

On the surface it would seem that the Mexican economy has fully recovered from the currency collapse of 1994/95, and some international analysts are even saying Mexico is the example the Asian economies should use to get out of their recession as quick as possible. Reality, however is slightly different. And the regime is increasingly using repression to try and keep people quiet.

Splits in the PRI and the official unions, growth of the opposition PRD and the May Day Inter-Union Confederation, emergence of new guerrilla groups, economic crisis. An analysis of the situation facing Mexico in 1997.