Support the Uprising in Chiapas!
- Statement
by the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
15 January
1994
On January 1st 1994
hundreds of armed peasants arose in rebellion in the Mexican state
of Chiapas. Their bold and daring action mobilized the support of
thousands in the immediate area and aroused the enthusiasm of the
masses throughout the whole country. The news was greeted with jubilation
by the class conscious proletarians and revolutionary masses, especially
those who suffer exploitation and oppression at the hands of U.S.
imperialism, including within the U.S. itself.
The rebellion demonstrates
the deep revolutionary sentiments of the Mexican people and their
basic needs: to be free of imperialist subjugation, (principally
by the U.S. which is being even further tightened by the North American
Free Trade Agreement); to implement a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution;
and to overthrow the bureaucrat-capitalist class that rules Mexico
in the service of U.S. imperialism and in league with the landowning
classes.
The Chiapas uprising
struck panic into the hearts of the Mexican ruling class and its
U.S. overlords who were in constant contact over how to suppress
the uprising. It was met by counter-revolutionary dual tactics of
vicious indiscriminate repression and terror directed against the
people, on the one hand, and the spreading of false promises of
reform on the other.
Although the Committee
of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement is not fully informed
as to the political programme and ideology of the Zapatista National
Liberation Army which has been leading the revolt in Chiapas, it
is clear that this revolt is fully justified and merits the support
of revolutionary communists and progressive forces the world over.
Mexico is a populous
country of Latin America which has the misfortune of being located
on a long frontier of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. imperialists have
long considered Mexico a private preserve to exploit to the maximum
where they are free to interfere at will to defend their reactionary
interests. Recent events have shown that revolutionary struggle
can transform Mexico from a strategic reserve of U.S. imperialism
into a strategic dagger of the world proletarian revolution aimed
at the very heart of the U.S. empire.
Mexico has a long revolutionary
tradition of the masses of people rising to fight the oppressors.
But in the past these struggles have never led to genuine liberation
because they lacked the firm leadership of the proletariat and its
vanguard party. What the people of Mexico need most is such a party,
based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, determined and able to lead the
people in waging a New Democratic Revolution. Today the People's
War in Peru led by the Communist Party of Peru is a glorious example
of the vitality of the Maoist road of liberation.
The rebellion in Chiapas
shows once again that the conditions for revolutionary explosions
are maturing in Mexico and in the world. The Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement, which unites and concentrates the strengths of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
parties and organisations worldwide, pledges its support to the
revolutionary masses in Mexico and to those forces in that country
who are fighting to arm the people with the revolutionary ideology
of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism which alone can lead the struggle to
victory.
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