By Nikos Mottas
Earlier this month, on March 8, the discovery of a suspected training and extermination camp for a drug cartel has sparked outrage across Mexico.
More specifically, activists unearthed a mass grave in a ranch called Izaguirre farm, in the Teuchitlan region of the state of Jalisco, which is estimated to contain personal belongings, as well as cremated remains of at least 200 persons.
Mexican drug cartels, notorious for their brutalities and cruel methods of killing, are also known to have strong ties with the bourgeois state and its mechanisms. According to the Communist Party of Mexico (PCM), crimes like the above are no different than other tragedies, such as the case of the 43 missing students of the Ayotzinapa Normalist School, who mysteriously disappeared in 2014. Since then, no bourgeois government – neoliberal, conservative or social democratic – has managed to solve the issue.
In a statement (read here the full statement in Spanish), the Communist Party of Mexico explains that mafia gangs and para-state mechanisms collaborate not only in carrying out such crimes, but also in covering up the actual perpetrators. PCM adds that the number of missing persons in Mexico exceeds 111,000 people, while it is estimated that there over 5,600 mass graves. The responsibility of the Mexican capitalist state is immense, no matter which party (PAN, MC, PRD, PRI, MORENA) is in the government.
All governmental administrations are trying to present themselves as “victims of conspiracies”, but the actual victims are the people, the Communist Party stresses out.
“President Sheinbaum isn't the victim; the victim is the working class people and their children who, seeking employment or better working conditions, fall into the networks of recruiters, cartel fronts used to recruit labor and feed their armed groups. Victims are migrants who are kidnapped at bus terminals, or even abducted aboard buses and vehicles on the highways, as it happened in the case of San Fernando. Victims are working-class women, adolescents and girls, against whom the most horrific violence and disappearances have increased, aimed at covering up rape, femicides, trafficking, and sexual exploitation. Indirect victims are mothers, wives, and daughters, who, faced with the terrible suffering of absence and uncertainty, are left to raise their families while they face the search on their own”, the Communist Party of Mexico points out.
The PCM adds: “The issue of drug trafficking cannot be analyzed without considering its ties to the state, the army, business leaders, the banking and financial system, and top-level politics. Today, it influences national life through the various bourgeois parties, representatives, senators, governors, and mayors [...] Its business dealings with mining, real estate, construction companies, agribusiness, and various other investments—which have continued to grow over the past two decades—along with constant attempts to legalize its operations, do not negate its primary business: the production and trafficking of drugs, the control of markets, and the development of black market activities such as prostitution and trafficking as the primary means of laundering its dirty money. This dynamic generates a constant demand for labor, an insatiable appetite that devours the sons and daughters of the proletariat, making tragedies like that of Teuchitlán a constant in the country's poverty belts”.
In the end of its statement, the Communist Party expresses its solidarity with the mothers and fathers, as well as with the families of the disappeared and the dead” and adds: “We consider it a priority to concentrate our efforts to achieve justice. As with Ayotzinapa, only popular outrage and the mobilization of diverse working-class organizations can dismantle the narrative of criminalization and confront criminal and state violence in an organized manner.”
In a statement (read here the full statement in Spanish), the Communist Party of Mexico explains that mafia gangs and para-state mechanisms collaborate not only in carrying out such crimes, but also in covering up the actual perpetrators. PCM adds that the number of missing persons in Mexico exceeds 111,000 people, while it is estimated that there over 5,600 mass graves. The responsibility of the Mexican capitalist state is immense, no matter which party (PAN, MC, PRD, PRI, MORENA) is in the government.
All governmental administrations are trying to present themselves as “victims of conspiracies”, but the actual victims are the people, the Communist Party stresses out.
“President Sheinbaum isn't the victim; the victim is the working class people and their children who, seeking employment or better working conditions, fall into the networks of recruiters, cartel fronts used to recruit labor and feed their armed groups. Victims are migrants who are kidnapped at bus terminals, or even abducted aboard buses and vehicles on the highways, as it happened in the case of San Fernando. Victims are working-class women, adolescents and girls, against whom the most horrific violence and disappearances have increased, aimed at covering up rape, femicides, trafficking, and sexual exploitation. Indirect victims are mothers, wives, and daughters, who, faced with the terrible suffering of absence and uncertainty, are left to raise their families while they face the search on their own”, the Communist Party of Mexico points out.
The PCM adds: “The issue of drug trafficking cannot be analyzed without considering its ties to the state, the army, business leaders, the banking and financial system, and top-level politics. Today, it influences national life through the various bourgeois parties, representatives, senators, governors, and mayors [...] Its business dealings with mining, real estate, construction companies, agribusiness, and various other investments—which have continued to grow over the past two decades—along with constant attempts to legalize its operations, do not negate its primary business: the production and trafficking of drugs, the control of markets, and the development of black market activities such as prostitution and trafficking as the primary means of laundering its dirty money. This dynamic generates a constant demand for labor, an insatiable appetite that devours the sons and daughters of the proletariat, making tragedies like that of Teuchitlán a constant in the country's poverty belts”.
In the end of its statement, the Communist Party expresses its solidarity with the mothers and fathers, as well as with the families of the disappeared and the dead” and adds: “We consider it a priority to concentrate our efforts to achieve justice. As with Ayotzinapa, only popular outrage and the mobilization of diverse working-class organizations can dismantle the narrative of criminalization and confront criminal and state violence in an organized manner.”
Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
