From Labor's Champion
March, 1989
The struggles of the working people of Mexico and the United States are closely linked. The two countries are more than neighbors; the histories of both countries have been intertwined since they were born. Mexico has been dominated by U.S. capital since the last century. Millions of Mexican workers labor for U.S.-owned corporations in Mexico and millions more have been drawn across the border to work in fields and sweatshops in the U.S. In recent years, as U.S. industrialists have built an ever larger system of interlocking plants on both sides of the border, the fate of U.S. and Mexican workers has become more closely linked than ever.
The situation faced by the Mexican working people has become more and more desperate over the last few years, spurring the growth of revolutionary struggles by the workers and peasants. These developments are of great concern to U.S. workers, because the advance of the popular struggle in Mexico contributes greatly to the development of our struggle here in the U.S. Workers here must not only learn about the struggles of our class brothers and sisters in Mexico; we must do all we can to aid those struggles and build the unity and joint action of the laboring people on both sides of the border.
In this issue, Labor's Champion presents the first part of a series of articles on the situation in Mexico and the struggles of the Mexican working people.
The situation of the Mexican working people, which was never good, has declined sharply since the economic collapse of 1982. Some 675,000 workers were laid off in four years, while 3 million more people joined the labor force without any additional jobs for them. It is estimated that over half the labor force is unemployed or underemployed. This provides a huge reserve army of labor that helps keep wages low. Workers' real wages have fallen about 50% since 1982. The official minimum wage is about $3 per day, but less than half of the employed workers even earn this miserable amount. Many skilled workers, such as miners, auto workers, etc., earn only slightly more than this.
Mexico City is now the largest city in the world, with some 12 to 20 million people. It has millions crowded into huge slums, with inadequate housing, lack of sanitation, and frequently no water safe to drink. Over half the population suffers from malnourishment. In the countryside conditions are even worse, with over 80% estimated to suffer from malnutrition.
On the other hand, Mexico owes about $105 billion in foreign debt, mostly to the U.S. banks and the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. It has the second largest debt among the dependent countries (Brazil, another "economic miracle," has the largest), and it has the largest debt per person. Mexico pays about $10 billion per year in debt service (payment of interest on these loans). This is money that is soaked out of the Mexican working people, and is one of the chief ways that the U.S. monopoly capitalists extract surplus-value (profits) from their labor. The various schemes of the monopolists to "rescue" Mexico with more loans and extended payments only serve to increase and prolong the suffering of the Mexican people.
History of U.S. Domination
Let us look at the development of the imperialist relations impressed upon Mexico by U.S. monopoly capitalism that led to these conditions
Mexico has had formal, political independence for about 175 years, since the revolution of 1810 to 1821 against colonial Spain. In 1845, the U.S. forcibly annexed the territory which is now Texas. This attack precipitated the war between the U.S. and Mexico in 1846, in which the U.S. government invaded Mexico and forced it to give up two-fifths of its territory. This territory now comprises most of the southwestern United States (the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, California, Utah and Nevada).
In 1876, General Porfirio Diaz seized power and installed an arch-reactionary dictatorship which was overthrown by the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920. Mexico has had a continuous period of capitalist democracy since then. The Mexican government and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) at times speak against certain U.S. policies, on Mexico and Central America in particular. But this only serves to conceal the fact that Mexico is a capitalist country that is completely controlled and plundered by U.S. imperialism.
Mexico, before and in the first decades after the revolution, was a "traditional" neo-colony. It had little industry and was plundered of its agricultural and raw material resources by the United States monopoly capitalists. But in the period since World War II, it has undergone an economic transformation. It now has a large and growing industrial sector, assembling everything from electronics to automobiles. Until the latest outbreak of Mexico's "debt crisis" in 1982, it was called an "economic miracle." But this "miracle" only deepened and extended the poverty and oppression of the Mexican working people. On the other hand, it has been a miracle of super-profits for the U.S. and other imperialists and their junior partners, the Mexican bourgeoisie, who have gotten rich off their labor.
|
One of the foundations of Mexico's "miracle" of dependent development has been the transformation of agriculture. Before World War II, the bulk of agricultural production was of corn, the main item in the Mexican diet. In 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation and Mexico's Agriculture Ministry sponsored the so-called "Green Revolution," introducing widespread chemical fertilizers, insecticides, etc. From 1940 to 1975, there was a six-fold increase in agricultural productivity, but this increase did not benefit the Mexican working people. Rather, it marked a shift to production for export instead of providing food for the population. Increased production also served the growing animal-feed and food processing industries, controlled by U.S. and other monopoly capitalists. Meanwhile, Mexico imported corn as well as wheat to feed its people, while 3 million tons of corn and 6 million tons of sorghum per year go to just two U.S. monopolists, Ralston Purina and Anderson Clayton, for animal food. Already by 1957, 60% of agricultural production was for export.
Today, 64% of the farm land in use goes for cattle raising. But this is primarily for meat export, as most Mexicans rarely eat meat. Similarly, 35% of the population never drinks milk, and the rest only rarely. What milk is available is mostly Nestlé's or Carnation's condensed, evaporated or powdered milk. However, the average Mexican drinks 5 bottles of soft drinks per week, 45 times the average milk consumption. Coca-Cola alone makes up 42% of all soft drink sales in Mexico. Thus, what Mexico's workers produce they do not consume, and what they consume they do not produce. The foreign monopolists profit at both ends.
Mexico also has a growing fruit and vegetable industry, mostly for export and controlled by imperialist, mostly U.S., companies. These exports, for the U.S. winter and spring market, make up half of Mexico's agricultural exports. Del Monte controls Mexico's white-asparagus production, United Brands (formerly United Foods) controls strawberry production, while Ralston Purina and International Multifoods control the poultry industry. This control exists despite a law requiring 51% Mexican participation in most industries.
U.S. monopolies also profit from the production of agricultural machinery. Del Monte has an agricultural machinery complex, and John Deere and Ford own tractor factories, in central Mexico.
With increased agricultural production comes increased concentration of land and the development of an agricultural proletariat. By 1970, 2% of the farms held 76% of the land. Land concentration is speeded up by Mexican state funding for irrigation and other elements of infrastructure, which goes mostly to aid the large landlords and agribusiness. They rent the land and provide credits. In this way even the peasants on the communal lands (ejidos) that resulted from the revolution and later reforms have often become peons on their own lands. The land itself is generally owned by Mexicans, while the production is controlled by agribusiness. Mexican landlords thus take a secondary share in the exploitation of the peasants. Monopoly agribusiness now employs 75% of the rural proletarians. Their conditions may be seen from the fact that the average real wage of Mexican farm workers is only one-seventh that of farm workers in California, who are already notoriously exploited.
We thus see that the large increase in agricultural production in Mexico has only gone to the benefit of U.S. agricultural monopolies, the Mexican large landlords and rural bourgeoisie. It in no way benefits the Mexican working people. This fact stands out clearly when one notes that although Mexico is the world's 9th largest food producer, it ranks 60th in per capita food consumption and life expectancy.
The peasants have not accepted their deteriorating conditions lying down. The countryside has been a scene of widespread though scattered struggles, mainly over land. Up to the mid-'70s, there were several guerrilla struggles. One of the strongest, in the southern state of Guerrero, lasted for 7 years until it was finally crushed by 24,000 troops.
Since that time, there have been many mass land occupations and fights against dispossession by the peasants. In 1976, in the northern state of Sonora, peasants forced the government to distribute some 250,000 acres of land.
Many of these struggles have involved the Native peoples, who are among the poorest in the countryside. The state of Chiapas, which borders on Guatemala and has a large number of Native people, has been the scene of frequent peasant struggles against dispossession from their land by the landlords and political bosses and against encroachments by cattle barons.
As the peasant struggles have spread throughout the country, there have been increasing attempts to form independent peasant organizations, as well as to link the struggles with those of the workers in the cities and other oppressed classes. Their revolutionary outlook has grown as well, as indicated by the slogan of one of the peasant organizations: "Today we fight for the land, tomorrow for power." As these struggles have grown, they have faced increased repression from the Mexican state. Many of the estimated 800 political prisoners and "disappeared" persons have been from the countryside, where the dispersion of the population makes it easier for the army to carry out its repression.
The concentration of agricultural production has lead to mass migrations of dispossessed peasants to the cities. In the decade of the 1960s alone, some 3 million people left the countryside. By 1980, the rural population made up only 35% of the total, down from 65% in 1940. In the same period, the actual number of people in the countryside rose from 13 million to 27 million due to the rapid population growth in the country as a whole. This shows that the peasant movement will continue to be a significant part of the Mexican revolution.
In the cities, the new arrivals form part of a growing pool of cheap labor for industry. As we shall discuss later, many also go the the U.S. to become some of the most super-exploited workers in this country, while others, mostly young women, work in the maquiladoras, the U.S. owned assembly plants located along the border with the U.S.
Click here to return to the U.S. Index