Central America / Mexico / U.S.: Solidarity with the Migrants’ Caravan!

 

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 01.11.2018, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

1.             Central American migrants, fleeing misery and violence, are heading towards the U.S. border. About 10,000 people, with many children among them, are currently traveling through southern Mexico with the intent of reaching the U.S. border. A second caravan is at the Guatemala-Mexico border.

 

2.             These people are fleeing the horrible misery in their native countries. Decades of capitalist attacks on social and democratic rights of the working people have resulted in poverty, mass unemployment, high criminality, and drug business. At the same time, multinational corporations and a small domestic elite are appropriating huge profits, resulting in massive inequality in the Central American countries.

 

3.             The impoverishment and plunder of Central America has not been a spontaneous process but the unavoidable result of the austerity and privatization policy imposed by the International Monetary Fund – a powerful international financial institution controlled by the U.S. and other imperialist Great Powers. Whenever the workers and poor peasants in Central America rose up against the oppression and exploitation, they were met with, open as well as disguised, military interventions of U.S. imperialism and its local henchmen.

 

4.             The migrants in the caravans experience impressive demonstrations of solidarity by the people in Mexico. While the reactionary government of Peña Nieto, under the pressure of the Trump Administration, tries to stop the caravan, ordinary people in nearly all cities and villages spontaneously help the migrants with food, water and other everyday articles. The Mexican people see and feel that the migrants are people of their kind – workers, poor peasants and urban poor.

 

5.             At the same time U.S. President Trump, as usual, slanders the migrants. He accuses them of having many “gang members” and “some very bad people” among them. Trump even suggested that the caravans harbor terrorists from the Middle East! He threatened the migrants in one of his notorious tweets: “This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” The White House announced that it will send up to 15,000 troops to the border with Mexico, in addition to the 2,100 U.S. National Guard forces which Trump already sent in April. It seems that Trump is prepared to order a massacre against the Central American migrants at the southern border. The orange man is dumb as bricks, racist to the core and he represents a mortal danger for many people!

 

6.             The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and its sections in Mexico and Brazil send their warmest greetings to the Central American migrants! We fully support their desire to enter the U.S. The working people of Central America are suffering from the super-exploitation of U.S. imperialism since more than a century. As a result the U.S. has become a very rich country while Central America remains its impoverished backyard. The workers and poor peasants in Central America have every right to enter the U.S. and to get a share of the enormous wealth which the imperialists have accumulated at the back of the oppressed people through decades of plunder!

 

7.             The RCIT calls for the creation of an international and multinational movement in solidarity with the migrants. Such a movement should be built in North America as well as in Latin America (as well as in Europe which is another destination for many poor from Africa and the Middle East). It should include trade unions and other mass workers and popular mass organizations. Such a movement should demand the opening of borders. It should support the desire of the migrants to enter the U.S. or, if they prefer, to stay in Mexico. It should organize political and organizational support for the migrants, including logistic help as well as the formation of self-defense committees against police repression and against attacks of racist and xenophobic groups. Such a solidarity movement should also demand from the Mexican government, with the recently elected bourgeois populist President López Obrador, that it does not give in to the pressure of the U.S. Instead of hindering the migrants, the Mexican authorities should let the migrants enter the country and provide the migrants’ caravans with all the necessary logistic support.

 

8.             In the U.S. the solidarity movement must demand the immediate withdrawal of all troops from the border. It must call for the opening of the borders. It should urge the soldiers to undermine all instructions desired to stop the migrants. We have already seen in the past two years numerous examples of people in the U.S. defending migrants against the racist ICE units. We need to see now similar attempts to sabotage the efforts of the U.S. authorities to stop the migrants’ caravans. The solidarity movement must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to help the migrants enter the U.S.

 

9.             Finally, the workers and migrants mass organizations in the U.S. should fight against all attempts to criminalize and deport migrant brothers and sisters. They should fight for the immediate dissolution of the barbaric internment camp for migrants and, in particular, for migrant children. They should also demand the dissolution of the ICE. Furthermore, they should demand full citizenship rights for migrants, equal wages and full equality in all aspects of social life.

 

10.          The RCIT calls all revolutionaries in Latin America and North America to unite on the basis of a program of consistent anti-imperialism and working class internationalism! Forward in building revolutionary parties as part of a new World Party of Socialist Revolution!

 

* For an International Solidarity Movement to Support the Migrants’ Caravans!

 

* No U.S. Military to the Mexican Border!

 

* Open the Borders!

 

* Undermine All Efforts of U.S. Imperialism to Stop the Migrants’ Caravan!

 

 

 

International Secretariat of the RCIT

 

 

 

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For a more detailed elaboration of the RCIT's position on migration and the internationalist program of revolutionary equality we refer readers to various documents which we have published and which are accessible on our website. See e.g., RCIT: Marxism, Migration and Revolutionary Integration, https://www.thecommunists.net/oppressed/revolutionary-integration/; Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South, chapter 8.iv) and 14ii), https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/great-robbery-of-the-south/; Michael Pröbsting: The British Left and the EU-Referendum: The Many Faces of pro-UK or pro-EU Social-Imperialism, August 2015, Chapter II.2, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/british-left-and-eu-referendum/part-5-1/, RCIT-Program, chapter V: https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit-manifesto/fight-against-oppression-of-migrants/, RCIT-Manifesto chapter IV: https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit-program-2016/chapter-iv/; and various actual statements and articles here: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/europe/articles-on-refugees/. See also Michael Pröbsting: Migration and Super-exploitation: Marxist Theory and the Role of Migration in the present Period of Capitalist Decay, in: Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory (Volume 43, Issue 3-4, 2015), pp. 329-346, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03017605.2015.1099846. We have also published a detailed study on migration and the Marxist program in German. See Michael Pröbsting: Marxismus, Migration und revolutionäre Integration (2010); in: Der Weg des Revolutionären Kommunismus, Nr. 7, pp. 38-41, http://www.thecommunists.net/publications/werk-7. Michael Pröbsting: Patriotic "Anti-Capitalism" for Fools. Yet Again on the CWG/LCC's Support for "Workers’" Immigration Control and Protectionism in the US, 30.5.2017; Michael Pröbsting and Andrew Walton: The Slogan of "Workers’" Immigration Control: A Concession to Social-Chauvinism, 27.3.2017, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/workers-immigration-control/; Michael Pröbsting and Andrew Walton: A Social-Chauvinist Defence of the Indefensible. Another Reply to the CWG/LCC's Support for "Workers’" Immigration Control, 14.5.2017, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/cwg-immigration-control/

 

For the RCIT’s analysis of the Trump Administration see e.g. Michael Pröbsting: The Meaning, Consequences and Lessons of Trump‘s Victory, 24.November 2016, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/meaning-of-trump/; For more article see https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/north-america/