POLITICAL POSITION OF THE FRENTE NACIONAL DE LUCHA POR EL SOCIALISMO (FNLS)
(National Front of Struggle for Socialism)

Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, October 29, 2006

TO STATE, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
TO DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS
TO HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENSE ORGANIZATIONS
TO DEMOCRATIC AND PROGESSIVELY-MINDED PEOPLE

Given the criminal acts committed by the federal and state governments against the people of Oaxaca, especially in the violent and unconstitutional outbreaks by the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), civilian-dressed military and paramilitaries attacking integrants of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO, Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca), the Frente Nacional de Lucha por el Socialismo manifests that:

1. The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca is the political expression of an exercise in democracy in which the people generate spaces of direct participation that manifest a tradition of struggle and autonomy that the State tries to destroy. This reflects the national discontent that has among its expressions the SICARTSA company miners union movement (Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan) that was repressed with excessive violence by police forces and had the tragic outcome of two assassinated workers; or the similar acts perpetrated against members of the San Salvador Atenco ejido (Mexico State), with the irreparable loss of an economics student killed by state police, the rape of 26 women by those same police, and members of the ejido unjustly imprisoned.

2. Facing this popular discontent, the response of the State is to ignore the most deeply felt demands of the people, only later answering with violence in all of its forms as the only possible way out. The State shields itself in the political and legal fundament of the supposed “State of Law,” and, in the present case of Oaxaca, sustains with blood and fire the authoritarian will of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the PRI-party governor of the state of Oaxaca; thus revealing the complicity that exists between the PRI and the PAN—the parties of the right and the ultra right—and making evident the continuation of a fascist state that answers to the interests of the oligarchy.

3. Once again we are seeing that the project of the ultra-right is to annihilate all political and social movements that threaten its dominion, resulting in a high social cost that manifests itself in persecution for political motives, arbitrary detentions, forced disappearance, assassinations and extra judicial killings.

4. We reject the policy of violence implemented by the State in response to popular civil and peaceful movements. That is why we consider the process of media criminalization carried out by the State against these movements to be an act of political perversion through which it attempts to justify its acts of repression and containment of the popular movements that demand solutions to diverse political, social and economic needs.

5. The democratic movement of the Teachers Union Section XXII, as part of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, is an example of union organization in Latin America to which others aspire. This is why it has become the victim of State repression. We believe that the assassination attempt against Section XXII, organized by the leaders of the SNTE (National Union of Education Workers) and headed by Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, is a danger for the independent union movement. As part of the nefarious union corporativism that sustains such charrismo [being in league with the bosses] they are trying to create a sindicato blanco, a phantom union, which divides the union and provokes repression against the workers. It is a desperate act in the face of the inexorable advance of democratic unionism allied with the popular movement.

6. We want it to be known that the bourgeois state in Oaxaca is experimenting with the variants of Low Intensity Warfare that have been systematically applied in various states of the Republic and in Central and South America, with the use paramilitary bands, participation of the army in police actions that constitutionally do not correspond to them and other forms of repression such as psychological warfare to disarticulate the social movements.

For all of these reasons the National Front of Struggle for Socialism calls on all independent social and political organizations, as well as democratic figures to:

Ø Unite forces to bring down this fascist onslaught from the ultra-right.
Ø Mobilize in defense of the political and social rights of the people of Oaxaca and Mexico.
Ø Call for the immediate resignation of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz from the governorship of Oaxaca, and to demand political and criminal trials against him for the direct responsibility he holds in the assassinations and diverse human rights violations that have occurred during this conflict.
Ø Demand the immediate resignation of Vicente Fox from the presidency of Mexico, for crimes of omission and complicity in the assassinations that have occurred in Oaxaca, and for propitiating and fabricating a violent way out of the conflict before search for a solution that holds fast to the justice of the people; for the brutal repression against the members of the ejido of Atenco and the grave human rights violations against women during that confrontation; and for responsibility for the assassination of the human rights defender, Digna Ochoa.
Ø Reorganize ourselves as a people to make democracy a reality, as the first moment in the construction of Socialism in our country—the alternative to the voracity of the savage capitalism that oppresses us.

¡STOP THE REPRESSION AGAINST THE OAXACAN PEOPLE!
¡OUT OF OAXACA ALL MILITARY, POLICE AND DEATH SQUADRONS!
¡FREEDOM TO ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE OF OAXACA AND MEXICO!
¡RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS!

IN BROTHERHOOD

¡For Worker, Campesino, Indigenous and Popular Unity!

FRENTE NACIONAL DE LUCHA POR EL SOCIALISMO (FNLS)