Welcome to this conference and the presentation of Fight Now for the New Socialist Revolution!¹

The old order is on its deathbed, and a much better world is possible. To achieve this, we need a real revolution guided by Bob Avakian’s New Communism, and nothing less.

We live in times of great upheavals: The world order based on the rules of international imperialism is broken and this imperialist system is running up against its limits.

The crisis of the global capitalist-imperialist system has brought forth an extreme situation of great horrors for humanity, but also of great opportunities to make liberating revolutions.

A fascist regime has been established in the United States, with Trump at its head. U.S. imperialism is engaged in a fierce rivalry, primarily with Chinese imperialism but also with Russian imperialism, for global dominance. In the Caribbean and the Pacific, U.S. imperialism has even bombed fishing boats. They have murdered at least 133 people in cold blood, accusing them of being narco-terrorists without any evidence, and lying that it was to stop the trafficking of fentanyl, which does not come from there. They attacked Venezuela, bombing and murdering dozens of people, and illegally kidnapping Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife. They are provoking a humanitarian crisis in Cuba, threatening Greenland, Colombia, and Mexico, among others, and continuing their genocide in Palestine.

In its new National Security Strategy, the United States has declared “America First,” meaning that the United States must own the entire American continent and control the territory from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. As part of its strategy for world domination, they propose expanding fascism, establishing more subservient governments, and overthrowing those who oppose them. Yesterday [February 28, 2026], the United States and Israel began an illegitimate and criminal war against Iran. This war has already claimed the lives of women, young people, and girls at a school in Iran due to U.S. bombs, and there is a danger that it will escalate further.

This is happening as part of the competition and rivalry between imperialist superpowers that threaten us with a nuclear world war, which would have devastating consequences for the existence of life on the planet. A real revolution, guided by [Bob Avakian’s] New Communism and nothing less, is needed to put an end to the system that produced all this. As Bob Avakian, the architect of New Communism, says:

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.

Because of this same system, the enormous environmental crisis is accelerating, which also threatens life across the planet. In 2024, glaciers the size of Germany were lost. This global warming is causing countless natural disasters.

The WHO estimated in 2025 that heat waves caused 520,000 deaths annually worldwide. Mexico recorded 12 tropical storms and 14 hurricanes, affecting 158,000 people. The northern mountains of Puebla and Veracruz suffered major flooding. In Poza Rica, the water reached 8.5 meters in height in just 10 minutes: 27 people died, and the homes of entire families were swept away. The 1.5°C limit for global temperature increase, set at the COP international meetings, was already surpassed in 2024. Emissions of gases that cause global warming continue to rise, and now fascists like Trump insist that everyone burn more oil, jeopardizing the future of the entire planet. A real revolution, guided by Bob Avakian’s New Communism, is both necessary and possible. Avakian states:

This system and those who rule over it are not capable of carrying out economic development to meet the needs of the people now, while balancing that with the needs of future generations and requirements of safeguarding the environment. They care nothing for the rich diversity of the earth and its species, for the treasures this contains, except when and where they can turn this into profit for themselves.... These people are not fit to be the caretakers of the earth. [Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:29]

The environmental crisis and the threat of a nuclear world war are products of the capitalist-imperialist system from which no one escapes. This system has also led to the rise of fascism in the United States and the world, with all its horrors. But, at the same time, the very intensity of the system’s crises has also led us to a rare situation of greater possibilities for truly liberating real revolutions in the world and in Mexico.

What is a real revolution? It is not an uprising of millions protesting, however important that may be, as in Egypt in 2011, which brought down the hated president Mubarak. It is not a rebellion like what happened in Oaxaca in 2006 against the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

A real revolution overthrows the capitalist state and confiscates the property of the big capitalists and imperialists and creates a new political system, a new socialist economy and culture in service of the needs and highest interests of the people of the world to end all forms of oppression and exploitation.

In Mexico this revolution is possible because of the situation we face, because, as analyzed in the pamphlet, “More and more people can no longer live as before, and the ruling classes face increasing difficulties in continuing to govern as before.”

Let’s look at the first aspect, which is that more and more people can no longer live as before, and millions of people in Mexico desperately need a revolution.

In many parts of Mexico, young people and others face the cruel choice of joining the gangs, fleeing with their families, or organizing armed self-defense groups against organized crime. As one young woman told us, “What do I do? My brother in Veracruz is being told to join the gangs or they’ll kill his whole family.” And the authorities are almost always in collusion with organized crime. In the state of Guerrero, for example, we’re told that the gangs collect a tax on soft drinks, in addition to controlling the sale of beer and other products in various locations. Bean farmers can’t sell their product at a price that allows them to survive and are extorted. “Protection money” and collusion between crime and authorities are rampant. Some peasants tell us that the increasingly desperate situation is going to lead to an outbreak. A teacher from the Isthmus in Oaxaca told us that he spoke with peasants from his community denouncing the repression of one of the opposition leaders of the interoceanic train and they responded that “we are waiting, teach, it is time to take up arms.”

There are more than 133,000 missing persons in Mexico. Do you think these families can live as they did before? Between 10 and 11 women are murdered every day. You can no longer travel around Mexico without fear, and since the war against the people began under [president] Calderón in 2006, half a million people have been killed, and the count continues. It is true that millions of people can no longer live as they did before. This is part of the objective basis for a revolutionary situation and the possibility of a real revolution.

The other part of the objective basis for revolution is that the ruling classes face increasing difficulties in continuing to govern as before. Mexico is already largely governed by a hellish triple alliance between authorities, organized crime, and big business. And they are not unified: Violent conflicts constantly erupt between one [criminal] group and another, each linked to certain authorities and businesspeople, as in the persistent war between “Los Chapitos” and “Los Mayos” [drug cartels] in Sinaloa, with the narco-governor Rocha Moya, or the conflict between the Tlacos and Ardillos [criminal organizations] in Guerrero, with the full involvement of the narco-governor Evelyn Salgado. Politicians, organized crime, and businesspeople are so intertwined that they cannot even hold elections without a toll of assassinated politicians, and this continues even outside of elections, as with the murder of Carlos Manso in Michoacán. The internal struggle within Morena [political party currently ruling in Mexico’s national government] is intensifying, also intertwined with drug trafficking scandals, such as that of Adán Augusto López—when he was governor of Tabasco—who had the head of the La Barredora cartel as his Secretary of Public Security. In Sinaloa, 10 employees of the Canadian mining company Vizsla Silver were kidnapped and several murdered, apparently to pressure the company into paying more in an area known for extortion. Both the company and the government are trying to cover up the extortion payments. Omar García Harfuch, the Secretary of National Security, blatantly lied when he said the miners were mistaken for a rival gang, when the brother of one of the kidnapped men reported that they were dragged from their beds in the mining company’s residential area. All of this was to protect this imperialist company, the colluding authorities, and organized crime, which has provoked angry protests. This only intensifies the splits and divisions among the ruling classes in Mexico, and with the growing threats and interventions now from the fascist Trump regime, which the Mexican government is denying and covering up with a false nationalist rhetoric.

This imperialist interventionism has nothing to do with actually eradicating drug trafficking and everything to do with more direct imperialist domination, which causes even more instability.

As the pamphlet points out, “These internal struggles within the ruling classes are opening cracks in the power structure through which the suppressed revolutionary potential of the masses could erupt with enormous force.”

The two factors we have mentioned—that the ruling classes can no longer govern as before and that millions of people can no longer live as before—represent a potentially revolutionary situation in uneven development that needs to be further investigated, which is the basis in society that makes a real revolution possible.

The current crisis in the United States, with the rise of the current fascist regime, the deep splits within the ruling class, and the widespread popular protests, has led to a rare situation in which a real revolution is more possible on the other side of the Río Bravo/Grande. This has a tremendous impact on the possibilities of revolution in Mexico, since the United States is the main power dominating Mexico and also an enormous bulwark for the defense of the subordinate capitalist system in Mexico.

For the possibility of a revolution in Mexico to become a reality, for the suppressed revolutionary potential of the masses to be transformed into a conscious force fighting for a real revolution, scientific leadership is needed. Without correct scientific leadership, the opportunity will be squandered, as happened in Egypt in 2011, or things will end up in another oppressive capitalist government, such as in Nicaragua.

What is needed is a leadership core based on today’s revolutionary science, Bob Avakian’s new communism, applied to the specific conditions in Mexico.

And as the pamphlet points out, “a growing core of revolutionary communists must go out to the people, to debate and convince them of the truth that we don’t have to continue living, suffering, and dying like this, and to organize them now for a real revolution.”

The leadership group which we have now is the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico, the OCR, which is fighting to forge a revolutionary communist party. Given the increasingly intense situation we are experiencing today, with its great dangers and new revolutionary possibilities, it is urgent that the OCR grow and develop further with the contributions of many more people, like yourselves who are here at this conference.

That’s why we invite you to buy and read the pamphlet, to start seriously learning about Bob Avakian’s new communism at booth 709, as well as the application of that science by the OCR.

You can also participate in the Revolution Movement, where you can learn and critically debate the science of revolution while contributing to the fight now for the new socialist revolution that is so urgently needed.

The new communism puts forward a new and much better socialism. What is this socialism about? If you think it’s like Venezuela or Cuba, you’re mistaken. We are fighting against the aggression of Yankee imperialism against both countries, but we’re not talking about creating a state capitalism labeled as “socialism,” which is what exists in those countries. Although they have some state ownership and some social programs, profit is what determines what is produced and what isn’t, as in any capitalist country.

True socialism requires state ownership and economic planning, but the fundamental point is that instead of putting profit in command of the economy as in capitalism, what matters most or is put in command of the economy are the needs of the people, the defense of the environment, and the fight to end all forms of exploitation, oppression, and social inequality, both in Mexico and in the world.

If you think about this and look into this, you will see that this is not what is happening in Cuba, Venezuela, China, or any other country now.

If you think this is going to be a socialism like the best of the real socialism of the past in the Soviet Union or China before the restoration of capitalism in those countries, you are also mistaken. These early socialist societies achieved great breakthroughs, but there were also serious mistakes.

Bob Avakian has learned from both successes and failures, among other sources, to create a qualitatively different and better vision of socialism. He has outlined a new framework for the emancipation of humanity.

A key difference is that it raises the need to encourage and promote even more dissent and debate in the new society.

Another new aspect is that the revolutionary communist party will not govern by holding a majority in the organs of power, but by submitting proposals and conducting a broad process of critical debate and reasoning among the people. This is essential, not only to learn from everyone and correct mistakes, but also to grapple in the best way with the problem that, while it is in the fundamental interests of the vast majority of the people to continue the struggle under socialism to go about eliminating all the oppressive relationships, inequalities, and ideas inherited from the old society, many people will not necessarily be convinced at any given time to continue that struggle.

That is why what Avakian has formulated as “a solid core with a lot of elasticity” is needed. In other words, a core of people from the party and others in society who consciously fight to continue the struggle for communism in the country and the world, while at the same time promoting the broadest dissent and debate throughout society, to help distinguish truth from falsehood, successes from failures, and to involve more and more people in the process of governing society at all levels and in all spheres.

I invite you again to check out this pamphlet for an outline of how a real revolution and this new socialism could fundamentally transform Mexico and the world we live in now.

• How can the material and cultural needs of everyone be met; how can justice be served swiftly but also be subject to due process in so many cases of femicides, murders and disappearances;
• How great leaps forward can be made in the liberation of women and indigenous peoples;
• How will it be possible to begin rescuing and protecting the environment;
• How the rights of the people will be guaranteed with a new socialist constitution; how elections will encompass not only the political sphere but also the administrative bodies of all institutions: workplaces, schools, cultural institutions, and so on;
• How will a truly independent Mexico, free from imperialism and at the same time internationalist, committed to the struggle to end all forms of exploitation and oppression throughout the world, be possible?

In closing, I would like to pose to you here at this conference the challenge with which this pamphlet concludes:

The old society is agonizing amid great crises and upheavals. But beneath the gloomy surface, new possibilities are opening up for a real and truly liberating revolution. Transforming these possibilities into the reality of an emancipatory struggle for a real revolution depends on what each of us does. Dare to learn about the new communism. Have the courage, the heart, and the critical mind to take up a commitment to the people who desperately need a revolution and join the battle for the new socialist society of hope, liberation, and community that is struggling to be born.

Thank you so much.