What Bob Avakian lays out is the straight truth. 

In 2023, over two million people predominantly from Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean crossed the U.S.’s southern border. Not because they wanted a change of scenery, not because they always wanted to live in “the greatest country in the world.” They came because this system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism has dominated, looted, and ravaged the Western Hemisphere for over a century. Coups and invasions installed governments geared to serving U.S. interests. National economies were reconfigured to funnel profit into imperialist banks and investors. Government violence enforced all this, and poverty, hopelessness and brutalization gave rise to violence among the people themselves.¹

Terror, deep poverty and hunger have made it impossible for millions to feed their families and keep them safe, forcing them to flee their homelands. In a desperate gamble for survival, they travel thousands of miles through jungle, swamp and desert, often with small children in tow, preyed upon by gangs that rape and rob them, hunted and hounded by police and military forces in the countries that they travel through. Thousands have died along the way. All for a shot at the slim chance of getting legal documents and being able to start a “new life,” most likely working minimum wage, dirty and dangerous jobs available to immigrants.

This outrageous situation has been going on for decades, but in recent years it has escalated. It is not only a major humanitarian crisis, but also a political and social crisis for the imperialists, who fear these victims of their plunder. 

The “Exodus from Poverty” vs. the U.S. and Mexico

On Christmas Eve in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, about 6,000 migrants (including thousands of children) ate dinner—a sandwich, a bottle of water and a banana—and went to sleep on scraps of cardboard or on hard dirt. At 4 am, they got up and started walking north, towards the U.S.

This is the “Exodus from Poverty” caravan—a way in which immigrants and activists are calling out their situation. People joined from many countries—a Venezuelan woman tugged on the arm of her weary seven-year-old as they walked, saying, “They don’t understand why we have to do this to get a better life.” A Colombian man, fleeing criminal gangs, said “You know that you are walking for a purpose, with a goal in mind, but it is unsure if you are going to make it … I can’t return to Colombia.”

Millions make this perilous journey in small groups, vulnerable to violence from gangs and governments. A young woman who made it to El Paso, Texas, described the trip as “a very ugly experience. If you don’t carry any money, you run the risk that you are killed, that you are raped, that they take away your children.” In a shaky voice she said she wanted to forget everything she’d just been through “to start a new stage.”

Now the Biden administration is demanding that Mexico amp up the repression, by sealing its southern border with Guatemala, and further unleashing its murderous police and National Guard. Mexico's armed forces are already "at the center [of] managing key sectors such as customs [and] migration," suppressing immigrants, sometimes rounding up people who have gotten close to the border… and sending them back to their starting point in southern Mexico, broke and exhausted, but neither in the U.S. nor home. But this has not stopped the flow of desperate people. In December, the U.S. delivered the message gangster-style—shutting down border crossings that are crucial to the Mexican economy.

Mexican police and bulldozers in Matamoros drove migrants out of a border encampment that hundreds had occupied for months while trying to get into the U.S. With nowhere else to go, 70 migrants tried to swim the Rio Grande. Those who made it across were trapped for hours by rolls of barbed wire that Texas has put on the riverbank.

Only after Mexico signaled that it would carry out its master’s orders, did the U.S. reopen the closed border crossings.

“And When You Reach That Broken Promised Land...”

Last year two million immigrants made it into the U.S. … “the promised land” … only it’s actually still a nightmare. About a million were quickly deported. The “lucky” million who remained found themselves treated like unwanted garbage by political leaders of both parties ², demonized and insulted by anti-immigrant mobs, bused to strange cities and sometimes dropped in the middle of nowhere, denied work permits that would enable them to start new lives, and with almost no money allotted to assist them, even as Biden pushes for $13.6 billion more for “enforcement” against them.

No One Should—or Needs to—Tolerate This Horror

This system of capitalism-imperialism has created this crisis and will continue to force millions more to flee their homes. This will not and cannot be stopped under this system, it will only get worse. We, the Revcoms (revolutionary communists), are getting organized for a real revolution to overthrow that system, and to replace it with a much better system based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. With this Constitution in place, we would be able to welcome these people, fleeing horrific conditions, who want to contribute to building a new society.

If it hurts you deep in your heart when you see our immigrant brothers and sisters being put through these horrific conditions, if you wish you could do something to help them and millions more, YOU need to be part of the force that is fighting for the emancipation of all humanity! Only through the overthrow of this system will we be able to deal with this tremendous crisis that this very same system has created.

Be part of bringing forward thousands and then millions into a movement for an actual revolution. Now’s the time to get with this revolution!