Revolutionary Reality Check on the U.S.-Mexico Border

September 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Donald Trump whips up lynch mob frenzy at his “campaign rallies” calling Mexican immigrants drug dealers and rapists. He blames the loss of economic security experienced by big sections of the American middle class on Mexico “stealing our jobs,” and promises to force Mexico to pay for a wall that will intensify death and suffering at the border. Hillary Clinton decries Trump’s rhetoric, but represents the policies of Barack Obama who deported more undocumented immigrants during his first six years than the Republican George W. Bush administration did over its full eight.

Whatever approach they take, Trump, Clinton, and every representative of this system is all about maintaining a relationship defined by the 2,000-mile-long border between the U.S. and Mexico. What does that border actually represent?

1. The current U.S.-Mexico border was created by the violent theft of half of Mexico by the U.S. through the 1846-1848 war. The U.S. instigated this war, invaded Mexico, and carried out civilian massacres, rape, and plunder.

As Bob Avakian has said:

Now, of course, slavery was not the only factor that played a significant part in the emergence of the U.S. as a world power, whose economic strength underlies its massive military force. A major historical factor in all this was the theft of land, on a massive scale, from Mexico as well as from native peoples. But, in turn, much of that conquest of land was, for a long period of time up until the Civil War, largely to expand the slave system. “Remember the Alamo,” we are always reminded. Well, many of the “heroes” of the Alamo were slave traders and slave chasers....And expanding the slave system was a major aim of the overall war with Mexico, although that war also led to the westward expansion of the developing capitalist system centered in the northern United States.
BAsics 1:2

2. U.S. domination of Mexico makes possible vicious super-exploitation of people in that country. Mexican people slave in the maquiladora sweatshops making TVs, smartphones, airplane components, and cars, and on U.S.-owned corporate farms. Their labor pumps super-profits into U.S. capital.

3. Historically, the U.S. rulers have used a slice of the wealth ripped from the labor of people in Mexico—along with much of the rest of Latin America as well as Asia and Africa—to buy stability in their “homeland.” That wealth is part of what has gone into providing a level of relative economic stability and the possibility of upward social mobility for large sections of the people in the U.S.—including the fascists and fools chanting “build the wall” at Trump rallies.

4. The reign of terror enforced by the Mexican state against the people of Mexico flows out of the domination by the U.S. Tens of thousands have died in the past few years at the hands of the Mexican state’s police, army, and death squads, as well as the powerful drug cartels (which are in fact in many ways tied into the state). In so doing, the Mexican state horrifically maintains the “order” that benefits the U.S. capitalist-imperialists.

5. Capital from U.S. corporate agriculture flows freely across the border, devastating small farmers and food production in Mexico. Some two million Mexican people have been forced off their farms since 1994. At the same time, consumer food prices have risen. A quarter of the population does not have adequate access to basic food, and one-fifth of Mexican children suffer from malnutrition.

6. Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are demonized and terrorized, with no rights at all. Their super-exploited labor in agriculture, construction, and other areas is vital to creating profits for U.S. capitalism-imperialism.

7. The border is a one-way pipeline for the U.S. to spew killing pollution into Mexico. U.S. “exports” to Mexico include unregulated polluting factories and environment-destroying and toxic corporate agriculture.

8. U.S. domination and crimes over decades have created a desperate situation for millions of people in the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In the past few years, refugees from these countries “embarrassed” the U.S. So the Obama administration has “outsourced” rounding up, terrorizing, and turning away these refugees, including tens of thousands of children, to the Mexican government.

9. In sum, the U.S.-Mexico border was created through conquest and serves exploitation and oppression. “There is nothing sacred to us about the USA, as it is presently constituted, or about the borders of the U.S. as they are presently constituted. Quite the opposite.” Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:20

10. The U.S.-Mexico border has the potential to be transformed into a dynamic and positive factor in revolution in both countries, and in the revolutionary transformation of the world in a revolutionary society that may well encompass parts of what is now both countries.

It is hardly conceivable that there could be a revolution in the U.S. which didn’t at some point and in various ways significantly interpenetrate with and have mutual interaction and mutual influence with revolutionary struggles being waged by the people in neighboring countries—especially in Central America.
BAsics 3:21

And, most important of all:

11. There is a way out of this horror and madness—a strategy to make revolution and a leadership determined to do it. The revolutionary state that would come to power would deal with the question of the border, as well as the oppressed position of Chicanos and immigrants within the U.S. This would be done in a way that overcomes the oppression inherited from capitalism-imperialism as part of getting to a whole new world without exploitation, without oppression, and ultimately without borders of any kind. Check out the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. And get with this revolution!

 

Sources and Framework:

For a basic understanding of internationalism, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, by Bob Avakian (see the ad at top of this page)

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian

“American Crime: Case #83: The U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848”

“Imperialism’s Mexican Miracle of Transubstantiation: How the Bones of Mexican Peasants Become Broccoli on the Table in the U.S.”

“Under Nafta, Mexico Suffered, and the United States Felt Its Pain,” (New York Times, November 24, 2013)

“Mexico: ‘The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back’”

“From A World to Win News Service: The Drug Wars in Mexico, the War Against the People and Possibilities for Revolution”

 

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