The following article comes from the Socialist Worker (Britain),
January 7, 1994 weekly newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party.
For subscriptions: 10 issues for L4, L13 for six months, L26 for a
year; L40 for airmail overseas. Socialist Worker, PO Box 82, London
E3 3LH.

REBELLING AGAINST MARKET "REFORM"


DOZENS OF people died in fighting between Mexican peasant guerillas
and the country's army as the new year began.

Hundreds of armed guerillas seized several towns in the southern
Mexican state of Chiapas.

The peasant guerillas are descended from the area's Native Indian
population and were protesting against the crushing poverty they
live in.

"For the government it does not matter that we possess nothing,
absolutely nothing, not a home, not land, not work, not education,"
said a spokesman for the guerillas.

The insurgents called themselves the Zapatista National Liberation
Army, invoking the memory of the leader of the Mexican revolution
of 1910.

Zapata's peasant army briefly seized the capital, Mexico City, in
1914 and won huge popular support by calling for land to be taken
from wealthy landowners and given to peasants.

Since that revolution Mexico has been run as a virtual one party
state by the Institutionalised Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The PRI used the language of revolutionary leaders like Zapata, but
the party served the interests of a wealthy class based both on
huge state corporations and on private industry.

Throughout its years in power the PRI exploited workers and screwed
the peasants.  The promises of the revolution never arrived for
most people.

While the world economy grew in the 1950s and 1960s the Mexican
economy grew too.  It lurched into crisis in the early 1980s.

The crisis pushed a section of the Mexican ruling class under
President Carlos Salinas to enthusiastically push for deregualtion,
privatisation and market "reforms".

These "reforms" did little for the majority of people, as real
wages fell by around 40 percent.

More than one fifth of Mexico's near 90 million population live
below the official poverty line, with annual incomes of less than
140.

And a brief economic revival of the late 1980s has now given way to
a new recession.

The government has pinned its hopes of getting out of the crisis on
the Free Trade Agreement it has made with the US and Canada, which
came into force on 1 January.

The results of the deal, like those of any GATT deal resulting from
the world trade talks, are likely to be a long way from the
economic miracle politicians and much of the media claim.

Greater integration and trade with the US has only led to
industrial development in the north of Mexico along the US border.

Millions of workers are paid slave labour wages and forced to
work in appalling conditions.

Meanwhile in the poor south things have gone from bad to worse.

Those involved in this week's rebellion timed it to coincide with
the free trade deal to highlight that it will do nothing for them.