Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Mexico’s Center-Left Wins in a Landslide, but Revolutionary Socialists Also Had a Successful Militant Campaign

Sulem Estrada and Miriam Hernández, two socialist workers running for the Mexican congress, won almost 2863 votes in District 32 of Mexico City. Their result of 1.7% is modest, but it is important in the context of the landslide for the center-left in the presidential election.

Nathaniel Flakin

July 7, 2018
Facebook Twitter Share

Last Sunday, the center-left politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won the presidential election in Mexico in a landslide, with over 50% of the vote. Most of the left lined up behind a bourgeois candidate who promised to respect NAFTA, private property and the autonomy of the national bank.

The platform “Anticapitalists to Congress!” was one of the main electoral options to the left of AMLO’s party, MORENA. The platform’s lead candidates were Sulem Estrada, a high school teacher, and Miriam Hernández, a library worker at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

For the last four months, workers and youth organized a militant electoral campaign in the Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacán, Electoral District 32. This campaign was dedicated to building up a revolutionary socialist political alternative to the bosses’ parties. The anticapitalist candidates received almost no coverage on TV and had to face the strong electoral machinery of the PRD and MORENA, the left bourgeois parties.

sym.jpg

Central demands included reducing the working day to six hours, five days a week, with a salary sufficient to support a family. The campaign demanded that every state functionary or parliamentary representative earn no more than a teacher or average worker. (This proposal goes well beyond AMLO’s demand that the president’s salary be cut in half.)

On Sunday, the anticapitalists won 2,863 votes (the result has not yet been definitively confirmed), or 1.7% of the total. This is a modest result, though still ahead of the evangelical Social Encounter Party (which was part of AMLO’s coalition) as well as the liberal New Alliance Party.

The campaign was advanced by the Socialist Workers’ Movement (MTS, Mexican section of the Trotskyist Fraction–Fourth International) and by the news site La Izquierda Diario, sister site of Left Voice. The campaign’s result is admittedly less than the 12,000 votes received in 2016 by the anticapitalist campaign for the Constituent Assembly of the Federal District of Mexico, but that was a citywide election, whereas this campaign was in only one of the 33 electoral districts.

juve.jpg

The Coyoacán neighborhood is best known as the erstwhile home of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky. Today it is divided between a hipsterized center in the north and more working-class areas in the south toward the university.
Estrada said of the results, “This was an important advance to strengthen the independent organization of the working class. We know that the workers and the people will keep fighting for our rights in the streets. There are enormous challenges ahead.”

Hernández added, “We are very happy that we reached tens of thousands of workers and youth. We are aware that our campaign in the Coyoacán district is just a small gesture in comparison to the national campaigns of the bosses’ parties.”
Millions of workers and youth in Mexico have illusions in AMLO, who has promised to end corruption and violence yet refuses to even touch the massive wealth of the Mexican and American capitalists who are responsible for all the country’s misery.

enojo.jpg

They will quickly realize that AMLO offers no real alternative to the bosses’ other parties, which are responsible for so much barbarism. These 3,000 votes for a socialist alternative of the working class are only a minor symbol, but they could become very important in the coming period.

Left Voice is currently working on an interview with Sulem Estrada about the results.
Read a longer article in Spanish.

Facebook Twitter Share

Nathaniel Flakin

Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

Instagram

Latin America

A square in Argentina is full of protesters holding red banners

48 Years After the Military Coup, Tens of Thousands in Argentina Take to the Streets Against Denialism and the Far Right

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Argentina on March 24 to demand justice for the victims of the state and the military dictatorship of 1976. This year, the annual march had renewed significance, defying the far-right government’s denialism and attacks against the working class and poor.

Madeleine Freeman

March 25, 2024

Declaration: End Imperialist Intervention in Haiti, Solidarity with the Haitian People

The “Multinational Security Support Mission” announced by the United States marks a new imperialist-colonial intervention in Haiti by the United States, the UN, and their allies.

The Fight against Javier Milei Has Set The Stage For a Whole New Wave of Struggle

The defeat of the Omnibus Law is a key victory for the movement against Javier Milei’s austerity plan and attacks on democratic rights. It shows that the working class and oppressed have the power to fight against the advance of the Far Right in Argentina and across the world.

Tatiana Cozzarelli

February 9, 2024

Defying Repression: Socialist Electeds in Argentina Show Us What Revolutionary Parliamentarism Looks Like

Workers in Argentina are defying police repression and fighting back against the far-right government’s shock therapy. Trotskyist members of congress are not just protesting inside the chamber — they are on the front lines of the demonstrations, getting pepper sprayed and shot with rubber bullets.

Nathaniel Flakin

February 9, 2024

MOST RECENT

The Convulsive Interregnum of the International Situation

The capitalist world is in a "permacrisis" — a prolonged period of instability which may lead to catastrophic events. The ongoing struggles for hegemony could lead to open military conflicts.

Claudia Cinatti

March 22, 2024

Berlin’s Mayor Loves Antisemites

Kai Wegner denounces the “antisemitism” of left-wing Jews — while he embraces the most high-profile antisemitic conspiracy theorist in the world.

Nathaniel Flakin

March 22, 2024

What “The Daily” Gets Right and Wrong about Oregon’s Move to Recriminalize Drugs

A doctor at an overdose-prevention center responds to The Daily, a podcast produced by the New York Times, on the recriminalization of drugs in Oregon. What are the true causes of the addiction crisis, and how can we solve it?

Mike Pappas

March 22, 2024

Lord Balfour Was an Imperialist Warmonger 

We should give our full solidarity to the Palestine Action comrade who defaced a portrait of Arthur Balfour at Cambridge University. But the problem for everyone who opposes the genocide against Gaza is how to massify and politically equip the movement.

Daniel Nath

March 21, 2024