Mexico: IN MEMORY OF COMRADE PROFESSOR CELEDONIO LUIS SANTIBÁÑEZ

We hereby share an unofficial translation of a statement published by Sol Rojo.

“There are men that fight one day and are good.

Others fight one year and they’re better.

There are those who fight many years and are very good.

But there are the ones who fight their whole lives and those are the indispensable ones”.

Bertolt Brecht.

One of the best sons of the people has passed away.

IN MEMORY OF COMRADE PROFESSOR CELEDONIO LUIS SANTIBÁÑEZ

To the working class and the toilers

To the poor peasantry and the oppressed indigenous peoples

To the women and the youth of the people

To the democratic organizations and unions

To the Anti-Imperialist League (AIL) and our friends across the world

Comrades.

With deep sorrow, we inform you about the passing away of our comrade Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez, who was a founder of our democratic organization, a member of our historical contingent and a prominent member of the Political Commission of the Current of the People Red Sun.

Comrade Celedonio Luis Santibáñez was 72 years old at the time of his death, which occurred on March 30, 2025, as he fought his last great battle against cancer that had invaded his body and kept him away from his political activities since December 2024. Just in January of this year, our General Assembly paid tribute to Comrade Celedonio Luis Santibáñez while he was still alive, reserving his place of honor at the presidium, honoring his name and the teachings under which several generations of people’s fighters and leaders have been formed.

Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez was born into a family of poor peasants on October 18, 1952, in the Zapotec indigenous community of Buena Vista, in the municipality of San Agustín Lochixa, Oaxaca. Despite the misery and difficulties faced by the poor in that region, young Celedonio stood out in his studies as a responsible, bright, and dedicated student. Like all young Xiches from the mountains of the Oaxacan coast, he enjoyed basketball, swimming, and working in the planting and harvesting of coffee. By combining work in the countryside with his studies, Celedonio was able to complete his basic education and take the path that would change his life forever: Teacher Education.

Comrade Celedonio Luis Santibáñez studied at the Regional Center for Normal Education of Oaxaca (CRENO) in the Bachelor’s program in Primary Education, where he came into contact with the student movement during a tumultuous time marked by the tyranny and repression unleashed by the State, which openly persecuted the student and the communist movement in our country. This period is known as the “dirty war” and lasted from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

During that stage of his life, Comrade Celedonio Luis embraced the best causes of Mexican youth and humanity, and it was during this time that he first came into contact with the Communist Party of Mexico, which was already in the midst of a revisionist debacle influenced by Khrushchev’s revisionism. Young Celedonio joined the Party for a brief period during his student activities and later became part of a circle of supporters of the Mexican Proletariat Revolutionary Party (PRPM), and in his own words, “it was one of the most honorable experiences of my entire life.”

After graduating from the Normal School, Professor Celedonio consistently assumed the mission of education by working in rural communities, where he helped poor peasants to organize the struggle for land and production, forming unions that would gradually develop other important battles. But the Professor did not stop there; he decided to continue his academic training, completing a Master’s degree in Basic Education at the Higher Normal School of Oaxaca, and after graduating, he took on the role of a classroom teacher at the secondary level, later becoming a supervisor.

Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez was part of the generation of democratic teachers who founded the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), and he recounted how he had “the honor of assisting Prof. Enedino Jiménez Jiménez in the struggle for the democratization of the SNTE, against Elba Esther and against Salinas de Gortari.” During those years, Comrade Celedonio also engaged in political work with the Xiche communities, supporting all kinds of tasks for the democratic struggle, which would later face new obstacles from the military machinery of the regime that besieged the region, committing all kinds of war crimes such as genocide, forced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, torture, and forced internal displacement. In the face of this phenomenon, Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez responded with a firm and supportive hand, providing shelter and support to poor peasants and their families.

Years later, after the insurrectional process of the People’s Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and the brutal repression exercised against the teacher-people’s movement by the tyrant Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez participated, along with a handful of men and women, in the formation of our democratic organization, which in 2007 held an event under semi-clandestine conditions where the ideological foundations and working methods were established that allowed for the initiation of work among the marginalized communities of Oaxaca in a non-public manner.

Throughout that period, acting in an exemplary, responsible, and humble manner, Comrade Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez helped to form unions of coffee harvesters in the Loxicha region; he created parent associations by taking land and forming schools; he was commissioned by the democratic teaching staff to join the Democratic Federation of Public Servants’ Unions (FEDESSP), from where he helped form democratic unions such as the Independent Union of Workers and Professionals in Health (SITYPS) and the Independent Union of Sepomex Workers, among others. Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez was a clear promoter of the formation of the Intersyndical Federation of Oaxaca, which has highlighted unions such as SITYPS, SUTIOCIFED, SUTCSEIIO, SINTS-Section 9, SNLTSS-Section Oaxaca, SUTTEBCEO, among others. He promoted neighborhood workers organization in the struggle for dignified housing against real estate monopolies, and along with more than 300 families of workers, he initiated the formation of the Francisco Villa Community, which is proudly known by the popular masses as “Victorious Occupation”.

Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez firmly responded to the call for a break from Hoxhaist and Castro-Guevarist revisionism, being a key factor in leading the assembly processes in the Isthmus, the Central Valleys, and the Loxicha region from June to August 2016. This was the unequivocal signal for the public announcement regarding the existence of the Current of the People Red Sun, which made its first demonstration in the streets in September of that year, demanding the immediate and unconditional release of the political prisoners accused of terrorism and possession of explosives reserved for the Mexican army.

Comrade Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez, along with Dr. Ernesto Sernas García, presided over the work of the First Political Congress of the Current of the People Red Sun on December 26, 2017, and since then he has been part of our Central Leadership. From this high-representation space, as the main leader of our Democratic Organization, Comrade Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez laid the foundations for the formation of the Classist Current of Education Workers (COCLATE) and the League of Communities for Agrarian Revolution (LCRA). Equipped with discipline and the art of proletarian diplomacy for forming alliances, Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez was currently leading the tasks of a special commission for spreading the Anti-Imperialist League (AIL) and its basic documents, with the task of forming the Mexico chapter of this internationalist organization.

Tireless and indomitable in his revolutionary spirit, with the experience and forging of long decades of class struggle and two-line struggle, trained as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, mainly Maoist, and making the universally valid contributions of Chairman Gonzalo his own, Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez greatly contributed to the theoretical work of the Cultural Center and Studies of Science for Proletarian Revolution, and the Ideological and Political Training Commission (CFIP), training new generations of cadres, activists, and fighters of the people under his teachings.

His pen is reflected in our Basic Documents, in our political line documents, and in so many texts and denunciations published in our media, as well as in the Mural Newspaper, popular and democratic press.

Before illness prevented him from continuing his activities, Professor Celedonio dedicated the last years of his life to our Rectification Campaign, highlighting the importance of its three central objectives in the perspective of our II Political Congress, which has as its central task to bring to light the People’s Front as a revolutionary mass front, the third instrument of the Revolution.

His affection for the popular masses, his pedagogical patience, and his human warmth are perfectly associated with his class identity and ideology. The man with the kind smile and firm handshake has departed; the Teacher who taught and educated by example has left us; one of the best sons of the people has passed away.

Comrade Professor Celedonio Luis Santibáñez lives on in the heart and struggles of the people!

Everything except Power is Illusion!

We are the spark that ignites the prairie!

Let the workers rule the homeland!

With the Red Sun, the people will win!

CURRENT OF THE PEOPLE RED SUN

CENTRAL COMMITTEE

MARCH 31, 2025