Mexico: Weekly Newsletter
We hereby share an unofficial translation of the part on Mexico from the latest Weekly Newsletter published by Sol Rojo.
A new notorious failure robs the government of the self-proclaimed “fourth transformation” of their end-of-year joy. The president of the republic, Claudia Sheinbaum, and the governor of Oaxaca, Salomón Jara, cannot hide their incompetence after a new accident involving the inter-oceanic train, part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Inter-oceanic Corridor (CIIT) mega-project, was reported on December 28.
In just two years since its inauguration, the inter-oceanic train that runs from the Port of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, to the Port of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, has recorded eight accidents, three of them on the Z line and five more on the FA line. But this latest accident has been the most devastating, with 13 people dead and 98 injured, 36 of whom remain hospitalized in various hospitals across the country. The accident occurred early in the day, near the community of Nizanda, in the municipality of Asunción Ixtaltepec, and according to testimonies from community members and a statement from the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI)… “The serious accident that occurred […] highlighted the lack of a protocol for dealing with this type of event on the part of SEMAR. The marines and National Guard personnel remained passive in the face of efforts by Ixtaltepec community members and fire departments to rescue the injured. The disorder that prevailed during the rescue of the victims is troubling. Likewise, yesterday’s serious accident highlighted the significant limitations in the capacity of IMSS Bienestar hospitals. For example, in the case of IMSS Field Hospital 37, located in Matias Romero, of the 18 injured people taken to that hospital for treatment, after more than 8 hours without receiving care, 12 of them were referred to the regular IMSS hospital in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca”.
To mitigate the political and social effects of this failure, the federal government has used the euphemism “railway incident” and staged a media show in the Isthmus hospitals with a futile visit by Sheinbaum and State government officials. The photos widely circulated by these same public servants show the distraught faces of the president and governor surrounded by military personnel doing absolutely nothing. Now Sheinbaum has announced that they will give “30,000 pesos” to each family affected by the accident as “initial aid,” in addition to the FGR taking over the investigation into the events to determine responsibility. This is the second time that Sheinbaum has been “run over by the train,” and her promises of “justice and reparation for the damage” ring hollow in light of the testimonies of the victims of the tragedy that occurred on May 12, 2021, when the accident on line 12 of the Mexico City subway left at least 26 people dead and dozens injured. At the time, she was the head of government of the country’s capital, and so far, no one has been charged or imprisoned. Now, audio recordings have been leaked implicating one of AMLO’s sons in the corruption network that operated the purchase and sale of ballast for the construction of the inter-oceanic railway infrastructure. At the time, Andrés Manuel himself acknowledged that his son Gonzalo was an “honorary supervisor” on the CIIT works, which draws attention to his responsibility in this accident.
In this regard, it is important to emphasize what we have said many times before: 1) The CIIT is the product of deception and imposition orchestrated by the federal and State governments under the orders of imperialism. 2) The CIIT is an imperialist mega-project of dispossession and death, which threatens the social ownership of land, natural resources, water, and the life of ecosystems. 3) CIIT, like many other mega-projects, has destroyed the social fabric of agrarian communities and indigenous peoples in its path, allowing organized crime cells and white guards in the service of big landlords to impose terror in the region. 4) CIIT has blood on its hands throughout the region, having murdered poor peasants and indigenous people in different communities; we want to highlight the names of our murdered comrades: Luis Armando Fuentes Aquino (April 11, 2019, Cerro Grande, Ixhuatán), Jesús Manuel García Martínez (October 27, 2022, Santa Cruz Tagolaba, Tehuantepec), and Félix Vicente Cruz (April 13, 2023, Veinte de Noviembre, Ixhuatán). 5) The CIIT has criminalized, persecuted, and imprisoned community members and land defenders such as Salvador Pinal Meléndez in Tehuantepec, among others. 6) The CIIT has exposed networks of corruption, influence peddling, embezzlement, looting, theft against communities, and many other phenomena inherent to capitalism, confirming that those in Morena are exactly the same as those in the PRI-PAN-PRD and other bourgeois parties. 7) The CIIT continues to be an imperialist mega-project, an empty shell, alien to our peoples and our communities, and as such continues to be widely rejected by working people and their democratic organizations, which continue to defend the land, territory, water, life, and the right to self-determination.
As a democratic organization, we stand in solidarity with the families of the victims of this new accident and we support the demands made by our comrades at UCIZONI as fair and just.
Punish those responsible for this tragedy!
Solidarity with the victims of the Inter-oceanic accident! Justice for the peasants murdered by the CIIT!’
The Inter-oceanic Corridor dispossesses and murders poor and indigenous peasants!
