Oaxaca teachers' strike is not Marxist

Joe,

This follows our earlier email exchange ("Young Mexican considers his choices"). I'd just like to give my take on this. I am the only Spanish-speaker here, so hear me out. Oaxaca's destabilization (rebellion is a more constrained category) has been an important topic in your site for some months now. This event has specifically 20th century Mexican characteristics that make it difficult to apply classical Marxism to it. When they are applied reality is greatly misrepresented.

It is not a Marxist class war. It is one of the poorest states in Mexico, so it lacks the industry that might differentiate the bourgeoisie from the proletariat. Almost everyone is poor, minus a small middle class and the owners of the means of production (in this case, hotel owners). There is some income from tourism, not nearly enough to sustain everybody living in the state. It contains urban poor, rural poor, rural Indian poor, rural landowners (very, very few: Mexico's revolution of 1910 destroyed the large estates, and those still in the families that owned them then are much smaller than they were then, frequently the only thing left is the hacienda house), urban middle class, and urban-rural wealthy class (these might own some lands and some hotels). Most hotels are owned by people from out of state, such as Camino Real's Gaston Azcarraga, a Mexican businessman.

The destabilization in Oaxaca has made the urban poor much more visible, and they have legitimate axes to grind with the Mexican government at state and federal levels. Besides the greater visibility of simmering conflicts, the destabilization has helped very few people. The rural poor has not benefited, and those that made a living off tourism have suffered. The urban middle class has suffered from interruptions of business. The wealthy class has suffered, though not fatally so. Oaxacan schoolchildren returned to classes just a week ago, after more than six months with Public School Teachers Striking! No School for Months! Is that the solution?

I may be urban bourgeoisie, but I am studying economy, read newspapers in Spanish, and know the country's history and patterns. I will look for a backgrounder in English so you can see that this is not industrial Europe, and Marxist categories have to be heavily tweaked.

Plus, a classmate of mine is fully on the Oaxacan's side. I'll point him to your web site.

Not nearly on the front lines, but thousands of miles closer,

Fernando
Mexico City

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Fernando,

Oh no, no no!

I do not mean  Marxist in the classic dogmatic sense. That is for little puds and bookwoms. Conditions today seldom fit Marx's exact description. History happens. The world changes.

I meant in the sense that the classes remain. A class system is a class system. Class inequity is always the problem. Period. Maybe it would be better if we just threw away Marx and looked around and asked, "Who is getting fucked here?" And "Who is doing the fucking?" And the  answer will always be the same. "Property is theft and those who own the property are doing the fucking."

As to the suffering caused, no real change happens without suffering. Ever. That's why America cannot change itself from the gluttonous ogre it has become. It does not yet suffer enough. But it will. All empires come to suffer eventually.

As for economics, it may be the modern world's greatest sham of all. The great illusion, in which things are counted, and explanations are spun out as to why one man is allowed to eat while another is not. And why one man deserves stand upon the throat of another, and why one deserves to profit from the labor of his brother. The great lie here is that it purports to be the way the world works, the way the world is and must be by default. No, it is the way greed works. The fact is that modern economics is the curtain behind which our masters stand issuing forth smoke and noise, wars and toil. That's why you find yourself being indoctrinated with it in the schools. To keep the virus of exploitive and wasteful commerce alive in mankind, so that capitalism's extractive process can feed to the very marrow of man and earth.

Economics is no science. It's not even bad art.

And as to reading newspapers, regardless of the language, just remember that paper will lie still for anything. Best to go into the world, and suffer, and sing, and fuck, and bleed and dance upon the naked floor of the world with all its mysteries and risks. The very worst that can happen to you is that you will have had a very, very full life.

In art and labor,

Joe