U,S. EXiPLOITATION IN MEXICO peasants, wage-earning farm workers and the unemployed in the countryside. 0 The Party of Socialist Workers (PST), one of the groups which supports outgoing President Echeverria and his successor as "left" forces within the PRI, has been active in the mobHization of thousands of cane and tobacco workers in the states of Veracruz and Puebla over the ,past few years. • The U•GOCM continues to have an important base of workers and peasants who have precipitated many strikes and land occupations, despite a leadership which appears to be moving more and imore into the sphere of government control. • The Mexican Workers Party (PMT) is a mass-based -revolutionary party led by ex political pr,isoners Herberto Casti-llo and Demetrio Vallejo, who are •strongly opposed to any association with the PRI. Since their release in 1971, the PMT has been organizing regional ·committees in many parts of the republic, including Sonora, 'Sinaloa and Baja California. Part of their program is the independent ·unionization of agricultural workers. • Also active in the Northwest is the recently creacted Independent Union of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (CIOAC), which has so far demonstrated its independence from government controlled organizations. This national organization, some 01 f whose leaders come from the Mexican Communist Party, has defined a program which focuses on the independent unionization of farm worker.<,. It is also trying to unify the struggle in the countryside by relatin•g well to the different demands of squatters, small farmers and the unemployed. "THE PATRONES KEEP US SEPARATED" The current land revolt just south of U..S.-Mexican border has long range implications for the future of the anti,imperialist struggle in Mexico and in the United States. It will decide not only who owns the land, but what will be rgrow,n on it and for whom. The bloody land struggle is also woven into the lives of most North Americans, as the fruits and vegetables harvested by the poor of one country are exported and resold at inflated prices to the poor of another country. The ,relationship w,ith farm workers in the U.S. is even more 129
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==