Mexico hunger strikers win victory

Scan page 12

A victory for human rights has been won in Mexico. After a month-long hunger strike by leaders and supporters of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT, Mexican section of the Fourth International), the government agreed to release political prisoners not covered under an earlier amnesty.

Two of the prisoners who have been released are Eladio Torres Flores and Amanda Arciniega Cano, who had been sentenced to serve 32 years and 38 years respectively on charges of membership in a guerrilla group, the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre. Torres, imprisoned since April 1980, had been tortured in prison.

The government also acceded to the demand that they set up a commission to investigate the disappearance of Jose Ramon Garcia Gomez, a PRT member who was abBrooklyn, NY 11240-4830 IMPACT Post Office Box 404830 ISUALS 2-966-9619 Affordable photos, cartoons, caricatures and illustrations for the movement and the progressive press ducted by government agents last December. The commission will include representatives from the PRT.

The hunger strike was begun on May 10 in front of the National Cathedral (near the seat of government in Mexico City). The participants included two men and two women who are members of the central leadership of the PRT. They are Edgar Sanchez, Manuel Aguilar Mora, Leslie Serna, and Simon Castillejos.

Also taking part was Carlos Piedra, a member of the Eureka Comittee for Human Rights and son of former PRT presidential candidate Rosario Ibarra de Piedra.

The hunger strike gained wide publicity and support. Thousands of people visited the strikers—including former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and other politicians, artists, and religious leaders. Millions of pesos were collected for the defense fund.

Solidarity actions at Mexican embassies and consulates were held in several cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit—as well as Paris (France) and Sao Paulo (Brazil).

The PRT continues to urge that messages be sent to the Mexican government demanding the release of Ramon Garcia Gomez. Send letters to Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Presidente Constitucional-Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Palacio Nacional, Mexico D.F., Mexico.-the editors what to do with these demonstrations while the workers impatiently waited in the streets for some direction.

Some revolutionaries argued that Berlin was still isolated from the rest of the German workers. They believed it would be better to give these demonstrations the character of a mass protest rather than an insurrection, and then use the momentum established to win further support for a workers' government throughout the councils and press for a struggle for power in the future.

A premature struggle for power, they said, would give the SPD the opportunity to isolate Berlin from the rest of the country and crush the workers' movement. Liebknecht and others, however, were not willing to let this opportunity slip by. It seemed to them that governmental power was in their reach if only they would move forward and take it.

The indecision of the leadership created a restlessness among the workers in the street. They spontaneously took over the newspapers and government buildings. Thousands of workers rushed to the newspaper district and set up barricades. The government sent in troops, and the new revolution had begun.

Liebknecht and his supporters took the leadership of this spontaneous movement and called for an insurrection against the Ebert government.

For days, the Berlin workers battled heroically against the forces of the Freikorps and other government troops. But the fight before they wanted to, and we were therefore in a position to counter them."

The KPD made a tactical mistake by striking in January before the working class and peasantry outside of Berlin were ready for an insurrection. But the KPD leaders were absolutely correct in their analysis that the workers' and soldiers' councils needed to take state power from the capitalists.

These institutions were the early forms of a new workers' state, and their very creation posed the question of power for the working class. The capitalists could not peacefully exist alongside these institutions which challenged their rule. Ultimately, the capitalists would move to crush the councils and "put the workers in their place." This is what happened in January 1919.

The frustrating fact is that the councils were handed power by the workers, and then the councils handed it over to the bourgeoisie. The councils delegated authority time and time again to the Council of People's Commissars and later to the national assembly— the class institutions of the capitalists and landowners.

The German Revolution of 1919 is not just a subject for history students. The tug of war that developed in Germany between reactionary parties and governmental institutions and the embryonic institutions of a new society has been repeated in every 20thcentury workers' revolution. The participants in these and future struggles need to understand what happened in Germany and what went so horribly wrong.

Scan page 13

Batman would be proud of the Pentagon's new B-2 "Stealth" bomber. But many average citizens are not so sure. The costs of the project are in the stratosphere—to as much as $1 billion per airplane. A lot of homeless people could be housed for that amount of money. Many schools could be built. And food could go to the hungry.

Alexandra, a poor Black township in South Africa, will be "transformed," the apartheid government boasts to the world. But, says community leader Moses Mayekiso, planned new housing will sell at prices far beyond the reach of most residents. They'll have to move out to rural camps.

"Drug traffickers beware!" warns President Bush. In the meantime, Oliver North and other former high-ranking U.S. officials have been charged with smuggling drugs to raise money for the contras. The charges were made last month by a parliamentary commission in Costa Rica.

The average family in the United States is $11,500 in debt, reports economist Barry Bluestone.

A Summer of Discontent is heating up in Britain. A strike by rail workers has closed lines for one day a week. And dockworkers have placed 30 ports at a standstill. Polls suggest that a majority of the population blames the government for the situation rather than the strikers. Inflation in Britain is over 8 percent a year.

"Brother Czech, don't poison Lech!" says the growing grass-roots environmental movement in Poland. Protests have been organized against Czechoslovakia's plans for a power plant on the Polish border. Poland is already one of the most polluted industrial countries in the world. As much as 10 percent of Poland is an environmental disaster area and should be evacuated, some scientists believe.

Which U.S. industry pays the most in honorariums to members of Congress? The tobacco corporations, natch. They shelled out $123,400 last year to lawmakers who presumably are "friendly" to so-called smokers' rights.

The cancer-stick producers are facing big trouble with calls for curbs on smoking in public places. A just-published government study estimates that tobacco smoke in the home and workplace kills some 46,000 non-smokers a year in the United States.

Need a direct line to Heaven? There's now a toll-free number you can call to place a message in Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. The service is provided by an enterprising Hassidic group in Brooklyn.

STEALTH BOMBER $500.000,000 u IF IT'LL MAKE YOU FEEL ANY BETTER, WE GOT THEM TO THROWIN THE WHITE WALL TIRES FOR PRACTICALLY NOTHING!

BY BRANCH FOR THE SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS as an "undesirable alien" during the anti-

----- pull-quotes -----

was really over before it started. Armed confrontations sprang up throughout the