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DIRTY stone building pushes its three stories up between the ramshackle structures that pass for houses in a

slum street of Mexico City. Flaming across its front door is a huge canvas sign. On it is the picture of a blind-
folded Mexican peasant lad and in red letters four feet high the slogan: ‘Wipe Out Illiteracy.’ On the broad

stone steps leading into the building is a display of literature. Everything is there from the Spanish translation of Oliver
Twist to Karl Marx’s Capital. Inside, the place hums with activity. In the dozens of rooms, offices and small halls
grouped three-tiered around the neglected patio men and women are typing, talking, writing or ‘meeting in small groups.

Everywhere there is this feeling
of tremendous activity, of pur-
pose—a feeling almost of ten-
sion.

For here, among. the people
they are helping most, is the
headquarters of one of Mexico’s
most progressive, most militant
unions; the Sindicato de Traba-
jadores de la Ensenanza de la
Republica Mexicana. These are
the offices of the Union of Wor-
ker-Teachers — over seventy

thousand of them affiliated to,

the powerful CTAL under the

leadership of Lombardo Tole-
dano, himself once a _ school-
teacher.

Ask any Mexican worker which
are the strongest, most effective
unions in Mexico and he'll an-
swer, “The Railway Workers,
the Oil Workers, the Miners —
and the Teachers!”

“This is a far cry from the
Situation in Canada and_ the
» United States where many teach-
‘ers are still unorganized and
even -where organized, seldom
take their place alongside the
‘leaders of the working class.

PUT it is. not by mere chance
~ that the-teachers of Mexicu
. have earned their place among
the leaders of their country’s
exploited workers, They have
gained their position through
~ years of suffering and persecu-
tien. Hundreds of murdered
members of the Teachers’ Union
bear silent testimony to the
- leadership they have given the
working class through the long,
hard years of bourgeois revolu-
tion and counter-revolution.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1947

Mexico has taken tremendous
strides forward during -the last
twenty years. But it is still piti-
fully backward. Foreign imperi-
alism still bleeds the country of
its natural wealth leaving for

‘the people only poverty and dis-

ease. Corrupt officials pimp for
this foreign imperialism and
betray. their fellow-countrymen
Yet, despite all this, the Mexi-
can workers and peasants nour-
ish within themselves the inde-
structible seed of true democ-
racy. Their fight for liberty has
barely begun but it gathers mo-
mentum every day.

IDUCATION is a fundamental
need in the struggle for gen-

uine democracy, In 1939 seven
million Mexicans out of a pop-
ulation of twenty million were
illiterate! The teachers knew
this had to be fought and wiped
out like the plague it was.

A déeade before the teachers
had helped actively in the ‘Cul-
tural Missions’—groups of men
and women who went into the
tens of thousands of forgotten
villages of Mexico to bring them
the alaphabet, medicine. sanita-
tion: and better ways of living.

These ‘Cultural Missions’ were
“soon outlawed — education was
too radical for Mexican (and

U.S., British and Canadian)
reaction.

Then. in 1934, President Car-
denas, on a mandate from the
people, amended Article III of
the Constitution to read:’

“The State shall impart so-
cialist education, and_ besides
excluding all religious teaching,
education shall combat fanati-
cism and prejudice.”

The word ‘socialist’ here
should not be translated too
literally. Mexican political lead-
ers—even right wingers—are very
much addicted to the use of the
words ‘socialist’ and: ‘revolution-
ary’ to describe platforms which
are often the very opposite. In
any case it was a very innocu-
ous form of socialism that Art-
icle III envisaged. . :

HE teachers rallied behind
the amendment. They train-

ed additional thousands of ‘tea-—
chers and recruited thousands of ©
, others

who themselves
barely literate. They went into
the towns and villages of Mexi-
co often with no assurance of
any pay whatsoever. And thous-

_ and of them began to teach

the people reason and tolerance
instead of fanaticism and prej-
udice.

With literacy the blindfold
dropped from the eyes of the
workers and peasants. But this
endangered the position of reac-
tion. Counter-measures had to
be taken. So reaction, led by
the right wing of the church,

brought into being a great foul-
ness—the. cristeros —
superstitious people who under
the leadership of these reaction-
aries unleashed upon the teach-
ers of Mexico a horror even
greater than that of the Klu
Klux Klan.

Between 1935 and 1938 these

were —

ignorant, »

hooded degenerates brutally mur-
dered over two hundred teach-
ers, many of them women, Doz-

ens were tortured to _ death,

Many were assassinated in their

school-rooms — all this in the
name of Christ.
)

HERE was Professor Juan

Marinez Escober who was

stabbed to death before his

young students jn a tiny school-

Native

son means an individual other
than an Indian” and admitted
that under the Children’s Allow-
ance Act an Indian child is also
a Canadian child.

/
{= Native Brotherhood of
British Columbia is the out-

standing Indian organization in

Canada. Its membership con-
tains the majority of Native fish-
ermen along the coast as well
as Native agricultural commun-
ities in the Interior. In the fish-
ing industry the Natives are a
vital section both from the view-
point of production and organ-
ization.

The close cooperation and har-
monious relationship that has
been built up between the Na-
tive Brotherhood and the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers’
Union in the industry, leading

_to joint negotiations of price

and wage agreements, has help-
ed to improve working condi-
tions for fishermen and cannery
workers alike. 8

That is why the fishermen’s
organizations give every support

dered. His death was a cruel

-la. Across his body the cristerod

_ deal for the Indian.

‘must have every freedom and

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 12

room in the village of Acam-
baro in June of 1938. :

There was Arnulfo Sosa Pot
tillo, a teacher in the state of
Puebla, who was brutally hack-
ed to pieces by machetes in the
hands of a band of cvristeros,
after they had first burned
down the one school-house in
the village.

Among the dozens of murder-
ed women teachers was Profes- —
sor Maria Salud Morales be-,
loved by the peasants and stu-
dents in the town of Tenencia
de  Tecario. This Teachers’
Union member was assassinated
in her home in February, 1938.

That same. week Professor
Jose Martinez Ramirez was mut-

one. He was lynched in front
of the town-hall in Cuatomatit- —

pinned a placard with the crude- —
ly printed words, “This is what
comes to a teacher who accepts
the evil ideas of a traitor gov-
ernment in order ‘to pervert
youthful innocence, Let this be
a warning to other teachers not —
to get the same ideas.”

But the teachers cafried on.
Neither death nor terror could
stop them from their task of
teaching the youth of Mexico —
to combat superstition and fan-
aticism.

Today the cristeros have been |
stilled—temporarily at least. But
in the backward districts of the -
country women teachers still
carry guns for self-protection.

E work of the Worker-Tea-

cher Union is still going on.
Its normal schools are turn-
ing out more qualified teachers
every year. But there is a long
hard road ahead of it yet.

In 1939 over 70,000 towns and
villages lacked medical services.
Probably half of them lacked
schools.

Teachers’ wages. are _ still
shockingly low. In 1939 rural
school teachers received from
sixty to one hundred pesos 4
month ($12.00 to $20.00). High
school teachers in the cities re-
ceived a salary of 360 pesos @
month ($72.00). Wages are some
what higher today but still far
below the level of decency.

Yet this fighting Union of
Worker-Teachers still attracts to
its ranks thousands of the fin-
est men and women of Mexico.

For them the fight has just
begun. ,
As I left the building I no-

ticed on the ‘wall a print of one
of Leopold Mendez’ famous lith-
ographs of a murdered teacher:
Over it was carefully printed the
slogan: ‘For Education in the
Service of the People.’

}

Indians

to the Native Brotherhood in its _
valiant fight to gain a square
'

And that.is why the confer-—
ence of Gulf locals of thé
UFAWU held last week in Nav.
naimo unanimously voted aPp-
proval for the following resolu-
tion:

“WHEREAS: The principal: of
democracy is based upon equal-
ity meaning that, the minority

right enjoyed by the majority
people within the jurisdiction of
the governing body;

THEREFORE BE IT RE
SOLVED: That the Indians b@
granted equal citizenship and
voting rights without being re —
quirea to give up their identity —
as Indians or giving up theit
collective rights on reservation
property;

AND BE IT FURTHER RE
SOLVED: That a system of reP-
resentation in provincial and fed-
eral parliaments modelled 07
that given to the Maori peopl@
in New Zealand be instituted.

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