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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.’

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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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