As part of the "modernization" of the Mexican rail system, the magazine reports, "two- and three- person train crews are in place on most main-line trains, with cabooses steadily being replaced by two-way end-of-train devices." This while the average length and tonnage of trains being put together in Mexico for the trip north is increasing. One TFM official bragged, "One advantage we have is that we got thirty years worth of evolution in labor agreements in two months time". The company's contract with the National Railway Workers Union "provides an average 25% increase," the article reports, in return for a massive workforce reduction. There are currently 4200 workers employed on this line, about half the number of workers employed when the railway was nationalized, and more lay-offs are expected. Locomotive and car repair, and track and signal maintenance, has already been privatized and downsized.

One of the first items of business for the U.S. bosses in Mexico was to increase "security" for their ventures. The chief of the newly-created TFM railroad police force is a retired Mexican Army officer, and the rail cops now have the authority "to arrest and prosecute thieves, vandals, trespassers, and stowaways attempting to cross the border".

Still to come is the Union Pacific's takeover of the second segment of the old FNM, as well as similar scenarios being planned for Mexico's petrochemical and maritime industries. The editors of Railway Age glowingly report that "when profits begin to flow, the Mexican people, whose government retains a 39.6% interest in the concession, will share them with the owners of TFM." All evidence indicates, though, that Mexican working people are resisting the imperialist-imposed austerity programs as they fight to reclaim their national patrimony.

Bill Kalman

Miami, FL

Disagree on education
I feel compelled to question the Militant's reductive approach to ideological issues, this time in the area of public education under capitalism. I will be directing my criticism at the article by Ted Leonard on Boston's Chelsea High in the issue of October 27.

I agree with the students that they shouldn't be "automatically" failed for six unexcused absences. At most high schools which I am familiar, there is an appeals process for credit denial which usually goes in favor of the student. If this is not the case at Chelsea High, then it should be. However as a teacher, I believe that cellular phones and pagers which can be heard are distracting and unnecessary accouterments of bourgeois "success," the use of which I am surprised Leonard seems to be championing. I agree that it sounds as if the school administration should have held the assembly the students wanted, but the reporter doesn't explain in full what happened before the principal refused. This omission seems to indicate a lack of thorough analysis of the situation, apparently in order to present a one-sided article.

The article falls into an apparently opportunistic reduction of the general role of public education in capitalist society. No effort seems to have been made to provide direct quotes from the students asking to meet with the superintendent so that the reader can determine if the students' statements were indeed "abusive" and so perhaps counterproductive.

A reader can get the impression that the reporter believes that ANY protest of the unfairness of a situation is somehow proto-revolutionary, which is not necessarily true. If Leonard and Marcus were indeed present at the student walkout, then why doesn't the article explain what was allegedly abusive about the language of the students? Your audience is intelligent enough to decide whom to back.

Teachers do not even exist as far as one can tell from the article. The reader is left to assume that teachers, as a passive unified group pledged to support all the evils of capitalism, back whatever the administration says and does, the local administration which also is perfectly pliant in regard to the edicts passed down to it from above.

Some of us teachers actively support students who are being demonized by repressive "Codes of Student Conduct." Some of us agree that cops shouldn't patrol the halls and get paid with school funds and that JROTC shouldn't even be allowed to exist on school property. How is it the Militant will support our right to strike in one issue and then ignore our existence in the next one?

Ian Harvey

Naples, Florida

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of general interest to our readers. Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home