Raise the Call to Present Dr. Sernas Alive on August 30!

Editorial Board

August 30 is the International Day of the Detained-Disappeared, commemorating and fighting for those kidnapped or disappeared by the reactionary old-state: anti-imperialists, union organizers, defenders of the people’s rights, and revolutionaries.

Every year on this day, the revolutionaries of Mexico spread the name and image of Dr. Ernesto Sernas García since his disappearance in 2018, raising the slogans: “Dr. Ernesto Sernas García, Presented Alive!” and “Because they took him alive, we want him back alive!” as well as the hashtag slogan #DrSernasPresentaciónConVida.

An essayist, professor, and democratic people’s lawyer of Oaxaca, Mexico, Dr. Sernas was disappeared in Oaxaca in May 2018 after successfully defending 23 political prisoners in Mexico.

The political prisoners were members of the new democratic organization Corriente del Pueblo Sol Rojo MX (Current of the People – Red Sun Mexico, known as Sol Rojo), accused of terrorist acts on trumped-up charges.

For several years now, Sol Rojo has called for an international campaign to Present Dr. Sernas Alive, so that reactionaries have no peace and see his name and face everywhere. It should be made known that disappearing a people’s lawyer will not break the will of revolutionary and progressive lawyers, nor break the will of the rebels they defend.

In a statement from August 10 calling for mobilizations in defense of Dr. Sernas, Sol Rojo denounces the Mexican old-state for not taking actions to find Dr. Sernas or those who disappeared him, positioning the disappearance as one aspect of the reactionary war against the people waged by the Mexican old-state on behalf of US imperialism.

According to Sol Rojo, this war against the people has so far claimed over 130,000 missing persons, 72,000 unidentified bodies, “and tens of thousands of clandestine graves throughout the country”.

Sol Rojo divides this reactionary war into three phrases, signifying the ruling party during each period:

1) Dirty War / PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] 1965-1985

2) War on “Drugs” – Militarization / PAN-PRI [National Action Party and Institutional Revolutionary Party] (2006-2018)

3) Legalization of militarization and creation of the National Guard as the fourth reactionary army corps / MORENA [National Regeneration Movement] (2018 to date)

What does the war against the people seek? Sol Rojo says that the Mexican old-state, subservient to US imperialism, wants to achieve three goals:

1) Centralization of the old-state; reactionization and corporativism

2) Re-energizing bureaucratic capitalism [stunted capitalism subservient to imperialism] through anti-people policies and imperialist mega-projects, attacking the peasantry and injecting imperialist capital, like the Interoceanic Corridor

3) Smothering the rebellion of the masses before it can begin through militarization

US Imperialism Is the Main Enemy

US imperialism wants to exit the quagmire of the Middle East, where it is bogged down by the armed resistance of Iran and others, and focus on shoring up its domination in the Americas. It fears the explosiveness of mass rebellion and the incursions of rival imperialist powers.

Latin America is the target of the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, where US imperialism aims to deepen its domination to preserve its status as the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower. This includes intensifying the genocidal blockade against Cuba alongside active attempts to overthrow its government; invading Venezuela, abducting its president and first lady, and replacing them with a more capitulationist government; abducting, torturing, and murdering hundreds of peasants and fishermen in and around the coast of Central America; and ground incursions alongside the militaries of lackey governments part of the “Shield of the Americas” coalition.

The demands of US imperialism amid the failed recovery of its economic crisis, and the management of this attempted recovery by the Trump administration, underlines the election of far-right figures across the region over the past few years. These figures represent the country-selling comprador capitalists who are most eager to manage the subordination of their countries in the interests of US imperialism.

On the other side of this equation are Lula da Silva in Brazil and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, who facilitate US domination while masking their capitulation through popular rhetoric.

The Mexican old-state has been deepening its subservience to US imperialism under the MORENA government, first with Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and now with Sheinbaum. The Mexican government accepts the “aid” of US imperialism, surreptitiously allowing in US military assets and covert CIA operations inside the country hoping they’ll fly under the radar. However, the Sheinbaum government’s country-selling nature is embarrassingly revealed time and time again, for instance with the two CIA operatives killed in a car crash in Mexico last April.

While the war on the people is carried out under the flimsy pretext of fighting “narco-terrorism”, it is widely known and documented that US imperialism is the driver and profiteer of the drug cartels.

Unite Against the Common Enemy

The oppressor of the working class at home—pursuing militarization, ICE terror, job and wage cuts—is directing the wars against the people abroad. The first acre of US imperialism’s “backyard” is Mexico, and it seeks beach-heads in Venezuela and Cuba to break bastions of resistant people and further subjugate states that do not align fully with its interests. This is why a constant, low-intensity warfare is carried out against the people in Mexico, hoping to drown rebellion in blood and keep the “backyard” under control while aiming to secure its domination from the threats of rival imperialists and new democratic revolution.

As imperialism becomes increasingly rotten and decadent, it undergoes reactionization, militarizing and centralizing power in the executive branch, trending toward presidential absolutism, and accelerating the erosion of democratic rights, attacking foreign-born workers, and increasing exploitation.

Reactionization underscores the burning necessity for progressive, upright, and revolutionary lawyers who can defend those falling under the old-state’s terror and repression. As the public face of legal defense of the workers’ and people’s rights, these lawyers, like Dr. Sernas, are special targets of the enemy, and as such require support and solidarity themselves.

The case of Dr. Sernas’ disappearance and the calls of the new democratic revolutionary forces of Mexico for his return alive embody and typify the sharpening contradictions in the world today: the growing weight of the masses in the storm centers of world revolution, imperialist crisis, sharpening competition between the imperialist powers, US imperialism’s desperate maneuvers to ward off threats to its sole-hegemonic status, reactionization, militarization at home and abroad. In the US, ICE kidnaps and disappears foreign-born workers and union organizers, while lackey governments abroad disappear people’s defenders at the behest of the same imperialist ruling class.

We close this brief examination of the significance of the campaign for Dr. Sernas as part of the International Day of the Detained-Disappeared by amplifying Sol Rojo’s call on August 10:

1) Realize denouncing actions against the Mexican State for the immediate completion of the Urgent Action 540/2018 of the Committee on Enforced Disappearance (CED) of the UN.

2) Realize mobilizations, meetings, forums and more types of protest activities in solidarity with the struggle for the presentation alive of Dr. Sernas García and the more than 135,000 disappeared people in Mexico.

3) Join the national and international campaign #DrSernasPresentaciónConVida

Dr. Ernesto Sernas García, Presented Alive!

Because they took him alive, we want him back alive!

Presentation alive and punishment of those responsible!

Image: Dr. Ernesto Sernas García.

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