https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jan/28
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Liberation Road's newsletter of insights and analysis for the freedom struggle.
International Solidarity That Is Meeting the Moment
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The MAGA regime has shown itself to be a death cult, without regard for human life. Witness, most recently, the killings off the coast of Venezuela, starvation due to cuts in food aid programs abroad, deaths of prisoners in US immigrant detention camps, and execution of protestors on the streets of Minneapolis. Even as resistance grows here in the US, we remember that international solidarity is essential to fighting militarism and murder both at home and abroad.
by Bruce Hobson and Meizhu Lui
An Interview with Mexico Solidarity Project Founder Bruce Hobson
What is solidarity?
Fundamentally, it means to identify with others’ struggles and to follow up with action. Mexican and US progressives have organized in solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world for far longer than I’ve been alive.
A historical example in Mexico was the Saint Patrick’s Battalion during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Irish immigrant conscripts in the US Army deserted and fought against the US alongside Mexican forces. The Irish saw that the Mexicans were poor Catholics like them and that their struggle against the US was similar to theirs against British colonial rule. Under Captain John Riley’s leadership, the soldiers stripped off their uniforms and switched sides. In solidarity, many sacrificed their lives. The San Patricios have always inspired me profoundly.
What makes you so passionate about Mexico?
As a teenager in 1968, I hitchhiked for six months throughout Mexico and, by chance, was in Mexico City not long after the October 2nd government massacre of 400 students in Tlatelolco Square. Among soldiers and tanks, I met three student survivors who didn’t know whether to trust me; they asked if I supported Vietnam and the Black Panthers. Based on my answers, they knew I was ok. These young students, barely older than me, inspired me to see that Mexico’s struggles were linked to other struggles throughout the world.
In the early 90s, I organized a health and rehab program for Guatemalan Indigenous refugees in Chiapas. At one point I joined a collective of socialist health workers. Following the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, army incursions aimed to stamp out Zapatismo; less than a year later, Mexico’s national security ministry deported me and 100 other non-citizens. International solidarity with the Zapatistas scared the hell out of the government. As eyes and ears on the ground, we internacionalistas were seen as a threat.
You co-founded the US-based Mexico Solidarity Project (MSP) in 2019. Why that date?
In 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, was elected in a landslide as Mexico’s president; progressive social movements had provided the base for his new party, Morena. This was a watershed moment for Mexico, a rupture with its history of oligarchic rule.
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I’m a longtime member of the US socialist organization Liberation Road, and, in 2019, several of us proposed a project to build solidarity with the people of Mexico. We wanted to support AMLO’s monumental task of transforming Mexico’s political, economic and social systems.
The US left has often not understood or has simply ignored Mexico’s significance, given that 150 years ago over a third of the country was taken by military force and annexed to the United States. We recognized that the past, present and future of both our countries are inextricably linked, and Mexico’s electoral victory and ongoing social experiment can provide vital lessons for progressives in the US. Mexico needed our solidarity to defend it from US attempts to derail the new progressive government, as it often has in Latin America and the Caribbean.
As a key player on the world’s stage, particularly in Latin America, but also in the broader global South, Mexico serves as a first line of defense against US imperialism.
How does the MSP promote solidarity?
Our first task was to fill the void of reliable news and analysis for an English-speaking audience. US and Mexican corporate media bombard the public with “fake news,” and without sources that reflect Mexican working-class perspectives, many US leftists adopted the view that AMLO was another corrupt authoritarian president who manipulated the people. Even NACLA, the longtime go-to source on Latin America, has published “left” criticisms of Morena’s major projects such as the Tren Maya, echoing right-wing assertions that the military controls Mexico. These reports aren’t rooted in Mexico’s history and culture, so different from the US.
In 2018 we sponsored Morena activist Javier Bravo on US speaking tours to set the record straight, but COVID ended that. Sam Pizzigati, retired as a long-time editor for the National Education Association, said, “Let’s do a bulletin that features the actual voices of activists in Mexico!” Since 2021 we’ve featured more than 100 interviews in the Mexico Solidarity Bulletin.
Because the Bulletin doesn’t provide comprehensive coverage of current events, in 2023, we launched the Mexico Solidarity Media website, which offers news, analysis and vibrant images and photographs by Jay Watts. Our translations of Spanish-language articles offer English speakers access to what Mexicans read.
Through our media work, two remarkable journalists met each other. Kurt Hackbarth and José Luis Granados Ceja were infuriated when US media tried to influence Mexico’s 2024 election against Morena. In response, they began their weekly podcast, Soberanía, which for two years has given English speakers hard-hitting, entertaining and fact-based analyses that counter mainstream media’s biased reporting.
Besides information, we also wanted to provide practical support to Mexican workers fighting for union democracy and social change.
Our opportunity came when GM workers in Silao, Guanajuato, campaigned to form a democratic union and oust the corrupt charrounion that colluded with the bosses. GM Silao is only 20 minutes from where I live, so Javier Bravo and I went to meet the organizers.
We raised money to buy a printer for their nearby worker center, the Casa Obrera del Bajío, which supports auto worker organizing. The MSP then joined forces with Labor Notes, which had connections to workers around the world. The Mexico Labor Solidarity Committee was born!
Since 2020, the Committee, which is binational and bilingual, has supported several organizing campaigns, always at the request of the workers, including those from GM, VU auto upholstery workers, Camino Rojo miners and truckers transporting Hyundai parts across the border. We’ve written support letters to the Department of Labor, demonstrated at company headquarters in Detroit to protest VU’s interference with their workers right to organize, passed support resolutions at labor councils, written articles in Labor Notes, raised funds, and pressured the Mexican Department of Labor.
In March of 2025, we organized our first face-to-face MSP conference in Guanajuato, a terrific step forward in building unity and trust. Casa Obrera del Bajío invited us to meet with them and learn in detail about their work. On the following day, International Women’s Day, we participated in the massive annual march in Guanajuato — and afterward we all ate and drank together out on the town!
What are the principles of the MSP?
First and foremost, we defend Mexican sovereignty and oppose all forms of US intervention; our media work provides in-depth information to convince others of the imperative to support Mexico.
Secondly, through our labor work we promote solidarity between the working classes of Mexico and the US.
Third, while not an arm of the Morena party, we give it our critical support. Given that 70% of the people of Mexico approve of President Claudia Sheinbaum, we follow their lead. However, we also give voice to groups, such as women and union organizers, who feel that progress has been frustratingly slow.
Another principle is humility. US activists sometimes go to Mexico believing that their role is to teach and to lead; that attitude can seriously fuck things up! Mexico is far ahead of the US in many ways, as their building the 4th Transformation and governing a huge, diverse country shows. Solidarity means respect for and following Mexican leadership.
What are the tasks of Mexico solidarity activists in 2026?
The first task is to oppose US intervention, particularly against increasing military threats. In these first days of 2026, new dangers hang over Mexico. Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president is a wake-up call. The invasion puts into practice Trump’s “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which had already codified the US imperialist agenda in Latin America. Is Mexico next? Trump explicitly stated that cartels govern Mexico and that the US needs to do something about it.
Today, solidarity with Mexico is more important than ever. Its revolutionary transformational project must survive and deepen. We see that Mexico is showing how neoliberalism has failed and that another road is possible. As the St. Patrick’s Battalion demonstrated, solidarity means above all the unwavering defense of Mexico’s sovereignty.
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On this dayJan 28, 1918
Texas Rangers Execute 15 Mexican American Men and Boys in Porvenir, Texas
In the early morning on January 28, 1918, a group of Texas Rangers, alongside U.S. Cavalry soldiers and local white ranchers, arrived in Porvenir, Texas, a small farming village that was home to refugees of the Mexican Revolution. The officers, looking for a robbery suspect, woke up the residents of the town and searched them at gunpoint for weapons and stolen goods. The officers found only one antique rifle and a pistol that belonged to the only white resident of the town. Nevertheless, they tied up 15 Mexican American men and boys from the village and shot them until they ran out of bullets.
The officers later tried to defend their actions by claiming that the residents were “thieves, informers, spies, and murderers.” However, a report by an adjutant general of Texas found that the victims were “defenseless and unarmed” and killed “without provocation.”
After the executions, the surviving residents fled Porvenir, returning only to bury the bodies of their loved ones. The victims, who ranged in age from 16 to 72, were Antonio Castañeda, Longino Flores, Pedro Herrera, Vivian Herrera, Severiano Herrera, Manuel Moralez, Eutimio Gonzalez, Ambrosio Hernandez, Alberto Garcia, Tiburcio Jáques, Roman Nieves, Serapio Jimenez, Pedro Jimenez, Juan Jimenez, and Macedonio Huertas.
The U.S. Army subsequently burned the whole village, and no participants in the massacre were ever prosecuted for their actions.
The Porvenir Massacre was part of La Matanza, a period of horrific anti-Mexican violence in Texas between 1910 and 1920 during which hundreds of people of Mexican descent were killed by Texas law enforcement officials.
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