[In Mexico the transfer of presidential power from…]

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In Mexico the transfer of presidential power from one member of the bureaucracy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (which has monopolised political power for over 50 years) to another, is usually an orderly affair.

But not this time. When probig business President Lopez Portillo took' over from President Luis Echeverria on December 1st, he inherited raging inflation, suspended currency dealings and a huge increase in foreign debts.

Mexico's social and economic crisis is fundamental. Capitalist development has failed to solve a single one of the problems facing the masses of impoverished workers and peasants.

MULTI-STOREY

In the cities, glistening multistorey skyscrapers are surrounded by huge areas of the most impoverished shanty-towns.

In the countryside, the land reform law is abused by large landowners 'sharing out' property among their families.

This system is presided over by the corrupt bureaucratic, and right wing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Echeverria has attempted to disguise his own role by indulging in 'anti-imperialist' and populist rhetoric which he hoped would lift him into the Secretary-Generalship of the United Nations. Last week, as he expected, he failed.

POWER

Echevveria's real aim was to retain some power inside Mexico.

To this end he implemented the redistribution of 100,000 hectares in the northern province of Sonora from 73 large landowners to peasants. The hypocrisy of this act is shown by the fact that in the autumn of 1975 he had sent his troops to forcibly evict peasants from land they had occupied in the very same province.

Carillo, then there would be a political crisis. This was not, however, (he was at pains to emphasise) a threat.

He never spoke a truer word: it was an offer to the fascists. 'Share power with us' , he said in ettect, and we will use all our political power to destroy any independent mobilisation of the working class.' In fact the Communist Party leaders have already shown hundreds of times that this offer is not conditional on their legalisation.

MORE DIFFICULT What they, and probably some sections of the fascist regime, fear is that continued illegality will make it more difficult for them to implement their collaboration with capitalism and the Francoist regime.

The demands which flow out of the situation in Spain are completely the reverse of the crawling subservience of Communist Party and PSOE leaders. They are: *Boycott the referendum! *End class collaboration by the workers" parties! No pact with the fascists! *For a general strike to force abdication of the fascist regime! *For a constituent assembly and a provisional government of workers' parties!