Mexico: the volcano of resistance

The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.

Relatives of the 43 students disappeared in Ayotzinapa protest in Mexico City in December 26, 2015. AP Photo / Marco Ugarte. All rights reserved.

 

From
the transition times' civil society, to the volcano of resistance

For those interested in social movements, the 21st
century began in Mexico with the uprising of the indigenous Zapatista rebellion
in Chiapas on January the 1st, 1994. Their struggle has been a
source of inspiration for movements around the world.

During the following years, Mexican civil society
acquired a certain prominence in the so-called “transition to democracy”. After
more than seventy years of domination by a single party, the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), a contender won the seat of Mexico City in
1997 and the presidency of the republic in 2000.

Faced with the Zapatista threat and a different party
winning the presidential elections, it appeared as though the country was going
through a profound process of renovation and democratisation. Expectations for
change were huge.

Two decades later, this hope has faded out. The PRI
recovered the presidency in 2012. Poverty has reached terrifying levels,
corruption is increasingly unashamed, and access to healthcare is difficult for
huge sectors of the population. Structural violence, murders and forced
disappearance are on the rise due drug cartels and the human rights violation
and extra juridical executions by military forces.

The gap between the rich and the poor continues to
grow. Meanwhile budget cuts to public spending are announced, particularly in
education, science and technology, and health and social services, the National
Electoral Institute (INE) declared a historic budget of more than 1,050
millions of euros for funding of political parties and the organisation of next
July elections.

The reality of the “transition to democracy” and the
profound transformations it was supposed to generate is questioned on every
front.

At a quick glance, it appears that a type of drastic
conformity reigns over the country when things fall apart. The media show
focuses on the 24/7 political campaign, rising violence and worries regarding
the NAFTA negotiations. Citizens seem to have lost any hope for change towards
a better, fairer and less violent Mexico.

The perspective looks however very different on the
ground, as shown by the book “México en Movimientos” that gathers 15 short
essays analysing resistances and alternatives in 14 states of the Mexican
Republic.

John Holloway [1], author of the preface of the
book, describes it in the form of a metaphor: the country is a volcano and the
beauty and frailty of the snow that graces its peaks hides a scalding reality
of rejection, fury, and a search for alternatives, an instability that in any
given moment could explode.

Different
panorama, different resistance

However, it would be an error to search for movements and mobilisations in the shape they appeared in the period of the ‘transition to democracy’. The context in which resistances emerge  today is very different and so are the movements. . These differences impose the necessity to explore in new spaces the shifts that are occurring. 

The
chapters of the book “Mexico in Motion” [2] (Mexico en movimientos) points to six
fundamental transformations in social movements in Mexico during the last
decade:

1. The explosion of the Internet
   and social networks has deeply changed the culture and organisation of social
   movements. Social media allow a fast and efficient mobilization of inter-personal
   and collective organisations. New channels of information and communication are
   opening up among citizens. However, while information, flows on social media,
   the issue of misinformation, media manipulations and fake news has yet to
   cease.

The
“battle of information” has become an all-out war, with a death toll of 35
Mexican journalists murdered from January of 2016.

The dominant television consortiums still retain a
wide influence over public opinion. What’s more, Mexico is among the countries
in the world with the highest spent on government and political propaganda. The
relevance of this field is clear when warnings that the “battle of information”
has become an all-out war, with a death toll of 35 Mexican journalists murdered
since January of 2016.

2. In the last decade, violence has flared up in
Mexico and has become a structural problem, with deep roots in every sector of
the economy and public life, including the state and its own institutions.
Journalism, defence of human rights and activism has become extremely dangerous
activities across the country. The forced disappearance of 43 students from the
teachers’ rural school of Ayotzinapa, in the state of Guerrero illustrates the
on-going process of criminalising social movements and youth in particular. One
way or another, all social movements face the issue of violence through threats
from the drug cartels, destruction of their communities, repression by the
state or disappearance of activists. With the exceptions of the “Movement for
Peace with Justice and Dignity” and the protests after the disappearance of the
43 students of Ayotzinapa, the majority of resistance to violence has arisen at
the local level and has expressed a strong distrust towards the state Citizens
and communities have set up their own “groups of self-defence” groups against
the drug cartels. Most of them face a strong repression by the state and the
army.

3. As it is the case all over Latin America,
extractivist policies and neoliberal “development projects” have all but
intensified in the past few years. Indigenous and rural communities are
deprived from their land by mining projects, the construction of a new airport
and land grabbing by legal corporations and drug cartels. On the other hand,
attempts to privatise resources such as water have recently unfolded. Villages
and communities resist this extraction complex that is becoming a central focus
of neoliberal economics. In this process, rural communities experience modes of
organization oriented not only towards resistances but also towards the daily
construction of alternatives to the capitalist and extractivist system.

The
possible arrival to the presidency of a honest politician that strives to
combat corruption may improve the situation, but it will not resolve the
structural problems of the country.

4.  One of the deeper
transformations that affect citizens and social movements in Mexico is the loss
of hope in the democratization process and the questioning of the prospects for
emancipation. 20 years ago, the ‘transition to democracy transition’ generated
hopes that political alternation would open up new political, economic, and
social horizons, that it would put an end to corruption and impose the rule of
law and human rights. 18 years later, few expectations remain. The media system
displays the electoral campaign 24/7, but a majority of Mexican know that the
arrival of an honest politician that strives to combat corruption may improve
the situation, but it will not solve the structural problems of the country no
stop the power of the drug cartels.

5. A growing number of Mexicans now clearly consider
the state to be part of the problem rather than the solution to it. What the
experiences analysed in this book show us is that citizens and communities go
beyond resistance. They develop concrete and autonomous alternatives. An
increasing number of citizens don’t expect the State to solve their problem and
decide to take their fate in their own arms developing concrete local
autonomous projects, against and in spite of the context of high violence and
repression. Resistances and alternatives are thus mostly focused at the local
scale. In many cases, they have managed to decrease violence, defend their
livelihood and provide their people with dignity and more secure and a slightly
better life. However, it is not denying the importance of these local alternatives
to mention that many of the problems they face cannot be solved only at the
local level. In spite of the success of the Zaptista movement and of the
multiplication of autonomous communities, violence and inequalities have risen
in Mexico. The emancipatory model based on local autonomy that has fuelled so
many alternatives now faces some major challenges. It has become increasingly
difficult and dangerous to resist to drug cartel violence, mining projects and
repression only at the local scale. To solve the issue their face (mass forced
disappearance, feminicide, land grabbing, growing inequalities) also requires
deep changes at the state and national scales. To foster structural changes
beyond local initiatives has become their major and urgent challenges, and no
one seems to have a clear path to offer in this respect.

6. The movements that have arisen in the last decade haven’t
done so with an institutional-political agenda in mind, but based on
indignation that rose from personal experience, local livelihood and daily
problems: feminicide (mass murdering of women), the search for disappeared
family members without the support of (and often against) the state, the
destruction of a forest in the municipality of Cherán, environmental
devastation caused by mining companies, the rise in petrol prices, the lack of
resources for schools and education. It would be a mistake to oppose these
mobilisations in defence of local and personal issues to the preservation of a
much higher general interest. When the parents of the 43 disappeared students
of Ayotzinapa demand the truth and justice for their children, they are
fighting against a system, which favours violence and guarantees impunity in
the context of every death and disappearance in Mexico. When a forest is
protected or a common farm defended, a whole economic model is being resisted,
showing that alternatives are possible, that another Mexico is still standing
in spite of everything.

____________

[1] Holloway, John (2010). “Teoría volcánica”. En J. Holloway, F. Matamoros y S. Tischler (eds), Pensar a contrapelo. Movimientos sociales y reflexión crítica. Buenos Aires: Herramienta.

[2] The book “México en movimientos” brings together analysis of resistence movements and the construction of alternatives throughout the 14 states of the Republic of Mexico. From various standpoints and experiences, the chapters describe the diverse ways in which the individual capacity to become a subject is reclaimed, departing from a notion that opposes the dominant form of relations: dignity. Pleyers G. Garza M. eds. (2018) México en movimientos. Resistencias y alternativas, México: Porrúa. Prefacios de John Holloway & Eduardo Bautista. Posfacio de Breno Bringel.

How to cite:
Pleyers G. and Garza Zepeda M.(2018) Mexico: the volcano of resistance Open Democracy / ISA RC-47: Open Movements, 5 February. https://opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/geoffrey-pleyers-manuel-garza-zepeda/from-zapatistas-to-ayotzinapa-mexico-two-deca

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