Social Movements and Latin American Philosophy: From Ciudad Juárez to Ayotzinapa 1498560539, 9781498560535

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Social Movements and Latin American Philosophy

Social Movements and Latin American Philosophy From Ciudad Juárez to Ayotzinapa Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Díaz Cepeda, Luis Rubén, 1976– author. Title: Social movements and Latin American philosophy : from ciudad Juárez to Ayotzinapa / Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020028285 (print) | LCCN 2020028286 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498560535 (cloth) | ISBN 9781498560542 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Social movements—Latin America—History. | Organization—Philosophy. Classification: LCC HN113.5 .D513 2020 (print) | LCC HN113.5 (ebook) | DDC 303.48/ 4098—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028285 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028286 TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

A mi hija Luisa Violeta: que los unicornios te lleven a la libertad.

Contents

Foreword

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6

xiii

Ciudad Juárez: The Movement against Militarization Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity Ayotzinapa State of Rebellion A Movement of Movements A New Order

1 19 37 55 75 97

Conclusions

113

Bibliography

121

Index

127

About the Author

135

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Foreword

This book by Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda, written in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on the border with the United States, between the Latin and Anglo-Saxon world, was conceived first in Spanish (as part of his work while in the Political Philosophy doctoral program at the Autonomous Metropolitan UniversityIztapalapa in Mexico City) and is now completed in English. This book has the advantage of placing itself in the right place of enunciation (locud enuntiationis): between the geopolitically dominating global North and the underdeveloped and exploited global South. It is then both a philosophy and a methodology that plays the role of a bridge comparing and debating two worlds, doing so in dialogue and also in war. How can we not see the market for drug consumption by a partially frustrated people (due to unemployment caused by the responsibility of companies seeking labor in countries with lower wages) and the existence of mafias engaged in production and selling those drugs? If there were no market there would be no need for the mafia’s existence. How can we not see the cause of violence in one country that manufactures the best weapons then sold in another (corruptly circumventing the borders of both sides) which uses them to murder their sisters and brothers in order to meet the demands of the drug market? Ciudad Juárez is in the midst of that world of terror, of femicide, of drugs, of daily crime, all of which result from being the frontier of two confronting worlds. Dr. Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda thinks philosophically in that dangerous meeting place of the North and the South. To think from that perspective is a privilege! Thus, the problems of philosophy and the political sciences obtain there in the borderland a violent ongoing struggle which cannot fail to be present in the committed thinker. The topics covered not only are issues theoretically debated in universities or in scientific communities, but also dominate the daily conversation of ordinary citizens. It is concrete philosophy that tries to ix

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fulfill one of K. Marx’s “Feuerbach’s Theses” that says: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” This book deals with the concept of social movement with respect to social class and the people. In Latin America, the interpretative category of social class is in crisis (although it should not be ruled out), and it must be integrated into the most comprehensive and political category of the people, which for decades has sparked a heated controversy that is still partly unsolved. Furthermore, thanks to Aníbal Quijano, the class system is being partially replaced by the more comprehensive category of race (or racialization of social relations). Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda enters the debate successfully trying to take a step forward. His work is welcomed. We can only salute this publication, and, better yet, the reading of it, hoping the author will follow the same fruitful path in his future fronterizo endeavors. Enrique Dussel A. Professor Emeritus of UAM-I Emeritus Researcher of the National System of Researchers 1 NOTE 1. Eventually National Secretary of Political Formation of Morena (party in power in Mexico).

Acknowledgments

Undoubtedly, one of the most trying tasks in writing a book is the acknowledgments, as there is always the risk of leaving someone out. If that proves to be the case, I apologize in advance. First of all, I want to thank my very dear friend Ruby Montana for her unconditional support and assistance in the writing process of this manuscript. Without her magic, this book would not be anywhere near to what it is now. I also want to thank my friends and colleagues Susana Báez, Víctor Hernández, Roberto Sánchez, and Roberto Estrada, as well as my students in the Philosophy Doctoral Program and my students in the Sociology Bachelor’s Program at the University of Juárez (Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, UACJ). Their comments and encouragement were essential in the research and writing process. I wish to also recognize the financial support I received from the Program for Professor Professional Development (Programa para el Desarrollo Profesional Docente, para el Tipo Superior PRODEP) of the National Council for Science and Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT). This generous funding made it possible to conduct my research in the best possible conditions. My gratitude also goes to the authorities, colleagues, and staff of UACJ, without their day-to-day commitment this book would not have been possible. I am also in debt to Pablo Chavarria, my research assistant, for his dedication to this project. I will always be grateful to my family for their unconditional love and guidance, especially as I was conducting my extensive research. I am particularly thankful for my wife Ana Laura, who tirelessly cared for our daughter Luisa Violeta while I was focused on the writing. She managed this role while simultaneously meeting her own professional obligations and for this, she will always serve as a source of inspiration and encouragement. Ana Laura, I love and respect you. It is only fair to also recognize the direct xi

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support of my extended family: my mother-in-law, Angela, and my stepsons Jair and Ivan, without whom it would not have been possible to write this book. My gratitude also goes to my mother Maria de Lourdes, and my late father Francisco Javier; their love of life and their work ethic set a lifetime example for me. To my brothers Javier and René, thank you for being there for me when I needed you the most. I am also in great debt to my Sociology Professors and mentors Ernesto Castañeda, Guillermina Gina Núñez, and Howard Campbell, as well as to Professors John Symons, Juan Ferret, and John Haddox for their academic and life teachings while I was an undergraduate and graduate student at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Without their patience, attentiveness, and discipline I may have long ago abandoned philosophy. Thanks to them, I was able to discover Latin American philosophy, an enterprise that I further pursued under the direction of my beloved professor Enrique Dussel. Being able to learn directly from him and from my brothers and sisters from the Association of Philosophy and Liberation, (Asociación de Filosofía y Liberación, AFyL) has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. I want to also thank my friends José Mendoza, Robert Sanchez, and Ernesto Rosen Velázquez of the Society for Mexican American Philosophy, SMAP. Their feedback in early drafts of this books was invaluable. Very special thanks to my dear friend and mentor Amy Reed-Sandoval. For all her wisdom, encouragement, and support I am more grateful than words can express. Finally, I want to express my deep appreciation to all the social activists who selflessly fight for the well-being of us all, even making the ultimate sacrifice with their willingness to give their lives for the possibility of building a fair and ethical world. To those I say: I only hope I honored your most principled work and endeavors in this book.

Introduction

In La filosofía americana como filosofía sin más 1 Leopoldo Zea said that to do Latin American philosophy is to do philosophy about Latin America with clarity and preciseness. He argues that when doing so, original and relevant ideas will arise from our continent and will be necessitated and incorporated into the world’s philosophical debate. Following Zea’s guidelines, I dissect the last cycle of social mobilization in México from a Latin American philosophy perspective and, consequently, prove that it has explanatory power that can be used for social movements and scholars in Latin America, along with other countries where the poor are abused. In Social Movements and Latin American Philosophy: From Ciudad Juárez to Ayotzinapa, I analyze the antecedents of the Ayotzinapa social movement, the current state of affairs, and the ultimate goals of the social movement organizations (SMOs) participating in the movement. By doing so, I offer a comprehensive explanation of the last cycle of mobilization in México, which comprehends the movement against militarization in Ciudad Juárez (2008), the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad, MPJD, 2011), and the mobilization for the forty-three disappeared students of Ayotzinapa (2014). I argue that the Ayotzinapa social movement is the last stage of a decade-long series of social movements against a highly corrupt and violent state and its neoliberal agenda. The book is divided into two sections. The first section deals with the past of the Ayotzinapa social movement and mainly responds to the inquiry of: How did it become the largest social movement in México’s recent history? The second section, by reflecting on the present and future of the Ayotzinapa social movement, answers to significant problems in social movements theory: Who joins a social movement? How can different social movements xiii

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articulate? And, what should be their reach? In order to address these questions, I will rely on the theoretical tools provided by Latin American social and political philosophers, as I believe their work holds the most explanatory power, not only for the global south but for the Global North too, as the hegemony of the liberal-state is being challenged all around the world. For a long time, European philosophy held that Latin American philosophy is inferior, incapable of worthy ideas. Some Latin American thinkers shared this view, forcing them to copy and comment on European philosophies; ignoring the work made in Latin America. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a first generation of Latin American philosophers—Alejandro Korn, José Enrique Rodo, Antonio Caso, Samuel Ramos, José Vasconcelos, etc.—who purposely looked to give a new sense and a deeper meaning to our culture. This started a debate about if there were an authentic Latin American philosophy. The systematic and conscious study of Latin American philosophy began with Augusto Salazar Bondy’s book ¿Existe una filosofia de nuestra America? 2 a work that echoed this debate about the very existence of Latin American philosophy. A second generation of Latin American philosophers (Enrique Dussel, Francisco Miró Quesada, Arturo Andrés Roig, among others) have endeavored to show that there is Latin American philosophy. Later, scholars such as Nelson MaldonadoTorres, Walter Mignolo, Linda Martín Alcoff, Catherine Walsh, Chela Sandoval, Guillermo Hurtado, Carlos Pereda, and many more have already produced enough continuity to create a strong philosophical tradition in its own right. The work of these philosophers has gained for Latin American philosophy the recognition of being a legitimate philosophical tradition with explanatory power that is capable of producing relevant original contributions to a pluriversal philosophy. Social Movements and Latin American Philosophy: From Ciudad Juárez to Ayotzinapa stands in this tradition and engages in the current academic discussion among contemporary Latin American philosophers about social movements. Through the work of Santiago Castro-Gómez, José Carlos Mariátegui, Enrique Dussel, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and Ernesto Laclau, among others, I will show how social movements rise, organize, and how far they can go. SECTION I. HISTORIC BACKGROUND In order to have a full understanding of the Ayotzinapa social movement, it is vital to situate it in a broad context. This background includes previous protests against the Mexican state’s neoliberal agenda and the rampant violence in the country that, according to the México census bureau, has caused the death of at least 200,000 people and the disappearances of tens of thou-

Introduction

xv

sands more from 2007 to 2018; most of them poor and young. The social movement against militarization in Ciudad Juarez managed to show that the army was directly involved in the increased violence. It was followed by MPJD, which revealed that violence was a national problem, and has in the Ayotzinapa social movement its last chapter. On the one hand, this new cycle of social mobilization is characterized by a larger presence of urban civil society and new ways of protesting that aims to get non-politicized people to take part in social organizations. On the other hand, during that period the Mexican state had become even more detrimental for the dispossessed. Now, it openly favors economic interests by allowing private corporations to invest in strategic areas such as the oil industry, which had been run by the federal government for over six decades. The state has also enhanced its repression repertory by having the army police civilians and allowing narco-violence against social activists and civilians. It is important to note that the Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) that I will be touching on in this book are not the only active social movements in Mexico. In fact, currently there are over 300 struggles for territory against corporate expansion projects 3 as well as teachers’ and workers’ movements that demand better working conditions. However, I choose the previously mentioned movements because, as I argue, they form a continuous view of the struggle against the state as a whole. This book will focus on the cycle of mobilization from Ciudad Juárez to Ayotzinapa which presents social and political philosophers committed to the improvement of the material conditions of the victims of the system engrained with a set of theoretical problems. These problems begin with the task of explaining how a social movement arises, followed by the issue of articulation between the different social organizations, and finally, what (if any) should the limits of social organizations be. The answers to these questions are complex and have ignited an intense debate among Latin American scholars and activists as well. The purpose of the second part of this manuscript is to present the varied positions on this issue as well as my own, as applied to this cycle of mobilization. SECTION II: WHAT IS THERE TO DO? Once the historical context is clear, I reflect on how social movements start, how can they articulate efforts, and what reach should they have. To address the first question, How do social movements come to be? I turn to Enrique Dussel’s political philosophy where he points out that when there are oppressive circumstances, all kinds of groups will rebel against them. He argues that this point proves that there is not a transcendental subject, as orthodox Marxism proposes, but victims result from concrete circumstances. Research

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conducted on the Ayotzinapa social movement supports his argument, showing that the Ayotzinapa social movement is composed of the usual suspects—i.e. workers’ organizations—but also by unexpected people such as the members of civil society that were not directly affected, but still joined the movement in solidarity with the victims. While there is strength in the groups’ solidarity, a diverse membership makes it challenging for people to work together, and this mobilization cycle is not an exception. This fact naturally leads to the second question: How can the different SMOs build a coalition that may allow them to increase their political power? In the case of the studied organizations, they are willing to do so, but they have not been successful. To make progress, Laclau and Santos offer two different alternatives on how to solve this problem. The final question that this section answers is this: What should be the reach of the movement? There are different positions within the movement. Some groups, following an autonomist tradition, are fighting for limited territories, while others want to take over the state as a whole and set a government that obeys the people. It is possible to see how these different positions connect with divergent theoretical proposals. The former sympathizes with Holloway’s case for politics beyond the state while the latter is closed to Dussel’s proposal of a transmodern conception of the state. I believe Social Movements and Latin American Philosophy: From Ciudad Juárez to Ayotzinapa is unique because even though the night of Iguala and the subsequent social movement has been explained by several perspectives, they have not been extensively treated in a book-length work that encompasses the past, present, and future of the Ayotzinapa social movement. It is also unique because this analysis is done by applying a decolonial perspective into the events. I do so by deriving information directly from SMOs and comparing their behavior with the theories of relevant Latin American philosophers. In the first chapter, I present the history of the first stage of the current cycle of mobilization in Mexico: the movement against militarization in Ciudad Juarez. It started in 2008 when a small group of activists protested the military strategy of former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (PAN, 2006–2012), a strategy that caused the death of over 6,000 people in two years of the Chihuahua Joint Operation 4 just in Ciudad Juárez. At first, it was only a small group of SMOs making this claim; as the general population in fact accepted and even demanded the presence of federal forces to control violence. However, as violence increased with the military presence, there was a consensus among SMOs, holding that the army was responsible for this escalation. The killing of 17 students in the impoverished neighborhood of Salvárcar as well as the claim of Calderón that the victims were gang members infuriated the people, and they demanded that the army leave the city. In this chapter, then, it will be seen that the state created, promoted, and

Introduction

xvii

positioned a transcript where the army was policing the civil population in order to reestablish order. However, opposing SMOs were able to challenge this transcript and somehow establish the narrative of the state using military presence for social control and cleansing purposes, and being responsible for the increasing levels of violence. It is only fair to say that the movement against militarization in Ciudad Juárez was responsible for challenging the government’s narrative that the violence was caused by the drug cartels and would end once the cartels were defeated. In opposition, Ciudad Juárez’s social organizations posited the narrative that the feigned war on drug cartels and the subsequent militarization of the city had brought more violence. The evidence in favor of their argument—over 11,000 people killed from 2007 to 2011—turned “the political community to the people into a state of rebellion.” 5 This movement would grow to the national level in the following years. Chapter 2, “Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD),” illustrates the development of the MPJD. On March 27, 2011, the son of Javier Sicilia, a famous Mexican poet, was found dead, along with six friends of him. In a demand for justice, Javier Sicilia started a caravan from Cuernavaca to Mexico City. His demand for justice and for an end to President Calderón’s war on drugs was quickly joined and supported by numerous people and other SMOs. The MPJD toured the country with two caravans. The first toured the north of the country to Ciudad Juarez, and the second caravan headed to the southern border to Ciudad Hidalgo in Guatemala. In these two caravans, they had a direct dialogue with the victims of violence, showing that the violence was happening across the country. Against the position of some SMOs that had joined the MPJD, their leaders negotiated with Calderón’s administration, but he refused to end his war on drugs. Despite Calderón’s refusal to end the militarization of the country, the MPJD deserves credit for showing that Mexico was going through a human rights crisis. For example, in Calderón’s term, from 2006 to 2012, over 100,000 people were killed and 20,000 went missing. In other words, the MPJD showed that by action or lack of it, the state was responsible for having the country immersed in a human rights crisis. Three years after the movement against the militarization had started in Ciudad Juárez, MPJD was able to raise the protest to a national level. They did so by bringing attention through the caravans to the fact that people, especially the young and poor, were being assassinated not only in some cities such as Ciudad Juárez or Tijuana, but all around the country. People became aware that this was a national problem, not a local one. However, at the same time in which they found a solidarity with the victims and their families, they also discovered difficulties in building a movement of movements. The distinct social organizations that were partaking in the MPJD were not able to articulate their agendas and by June 11, 2011, they parted

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ways and continued their efforts separately. They were not able to fix the empty signifier of the struggle, as Laclau proposes, nor did they agree on having a soft articulation similar to that which De Sousa submits. In the last and most important chapter of this section, I elaborate on the history of the Ayotzinapa social movement. In order to fully understand this movement, it is necessary to present the underside of the history. I will present, then, the events of the Ayotzinapa social movement as they are told directly by the parents, social movement organizations (SMOs), and international organizations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Comisión Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos, CIDH). Through this chapter, it will be seen that far from doing justice, in order to stay in power and protect their own, the state wants people forget the 43 missing students and three injured—as well as the over 200,000 people killed and 30,000 missing people by 2014 in all of Mexico’s territory. The Ayotzinapa social movement galvanized all the indignation and rage that had been accumulating over the last decade, as the state showed corruption beyond redemption. Consequently, the people demanded not only the whereabouts of the students, but also that a new social order be installed. This goal was not accomplished; President Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI, 2012–2018) managed to navigate his administration’s agenda despite the efforts of the movement while also weakening its political influence. One of the reasons Peña Nieto’s administration was able to diminish the power of the movement was that the social organizations themselves doubted the possibility of bringing down the regime. Also, while all organizations were in agreement that finding the 43 students should be the main demand of the movement, they were in disagreement regarding what actions should be taken next. Some favored an obediential state, such as the system Enrique Dussel proposes, while others were inclined more to an autonomist position closer to Raúl Zibechi’s and John Holloway’s theories. I open Section II, “What Is There to Do?” with Chapter 4, “A State of Rebellion.” This chapter shows that the Ayotzinapa social movement is not an isolated event, but the last episode of a decade-long struggle against the impoverishment and violence that Mexico’s population has lived through as a consequence of the flare-up of the state’s neoliberal agenda and the inclusion of narco-violence in the state’s repression repertory. I argue that activists from Ciudad Juarez showed that the state was part of the violence; the MPJD demonstrated that it was not a problem of Ciudad Juarez but a national one. These movements were connected by the participation of core activists who had unwavering commitments to social change. Their commitments transitioned from one movement to the next movement. By doing so, they transferred their knowledge of the state of affairs in Mexico to new participants. All such movements helped the general population accumulate rage and indignation, manifesting in the Ayotzinapa social movement. As pointed

Introduction

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out by Enrique Dussel’s theory, participants of social movements were not transcendental subjects, but they became involved out of their will to live. In a few words, this chapter shows that after several social movements, a large segment of civil society (as well as organized groups) had concluded that the state was responsible for the levels of economic and direct violence that Mexico’s inhabitants were enduring. They concluded that the current political ruling class must leave, giving birth to a state of rebellion, yet, as will be seen in the next chapter, there have been difficulties in organizing a longterm coalition. In the following chapter, “A Movement of Movements,” I argue that just because SMOs share the same demand of overthrowing the state does not imply that there is a consensus on how to do it, as the different groups have different strategies. On one hand, there are groups that conceive the movement as a class struggle against the bourgeoisie, and they are willing to use violence as a mean to overthrow the state. On the other hand, there are groups that agree that there is a need to overthrow the current political class, but they want to do it by peaceful methods. Despite their differences, activists are looking for ways to unite. The literature offers two opposite positions on how different SMOs can work together. On the one hand, there is Sousa Santos’s proposal of intercultural translation that looks for reciprocal intelligibility between different cultures in the form of diatopic hermeneutics that does not request hegemony. 6 On the other hand, Laclau agrees in the potentiality of having different movements, i.e. the feminist movement, the workers movement, etc.—but he argues for a stronger articulation. Laclau argues for a hegemonic practice where a particularity (plebs) makes themselves the universal that represents all (populous) capable of challenging neoliberalism on a binary antagonism: us against them. 7 I argue that hegemonic articulation may be the most desirable alternative, and SMOs have tried to follow it, but the ideological differences among them, as well as material conditions of the urgency of their own needs, forces them to go back to their territories. Consequently, they have had trouble forming a long-term coalition. In consequence, given the factual conditions, Santos’s proposal seems to be more plausible. However, this type of soft articulation has not built a momentum powerful enough to effectively challenge the state on a large scale. In consequence, SMOs are still working towards a new government. This process will be seen in the following chapter. The final chapter, “A New Order,” explains that despite repression and limited success, social activists have remained organized, fighting for liberation. It is imperative to learn what future they envision in terms of form of political organization for the country that they want. In this last chapter, it will be seen that the National Popular Assembly (Asamblea Nacional Popular, ANP) is dedicated mostly to getting the 43 missing students back, but

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they are also building some focused resistance. In this case, it is possible to see that some of them are going for forms of direct democracy, beyond the liberal conception of the nation-state and are looking to set up Zapatista-like municipalities. On the other hand, the Citizen-Popular Constituent Assembly (Asamblea Constituyente Ciudadana-Popular, ACCP) is looking to establish a representative democracy, getting rid of all of the current political class in order to institute a government by the people. The literature shows instances of both forms of democracy. There is the autonomist option represented by Holloway, but that can be traced back to the concept of “Multitude” developed by Negri and Hardt. These authors consider that the multitude does not need institutions that represent the general will of the population, for capitalism has absorbed the nation-state, including the institutions that should promote the well-being of the people. On the other hand, Dussel argues that it is necessary that the people give themselves institutions that generate the material conditions that guarantee the lives of the people. These institutions should be part of a state, which should not be limited by the liberal conception of it. Dussel argues for a transmodern definition of the state beyond capitalism where government is done through obediential power. I argue that while it is desirable to create institutions, it is not the case that all social movements should become part of the government. I have two reasons for this. One is factual: it is impossible for any government to meet all demands, hence not all of them can become part of the government’s structure. The second one is normative: civil society should keep a voice of its own, for this creates equilibrium in power, which may prevent instituted power to fetishize. NOTES 1. Zea, La filosofía americana como filosofía sin más. 2. Salazar Bondy, ¿Existe una filosofía de nuestra América? 3. Navarro Trujillo and Composto, “Claves de lectura para comprender el despojo y las luchas por los bienes naturales en América Latina.” 4. Monárrez Fragoso, “Muerte, coerción legítima y existencia precaria,” 214. 5. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 71. 6. Santos, Refundación del Estado en América Latina. Perspectivas desde una epistemología del Sur, 55. 7. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemonía y estrategia socialista: hacia una radicalización de la democracia.

Chapter One

Ciudad Juárez The Movement against Militarization

The primary challenge a social movement must overcome is in regard to its very organization: from small protests, usually organized by only a few people, into a significant movement capable of challenging the state. These small demonstrations are typically ignited by an event that causes indignation and rage in people, and they engage in collective action as a result. Yet, in order for these movements to truly be effective, more people need to become aware of the various issues of oppression, injustice, etc. Sometimes this developing process is facilitated by core activists who already have the experience and the knowledge to do so. An additional element, and likely the most challenging, is going from fraternity to solidarity, wherein even those who have not been directly affected by the issue also participate in the social movement. As I will show in this chapter, the intersection of these three elements—the occurrence of injustice, social activists, and solidarity— helped organizations in Ciudad Juárez initialize a state of rebellion. In time, a pueblo unido would enter into the state of rebellion theorized by Enrique Dussel and would fight for the people’s rights. On December 11, 2006, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (PAN), who was president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, launched the Joint Operation Michoacán (Operación Conjunto Michoacán). This marked the beginning of a war strategy against organized crime in Mexico. By the end of Calderón’s term, this strategy had led to at least 100,000 people killed and another 20,000 people missing. In view of these numbers, several voices demanding the halt of the so-called “war on narco (traffic)” emerged throughout the nation. This scenario continued with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI) for the 2006–2012 term. 1

2

Chapter 1

The first organized voice against this war emerged in Ciudad Juárez in 2008 where different social movement organizations (SMOs) organized small demonstrations to denounce this erroneous state strategy. Social mobilization took place from several fronts, where each of them had their own strategies for recruiting new members and pressure on the state. Even though this diversity of social organizations and citizens did not form a unified social movement in terms of an articulated action that would be reflected in common strategies, visions and/or agendas, for purposes of this text, I will consider them as unified under the name of social movement against militarization. I believe this grouping is justified because despite their differences in strategies and long-term goals, they shared the demand of ending the militarization of the city. The social movement against militarization in Ciudad Juárez started when some leftist SMOs opposed the government’s narrative that violence was caused by criminal groups and that federal forces had come to the city to stop this violence. Instead, the activists positioned the narrative that the presence of federal forces was actually increasing the violence against the population, especially poor people and social activists, and therefore the militarization of the city needed to cease. Given the evidence in favor of their claim, it was only a matter of time that this narrative was supported by a larger number of SMOs and citizens, creating greater pressure on the state to change its strategy. This positioning allowed the movement against the militarization to create political opportunities and have some influence on the actions of Calderón’s administration. In addition to this, they created the precedent for future social movements nationwide to understand the background and extent regarding the use of the military against civilians. The social movement that emerged in Ciudad Juárez during the period of militarization (2008–2012) contributed to posit the discourse 1 that the alleged “war” on the drug cartels was in fact a state strategy of control of the population that would only result in human rights abuses and more violence. This perspective was later understood and shared by subsequent social movements such as the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad, MPJD) and the Ayotzinapa Social Movement. The strength in the accumulation of the participants of the SMOs permitted an upsurge in social mobilization, and by 2014 there were massive protests that jeopardized the authority and power of Peña Nieto’s very administration (2012–2018, PRI). Also, it is worth noting that arguably, this level of mobilization had an influence in the change of regimes in México in 2018, yet it is too early to maintain this thesis with absolute certainty. In this chapter, I aim to present the context and strategy of Calderón’s war. I will explain what it meant for Ciudad Juárez in terms of violence, human rights violations, and repression against social activists. Following, I will analyze the different social organizations that opposed the militarization

Ciudad Juárez

3

of the city as well as explain how the massacre of Villas de Salvárcar contributed to the emergence of a common discourse of repudiation against the militarization. I will also elucidate just why this rejection contributed to the increase in social pressure, which in turn influenced the state to consider a change in the strategy of security. Finally, the achievements of the social protest in the period studied will be evaluated. I aim to denote the laborious process of building a social movement, a process that later, in Chapter 4, I will analyze according to the theory of Enrique Dussel. CONTEXT OF THE MILITARIZATION The strategy of using the military to allegedly fight the drug cartels did not originate with Calderón, but rather, with the defeat of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) for the first time in a presidential election. It was the winning candidate for the 2000–2006 term, Vicente Fox Quezada from the conservative National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN), who ordered the federal forces to intervene in the fight between drug cartels in states like Tamaulipas and Guerrero. Calderón took advantage of this precedent, wrongfully declared a state of exception, and broadened it into operations “coordinated by military and federal corporations and backed by state and local security forces.” 2 The objectives of these operations included the dismantling of organized crime groups, the arrest of criminals, the seizure of drugs and weapons through the deployment of law enforcement federal agents, and the increase in resources destined to the militarization of the zones of the country that were considered to have a high incidence of crime. However, far from diminishing violence, it actually increased. Consequently, citizenry became involved and reacted against these strategies. The war against the narcos had serious repercussions throughout the country but affected with greater intensity certain areas of the nation. For example, in the case of Ciudad Juárez: Military violence and criminal violence are confused because both severely fragment social ties and each one is a replicator of the other. Military forces entered Ciudad Juárez in March 2008 with the support of the population and withdrew in April 2010 amid the repudiation of the population and the denunciation of human rights violations, although they returned to patrol the streets of this city at the end of 2010. In a critical point the military and police forces became a threat of similar magnitude to organized crime in Ciudad Juárez. 3

In order to fully understand the relevance of Ciudad Juárez in the alleged war on drug cartels, it is vital to remember that Ciudad Juárez is the point of contact between the United States of America and México; the city’s geographical position gives it a special place in the economic and cultural ex-

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change between both nations. The nature of this exchange was strength with the Border Industrialization Program (Programa de Industrialización Fronteriza, PIF) launched in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana in the mid-1960s. This program was the predecessor to the massive presence of maquiladora industries in the city. With the arrival of these manufacturing factories in Ciudad Juárez, a high demand for workers emerged, which in turn attracted a large number of people from the southern states of México. This ultimately led to the exponential growth of the city. Palpably, such a high growth rate presents unique challenges and problems. In the case of Ciudad Juárez, these problems were increased by the lack of concern by the state to create the conditions for economic development to favor social integration and human development. 4 This lack of understanding by the state resulted in a weakening of a sense of community among the inhabitants of the city, which in turn added to the economic inequality, as well as weapons, money, and drug trafficking which created a fertile field for impunity and injustice in this border city. These injustices and inequalities instantiated in the systematic and numerous femicides, which became public beginning in 1994 through the work of women’s organizations such as Women’s Network (Red Mesa de Mujeres) and Our Daughters Back Home (Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa), among others. Thanks to the activism against feminicide, cases like the Cotton Field (Campo Algodonero) were documented. This case reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which in November 2009 condemned the Mexican state for violation of human rights in the cases of Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, Laura Berenice Ramos Monárrez, and Claudia Ivette González. The lessons learned by these SMOs in their continual struggle against femicides and impunity proved immensely useful especially when on March 7, 2008, in a demonstration of power as domination, Felipe Calderón announced the Integral Strategy for the Prevention of Crime and the Fight against Crime, a policy that would exacerbate violence in the country. For the topic that concerns us, this order from the federal executive branch was executed in Ciudad Juárez with the start of the Joint Operation Chihuahua on March 27, 2008. It consisted of the deployment of 2,026 soldiers of the Ministry of National Defense (Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, SENEDA) and the Ministry of the Navy (Secretaría de la Marina, SEMAR). The presence of federal forces increased in the following years, and in 2010 it reached a deployment of 10,000 troops from the Navy, the Army, and the Federal Preventive Police with the official mission of fighting organized crime. However, with the arrival of federal forces, crime, impunity, abuses of human rights, and systematic repression of social activists who opposed the presence of these forces in the city steadily increased. This caused outrage with most of the SMOs in the city. They mobilized, dealing

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with the ups and downs, disagreements, and contradictions that are common in social movements, against the militarization of the city. With the launching of the Joint Operation Chihuahua in March 2008, which had the objective “to combat public insecurity, as well as the high level of executions, derived mainly from the dispute that the Juárez and the Pacific cartel maintain for the control of the zone and the presence of some units of ‘Los Zetas’ cells, especially in Ciudad Juárez,” 5 just over 2,000 SEDENA and SEMAR troops were deployed, a number which, as I already mentioned above, would be increased fivefold by the end of the operation. In February 2009, forces from the Federal Preventive Police replaced the army troops in patrolling the city. Also, at the beginning of 2010, within the framework of a rethinking of the strategy, the Chihuahua Joint Operative changed its name to Coordinated Operation Chihuahua. In fact, on April 9, 2010, the Army and local police were placed under the command of the state delegate of the Federal Preventive Police in Chihuahua, replacing General Felipe de Jesús Espinilla. In the years that followed, the Army would intermittently return to command the operation and patrol the city. To summarize, the presence of federal forces created a militarization of Ciudad Juárez that in real terms translated into a high number of literal roadblocks in the city. At one point there were up to five checkpoints in a span of less than two miles in the so-called safe areas, which were located near the international bridges, the American Consulate, and in some tourist areas. The strategy also included joint patrols of municipal and federal forces, the control of the emergency call reception center—Immediate Response Center (CERI), by federal forces, and the hiring of a retired military officer, Julián Leyzaola Pérez, as secretary of Municipal Public Security. This strategy resulted in grave consequences for the city, as I will elaborate on next. IMPACT OF THE WAR AGAINST DRUG TRAFFICKING IN CIUDAD JUÁREZ The strategy of war in the administration of former president Calderón was characterized by his low regard for life. Julia Monárrez Fragoso, a wellknown feminist scholar, documented this attitude of disdain for the life of the militarized state through the words of General Jorge Juárez Loera, an important commander in the Joint Operation Chihuahua. General Juárez Loera asked the press to report the killings in Ciudad Juárez in a different way. He told reporters: “Instead of saying one more death, say one less criminal.” 6 At the local level this attitude could also be observed in the statement of Julián Leyzaola Pérez, who was the chief of the local police from March 10, 2011 to September 2012. He declared: “We have to teach them [criminals] that

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they cannot be above the law or authority. They are criminals and should be isolated, isolated in jail or buried in the cemetery.” 7 This lackluster value of life by state officers resulted in levels of violence never before seen in the history of this border city. Far from diminishing, the violence was in a steady increase until reaching unprecedented degrees. In 2008, the murder rate increased from 25.5 to 215 men killed per 100,000 inhabitants and from 2.8 to 16 women murdered per 100,000 inhabitants. During the climax of violence in 2010, it reached a daily average of 8.3 murders. It reached the point where in 2008 Ciudad Juárez was called “the national dump of the dead.” 8 The violence would increase even more, to the point where 6,000 people were killed in only two years of the Joint Operation Chihuahua. 9 Even more, according to the records of Molly Monly, a researcher from New Mexico State University, there were 11,114 murders from January 2007 to October 21, 2012. 10 In addition to the mass numbers of people killed, the phenomenon of emigration and migration emerged as well. Between 2007 and 2011, hundreds of thousands of people fled the city in search of a safe place to live. At the same time that the population was suffering high levels of violence, there was also a systematic and purposeful increase in the repression against those who dared protest against the actions of the state. Repression against Social Activists Violence perpetrated against social activists occurred either through direct actions of the state or through its inability to protect them. The most direct manifestations of these attacks on social activists were the murders of Geminis Ochoa, on June 30, 2009, Marisela Escobedo Ortiz on the afternoon of December 16, 2010 in front of the Government Palace in the city of Chihuahua, Susana Chávez, whose body was found on January 6, 2011, and the murder of members of the Reyes-Salazar family in 2008, 2010, and 2011. 11 Other social activists were also victims of intimidation and were forced to seek political asylum in the United States on the grounds that the Mexican Army had overtly threatened their lives. To a large number of social organizations, this disdain for life and the mismanagement of human rights by the administration of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa were clearly evidenced in his speech to establish drug trafficking as a matter of national security. This same speech also relayed plans to undertake a strategy of war without major planning and without an end in sight, despite the exorbitant number of deaths, displacement, and disappearances of people that this war was causing. These actions and omissions of the state provoked the social mobilization against militarization. The following section presents a brief account of these organizations.

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Social Movement Organizations Cartography In this section, I will give an account of the groups that participated in the movement against militarization. I classified these groups based on their ideology, their strategies, and their demands. 1. Leftist groups: This faction, in conjunction with organizations working on femicides, was among the first to denounce the presence of the military as it would mean abuses towards the population. It was also among the first groups to question the objectives of Calderón’s war. In this sense, they argued that the alleged war on drug cartels was taking place in the context of a class struggle, in which the military was being used by the bourgeois state to prevent a possible uprising of the population and to make a society rid itself of the young and poor. This group was mostly made up of people and social organizations from the left that declared themselves either allied with or fully Marxist, such as the National Front against Repression (Frente Nacional contra la Represión) and the University Committee of the Left (Comité Universitario de Izquierda). The members of these organizations were perceived as radicals by other activists because they were looking for substantial changes in the political system, i.e. the eradication of the bourgeois state. They demanded the end of the militarization, a full and impartial investigation of the whereabouts of persons kidnapped by the military, and the resignation of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, the governor of Chihuahua (2004–2010) José Reyes Baeza, and the city mayor (2007–2010) José Reyes Ferriz. They also criticized and demanded an end to the intervention of the government of the United States in the internal affairs of México. Their strategies as well as links with other leftist groups included highly disruptive collective actions such as marches, sit-ins, and the blocking of international bridges. They even went so far as to convene a constituent assembly as a direct response to crimes of the state. Predictably, this group was highly repressed by the state. Some of its members received constant threats and its manifestations were strongly inhibited with the use of public force. An instance of this is the shooting of José Darío Álvarez Orrantía, a Sociology major at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez (Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, UACJ), by an agent of the Federal Preventive Police on October 30, 2010 just outside of the university grounds. The federal agent shot Darío when a group of people was about to finish the eleventh “Walks Against the Death” (Kaminatas Contra la Muerte) and was heading, along with the rest of the participants, to attend the International Forum against Militarization organized by the National Front against Repression. The bullet, although it seriously injured him, did not have fatal consequences.

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This aggression towards a university student caused outrage not only from the participants of the Forum against Militarization, but also from a large number of students of UACJ, who briefly occupied the campus grounds of UACJ together with activists, and then called the march “If they shot one, they will shoot us all” (Si nos dan a un@ nos dan a tod@s”). Despite the intimidation by federal forces, on the evening on November 2, 2010, thousands of students and citizens marched, chanting: “They are afraid of us, because we do not fear them! They said no, we say Yes, we are here! Juárez, Juárez is not a military base, take the army out! and We want schools, we want work, we want hospitals, we do not want soldiers!” During this march that ended in a rally at UACJ, the students received support from the same citizenship that had welcomed the army just two years prior, that is, at the beginning of the Joint Operation Chihuahua. The contributions of this group to the movement included the promotion of discourse against the militarization. It is also important to note that the strong subjugation that this group was subjected to brought to light the violence of the state towards young people with low economic resources, which presumably only contributed to the rejection of the militarization of the city. 2. Articulation groups: The second group, although also left-wing, was more moderate. They actively opposed militarization based on a human rights platform. Before the militarization, some of the organizations in this branch such as the Pact for Culture (Pacto por la Cultura) advocated an alliance with the state, in the hopes that it would allow the improvement of living conditions in the city through the joint work of citizens and the state. However, as it became clear to some members of this organization that since the government was part of the generation of violence, they decided that “there were no conditions for a pact. It takes two to dance tango, and in this time the State does not want to be the other part.” 12 Other organizations within this bloc decided that while the state was responsible for the violence, it was also the sole source with the power to solve the problem, because in the words of a well-known activist in defense of women: “We can shout, march, close the bridge, but in the end the power and responsibility to do it [change the conditions of life in the city] is the state. The marches are to force it to do so.” 13 Their demands were: no to militarization, peace with justice and dignity, investment in crime prevention through the creation of conditions that allowed the city to be livable, and the strengthening of a true rule of law. Their strategies included a combination of pressure and dialogue with the state and institutions. Even though they operated both via protest in the streets and in the negotiation room with the state, they were more inclined to work with people from organizations than with spontaneous demonstrations. In this sense, and in order to prevent possible acts of repression, they had a policy of not making public statements in a personal capacity, as well as being cau-

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tious of whom they spoke with, because “we did not know who the enemy was.” 14 This group is characterized by having a vast network of contacts in different realms. That is, they are linked to academics, human rights organizations, organized civil society, local and international groups on the left as well as to business and trade associations, and to foreign government institutions such as the European Parliament. This bonding capacity allowed them to function as a hinge between leftist local groups and business groups and medical doctors. These connections made it possible for the anti-militarization position to permeate the middle-class entrepreneurs. It also allowed them to organize massive events such as the hearing of the Permanent Tribunal of the Peoples and to have authorized use of the facilities of UACJ so that on June 10, 2011, the Citizen Pact convened by the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity was signed. They also served as liaison with solidarity organizations in the United States, mainly from El Paso, Texas. 3. Business groups: A third group consisted of businessmen and medical doctors who typically held an ideology closer to the right but faced with the violence and instability now persistent in the city, were essentially forced to become politically active. This group demanded that the kidnappings and extortions be ended. At first, this demand was not associated to the end of the militarization, much less to thoroughly questioning the purpose of the selfproclaimed security strategy of the Calderón administration. However, upon closer examination, some of the members became aware of the scope of the militarization strategy and adopted the discourse against it. Unlike the previous factions, the members of this group only slightly questioned the social and economic inequalities prevailing in the city. Their strategies were oriented towards the realization of non-disruptive collective actions. However, in an unprecedented event in the history of Ciudad Juárez, given that this was not a segment normally associated with social protest, these organizations called for a 24-hour pause in medical care. The mobilization led by this group had a considerable impact in terms of drawing the attention of the political class and sanctioning social protest. The value of this group of businessmen and medical doctors is that their participation contributed in legitimizing, in spheres outside the militant social organizations, the rejection of militarization. Also, its connections with power structures allowed the message to reach the state, albeit minimally. 4. International groups: With Ciudad Juárez being a border community, the important contribution of social organizations beyond the border cannot be omitted. Among others there were humanist, academic, university, Chicano, Zapatismo, and political-partisan groups in support of Ciudad Juárez. This diversity entails a range of ideologies, which makes it impossible to name one as the dominant. What can be affirmed is that the common factor was simply solidarity with Ciudad Juárez.

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The diversity of ideologies was reflected in the strategies adopted by the different groups. There was a group that called for a vigil every Thursday in front of the Mexican consulate in El Paso, Texas. Additionally, some students in collaboration with professors from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and a variety of social organizations called for the binational event “Peace and Justice without Borders: A Day of Action” that took place on January 29, 2011 at the border fence between Sunland Park, in New Mexico, and Anapra in Ciudad Juárez in order to commemorate the first anniversary of the Villas de Salvárcar massacre and to draw media attention to violence on the border. From this same group was born a critical mass that accompanied the efforts against militarization with various actions such as the Border Activism Summit for Teaching and Action (BASTA) conference that took place on the UTEP campus. BASTA offered a vision more focused on human rights, a perspective that contrasts with the Border Security Conference, a convention held every year at the same university where the defense of the border is promoted through armed means. Other pro-immigrant and religious groups such as Annunciation House organized marches and vigils to denounce the high number of murders in Ciudad Juárez as well as other areas of México. The importance of these groups consisted in their ability to promote small but significant legal resolutions on the part of the government of the United States. One of them was that against all odds, as only 5 percent of the requests for political asylum made by Mexican citizens to the government of the United States are approved, the legal buffet of Carlos Spector managed to gain political asylum to Cipriana Jurado under the cause of threats to his life by the Mexican Army, and to some members of the Reyes family. This was perceived within the circles of the activists as a de facto acceptance by the United States government of the failures of the military strategy promoted by the Calderón administration. Another achievement was that organizations such as the Border Network for Human Rights, Annunciation House, and some activists from Pact for Culture in coordination with their contact networks managed to get the city council of El Paso, Texas, to allow Javier Sicilia and participants in the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity a public hearing in the United States in 2012. A UNIFIED MOVEMENT In the previous sections I showed that demonstrations against the militarization had begun since 2008. At this time, it was only a minority who were opposed to the military presence. Most people actually welcomed the presence of the army in the city because they expected and hoped that the vio-

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lence, which was already occurring in the city, was to be combated and diminished more efficiently by the soldiers. However, as documented above, the presence of the army in actuality resulted in a drastic increase in the level of violence against the people of Juárez, but especially towards impoverished youths and social activists. As people became aware of these effects, they organized in differing groups, which for the most part did not work harmoniously. This changed in 2010 when 15 high school students were brutally murdered in the impoverished neighborhood of Villas de Salvárcar. The Massacre of Villas de Salvárcar Generally speaking, the aforementioned factions worked separately without being able or willing to consolidate as a unified social movement. However, this changed after January 30, 2010, when temporarily, the various social organizations and members of civil society attempted to work as a unified movement against militarization. This attempt at presenting a unified front was due to the fact that at dawn on January 30, 2010, 15 high school students were killed while attending a party in their neighborhood, Villas de Salvárcar. It took more than 50 minutes for law enforcement agents to reach the site of the massacre, although the city was practically wholly occupied by federal and municipal forces. The massacre of Villas de Salvárcar was quickly spread by mass media and through social networks, attracting the attention of the population that demanded an explanation from the federal government. At the local level, this indignation was mainly channeled by the Front against the Militarization and the Articulation Group Justice for Juárez (Grupo Articulación Justicia por Juárez). These groups, although they had different strategies and visions, shared the demand of ending the militarization. Each one within their sphere of influence managed to channel the indignation of the population and of other organizations to pressure the state to change its strategy. Due to the national and international concern raised, in an impromptu press conference made from Japan and just hours after the massacre, President Calderón gave a statement. Here, he continued his stance that the deaths resulting from his implemented war were merely criminals. He went on to claim that the most likely hypothesis was that the murders of the students were due to rivalries between gangs and that some of those executed likely had links with the cartels. The death toll, the way the students were murdered, the very fact that they were students, in conjunction with Calderón’s statement, outraged the citizens of Ciudad Juárez and caused a vast majority of social organizations and citizens to finally accept the position of the Front against the Militarization that the federal armed forces were responsible, either by commission or omission, for the high number of deaths caused by the militarization of the city. The Salvárcar massacre proved to the inhabi-

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tants of the city that not all the casualties of Calderón’s war were criminals or collateral damage. In addition to the reactions in the city, vigils were held throughout the nation, and critiques of the military strategy by the Calderón administration were formulated internationally. These demonstrations countered the promoted narrative by the state that the militarization of the city would bring peace. Opposing discourses extended even to circles which historically had behaved uncritically in regard to militarization. Among these was Televisa, the largest telecommunications company in the country that holds a strong presence in Ibero-America, and El Universal, a newspaper of national circulation with a right-wing agenda. At the local level, the Diario de Juárez, owned by Juárez businessmen who initially supported militarization, and even members of the president’s own party criticized his strategy. Also, a group of Juárez businessmen composed of, among others, María Soledad Máynez, president of the Association of Maquiladoras de Juárez, and Eduardo Guereque, representative of the Citizen Observatory in Juárez, called a press conference at the Hotel Nikko in Polanco, in Mexico City. In this conference the group demanded that: “President Calderón come to Ciudad Juárez immediately in order to address the crisis in person.” 15 We All Are Juárez Faced with local, national, and international pressure, immediately after his return from Japan, Felipe Calderón “gave indications that the announcement of ‘a new strategy’ for Ciudad Juárez that included the participation of citizens was imminent.” 16 This new strategy was called “We All Are Juárez: Let’s Rebuild the City” (Todos Somos Juárez: Reconstruyamos la Ciudad). It is important to note that despite the general impression that this strategy was developed at the last minute to respond to the outrage caused by Villas de Salvárcar, according to some activists and Ricardo Ainslie, this program had been drafted by the federal government since 2009 and “it was scheduled to be implemented in April 2010. [However,] the massacre in Villas de Salvárcar and the national outrage accelerated the pace of the planned intervention.” 17 According to Calderón, this program had “the clear objective of rebuilding the social fabric of the city in order to successfully confront the problem of crime and violence.” 18 The program was presented as a change in the security strategy policy, switching from the previous military strategy to a more comprehensive approach, under “three fundamental strategies: citizen participation, integrity of policies departments, and co-responsibility of the three levels of government.” 19 In order to present the plan to some select SMOs, 20 Calderón’s administration called them to a meeting where 160 specific objectives, divided in six sections, were set. The initial outline included

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a human rights section and a security section. However, as we shall see later, the human rights roundtable was ultimately not included in the final draft. It is important to note that some sectors of academia participated in the development of the operation of We All Are Juárez. The prestigious College of the Borderland in Ciudad Juárez (Colegio de la Frontera, sede Ciudad Juárez, COLEF) was one prime example. In March 2010, COLEF presented a proposal to coordinate and focalize the governmental and civil society initiatives within the framework of the aforementioned program. The proposal raised the common objective of stopping the violence in the city and bringing attention to the youth population that did not have access to education, and consequently neither to employment. 21 COLEF professors emphasized the need of working with civil society, because “the risk [of not coordinating and focalizing efforts] may be the dispersion of resources and the dilution of the many social and governmental capabilities that are in motion.” 22 Despite this warning, this coordination between the state and civil society did not occur because We All Are Juárez was controversial from the outset. Initially, it was announced that members of organized civil society would be included, but in actuality, when the narratives of some social organizations opposed those of the state, those organizations were excluded. This was the case of the human rights section, which, according to Gustavo de la Rosa, a well-known human rights activist in the city, “was canceled by someone within the government.” 23 Other organizations, such as Pact for Culture, declined to participate in the discussions because, as Perla de La Rosa, a well-known activist and one of its members said: “We have not established any dialogue because it is clear that it is a great simulation, because there was no seriousness. The very call was exclusive, and this exclusion grew as the opinions [of social organizations] did not concur with that of the State.” 24 Others decided not to participate because “How are we going to talk to the State? If it is the state who is generating violence.” 25 Another position was “to participate in the security section, because although we know it is a simulation, we think that we can have some influence if we are part of it.” 26 In a few words, the program We All Are Ciudad Juárez was not executed as was initially promised. It was not inclusive, and resources were not equally or fairly distributed. This caused a division among SMOs participating in the Movement against Militarization, for some of them were recipients of grants, under the unofficial but existing condition of not protesting against the government, which clearly caused a decrease in the protest levels. Also, federal forces continued patrolling the city, with the subsequent human rights abuses and repression against social activists.

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Achievements of the Movement against Militarization The change of strategy promised in the launch of We All Are Juárez was to develop a comprehensive strategy, inclusion of civil society, and integrity of the security forces. However, this promise was not fulfilled. Instead, the security strategy was continued through the “strengthening and adjustment of deployment with 2,000 additional elements of the Federal Preventive Police, a 20 percent increase in the ministerial and investigative personnel of the attorney general’s office in the state of Chihuahua, and the establishment of control mechanisms with the support of the Army in suburban areas.” 27 The new failure of this strategy could be observed in the explosion of a car bomb on July 15, 2010 in downtown Juárez, attacks on social activists such as the Reyes-Salazar family, and the repression of the collective “Los Indignados.” 28 The excess of force with which they were arrested, as well as the fatigue the four years of resistance had caused ensured that this was the last march in the city for a long time. This is not to say that there were no accomplishments with social mobilization. Although the achievements could be considered trivial by some, it cannot be denied that they were in fact highly important and occurred at several levels. On the international sphere, the following was achieved: 1. The obtaining of political asylum in the United States for several activists, under the argument that their lives were threatened or not protected by the state, which was a de facto admission by the U.S. government that the government of México was, at least to some level, associated with the drug cartels. 2. The signing of a resolution by the city council in El Paso, Texas, which recognized that the sale of arms in the United States had an effect on the violence in Mexico. These steps, although seemingly minor, were notable in that the government of the United States began to recognize the shared responsibility they held in the violence in Mexico. 3. At the national level, the social movement in Ciudad Juárez, which was courageously and proudly named “the epitome of resistance,” would serve at least as an inspiration for other movements to be organized against militarization in the country in the years to come. 4. At the local level, civil society was activated to fulfill the functions of security, the creation of public spaces, and the attention to the victims that the state was not fulfilling. CONCLUSION Kriesi 29 defines several states and their consequent behavior with social movements. A forceful state with exclusionary tendencies, such as Calderón’s administration, derives in “total exclusion, strong repression, without the possibility of veto or substantive changes.” 30 The Calderón administration used a strategy of repression against social movements. This

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made it difficult for the demands of social movements to be considered and much less applied by the state. Despite this, the social movement against militarization in Ciudad Juárez managed to have a certain level of influence on the state’s actions in this locality. The networks that different social organizations created against militarization, within its diversity, contradictions, and different strategies, managed to create sustained actions that opposed the policies of the federal government. These sustained actions managed to change the narrative from one that justified the presence of federal forces in the city to one that held these federal forces responsible for the excessive increase in violence. The adoption of this narrative by a vast majority of social organizations and citizens allowed for a slew of political opportunities which were used by social organizations to pressure the state more adeptly in order to change its strategy of militarization in the city. Faced with this pressure, the state offered, through the We All Are Juárez program, an integral response that would address the reconstruction of the social fabric. Unfortunately, this response was only a simulation and the military strategy continued. Among the social commitments that were fulfilled, the majority were made only as the federal elections of 2012 approached. This does not mean that the actions of the social movements have been in vain. On the contrary, significant achievements were achieved that had immediate consequences in the city. On a larger scale, one of the most important consequences of the movements against the militarization was that they set a precedent of discourse against the military strategy against the narcos. The total effects of the social movement against militarization were yet to be seen because although not all changes in the balance of power lead to a regime change, all regime changes were the result of a shift in the balance of power. Further, as I will expand upon in Chapter 4, this shift of power occurs when community members act in solidarity to recover their political power. NOTES 1. I am using the term discourse in Ernesto Laclau’s terms and referring not only to speech acts but also to social practices. 2. Pereyra, “México: violencia criminal y guerra contra el narcotráfico,” 446. [coordinados por las corporaciones militares y federales y respaldados por las fuerzas estatales y locales de seguridad]. 3. Pereyra, 452. [La violencia militar y la violencia criminal se confunden porque ambas fragmentan severamente los lazos sociales y cada una es un replicador de la otra. Las fuerzas militares ingresaron a Ciudad Juárez en marzo de 2007 con el apoyo de la población y se retiraron en abril de 2010 en medio del repudio de la ciudadanía y la denuncia por violaciones a los derechos humanos, aunque regresaron a patrullar las calles de esta ciudad a fines de 2010. En la crisis de las diferencias, las fuerzas militares y policiales devinieron en Ciudad Juárez una amenaza de similar magnitud al crimen organizado].

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4. Sánchez and Ravelo, “Cultura obrera en las maquiladoras de Ciudad Juárez en tiempos catastróficos.” 5. Procuraduría General de la Republica, “Cuarto informe institucional de la Procuraduría General de la Republica.” 6. Monárrez Fragoso, “Muerte, coerción legítima y existencia precaria,” 260. [En vez de un muerto más, digan un criminal menos]. 7. Romo, “Cárteles atacan a policías en Juárez para forzar la renuncia de su jefe.” 8. Turati, “Ciudad Juárez, vivir y morir en la capital del crimen,” 11. 9. Monárrez Fragoso, “Ciudad Juárez, tiradero nacional de muertos: entre el discurso del guerrero y el caballero,” 214. 10. Esquivel, “Juárez, símbolo de la mortandad.” 11. Geminis Ochoa was a well-known leader of street vendors in downtown Juárez. One of his last acts of organized resistance was that he occupied the Santa Fe International Bridge so that for several months no toll would be paid, emulating the action that Francisco Villarreal had made years before, during his tenure as city mayor. The Salazar-Reyes is a family with a long tradition of commitment to social movements. In the sphere of social activism, it is thought that they were murdered because they were denouncing the violations of human rights committed by the military. On the last occasion when this family was attacked, three of its members were declared missing. After local, national, and international political pressure to find them, the state police located their bodies a few meters away from a military checkpoint. Marisela Escobedo was shot dead in front of the State House in Chihuahua, Mexico. The place where she was killed is surrounded by surveillance cameras and a strong police presence; however, the murderer was not arrested at the scene. Escobedo had several disruptive tactics to pressure the legal system to do justice to his daughter Rubí, who had been murdered by her boyfriend Sergio Barraza, who, despite confessing his crime, was released by a court of law. Later, Barraza also fell shot dead in Zacatecas by the Army in a confrontation unrelated to his warrant. Susana Chávez was a poet and activist murdered with extreme cruelty. Social activists say they executed her because of her social activism, while the police stated that her femicide was an isolated case that was done by some people with whom she had been drinking the night of the crime. 12. Constantino Ramírez Padrón, Interview. [no había las condiciones para un pacto. Para esto se necesitan dos partes, y en este caso el Estado no se prestaba a ser la otra parte]. 13. Marisa, Interview. [podemos gritar, marchar, cerrar el puente, pero al final el poder y la responsabilidad de hacerlo (cambiar las condiciones de vida en la ciudad) es del Estado. Las marchas son para obligarlo a que lo haga]. 14. Alberto, Interview. [As requested by the person interviewed, her name has been changed. A name change is indicated by using only a fictitious first name]. 15. Ainslie, The Fight to Save Juárez: Life in the Heart of Mexico’s Drug War, 200. 16. Ainslie, 204. 17. Ainslie, 215. 18. Calderón Hinojosa, “Todos Somos Juárez, dos años después.” 19. Gobierno Federal, Gobierno del Estado de Chihuahua, and Gobierno Municipal de Ciudad Juárez, “Estrategia Todos Somos Juárez, Reconstruyamos la Ciudad.” 20. Those SMOs that were perceived as radicals were not invited. 21. COLEF, “Propuesta para Coordinar y Focalizar las Iniciativas Gubernamentales y Sociales.” 22. COLEF. 23. Ainslie, The Fight to Save Juárez: Life in the Heart of Mexico’s Drug War, 225. 24. De la Rosa, “Entrevista a Perla de la Rosa en Milenio noticias.” [no hemos establecido ya ninguna interlocución porque es claro que es una gran simulación, porque no hubo ninguna seriedad desde la convocatoria que fue excluyente, y que esta exclusión se fue dando cada vez más a medida que las opiniones no eran cómodas]. 25. Fong, Interview. [cómo vamos a dialogar con el Estado, si desde el estado se está generando la violencia].

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26. Adriana, Interview. 27. Mesa de Seguridad y Justicia, “Foro Nacional de Observatorios de Seguridad.” [Fortalecimiento y ajuste de despliegue con 2,000 elementos adicionales de la Policía Federal; el incremento de 20% en el personal ministerial y de investigación de la Procuraduría General de la República en el estado de Chihuahua y el establecimiento de mecanismos de control con el apoyo del Ejército Mexicano en zonas suburbanas]. 28. On December 1, 2011, the Ciudad Juárez Municipal Police beat and arrested a group of demonstrators during a march against the drug war. 29. Kriesi, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies.” 30. Kriesi, 75.

Chapter Two

Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity

The Movement against Militarization in Ciudad Juárez was ongoing, when on March 27, 2011 a new tragedy struck: another mass shooting, eerily similar to that of the Salvárcar students in Ciudad Juárez on 2010, which shook the people of México yet again. Seven young people were killed in Cuernavaca, Morelos. Among them was Juan Francisco Sicilia, son of poet and journalist Javier Sicilia, an important member of the intellectual community in México. Sicilia came to learn about the tragedy while he was out of the country. By the time he returned to México, several people and organizations had expressed their solidarity with him. He was not to remain silent in the face of the senseless killing of his son and six of his son’s friends. He called for a march which he deemed The Silent Walk (Caminata del Silencio) from Cuernavaca to Mexico City. His call was answered by well-known human rights activists such as Pietro Ameglio Patella and Emilio Álvarez Icaza, but also by a number of regular citizens who had similarly lost relatives and friends because of the ongoing violence and corruption. Little did they know that this movement, which they called the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad, MPJD) would grow to become a national movement which would give a national and international voice to the pain and courage of the victims of the war that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (PAN, 2006–2012) had declared on drug cartels at the beginning of his tenure. The Silent Walk ended in a demonstration in Zócalo, the main square in Mexico City, where Javier Sicilia introduced the six points of a Citizen Pact for Peace that he proposed which called for civil society, government officials, and criminals to work together to end this unfounded militarized strategy and restore peace to México. He proposed the signing of this pact in 19

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Ciudad Juárez on June 10, 2011, and specifically called for it to be signed there as this city represented to him the “epitome of pain.” To this end, MPJD planned to go on a six-day caravan from Mexico City to Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Texas. As they traveled, a large number of people welcomed them in every city in which they stopped. This multitude represented the invisible victims of Calderόn’s war. They were also joined by members of other Social Movement Organizations (SMOs), although some of them did not share the original vision and methodology of MPJD. These differences would become evident in Ciudad Juárez when a pact, different from the original one, was publicly signed, only to be rejected the next day in El Paso, Texas, by Javier Sicilia and Emilio Álvarez Icaza, as they considered it to be unrealistic and rife with contradictions. These discrepancies, as is common in heterogenous social movements, caused a dismantling and weakening of the movement. Despite this setback, they continued to organize and called for two more caravans, one to south México and another one into the U.S. Due to the efforts of these caravans as well as rounds of public conversations with the federal government, MPJD was able to make evident the fact that civil society members and not criminals were the ones truly being affected by Calderόn’s war. To this day, MPJD has remained an influential element in the resistance against the militarization of the country. In this chapter, I will introduce and analyze the history of MPJD. This analysis will reveal the difficulties inherent in attempting to develop a cohesive movement. In accordance with the resistance movement in Ciudad Juárez, MPJD also made clear that the vast numbers of killed and missing people were due to the failed war strategy promoted by Calderón. However, there were important differences as well. MPJD was conceived as a movement to make the names of the victims visible in an attempt to show that most of them were not criminals nor “collateral damage” as the official narrative portrayed them. Also, unlike the Ciudad Juárez movement, MPJD was willing, and in fact demanded, to have a dialogue with the state. To them, the state was the only entity capable of stopping the war and able to compensate the victims. Overall, my intention is to prove that MPJD largely aided in bringing awareness to the fact that Calderόn’s war had caused a drastic surge in deaths in addition to missing and displaced peoples throughout all of México’s territory. In bringing this awareness, they enabled otherwise passive victims to become active social actors capable and willing to face the state and build autonomous organizations at a national level. Yet, due to the disagreements on finding an adequate solution, the distinct organizations were not able to form a common front. They continued fighting the state in alliance with other organizations with common ideologies.

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THE FIRST DAYS Since the first decade of the 2000s, México experienced unusual and alarming levels of violence. The roots of the problem can be traced to the increased security in airports and seaports that followed the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. This security shield closed the Caribbean Sea to South American drug cartels and turned México into a corridor for the drug supply demanded by the 26 million–plus addicts in the U.S. In addition to this situation, the deep corruption and the neoliberal project which began in the 1980s under former president Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (PRI, 1982–1988) had caused a large segment of the population to live in poverty. Both circumstances created a fertile environment for Mexican drug cartels to grow by first disputing the control of the drug corridors, and later becoming the main suppliers to the U.S. market. In addition to the control of the supply chain, México also became a market of its own. It is important to consider that while Mexican drug cartels in the 1980s were gaining power, they kept a sort of “code of honor” where they agreed to not kill people who were not part of their operations and for the most part, they would not shoot in civilian areas. They kept their business to themselves, and the government therefore did not interfere much in their matters. This modus operandi remained in place when there were only a few cartels. However, there was a change in government strategy, and this new approach began to attack some the drug cartels. Far from diminishing their power, the cartels became more dangerous as they split into several separate factions. 1 Further, under the protection of corrupt government officers, their power grew to the point where they attained an arsenal at the same level as the Mexican army, and the federal police. They became a de facto government in some territories where people obeyed them out of both fear and, in some cases, admiration too. This power was used to control territories not only for drug trafficking purposes, but allegedly also to benefit legal international mining companies as well as for political candidates’ profit. It was under these circumstances that on December 11, 2006, then President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (PAN, 2006–2012) launched the Joint Operation Michoacán (Operación Conjunta Michoacán) which would come to be known as Calderόn’s War. As explained in the previous chapter, the outcome of Calderόn’s war was the disappearance of at least 20,000 people and the murder of 100,000 more. One of these casualties was Juan Francisco Sicilia, son of Javier Sicilia. He was killed alongside six friends of his in his hometown of Cuernavaca, Morelos on March 27, 2011 by members of the South Pacific drug cartel. As had become customary, the federal and state governments first declared that these young people had been killed because they were involved in criminal activities.

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On April 2 Sicilia publicly responded to this unproved accusation in an open letter to both the state and the criminals. 2 In this letter he told government officials that the people were exasperated with their corruption. To the criminals he made it known that the people were fed up with the senseless violence. He demanded from both heads of state and criminals, to abide by a code of honor and stop the violence and the killing of innocent people, as now México was living in a state of emergency. Taking a cue from protesters in Argentina in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Sicilia said: “If they can’t, out with them!” (¡Si no pueden que se vayan!). This letter did not resonate with its intended audience, but it did with Sicilia’s friends, allies, and civil society. The vast networks that Sicilia had built over time through his work with leftist and human rights organizations empathized with his pain and grievances and together they founded MPJD. They were able to call their allies in support of the movement and soon hundreds of SMOs and some media networks were banding together on a national level demanding the end of Calderón’s war. The participation of intellectuals made this movement different from the traditional ones. Even the language was different. Far from the customary chants, poetry was read. Further, this time it was the victims, and not the politicians or core activists 3 who were speaking at the demonstrations. Together, Javier Sicilia and this large network made an open call for people to hold demonstrations on April 7 against Calderón’s war. People responded with large rallies not only in Cuernavaca, the hometown of Javier Sicilia, but also in several cities in México and some European countries. During these demonstrations, MPJD announced that on May 5 they would march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City and on May 8 they would hold another demonstration to announce the six points of the Citizens Pact they were proposing. As announced, around two hundred people carrying México’s flag started the march. They departed from the monument called the Dove of Peace with Zócalo in Mexico City as their final destination. The march was joined by Julian LeBarón, brother of Benjamín LeBarón who had been killed the night of July 7, 2009 in the state of Chihuahua because he and his relatives found themselves squaring off against a cartel in defense of their lands. Julian LeBarón stood in for his brother and became vocal about the need to be involved and fight back against the drug cartels. With them was Bishop Raúl Vera, who later would be one of the funders of the Citizen-Popular Constituent Assembly (Constituyente Ciudadana-Popular, CCP). There were also members of organizations as representatives of the Zapatista Army and the parents of the forty-nine infants who died by fire on June 5, 2009, in the northern state of Sonora in a government-run childcare center. 4 Importantly, in addition to activists there were several hundred people carrying photographs of their sons, daughters, parents, and friends who had been killed or had disappeared in Calderón’s war. Most had come

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by themselves. During the march, which was supposed to be silent, they talked amongst each other, sharing their pain and frustrations. In a few words, the MPJD was becoming a movement of the victims who had decided to collectively protest in demand of the end of the militarized strategy against drug cartels. On May 8, the Caravan arrived at Zócalo in Mexico City where they held a demonstration. In this meeting, Sicilia gave a speech wherein he declared that the members of MPJD were there to show the “lords of death” that the people were resilient and ready to defend the lives of their sons, daughters, siblings, and parents—the lives of all. He demanded that the people who had been killed be called by name to oppose their minimization of being tagged as criminals, for even criminals deserve a name and a grave. He claimed that people would not stand for another election if political parties did not expel all corrupt politicians from their ranks. He also argued that drug use “should have and should be treated as a problem for urban sociology and public health, and not as a criminal matter that must be faced with violence.” 5 In order to solve the state of emergency that México was, and still is, going through, MPJD proposed a National Pact for peace to civil society, churches, business organizations, and SMOs. The pact, read by Olga Reyes, demanded: 1. Solve the murder and disappearance cases and name the victims. 2. The end to the war strategy and the introduction of a citizen-led strategy. 3. Combat corruption and impunity. 4. Combat the economic roots and profit of organized crime. 5. Urgent attention to the needs of the youth and effective measures to rebuild the social fabric. 6. Participative democracy. To summarize, in this early stage of MPJD, not only social and human rights organizations joined the movement, but also members of civil society who had been affected by Calderón’s war. In fact, the active participation of the relatives of the people who had been killed or had disappeared became a vital part of the movement. They made it known that their slain loved ones had been labeled as criminals and because of that, by Calderόn’s logic, killing them was justified. The victims had been condemned and sentenced to die without any trial. Further, even when it actually was the case that some of them were indeed criminals, execution would still not be warranted, as capital punishment was eradicated decades ago from the legal system in México. Worse still, the victims are buried without even so much as a register of their names by the government or in clandestine graves by the drug cartels. MPJD demanded an end to Calderón’s war and the passing of a General Law of Victims that would help the country to heal and reestablish the social

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contract. To this end, they proposed a Citizen Pact for Peace to be signed in Ciudad Juárez on June 10, 2011. Concerned about the extensive response MPJD had obtained, the federal government thought it best to start a dialogue with them. MPJD leaders accepted this offer, but only after their return from Juárez. SOLACE CARAVAN On June 4, five hundred people in thirteen buses and twenty-two cars started the Solace Caravan (Caravana del Consuelo) to Ciudad Juárez, where in a gathering with organizations from the border city they would sign the Citizen Pact for Peace. On their way to the north, caravaners would find several spontaneous expressions of solidarity and empathy. From within the caravan, it was possible to observe that they were a heterogenous group where the seeds for future disagreements were already planted. Among these elements of dissent included some level of separation between MPJD leadership and members of the caravan as well as the differences between the goals and vision of the MPJD founding members and other organizations that had joined the movement as they agreed on the demands to the state: the end of the militarized strategy and finding the 20,000+ disappeared people. With the beginning of MPJD in Cuernavaca, there had been a process of change in the people’s collective attitude. They went from being passive victims of the violence caused by the state and drug cartels to vital social actors. This process was accompanied by, among many others, the experiences of the LeBarón family, the Alvarado family, and the Reyes family—all of them relatives of people who had been killed because of Calderόn’s war. All of them had also rebelled against this futile war and had become involved in activism demanding justice on behalf of their relatives. As the caravan headed north through twelve states, this awareness process increased as more people publicly shared the names and faces of their own loved ones who had either been killed or had disappeared. They did so by making signs which they would carry in the demonstrations. By taking this small action, people realized that it was not an isolated circumstance, but rather it was a national phenomenon. In every city in which they arrived, the caravan was welcomed by others who wanted to express their pain, and who also wanted the names and faces of their killed and missing relatives to be known. The awareness and unification were spreading. The caravan arrived in the state of Chihuahua on June 8, where they were widely welcomed and celebrated in every city in which they passed on their way to the capital city, Chihuahua. That night, when they finally arrived in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, they were hosted by several organizations from human rights to women’s groups to even farmers’ groups, but also by citizens

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who had come of their own volition; there was a spirit of fraternity and solidarity. The next day, June 9, this united front marched to the Government Palace, which serves as the seat of the governor. Here, Sicilia made a small but highly symbolic act; he placed a memorial plaque in honor of Marisela Escobedo. 6 The caravan then departed to Ciudad Juárez. The caravan arrived in Ciudad Juárez on the evening of June 9 and encountered an emotional welcoming at the entrance of the city by hundreds of people who had gathered. Among others, there was Maria Elena Dávila, mother of two of the fifteen young people who had been killed in Salvárcar on January 30, 2010 and who had directly told Calderón that he was not welcome in Ciudad Juárez only a year and a half ago. After the welcoming, they headed to the Salvárcar Park where there was a multitude of people waiting for them. These suffering people from central México met these suffering people in Ciudad Juárez, and the shared resistance and accord were cathartic. They hugged, cried, and remembered the 7,000 and more people killed, just in the state of Chihuahua, 7 along with the other thousands of people killed in the rest of the country since the beginning of Calderόn’s war. The mechanics of all the caravan’s previous encounters had been constant. They all started with a brief session of poetry reading, followed by direct testimonies of victims who would find empathy from Sicilia and the myriad of other victims. This is to say, the protagonists of the encounters had been the victims and the visible leader of the movement was Sicilia, who for the most part had been in charge of the methodology and the decisionmaking process. However, this would change dramatically during the sessions held the next day to discuss the pact; other SMOs starkly disputed the methodology and goals of the meeting. On June 10, the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez (Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juarez, UACJ) opened its facilities for caravaners, SMOs, and members of the civil society to discuss the pact. The day was initiated with a brief ceremony where a salutation from the Zapatista Army was read. After this though, the heterogeneity of the movement was questioned when some SMOs contested the leadership and direction of the movement. The dispute stemmed from the methodology proposed for the discussion sessions of the six original points of the Pact that had been planned. Some wanted to discuss the six original points of the Pact for Peace, while others wanted to open the Pact as a whole to discussion. The most severe clash happened during the Security session, where they discussed the end of the war and the implementation of a citizen-based security strategy grounded in a human rights perspective. Some leftist SMOs claimed that the MPJD should demand an immediate end to the militarization of the country. On the other hand, MPJD members argued that some zones in the country still needed the temporary presence of federal forces to defend them from the drug cartels. Even though less intense, there was also a high

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level of disagreements and confusions in other sessions that I witnessed. In these sessions there was a combination of experienced social activists who wanted to convince the audience of the rightness of their position and unexperienced citizens who simply wanted to be listened to. The most serious disagreement was over the nature of the worth of the resolutions of these discussion sessions. It was not clear if they were a binding precedent or if they were mere proceedings. On the one hand, some national and local leftist organizations claimed that since the resolutions had been taken by a public and open assembly, they were the voice of the people, and as such they should be considered the true Pact. On the other hand, MPJD delegates and members of the Juárez Articulation Group argued that the assembly of all the resolutions lacked a “principle of reality” as they were a list of good wishes and were even contradictory in certain points within. As this point continued to be discussed, the meeting at Juárez Monument square (Plaza del Monumento a Juárez), where the Pact for Peace would be publicly announced, had already started and people were anxious and excited to witness the signing ceremony. Under pressure, MPJD delegates sent the resolutions, over fifty of them, to Sicilia who was already at the square. He did not have prior access to the resolutions. As they were being read, it became evident that he was in disagreement with most of them. Yet, they were announced and signed by him as the official Citizen Pact. The next day, Saturday the 11th, the Caravan had one last event before people would return back to their homes: a demonstration in San Jacinto square in downtown El Paso, Texas. Unlike the meetings in UACJ, this event had been well-organized and carefully crafted since weeks prior to the event. The organization meetings were held at the facilities of Casa Vida, an immigrant shelter. From the very first meetings it was made clear to all of us who were attending that the sole purpose of being there was to help facilitate the event and not to discuss agendas and ideas to end the militarization. It was made known to all of us who attended the meetings that although it was a necessary discussion, this was not the proper place nor time to have it. The event was successful and went as planned. After the event ended, Sicilia gave an improvised press conference where he announced that he and Emilio Álvarez Icaza, responsible for the management of the MPJD political agenda, rejected the Pact announced by the former as such the night before. Sicilia claimed that they were just the minutes of the discussion sessions and that the true Pact was the one originally announced in Mexico City on May 8. This announcement caused a rift between some of the SMOs that had joined MPJD and its leadership, weakening the movement as a whole. A year later, Sicilia stated that he was even accused of having betrayed the June 10 pact, but the truth was that he wanted to stay loyal to the moral principles that had guided MPJD and avoid those people or organizations who had imposed

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their own ideologies, for MPJD was about the victims, not about political or ideological projects. Even though it can be said that the estrangement was untimely, it was not surprising, for it was the instantiation of the divergent visions that had formed MPJD but had not detonated until the day before. In order to understand these divergences, it is necessary to go back in time and remember that even when MPJD was funded by Sicilia’s friends and allies, they had also made an open call to other SMOs. Efforts would be coordinated by the Network for Peace and Justice, a group created ex profeso, with this goal in mind. Their call was answered by several SMOs that did not necessarily share the vision of Sicilia’s group based on Gandhi’s pacifist protests, human rights, and non-violent weapons. One of these divergent organizations was the National Coordinator against Militarization (Coordinadora Nacional contra la Militarización, COMECON). COMECON was funded in Mexico City in November 2010 after several student organizations learned about Dario, the UACJ student who had been shot in front of the university on October 29, 2010. It “was created to show solidarity with the comrades from Juárez and recover many of the methods that were used in Chihuahua.” 8 It coordinated the efforts of SMOs from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico City, and other cities of the country to demand the end of militarization. For the most part, it was made up of leftist college students and some lifelong activists such as Rosario Ibarra de Piedra. 9 As COMECON established contact with activists from Ciudad Juárez, they realized both the extent and consequences of Calderόn’s war. Most members of COMECON concluded that the war on drug cartels “was a strategy implemented by the state, which, in congruence with the great capital, sought to generate terror to move forward with neoliberal reforms.” 10 This conclusion and the organization methods would be the breaking point with MPJD leadership. For the most part decisions in MPJD were made by their leaders, the movements emphasized the victims, and in that sense the leaders were willing to accept the presence of the military in some places where it was necessary. However, together with other organizations COMECON requested that the decision-making process be open to all and decisions be made in an assembly. Also, they demanded the immediate end of the militarization of the capitalistic state. The two sides were not able to reach a compromise and consequently went separate ways, an occurrence which is not uncommon in heterogenous social movements. 11 Even though it was weakened, MPJD was not finished and would still play a crucial role in the movement against Calderόn’s war. In essence, during this second stage of the movement, it grew to a national level. Caravaners traveled from central México to the border city of Juárez. On their way, they encountered a number of repeating testimonies of people being killed or disappeared without the government conducting prop-

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er investigations on the cases. By virtue of this encounter, there was a national awareness of the dimension of the situation. Besides direct victims of civil society, there were also several SMOs involved in MPJD. Some of them were the core that initially founded the organizations, while some others, such as United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila (Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Coahuila, FUNDEC, now FUNDEM), were created as a citizen response to the disappeared persons’ crisis. A third sector was made up of radical leftist organizations that shared MPJD’s demands of ending the war and finding the missing persons. There was a discord regarding the ways to reach these goals and this disagreement would cause a division within MPJD. Yet, MPJD would still go to the agreed meetings with the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. DIALOGUE WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT As announced since the first demonstration in Mexico City, representatives of MPJD and victims themselves held a dialogue with the federal government. MPJD wanted to have it with the three branches of government, but the judicial branch never accepted MPJD conditions, which de facto meant a refusal to talk to the movement and the victims. The first in turn was the executive branch. After some negotiations about the place, MPJD and the Calderόn administration agreed on having a public meeting in the Chapultepec Castle on June 23. As expected, the dialogue was strained and yielded questionable results as Calderόn insisted on keeping his military strategy, as he did not seem to care about the testimonies of the victims of his war. In his opening speech, Sicilia pointed out that they were there to remind the government of their duty to protect citizens’ lives and well-being. He argued that because of their decision of approaching the drug issue as a matter of national security, and not as an issue of public health, they had declared war on a non-existing army, since drug cartels do not obey the rules of war; they are criminals, not a state. He continued, saying that drug cartels had found such a fertile environment to prosper precisely because of the poverty that a large segment of the population, especially the youth, were living in due to the neoliberal economic model. This war had brought pain and sorrow to many people whose relatives had been killed or disappeared under the excuse that they were criminals or “collateral damage.” But this was wrong, and twenty-three people, a small sample of that affected population, was here to give testimony to the egregious ways of the war strategy. Despite the testimonies and the six demands of the Pact, in an example of fetishized power Calderόn refused to change his strategy. In fact, even when previously he had agreed on establishing four co-joined committees to discuss the demands, in his Presidential Report he announced the creation of the

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Office for the Attention to Victims (Procuraduria Social de Atención a las Víctimas), without taking into consideration any MPJD input. About a month later, on July 28, MPJD held a second round of conversations, this time with representatives of the legislative branch. Forty MPJD representatives and victims sat together with forty Congresspeople in order to establish a critical route to turn the agreements with Calderόn into official laws. They asked the Congresspeople to pass the General Law of Victims, a Commission for Truth, the classification of forced disappearance as a felony, and the refusal of the Law of Internal Security. Only four out of eight initial agreements would be fulfilled. On October 14, there was a second encounter with Calderόn, and similarly to the first one, there were no tangible results. Rather, they were more a government strategy of simulation to gain time. The few agreements that had been reached were blocked or manipulated by Calderόn to continue with his belligerent strategy. To summarize, the dialogues with the federal government had ambiguous results. On a positive note, the General Law of Victims was approved, only to be blocked later by Calderόn. As predicted by radical leftist organizations, Calderόn did not change his strategy and made empty promises. Sicilia defended the need of continuing dialogues by arguing that while citizens’ participation was essential, they also needed the state to alleviate the pain of the victims and to end the militarized strategy. He also defended his act of giving a kiss to Calderόn as a demonstration of peace and good faith. Both his strategy and his behavior were highly criticized by the radical left, causing a further split inside the movement. CARAVAN FOR PEACE After the rounds of conversations with the federal government and a short recess, MPJD prepared for a third caravan, this time to the south of México. On their way to the south, they would stop in the states of Morelos, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, the latter from which they would continue through to Guatemala in order to apologize to Central American immigrants for the abuses they receive in México. This symbolic act served as a means of expressing solidarity against the oppression from the hands of the Mexican government. On their way back to México they planned to hold demonstrations in the states of Tabasco, Veracruz, and Puebla. Six hundred twenty-one people departed on fifteen buses on August 11. Even when southern México had also been affected by narco-traffic, caravaners would find a different country than the one they encountered in the northern states of México. Here, the pain was centuries older; it was the voice of indigenous communities that had been oppressed for centuries by colonial practices. It was the voice of the

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descendants of the victims of the “dirty war” (guerra sucia) that the state had commanded in the 1970s against those who had rebelled against it. The Caravan for Peace started in a rather cold mood. On the buses, as part of the caravan, there was the daughter of Lucio Cabañas, a former guerrilla fighter who had been shot by the Mexican army in December 1974. There was also a small group of Central American immigrants representing the growing numbers of people that go through México en route to the United States. On their way through, they suffer all kind of abuses from both criminals and authorities. In their journey through, the caravan was not received by multitudes as they had been in the Solace Caravan. This can be explained by fear and apathy in civil society. The former was arguably due to the manifest surveillance drug cartels were conducting on the caravan. Presumably, the latter was because of the lack of media coverage on this caravan. As the presidential elections were getting close, mass media was more focused on covering the potential candidates than the caravan. To them, it was not news anymore. Even where there was a constant communication between EZLN and other indigenous organizations, they were not able to build permanent bridges that would allow them to communicate better and effectively work together. One of the reasons for this limited communication was the divergent levels of experience. Indigenous organizations had a large experience in autonomous practices, as they had valid reasons for not believing in the government’s promises as “government responds with declarations and false promises, trying to get them tired [the parents of the ABC babies] so they forget and they are forgotten.” 12 However, in accordance with their pacifist ideology, the leadership of MPJD believed that the enemy could be transformed. They expected that Calderόn and his cabinet would become sensitive to the pain of the victims and would eventually end their military strategy. As time would show, this change never happened, proving indigenous organizations right and leaving a lasting learning experience for MPJD leaders and members. The Caravan for Peace ended on September 19 in Zócalo in a meeting attended by only a few hundred people. Here, MPJD demanded Calderόn meet the six points introduced in the dialogue. However, as the political class was tuned into the presidential elections, they were not listening. The Caravan for Peace also had mixed results. MPJD contacted old and important organizations such as the Zapatista Army. Yet, it increased the rift with radical leftist organizations. Also, it was not nearly as covered by the media as had been done with the first caravan, which made it appear as if MPJD was losing momentum. Questioned about it, Sicilia noted that this was not a mass movement, but a movement with moral authority. At this stage, it was clear to MPJD and other SMOs that México was not a failed state but a criminal state in complicity with the drug cartels. 13

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THE LAW OF VICTIMS A little less than a month after the end of the Caravan for Peace, MPJD was ready for the second round of dialogue with Calderόn and members of his cabinet. The movement was perceivably weaker than in the previous round. This setback can be explained by several reasons: a physical and mental fatigue that occurs within most social movements as a natural consequence of continuous mobilization for a large period of time. 14 This fatigue causes some to take their exit from the movement. A second reason was the proximity of the 2012 presidential elections. Some people and organizations that had joined MPJD were now focusing on supporting the candidacy of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. A third factor was the media siege of the movement, which caused non-involved citizens to perceive that MPJD was over. This resulted in these citizens not attending the demonstrations called by the movement. Finally, there were constant attacks from the right-wing organizations that promoted the continuity of the military strategy. The dialogue was held on October 14 at the same place, Chapultepec Castle. From the very beginning it was clear that the federal government was not committed to it, as government officers were proposing to include rightwing organizations, 15 but MPJD refused declaring, “We are not equal to any organizations with which you want to sit us. We represent all the victims that you have denied.” 16 After a rough negotiation, Emilio Álvarez Icaza compromised by having two different rounds, one with the sole presence of MPJD and another one with the other organizations. Also, a minimal part of the agreements made in the first round of conversations had been met. If fact, only the General Law of Victims was in the works. The political system attempted to domesticate the movement by offering a candidacy for the Senate to both Javier Sicilia and Julian LeBarón. Both refused the offer because this was a civil movement in defense of the victims, not a movement to gain personal political power and privileges. As the government did not fulfill its obligations, MPJD focused on promoting the General Law of Victims where they proposed a national register of victims, an assistance fund, and assistance and compensation to victims, among other aspects. It was approved unanimously in the Senate on March 26, 2012, but Calderόn introduced a constitutional controversy and stopped it. At the same time, after the failed dialogues, Sicilia asked MPJD to promote what is called a “voto blanco,” or a “blank vote.” This process entails a voting option wherein a vote can be cast for neither candidates nor parties running. The vote then is a null, or blank, one. This request created a controversy within MPJD, as not all members agreed on it. Some sectors wanted MPJD to actively participate in the elections under the argument that a positive change in government will be mirrored with a change in the military strategy. The opposite sector, mainly Sicilia, refuted this argument by claim-

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ing that unless political parties expelled all criminals and corrupt members from their ranks, there will be no true change in the political system. Consequently, the war strategy would also not be affected since those political criminals were profiting directly from it. Sicilia accepted that the null vote was not promoted by MPJD as a whole, but he would push for it under his own name. They also negotiated to have a formal and public dialogue with all the presidential candidates on May 28, 2012. By this time MPJD was largely fragmented due to both internal and external conflicts. Regarding the internal aspect, it is worth noting that besides the previous disagreements with radical left organizations, there were also some differences in the core of the movement over the direction and leadership style. Regarding the external factors, it is only fair to say that the movement was attacked by right-wing organizations, pro-government media, the government itself, and criminal organizations. One of the most extreme instances of these attacks occurred with the killing of a total of forty-seven of its members in a short period of time. A tragically notable case was that of Nepomuceno Moreno, who in the first encounter had faced Calderόn and demanded results in the investigation for the killing of his son Jorge Mario Moreno. Nepomuceno was killed at daylight in downtown Hermosillo, Sonora on November 28, 2011, after the Minister of Justice (Procuraduria General de la Republica, PGR) had located the murderers of his son. Besides disagreements and killings, other members of MPJD left the organization to attend to other responsibilities. Such was the case of Emilio Álvarez Icaza, for example, who was named Secretary of the Interamerican Human Rights Commission. A final factor in the near dissolution of MPJD was the end of Calderόn’s administration. As noted above, since the end of 2011, most political actors were focused on the presidential election and as MPJD was not supporting any pre-candidate, they were relegated by both political parties and the news agencies. Further, the 2012 presidential election was marked by suspected election fraud and #IAm132, 17 a movement against this alleged fraud, received the most media attention. MPJD made an attempt to go beyond elections and organized a final caravan, this time in the United States. Unfortunately, it would not gain the desired attention. This caravan took place from August 12 to September 12, 2012. It departed from Tijuana, Baja California, in Mexico and after visiting 27 cities in the United States, it ended in Washington, D.C. The Caravan for Peace had the purpose of raising awareness about the disappearances and deaths of men and women in Mexican territory, the war against drugs, arms trafficking, and money laundering. The purpose of the visit to El Paso, Texas, and that of other cities was to request that the local council sign a fivepoint agreement in favor of a strategy that would respond to their requests. After a tense session the city of El Paso, Texas, agreed and in fact, was “the only city to endorse the resolution in its entirety.” 18

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After this caravan ended MPJD did not fully disappear, and to this day it is still an important element in México’s political scene. They were able to put enough pressure on the government and the new President Enrique Peña Nieto, EPN (PRI, 2012–2018), signed the Law of Victims on January 9, 2013. Given the antecedents of PRI, the political party that had postulated EPN, and his own record of repression against opposite social movements, there was little hope that his administration would change the military strategy. 19 Unfortunately, MPJD and other organizations were right in that they only changed the discourse but not the actions. The EPN administration approved the Law of Victims and an Office to provide economic and psychological relief to them, but it opened with virtually no resources, which signified that it was an inoperable office. Also, the military continued patrolling the streets and supposedly combating drug cartels. The numbers of murdered people reached 156,437, almost 35,000 more than in Calderόn’s terms. CONCLUSION The killing of Juan Francisco Sicilia, son of the poet and journalist Javier Sicilia, detonated the creation of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) which grew to be a national movement that made visible the true dimensions of Calderόn’s militarized strategy against the drug cartels. The high levels of mobilization can be explained by Sicilia’s large network, which made it possible to use a variety of means to call attention to the movement. As more people joined the movement, they realized that their personal experience of having a missing or killed relative without any explanation, or even an investigation from the authorities was not an exception, but rather, the rule. This awareness turned the passive victims into active and organized social actors that demanded the end to the militarized strategy against the drug cartels and also some compensation to the victims. Despite the waning membership they were able to reach important landmarks such as the approval of the General Law of Victims and, more important, to foment the creation of independent victims’ organizations that served to search for their missing loved ones. The work of MPJD and these organizations would elucidate the problematic relationship between the state as a whole and the drug cartels. As important as these landmarks are for Pietro Ameglio, a MPJD founding member and human rights activist, “In the long run this was not enough, because we could not go to the stage that the history of nonviolent civil resistance teaches: noncooperation and civil disobedience.” 20 Arguably, the failure to make this transition is not due to a lack of MPJD efforts, but to the number of obstacles they faced. They were politically attacked by right-wing organizations. The attacks MPJD received included the killing of some of its

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members in broad daylight and with total impunity. In addition to this, the 2012 presidential elections dominated the media and the people’s attention, which caused MPJD to lose momentum. In addition to the external attacks, MPJD also faced internal difficulties including the disagreement among some of its factions on several issues. One such issue was the organizing method—some preferred a public assembly to make the decisions, while others argued that the leadership of the movement should do so. Another source of contention was the relationship with the state. Sicilia and his inner circle believed that civil society should pressure the state on its duty of protecting the population, but never advocated that society could replace the state. Hence, a dialogue between civil society and government was necessary. However, more radical and experienced organizations argued that the state was inherently corrupt, and no solution would suffice. Therefore, the people should take over power and control security. As they were not able to compromise, the movement split and every organization continued working with those allies that shared their same ideologies. Despite their shortcomings, it is only fair to say that as the Movement against the Militarization in Ciudad Juárez in 2010, MPJD and other SMOs helped to create the basis for a national and international movement that would later denounce the state and demand a new social pact. Also, it is important to note that these difficulties in articulating several organizations in a movement or movements are not exclusive to MPJD, but rather, they are constant in large social movements. In Chapter 4, I will share the responses that Latin American philosophers have offered to such impediments. NOTES 1. For more on this topic, see Heyman and Campbell, “Crime on and across Borders.” 2. Sicilia, “Carta abierta a políticos y criminales.” 3. For more on the notion of core activists see: Díaz Cepeda and Castañeda, “Activists” Motivations and Typologies: Core Activists in Ciudad Juárez.” 4. ABC Baby care center was owned by relatives of Margarita Zavala, Calderόn’s wife. They had never been brought to trial for the possible criminal negligence. Due to the lack of justice, the parents of the forty-nine babies started a social movement demanding a thorough investigation on the causes and responsibilities of the fire. 5. Javier Sicilia and Eduardo Vázquez Martín, eds., “Prólogo,” in El movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad, 1st ed. (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 2016), 60. [debió y debe ser tratado como un problema le sociología urbana y de salud pública, y no como un asunto criminal que debe enfrentarse con la violencia.] 6. As indicated in Ch. 1, Marisela Escobedo was shot dead right in front of the Government Palace while protesting the murder of her daughter Rubí Marisela Frayre. In order to commemorate her struggle, women’s organizations placed a plaque in the site where she was killed, but it was removed by state government’s order. They placed it again, just to be removed again in an endless repetition of events. 7. According to State Police data in 2007, the year before the beginning of Joint Operation Chihuahua, there were 519 homicides in the state. The next year there were five times more and by the end of Calderόn’s term there was a total of 17, 548 homicides. The homicide rate went

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from 16.97 per each 100,000 habitants to 148.9 homicides per each 100, 000 habitants. This is to say, the homicide rate increased almost nine times from the beginning to the end of Calderόn’s term. 8. Moissen, interview. [was created to show solidarity with the comrades from Juárez and recovers many of the methods that were used in Chihuahua]. 9. Rosario Ibarra de Piedra is a lifelong activist. Her involvement in political activities started as early as 1974 when her son Jesús Piedra Ibarra was arrested and disappeared by policemen in 1974. In 1973 he had been accused of being part of the guerilla group September 23 Communist League (Liga Comunista 23 de septiembre). She funded the Committee for the Defense of Prisoners, Persecuted, Disappeared and Political Exiles, better known as the Ureka! Committee. She has also served as Senator and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. 10. Raúl Romero, “Encuentros y desencuentros de un movimiento en construcción,” in El Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad, ed. Javier Sicilia and Vázquez Martín, 1st ed. (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 2016), 107. [era una estrategia implementada desde el Estado, que, en contubernio con el gran capital, buscaba generar terror para avanzar con las reformas neoliberales.] 11. Díaz Cepeda, “Addressing Ayotzinapa: Using Dussel’s Analectic Method for Establishing an Ethical Framework for Complex Social Movements.” 12. Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena, Comandancia General del Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, and Subcomandante Marcos, “Palabras del EZLN en la movilización de apoyo a la Marcha Nacional por la Paz,” June 7, 2011, https://desinformemonos.org/palabras-del-ezln-en-la-movilizacion-de-apoyo-a-la-marcha-nacional-por-la-paz/. [El gobierno les responde con declaraciones y promesas mentirosas, tratando de cansarlos y de que olviden su desgracia y se olvide su desgracia]. 13. Equipo Bourbaki, “El Costo Humano de la Guerra por la Construcción del Monopolio del Narcotráfico en México (2008–2009).” 14. For more on the decline of social movements, see Part IX of Goodwin and Jasper, The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts. 15. As, for example: México SOS, Alto al Secuestro, and Causa Común. 16. Sicilia and Vázquez Martín, “Prólogo,” 46. [No somos iguales a ninguna las organizaciones con las que quiere sentarnos. Nosotros representamos todas las víctimas del país que ustedes han negado]. 17. Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda, “#Yo Soy 132: A Networked Social Movement of Mexican Youth,” in Waves of Social Movement Mobilizations in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges to the Neo-Liberal World Order and Democracy, ed. Nahide Konak and Rasim Ozgür Donmez, 1st ed. (London: Lexington Books, 2015), 41–58. 18. Staudt and Mendez, Courage, Resistance and Women in Ciudad Juárez: Challenges to Militarization in Ciudad Juárez, 142. 19. For more on Atenco events see: Hernández Castillo, “State Violence and Gender: In San Salvador Atenco, Mexico.” 20. Pietro Ameglio Patella, “Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad: construir paz en la guerra de México,” Polis Revista Latinoamericana, no. 43 (2016): 12. [la larga esto no fue suficiente, pues no se logró pasar a la etapa que la historia de la resistencia civil no violenta enseña: la no cooperación y la desobediencia civil].

Chapter Three

Ayotzinapa

On the night of September 26, 2014, a group of normalistas, the name given to college students attending the rural college Raúl Isidro Burgos for studentteachers located in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, were attacked by policemen and military-clad men in the city of Iguala. They were on their way to the school campus after having commandeered a couple of buses. Three bypassers and three students were killed, and 43 other students, ranging in age from 19 to 23 years old, were taken by the local police. The students’ peers had vast experience in disruptive tactics, which enabled them to quickly mobilize and denounce the attack. They also demanded that their classmates be returned alive. At first, the city mayor denied the events, but as the news spread and the students were not located, he was forced to acknowledge them. The government of Guerrero, and later the federal government, promised to find the students and punish those perpetrators responsible for the attack. Yet, as it is documented, there was no actual intention to fulfill this promise. The circumstances of the attack, the indefensible institutional response, and the accumulation of rage all led to the surpassing of the mobilization that had started in 2008 with the movement against militarization in Ciudad Juárez and had continued with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity. Social mobilization rose to the point where a large number of people blamed the state, demanded the resignation of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018), and called for a new social contract. For the purpose of this text, I refer to this movement as the Ayotzinapa Social Movement. I consider that this movement meets the criteria of a heterogenous social movement, 1 for there are several Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) involved sharing a set of demands such as finding the missing students alive as well as a fitting punishment for the culprit(s). Yet, at the same time, these SMOs have

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ideological differences, reflected in their long-term goals and their strategies in pursuing them. In this chapter, I document these events and the subsequent social movement from the underside of history; this is to say, from the vantage point of the victims. The corpus has been obtained through in-depth interviews, participatory observation, and documentary sources. This information will be relevant in Chapter 6 as well, wherein I will elaborate from a philosophical perspective on the question regarding the reach of social movements. AYOTZINAPA CONTEXT For many decades, the state of Guerrero has been one of the most violent territories in Mexico. This is the result of a long tradition of cacicazgo, in which a few families have ruled the state as their personal ground, favoring the powerful by attacking social movement organizations (SMOs) and activists that resist their power. In recent times, along with political corruption, Guerrero has also been a center of marijuana production and, more recently, white heroin production to meet the growing demand from the United States. 2 Organized drug cartels, such as the cartel of the Beltrán Leiva brothers, have found ideal conditions for business in Guerrero’s reputation for lawlessness. This, in turn, has produced increasing problems when mayors and other government officials, including the Army, associate with the drug lords to benefit from their mutual economic interests, proving detrimental to the rule of law as well as the living conditions of the general population. Guerrero´s tradition, then, encompasses a history of repression and poverty. Currently it is the fourth-poorest state in Mexico. 3 However, Guerrero also has a long history of resistance, with the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa at the forefront. Normales rurales are rural schools for student teachers created in the 1920s during President Álvaro Obregón’s administration by the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos, who served as the Minister of Education. They were established with the goal of bringing social progress to the peasants living in Mexico’s countryside through education. Since their launch they have been organized by the Mexican Federation of Peasant Socialist Students (Federacion de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de Mexico, FECSM 4) and regularly engage in activism in order to demand better social conditions for the students and the poor. 5 Students follow a socialist and activist approach when they take part in the peasants’ struggles, as most of them are peasants themselves. Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College has around 500 students, all male as the school is not co-educational. Most of them are the children of peasants from all regions of Guerrero, who come with the intention of improving their life conditions through the opportunities that knowledge can

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bring. Sometimes, however, their living conditions are so precarious that they reach the College in search of food and a place to stay. 6 Even though new students may not be politically active or exceptionally doctrinally aware, once they begin classes, as part of their regular curriculum they receive political education under the Political and Ideological Orientation Committee. Students do not only learn how to become teachers, but they also become politically active, as the student body has a reputation of using highly disruptive tactics to push their demands. Former Ayotzinapa students include the nationally well-known guerrilla fighter Lucio Cabañas who in 1967 funded the Party of the Poor and fought to establish a communist government. Cabañas was killed in a gunfight with the army in December of 1974. This level of confrontation and use of lethal force are to be expected when it comes to repressing government opponents. In fact, in Guerrero there was a period called the Dirty War (Guerra Sucia) that lasted from 1971 to 1981 when people who were labeled as a threat to the government were brutally attacked. “It was carried out mainly by the Army: men, women, the elderly, boys and girls were victims of rapes, arrests in clandestine prisons, forced disappearances and summary executions, among other atrocities that aggravated many peasant families in the state.” 7 Many rural schools, especially the Raúl Isidro Burgos school, have been placed by the government in a category marking them as potential subversive groups. Therefore, there is a continuous monitoring of their facilities and unusual cruelty when the government takes action against them. The most recent preceding attack, prior to the events in Iguala, took place on December 12, 2011, during a highway siege targeting 300 Ayotzinapa students. Federal and state police officers shot at them, killing two, Gabriel Echeverría and Jorge Alexis Herrera. Three students were injured, and 23 students were arrested. The 23 were all tortured. Despite the numerous previous attacks no one could have foreseen what occurred on the night of September 26, 2014, when a group of around one hundred students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college, most of them freshmen, boarded two buses at the school and headed to the city of Iguala where they planned on commandeering more buses. They planned to drive these buses to Mexico City to join the October 2 march to commemorate the 46th anniversary of when the Mexican army shot and kidnapped students who were protesting peacefully in the Tlatelolco Plaza before the 1968 Olympics. 8 Throughout that night, local uniformed police officers and a group of military-clad armed men shot at the protestors, made numerous arrests, and also kidnapped several others. The irony here goes without saying. In La Verdadera Noche de Iguala 9 (The True Night of Iguala), the acclaimed journalist Anabel Hernández describes the attacks on the students. According to her research, the horrific events started at 16:30 hours when Ayotzinapa students led by Bernardo Florez Alzar, called el Cochiloco, decided to go to Iguala and attempt to seize some buses. They used two Estrella

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de Oro buses with the numbers 1568 and 1531, which they had overtaken before. In the bus station of Iguala, they appropriated three more buses. Unbeknownst to them, their activities were being surveilled by C4, a police survival center that provides information in real time to local, state, and federal police, as well as to the headquarters of the 27th Infantry Battalion. In Hernández’s account, students left the bus station in five buses. Three of them, Estrella de Oro #1568 and two Costa Line buses, took a wrong turn and headed to downtown Iguala at 21:20 hours. They are attacked first at 21:30 with shots to the air. No one is injured. Ten minutes later, their path is blocked by a police car and the Estrella de Oro 1568 bus is massively shot. Students are forced to leave the bus. Only one of them and the bus driver survived and at least 21 students are kidnapped by policemen. At about the same time, 22:30 hours, the other two buses, Estrella de Oro 1531 and a Costa Line bus that were on their way back to the College were attacked too. With the same ambush-style tactics, the buses were forced to stop and students forced to evacuate, especially students on the Estrella de Oro 1531 bus. Fourteen students in total were taken from this bus. A fourth attack happened when the bus belonging to Los Avispones, a soccer team, was mistaken for a bus carrying the students. One of the soccer players, David Josué Garcia, was killed during this attack. The fifth and final attack happened around midnight when other Ayotzinapa students that had come to Iguala to help their classmates were given an improvised press conference, but they were shot. The students begin to run and are chased. Three students were killed during this attack: Daniel Solis, Julio César Ramírez, and later Julio Cesar Mondragón. In sum, 25 students were hurt, and three were killed. In addition to the students, a bus driver, a soccer player, and a female passenger in a taxi were killed during the attack too. Further, the Iguala police and the armed group of people kidnapped 43 of the students. To this day, they have yet to be found. Since that very night of the attack, government officials attempted to downplay the manner and nature of the events. José Luis Abarca Velázquez, the mayor of the city of Iguala who would later be accused by the federal government of ordering the attack, declared that he had reports that the police responded to the students’ taunting, but no students were shot. However, as Ayotzinapa students are quite skilled at reacting when attacked, on the night of the attack they quickly organized a press conference and communicated the news to their allies via social networks. This tactic was key to the future development of the Ayotzinapa social movement, 10 as not even newspapers critical of the government were privy to the events. 11 Had it not been for their swift responses, the events of that night would have been reduced to just another of the many violent incidents happening in México. The very next day, when the events could no longer be denied, both local and state authorities admitted that three students and three others had been killed. They also admitted that there were fifty-seven students missing, yet

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they claimed that the students were merely hiding, and would soon return to their homes as they felt safe. During these first days, over fifty students were missing. The state police found about a dozen of them and claimed that the rest of the missing students were also hiding. However, after a census and an investigation, the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan, CDHMT) announced on October 1, 2014 that there were 43 students who could not be found anywhere. Since then, this human rights center has served as the mediator between the parents and the government. As the magnitude of the attack became clearer, discontent rose. Ayotzinapa students compiled a list of demands, which allowed them to give some direction to the local mobilization. The day after the killings, the student body and staff of the Ayotzinapa school demanded: 1) the impeachment of Mayor Abarca and Governor Aguirre for the six killings, and 2) the return of the missing students. Their call for support had a quick response from two teachers’ unions: Education Workers National Organization (Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, CNTE), and the Education Workers State Organization (Coordinadora Estatal de Trabajadores de la Educación, CETEG), among other organizations. On October 27, 2014 in different press conferences, which had been previously organized to announce other issues, both CNTE and CETEG added the Ayotzinapa demands to their own. They also mobilized and organized demonstrations denouncing that the missing students had been taken by the local police, with the complicity of federal forces. As days passed and their demands (finding the students alive, impeachment of Mayor Abarca and Governor Aguirre) were not met, FECSM, CETEG, and CNTE used some of their vast repertoire of disruptive tactics including: marches in the most important cities of Guerrero, the closing of the Mexico City–Acapulco highway, demonstrations in front of the city halls, and even more disruptive tactics such as burning buses and setting government buildings on fire to pressure the government. Given the extended use of these tactics and the increasing public support that this movement had acquired, these actions were not repressed by any branch of the government. In fact, rather than looking for an open confrontation, at this point the tactic of all three levels of government was to tone down the attack on the Ayotzinapa students. The federal government repeated that it was a local problem where organized crime had infiltrated the local police and insisted that the federal agencies had not played any role. They said that since it was a local crime, the general attorney would not intervene in the investigations. On October 1, 2014 President Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) urged the state government of Guerrero to take responsibility and to solve the problem. In order to understand the federal government’s efforts to not get involved, it is important to point out that since EPN came into the presidency

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there was a coordinated campaign to hide the ongoing violence and the effects of the war on drugs. Even international media started talking about the “Mexican moment,” and the cover of Time magazine in February 2014 claimed that EPN was saving Mexico. In downplaying the attack, they expected the incidents to soon be forgotten, so their narrative of having diminished violence would not be affected. They counted on the complicity of mass media to keep promoting an image of economic progress in the country. However, they miscalculated the power of the participating organizations, which were able to break the media siege and present the students’ version. While the attack against the Ayotzinapa students on September 26, 2014 was not unique, this would be the first time that people across the country became aware of the situation, empathized with them, and acted in solidarity. This reaction was due to a change in the public perception of the normalistas. Gradually, they would stop being perceived as troublemakers who needed to be controlled, but rather, as the innocent victims of an illegal attack by the police. In conclusion, during this first stage of the movement, thanks to an information strategy and their savviness, the students and their allies defeated the government strategy of framing the students as criminals. They also defeated the narrative of these events being an isolated incident where a criminal group had corrupted local police. On the contrary, by showing that local policemen had participated in the attack and the federal forces, at the very least, had failed to protect the students, they started to point out that the federal government also held responsibility. By breaking the media siege, Ayotzinapa students and their networks reached an extensive audience. Within this audience there was a vast number of people who were also discontent with the EPN administration; they joined the movement. WHERE ARE THEY? As with preceding social movements such as #Iam132, the use of social networking sites was vital in delivering information to a broader audience. 12 Within days, the case of the 43 missing Ayotzinapa students went beyond local organization networks and gained national and international attention. The traditional protest on October 2 was the perfect scenario for the emerging movement to gain momentum and for possible allies to meet each other, as the Tlatelolco commemoration usually reunites most of the leftist organizations of the country. In 2014 some organizations tied their demands with the ones from the parents of the Ayotzinapa students. Protests were not circumscribed to the October 2 demonstration, but they spread through Mexico City and other states in Mexico, the U.S., and some countries in Europe.

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As public pressure increased, the investigation efforts were expedited. On October 4, 2014 state police found a clandestine mass grave with twenty-two bodies which they suspected were bodies of Ayotzinapa students. The parents came to learn of this through social networks and mass media. They did not get any official communication from the state police or the state government until later that day during a meeting with a federal justice minister. Governor Aguirre came to this meeting too, but the parents yelled “Murderer!” at him and he was forced to leave. The parents demanded that the federal government find their sons alive. A few days later, it was determined that none of the DNA from the twenty-two bodies matched any of that of the missing students. Naturally, this raised several questions from the public: If these were not the students’ bodies, whose were they? Why did the government not look for them before? Where were the students? These questions started to undermine the official discourse that the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students had been an exception, and more people started to realize that once again, occurrences like this was the rule. This also made social activists realize how this event was bringing to light the deep moral vacancy within the political system. Enrique Pineda, a well-known social activist and co-organizer of the first Global Action Days, relayed to me: “I was aware of the killing in Ayotzinapa and I knew that a reaction was coming, but it wasn’t until these bodies were found that I realized the dimension of what was happening. This was even more important than the Acteal 13 massacre.” 14 In addition to the Acteal massacre, the authoritarian response to the protests in Atenco in 2016 also provided an important background for the Ayotzinapa movement because Enrique Peña Nieto was behind the repression of this movement when he was governor of the State of Mexico (2005–2011). Based on these prior obstacles, organizations were well aware that justice would not be served unless there was enough political pressure. Subsequently, SMOs, in coordination with the parents, felt the need to increase the pressure on the federal government to get involved and bring the students back home alive. At the same time, there was also a realization that the problem was bigger than Ayotzinapa. Social movements are rarely cohesive, and the Ayotzinapa movement is no exception. At this point, protests indicated a sense of indignation more than a unified long-term political goal. As protests kept growing and more people joined the movement, it was clear that there were different agendas within this social movement. In the days to come these differences would become more noticeable. Demands such as justice for all the people killed and the end of the government’s neoliberal agenda would be incorporated with the original ones. However, the parents’ demand that the federal government bring back the 43 students alive was, and would continue to be, the dominant plea.

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IT WAS THE STATE! It was under national and international pressure that on October 6, 2014, the Mexican federal government took the lead in the investigation. They maintained their position that this was a local event. The federal government claimed they would find the ones responsible and would restore the rule of law in Guerrero. The attorney general’s office preserved the hypothesis that the local police had been infiltrated by some members of the Guerreros Unidos, who handed over the students to this criminal group, who, in turn, killed and burned them to ashes. However, people did not believe them and protests continued. As established in the previous section, at first there were three different bands of people in the movement: 1. The National People’s Assembly, made up of approximately one hundred leftist groups, such as the Mexican Revolutionary Workers Union (Sindicato de Trabajadores Revolucionarios Mexicanos, STRM), National Coordination of Education Workers (Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, CNTE), and the ones who had supported Ayotzinapa since the beginning. Most of the participating organizations had a well-earned reputation of being radical and not afraid of using highly disruptive tactics. They held a meeting in the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural College, where they decided to mobilize around the Ayotzinapa cause and in support of a populist agenda. This group would take the lead on the Action Days, and in the years to come they would keep actively protesting and demanding that the students be brought forth alive. 2. Among the people who did not belong to any organization but would support the Ayotzinapa cause from their own platforms there was a cluster of intellectuals and academics who, even when not acting as an organized group, shared a concern for the events in Ayotzinapa. This group used their prestige and vast network to broadcast the demand to get the students back alive. Mexican intellectuals such as Imanol Ordika and Adolfo Guilly introduced the idea that at the very least the federal government’s failure to act regarding the violent social conditions in Guerrero made the government co-responsible for what had happened to the students. There were also many citizens who empathized with the cause. 3. As organized efforts in Mexico City go, probably the most important support came from the Solidarity group (Plataforma de solidaridad), made up of divergent organizations such as the Consulting Office for Peace (Servicios y Asesorias para la Paz, Asociacion Civil, SERAPAZ), the Energy Workers National Union (Sindicato Mexicano de

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Electricistas, SME), Youth in Alternative Resistance (Jovenes en Resistencia Alternativa, JRA), and another fifty organizations. This group was created ad hoc to assist the efforts of the Ayotzinapa parents to pressure the government to find the students alive. They were also responsible for organizing the first demonstrations in Mexico City known as Global Action Day for Ayotzinapa on October 8, 2014. Also, there was a cluster of sympathizers, mainly composed of college students. They were organized in the Intercollege Assembly (Asamblea Interuniversitaria) made up of representatives of the assemblies of every college and university that wanted to act in support of Ayotzinapa. All of these organizations would rally together in a demonstration in support of the Ayotzinapa cause on the first Global Action Day. Organizing this event was not an easy task, as some social organizations were not yet convinced of the importance of Ayotzinapa. Raúl Romero, a long-time social activist, communicated to me: “I am saying this without any conceit. It was we, five crazy people . . . [with large] networks due to our long participation in social movements, the ones that proposed a demonstration as a reaction to Ayotzinapa. Luckily, even when they [other SMOs] had doubts, they supported it; and the demonstration took place!” 15 On October 8, 2014, the first day of global action included a protest in Mexico City that was attended by over 10,000 people, as well as protests in 25 Mexican states. Also, academics from Mexico National University (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM), the Autonomous Metropolitan University (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, UAM), and in an unprecedented act, the elite College of Mexico (Colegio de México, COLMEX) signed a statement demanding that the students be found alive immediately, and they made the Guerrero state police responsible for the event. The importance of this first day of global action was that it centered the attention and efforts of a large number of diverse social organizations, academics, and non-affiliated people in support of Ayotzinapa. The demands made during this day showed that the movement was progressing beyond the initial demands. SMOs recognized the importance of increasing political pressure on the federal government to find the 43 alive as the most important demand. However, they also started to challenge the official narrative, and claimed that the Ayotzinapa iniquity was a crime of the state. Popular discontent could be summarized by the chant “Justice for Ayotzinapa! If they cannot do it, they need to leave!” 16 As days went by and no progress was made in the investigation, the parents of the still-missing students gave an ultimatum to the federal government to find their sons alive by October 13, 2014. The federal government did not meet this deadline, which raised the level of confrontation between

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the federal government and some sectors of the Ayotzinapa social movement. On October 15, 2014, the ANP adopted and signed a plan to bring down the Guerrero state government, calling it corrupt and beyond redemption. Taking over banks, international corporations’ headquarters, and the main highways was part of this plan. They also agreed to take over the eighty-one city halls in the state of Guerrero, as well as the tollbooths on all the highways in the state. The intent of these actions was to push for a recall of all politicians in the state in preparation for establishing a new popular government that would replace the official government. At the same time, political pressure from overseas on the federal government was also increasing. International solidarity was growing as some members of the European Parliament called to stop any trade agreement with Mexico until the case was solved. Mexican students in Germany were very successful in meeting with elected officials and convincing them to bring up the issue of Ayotzinapa in trade agreements and official communications. Political pressure was now not only coming from international SMOs, but also from some supportive government officials. In an attempt to reduce the number and levels of mobilizations, the federal government took some actions. After fleeing Guerrero and going into hiding, Mayor Abarca was arrested on October 4 on charges of a previous killing. EPN pressured Governor Aguirre to resign, and he requested license to leave on October 23. Also, on October 29, over twenty days after the attack, EPN got together with the parents and signed an agreement with ten points. In this agreement the federal government committed to search for the students, support teachers’ colleges like Ayotzinapa, and accept the technical assistance of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, CIDH). For this purpose, the CIDH convened an international and interdisciplinary group of experts (Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos y Expertas Independientes, GIEI), which in the following years would play a key role in the investigations, as they would point out inconsistencies and the use of torture in the attorney general’s investigation. The federal government accepted the presence of the CIDH and GIEI. With the arrest of Abarca, the dismissal of Aguirre, and the participation of the CIDH and the GIEI, the federal government pretended to have met some of the demands. However, the members of the Interdisciplinary Group were not receiving all the necessary information. Mayor Abarca was not arrested under the charges of premeditated kidnappings of the 43 missing students, and the PGR would give information to international organizations and mass media before giving it to the parents. Furthermore, the most important demand, to find the whereabouts of students, was pending. Social activists and the parents, then, interpreted this as if the government was more interested in

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recovering the good international image that Peña Nieto had before Ayotzinapa rather than in bringing about the long-overdue justice. With all this discontent accumulated, let us turn to the November 5 Global Action Day. It was one of the best-attended marches in Mexico’s recent history with the presence of over 100,000 protesters in Mexico City. This march, as all the previous ones, was led by the parents of the missing Ayotzinapa students. It was massively attended by union workers, multiple social organizations, and a large number of concerned citizens, as well as by college students—even by medical and law students who usually do not participate in demonstrations. There were coordinated protests in 22 states on that day. Also, over 80 universities called for strikes. Some of them went on 24hour strikes, while others did it for 72 hours. In Guerrero, the ANP continued with their plan of using highly disruptive tactics in order to bring the state government down. To summarize, these differing narratives show the battle for public opinion between SMOs and the Mexican State. Even though the details had changed, the official discourse was the same: it was a highly unfortunate event caused by corruption at the local police level, a story line designed for citizens to quickly dismiss the case. Counter to this depiction, activists, SMOs, and eyewitnesses claimed that it was an organized attack with the participation of federal forces. The Ayotzinapa students posed a threat by making public the hidden transcript that the government may actively contribute to the high criminal rates in the country. As Scott argues, when the oppressed hidden transcript becomes public, it engenders mobilization among other oppressed groups. 17 By gaining more allies, the Ayotzinapa social movement gained more political power as well. By far, it became the dominant issue in the national political agenda and gained relevance at the international level. 18 The Ayotzinapa social movement was now clearly in a coalescence stage, with demonstrations all over Mexico and in other countries in Latin American and Europe. The demands kept growing in addition to demanding that the students be found alive, and the call for the president to resign grew stronger. As we will see in the next section, the federal government wanted to end this movement as soon as possible. REPRESSION During the November 5 march there were rumors that the federal government had found the student’s bodies in horrible condition, and that people in the government were worried that when this discovery was to be made public, people may start a social revolt. This created a sense, among experienced social activists, that the tolerant attitude that the federal government had

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shown was about to end, and that they would now repress the protests. They were right, as previous to that night no arrests had been made in a month of continuous protests. However, that same night, federal police were sent to the UNAM campus where they arrested four people, accusing them of having set a bus on fire. Due to the quick mobilization of their relatives and social organizations, they were set free and no charges were filed. On November 7th, Attorney General Murillo Karam met with the parents in Guerrero. After the meeting, he gave a press conference where he presented the results of the investigations, proof, and conclusions in what he called the “historical truth.” He claimed that according to some detainees, once the local police turned over the students to the members of the drug cartel Guerreros Unidos, they killed the students who were not already dead and incinerated them in a garbage dump. They then collected the ashes in garbage bags and dumped them in the San Juan River, which is 6 miles away from the garbage dump. Towards the end of the press conference, when answering the questions from the press, Murillo Karam mumbled: “Ya me canse” (I am tired), thereby indicating that he wanted the press conference to be over. Many citizens were outraged at the disregard that a public official had regarding such a tragic case. The phrase was co-opted by Twitter and became a trending hashtag. Alicia Hopkins, an experienced activist told me, “With this press conference and the support of the political class the federal government wanted to close the case and move on.” 19 However, to the government’s surprise neither the parents nor the people accepted this version, and the movement continued. This version was challenged by the parents in two different and opposite theories. The first claims that the students are still alive and are being kept in military facilities. They think this is a possibility due to the preceding events of the 27th Infantry Battalion, which in the 1970s ran the guerra sucia against guerrilla fighters in Guerrero. The other theory states that if the students’ bodies were in fact burned, it would had to have happened in the nearby military facilities. This idea emerged because according to Jorge Montemayor, a professor in the Physics Department at UNAM, it was physically impossible to burn the bodies to ashes with the limited fuel the Guerreros Unidos would have had access to in a garbage dump. In order to understand this hypothesis, it is important to highlight that the human remains that were presented by the Attorney General’s Office as proof of their version of events were so reduced to ashes that it was almost impossible to carry out DNA tests. According to them, only a dental piece was found, and the DNA corresponded to Alexander Mora, one of the missing students. This level of burning had to occur at extremely high temperatures, and not those that would occur by setting bodies on fire in a bonfire. In addition, local weather reports showed that the day that the bodies were supposedly burned, it had rained in that area. Social networks were rife

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with questions and alternative explanations, which only increased the doubts and discontent of the people against the state. 20 As protest and public outcry showed no signs of diminishing, the federal government changed its attitude from one of attentiveness to the parents, the SMOs, and the people, to one that sought to close the lingering speculations at any cost. The federal government started to make selective arrests to deprive the movement of the leaders who were helping make it visible. At the same time, arguably in order to intimidate people and discourage participation, they also arrested random people who participated in the marches. This shows a clear strategy of intimidation in order to curtail people’s participation. Much to their dismay, protests did not end and on November 20, they reached their climax with the best-attended march, where protesters said, “We didn’t reach the Zócalo until about three hours after the first marchers started.” 21 There were also a vast number of similar demonstrations all around the world. Despite the high level of social mobilization, the ruling elites did not subside, and the belief that the movement could force the immediate dismissal of Peña Nieto faded out. After the November 20 march, public demonstrations started a slow but clear decrease in the number of participants. This decline can be attributed to several factors. The attendance of non-politicized people lessened because some of them were afraid of being arrested. Other people believed that if the students were alive, they should have been found by now, so they must be dead. If they were dead, it did not make sense to mobilize demanding they return alive. Also, with the winter holidays, the college campuses were closed, and students lost a common place where they could massively gather and organize. Additionally, a number of students went back home to visit their families. Finally, as the intermediate elections of June 7, 2015, were getting closer, some SMOs deviated their efforts from the Ayotzinapa movement in order to focus on the election. However, the parents and some SMOs continued organizing and would keep the movement alive. To summarize, afraid that the Ayotzinapa movement could grow exponentially, the federal government began to repress the movement by threatening protesters so they would stop attending the demonstrations. After the November 20, 2014, march, mass mobilization decreased. Also, the elites did not support the movement, and as argued by Tarrow, 22 without mass support, the political opportunities for the movement decreased. However, the parents and supportive SMOs kept demanding that the truth be revealed and always implored that their sons be found.

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DOWN WITH THE GOVERNMENT! The response to this investigation from EPN’s administration was not satisfactory for the people. The investigation lead by the GIEI points out the possible use of torture in order to obtain self-incriminating testimonies from the people accused of having killed the students, investigations were conducted without following international protocols, and the discovery of the commandeering of a fifth bus that had never been reported by the Attorney General’s Office. This led the GIEI to present as possible the hypothesis that “due to the importance of the interests that were threatened with that action, the existence of this fifth bus and the probable cargo of heroin or money should be considered as a motivation for such a brutal attack done with excessive firepower and in different places.” 23 Clearly, all these omissions and failures cast doubts on the government’s intentions of solving the crime and made some people believe that it is thereby hiding the truth. EPN’s administration was further delegitimized with several other corruption scandals. According to news reports, EPN and some high-ranking officers received lavish mansions from government contractors, increasing people´s discontent. Even when mass mobilization decreased, the Ayotzinapa movement was far from being finished. Rather, it entered into a sort of institutionalization stage. The National Popular Assembly (Asamblea Nacional Popular, ANP) was officially called by the parents and the Raúl Isidro Burgos Student Association. They were joined by several organizations affiliated to the Indigenous National Congress (Congreso Nacional Indigena, CNI), and other independent organizations. On the 5th and 6th of February 2015, over two hundred organizations gathered in Ayotzinapa to form three different committees: 1) structure of the national reference, 2) political program, and 3) action plans. In addition to the original demands of bringing the students home alive, justice, and the resignation of EPN, they added the demand of abrogating the structural demands promoted by the EPN administration and approved by the Congress in 2013. In order to bring social justice, the parents, some members of the Ayotzinapa students’ union, and allied organizations from the ANP were, and currently are, still dedicated full-time to promoting support for their demands. They used peaceful tactics such as demonstrations, as well as highly disruptive methods such as burning election materials in southern states such as Guerrero and Chiapas. On the national spectrum, with the 2015 elections coming, leftist SMOs and the Ayotzinapa students’ union continued with their plan of boycotting the elections with the goal of establishing a new form of government where autonomous councils, like the ones in the Zapatista territories and in Cheran, rule the municipalities. To this end, in the first months of 2014 they took 35 out of 81 municipalities in Guerrero; some of

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them were already ruled by these autonomous councils. However, they did not have enough political power to stay in control of these municipalities. This level of opposition caused a stronger repressive reaction from the federal government. On May 26, 2015, during the twelfth day of Global Action, Ayotzinapa students denounced that the government had not opened enrollment for the rural teachers’ colleges for the coming academic year, which the students argued would lead to the closing of these schools. Also, the federal forces repressed the demonstrations against the elections, and there was a large media campaign to encourage people to vote. In fact, on June 6, 2015, Election Day, “State forces fired at citizens of the UPOEG and against 35 activists, [which were] Ayotzinapa students and relatives of the missing 43 students.” 24 ANP also worked on an international level by organizing the “43 Caravan,” where they visited the United States, Europe, and South America. Just as in the defense of human rights in Latin America in the 1970s, the “43 Caravan” chose the strategy of information collection and monitoring as a way to gain protection and support from organizations and governments from the Western world. However, despite their efforts “the election finally took place, even in regions with higher [political] tensions, such as Tixtla, Guerrero [hometown of several of the missing students and of Normal Rural Isidro Burgos].” 25 Only 40 percent of the people voted in these elections, but it was the same percentage of people who did so in the 2012 federal elections. Furthermore, PRI won four out of nine governor elections and the majority in the Senate. This is to say, the boycott was not successful, and regardless of the high levels of mobilization and popular discontent, this time the regime managed to endure and stay in power. In addition to the ANP, which was organized as a direct response to the Ayotzinapa events, there is also the Citizen-Popular Constituent Assembly (Constituyente Ciudadana-Popular, CCP). It was called by Bishop Raúl Vera, who is a recognized social activist in support of several social causes and who was part of the peace process in Chiapas in 1994. Well-known Mexican activists such as Father Solalinde, Javier Sicilia, Lidia Cacho, as well as social organizations such as the Mexican Electricians Union (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas, SME), supported this. Even though CCP was publicly announced on February 5, 2015, they had been working on this project since January of 2014 when the People’s Permanent Tribunal (TPP) presented its conclusions that Mexico’s economy was devastated by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The goal of this organization is to establish a new state and a new nation starting with the building of a new communitarian subject that will organize, from the people and grassroots organizations, a new way of doing politics against the surrender and destruction of the country. The process of building this new social pact starts with having a national organizing process, where activists will share the

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initiative with the population. Once the initiative has been adopted by the people, they would drive the movement to its specific goal: a new Constitution by February 2017. Even though these two processes—the National Popular Assembly (Asamblea Nacional Popular, ANP) and the Citizen-Popular Constituent Assembly (Constituyente Ciudadana-Popular, CCP)—had different origins, they attempted to work together. Despite their goodwill they were unable to increase their membership in such a way that they could effectively challenge the federal government. However, the failed investigation of the attacks on the Ayotzinapa students, the inability to find the 43 students, in conjunction with the corruption scandals all contributed to the increased discontent in parts of the population, which finally had an effect on the elections. In 2016, the PRI had one of the worst defeats in its history as they lost seven out of twelve governor’s elections, including states such as Durango, Quintana Roo, Veracruz, and Tamaulipas where they have always held power. Also, in 2018, the PRI shockingly lost the presidential election to the leftist candidate Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador (2018–2024). In this final section it was evident that different SMOs that have adopted Ayotzinapa again as common ground are attempting to reach a long-term goal: the building of a new social contract. For social activists the enemy is clear. The slogan “‘It was the State!’ [. . .] represents a historical accumulation of knowledge and resistance. It allows for looking at the current Mexican State as the legal and criminalizing instrument of capitalism. The adversary is no longer diffused, it is called capitalism and it uses the State to reproduce and expand.” 26 The political opportunity to revolutionize the system seemed to be in place. However, despite the high hopes and work of radical SMOs, most people decided for the electoral route, and just voted out EPN. CONCLUSION The SMOs participating in the Ayotzinapa social movement have been able to use their savvy and their extensive networks to change the government’s narrative on Ayotzinapa. SMOs challenged the government’s transcript that Ayotzinapa was a rarity and was due to the corruption of local institutions. Instead, they promoted the narrative that the state was responsible not only for the kidnapping of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, but also for the high level of criminality and impunity in Mexico. By doing so, SMOs attracted more allies that shared the same perspective, and convinced a large percentage of the population of the fairness of their cause, some of them willing to face repression. By virtue of this process, they were able to obtain political oppor-

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tunities in favor of their cause of finding the students alive, bringing true democracy, and improving social and economic conditions in Mexico. By observing the Ayotzinapa social movement, it is possible to infer that a limited set of demands grew into a larger social movement when SMOs used their own networks and accessible media to produce counter-discourses that generate collective identities and structures capable of sustaining collective action against powerful opponents. However, this process did not start with the kidnapping of the students. The Ayotzinapa social movement is the last stage of a continued social struggle against a highly corrupt state that utilizes and allows for the use of narco-violence in order to gain enough social control to impose a neoliberal agenda that is worsening the living conditions of the people of Mexico. The Ayotzinapa social movement posits several questions regarding how far social movement organizations should go and what their relationship with the government should be. These are not simple questions to answer, as some organizations prefer to overthrow the government by whatever means necessary, while others argue that SMOs should never use violence to achieve their goals. The latter question is more complex as it posits an ontological, if not a metaphysical issue. This is to say, the question is not literally what kind of relationship organizations should have with an oppressive regime, as it is clear that an antagonistic relationship will always exist. What remains unclear is just what kind of relationship should be established, even with a leftist government. As I will expand upon in Chapter 6, some Latin American philosophers as Enrique Dussel argue in favor of an obediential state where organizations are included, while others such as John Holloway favor an autonomist position. NOTES 1. Díaz Cepeda, “Addressing Ayotzinapa: Using Dussel’s Analectic Method for Establishing an Ethical Framework for Complex Social Movements.” 2. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “2015 National Drugs Threat Assessment.” 3. CONEVAL, “Report of Poverty in México: The Country, Its States and Its Municipalities,” 35. 4. In order to facilitate readers’ cross-references, I keep the initials in the Spanish language. 5. Navarro, “Las normales rurales: espacios escolares a contracorriente con la política educativa modernizadora.” 6. Luis Ángel Abarca Carrillo, Jorge Álvarez Nava, and Marcial Pablo Baranda, Ayotzinapa. La travesía de las tortugas. La vida de los normalistas antes del 26 de septiembre de 2014, ed. Monica Ocampo and José Luis Tapia (México, D.F.: Marchando con Letras, 2015). 7. Hernández, La verdadera noche de Iguala. La historia que el gobierno trató de ocultar, 67. 8. Soldatenko, “México ’68: Power to the Imagination!” 9. Hernández, La verdadera noche de iguala. La historia que el gobierno trató de ocultar. 10. Díaz Cepeda, Castañeda, and Andrade, “Communication and Mobilization Tactics to Find Ayotzinapa’s 43 Disappeared Students.”

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11. La jornada, a popular left-wing newspaper, published just a small note on the attack on the Ayotzinapa students. 12. Guillén, “Mexican Spring? #YoSoy132, the Emergence of an Unexpected Collective Actor in the National Political Arena.” 13. On December 22, 1997, a group of paramilitaries attacked the indigenous community of Chenalho, killing forty-five people including children and pregnant women. 14. Pineda, Interview. 15. Romero, Interview. [Digo esto sin ninguna presunción, fuimos nosotros cinco locos, pero no unos locos cualesquiera, ya que todos tenemos redes por nuestra larga historia en los movimientos sociales, los que propusimos organizar una reacción por Ayotzinapa. Afortunadamente, ya que algunas organizaciones tenían dudas, apoyaron la iniciativa, y el primer día de acción global salió]. 16. ¡Justicia para Ayotzinapa! ¡Si no pueden que se vayan! 17. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. 18. Tilly, Castañeda, and Wood, “Social Movements in Contemporary Mexico.” 19. Hopkins, Interview. 20. Later on, both the Internal Affairs Office (2015) and the GIEI (2016) pointed out that the alleged evidence—the plastic bags containing the ashes, was not properly collected and that Tomas Zerٕ ón, a high-level officer of the PGR, was in the San Juan River before off-the-record. See: GIEI. Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes, “Informe Ayotzinapa II. Avances y Nuevas Conclusiones Sobre La Investigación, Búsqueda y Atención a a Las Víctimas,” April 15, 2016, https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/actividades/giei/giei-informeayotzinapa2.pdf. 21. Goldman, “Crisis in Mexico: An Infrarrealista Revolution.” 22. Tarrow, Power in Movement. Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 166. 23. Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes, “Informe Ayotzinapa II. Avances y Nuevas Conclusiones sobre la Investigación, Búsqueda y Atención a las Víctimas,” 234. 24. Sin Embargo, “La Elección Fragmenta El Poder y Da Paso a 2 Fuerzas: MORENA e Independientes.” [fuerzas del Estado dispararon contra ciudadanos de la Unión de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Estado de Guerrero (UPOEG) y contra unos 35 activistas, normalistas de Ayotzinapa y familiares de uno de los 43 jóvenes desaparecidos desde septiembre]. 25. Sin Embargo. [La elección finalmente se pudo realizar aun en regiones con mayor tensión, como Tixtla, Guerrero.] 26. Romero, Interview. [La consigna “¡Fue el Estado!,” [. . .] Representa un acumulado histórico de saberes y resistencias. Permite mirar al Estado mexicano actual como el instrumento jurídico y criminalizador del capitalismo. El adversario ya no es difuso, se llama capitalismo y utiliza al Estado para reproducirse y ampliarse].

Chapter Four

State of Rebellion

In the preceding chapters, I presented a brief history of the last cycle of mobilization (2008–2018) in México. I justify this particular time period as case-in-point by showing that the high levels of mobilizations experienced after the 43 students of the rural teachers’ college Raúl Isidro Burgos were kidnapped by police officers and military-looking individuals on the night of September 26, 2014, can only be explained by the awareness process initiated by previous social movements. These movements included the social movement against militarization in Ciudad Juárez, which since 2008 started to call attention to the unlawful use of the military for an alleged war on drug cartels. Social activists argued that the army was on the streets not to patrol drug-traffickers but rather, as a means to control the population. This was a local narrative until 2011 when the Movement for the Peace for Justice with Peace and Dignity (Movimiento por la paz con justicia y dignidad, MPJD) was founded by the poet Javier Sicilia after his son and several of his son’s friends were murdered. This movement grew to a national level and revealed that the murders and disappearances of people, most of them young and poor, were a repeating pattern and not an exception. Some people as well as social activists claimed that state agents were directly responsible for these murders, yet there was no hard evidence. The evidence that the kidnapping of the Ayotzinapa students had been conducted by police officers, in addition to the erratic response of the federal government, led the people to publicly proclaim, “It was the state!” In this chapter, I will analyze, from the perspective of the political philosophy of Enrique Dussel, the formation process of social movement organizations (SMOs), as well as illustrate their importance. First, I will show how liberalism, especially economic liberalism, is responsible for the economic inequalities and endemic poverty which makes a large segment of the popu55

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lation vulnerable to the power of drug cartels. Second, I will present Dussel’s political philosophy as the most useful ethical response against liberalism in México. I will focus on his concept referred to as hyperpotentia. Finally, I will explain how hyperpotentia, instantiated as social movements, entered a state of rebellion where they challenged the state. NEOLIBERALISM In order to understand the high level of violence, and perhaps more importantly, the building of resistance in México, it is necessary to reveal the force behind these events. According to this research, there is a broad consensus among social activists that economic liberalism and its product, capitalism, are responsible for these events. As it is known, capitalism is by far the most dominant economic system in the world. This predominance had its beginnings in 1492 with the conquest of America and the establishment of a world-system. 1 This world-system has been selective of cultural differences and has attempted to subordinate all civilizations to what has come to be known as Western culture. Liberalism has naturalized, or, universalized, their local circumstances and needs, negating the perspectives of those that are out of their system of beliefs. When liberalism claimed the existence of natural rights, i.e. property rights, they were in fact universalizing the needs of a specific group: property-holders. Since then, and as Rousseau maintained, societies that do not conceive of private property as a constitutive feature of their being have been portrayed as primitive (as in inferior) and living in a state of nature. Under liberalism, human beings are first and foremost individuals who are in “a state of perfect Freedom to order their Actions . . . as they think fit . . . without asking leave or depending on the Will of any other Man.” 2 While this position can be interpreted as a call for liberty, its emphasis on the individual may portray other human beings as an obstacle to self-determination, and as an abandonment of the ethical duty to assist other people. In that sense, liberals do not believe the state is obligated to actively promote the well-being of people, because, so Kant argued, that would cause the infantilization of citizens. Under these assumptions, political power could potentially be considered unfavorable, as a necessary evil that needs to be limited. They claim that it should be used only to ensure that citizens do not coerce each other’s freedom without any valid justification. In that sense, individuals’ natural rights should be protected by the state defined as a “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” 3 Once again, what liberals fail to see is that what they are portraying as natural, are in fact the rights and structure

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needed by the specific segment of their societies and epoch that ultimately accommodates economic and political elites. 4 The liberal-capitalistic structure has come to mean increasing levels of poverty all around the world (including segments of population in the socalled developed countries), 5 forced migration from poor countries to the global north, and ultimately the deaths of millions of people due to the loss of their livelihood or directly by the hands of violent groups and corrupt governments. In México, the balance of the last decade goes to over 200,000 people killed, 40,000 nationals and at least 80,000 immigrants missing. In addition, there were approximately 30,000 unidentified bodies. Again, most of them were young and poor, as was the case with the missing Ayotzinapa student-teachers. According to José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, a prestigious Latin American sociologist, the events of Ayotzinapa are part of a framework defined by juvenicidio (juvenicide), which contains several constitutive elements which include increasing levels of poverty, inequality, the banalization of evil, the sullying of the state, the stratification of social order, and the wrongful use of an alleged war on drugs to limit the spaces of freedom for youth. 6 Facing this scenario, it is clear that, as Walter Benjamin noted in the context of the birth of Nazism, the proverbial emergency brake had to be pulled in México. As the people took action, they entered a state of rebellion, a concept developed by the Mexican-Argentinean philosopher Enrique Dussel. But before I delve into this concept, I will proceed to give a summary of Dussel’s political theory while expanding upon his conception of social movements. This will facilitate a better appreciation of this concept. ENRIQUE DUSSEL’S POLITICAL THEORY Given the purpose of this book, I will not offer an extensive review of Dussel’s Politics of Liberation, 7 but only the writings that will aid in understanding his take on social movements. Dussel’s political theory is developed in three major works: Política de la Liberación, Vol. I Historia mundial y crítica; 8 Política de la liberación, Vol. II Arquitectónica; 9 and Politica de la liberación, Vol. III (forthcoming), which were written in 2018 by students under his direction and will be published soon. In addition to the three volumes of Politica de la liberación, Dussel has developed his political theory in other minor works such as Materiales para una Politica de la Liberación, 10 Carta a los Indignados, 11 and 20 Tesis de Politica, 12 among many others. Dussel’s goal is to find the “ultimate positive foundation that allows us to describe the will and the political power in its strong sense, with pretension of truth and legitimacy, from where it is possible to criticize the defective descriptions of power.” 13 Unlike other political thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes who conceives of power as domination, Dussel proposes

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power as service. His theory, influenced by Levinas’ philosophy, conceives of the political as the ethical vocation for the Other; this is to say, for the victims of the system. The Mexican-Argentine philosopher finds in the suffering and rebellion of the victims (hyperpotentias) the metaphysical foundation of the political, which precedes the ontological level of the community (potentia) and the ontical level of state institutions (potestas). Allow me now to elaborate on these concepts. Politics as Service Dussel proposes a way of doing politics as service, especially to the victims of the system: the poor and the excluded, the homo sacer of Giorgio Agamben. 14 Here, the voice of the Other is to be heard and obeyed. Those who had been excluded from the system, i.e. the Totality of Hegel, are the ones that transform, revolutionize, or abolish a corrupt political and social system. A political system is called legitimate when it promotes human life and intends to include all in a symmetrical consensus, knowing that such consensus is impossible to reach. Facing this factual impossibility, potestas can attempt to satisfy most needs and hear most voices. Dussel argues that institutions that submit to obediential power, in that the government obeys the will of the people, offer the best mechanism to achieve that end. Dussel’s political system is based on three principles: democratic, material, and feasibility. These principles are not established in a hierarchical order, but rather they are interdependent. Preserving life (material principle) is not enough, as people should also be able to democratically participate in the decision-making process that affects their lives (democratic principle). At the same time, the political project which a community gives to itself needs to be within reach, otherwise it may become an empty promise and could potentially jeopardize the lives of the community members (feasibility principle). As we will see, some ideals cannot be reached, i.e. direct democracy in large population centers. Yet, those ideals are not to be disregarded. They serve as postulates, as guides that illuminate the way to a better political system. The State There are several theories that explain the functions and forms of the state including monarchy, socialist states, and the welfare state. There are advocates for a strong state, for a minimum state, and for anarchy. However, I believe it is fair to claim that the most practiced approach is liberalism. The concept of liberalism is not attached to only one vision but to a range of them. Yet all of them claim to have a core commitment to individual liberty where humans are in “a state of perfect Freedom to order their Actions . . . as they think fit . . . without asking leave or depending on the Will of any other

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Man.” 15 This means that any entity, including the state, that wants to limit individual liberty must justify the violation of this normative principle. In fact, it is because of this that social contract theories—as developed by Thomas Hobbes, 16 John Locke, 17 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 18 and Immanuel Kant 19—are placed within the liberal tradition. While, by definition, all liberal traditions share this principle, they differ as to what liberty amounts to. Negative liberty advocates claim that a person is free to the extent that no man or body of men interferes with her activities. 20 On the other hand, positive liberty supporters such as Rosseau argue that a person is free and is self-directed when she is in control of her own actions in a way that qualifies her as a fully autonomous agent, acting entirely of her own accord. There are some indisputable advantages to liberalism as in individuals’ rights to trial by jury, due process, and equality before the law. However, there are some limitations as well. If we take the liberal principle of individual freedom as the foundation, it is possible to see that political institutions can be perceived as a limitation; institutions can be perceived as an obstacle in the individual’s way. In other words, political communities come after the individual’s needs and are accepted only as a less evil situation. However, one cannot help but wonder if this starting point is wrong, and the community holds precedence (both in order and ethical importance) and hence the community and its rightful institutions are the place where the individuals can actually achieve and express their freedom. This is to say, far from being an obstacle, the community is the entity through which an individual can reach and instantiate her freedom. This is exactly the position that is defended by Enrique Dussel. In Section 15, “The Founding Event,” of his book Política de la liberación Vol. II, 21 Dussel argues that any prevailing political order originated from a previous political reference. Unlike Rosseau who sets this founding event in the social contract, Dussel places the event (événdement) 22 “at the intersection of a situation (not only objective, but of an objectively inevitable component of intersubjectivity) with a very special mode of transformation by which a mere observer goes from being a subject to being an actor. Potentia is phenomenologized as potesta.” 23 This is to say, the real founding event is born of the community of victims, which in an intersubjective manner challenges the status quo which keeps them under oppression. Dussel’s theory of the state is formulated in three levels. The first one is potentia, which is the source of political power. The second level is potesta, for now, broadly defined as institutional organized power. To these two categories that had been developed by classic political philosophy, Dussel adds the capability of the people to recover political power when it has become fetishized. He calls this hyperpotentia. I will now elaborate upon this.

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a) Potentia. Counter to liberal philosophy and its emphasis on the individual, where societies are conceived as a secondary product of the free association of individuals, Latin American political philosophers argue that communities are formed first, and individuals are shaped around their native culture. In order to show this, I will refer to León-Portilla’s work Toltecáyotl. Aspectos de la cultura Náhuatl 24 where he explains that in ancient Náhuatl the word for citizenship, Toltecáyotl, can be traced to collective identity and yuhcatiliztli as “the action that drives us to live in a given way.” 25 This living together means to preserve what belongs to us, an equivalent of dwelling in the philosophies of Hegel. Yet, this similarity indicates only the universal human drive to live in communities tied by a collective memory, not that the European form of dwelling is universal. We can go further and see that the roots of both stability and social change lie within the communities of the victims of the system. In Frederick Mills’ words, “One can only apprehend practical truth from a lived experience of solidarity with a political community that challenges the economic and social structures that generate so many victims.” 26 It is then possible to say that political power is a moment of a political community, when the plurality of wills is linked intersubjectively with the other members of the group in such a way that they develop a shared identity. 27, 28 This shared identity configures the way they manage collective life, including government. In that sense, Francisco Suarez claims that democracy is the only natural form of government, for before any form of formal government there is a community whose members decide in an active or passive way on how they will be ruled. In Dussel’s words, “Power is held, always and only, by the political community—the people. The community always has this power, whether it be weakened, threatened, or intimidated such that it cannot be expressed.” 29 This political community is the potentia, the original and ultimate source of political power. But, this power is not yet instantiated, as it lacks the institutions that will serve as means to protect and promote human life. b) Potestas. In concordance with the material principle (people’s will-tolive), political institutions should grant the conditions that allow the people to fulfill this principle. In proving this, Dussel argues that if, as liberals claim, politics is about power, the very first point is to establish its source. Dussel notes that M. Henry, following Schopenhauer’s earlier works, says that the essence of power is will, and the essence of will is life. Hence, the ultimate source of power is life. In Schopenhauer’s words, “The action of corporality (Leibes) is nothing other than the act of the objectified Will [. . .] the immediate object will be called here the objectivity of the Will.” 30 It is important to note that the political power refers especially to human life, in that while it is true that human beings are just another corporality where life instantiates, it is also true that we human beings are the only ones that can represent the

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world, in a phenomenological sense. 31 Consequently, we are the only beings that can actively modify the social and material conditions in which we live. On an ontological level then, will is the desire to master ourselves and to set the means for surviving in community. It is at this moment, when the foundational power transits to an external manifestation and becomes a power outside itself, that potestas are constituted. When potestas are rightful they are not obeyed out of fear, but by conviction, as community members participate democratically in regards to their constitution. In this case, citizens follow the rules because they have given them to themselves. However, as it is possible to infer by the numerous corrupt governments all around the world, the will of the foundational power (potentia) is not always followed by government institutions (potestas) and formal political power becomes corrupt. When political institutions become fetishized, people organize and reclaim what is theirs: the formal exercising of political power. They do so via hyperpotentia. c) Hyperpotentia. The will-to-live of a group that has been excluded opens the metaphysical dimension of Dussel’s political theory. Theirs is the voice of the Other which stems from beyond the zone of being and questions the totality of the system. Through struggle, social movements make their demands accepted, thus establishing a new critical consensus. This process is driven by emerging people, those who perceive the failures in the system, in the form of hyperpotentia, which Dussel defines as: “the power of the people, their sovereignty and authority, which emerges at creative moments in history to inaugurate great transformations or radical revolutions.” 32 In other words, the way to retain and exercise power is through active and direct participation in the community; a community that is alert to question the power of institutions when they become corrupt and oppressive. I will now expand upon the state of exception. State of Exception When political institutions become self-referential and serve their own interest, fetishized power shifts and rules by commanding, not by obeying. This situation of oppression is the result of several factors. One of them is apathy, which causes a weak consensus wherein people leave the decisions that affect their lives to the state or to the elites. There are two reasons for this: The first being when people are in fact aware of the oppressing state of affairs, yet do not take any action to change it. As Sheldon Stryker theorizes, if people believe that their participation will not have any effect on the course of events, most people are less likely to participate. 33 This in turn means than the amount of work to be done is distributed among fewer participants. Clearly, this causes a negative circle for social activism because as the participation cost increases, due to the lower participation, even fewer people are

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now likely to participate, which again increases the cost for those willing to take part, further diminishing participation. The second reason occurs via mass media, when people are manipulated and deceived into accepting a set of beliefs that are harmful to them. They do not see the deception since they do not have, nor do they look for, information other than that given by official sources. As Gramsci explains, the control of the dominant class is not necessarily secured only by using violence against subordinated classes. Ideology plays a more efficient role in locking the consent of the population. This consent can be obtained by the diffusion and popularization of the perspective of the dominant class. 34 In this case, laws do not need to be forced on people, as they follow them out of conviction of a hegemonic ideology. However, when the equilibrium is broken, some people will no longer obey the status quo. As Gramsci stated: “If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e., is no longer ‘leading’ but only ‘dominant,’ exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously.” 35 When an oppressive ideological domination is broken and people attempt to rebel against it, it is often the case that government turns into dictatorship and power is fetishized. Force is now exercised by the state as domination and utilized for the mal gobierno (evil government) to stay in power for the benefit of the rulers, and not for the well-being of the population. 36 This government corruption causes a larger exclusion and levels of poverty and discrimination that, in the worst cases, causes the deaths of people, especially to political enemies, either by directly killing them by repression or by the lack of the material conditions needed for their well-being. As we can see now, in addition to apathy, another factor for people to avoid protesting is intimidation. In this case it is out of fear that a community obeys the corrupt leaders’ disturbing and unjust will-to-power. Social activists hold that in the case of México, this was in fact the purpose of having the army patrolling the streets. In the words of Raúl Romero: 37 We are seeing this criminal state in its maximum extension, a state for which crimes are a constant, [we are also seeing] violations of human rights of the most vulnerable subjects, such as human rights defenders, journalists, social and political leaders. [Also] vulnerable women and young people, such as immigrants. They are just some examples, as the main subjects of violence. This is not random violence but has a political purpose. The victims are not only those who do politics. It is a strategy of global control and the objective is to frighten because they stroke not only social activists but also to those who are . . . , potential supporters. 38

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In the case of Ayotzinapa, a fetishized state purposefully used violence to prevent an uprising by raising the cost of participation. By making clear that if a person is to be involved in politics against the government he or she may be assassinated, there is an obvious increasing chance that people will not do so. Also, by killing, kidnapping, or hurting the potential support groups, government assures that those political leaders that dare demand their rights become isolated, which in turn makes it easier to close the circle around them. Obviously, when a state follows these intimidation strategies, they do not claim that it is to stay in power, but rather, to keep the rule of law. They declare a state of exception. For Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), in well-formed nations there is a normality, a continuity that comes from a common identity from the community members. Having a common identity permits that the population living in a territory may become a people. According to Schmitt’s argument, the existence of this national character creates the hegemony which allows a people to give themselves laws, and which creates the conditions to live harmoniously and peacefully. However, when law and order is broken, who is there to restore them? In tune with Hobbes, Schmitt places this decision in the sovereign, 39 who, as the source of political power, has the authority to declare what is right. Undoubtedly this is problematic, for if the sovereign’s decision of declaring a state of exception [Ausnahmezustand] is not subject to any positive law constraints, that means that the power to decide on the state of exception is equivalent to deciding what counts as a state of exception, which clearly may allow for giving dictatorial powers to the sovereign. This is to say, based on Schmitt’s distinction between friend and enemy, a sovereign could claim that laws cannot be enforced due to the existence of an internal or external enemy, which would make it necessary to suspend the rule of law in order to restore it. This enemy is not necessarily an armed enemy, but a group that “jeopardizes” the way of living of a people. A problem with this position is that just as it is the sovereign’s decision to decide the suspension of the rule of law due to the presence of an enemy, it is also for him to decide who the enemy is. By manipulating information at the sovereign’s convenience, any group can be represented as a threat to society. In order for the sovereign to call a state of exception and justify the use of violent means to recover control of power, he could do so once again under the excuse of reestablishing order. The above described mechanism of fabrication towards an enemy was used in the case of the terms of both President Calderón and President Peña and their use of both legal and unlawful means to stifle demonstrations against their administrations. On December 11, 2006 President Calderón declared a war on drug cartels under Joint Operation Michoacán (Operativo Conjunto Michoacán) followed by the same operation in the states of Baja

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California, Sinaloa, Durango, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, and Guerrero. In the case of Ciudad Juárez, the operation introduced as its official goal to “combat public insecurity, as well as the high level of executions, derived mainly from the dispute that local groups of the Juárez and Pacific cartels maintain over the control of the area, as well as the presence of some of ‘Los Zetas.’” 40 This came to mean a de facto state of exception because under the excuse of temporarily using the army to control drug trafficking, it was used to ensure that Calderón and Peña would stay in power by controlling and repressing the population. Since 2008, in Ciudad Juárez, activists pointed out several problems with the use of the army for civil law enforcement. The first being that the military mindset is war, which caused them to see civilians as potential enemies. A second issue was that they were exposed to corruption or intimidation which caused the army itself to become suspected of siding with drug cartels. A third accusation made by activists was that the army was being used as a form of taking control of certain territories, either for drug trafficking or land speculation via an attempt to create new industrial cities, as in the valley of Ciudad Juárez. 41 This narrative which had started as a local perception gained national attention in 2011 with the rise of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, MPJD (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad), a movement led by the poet Javier Sicilia after his son and six friends of his were murdered near their hometown of Cuernavaca. The MPJD was joined by several activists and SMOs including the Zapatista Army who demanded an end to the alleged war on the drug cartels. In Joel’s words: Something happens when Juanelo [Javier Sicilia’s son] is murdered, there was already accumulation of the drama, here in Juárez for example the death of the boys of Salvarcar, the attitude of Luz María Davila confronts the logic of the president [Calderón] when he criminalizes them, when he claims that [the dead] are criminals killing each other. Luz María shows to the president, to the whole country, that not everyone is guilty. The death of my son Juanelo causes the final catharsis: the dead are human beings, with name and surname, many of them innocent. 42

In 2012, the demonstrations against Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidential election served as a means to voice the people’s concerns. From the very first day of his term, he used public force as a way to control the population. It is important to note that, unlike Calderón’s administration, the militarization of the country was never formally declared nor promoted by Peña’s administration, but it de facto continued and even increased, despite the events in Ayotzinapa. In the words of Enrique Pineda, an important activist in México and founding member of the Solidarity Committee with Ayotzinapa:

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Ayotzinapa finally made it clear to we all what it is happening in Mexico. I mean, we had intuitions, we all knew there was a narco-state, we all intuited that the state was involved all the way down, but we did not have any hard data to prove it. All what we had were rumors, investigative journalism as [the magazine] Proceso, but then, pum! Ayotzinapa was such a blow, I mean, it was so obvious that it completely ruled out any other explanation, right? And then the chant “It was the state!” It is really a diagnosis, right? It is to claim the responsible is the state. 43

Given that according to Schmitt, the sovereign is the only entity able to declare a state of exception, but also according to history the oppressed had also called for the suspension of the rule of law, one cannot help but speculate if the victims can also claim a state of exception. Walter Benjamin provides an affirmative response to this: the proletarians can be the ones suspending the rule of law when said rule of law is turned into an instrument of oppression. Benjamin, as Schmitt, sustains that the political [das Politische] can only be understood in light of theological concepts. Yet, unlike Schmitt, Benjamin sides with the revolutionaries in whose anarchistic violence he recognizes traces of a divine law-destroying violence, a violence that he calls mythical. In his words: The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of exception” in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that accords with this insight. Then we will clearly see that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism. 44

As we have seen in this section, the victims of the system were on the front line demanding an end to the war on drug cartels because they believed, justifiably, that it had been used to control the population and prevent any possible general uprising against government corruption. Yet, despite the attacks on them and their leaders, the victims were able to organize and mobilize thousands of people in México and all around the world. It is only fair to ask then, Who are they and where does their power come from? Victims Once it has been seen that oppressive conditions affect a variety of groups and while some of them decide to remain under oppression, while others fight back for their lives, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of who the latter are. At this point, it is important to note that the recognition of the will-to-live is not the same as the recognition of life in general, nor is the recognition of the human species as an object of survival, since the human species is an abstraction which can prevent recognition among concrete subjects. When people become aware of their shared oppression, they recognize

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each other as natural beings in need and that want to live. As Franz Hinkelammert’s states: “Mutual recognition between subjects results in an option for some subjects, that is, the option for those whose life is more directly threatened. The criterion of truth is life and death (. . .) in the center of which is the victim.” 45 From outside of the system, there is the voice of the one who can no longer stand her conditions and cries out in pain: “I am hungry!” It is the voice of a concrete, empirical, living human being who opposes her will-tolive to the will-to-power of the ego conquiro. This is the voice of the victims, defined by Dussel “as ethical subjects, as human beings who cannot reproduce or develop their life, who have been excluded from participation in the discussion, who are affected by some situation of death at whatever level, and there are many of varying depth or drama.” 46 Clearly, in the case of México since the beginning of the so-called war on the drug cartels, the community of victims of the system increased from rural areas to practically the entire national territory. This strategy has come to mean the murder of at least 200,000 people and the disappearance of over 30,000 more. As we have seen in the previous chapters, social activists, journalists, and well-recognized human rights organizations blame this situation on the state, not as a failed strategy, but as purposely using this violence to control the population in order to fulfill the needs and desires of corrupt government officials, including the president. In Ethics of Liberation in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion, 47 Dussel shows that the process of relief starts in the community of victims in general, who are always the result of a certain performative system that have a profile of their own, and a certain identity that is affirmed as different from other groups, movements, and socio-historical subjects. 48 It continues with a process including a rise in awareness; a process in which victims move from a fetishized reality to a point where they realize their conditions of oppression in such a way that they become aware that these conditions do not affect only them, but others as well. People who achieve this level of consciousness reach a collective liberating subjectivity that is organized to seek the suppression of oppression. Only then, when critical reasoning has revealed their oppression to the victims, one can speak of the subject of the praxis of liberation, defined as “the living, needy, natural, and therefore cultural subject, ultimately the victim, the community of the victims and her co-responsibly articulated.” 49 In the case of Ayotzinapa, this process of awareness was initiated by a combination of both long-time activists and college students who experienced the violence of the state on their own bodies. It was through this experience that some of them began, and continued, to question the real purpose of the use of the military to combat civil law criminals. They concluded that this new strategy to combat drug cartels was more an excuse to

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control the population by inducing them to fear or by direct intimidation and attacks. In the words of the Marxist activist Sergio Moissen: We are part of a new generation of activists who were beginning to ask ourselves what was happening in the country, because at that time [2010] there was a war against the drug cartels, Calderón’s war, but for us [the shooting of] Darío showed that there was no such war between drug traffickers and the state, and that there was collusion, complicity, and there was a phenomenon of militarization—for some with contra revolutionary strategy—or to pass the structural reform. The demonstrations against the shooting of Dario allowed us to meet many young people that were having the same concerns. 50

It is now possible to see that when the necessary material conditions to support their lives became limited or null, the victims of the system rebelled against the system. They are joined by ethical social organizations as well as people who revolt in solidarity against the corrupt system. They thus enter a state of rebellion, which is beyond the rule of law and the state of exception. State of Rebellion It is important to remember from the preceding sections that potestas are but a moment in the attempt to instantiate potentia. They are necessarily limited and are thus bound to fall short in meeting the needs and desires of an ethical community. Facing this limitation, political institutions, of which the state is the dominant, have two choices. The first is to ignore the voice of the victims and become self-referential. Or, they can be attentive to those demands and try to include them as much as possible. In the first case, what should be the position of SMOs is evident and is accepted by most literature: they must resist and rebel against oppressive regimes. In the second case there is more controversy about what the role of SMOs in democratically elected and fair governments should be, for some argue that in this case, SMOs should be subordinate to the state. Against this position, I will argue that even when institutions operate with a pretension of legitimacy and people can perceive that they are able to respond to the needs of the people, SMOs should work with them, either directly or in a parallel way, but never become subordinate to the state. In order to prove my point, I first will develop the need for SMOs in an oppressive regime, and later in the second case. As we have seen, by facing a repressive regime hyperpotentia carries liberation praxis 51 where subjects become active in the political and they become the driving force, or the power that transforms history. This praxis has two moments. The first is negative, which involves deconstructing a fetishized system, and the positive one which signifies building the new order. 52 The complexity of this task requires several levels of action and thinking. The first being the most distant horizon, a political postulate where

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“another world is possible.” This postulate represents the hope, as it was well-established by Ernest Bloch, 53 that just because another world has “notyet” been achieved, this does not mean that it is not possible. When the state becomes corrupt to the point where they no longer have any interest in the well-being of the people, when a state of emergency is reached, and the government responds with repression by declaring a state of exception in an attempt to control the people, some may likely give up. But others, filled with hope will yell “Out with them all!” (!Que se vayan todos!). By doing so, they enter a state of rebellion. The state of rebellion instantiates in hyperpotentia. This is Benjamin’s Jetztzeit or “now-time,” a messianic time “that is determined to blast the moment out of the homogenous course of history.” 54 In order to carry the state of exception to a successful end, the people need to build “popular social and political movements that do not fall prey to the tendency for political institutions to disassociate themselves from the needs of the community.” 55 These movements have a direct correspondence to the people’s need, which is what makes hyperpotentia capable of building up a new paradigm. In order to do so, they must, on a concrete level, work towards a feasible project, divided by short-term, median, and long-term. Their leaders need to have strategic clarity and prudence to look for the consensus which maintains social movements as democratic. Also, it is necessary to formulate efficient tactics to carry out the strategies planed. And finally, appropriate means need to be selected to achieve their goals. The emergence of a social movement is neither free nor spontaneous. Rather, it goes through different stages. The first step is awareness, where some people pass from non-consciousness to the ethical-critical conscience that moves them to rebel against oppressive conditions. The second step is when the people go to the moment of action; when they decide to fight to improve their living conditions. For the struggle to be fruitful it is necessary to strengthen the bonds of co-responsibility and solidarity among the victims themselves as well as in the people who have responded to their call; this is “the people, the non-oppressed, but who [also] are dissatisfied, form a struggle in common with the excluded.” 56 These ties of co-responsibility require a new pedagogy, one that takes a rearguard position and respects the awareness process of the oppressed. According to Raúl Romero: . . . like the classic, traditional manners of the left that practically work by scolding, right? (laughs), the [political] actors that scold you to wake up and become aware and stop being yourself . . ., no? It is a form that no longer serves us, right? And not only that it does not serve us, it is deeply antipedagogical vertical, authoritarian. Even more, they are not useful to explain contemporary realities, as they are so complex. I mean we need to stop, right? I do believe that it is necessary to use new pedagogical mechanisms. 57

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It is clear and evident that social movements play a vital role in keeping democracy true to the needs of the victims of the system, hence it is crucial to go beyond the abstract concept of social organization and to study how the ethical duty to the Other is instantiated. SMOS INTERNAL STRUCTURES In this section, I will argue that the interpersonal relationships that are necessary to create a legitimate social movement retain the personal contact which leads to awakening and maintain the ethical duty towards the Other as well as in establishing bonds of solidarity among the community, all conditions of a direct critical democracy. While human beings are individuals, we are not isolated nor are we independent, we are always in interrelation with other human beings which creates an entity different from the mere sum of participants; this interrelation creates a “we.” Dussel elaborates on his notion of intersubjectivity in a manner analogous to that in which he constructs the notion of subjectivity. In the same way that in the notion of subjectivity there is an “I” as the epicenter of the subject, in inter-subjectivity there is a “we.” That is, “the inter-subjectivity does not have a skin, nevertheless it has limits, horizons, borders of the ‘system/environment’: us/you.” The “we,” proper of inter-subjective subjectivity, is constituted from a life-world formed by a collective memory, from a shared culture, a concrete historical project to which people aspire in solidarity. In short, the “we” is formed from common circumstances that allows people to appear with a shared identity that differentiates “us” from “others.” Dussel claims that just as there is a reason of self-awareness which permits a person to notice the negative consequences of the system (as well as her own responsibility in the functioning of the system to the detriment of the victims), it is also possible that from inter-subjectivity, there emerges an “ethical-criticism consciousness that explicitly discovers the systemic or institutional participation of the actors who have inevitably produced the unintended negative effects and charges for the same conscience of collective social responsibility.” 58 Social responsibility is not diluted in a group as such, but each member of the community is directly responsible for participating in inter-subjective, systemic, or institutional actions. As a direct responsible party, one must respond directly and inter-subjectively to the negative consequences of the system that inter-subjective ethical-critical reason has revealed. A true ethical community is not filled with selfish individuals looking only for their benefit. On the contrary, “to participate is to take charge of the community as responsibility for others. It is the first expression of the will-to-live, since the isolated one closes on itself and does not collaborate nor does it count on the community is in a state of autistic suicide.” 59 This participation is an activity

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of placing our own bodies, our committed subjectivity, along with other community members to bring it to live as such. Individual participation constitutes in act (entelékheia), the mere existence of political community. There is no political assembly without participants. Participation, then, is vital to community-building and to the exercise of democracy. The instantiation of potentia into the future of a political project depends on the participation of individuals in the collective issues. It is from this participation that potentia becomes power and possibility. Yet, as mentioned before, for Dussel social ties are necessary but not sufficient to materialize a true ethical society; they need to be instantiated on the political field. In addition to the community in which people develop, it is necessary to create strong ties of solidarity. This movement occurs through mutual recognition of the conditions of oppression experienced by the victims of the system. When simple individuals grow to be united in their pain and anger, they evolve to become the people that will fight in solidarity to overthrow the status quo that denies their right to life. This merger then is established when a person goes from being non-active politically to being a political actor, understanding politics in the noblest of its senses: the creation of the conditions for enjoyment of life, especially for victims. Dussel accepts Badiou’s position that political subjects appear in response to oppressive conditions, although with the clarification that there is a “natural subject” in every human being who participates in social mobilization, and they are the ones making up a socio-historical subject. 60 This is to say, natural subjects become a “political subject” when the circumstances of oppression are such that they think of rebellion as the only way out of oppression. Political actors emerge from experiencing oppression in their own flesh, but also because they share the suffering of the other, when one offers himself in substitution of the other. In the words of Levinas: “Responsibility for the other, this way of responding if a prior commitment is human fraternity in itself and is prior to freedom.” 61 CONCLUSION In this chapter, I developed the argument that hyperpotentia, instantiated in Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) arise when institutional power, potestas, become corrupt. My argument, based on Enrique Dussel’s political philosophy, starts from the premise that any society’s first ethical duty is to protect life, especially human life. A second premise is that human life can only be reproduced within the realm of community. From these premises, it is possible to infer that when the leaders of that community do not meet the principle of protecting human life, they need to be removed either by peaceful or, if necessary, violent means. Usually, the promoters of this political

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change are the victims of the systems, who, motivated by their will-to-live, enter into a state of rebellion where they fight against institutional power in order to win back the control of political power. In the case of the last cycle of mobilization in México, Ciudad Juárez (2008), MPJD (2011), and Ayotzinapa (2014), it is possible to see how the victims of the alleged war on drug cartels challenged this narrative and claimed that not only was the state not fighting the drug cartels, but it was actually colluding with them. This criminal association had resulted in the killing of at least 200,000 people and another 30,000 missing all over the country. In response to this wrongful situation, the victims organized at a local level in Ciudad Juárez where they denounced the association of the state with drug cartels and demanded an end to the militarized strategy. This narrative would later become the national view with the creation of MPJD, which gave notoriety to the victims, and demanded the creation of the General Law of Victims, and which also indirectly brought the creation of several victims’ organizations. Finally, in 2014 with the disappearance of 43 studentteachers from the rural college Raúl Isidro Burgos, at the hands of policemen and military-clad men, the people became enraged and entered into a state of rebellion and yelled, “It was the state!” As we will see in the following chapters, they demanded the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto and the building of a new order. NOTES 1. Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. 2. Locke, “The Second Treatise of Government,” 287. 3. Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 77. 4. For an example on the subsuming by capitalism of cultural and religion practices see: Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 5. For more on this topic, see: Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation; and Castañeda, “The Indignados and Occupy Movements as Active Criticism of Representative Democracy: A Reply to Eklundh.” 6. Valenzuela Arce, Juvenicidio. Ayotzinapa y las vidas precarias en América Latina y España. 7. For a more comprehensive analysis of Dussel’s politics of liberation see Mendieta, “Politics in an Age of Planetarization: Enrique Dussel’s Critique of Political Reason.” 8. Dussel, Enrique, Política de la Liberación. Historia mundial y crítica; Translated to English in 2011 as Politics of Liberation: A Critical Global History (Reclaiming Liberation Theology). 9. Dussel, Política de la liberación Vol. II. Arquitectónica. 10. Dussel, Materiales para una política de la liberación. 11. Dussel, Enrique, Carta a los Indignados. 12. Dussel, 20 Tesis de Política; Translated to English as Twenty Theses on Politics. 13. Dussel, Política de la liberación Vol. II. Arquitectónica, II:47. [fundamento positive último que nos permita describir la voluntad y el poder político en su sentido fuerte, con pretensión de verdad y legitimidad, desde donde sea posible criticar las descripciones defectivas, reductivas de dicho poder.] 14. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.

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15. Locke, “The Second Treatise of Government,” 287. 16. Hobbes, Leviathan. 17. Locke, “The Second Treatise of Government.” 18. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses. 19. Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice. 20. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty.” 21. Dussel, Política de la Liberación Vol. II. Arquitectónica, II:66. 22. See Badiou, L’être et l’événement. 23. Dussel, Política de la Liberación Vol. II. Arquitectónica, II:71. [En la intersección de una situación (no solo objetiva, sino de una objetividad componente inevitable de la intersubjetividad) con un modo muy especial de trasformación por el que un mero observador pasa de ser un sub-jeto a ser un actor. La potentia se fenomenaliza como potesta] 24. León-Portilla, Toltecáyotl. Aspectos de La Cultura Náhuatl. 25. León-Portilla, 17. 26. Mills, “The Development of Human Life in Enrique Dussel’s Politics of Liberation,” 57. 27. At this moment Dussel is moving on the ontological level. In will be only later when he elaborates the critique to the current political systems and the identities given to subordinated groups. This is to say, he will move off being, to the zone of non-being to the metaphysical level. 28. For more on the zone of non-being see Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; and Gordon, What Fanon Said. 29. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 16. 30. Schopenhauer, El Mundo como voluntad y representación Libro 1, 91. 31. This is not saying that Dussel has no regard for nature. On the contrary, under his philosophy, nature (the Pachamama, as it is called in Quechua by native-Americans in Perú) has dignity, which is a higher level that just being a passive object subject to the desires of humans. 32. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 81. 33. Stryker, Identity Competition: Key to Differential Movement Participation. 34. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks. 35. Gramsci, 275. 36. It is of course possible that there is a hegemony that validates practices against the victims of the system as in racist or sexist cultures. 37. Raúl Romero is a well-known social activist; he is a member of the Zapatists Solidarity Networks. 38. Romero, Interview. [estamos viendo este Estado criminal en su máxima extensión, un Estado para el que los crímenes de Estado son una constante, la violación a los Derechos Humanos en la que hay sujetos vulnerables. Son los defensores de derechos Humanos, periodistas, líderes sociales y políticos. [También] mujeres y jóvenes vulnerables, como los inmigrantes, para poner ahí un ejemplo, como los principales sujetos de la violencia pero que no es una violencia que no tenga un fin, sino que tiene un fin político pero que la víctima no es solamente quien hace política no, sino que es una estrategia de control global y el objetivo es atemorizar pues violentas no solo a los activistas sociales sino también a quienes están . . ., [a quienes] son potencialmente su grupo de apoyo.] 39. Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, 13. 40. Procuraduría General de la Republica, “Cuarto Informe Institucional de la Procuraduría General de la Republica.” 41. For more on this topic see: Cervera and Monárrez Fragoso, “Sistema de Información Geográfica para la Vida en el Municipio de Juárez, Chihuahua: Geo-Referenciación y su comportamiento Espacial en el Contexto Urbano y Rural (Sigvida).” 42. Joel, Interview. Joel is a pseudonym. [Algo sucede cuando asesinan a mi hijo, ya había acumulación del drama, aquí en Juárez por ejemplo la muerte de los muchachos de Salvarcar, la actitud de Luz María Dávila confronta la lógica del presidente [Calderón] cuando los criminaliza, cuando afirma que [los muertos] son criminales matándose entre ellos, pero ella le demuestra al presidente, a todo el país que no todos son culpables. La muerte de mi hijo provoca la

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catarsis final: los muertos son seres humanos, con nombre y apellido, muchos de ellos inocentes.] 43. Pineda, Interview. [Ya nos quedó a todos, o sea Ayotzinapa nos dejó claro que está sucediendo en México, o sea teníamos intuiciones, todos sabíamos que había un narco estado, todos intuíamos que el estado estaba involucrado hasta adentro, pero no teníamos ningún digamos dato contundente digamos o sea todos eran rumores, periodismos de investigación como el de proceso no, y pum, Ayotzinapa fue un golpe tal que es tan evidente que quiebra por completo cualquier otra explicación no, y ahí entonces la consigna fue el estado, es en realidad un diagnostico no, es decir el responsable es el Estado]. 44. Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 257. 45. Hinkelammert, El mapa del emperador, 49. 46. Dussel, Hacia una filosofía política crítica, 299. 47. Dussel, Enrique, Ethics of Liberation in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion. 48. Dussel, 526. 49. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 94. 50. Moissen, Interview. [Somos parte de una nueva generación de activistas que empezábamos a preguntarnos qué estaba pasando en el país, porque para ese entonces bueno la guerra contra el narco y la guerra entre Calderón contra los narcos, para nosotros lo de Darío demostraba que no había tal guerra entre narcos y Estado, y que había colusión, complicidad, y había un fenómeno de militarización para, con métodos contra alguno con objetivos contra la revolución o para aplicar la reforma estructural, buen de ahí en adelante como un primer flujo lo de Darío, que nos permitió conocer a muchísimos jóvenes con la misma preocupación.] 51. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 94. 52. We will see more on the affirmation of the negation in the following chapter with the introduction of the ana-dialectical method. 53. Bloch, The Principle of Hope. 54. Beiner, “Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of History,” 427. 55. Silva, “Populism, Pueblos, and Plutocracy: Notes on Radical Democracy from Latin America,” 12. 56. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 81. 57. Raúl Romero, Interview. [como las formas más clásicas tradicionales de esa, además de esa izquierda con la que yo conviví y que fue, que prácticamente funcionan por regaño no, o sea no, (risas), los actores que te regañan para que despiertes y tomes conciencia y dejes de ser . . ., no, es una forma que ya no nos sirve pues no, y no solo que no nos sirve es profundamente anti pedagógica vertical, autoritaria, sino que además para explicar estas realidades que son tan complejas, o sea que requieren un alto, o sea muy, muy complejas no, son menos útiles, no, y ahí sí creo que o sea se vuelve necesario la utilización de mecanismos nuevos pedagógicos.] 58. Dussel, Enrique, Ethics of Liberation in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion, 351. 59. Dussel, Enrique, Carta a los Indignados, 35. [Participar es hacerse cargo de la comunidad como responsabilidad por los otros. Es la primera expresión de la Voluntad de vida, ya que el aislado se cierra se cierra sobre sí mismo y no colabora ni cuenta con la comunidad está en un estado de suicido autista] 60. Dussel, Política de la liberación Vol. II. Arquitectónica, II:67. 61. Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, 116.

Chapter Five

A Movement of Movements

Since the last century social movements have been confirmed as powerful agents of social and political change. The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the World Social Forums (starting in 2001), and the Arab Spring (2011), are just a few examples that demonstrate the power exuded when the people take action. México is no exception. The last cycle of mobilization beginning with the movement against militarization that started in Ciudad Juarez (2008), continuing with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, MPJD (2011), and ending with the Ayotzinapa movement (2014), has certainly influenced the current national political landscape. However, given the scarce tangible results it must be admitted that the resulting effects were nowhere near as impactful as demonstrators had hoped. When considering what elements prevented these mobilizations from reaching more of their objectives, it is possible to think that the limitations in the articulation between the different social organizations have been at least partially responsible for this. During the last decade several Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) in México have grown to share the demand of overthrowing the current system and starting a new government, but that consensus has not extended to the point where they have reached an agreement on how to do it. There are groups that conceive the movement as a class struggle against the bourgeoisie, and they are willing to use violence as a means to overthrow the state. Conversely, there are groups that agree that while there is a need for upheaval regarding the current political class, they prefer to act in accordance with pacifism. Also, there are important differences on how to organize the new political system. Some groups favor formal politics as they believe that, if reformed and used rightfully, the current political system can be democratic and give power to the people. Alternatively, other groups claim that represen75

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tative liberal democracy is essentially wrong and a new political system, based on direct democracy, should be installed. Despite their differences, activists look for ways to collaborate and actively search for methods of articulation and implementation. This search has been accompanied by several political thinkers, who are not foreign to these differences as they share those variances themselves. Literature offers two differing positions on how various SMOs can work together. The first calls for a unified social movement and is developed by Ernesto Laclau and Enrique Dussel. Laclau argues for a hegemonic practice where a particularity (plebs) make themselves the universal capable of challenging a system on a binary antagonism: us against them. In agreement with this faction, Dussel adds the ethical duty to the Other and argues that social movements should make the struggles of the most oppressed their own. The second position I will analyze is Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s proposal of what I call “soft articulation” where articulation between social movements does not require a hierarchy of demands. He offers two mechanisms to promote this articulation: epistemology from the South and intercultural translation that looks for reciprocal intelligibility between different cultures in the form of diatopic hermeneutics that does not request hegemony. I consider that in an ideal situation, the union of all SMOs under a hegemony seems to be the best method, and SMOs should therefore try and implement this. However, this state of affairs happens only under exceptional circumstances, for a short period of time, and with a very specific goal. After this goal is achieved, the differences between SMOs tend to appear again. In the case of the last cycle of mobilization in México, the ideological differences among the distinct SMOs, as well as material conditions of the urgency of their own needs, led to difficulties in forming a long-term coalition. In addition to the challenging material conditions, I maintain that a forcible search for a unified social mobilization may in fact be detrimental to critical social movements. I say this, because the efforts that are carried out to achieve unification can distract the different SMOs from their particular struggles, or they can mean an epistemicide when certain organizations or social activists choose themselves as privileged social actors whose agendas and forms of struggle must be adopted by the rest of the social actors. This practice constitutes a repetition of the forms of oppression that caused the subordination of the social groups to defend in the first place. My aim in this chapter is to argue that a unified social movement is desirable, but not at all costs. Given the factual conditions, Santos’s proposal seems to be more plausible. To prove my point, first I will show that there are no a priori or preferential groups within social mobilization. Second, I will introduce both models—unified and soft articulation. And finally, I will demonstrate how the SMOs of the last cycle of mobilization used this last model.

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THE PEOPLE As social movements become the main actor in promoting positive political changes through the world, it is vital to understand who they are comprised of. There are two differing positions that explain it, with one being orthodox Marxism which has spoken of a historical subject that would lead a revolution in favor of the oppressed. Marx states, “The International was founded in order to replace the socialist or semi-socialist sects by a real organization of the working class for struggle.” 1 This historical subject has been proposed to be the proletarians organized in a political party, and lead by a vanguard. 2 Counter to this, scholars of the new social movements argue that there are not historical subjects, but that the social movements rise out of need. This is to say, there are no “privileged” political actors for social change. In order to find a solution to this debate, I will first present both positions and second, I will make an argument for the latter. Finally, I will discuss one of the implications of this state of affairs. Historical Subjects In the field of studies on socio-political processes, Marxism is distinguished and characterized by the analysis of social relations as relations of power around a systematic tripartition in the axis of domination-conflict-emancipation. Marxist theorists look to distinguish and articulate the analysis of the forms of exploitation-domination-alienation, the relations of tension and confrontation in the class struggle, and the practices and processes of liberation that take place there. Identifying, describing, analyzing, explaining, and interpreting the struggles, classes, forms, and circumstances of the crossroads, of assuming that struggles are class struggles, are activities at the core of the Marxist agenda of political philosophy. In this brief section, I will focus on the Marxist notion of struggle, as it opens the range of questions related to the action: Who gets organized? How do they organize? And how do subjects enter into a conflict? Orthodox Marxism argues that the proletarian is destined to lead the revolution that will end class struggle and bring social justice for all. The argument is grounded on Marx and Engels’s famous claim made in The Communist Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Where, in Marxist terms, the notion of class is a synthesis of the dialectical relationship between socio-economic material determination and socio-political subjectification; it has one foot in the structure and another in the agency. Let us turn to the argument in which orthodox Marxism justifies this claim. According to this body of thought, a historical leap occurred when capitalism built, after four centuries of existence, the material bases of its

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reproduction, which are the division of labor and industrialization. The proletariat was born then as a potential subject from the contradiction between capital and labor. Workers were, and still are, subject to exploitation within the very process of production, causing the working class to be fully absorbed by, as well as constituted by capitalism. This is what Marx called the real subsumption of labor for capital, and is evident in Marx’s writings, such as the following from The Poverty of Philosophy: “Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle [. . .] this mass becomes united and constitutes itself as a class for itself.” 3 Orthodox Marxists such as Dos Santos 4 and Draper 5 conclude that the new class, the proletariat, became a historical subject when it was built within the struggle itself, going from the status of a class in itself, to a class for itself. At that moment, the proletarians became the historical subject, that is, the privileged instrument of the struggle for emancipation of humanity from capitalism. Capitalism is not to be understood only in the contextual plan of the economy, but also as oriented in the configuration of the nation-state, colonial conquests, and world wars, not to mention its role as a privileged vehicle of modernity. Of importance is that orthodox Marxism is not the only reading of Marx’s theories. In fact, there is a large spectrum of theoretical traditions based on Marx’s philosophies, and while all of them agree on the importance of class struggle and the proletariat, they extend the scope of the last terms to also include other actors in addition to the factory workers. From a critical Marxist perspective, Massimo Modonessi 6 says that thinking of the class as a field or a universe of class allows one to recognize and analyze a series of processes of socio-political aggregation without falling into the essentialism proper to a certain Marxist tradition and an era marked by the centrality of the figure of the industrial worker, or to seek new immaterial centralities, but without neglecting that the contemporary social reality continues to be marked by the logic of capital, ownership of the means of production, exploitation of the workers, and dispossession of the commons. In that same sense, Tischler as well as other thinkers deny the orthodox reading of Marx but give a new meaning to the concepts. Tischler affirms that “the class struggle does not have as a horizon the change of domination of one class by another, but the end of domination and class as a form of existence of power.” 7 Non-historical Subjects In the previous section I showed that orthodox Marxism claims that the proletarian is the privileged instrument to bring positive social change. It was also stated that critical Marxism accepts other social groups (i.e. indigenous

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peoples, feminist movements, etc.) as sound political actors, but it keeps class struggle as the main component which promotes social change. Let’s consider this position and imagine a situation in which the bourgeoisie begins a class struggle by creating their opposing class, the proletariat. According to an orthodox reading of Marx, this class struggle will be solved by the factory workers. It is easy to see that this perception comes from a system designed for an industrial, urban European reality, in which all elements, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, and the new situation, are already contained in the system. However, as the Peruvian philosopher José Carlos Mariátegui points out, in Latin America where the proletarian did not have a large presence, other social groups, such as farmers and indigenous peoples, defended themselves against economic oppressive conditions. By doing so, they proved that the contradiction of capital goes beyond an industrialized urban reality. From their Otherness, the farmers and the native peoples brought new forms of resistance that are useful for a class struggle more extensive than the standard dialectic bourgeoisie-proletarian. It is possible to now see that the proletarian is neither the sole nor the privileged political subject. There is also an economic system that has divided the world distinctly: “the haves” and “the have nots.” Even though this unfair economic system is by far the largest form of oppression, it is certainly not the sole form. As Alain Badiou points out, “Throughout history, certain instances of politics have had or will have a relation to truth; a truth of the collective as such. [. . .] These political sequences are singularities, they trace no destiny, they construct no monumental history.” 8 This is to say, people may be more sensitive to other forms of oppression, such as racial, cultural, or sexual discrimination. In that sense, it is possible to infer that a historical subject does not exist prior to rebellion but the rebellion process induces the subject. Badiou argues that “one must come to conceive of truth as making a hole in knowledge. Lacan is paradigmatic on this point. The subject is thus convoked as a border—effect or a delimitating fragment of such a hole— piercing.” 9 In other words, the political subject (monological or communal) appears and exists insofar as the accepted truth of the events is challenged which makes its existence necessary. Again, by definition then, the historical subject does not precede the social struggle, but comes to be when natural subjects are grouped around a cause, and when people group against an oppressive regime. In a similar fashion, Laclau grounds his theoretical analysis of the people in their possibility to interrupt, to challenge a given discourse and, by doing so, preventing the social norm to close on its own limits. In his rebuttal to Slavoj Žižek’s critiques, 10 Laclau states: “I never said that populist identity preexists the enemy’s onslaught, but exactly the opposite: that such an onslaught is the precondition of any popular identity.” 11 The protesters, then, are established as such precisely because of the very fact of posing a demand.

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That is, in line with its ontology, for Laclau the popular subject emerges politically as a petitioning agent. This very reason is why, according to his theory, the existence of the people is never a primary fact, nor is their unity given in advance, but it is the product of a construction. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS UNIFIED Once it is established that there is not a privileged social actor destined to unify all social protests, the question now is if there is still a possibility to have a unified front. In order to answer this question, I will first analyze Laclau’s notion of hegemon, and later Dussel’s elaboration of the same concept, analogic hegemon. Ernesto Laclau’s Notion of Hegemon A large part of Ernesto Laclau’s political theory is dedicated to questioning what he considers a mistaken use of class in Marxism, without completely disregarding it. He has tried to operate deconstructively within Marxist categories in order to present a discourse which certainly goes beyond Marxism but which sustained itself with Marxism as one of its bases. In his antiessentialist mode of theorizing, his starting point is that the narrow perspective of classical Marxism—class struggle as the only legitimate struggle and the proletarian as its natural and unquestionable leaders—constitutes an obstacle to think about the hegemonic recomposition of fragmented political identities in contemporary society. Counter to classic Marxism, then, Laclau argues that society cannot be reduced to class struggle as there are not a priori given social actors and social struggles are contingent and depending on what demand subsumes the others against a common enemy. Building in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (still within a class-oriented framework) Laclau realized the dominant groups have understood this mechanism very well and used it to their benefit, convincing oppressed people of the validity of the first’s discourse and dominating the second without the need of violent or coercive methods. In Gramsci’s words: The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as “domination” and as “intellectual and moral leadership.” [. . .] A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise “leadership” before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to “lead” as well. 12

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It is for this reason that the Argentinian political philosopher urged intellectuals and activists who are committed to progressive social change to understand the logic of hegemony, dispute it, and develop our own strategies in favor of the causes of the oppressed groups by challenging the discourse of the dominant group. The first step to achieve the above-mentioned goal of using hegemony in favor of the oppressed was to broaden this category beyond the class limits. In “Hegemony and the Future of Democracy: Ernesto Laclau’s Political Philosophy” Laclau explains to Lynn Worsham and Gary A. Olson that “with hegemony, the relationships by which at some point a certain particularity assumes this function of universal representation involves a moment of universality, a universality, however, deprived of any kind of positive content.” 13 Hegemony is defined then by Laclau as the relationship by which a particularity content becomes the signifier of the universal, but this relationship is always temporal. If a signifier is temporary, it can be challenged, and a different particularity becomes the representation of the universal. In that line of thought, it is possible for the dominant group to promote and set their discourse as a universal, as if it belonged to all the community. However, in a revolutionary democracy, a new element (signifier) can be introduced and the hegemonic discourse challenged, and possibly defeated, in favor of a discourse that represents the interests and perspectives of the oppressed. How is this possible for a particular to take the place of the universal? In order to start answering this question, Laclau developed the concept of the empty signifier. The idea of an “empty signifier confronts us not with abundance (excess) or insufficiency (as in a floating signifier) but with something that indicates the very limits of the process of signification.” For Laclau an empty signifier is, strictly speaking, a signifier without meaning. This is in itself a problem because “how is it possible that a signifier is not linked to any meaning and continues to be, nevertheless, an integral part of a system of signification?” 14 This problem presents the paradox in which, beyond the differences, there is another difference in the limits of the system, that permits the constitution of it as a whole and at the same time determines its impossibility. This constitutive exterior puts into question the differences within the system, and the system is aggregated by a logic of equivalence, which prevents any social identity from being fully constituted while it is threatened from an outside that weakens its internal differences. The function of tendentially empty signifiers, then, is to renounce their differential identity in order to represent the pure equivalent identity of a community space, the universal. In order to understand the importance of an empty signifier, it is necessary to remember that the ontological starting point of Ernesto Laclau’s political theory is the understanding of the social as a discursive space, where discourse is not restricted to speech or the written word, but, in a broad sense,

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to any meaningful relationship. In opposition to the base/superstructure distinction of orthodox Marxism, to Laclau “the relations of representation do not constitute a secondary level that reflects a primary social reality constituted on the other side.” On the contrary, they are “the primary ground within which it constitutes the social.” 15 This is to say, an object (being a person, a group, or a thing) comes to existence only when it is named, as part of a network of meanings. In a closed system these meanings are fixed, but in a true democracy they can be changed. The Argentinian thinker distinguishes three necessary dimensions or conditions of appearance in the process of constitution of a popular subjectivity. First, the building of the people requires the development of the logic of equivalence, defined as the articulation of a plurality of multiple demands that cannot be absorbed by the current system into one demand. Secondly, and given that the equivalences are only such in relationship with a lack that dominates them all, there is no production of the subject, the people, without drawing an internal border that divides the social space into two fields; “we” versus “them.” Finally, the one demand must be consolidated as a popular identity that is qualitatively more than the mere sum of their equivalence bonds through the discursive production of signifiers tendentially empty. 16 This last dimension constitutes, for Laclau, the specifically hegemonic moment of the construction of the people. Laclau’s argument makes it highly significant to universalize some values, for only in this way can different groups defend their rights. In “Subject of Politics, Politics of the Subject,” 17 Laclau argues that politics of pure difference is the route to self-isolation. Articulation is needed because if the different group making demands is overly concerned about their particular circumstances, they will fail to establish connections with other affinity groups and potential allies, which would allow them to engage in wider struggles at ideological levels. In other words, unless there is strong articulation where one demand subsumes the others, particular movements do not have the potentiality to challenge the hegemonic system. By doing so, they destabilize the very categories of the dominant group, as the Ciudad Juárez movement did when they showed that the militarization of the country was a strategy to control the population, and not a war on the drug cartels. In sum, Laclau uses the categories of empty signifiers to indicate that representation relationships never have an inscription, decreeing, thus, the always ambiguous and unstable character of all popular subjectivity. In Laclau’s perspective, the people are an Other in relation to the current system and its emergence derives from what the author calls the “impossibility of society,” that is, the asymmetry between the community as a whole and the political agents that operate within it. This always-open status to the social and the subsequent impossibility of an ultimate universality explains why the

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people can rise from different, and even opposite demands, depending on how they gain significance. This mechanism of hegemony building has been known and used by oppressing subjects. If progressive intellectuals and activists want their demands to be fulfilled, we need to challenge the discourse of the oppressor by building a new hegemony, and, according to Laclau, this can only be done by subsuming particularities to a universality. Again, this particularity which becomes a temporal universality (until in time it is effectively challenged) can come from any of the particularities that dispute power. In Laclau’s words: “When people are in a situation of radical disorder, people need some kind of order, and the nature of the particular order is secondary.” 18 This absence of a normative framework that gives preponderance to the victims of the system is what Dussel criticizes in Laclau’s theory because according to Dussel, the foundation of the system is not antagonism, but the first principles. I will now proceed to explain this critique, by first introducing Dussel’s conception of the people, followed by an elaboration of the critique above mentioned. Enrique Dussel’s Concept of Analogical Hegemon In the previous section, I analyzed Laclau’s argument for the possibility of a unified front, which was inspired by the politics of Latin America in the decade of the 1970s 19 and later developed in the time frame of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Socialist governments in Europe, an obvious critical time-period in history for the left. In Latin America, this political and intellectual position has faced its own history and questions. The 1970s and 1980s regimes in Latin America were followed by social democracies, by the beginning of the twenty-first century and by the so-called progressive governments. 20 It is in this latest context—the beginning, development, and sustaining of the progressive governments—in which Dussel wrote most of his latest work on political philosophy. In fact, this work was inspired by the projects of Bolivia, led by Evo Morales, and Venezuela with Hugo Chavez. Just as with the left in Europe, one of the problems that progressive governments have faced is how to keep the different sectors united in one project of nation. In this section, I will move to revise Dussel’s response to this question and compare it to the last cycle of mobilization in México. Just as there has been a continuity in history, there has also been a continuity in theoretical work where different authors have established an intellectual conversation in the search for the best answer to the changing social and political conditions of Latin America. Such has been the case of Ernesto Laclau and Enrique Dussel. It is only fair to say that Dussel’s political philosophy shares and, in fact, is inspired by some features of Laclau’s work, and while the former recognizes the ideas of the second, he advances them by

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criticizing and fixing what he considers shortfalls of Laclau’s model. Allow me now to elaborate on this claim. Similar to Ernesto Laclau, Enrique Dussel also considers that the category of class cannot contain all political subjects as there are several forms of oppression. However, he claims that this reductionism is not Marx’s, but a mistaken interpretation of his theory by what he calls standard Marxism. Dussel considers that if they had they studied Marx in depth, they would realize that “in the almost 10 thousand pages that Marx wrote from 1857 to 1867, his theoretical creative period par excellence, there are not two pages in a row dedicated to the supra-infrastructure issue.” 21 By reading Marx carefully and directly, Dussel was able to find a Marx more in line with the Semitic tradition of caring for the other, rather than a cold and closed economist. Another similarity with Laclau is that Dussel also uses the category of the people to designate the set of diverse groups that rises against the oppressive system. In Dussel’s words, “The people is a social bloc of the oppressed and excluded, and in this the plebs can be distinguished from both the entire dominant community as well as from the future community (the populus).” 22 It is important to note that, as Laclau does, Dussel also claims that oppressive conditions are not enough to constitute the people; they must be aware and willing to fight those conditions. I make this claim, because in order for the people to be a bloc, they need to get in purposeful contact with other groups who also share the condition of oppression and the will to rebel, which of course implies awareness and willingness to take action against the problem. By virtue of this dialogue, they realize that their poor conditions are not due to a lack of personal effort, as some right-wing propaganda would claim, but rather, a direct result of a social and economic system which inherently negates them. Clearly, the shout “We want justice!” comes from those who are not the receivers of privileges of the system. By rebelling, they introduce a new element to the discourse, preventing the system from closing. For Dussel, it is not the dispute over the inner sense of totality, as with Laclau, that constitutes politics. It is rather the interpellation of “being” for “nothing.” The struggle that this implies is what constitutes the political, the building of the hegemon. This Other is not contained within the system, but rather comes from the outside, from the zone of non-being described by Fanon 23 when explaining how black people are forced to a “whitening” if they want to be listened to. They must deny their own being in order to be. In Laclau’s model the hegemon is the moment when an empty signifier is occupied by a particularity that represents universality. Given that any particularity can take the place of the universality, it is fair to deduce that there is no ethical duty to prefer one particularity over the other; the group that manages the best to posit its discourse, will be the group that dominates the hegemon. Dussel’s objection to this lack of first principles is that it opens the

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possibility that the hegemon exterminates the people who have hegemonized. If this happens, the contingent character of politics is closed and what results from it cannot properly be called hegemony. Here we can see that at any given moment there can be two instances of negation of the Other, from the inside as well as from the outside. The first form of negating the Other could even come from the very SMOs and can take the form of an attempt from one group to dominate other groups by imposing its agenda and styles of struggle as so happened in the disagreements among Javier Sicilia, leader of MPJD, and other activists against militarization. Here, we can see that even when presumably there were no ill intentions, the imposing of an agenda came to mean the same practices of not paying attention or giving due importance to the voice of the oppressed, solely to the leaders. It is only fair to see that the Ayotzinapa movement has actively looked to eliminate these practices as can be seen in the joint declaration of the Popular National Convention (Convención Nacional Popular) and Popular Citizen Constituent (Constituyente Ciudadana Popular), “[we follow] parallel but not opposite directions. The objectives of each project lead to dialogue. In the next few days we will continue to strengthen the bridges of dialogue, communication, understanding and action to contribute to the liberation of this shameful and unjust neoliberal system.” 24 The second form of negating the Other, which is by far more aggressive, comes from the state. It is conducted in both subtle and overtly wrongful manners. The first one takes the form of discourse and simulation when the government attempts to build a narrative where they are fair, and protesters are the public enemy. When this narrative does not work, the state uses direct and systematic violence against protesters. In the case of Ayotzinapa, arguably, the federal government expected that protests would end when Murillo Karam presented “the historic truth.” Up to that point, the marches had not been watched by the police, but when protests did not diminish, both the city and federal government started to suppress them. Also, when these actions are not enough, activists may be killed. 25 Again, if the first principle of the maintenance and improvement of the life of the oppressed does not exist, not only does hegemony lose its meaning, since it becomes an end in itself, but the hegemony is lost, since the hegemon will have to be supported each time in coercion, canceling the contingency of politics. In that sense, Dussel thinks of the Other, not in ontological terms as the limits of the system, but, inspired by Levinas’ philosophy, in a metaphysics of alterity where the orphan, the widow, and the stranger must be protected first. Dussel, then, uses the concept of hegemon but modifies it to recognize the preponderance of the struggle of the victims of the system, through the analogical hegemon, defined as “a ‘bloc’ that comes from ‘below’ with an

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increasingly developed national and popular consciousness of the unfulfilled needs and claims that are assumed with a clear understanding of the demands they entail.” 26 Say that at a given moment there are worker, feminist, and indigenous people struggles. In Dussel’s model the worker’s struggle must be aware that working women are more oppressed, and that indigenous women are even more oppressed. When they realize this, through relations of solidarity, the workers make their own the struggle of women and indigenous women. By doing so, they fight for the rights of all. As can be seen, there are similarities with Laclau’s model, where different social movements articulate with each other through solidarity networks. But a chief difference is that in Laclau’s theory, only one demand/group occupies the place of the empty signifier and from this demand, all other groups should be benefited. For example, if the feminist struggle makes their voice listened to and are able to posit their narrative as relevant and gain some benefits, i.e, equality, then female workers would also benefit from a better income. Of course, this is valuable, but in Dussel’s model the rights of workers or indigenous women would be fought directly and jointly, not as indirect wins. Applying this theoretical and ethical model to the Ayotzinapa social movement it is possible to see that there is in fact a correspondence to reality, as people with some privileges were moved to defend the cause of the Ayotzinapa students because they themselves were poor rural teachers. Is the Hegemon Possible? In closing this section, I will present my take on both Laclau’s and Dussel’s positions. First, I will say that while I can see the need to create a unifiedhegemonic bloc, it appears to me that there are at least three possible objections. In the case of Laclau’s model, I concur with Dussel and also offer the critique that this model does not offer a favorable option to oppressed groups which might not have enough resources to challenge the hegemonic discourse. In consequence, they will remain in a domineering situation. I argue that the possibility that Laclau offers—joining a stronger group—in the hopes that the demands they gain will also benefit them is not a viable solution, for they may obtain only partial or even no solution to their specific situation and demand. In a few words, I claim that the acceptance of a particularity as universality should not imply the negation of other particularities. My second deliberation is regarding Dussel’s analogical hegemon. Here, my concern is that if the defense of the Other—the most oppressed—is not done properly, it may become a form of oppression instead of liberation. I make this claim because it is theoretically conceivable and has been documented, that even within leftist movements stronger movements or more experienced activists attempt to impose an agenda in weaker or less-experi-

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enced groups. I believe this can be considered a form of oppression, for it denies self-determination in terms of manifestation of their being to these less-experienced groups. Finally, my last concern is that a unified social mobilization usually occurs on very limited occasions and for a limited amount of time. It certainly has been the case with the Ayotzinapa social movement. During the peak of the movement, summer–autumn 2014, their calls for action would be answered by hundreds of thousands of people at a national and international level. However, as new needs and demands arose, i.e. immigration, femicides, etc., the numbers within the movement decreased substantially. As of 2020, the movement is still alive and has achieved important goals such as the creation of the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa case under the command of the renowned academic and human rights defender Omar Gómez Trejo. Yet, they have done so with a considerably lower membership than from the beginning. Given these cautions, I believe one can speculate if an articulated social movement may be a better option than a unified one. I will now move to analyze this possibility, grounding my reflection on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s theory. SOFT ARTICULATION IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS In the previous section, I presented two models which recommend a unified bloc where all demands are subsumed by one. In Laclau’s model, this particularity that takes the place of the universality can be any of them. Building up on the model of the hegemon, Dussel introduces the analogical hegemon wherein he agrees that oppressed people should become one, but he adds that the most oppressed—i.e. indigenous women—have preponderance and social movements must advocate for them. I also introduced my concern that if not done properly, there is a risk that the unifying process may incur the same wrongful practices—denying the other, epistemic and direct violence—as oppressive regimes. In this section, I will analyze a different position, one where articulation, not unification, is advised. I am referring to Boaventura de Sousa Santos who argues that each group should enter into a process of dialogue with other groups, in such a way that they can collaborate, but do not necessarily form a unified front. First, I will explain the theoretical points. Second, I will apply these points to delve deeper into the analysis of social movements. Third, I will reflect on the reach and limits these categories have in understanding the articulation process between social organizations. Before entering the subject, I wish to clarify that the use I make of the theoretical categories of Santos—abysmal thought, ecology of knowledge,

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and intercultural translation—as categories of analysis is different from the use for which he developed them. Santos conceives these categories as tools to analyze the relationship between opposite sides of the abysmal lines, that is, between social movements and the current capitalist hegemonic system which looks to deny them. For my part, I do so for the purposes of research, by analyzing and theorizing the relationships between different social organizations within the denied side of the abysmal line. That is, if in the development of categories of abysmal thinking the different groups are grouped together as one by the criterion of being denied, in post-abysmal thinking their differences are considered and the dialogue between them is considered. I consider that this move is granted by Santos himself when in Descolonizar el saber, Reinventar el poder (Decolonizing Knowledge, Reinventing Power) he states that “I do not hold that modern Western thought is the only historical form of abysmal thought. On the contrary, it is highly probable that there exist or have existed, forms of abysmal thinking outside the West.” 27 Also, in previous research of my authorship 28 as well as in Santos’ writings there is evidence that some social activists, and therefore their organizations, behave in a cannibalistic manner, pretending to subdue other organizations to their forms of struggle and objectives, thus denying the validity and usefulness of other methods of resistance. Once this distinction is clarified, I proceed to expose Santos’ categories in order to develop my argument. Additionally, it is important to understand that the work of Santos arises from what he considers a crisis of critical theory because it has been tamed by the hegemonic liberal discourse. Recall that Habermas, one of the most important current representatives of the Frankfurt School, has directed his theorization towards the so-called “well-organized societies,” i.e. Europe and North America, and that when asked if his theories could be useful in other latitudes as Latin America, he has responded that he does not consider that to be the case. It is possible to see then that the current critical theory is not reflecting the perspective of the most oppressed, because they are outside of their realm. In this sense, it is worth noting that the work that Santos carries out with social movements, especially in Latin America, is a rearguard work, of facilitation, of accompanying social movements, that is, the theory is not instigating the practice, but learns with practice; it seeks to deepen some elements of it. In this journey with social movements, they have realized that it is “so difficult to imagine the end of capitalism as it is difficult to imagine that it will not end.” 29 It is not clear yet what to do, but it is clear that social justice cannot arise without epistemic justice, that is to say, that the value and validity of knowledge other than hegemonic knowledge needs to be recognized. It is also clear that this fight for the validation of different ways of life, as instantiated in alternative epistemes, must be given by the political organizations of those who suffer from oppression.

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Abysmal Thinking In order to gain collaboration among SMOs, the first step then is to tear down the epistemic boundaries that deny otherness. Santos argues that in the case of Western civilization this phenomenon laid its foundation with the unilateral assertion of colonial Spain that Native Americans had a soul, but not a human one, that is, they were quasi-human. To achieve the quality of humans, they should be converted to Christianity. As it is known, this meant a direct attack on their rites and the destruction of their temples, in addition to a discrimination that, as Maldonado-Torres argues, to this day persists through the invention of the notion of race. 30 This concealment of the other is given by the abysmal thought “that operates by the unilateral definition of radical lines that divide the experiences, the actors and social knowledge among those that are visible, intelligible, forgotten or dangerous [. . .] the division is such that the other side of the line disappears as reality, becomes non-existent and in fact is produced as non-existent.” 31 To overpass the abysmal thinking does not mean to become the dominant part and deny the other knowledge, as in indigenous knowledge becomes the dominant and denies European knowledge, but to understand that we live in a quasi-infinite plurality of epistemes that, when well understood and appropriate, can be of help for a true progress of humanity. Thus, for example, modern science could benefit from the ancestral knowledge of indigenous communities, as much as the communities of native peoples could benefit from the knowledge acquired by modern science. In the case of the Ayotzinapa social movement, the utility of the use of science can be clearly seen through the participation of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes, GIEI) in refuting the “historical truth” presented by Murillo Karam. It also can be seen in how SMOs coming from different contexts, i.e. rural, urban, college, workers, familiar, etc., were able to work together and learn from each other without attempting to gain control of the movement. Epistemology from the South The recognition of the existence and possible validity of other knowledge involves a great effort since most scholars are now immersed in the thinking of Northern Epistemology, and we are so used to universalism and general theories that we doubt the possibility of having a non-totalizing approximation of knowledge. For that reason, Santos argues that, as a moment of transition, a general theory about the impossibility of a general theory is necessary. Such a theory of transition is what he calls an Epistemology from the South defined as “the claim of new processes of production, of valuation of valid, scientific and non-scientific knowledge, and of new relationships between different types of knowledge, starting from the practices of the

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classes and social groups that have suffered, in a systematic way, destruction, oppression and discrimination caused by capitalism, colonialism and all the naturalizations of inequality in which they have unfolded.” 32 In a few words, an Epistemology from the South is a negative universalism, the idea of the impossibility of a cultural completeness since all knowledge implies the ignorance of another, and therefore of its absence, of the lack of it. Certainly, such a statement carries several and severe implications in various fields such as scientific, philosophical, cultural, etc. But for the purposes of this chapter, I will refer only to the implications for social movements and social organizations. Heterogenous Social Movements It is important to point out that in recent decades those who have promoted progressive changes have been social groups mostly unobserved to the Eurocentric critical theory, that is, women, indigenous people, peasants, homosexuals and lesbians, the unemployed, so much so that in the past decade the term new social movements was coined to account for these types of organizations that could not be fully explained by the matrix labor-capital, movements-state. I consider that an appropriate response to the need for an articulation of social movements must go on to explain what is implicit in the question: social movements, even those that are anti-capitalist, are not homogeneous with each other, but represent a multiplicity of experiences, knowledge, and expectations. The different knowledges (some of them contradictory) cannot be judged a priori as invalid, either by capital or by left cannibalistic organizations that seek to impose their belief system in other organizations. I make this affirmation based on the idea, demonstrated in the previous section, that no thought system has the possibility of establishing itself as the only possible alternative, but it is necessary to appreciate the contributions that other types of knowledge could give. At a macro level, this recognition is given in the use of theories typical of groups that have historically been excluded. In this sense, Catherine Walsh makes us see that, as important as the book Seven Interpretative Essays on the Peruvian Reality 33 of José Carlos Mariátegui is, the truth is that he continues to use a European theory, Marxism, to explain the reality of the indigenous peoples of Perú, thus ignoring what Walsh calls pensamiento propio (own thinking), the knowledge and explanations that the indigenous people have of their own reality. 34 Now that the diversity of social movements has been established, as well as the need they have for a method of communication that allows them to work together, I will resort to the concept of ecology of knowledge, for it signals the passage from a politics of movements to a politics of intermovements. In this sense, a politics of intermovements, the concerns inspiring the

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exercises of the ecology of knowledge, must be shared by diverse social groups that, in a given context, converge on the idea that their aspirations and interests can only be pursued successfully in articulation with other social groups, hence engaging other social groups’ ways of knowing. The times and places of engagement must be suitable to the different groups or movements. The ecology of knowledge is presupposed on the idea of an epistemological diversity of the world, the recognition of the existence of a plurality of knowledge. It seeks to provide an epistemological consistency for a proactive and pluralist thought. Knowledge interacts, intersects and, therefore, so does ignorance. The utopia of inter-knowledge is to learn other types of knowledge without forgetting that of oneself. In the words of Santos, “For an ecology of knowledge, knowledge-as-intervention-is-reality is the measure of realism, not knowledge-as-a-representation-of-reality.” 35 That is, the credibility of a cognitive system is evaluated in terms of the type of intervention in the world that it allows or prevents. Evidently a political position that denies alterity is not a position that promotes life, and the dignity that comes with self-determination. This appreciation and recognition of pensamiento propio of the victims themselves can be seen in how the Solidarity Committee (Mesa de Solidaridad) that had been organized under the sponsorship of SERAPAZ (Services and Advice for Peace. Servicios y Asesoria para la Paz, A.C.) ceded the leadership of the social movements to the parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. In the words of Enrique Pineda, one of the founding members of the Solidarity Committee, At first it was confusing who was the central actor because the parents were barely organizing, and well with the duel, understand that process SERAPAZ was accompanying the parents of Ayotzinapa, but there was a meeting with the student-teachers, and they told us to do the basic. Then the committee pushed these 4 days of global action, but at that point the parents of the studentteachers were constituting themselves with more and more force the leaders, they called, although in a confused way, to the popular national convention and then the student-teachers would announce their mobilization for November 20. 36

This testimony shows how different SMOs as well as the classmates and parents of the student-teachers who were forcibly kidnapped and disappeared worked together without SMOs attempting to keep the control of the movement. It remains now to investigate how this dialogue can be given between different social organizations. Santos presents his concept of intercultural translation. Let’s start by defining the concept. “Intercultural translation is the procedure that allows to create reciprocal intelligibility between the experiences of the world, both available and possible, revealed by the sociology of absences

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and the sociologies of emergencies.” 37 That is, the different experiences of the world are taken as whole or parts, as realities that are not exhausted in those totalities or parts. The translation between knowledges, then, takes the form of a diatopical hermeneutics, which means the search for common concerns and solutions that do not involve cannibalism of a different form of struggle. In this sense it is important to note that each group decides which aspects are most important to them and that they want to share and learn. Only then, through reciprocal intelligibility and the consequent possibility of aggregation between non-hegemonic knowledge, is it possible to construct a counter-hegemony. Thus, translation is simultaneously an intellectual work, a political work, and an emotional work that translates the forms of organization and the action objectives of two or more different social movements. A translation exercise must be the result of a combination of times, rhythms, and opportunities that allow us to share the struggle with those who do not share our knowledge or our experience. Does this mean that any knowledge is valid? That we should fall into a relativism that does not allow us to distinguish which one or which knowledge, or combination of knowledge, is better? I believe the answer is no, since the ecology of knowledge favors hierarchies that depend on the context in light of the concrete results intended or achieved by different knowledge practices. Santos, using the precautionary principle, argues that “preference should be given to the form of knowledge that guarantees the highest level of participation to the social groups involved in its design, execution and control, and in the benefits of the intervention.” 38 Based on this principle, I sustain that it is possible to infer that the groups directly affected must decide on what struggles they get involved with and how to fight them, and without this meaning they ignore knowledge that may be useful or that for selfish reasons they refuse to contribute their own to other struggles. CONCLUSION To summarize the content of this chapter, I have shown, grounded in the theories of Laclau and Dussel, that class is not the only valid struggle, and that the proletariat are not the chosen social actors. In fact, there are several distinct social struggles. Once we recognize the suffering of various and differing groups, it becomes vital to also recognize that they are entitled to fight for the causes they consider just, and that they do so on their own terms. Doing otherwise would mean to repeat colonial practices where the most oppressed are obligated to do something against their will. Consequently, that will be a form of oppression. Obviously, I do not argue that the colonization of knowledge made by some social organizations has led to forms of annihilation such as those

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caused by capital (at a local level I speak here of feminicide and juvenile) but, on a micro level, that the relations between various social organizations and the colonization of knowledge occurs in the way in which debates are presented to decide the course of this or that social movement. On one hand (the visible one, the one of the experts), there are formulated, lucid thoughts about political parties, classes, representativeness, Marxism, etc. But this line of thinking may ignore other forms of struggle with another vocabulary that speaks of dignity, solidarity, pacha mama, etc. These forms of knowledge and acting may not be visible to the first because they do not obey their categorical framework, they are not in their coordinates since they see a single homogeneous future, and they lack a sense of incompleteness and do not realize that there is not an a priori given group to lead social change. The question now is how to solve the problem of “cannibalism” in social mobilization without losing the know-how of committed activists, while also not negating other experiences. How can they benefit each other in such a way that the counter-hegemonic struggle is broadened? I believe that a possible answer is that this articulation can occur through two procedures: the ecology of knowledge and intercultural translation. Only through reciprocal intelligibility and consequent possibility of aggregation between non-hegemonic knowledge is it possible to construct counter-hegemony. This antisystemic potential resides in its ability to articulate with other social movements, with their forms of organization and their objectives. For this articulation to be possible, it is necessary that the movements are mutually intelligible. The work that goes into translations allows them to evaluate the possibilities and limits of the articulation. This articulation does not necessarily mean a unification of forms of struggle, much less the imposition of one. On the contrary, it means cooperation between knowledge through mutual appreciation, and an ethical preference for the Other as Dussel proposes. For example, “Marxism will claim that the emancipation of workers must be fought together with the emancipation of all the disposable populations of the global South.” 39 In the case of the last cycle of mobilization, especially in its last stage, within the Ayotzinapa social movement it was possible to see that diverse SMOs acted together under one main cause: to find the students alive. As the movement grew to the point of demanding a new social contract it was clear that SMOs have different forms of organization and agendas. Yet, the initial demand remained the common factor that kept them working as a whole with independent sections. This is to say, there was not a unified social movement, but an articulated one. I believe this was valuable for the movement, as it allowed every organization to work as they saw fit in favor of the cause of the 43 missing students while simultaneously working on their particular problems.

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NOTES 1. Marx, “Marx to Friedrich Bolte. 23 November,” 251. 2. For more on the relationship between Marxism and labor see: Horace Davis, Nationalism and Socialism: Marxist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to 1917. 3. Marx and Engels, Marx and Engels: Collected Works, 1845–48, 6:211. 4. Dos Santos, “The Concept of Social Classes,” 181. 5. Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution: The Politics of Social Classes. 6. Modonesi, Subalternidad, antagonismo, autonomía marxismo y subjetivación política. 7. Tischler, “La forma clase y los movimientos sociales en Latinoamérica,” 3. 8. Badiou, Metapolitics, 97. 9. Badiou, “On a Finally Objectless Subject,” 25. 10. Žižek, “Against the Populist Temptation.” 11. Laclau, “Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics,” 248. 12. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 57–58. 13. Worsham and Olson, “Hegemony and the Future of Democracy: Ernesto Laclau’s Political Philosophy,” 14. 14. Laclau, “¿Por qué los significantes vacíos son importantes para la política?,” 69. [¿cómo es posible que un significante no esté unido a ningún significado y continúe siendo, a pesar de todo, parte integral de un sistema de significación?”] 15. Laclau, “Populismo: ¿Qué nos dice el nombre?,” 70. 16. Laclau, 57–60. 17. Laclau, “Subject of Politics, Politics of the Subject.” 18. Worsham and Olson, “Hegemony and the Future of Democracy: Ernesto Laclau’s Political Philosophy,” 7. 19. Laclau, Política e ideología en la teoría marxista: capitalismo, fascismo, populismo. 20. To these days, progressive governments seem to be in decline. For more on this topic, see Gaudichaud, Webber, and Modonesi, Los Gobiernos Progresistas Latinoamericanos del Siglo XXI. Ensayos de Interpretación Histórica. 21. Dussel, Hacia una filosofía política crítica, 192. [en las casi 10 mil páginas que Marx escribió de 1857 a 1867, su período creativo teórico por excelencia, no se encuentran dos páginas seguidas dedicadas al tema supra-infraestructura]. 22. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 76. 23. See Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; Gordon, What Fanon Said. 24. Convención Nacional Popular and Constituyente Ciudadana Popular, “Declaración Conjunta Ayotzinapa y Constituyente Ciudadana-Popular.” [[seguimos] caminos paralelos, pero no opuestos. Los objetivos de cada proyecto nos llevan a dialogar. En los días subsiguientes seguiremos fortaleciendo los puentes de diálogo, comunicación, entendimiento y acción para contribuir a la liberación de este oprobioso e injusto sistema neoliberal]. 25. See Andrade, Castañeda, and Díaz Cepeda, “Interview with Activist Miguel Ángel Jiménez Blanco.” 26. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 73. 27. Santos, Descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder, 29. [No sostengo que el pensamiento occidental moderno sea la única forma histórica de pensamiento abismal. Por el contrario, es altamente probable que existan o hayan existido, formas de pensamiento abismal fuera de Occidente]. 28. Díaz Cepeda, “#Yo Soy 132, a Networked Social Movement of Mexican Youth”; Ramírez Vázquez and Díaz Cepeda, “Borderlands Women in Resistance: Feminist Vindications in Social Movements.” 29. Santos, Refundación del Estado en América Latina. Perspectivas desde una Epistemología del Sur, 27. [Es tan difícil imaginar el fin del capitalismo, como que el capitalismo no tenga fin]. 30. Maldonado-Torres, “Race, Religion, and Ethics in the Modern/Colonial World.” 31. Santos, Descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder, 29. [que opera por la definición unilateral de líneas radicales que dividen las experiencias, los actores, y los saberes sociales entre los que son visibles, inteligibles, olvidados o peligrosos’ . . . la división es tal que el otro

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lado de la línea desaparece como realidad, se convierte en no existente y de hecho es producido como no existen]. 32. Santos, Una Epistemología del Sur. La reinvención del conocimiento y la emancipación social, ed. José Guadalupe Gandarilla Salgado (Argentina: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales—CLACSO; Siglo XXI Editores, 2009). 33. Mariátegui, Seven Interpretative Essays on the Peruvian Reality. 34. Walsh, “Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies ‘Others’ in the Andes.” 35. Santos, Descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder, 53. [Para una ecología de saberes, el conocimiento-como-intervención-es-la-realidad es la medida del realismo, no el conocimientocomo-una-representación-de-la-realidad]. 36. Pineda, Interview. [al principio era confuso quien era el actor central porque los papás estaban apenas organizando, y bueno con el duelo, entender ese proceso SERAPAZ estaba acompañando a los padres de Ayotzinapa, pero hubo una reunión con los normalistas, y los normalistas lo que nos dijeron fue, ustedes hagan básicamente y entonces la plataforma empujo estos 4 días de acción global, pero en ese inter se fue constituyendo con cada vez más fuerza el actor padres normalistas, como conducción, ellos convocarían aunque de manera confusa a la convención nacional popular y luego los propios normalistas anunciarían su movilización para el 20 de noviembre]. 37. Santos, Una Epistemología del Sur. La reinvención del conocimiento y la emancipación social, ed. José Guadalupe Gandarilla Salgado (Argentina: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales—CLACSO; Siglo XXI Editores, 2009), 136. [La traducción es el procedimiento que permite crear inteligibilidad recíproca entre las experiencias del mundo, tanto las disponibles como las posibles, reveladas por la sociología de las ausencias y las sociologías de las emergencias]. 38. Santos, Descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder, 56. [la preferencia debe ser dada a la forma de conocimiento que garantice el mayor nivel de participación a los grupos sociales involucrados en su diseño, ejecución y control, y en los beneficios de la intervención]. 39. Santos, 48. [marxismo reclamará que la emancipación de los trabajadores se debe luchar junto con la emancipación de todas las poblaciones descartables del Sur global].

Chapter Six

A New Order

Thus far, I have demonstrated that when the people become aware of the oppressive conditions that affect them, we may organize, protest, and demand a solution to the problems. In extreme cases, this may include overcoming a corrupt state. This is the negative aspect of politics; negative in the sense of destroying fetishized institutions, although to clarify, this is not meant in a moral sense. It is now necessary to move to the positive aspect; positive in the sense of building a new order. How this new order should be built and maintained is the topic of this chapter. Despite repression and limited success, social activists in México have remained organized, fighting for liberation. In order to fully appreciate their efforts and learn valuable lessons, it is imperative to learn what future these activists envision in terms of the form of the political organization for the country that they want. In the case of the last cycle of mobilization in México (2008–2018) it is possible to see that some groups are striving for forms of direct democracy, beyond the liberal conception of the nation-state, and are looking to set up Zapatista-like municipalities. However, other groups are looking to establish a truly representative democracy by eliminating the corrupt political class in order to institute a new formal government that truly obeys the mandates of the people. When imagining the characteristics of these new governments, some of them have in mind the so-called progressive governments of the last decade in South America (i.e. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, José Mujica in Uruguay, and Evo Morales in Bolivia). Literature shows instances of both forms of democracy. On one hand, there is the autonomist option represented by the Irish-born but long-time Mexican resident John Holloway, who uses the concept of “Multitude” developed by Negri and Hardt (2001). Holloway considers that the multitude 97

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does not need institutions that represent the general will of the population, since capitalism has absorbed the nation-state, including the institutions that should promote the well-being of the people. On the other hand, Enrique Dussel argues that it is necessary that the people give themselves institutions that generate the material conditions that guarantee the lives of the people. These institutions should be part of a state, which should not be limited by the liberal conception of it. Dussel argues for a transmodern definition of the state that is beyond capitalism and where government is executed via obediential power. Certainly, progressive governments represent a step forward in radicalizing democracy. However, I think that the limitations they have shown—i.e. an extractive economic model and their requirement of subsuming all social movement organizations (SMOs) under the state, indicate that these answers are not enough. Consequently, as philosophers committed to positive social change, we need to continue working toward developing categories that may be useful for the further growth of our societies. In this chapter, I contend for a middle ground between these two opposing positions. I argue that while it is desirable and necessary to create institutions, it is not the case that all social movements should become part of the summa potesta: the state. I have two reasons for this. One is factual: it is impossible for any government to meet all demands, hence not all of them can become part of the government’s structure. The second is normative: organized civil society, in the form of hyperpotentia, should keep their autonomy themselves, for this creates equilibrium in power which may prevent instituted power to fetishize, as well as open spaces where radical democracy can be advanced and experimented with. AUTONOMY As can be expected, within a complex social movement there exist several movements, organizations, and a plethora of demands. Within the Ayotzinapa movement, though united by the objective of finding the 43 studentteachers alive, there also exists a diversity of proposals about how to handle the relation with the state. In this section, I will present the perspective of those organizations which claim that power and, by extension, power relationships are particularly harmful under the capitalist society, as capital hides its use of power under the label of legality and individual freedom. According to this view, the state is in fact in service of capital, hence it cannot be trusted to be a means to true freedom. Moreover, in order for people to build a fair and equalitarian society, the state should be erased, in that the existence and use of power is inherently oppressive.

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In the autonomist approach, the starting point is not the verb but rather the shout No! No! to the killing of thousands of people. No! to the continued and systematic disappearance of people. No! to the exploitation from the capitalistic system. This shout can come from different places and experiences. What all these movements share is the feeling that the world is wrong, that this cannot be reality. In a few words, “That is our starting point: rejection of a world that we feel to be wrong, negation of a world we feel to be negative. This is what we must cling to.” 1 This moment of pure indignation breaks the walls imposed by normality that says: it is your fault; you do not work hard enough! By shouting No! civil society reclaims the social space and rebels together against the lies of capitalism. It is this sense of solidarity and commonality that brought out the so-called stroller contingent, a group of mothers that decided to participate in the demonstrations by walking with their babies in solidarity with the parents of the 43 missing students. This same sense of solidarity, awareness, and experience made the Solidarity Committee decide to protect them by placing this group in the middle of the march, surrounded by other protesters that would protect them should be there any repression. Holloway argues that solidarity acts, as that mentioned above, recognize the primordiality of the social versus the individual. We recognize that our problems and their possible solutions can only be solved as a We. At first this We is blurred. It is more a question than an answer; a question that comes from the antagonist position where the capitalistic system has placed us all. This We is not homogeneous, in fact there are contradictions within. Some of us enjoy some middle-class privileges, while others live in extreme poverty; some live in the city and others in rural areas. There are no longer any certainties, so we scream. This “scream is two-dimensional: the scream of rage that arises from present experience carries within itself a hope, a projection of possible otherness.” 2 There is a tension between what it is and what we desire to be. We shout, This world is unfair, another world is possible! This tension projects us to an open, but unsure future, where the awareness of injustices and the desire and actions to stop them does not guarantee that this other possible world would actually be instantiated. It is conceivable, and unfortunately quite common that social movements’ demands are not satisfied. However, this null satisfaction should not be taken as a definitive not, but as a not-yet. Meanwhile, social movement organizations (SMOs) can become an oasis where this future is already built, and they can become an experimental ground and a reference for how a fair and communal future might look. As can be seen in the Ayotzinapa movement, the acknowledgment of the first part of the sentence will not necessarily bring the instantiation of the second. This is to say, the events in Iguala caused massive mobilizations, as

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had not been seen in México in decades, yet the social and economic system has not substantially changed. This is no reason to stop. On the contrary, it must reaffirm the fighting identity of those who are being denied by the system. This affirmation of the negated requires a new way of understanding the world. It is not only about seeing the world from above because this may come to mean only a reversal of the poles, where a group of people that is oppressed rises up and takes over power. This would signify only a change in the master, not in a system based on hierarchies. The goal is to build a system where power relationships are not existent or minimal as in the Zapatista communities. Also, in the context of urban social movements, the #Iam132 organized their assemblies in such a way that different people coordinated every meeting. They did it with the purpose of avoiding the possibility that the movement would become dependent on the leaders. 3 As can be seen in the example given, for the autonomist position the disappearance of power-based relationships and the building of a better, more humane society includes the elimination of the state. This position rejects the orthodox way of bringing social change: subscribe to a political party, vote for your candidate, and expect that he will get it done. Or, if you doubt the existing political parties, join a revolutionary organization, help to bring it to power, and then use the state to alter society. Autonomists disagree with both positions, considering: The state logic slowly and deeply penetrates the indigenous organization, through a way of doing completely opposite to that of the communities, which base their work on rotation (which prevents the birth of a bureaucracy), the permanent decentralization of doing (opposed to centralism) and the obedience of the leaders to the assemblies (which does not allow their separation from the community). 4

One of the arguments against using the state to change the world is that “constitutional view isolates the state from its social environment: it attributes to the state an autonomy of action that it just does not have. In reality, what the state does is limited and shaped by the fact that it exists as just one node in a web of social relations.” 5 The most important being the manner in which work is organized. Given that as in most parts of the world, work in México is organized under a capitalist system, and it is possible to infer that the state is submissive to capital. In addition to this, what the Ayotzinapa social movement and the previous movements (Ciudad Juárez and MPJD) made evident was that in México we live not only under capitalism, but even more disturbing, under a narco-capitalism where the rule of law is not important, and may serve a mitigating resource. 6 A second argument against focusing the revolutionary efforts in taking control of the state is that this becomes the main goal, instead of just a means to achieve social justice. This is to say, “the induction into the conquest of

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power inevitably becomes an induction into power itself.” 7 In this process, activists learn the language, logic, and rules of power. The disagreements between activists turn into fights for the control of SMOs and power. Under this logic—the conquest of power—SMOs are just an instrument to achieve this goal. Whatever organization that is not useful to this goal is relegated to a secondary position. During this research, I did not find any evidence that SMOs were behaving in an instrumental way and were using the cause of the missing 43 students to take control of the state for their own purposes. On the contrary, even some organizations such as the Human Rights Center of the Tlachinollan Mountain (Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montana Tlachinollan) that had been established long before the forced disappearance of the students had an agenda of “defending human rights of the indigenous peoples, and mestizos as well, and we take charge of accompanying the documentation, defense, development of strategies in cases of human rights violation. We also document cases of rapes committed against women, especially indigenous women.” 8 They did not offer stipulations regarding their assistance and support for the parents of the 43. It can even be said that they paused their own agendas in order to offer full support to them. When the people live in oppression they shout with rage. Not just in protest, but in a plea against the system that denies us. It is a shout that goes beyond the limits that had been imposed on us and is projected to the future we desire. It is the negation of this very system that denies us. Doing so implies a movement that bursts into history and breaks its course, creating something that does not exist yet. Counter to the unscrupulous individualism advised by capitalism, this doing is social, it implies the activities of other people. It is always collective, communal. In Holloway’s words, “Doing, in other words, is the material constitution of the ‘we,’ the conscious and unconscious, planned and unplanned, braiding of our lives through time.” 9 By recognizing the doing of the other each one of us acquires social validation as a subject. This “we-ness” could be observed in how people who usually would not participate in social mobilization became involved in the Ayotzinapa social movement because they recognized them as teachers, as a critical component in society. To this element of the argument, Holloway has enunciated and argued powerful reasons for why the conquest of power should not be the objective of social mobilization. Yet, the question of how to change the world without taking power, has not been answered. In order to answer this question, he explains that it is vital to understand how power relations are constructed. The concept of power is deeply contradictory, it can refer to opposing conditions: “power-to” and “power-over,” where the first refers to can-ness, to the people’s capacity to do, and the second is the power to control and appropriate the product of the work of others. Again, power-to is always social and refers to the net we all are part of. I, as a college professor, would not be able

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to perform my work if janitors, secretaries, and college officials did not exist. It is not a matter of individual effort, but a matter of mutual contribution and collaboration that allows the social flux to continue to function. Social flux is interrupted when it gets transformed into its opposite, “power-over.” This happens when a group arrogate to themselves the projectionbeyond (conception) of the doing and command others to execute what they have conceived. This is to say, the powerful people plan, but do not execute the doing. By doing so, they separate the done from the doers, which causes doers to lose their subjectivity and become mere objects to the powerful. In order to reverse this hierarchical social order that separate the haves from the have-nots, we need to remember that we are in fact the doers, that the powerful depend on us, on our work to stay in power. We need to reclaim our power-to, without transforming it to power-over another people. For Holloway, potentia cannot be replaced by potestas, for the latter is already an instance of power-over. TRANSMODERN STATE As we saw in the previous section, literature presents a dilemma between direct democracy and representative democracy, where Holloway 10 and Zibechi favor the former. To Dussel this is a false dilemma, for “indignation is necessary, but immediately it must be practiced as democratic participation, which is like the other arm of democracy. Representation is necessary, just as participation is.” 11 To elaborate on the topic, democracy is where discussions about the issues of the community are done vis-à-vis; people have the opportunity to express their concerns with their peers and be organized to reclaim their rights and needs face-to-face. Nevertheless, the feasibility principle notes that in an undersized city it is already impossible to hold an assembly of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. Hence, representative democracy is needed to facilitate a decision-making process. At the same time, it makes room for institutions that will prevail beyond the participation of specific individuals. Institutions grow to become a formal government, to establish the state as summa potesta. For Dussel, once power is understood as service, it can be instantiated, though not exclusively, in the state. In order for the state to become an institution in the service of the poor, it is necessary to deconstruct it, analyze it, and transform it. Through liberation praxis, in time of crisis, active participation of people creates a new hegemony that is translated in formal political power, in what Dussel calls the higher institution: the state, but not only on it, as direct democracy is vital to keep the government in check. Now that it is clear that the autonomist position and Dussel’s philosophy of liberation, though there is discord on the how-to, share the same goal of the emancipa-

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tion of the oppressed, we can move forward and analyze Dussel’s arguments more deeply. Social discontent may erupt in spontaneous protests where even those who are not accustomed to being involved in politics take to the streets and claim what is theirs: political power. At first, people participate out of indignation and, usually, join or start a social movement with their peers. 12 These early moments play a pivotal role in gaining membership to mobilization, as they do not require a long-term commitment. It is a conjunctural instance filled with pure courageousness and dignity. If the demand is shared or considered fair, and hence adopted, by more people, it may grow to a large and heterogenous social movement. However, Dussel explains: “A spontaneous movement as the ‘event,’ as described by Antonio Negri in Empire, or large mass demonstrations as in Seattle, Barcelona or Cancun, without previous organization, without being able to foresee its eruption, and without being able to establish a continuity in time [. . .] dissolves in the short time.” 13 This first moment is pure negativity, the bringing down of a fetishized system and may result in pure anarchism. Without diminishing their importance, Dussel qualifies anarchist social movements as wishful and largely dependent on the spontaneity of particular individuals, which may cause social movements to lose power as members lose interest in the matters or when material conditions force them to go back to normality. When this happens and people return to their day-to-day lives, unless there is an institution that remains, they will essentially be thrown back into a state of isolation far from pressing community issues. They will not have transitioned from civil society to political society, for “the truth of anarchism is participation, but it becomes idealistic moralism without institutionalization at all levels of the political orders (from the neighborhood and the village, to the commune, the municipality, the provincial, regional, federal or world state).” 14 According to Dussel, for social movements to make the leap from civil society to political society, they need to overcome two obstacles. The first is the position which conceives power as domination and the state as a naturally corrupt institution. For these thinkers. i.e. Holloway, power should be taken without winning control of the state. The second obstacle consists of those positions, i.e. orthodox Marxism, which claim that in order to change the world, it is enough to take control of the state. To the Argentinian philosopher, both positions are mistaken because, as I mentioned above, both forms, direct and representative democracy, are necessary. Again, having direct democracy without formal institutions is a risk, for it may become an unstable political system due to its dependence on the wishes of the people. Likewise, pure representative democracy, without active participation of the people, would be empty and may not reflect the true will of the people.

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Dussel argues that the social movements’ transition from civil society to political society means the need to redefine power as the strength of the wills of communities that unify their objectives democratically from below (as the Sandinista slogan reads, “the united people will never be defeated”). If that is possible or necessary is still under debate. What is clear is that social movements are essential to the efforts of building a new means of doing politics, from below. In that sense, it is important to note that having spontaneous social mobilization is not enough, as power from below requires “being aware of political responsibilities and beginning a struggle at all levels for the democratization of all structures.” 15 Some people will become aware that solving one issue is not enough to truly transform the system, and even if it does, keeping the system in check requires stable organizations; some of them will be organized for the median and the long-term. This transitions to a positive transformation—the building of a new order from below where people actively participate through social movements, neighborhoods committees, etc. in order to avoid loss of power. Social movements need to be structured in solid organizations, otherwise they become a form of “politics without continuity [in time], unable to truly modify history.” 16 This institutionalization requires the participation of social activists and organic intellectuals, practice, and theory in order to lead not only social movements, but more so, SMOs, in order to reach long-term goals. To summarize, as important as social movements are, it is vital to understand that discontent without organization is futile because its very effectiveness depends on spontaneous actions that if not channeled and properly conducted towards a transcendental goal, risk disappearing as spontaneously as they acted in the first place. Most likely, this ephemeral nature would prevent protesters from achieving a sustaining and tangible long-term goal. Every political movement needs popular participation, clear normative principles, hegemonic projects, adequate organization, and reliable and effective leadership. It is only by being organized that people can gain enough power to make a true transformation of the political system. This second, and simultaneous, moment requires SMOs, which are beyond the voluntarism and spontaneity that may occur in some social movements. While these organizations already have a bureaucratic structure, “they have goals aimed at changing the society and its members; they wish to restructure society or individuals, not to provide it or them with a regular service.” 17 THE NEED OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATIONS As I presented in the last section, Dussel agrees with the autonomist position, specifically with Holloway, that capitalism is a system of exploitation, and consequently, a state under capitalism is also an oppressive institution. How-

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ever, he disagrees that all forms of state are oppressive. He proposes the notion of a transmodern state which executes obediential power. In this section I will focus on the critique that the Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gomez makes of Dussel’s theory. First, I will present an overview of Castro-Gomez’s theory. Second, I will outline his criticism, and I will conclude by countering his critique. Castro-Gómez is one of the many philosophers who are attempting to articulate a form of democracy better than the European-liberal one. CastroGómez’s political theory, as presented in Revoluciones sin Sujeto [Revolutions without Subject], 18 is based on antagonism, which he posits at an ontological level. According to this position, the realm of politics does not have a first foundation, but its principles are decided by the community at a social level. The social level is then the arena where oppressed people can manifest their interests and have them validated by a majority of the community’s population. Allow me to elaborate on his argument. When it comes to politics, Castro-Gómez identifies two opposing positions. The first, represented by Jacques Rancière, 19 does not accept any form of institutions. For him, politics is defined as policing. Policing comes to mean that having a group of people ruling a country implies that there exists another group of people incapable of ruling themselves. Given that in a true democracy every person should have a voice of their own, having someone else dictating what to do is unacceptable. In a few words, according to this position, representative democracy is not true democracy. Counter to this is the idea that formal institutions are the higher and better level of politics. According to Castro-Gómez, this position is held by Enrique Dussel when he claims that direct democracy works as a postulate. Yet, it is not achievable, as it would be impossible for the people to be in a permanent assembly, making all decisions needed, or even for all the inhabitants of a city to gather in an assembly. Institutions as potestas are then needed to instantiate the will of the people. Castro-Gómez situates himself between these two positions. At the same time that he agrees that institutions are necessary to efficiently instantiate the will of the people, he wonders if all hegemony needs to be exercised at the level of the state. In Revoluciones sin sujeto (Revolutions without Subject) 20 his answer is negative; he does not consider that the will of the people can be exercised only through state institutions. For him, the social sphere is the place where this will is determined, hence before thinking about taking over the state, we need to think about having the general will of the population. In a few words, in order for positive material conditions to be permanent and solid, not only the state, but more importantly, the social sphere also needs to be conquered in favor of the have-nots. Castro-Gómez’s political philosophy follows Foucault’s notion in that where there is power, there is resistance, which is an indication that antago-

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nism is the ontological foundation from where everything originates. This notion is based on an ontology grounded on Nietzsche’s will to power. This influence can be found in early writings of Foucault’s where he argues against Aristotle’s notion that human beings have a natural desire for knowledge. To the French philosopher, will precedes knowledge. In Foucault’s words, “[W]e gain knowledge to command, to lord it over, not for the sake of knowledge.” 21 What is natural in human beings and in all nature, then, is the drive to master others. But will to power is not the desire to nullify and completely erase the opponent. On the contrary, there is agonism where the triumphant will absorbs some of traits of the defeated opponent and leaves the former with some energy. From these two premises we can conclude that 1) antagonism is the ontological foundation and 2) there is no absolute winner, i.e. a single, absolute belief that necessarily needs to be followed by everyone. From this, Castro-Gomez concludes that there are not first principles in politics. Principles are determined by the winner in a struggle between differing positions. For the purpose of this research, this means that the holders of different belief systems fight to add the rest of the population to their cause. I am talking of course of the concept of hegemony defined by Gramsci as the common sense that shapes the rules of a society. According to this argument, once a position becomes hegemonic, it determines the political organization and values of its community. Castro-Gomez follows Gramsci in the need to conquer hegemony through social practices, not by taking over government institutions from above. However, he distances himself from the Italian revolutionary and argues that the proletarian is not the privileged political subject. Along with Ernesto Laclau, Castro-Gómez argues that challenges to the status quo may come from different groups that experience oppression: women, indigenous communities, disadvantaged people, minorities, etc. According to this argument, if oppressed people want to truly change the system, they need to develop social practices that are adopted by the rest of the population as common sense. Only, then, when the have-nots win cultural hegemony, do they have real power and legitimate access and control of government institutions. In brief, to Castro-Gomez, as progressive governments show, in order for the have-nots to improve their material conditions, they need state institutions. According to him, however, control over state institutions does not guarantee political power. In order to gain stable political power, it is necessary to have hegemony, and that battle is fought and won in day-to-day life, through social practices. 22 I agree with Casto-Gómez’s position that the oppressed should be the promoters of their own liberation. I also agree that state institutions are needed in order to promote and safeguard their rights. Moreover, I concur that state institutions are not the only way to do so. But I do not think that social practices are enough to challenge and change the current

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oppressive political system, at least not in a country like mine, Mexico, where being poor, a woman, indigenous, or young is almost a virtual death sentence. Social practices and organization are necessities. In the following paragraphs, then, I will present my case in favor of SMOs. In order to refute Castro-Gómez’s argument, first I will show that his portrayal of Dussel’s political philosophy as one that excludes social activists as political actors and only relies on the state is incorrect. Second, I will show how social movements are not only theoretically needed, but more importantly, they are required and are being used as a powerful tool to promote change in real life in Mexico, and, for that matter, all around the world. In Revoluciones sin Sujeto (Revolutions without Subject) Castro-Gómez criticizes some aspects of Dussel’s political theory, specifically his call for state institutions. It is my position that this is a limited and mistaken interpretation of Dussel’s political theory, because it completely ignores the category of hyperpotentia (social movements) presented by Dussel in both his Twenty Theses on Politics 23 and in The Politics of Liberation Vol. II. 24 To be clear, I am not claiming that Dussel’s philosophy does not advocate for state institutions; it does. In fact, in the aforementioned books he argues that it is necessary that through critical consensus the people give themselves institutions that generate and protect the material conditions that guarantee the lives of the people. These institutions grow to become the state, but it should not be limited to the liberal conception of it. Based on this aspect of consensus, Castro-Gomez criticizes Dussel by arguing that his conception of critical consensus assumes 1) that there are no controversies and differences among the people and 2) that this general will is to be transferred without any distortion from potentia to potestas. In a few words, Castro–Gómez interprets Dussel as if once a consensus has been reached, there is no more room for antagonism. As I mentioned before, I disagree with this conclusion. I will show now that antagonism is in fact a key aspect of Dussel’s philosophy. As explained previously in Chapter 4, “A State of Rebellion,” to the traditional categories of potentia and potestas, Dussel adds the category of hyperpotentia, which describes the social movements organized by people excluded by the system. Since the initiation of his philosophy of liberation, Dussel claimed that people cannot establish perfect systems since that would require infinite intelligence and, clearly, that is something human beings do not possess. We can only hope that our actions actually benefit the victims. This same logic is transferred to state institutions. No matter how hard rulers try, even the ones with the desire to serve the victims, there will always be a group of excluded people. These groups become aware of their harsh conditions and organize to fight the oppressive system. They are the hyperpotentia, “the power of the people, its sovereignty and authority that emerges in creative moments of history to inaugurate great transformations or radical

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revolutions.” 25 Hyperpotentia have two crucial roles in Dussel’s philosophy. The first is to establish new rights as a community becomes organized and demands that its needs be met. The second one is to prevent the state from fetishizing and holding power for the sake of power—not to serve the poor. In “The Widow, the Orphan, and the Stranger: Levinasian Themes in Dussel’s Political Theory,” 26 Michael Paradiso-Michau tells us that Dussel suggests a dimension of political responsibility in favor of the victims. This is to say, the will to live, against the will to power. Such an inclusive human world can only come from a world that is built from the bottom where there are no power elites who impose a totalizing system that denies the identity, dignity, and will to live of the other. To prevent social leaders from becoming perpetrators, it is important that those who command, do so by obeying. This type of command is given in a form of solidarity and co-responsibility in which both “I” and the other will take responsibility to eliminate the social conditions that oppress the other. In conclusion, Dussel argues, then, for a transmodern definition of the state, one that goes beyond capitalism and where the government rules by obeying (mandar obedeciendo), a term that was first used by the Zapatista Army and more recently by Evo Morales. It means that rulers exercise delegated power by obeying the orders of the people. To this idea, Dussel adds the notion of obeying by commanding (obedecer mandando); this is to say, in order to be able to execute the orders of the people, rulers need to ensure that the consensus of the people is followed by enforcing the law. These two aspects of politics are the embodiment and union of direct democracy (the command of the people) and representative democracy as instantiated on the obediential power of the state, where both are necessary. Given these conclusions, in the following section I will show that SMOs are a vital component in the connection between a direct and a participatory democracy, in that they create independent spaces where there is a direct and organized participation in the representation of the interests of the people, while promoting a sense of community where individual and communal interests are reconciled and unified. I will argue that in order to meet these duties SMOs should exist independently of the state in a perennial state of rebellion. CONCLUSION Throughout this book I have shown that México went through a cycle of mobilization that started in 2006 when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006–2012) initiated a war on drugs, which was continued by his successor, President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018), and greatly diminished in 2018 with the election of the leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This

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war on drugs meant the display and use of the military to perform the duties of civil law enforcement agencies. The narrative used by both President Calderόn and President Peña was that the use of the military was a temporal response to the state of emergency created by the increasing narco-violence. 27 However, since 2008 a few SMOs claimed that the use of the military was a de facto state of exception in order to control the population for rebelling against the increasing social and economic inequalities caused by the corruption of the state. Given the rising numbers of killed and missing people, as well as of the denunciation of human rights abuses by the military, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), the Ayotzinapa social movement, and a large percentage of civil society agreed with this position and concluded that the political ruling class must leave. They organized, shaping a state of rebellion via several social movements to bring down the corrupt government and establish a legitimate government. To this moment, none of those initiatives had been successful. Yet, both PAN and PRI were voted out of the presidency and in 2018 Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador was elected under a leftist agenda. We have seen, then, that when 1) the people become politically conscious, 2) reach a critical consensus about the need to fight back, and 3) have a feasible project they might have enough power to bring down an oppressive regime. Once they triumph and the state of rebellion is ended, a new legitimate government is born. Normality is then reestablished, until a new state of emergency comes to be, and consequently, a new cycle starts. Dussel argues that this never-ending cycle is meant to happen, because any state will also have failures, for not doing so necessitates infinite intelligence, pure fraternity, and unlimited time, which are characteristics beyond human constitution. This perpetual renewal goes to a metaphysical level as Levinas proposes in Otherwise than Being; 28 the Other does not allow being to be at home with itself. This shows that the end of history (totality) is never reached, as Hegel proposes, and instead demonstrates the perennial need for a philosophy of liberation, since there will always be those excluded from the system. If, as Dussel claims, every system (as righteous as it can be) is necessarily imperfect, and it will, even unintentionally, cause victims, and by definition they will be out of the system, their voices will not be heard. This exclusion of the victims creates a problem for a government that aspires to be democratic, since the will-to-live of those victims is the criterion for a true democracy. The answer cannot be to include those victims into the new government structure, because there will be some other groups left out. From this, it logically follows that the only solution is to accept and even promote the existence of SMOs out of the state, so people can express and actively work on the solution to their demands. In that sense, even when I am in corroboration with Dussel’s proposal, I do not concur with his idea that the state of rebellion is to be called only

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under extreme circumstances, but it needs to be permanent because, as Walter Benjamin argued, the state of exception in which we live is the rule. Our task then is to produce the effective state of exception. In agreement with Benjamin but using Dussel’s category of state of rebellion instead of state of exception, I argue then that given that we live in a permanent state of exception, correspondingly we need to live in a perennial state of rebellion. It is important to clarify that a permanent state of rebellion does not necessitate living in a permanent state of war in the state or in full civil disobedience, but rather for the people to be alert and willing to disobey those rules and institutions that affect the lives of the most oppressed ones; this is to say, the lives of the victims of the system. These spaces which are in the limits of the system (they cannot be completely outside, for that would mean that they are not affected by a current system) are the counter-hegemonic vigilant eyes and hands that point out both the deficiencies that any political system has and the possible source for the solution of some of those deficiencies. Again, I argue that they have the solution to some of the problems because no system is perfect. When some problems are fixed, it will be possible to perceive new ones. An example of this is feminism. Just after the first wave won property and voting rights for women, it was possible to see that these rights were suited for white, property-holding women, and did not necessarily represent the most pressing needs of black or Latin women. A political system that pretends to be rightful should always be open to self-criticism by hearing the voice of the Other, and this voice is better listened to when it is organized, rather than being presented as a cacophony of unexamined opinions. The best way to participate, so I argue, is through social organizations. In a country like mine, México, where being a woman, or young, or poor is punishable by constant harassment and, tragically, even with death, mobilization cannot stop at the social level. People must become involved in politics and not leave this vital task solely to politicians. Here, the concept of politics is not confined to the liberal conception of representative democracy and the nation-state. To participate in politics is to be organized in institutions that go beyond volunteerism and the underlying constant ethical commandments. However, it is important to remember that since government institutions are made up of human beings, and human beings are imperfect, institutions are also imperfect. Thus, we also need to exercise our power in institutions other than the state, i.e. social movement organizations. Social movement organizations should go beyond mere social movements and offer stable and reliable platforms to sustain a long-term struggle. In the words of Sergio Moissen, a member of the Socialist Workers Movement (Movimiento de Trabajadores Socialistas, MTS): The weakness is that, although there is an eruption of politics at the national level it is still very movements based, right? And that is a problem, every time

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there is a problem, we mobilize and there are thousands in the streets, but afterwards there is nothing organized, something stronger, right? So, when the reflux comes the state advances and attacks us, and it hits hard against we all. 29

In conclusion, presenting politics as either potentia or potestas is a false dilemma, for there is a third option: hyperpotentias instantiated in social movements. I consider the existence of social movements to be vital in a struggle for radical democracy since they allow pedestrians to organize without the restrictions and burden, bureaucracy, resource limitations, etc., of government institutions. I propose, then, that social movements, as a hyperpotentia, are the best way to link potentias with potestas and thus maintain the people as the entity making the political decisions. Social movement organizations should not be perceived as a failure of democracy, but as a triumph and essential component as they allow for sudden and necessary transitions between formal political institutions, the state being the higher level, and civil society. Given that we live in a permanent state of emergency, a perennial state of rebellion is necessary. Thus, social organizations must keep working and functioning even when there is a leftist government. These organizations represent the voices of those excluded from the system. NOTES 1. Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder, 2010, 19. [Este es nuestro punto de partida: el rechazo de un mundo al que sentimos equivocado, la negación de un mundo percibido como negativo. Debemos asirnos a esto]. 2. Holloway, 24. [Nuestro grito, entonces, es bidimensional: el grito de rabia que se eleva a partir de nuestra experiencia actual conlleva una esperanza, la proyección de una otredad posible]. 3. Muñoz Ramírez, #Yo Soy 132: Voces del Movimiento. 4. Zibechi, Descolonizar el pensamiento crítico y las rebeldías. Autonomías y emancipaciones en la era del progresismo, 361. [la lógica estatal penetra lenta y profundamente la organización indígena, mediante un modo de hacer completamente opuesto al as comunidades, que basan su trabajo en la rotación (lo que impide el nacimiento de una burocracia), la descentralización permanente del hacer (opuesta al centralismo) y la sujeción de los dirigentes a las asambleas (lo que no permite su separación de la comunidad)]. 5. Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder, 2010, 32. [El punto de vista constitucional aísla al Estado de su contexto social: le atribuye una autonomía de acción que de hecho no tiene. En realidad, lo que el Estado hace está limitado y condicionado por el hecho de que existe sólo como un nodo en una red de relaciones sociales]. 6. For more on the wrongful use of law enforcement agencies see: Hernández, La verdadera noche de iguala. La historia que el gobierno trató de ocultar. 7. Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder, 2010, 35. [La instrucción en la conquista del poder inevitablemente se convierte en una instrucción del poder mismo]. 8. Hardaga, Interview. 9. Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder, 2010, 50. [El hacer, en otras palabras, es la constitución material del nosotros, el entrelazar consiente e inconscientemente, planificado y sin planificar de nuestras vidas a lo largo del tiempo]. 10. Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder, 2005.

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11. Dussel, Enrique, Carta a los Indignados, 1st ed. (México: Los nuestros. La Jornada ediciones, 2011), 18. Es necesaria la indignación, pero de inmediato hay que practicarla como participación democrática, que es como el otro brazo de la democracia. La representación es necesaria, e igualmente la participación. 12. Díaz Cepeda and Castañeda, “Activists’ Motivations and Typologies: Core Activists in Ciudad Juárez.” 13. Dussel, Enrique, Carta a los Indignados, 18. [Un movimiento espontaneo como el “acontecimiento” tal como lo describe Antonio Negri en Imperio, de grandes manifestaciones de masas como en Seattle, Barcelona o Cancún, sin organización previa, sin poder prever su erupción, y sin poder establecer una continuidad en el tiempo [. . .] se disuelve en el poco tiempo]. 14. Dussel, Enrique, 20. [La verdad del anarquismo es la participación, pero se vuelve moralismo idealista sin institucionalización en todos los niveles de los órdenes políticos (desde el barrio y la aldea, hasta la comuna, la municipalidad, el estado provincial, regional, federal o mundial)] 15. Dussel, Enrique, Carta a los Indignados, 212. [Tomar clara conciencia de las responsabilidades políticas y comenzar una lucha en todos los niveles una democratización de todas las estructuras]. 16. Dussel, Enrique, 19. [Es una política sin continuidad, que no puede afectar realmente a la historia] 17. Zald and Ash, “Social Movement Organization: Growth, Decay and Change,” 329. 18. Castro-Gómez, Revoluciones sin sujeto. Slavoj Žižek y la crítica del historicismo posmoderno. 19. See Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. 20. Castro-Gómez, Revoluciones sin sujeto. Slavoj Žižek y la crítica del historicismo posmoderno., 332. 21. Foucault, Lecciones sobre la voluntad de saber. Curso en Collége de France (1970–1971), 42. [porque conocemos para dominar, para imponernos, no para conocer]. 22. For more on the use of social practices as forms of resistance see James C Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale University Press, 2008). 23. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics. 24. Dussel, Política de la Liberación Vol. II. Arquitectónica. 25. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics, 81. 26. Paradiso-Michau, “The Widow, the Orphan, and the Stranger: Levinasian Themes in Dussel’s Political Theory.” 27. On February 22, 2019, the senate passed a constitutional reform, proposed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024), that will allow the military to formally be part of the National Guard, an allegedly civil law enforcement agency, but that for the following five years will be mostly made up and commanded by active military personnel. 28. Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence; 29. Moissen, Interview. [la debilidad es que, aunque hay una erupción de política a nivel nacional sigue siendo todavía muy movimientista no, y también es un problema, cada vez que hay una barrera y nos movilizamos y hay miles en las calles, pero después no hay nada organizado más fuerte no después es cuando no hay, cuando vino el reflujo el Estado avanza y ataca en masa, más duramente contra todos]

Conclusions

“Alive you take them; alive we want them!” Popular Demand

Maintaining a democratic system of government is no easy feat. A true democracy must listen to those who struggle for life and freedom from the exteriority of the system. Democracy then, cannot be limited to its liberal conception where some segments of society—i.e. poor people, indigenous, and minorities—are systematically left out of the decision-making process by several mechanisms. One of these is by not working towards eliminating social and economic inequalities. In the case of México as in other countries in the Global South, economic inequalities are vast. Obviously, these income disparities influence the decision-making process, as the owners of capital have a larger and almost complete influence on elected officials. The affluent control the political system by either directly being a part of it or by using their economic resources to finance the political campaigns of those candidates who are susceptible to this type of influence. The wrongful influence of capital in political structures in México is not limited to the formal institutions, but also goes go to facilitate illegal activities such as drug trafficking. In order to overcome these wrongdoings, a democracy needs to solve this dilemma between influence of wealth and the favor of the people. On those occasions where there has been a choice between an option that will serve the interests of the people or that of the capital owners, liberal democracy has tended to approve the one that benefits the former. This was evident in México in the year 2000, when for the very first time a president from the opposition was elected. The election of Vicente Fox Quezada (2000–2006, PAN) gave hope to Mexican citizens that the defeat of the Institutional Revo113

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lutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) would mean that the power structures would be open to the participation of the people and that there would be better living conditions. Fox Quezada’s administration postured to make decisions based on the people’s will and in their best interest, but the truth was that he kept the neoliberal agenda that his predecessors Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1998–1994, PRI) and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1995–2000, PRI) had maintained. The next two presidents, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006–2012, PAN) and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018, PRI), would follow suit. Even though it can be said that over these three decades of neoliberal government there was an improvement in formal democracy as election fraud accusations declined, unfortunately a legitimate democracy was far from being realized, as this neoliberal agenda caused the increase of poverty and economic inequalities in México, as well as an exponential growth of the drug cartels. Again, these conditions of economic and direct violence prevented a large segment of the population from effectively participating in community issues. A legitimate democracy does not only entail having a formal procedure where citizens have the possibility to choose their representatives, but as Santos claims, it is “any process of transforming relations of unequal power into relations of shared authority.” 1 A true democracy then recognizes, listens, and obeys the voices of the victims of the system. As Bishop Samuel Ruiz aptly stated when he was presented with the 2003 Voice of the Voiceless award by Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, it is not that indigenous people do not have a voice, it is that we are not listening. In order for the voice of the oppressed not to be ignored—either in stateless communities as proposed by Holloway 2 and Zibechi, 3 in state-based societies as the experimental state Santos argues in favor of, 4 or the obediential state defended by Dussel 5—their wants and needs must come directly from them as well as their organizations. I maintain that social movements meet this imperative, for they serve as a metaphorical megaphone shouting out the social and political circumstances affecting the political community and cannot be solved by the state. Necessarily, any government, even progressive ones, will face new needs and proposals that were not considered at first, but must be listened to as well. These voices come from the exteriority of the system, and hence are not part of the government structure but rather, are self-organized. In brief, social movements and their organizations are necessary to build and maintain a true democracy because they offer a voice to the otherwise voiceless. They are vital in combating oppressive regimes, but also are necessary in obediential states, as they promote participative democracy and are an invaluable moral reserve should the representatives democratically elected by the people fall prey to corruption. As necessary as social movements are, they are not easy to create nor to maintain. As shown in this book, social organizations must overcome several obstacles in order to

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be able to gain enough power for them to be in a position to challenge the state. Among these challenges, social movement organizations must solve issues on how to organize, how to establish relationships with other organizations, and how to work (or not work) with the state. As previously stated, there are several challenges social organizations face before they can reach a level of influence over the state. The first such challenge involves their very creation, as oppression does not generally respond with organization and resistance. Yet, sometimes people reach a breaking point which leads them to become organized and reclaim their power. In the case of the cycle of mobilization studied in this book, it can be seen that in Ciudad Juárez, initially only a few organizations that were portrayed as radical were denouncing the dangers of militarization. Most inhabitants of the city not only did not believe them, but rather they supported the presence of the military. In fact, in 2008 when the army first came to the city, some people actively welcomed them and showed their support, for they thought that their actions would stop the high levels of criminality. Little did they know that the military presence would have the opposite effect, as murder rates increased exponentially with the presence of the federal forces. It would take two years and the murder of sixteen high school students in the lowincome neighborhood of Villas de Salvarcar for people to unite in active opposition against the federal forces. During the time Ciudad Juárez was immersed in violence, some national organizations showed their solidarity, but the general population still did not see violence as an ongoing problem in the country. It was not until 2011 when the caravans organized by the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) allowed relatives of the victims of murder and kidnapping to speak out, that it was finally realized that violence was indeed a national problem. Even though MPJD made this issue visible to México’s population, it still could be considered a movement of victims and organizations, of the people. Accumulated anger and outrage galvanized with the Ayotzinapa movement; their demands found echo in people and massive marches, protests, and demonstrations were organized. The explosion of this accumulated anger conducted to a national and international movement that at its climax in 2014 was strong enough to challenge Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration and the state as a whole. In fact, it can be argued that the Ayotzinapa movement was a crucial factor in the defeat of PRI in the 2018 presidential elections. This rising of the people is explained by the Argentine-Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel. He argues that power always belongs to the people in the form of potentia. But as political communities become larger, direct democracy is no longer possible and their members need to name representatives to make decisions in their name. Potestas are constituted then as dele-

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gated power. However, when these delegates become corrupt and use power to their own benefit, the political community then becomes organized in hyperpotentias, social movements, and demand what ontologically belonged to them: political power. When there is this union, it is possible to talk about “el pueblo” (the people), which differs from the inhabitants of a country by having a strong political commitment with the needs of the community. They fight together to regain lost power and put it to the service of the most oppressed. It is important to note that having large mobilizations does not necessarily equal having a cohesive unified movement of movements. This brings us to the second question: if and how social organization should work together towards a movement of movements. Most of the time, single social organizations have a cohesive vison and agenda which allows their members to work together in the same direction. Difficulties arise when those single organizations find it necessary to work with other organizations in order to gain more combined political power. Sometimes they agree in who the common enemy is and in the overall goal, but they differ in the way they should pursue that goal. For example, some organizations may favor a pacifist route, while others are willing to use legitimate violence. Others may want to have a dialogue with the government, while anarchist or autonomous organizations consider that option to be pointless. Reconciling these differences has proven to be a large obstacle in the building of a national movement. The cycle of mobilization I study in this book is not foreign to these difficulties. In Ciudad Juárez, organizing a large social movement against the militarization took over two years. During this time, social activists who had a better understanding of the situation struggled to convince other groups of the gravity of the situation. The city’s movements can be grouped into radicals and progressive and professionals’ associations, with each having different understandings and interests. In addition, Ciudad Juárez’s civil society has long refrained from participating in the community issues. Yet, as we saw above, local organizations managed to create some level of articulation and gave birth to the movement against the militarization. In 2011, the organizations of Ciudad Juárez received the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity for a two-day meeting where a national pact was supposed to be discussed and signed. Since day one, it became clear that there were some strong programmatic differences between the distinct organizations. However, on the night of June 10 the pact was publicly signed in Ciudad Juárez, only to be denied the next day by the leader of MPJD. This caused a rupture between the organizations and a weakening of the national movement against violence. It would not be until 2014 with the unfortunate events in Iguala that the mobilization revived. The Ayotzinapa movement showed a better ability to manage the different organizations’ agendas. It was also formed by several organizations, but there was no central control. The

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parents would use the Global Day strategy and every organization could replicate it or not, according to their own capabilities. Also, even when some organizations that showed solidarity with the Ayotzinapa movement added some exigencies of their own, there was the unifying demand of finding the 43 students alive. Given the great difficulties in building a large heterogenous social movement, one could ask if it is the only option or if there are other possible alternatives. Latin American philosophers are split on this question. On the one hand, there are positions in favor of a unified movement, such as Laclau’s concept of the hegemon and Dussel’s elaboration of the same concept: the analogic hegemon. On the other hand, Santos does not deny the need for the unity of social movements, but he argues in favor of what I called a soft articulation. I hold that they are not mutually exclusive, for depending on the moment of the movement there could be a unifying element, i.e. a unique demand or a common enemy. However, when this element disappears, SMOs may decide to go in different directions. This split does not necessarily mean a setback for the movement as a whole, as every organization may now be able to better fight their local problems with tactics according to their particular circumstances and in an alliance with other groups that share their agenda and goals. This may optimize their resources and lead them to achieve social justice at a local level and a national level through the sum of their spheres of influence. Provided that a social movement had reached enough political power, a third question appears. What kind of world do they aim to build? In other words, once SMOs have managed to successfully challenge and defeat an oppressive regime, they and the population need to decide what form of political organization they want and need to pursue. One possibility is to have a direct democracy as in the Zapatista communities. This position is grounded on the idea that there should not be any, or as minimal as possible, separations between the decision and the decision-makers. Community members should directly make the decisions that affect their common lives. A different, but not necessarily opposite position recognizes the importance of direct democracy but posits that in larger communities it is not feasible to have direct democracy. Consequently, they argue for a combination of both direct and representative democracy, where the rulers truly obey the commands of the people. The disagreements between these two positions—autonomist and stateoriented—and their variants were a constant in the mobilization cycle I study in this book. In fact, in the case of the movement against the militarization in Ciudad Juárez, the controversy was not so much about if there should be a state or not. The problem was more about what kind of state should be built. Socialist organizations argued that in order for violence to stop, capitalism and the bourgeois state should end. However, professionals’ organizations

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recognized that the social and economic system should be modified, but defended a welfare government where economy was still profit-motivated, while the state would be in charge of providing social coverage. In the case of the MPJD the larger differences between the different social organizations stemmed from the level of responsibility of Calderόn’s administration in the exponential growth of violence. One position held that if Calderόn was guilty of protecting the cartels, clearly the solution would not come from them. The differing position claimed that citizens do not have enough power to directly fight the cartels and violence. They thought that the state alone had the capability to address violence via ending the impunity and providing the resources to build better and more cohesive communities. As MPJD entered in a dialogue with Calderόn and his cabinet, they came to the realization that the administration would not listen to the citizens. This understanding was confirmed later with the search for the 43 students taken by the police. The secrecy regarding what really happened that night and the persons who ordered the disappearance of the students, gave certainty to the people that the state as a whole was responsible for not only the disappearance of the 43 students, but also for the over 300,000 people killed and 60,000 people missing in the last decade. The question was then if the state was beyond redemption and citizens should seize power, or if the state could be fixed and turned into a truly democratic institution that would protect society. This question finds echo in Latin American political philosophy. On the one hand, there is the autonomist position defended by John Holloway who argues that the multitude does not need institutions to represent the will of the people. He considers that capitalism is responsible for the levels of violence and oppression in the world and that it has compromised the the state. In consequence, the end of capitalism implies the end of the state. Holloway continues his argument against the state and claims that pursuit of power becomes a struggle by itself, deviating people from the original reasons to fight. In that case SMOs and rules privilege “power over” rather than “power to.” On the other hand, Dussel advocates for a transmodern conception of the state where both direct and representative democracy are necessary. He argues that while direct democracy is desirable, it is not possible to do so in contexts where communities are made up of hundreds of thousands of people. They just cannot feasibly maintain an assembly this vast. The people need to name representatives, and hence, create institutions as the state. The representatives must practice power in an obediential manner, which means that they must follow the ethical duty of protecting lives, especially those of the most oppressed. In writing this book, I pursued two goals. The first is to give a diachronic revision of the last cycle of mobilization in México. Conducting this study will help us to identify patterns in social movements’ long-term behavior,

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especially in the way organizations take advantage of the political opportunities they are presented with, as well as the form in which they respond to the challenges they face. I consider this knowledge to be important because it may help social organizations to make informed decisions about where they want to go and the best means to achieve that. My second goal is to provide social activists, civil society, and students with some of the theories that Latin American philosophers have developed to explain and solve some of the problems that social organizations face as they attempt to build a radical democracy where the groups that are usually excluded—i.e. poor people, indigenous, women—take an effective part in the decision-making process. I am aware that even if these goals are achieved, there are still additional issues and topics that need to be covered in our search for radical democracy. This manuscript is of course not the final word on social movements nor a complete discussion of all the works that Latin American philosophers have published on the topic. Any one of the philosophers and problems I consider in this book can be (and have been) studied at large in Latin America as a regular part of universities’ degree plans, as well as in forums created by social movement organizations such as the World Social Forum. Also, as the existing literature in other languages and the fact that you are reading this book shows, their ideas are also studied in non-Spanish-speaking countries. Yet, as their theories are of great use for radicalizing democracy, we all should keep fighting for them to be known by a larger audience. In that sense, it is important to again point out that the questions asked in this manuscript are not the sole ones that Latin American and decolonial philosophers are working on. For example, Pablo González Casanova has been working over a period of five decades on issues of exploitation, internal colonialism, and indigenous rights, among other topics. 6 There is of course the work of Anibal Quijano and his conceptualization of the coloniality of power, which inspired the decolonial studies. 7 The decolonial turn and the decolonial option have developed into some of the strongest and most innovative philosophical traditions thanks to the seminal work of Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Catherine Walsh, Walter Mignolo, and Ramón Grosfoguel, among many others. As having a comprehensive list of the many and diverse themes and authors working in the global south on issues of democracy, government, state, and social movements is beyond the scope of this book, I must limit myself to the short list provided above. Another limitation of this book is the timeframe. As designed, the time period this book studies goes from 2008 to 2018, this is to say, from the movement against the militarization in Ciudad Juárez, to the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), and it finishes with the Ayotzinapa movement. While these three movements are still active, they are facing new political circumstances as now there is a leftist government in México, where many of the members of the now ruling political party were also either

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militant or allies of the social movements. Whether the new government will have the time to reshape the exercise of politics in México in favor of a real democracy is yet to be seen. México is coming out of a long period of neoliberal government and has not had a leftist government in decades. This will bring important experiences, lessons, and questions about the feasibility in the limits of government and the relationship between them and social organizations. NOTES 1. Santos, La difícil democracia. Una mirada desde la periferia europea, 229. [todo proceso de transformación de relaciones de poder desigual en relaciones de autoridad compartida]. 2. Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder. 3. Zibechi, Descolonizar el pensamiento crítico y las rebeldías. Autonomías y emancipaciones en la era del progresismo. 4. Santos, Toward a New Legal Common Sense. 5. Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics. 6. González Casanova, Explotación, colonialismo y lucha por la democracia en América Latina. 7. Quijano, Aníbal Quijano. Ensayos en torno a la colonialidad del poder.

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Index

Abarca Velázquez, José Luis, 40, 41, 46 ABC Baby care fire, 30, 34n4 abyssal thought, 87–88, 89–90 Acteal massacre, 43 Ainslie, Ricardo, 12 Alvarado family, 24 Álvarez Icaza, Emilio, 19, 26, 31, 32 Álvarez Orrantía, José Darío, 7–8 Ameglio Patella, Pietro, 19, 33 anarchy, 58, 65, 103, 116 Annunciation House, 10, 114 ANP (Asamblea Nacional Popular).. See National Popular Assembly antagonism, 83, 105, 106, 107 apathy, 30, 61, 62 Arab Spring, 75 Aristotle, 106 arms trafficking, 32 articulation: Articulation Group Justice for Juárez, 11; in Ciudad Juárez Movement against militarization, 8–9. See also soft articulation Autonomous Metropolitan University (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana) (UAM), 27 Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez (Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez) (UACJ), 7–8, 9, 25 autonomy: Holloway on, 53, 118; new order and, 98–102

Ayotzinapa social movement, 109; analysis of, xiii; bands of people in, 44–45; capitalism and, 100; conclusion, 52–53; context for, 38–42; decrease in numbers, 87; diversity in, 93, 98; 43 Caravan, 51; Global Action Day, 44–45, 47, 51; historic background, xiv–xv; institutionalization stage of, 50–52; lack of central control, 116–117; leftist groups and, 42; massive mobilization in, 99–100; national and international growth of, 42–44; new circumstances for, 119; new social order demand, xviii; overview, 37–38; Pineda on, 64–65; power of, 47; process of awareness in, 66; questions posed by, 53; Raúl Isidro Burgos school attack and, 37, 38–41, 48, 55, 71; repression of, 47–50; research conducted on, xv–xvi; understanding of state strategy, 2; violence against, 63; voice of oppressed and, 85 Badiou, Alain, 70, 79 BASTA. See Border Activism Summit for Teaching and Action Beltrán Leiva brothers, 38 Benjamin, Walter, 57; now-time of, 68; on state of exception, 65 blank vote (voto blanco), 31 Bloch, Ernest, 67 127

128

Index

Border Activism Summit for Teaching and Action (BASTA), 10 Border Industrialization Program (Programa de Industrialización Fronteriza) (PIF), 4 Border Network for Human Rights, 10 business groups, 9 Cabañas, Lucio, 30, 39, 48 Cacho, Lidia, 51 Calderón Hinojosa, Felipe, xvi, 108–109; Calderón’s war, xvii, 7, 12, 19–20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 63, 118; demand for resignation of, 7; fabrication used by, 63–64; human rights mismanagement by, 6; inciting violence, 4; Joint Operation Michocán, 1, 21, 63; low regard for life, 5; repression by, 14–15; security strategy of, 9, 28–29; on Villa de Salvárcar massacre, 11; We All Are Juárez strategy, 12–13, 15 Campo Algodonero (Cotton Field), 4 can-ness, 101 cannibalism, 88, 90, 92, 93 capitalism, 56, 78, 100, 104–105 Caravan for Peace, 29–30, 115 Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, 9, 10, 116 Caso, Antonio, xiv Castro-Gómez, Santiago, xiv; on Dussel’s political philosophy, 107; on hegemony, 106; opposing positions of, 105–111; political theory of, 105, 105–106; on status quo, 106 CCP (Constituyente Ciudadana-popular).. See Citizen-popular Constituent Assembly CDHMT (Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan).. See Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center Cesar Mondragón, Julio, 40 César Ramírez, Julio, 40 CETEG (Coordinadora Estatal de Trabajadores de la Educación).. See Education Workers State Organization Chavez, Hugo, 83, 97 Chávez, Susana, 6, 16n11 Chihuahua Joint Operation, xvi

CIDH (Comisión Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos).. See InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights Citizen Pact for Peace, 19–20, 23–24, 25–26 Citizen-popular Constituent Assembly (Constituyente Ciudadana-popular) (CCP), xx, 22, 51, 52 Ciudad Juárez Movement against militarization, xiii, xv, 100, 116; achievements of, 14; articulation groups in, 8–9; business groups in, 9; conclusion, 14–15; context of militarization, 3–5; growth to national level, xvii, xviii; impact of drug trafficking on, 5–10; international groups in, 9–10; leftist groups in, 7–8; new circumstances for, 119; overview, 1–3; repression against social activists in, 6; strategy of, 82; as unified movement, 10–14; Villa de Salvárcar massacre and, 11–12; war on drugs and, 3–5; We All Are Juárez strategy and, 12–13, 15 civil disobedience, 33 class, 77–78, 80, 92 CNI (Congreso Nacional Indigena). See Indigenous National Congress CNTE (Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación).. See Education Workers National Organization COLEF (Colegio de la Frontera, sede Ciudad Juárez). See College of the Borderland in Ciudad Juárez College of Mexico (COLMEX), 45 College of the Borderland in Ciudad Juárez (Colegio de la Frontera, sede Ciudad Juárez) (COLEF), 13 COLMEX. See College of Mexico COMECON (Coordinadora Nacional contra la Militarización). See National Coordinator against Militarization Constituyente Ciudadana Popular (Popular Citizen Constituent), 85 Consulting Office for Peace (Servicios y Asesorias para la Paz, Asociacion Civil) (SERAPAZ), 44

Index Convención Nacional Popular (Popular National Convention), 85 Coordinated Operation Chihuahua, 5 Cotton Field (Campo Algodonero), 4 counter-hegemony, 92 critical theory, 88, 90 Dávila, Maria Elena, 25 democracy: Dussel’s democratic principle, 58, 102–103, 105; Holloway’s democratic principle, 102; liberal, 113–114; participative, 23; radical, 98, 111; representative and direct, xx, 58, 69, 76, 97, 102–103, 108; revolutionary, 81; Suarez on, 60 Descolonizar el saber, Reinventar el poder (Santos), 88 direct democracy, xx, 58, 69, 76, 97, 102–103, 108 Dirty War, 29, 39 Draper, Hal, 78 drug cartels, xvii; alleged war on, 2, 3, 7, 19, 27, 63–64, 66, 71, 82; code of honor, 21; corridor for, 21; as criminals, 28; demands for drugs, 38; government complicity with, 14, 30; military strategy against, 22–23; Sicilia on, 28; South Pacific, 21; violence of, 24. See also war on drugs; specific cartels drug trafficking, 4, 5–10, 21, 55, 64, 113 Dussel, Enrique, xiv, xviii, xx, 1, 3, 104; on anarchy, 103; on cycle of state, 109; on intersubjectivity, 69; Laclau compared to, 83–84, 86; on Marxism, 84; obediential state position and, 53, 114; on obstacles to social movements, 103–104; on Other, 85, 93; on people, 84; on struggle, 85–86; on transmodern state, 108, 118; unified social movement and, 76 Dussel’s political philosophy, xv–xvi, 55, 92; analogical hegemon concept, 83–86, 87, 117; Castro-Gómez on, 107; democratic principle, 58, 102–103, 105; feasibility principle, 58; hyperpotentia in, 59, 61, 67–68, 70, 107–108, 116; inspiration for, 83; material principle, 58; overview, 57–58; politics as service in, 58; potentia in, 60, 67, 70, 115–116;

129 potestas in, 60–61, 67, 70, 115–116; state in, 58–61; state of exception in, 61–65; state of rebellion in, 109; victims in, 65–67

Echeverría, Gabriel, 39 ecology of knowledge, 87, 90–91, 92, 93 Education Workers National Organization (Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación) (CNTE), 41–59, 44 Education Workers State Organization (Coordinadora Estatal de Trabajadores de la Educación) (CETEG), 41 Empire (Negri), 103 empty signifier, xvii–xviii; Laclau on, 81, 82, 84, 86 Energy Workers National Union (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas) (SME), 44, 51 Engels, Frederick, 77 Enrique Rodo, José, xiv Epistemology from the South, 89–90 EPN. See Peña Nieto, Enrique Escobedo, Marisela Ortiz, 6, 16n11, 25, 34n6 Espinilla, Felipe de Jesús, 5 ethical-criticism, 69 Ethics of Liberation in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion (Dussel), 66 European Parliament, 9 evil government (mal gobierno), 62 ¿Existe una filosofia de nuestra America? (Salazar Bondy), xiv Fanon, Frantz, 84 Federation of Peasant Socialist Students (Federacion de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de Mexico) (FECSM), 38, 41 feminicide, 4, 7, 87 feminist movement, xix, 79, 86 La filosofía americana como filosofía sin más (Zea), xiii Florez Alzar, Bernardo, 39 43 Caravan, 51 Foucault, Michel, 105–106 Fox Quezada, Vicente, 3, 113–114

130

Index

Fragoso, Julia Monárrez, 10 Frankfurt School, 88 Front against the Militarization, 11 FUNDEM (Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Coahuila). See United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila Gandhi, 27 Garcia, David Josué, 40 General Law of Victims, 23, 29, 31–33, 71 GIEI. See Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos y Expertas Independientes Global Action Day, 43, 44–45, 47, 51 Gómez Trejo, Omar, 87 González, Claudia Ivette, 4 González Casanova, Pablo, 119 Gramsci, Antonio, 62, 80, 106 Grosfoguel, Ramón, 119 Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos y Expertas Independientes (GIEI), 46, 47, 89 Guereque, Eduardo, 12 Guerreros Unidos, 44, 48, 49 Guilly, Adolfo, 44 Habermas, Jürgen, 88 Hardt, Michael, xx, 97–98 Hegel, 58, 60, 109 hegemon: Castro-Gómez on, 106; counterhegemony, 92; defined, 81; Dussel’s concept of analogical hegemon, 83–86, 87, 117; Laclau’s notion of, 80–83, 117; possibility of, 86–87 “Hegemony and the Future of Democracy” (Worsham and Olson), 81 Henry, M., 60 Hernández, Anabel, 39–40 heroin production, 38 Herrera, Jorge Alexis, 39 heterogenous social movements, 90–92 Hinkelammert, Franz, 65–66 historical subjects, 77–78 historical truth, 48, 85, 89 Hobbes, Thomas, 59 Holloway, John, xvi, xviii, 114; autonomist potion of, 53, 118; on capitalism, 104–105; democratic principle and, 102; on Multitude concept, 97–98; potentia and, 102; potestas and, 102; on

solidarity, 99; on “we”, 101 Hopkins, Alicia, 48 human rights, 27; Border Network for Human Rights, 10; Calderón’s mismanagement of, 6; Human Rights Center of the Tlachinollan Mountain, 101 Hurtado, Guillermo, xiv hyperpotentia, 59, 61, 67–68, 70, 107–108, 111, 116 #IAm132 movement, 32, 42, 100 indigenous communities, 29, 30 Indigenous National Congress (Congreso Nacional Indigena) (CNI), 50 Los Indignados, 14 Integral Strategy for the Prevention of Crime, 4 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Comisión Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos) (CIDH), xviii, 4, 46 intercultural translation, 88, 91–92 international groups, 9–10 Interpretative Essays on the Peruvian Reality (Mariátegui), 90 intersubjectivity, 69 intimidation, 6, 8, 49, 62, 63, 64, 66 Joint Operation Chihuahua, 4–5; violence of, 6 Joint Operation Michocán, 1, 21, 63 JRA (Jovenes en Resistencia Alternativa).. See Youth in Alternative Resistance Juárez Loera, Jorge, 10 juvenicide (juvenicidio), 57 Kant, Immanuel, 56 Karam, Murillo, 48, 85, 89 Korn, Alejandro, xiv Kriesi, Hanspeter, 14 Laclau, Ernesto, xiv, xvi, xviii, xix, 92; analysis of people, 79; Dussel compared to, 83–84, 86; on empty signifier, 81, 82, 84, 86; notion of hegemon, 80–83, 117; on Other, 82; unified social movement and, 76

Index last cycle of mobilization, xiii, 71, 75, 76, 93, 97, 118. See also Ayotzinapa social movement; Ciudad Juárez Movement against militarization; Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity Latin American philosophy, xiv, xvi, 117; questions in, 118. See also specific Latin American philosophers LeBarón, Benjamín, 22, 23 LeBarón, Julian, 22, 24; candidacy offer to, 31 leftist groups: Ayotzinapa social movement and, 42; in Ciudad Juárez Movement against militarization, 7–8; in MPDJ, 25–26, 28; in National People’s Assembly, 44; SMOs, 51 Levinas, Emmanuel, 58, 70, 85; on Other, 109 Leyzaola Pérez, Julián, 5, 5–6 liberalism, 55, 56, 58–59 Locke, John, 59 Lopéz Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 31, 52, 109, 112n27 Los Zetas, 5, 64 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 97 Madrid Hurtado, Miguel de la, 21 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, xiv, 89, 119 mal gobierno (evil government), 62 Mariátegui, José Carlos, xiv, 79, 90 marijuana production, 38 Martín Alcoff, Linda, xiv Marx, Karl, 77–78, 79, 84 Marxism, xv, 90, 93, 103; characteristics of, 77; class and, 77–78, 80; Dussel on, 84; struggle and, 77, 79 Máynez, María Soledad, 12 Mexican Revolutionary Workers Union (Sindicato de Trabajadores Revolucionarios Mexicanos) (STRM), 44 México: inequalities in, 113; neoliberal agenda, xiv; poverty in, 21, 28, 38, 57, 114; public opinion and, 47; violence levels in, 21 Mexico National University (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) (UNAM), 45, 47 Mignolo, Walter, xiv, 119

131

Mills, Frederick, 60 Modonessi, Massimo, 78 Moissen, Sergio, 66–67, 110–111 Monárrez, Laura Berenice Ramos, 4 money laundering, 32 Monly, Molly, 6 Monreal, Esmeralda Herrera, 4 Montemayor, Jorge, 48–49 Mora, Alexander, 49 Morales, Evo, 83, 97, 108 Moreno, Jorge Mario, 32 Moreno, Nepomuceno, 32 Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), xiii, xv, 55, 109; capitalism and, 100; Caravan for Peace, 29–30, 115; conclusion, 33–34; current activities, 33; dialogue demanded by, 20, 28–29, 118; first days of, 21–24; founding of, 19, 64, 85; fragmentation of, 32, 34; General Law of Victims and, 23, 29, 31–33, 71; human rights crisis demonstrated by, xvii; leftist groups in, 25–26, 28; march by, 22–23; new circumstances for, 119; overview, 19–20; rise to national level, xvii, 27; SMOs joining, xvii; Solace Caravan, 24–28, 30, 115; split in, 29; understanding of state strategy, 2 MTS (Movimiento de Trabajadores Socialistas). See Socialist Workers Movements Mujica, José, 97 Multitude concept, xx, 97–98 NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement National Coordinator against Militarization (Coordinadora Nacional contra la Militarización) (COMECON), 27 National Front against Repression, 7 National Guard, 112n27 National Pact for Peace, 23 National People’s Assembly, 44 National Popular Assembly (Asamblea Nacional Popular) (ANP), xix, 45, 47, 50–51, 52 Nazism, 57 Negri, Antonio, xx, 97–98, 103 neoliberalism, 56–57, 114

132

Index

Network for Peace and Justice, 27 new order: autonomy and, 98–102; conclusion, 108–111; need for SMO’s, 104–108; overview, 97–98; transmodern state and, 102–104 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 52 Northern Epistemology, 89 now-time, 68 Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (Our Daughters Back Home), 4 obediential state, 53, 114 Obregón, Álvaro, 38 Ochoa, Geminis, 6, 16n11 Office for the Attention to Victims, 28 Olson, Gary A., 81 Ordika, Imanol, 44 Ortega, Meliton, 48 Other, 58, 61, 69; Dussel on, 85, 93; duty toward, 69, 76; Fanon on, 84; Laclau on, 82; Levinas on, 109; negation of, 85; voice of, 110 Otherwise than Being (Levinas), 109 Our Daughters Back Home (Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa), 4 own thinking (pensamiento propio), 90, 91

Pineda, Enrique, 43, 64–65; on SERAPAZ, 91 Politica de la liberación (Dussel), 57, 59, 107 politics as service, 58 Popular Citizen Constituent (Constituyente Ciudadana Popular), 85 Popular National Convention (Convención Nacional Popular), 85 Portilla, León, 60 potentia, 111; in Dussel’s political philosophy, 60, 67, 70, 115–116; Holloway and, 102 potestas, 105, 111; in Dussel’s political philosophy, 60–61, 67, 70, 115–116; Holloway and, 102 poverty, 78, 99; corruption and, 62; liberalism and, 55; in México, 21, 28, 38, 57, 114 The Poverty of Philosophy (Marx), 78 power-over, 101–102, 118 power-to, 101, 118 precautionary principle, 92 PRI. See Partido Revolucionario Institucional proletariat, 78, 79, 92 Quijano, Anibal, 119

Pact for Culture, 8, 10, 13 PAN. See Partido Acción Nacional Paradiso-Michau, Michael, 108 participative democracy, 23 Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), 3 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), 3, 52, 113–114 Party of the Poor, 39 Peña Nieto, Enrique (EPN), xviii, 33, 41, 49, 108–109; election of, 1; fabrication used by, 63–64; repression by, 43; threat to power of, 2, 37; torture and, 50; war on drugs and, 41 pensamiento propio (own thinking), 90, 91 People’s Permanent Tribunal (TPP), 52 Pereda, Carlos, xiv Piedra, Rosario Ibarra de, 22, 35n9 PIF (Programa de Industrialización Fronteriza). See Border Industrialization Program

radical democracy, 98, 111 Ramos, Samuel, xiv Rancière, Jacques, 105 Raúl Isidro Burgos school attack, 37, 38–41, 48, 55, 71 Red Mesa de Mujeres (Women’s Network), 4 representative democracy, xx, 58, 69, 76, 97, 102–103, 108 Revoluciones sin Sujeto (Castro-Gómez), 105, 107 revolutionary democracy, 81 Reyes, Olga, 23 Reyes Baeza, José, 7 Reyes Ferriz, José, 7 Reyes-Salazar family, 6, 14, 16n11, 24 Romero, Raúl, 45, 62; on awareness of oppressed, 68 Rosa, Gustavo de la, 13 Rosa, Perla de la, 13

Index Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 59 Ruiz, Samuel, 114 Salazar Bondy, Augusto, xiv Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 114 Sandoval, Chela, xiv Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, xiv, xvi, xviii, 87, 114; abyssal thought of, 87–88, 89–90; ecology of knowledge, 87, 90–91, 92, 93; on Epistemology from the South, 89–90; intercultural translation, 88, 91–92; precautionary principle and, 92; social movements and, 88; soft articulation and, xix, 76, 117; theoretical categories of, 87–88 Schmitt, Carl, 63, 65 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 60 Scott, James C., 47 Seattle WTO protests, 75 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 21 Services and Advice for Peace (Servicios y Asesorias para la Paz, Asociacion Civil) (SERAPAZ), 91 Sicilia, Javier, 19, 21–22, 23, 51, 55; candidacy offer to, 31; on continued dialogues, 29; disagreements with, 85; on drug cartels, 28; empathy from, 25; on moral authority, 30; moral principles of, 26; on murder of son, 64; network of, 33; vision of, 27; on voto blanco, 31 Sicilia, Juan Francisco, 19, 21, 33 The Silent Walk, 19 SME (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas).. See Energy Workers National Union SMOs. See Social Movement Organizations social activists: in Ciudad Juárez Movement against militarization, 1, 6; commitment and know-how of, 93; organization of, xix; repression against in, 6; violence against, xv, 2; vision of, 97 social discontent, 103 Socialist Workers Movements (Movimiento de Trabajadores Socialistas) (MTS), 110 Social Movement Organizations (SMOs), 49; accomplishments of, 117; activities

133

of, xv–xx; allies of, 53; collaboration in, 76; conclusion, 92–93; demands and methods of, xix, 37–38, 45; demonstrations by, 2; Dussel on obstacles to, 103–104; emergence of, 68; against feminicide, 4; formation process for, 55; goals of, xiii, 104; heterogenous social movements, 90–92; historical subjects and, 77–78; ideological differences in, xix; internal structures of, 69–70; international, 46; joining MPJD, xvii; leftist groups, 51; need in new order, 104–108; nonhistorical subjects and, 78–80; as oasis, 99; overview, 75–76; participants in, xv, 13; people in, 77–80; political and ideological differences in, 75–76; pressure from, 43; protests and, xv; public opinion and, 47; rise of, xiii–xiv; role of, 67; soft articulation in, 87–93; unified, 76, 80–87; vision and methodology of, 20, 25. See also specific social movement organizations sociology of absences, 91 sociology of emergencies, 91 soft articulation, xviii, 76; Santos and, xix, 76, 117; in SMOs, 87–93 Solace Caravan, 24–28, 30, 115 Solalinde (Father), 51 Solidarity Committee, 64, 91, 99 Solis, Daniel, 40 Sonora child care fire, 22 Soviet Union collapse, 83 Spector, Carlos, 10 state of exception, 61–65 state of rebellion, xvii, xix, 67–69, 109, 111 STRM (Sindicato de Trabajadores Revolucionarios Mexicanos).. See Mexican Revolutionary Workers Union struggle, 92; Dussel on, 85–86; feminist struggle, 86; Marxism and, 77, 79 Stryker, Sheldon, 61 Suarez, Francisco, 60 “Subject of Politics, Politics of the Subject” (Laclau), 82 Tischler, Sergio, 78

134

Index

Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan) (CDHMT), 40, 42 Toltecáyotl. Aspectos e la cultura Náhuatl (Portilla), 60 TPP. See People’s Permanent Tribunal transmodern state, 102–104, 108, 118 UAJC (Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez).. See Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez UAM (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana). See Autonomous Metropolitan University UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). See Mexico National University United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila (Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Coahuila) (FUNDEM), 28 University Committee of the Left, 7 University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), 10 Valenzuela Arce, José Manuel, 57 Vasconcelos, José, xiv, 38 Vera, Raúl, 22 La Verdadera Noche de Iguala (Hernández), 39–40 victims: in Dussel’s political philosophy, 65–67; General Law of Victims, 23, 29, 31–33; Office for the Attention to Victims, 28

Villa de Salvárcar massacre, 3; Calderón Hinojosa on, 11; Ciudad Juárez Movement against militarization and, 11–12 violence: against Ayotzinapa social movement, 63; Calderón inciting, 4; of drug cartels, 24; of Joint Operation Chihuahua, 6; in México, 21; against social activists, xv, 2 Voice of the Voiceless award, 114 voto blanco (blank vote), 31 Walsh, Catherine, xiv, 90, 119 war on drugs, xvii, 32; Ciudad Juárez Movement against militarization and, 3–5; EPN and, 41; impact of drug trafficking, 5–10; as state strategy, 2 We All Are Juarez strategy, 12–13, 15 well-organized societies, 88 “The Widow, the Orphan, and the Stranger” (Paradiso-Michau), 108 Women’s Network (Red Mesa de Mujeres), 4 World Social Forum, 75, 119 Worsham, Lynn, 81 Youth in Alternative Resistance (Jovenes en Resistencia Alternativa) (JRA), 44 Zapatista Army, 22, 25, 30; communities, 117; territory of, 51 Zea, Leopoldo, xiii Zedillo Ponce de León, Ernesto, 114 Zibechi, Raúl, xviii, 102, 114 Žižek, Slavoj, 79

About the Author

Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda is an Assistant Professor in the Humanities Department at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez in México (UACJ). Dr. Díaz completed his Ph.D. in moral and political philosophy in 2016 at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa in Mexico City, Mexico under the direction of Enrique Dussel. He also earned a Master’s degree in Philosophy and another in Sociology from the University of Texas at El Paso, where he occasionally serves as a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in the Philosophy Department. His research focuses on ethics, borders, social movements, critical theory, and philosophy of liberation. Dr. Díaz has organized international conferences in El Paso, TX, Ciudad Juarez, CH, and Mexico City. His works have been published in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States, with recent works including “Social Movements in Contemporary Mexico” (Castañeda, Díaz, Andrade) in Charles Tilly, Lesley Wood, and Ernesto Castañeda (Eds.), Social Movements, 1768–2018 (2020, Routledge). Dr. Díaz is also co-editor of Posglobalización, descolonización y transmodernidad. Filosofía de la liberación y pensamiento latinoamericano (Forthcomimg, UACJ). He can be reached via email at [email protected].

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