Our pains and a blossoming hope – Mexico in 2025

What happens at the top, Mexican necropolitics.

Making a brief summary, during the 70 years following the Mexican Revolution a hegemonic party, the PRI, governed the country. This party was created by members of the petty bourgeoisie who had participated in the war against the then-President Porfirio Díaz, who held power for more than 30 years.

The PRI institutionalized the country, created departments in charge of guaranteeing a welfare state, nevertheless a great sector of the population was still being marginalized, exploited and impoverished while that same petty bourgeoisie used the State to consolidate their riches and ability to control the country, at the same time making alliances with organized crime, thus the strength of the state was at the service of capital, be it legal or illegal.

In the 2000’s there was a change in the presidential office, the Right took power and after 12 years left the country in shambles, started a so-called “war on drugs” (guerra contra el narco) that left us with a balance of more than 120,000 dead and more than 60,000 missing people. Despite maintaining a rhetoric of confrontation against narcotrafficking, several party members strengthened their alliances and participation with organized crime. It was just a show, all of it. Ambition and power do not distinguish between legality and illegality.

In 2012 the PRI took back power and, with a policy of continuity, violence continued to grow and become much more visible. In 2014 the entire world came to learn about the disappearance of 43 students, an event in which the army, the police, the local and federal government and the entirety of the State machine were accomplices. After this event it became clear to us that the best way to describe the regime that governs this country is the concept of “Narcoestado” (Narco’s State).

From all this horror came many struggles, thousands had to take to the streets, the country seemed about to collapse with rage and despair.

In this tense context a candidate came up, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, with a progressive left-wing speech, managed to channel people’s malaise at the polls. He was elected President in 2018 and in 2024 handed over power to the first woman President, Claudia Sheinbaum.

The summary of our country’s last 6 years is the same as the rest of América Latina. Progressivism is naught but the sophistication of the counter-insurgency mechanism that the State has. They co-opt our discourse and give continuity to capitalism in its most savage form. The present government has completed the most destructive megaprojects in the history of our country: the “Maya Train” and the “interoceanic corridor” are extractive projects disguised as sustainable tourism.

Within its thinking the only development that exists is the one that capitalism proposes: destroy to accumulate. This way of thinking is the common ground between narcos, politicians and businessmen. It is a patriarchal line of thought that seeks to also sow these values within the youth. On the one hand, the State has doubled its armed forces, offering young people from the most marginalized sectors of society a “chance to rise up”, introducing them into a project where weapons, violence and territorial domination are the greatest satisfactions they can aspire to; on the other hand, organized crime casually offers exactly the same thing: a repatriarcalization of youth. Working for the narco, working for the state...no matter if the principles are the same: oppress, destroy, accumulate.

The anterior is the paint with blood left by those above.

Our history has been a long struggle against men and women whose center of life is nothing but ambition and power. Our defense from below has been the diversity: in colors, in tongues, in thoughts, in ways of being and doing, in ways of living. The current political bet of the organizations from below and on the left could not be understood without studying the history of the necropolitics of the Mexican bourgeoisie; the left-wing and right- wing spectrum in the electoral parties have not made a significant difference in the systemic violence against our people. The conclusions that have been drawn and the fight strategies are based on this clarity of the role of the State as a main agent in perpetuating a system of death.

A lesson and a foundation for the future. Seeking mothers. 

It is difficult to say that we are cheered on and encouraged by a struggle when we see that it comes from a deep pain and when that pain is far from going away, from healing, and instead it is increasing every day. In Mexico there are about 120,000 missing people.

The number is still rising, although the current government tries to hide the problem at all costs. From this deep wound a movement of searching mothers has been born. Throughout the country they organize autonomously to go out on the streets and to search not only for the family they lost but also for each one of those 120,000 people taken from their homes. They have become experts, lawyers, investigators, journalists and a whole lot more, all to heal the great pain that this country is going through. The searching mothers have simply not allowed this Narco’s State to normalize death. They have shown a deeply radical ethic based on love. They have been a light and example. They have forced the organizations to rethink what is important for moving forward.

Spirituality as the backbone of a different project.

How can we talk about a different tomorrow without thinking that our hearts and minds walk together in the construction of a future? These lands have an incredible profoundness, in the indigenous people there is a wonderful way of giving meaning to life, the physical passes through the heart and is interpreted differently. When remembering the martyrs it is inevitable to be filled with sadness. 

The example they have given us must be the way to organize our pain and anger.

On October 20, 2024, our comrade priest, Marcelo Pérez, was murdered. He was a Tsotsil native and always denounced the injustices despite threats and intimidation. He made many of us understand or reinterpret the faith: not as the desire for things to change someday but as the conviction that through our work we’ll achieve those changes; faith in principles, in the path we have chosen and in the struggle that we fight every day. We remember our comrade singing to the people a few verses he composed. We’ll remember him like this: an example of life.

“In my soul I know with deep faith

 that we’ll soon win.

Soon we’ll win, 

soon we’ll win

together we’ll fight until the end

I want my country to be happy

With love and freedom"

Zapatistas of before and now: the continuation of a dream

In the southeast of Mexico, the Zapatista struggle has been born, a light and hope for many people of the world. It is interesting to ask: Why does a guerrilla in the 90’s claim a character from almost a hundred years ago? This question also helps to understand the clash between the up and down in Mexico, two visions that will not manage to find a middle ground, two life projects that cannot cooperate.

A common reading of the system of domination, of the power of the state as an oppressive structure and in the service of the capital. Emiliano Zapata rejected the possibility of being a ruler, said that the presidential chair was cursed, that those who sat on it were sick with power. The Southern Liberation Army (Ejercito Libertador del Sur) fought for the land, to have a place in this world where they could continue to build their way of life.

When the EZLN burst in at the end of the century many questions arose, one of the biggest surprises was to hear them declare that they did not seek to take power from the state. 

Like Emiliano Zapata, they did not start a war just to be the new oppressor. At the heart was also the recovery of land for continuing with this project of life as indigenous people, now also with a greater provocation, the construction of “a world where many worlds may fit”.

A wider struggle where everyone from down below could build that other system that we, as the people, have always dreamed of.

After 30 years of struggle and building of autonomy, the EZLN has launched a new provocation called “The commons and non-property”, a critique of individualism and the organization of a life to be lived in isolation. A criticism that does not come from classical theoretical reviews, but from the knowledge and practices of the indigenous people. They have raised the possibility of building “the communal”; a series of practices and agreements to inhabit this world in another way: mutual support, collective work, solidarity and an ethic based on love and commitment to one another.

An ethic like that of the searching mothers, a common ethic with all and everyone from down below, a possibility to start again and build something different, without oppressors or oppressed, only people trying to collaborate to have a good life. A path under construction that may be an alternative for the youth, a space for them to explore all the possibilities of what it could be to live outside this system.

It is clear that there is a crisis, the pain crosses all of Mexico from below, but there is also an accumulated history of struggle and resistance. All these pains have begun to unite and build the alternative, our eyes looking toward the chance.

In crises, everything can be changed.

~ Pedro, from La Tormenta