In Mexico, groups of radical left, among which three trends stand out: insurrectionary anarchists, anarcho-feminists and eco-extremists or eco-terrorists. They are groups that assume they are enemies of the State, capital, patriarchy and civilization, as the case may be. Neither previous governments nor that of the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have been able to contain them, they argue Carlos Illades Aguilar and Rafael Mondragon Velazquez.
The authors of the bookRadical left in Mexico. Anarchisms and postmodern nihilisms”, edited by Debate and which has begun to circulate in bookstores, describe in an interview those nuclei of an unsubdued Mexican left, which does not admit traditional politics and parties, negotiation or agreements with the authority and which bets on street violence .
However, Carlos Illades Aguilar stressed that if we only think of them as violent, joints or misfits, it is not possible to understand what logic moves them.
We must not think that their objective is violence; it is your resource. They seek to “create short circuits” in the regular functioning of society and the State. With that they open spaces for their political action.
He said that, although violence is important in the way these groups intervene and sometimes they use it as a show to attract attention, it is worth reflecting on, what did we expect? of the manifestations of disagreement in a social context where violence is the constant.
According to the academic, among the causes that move the action of these groups are the old demands of the anarchist, socialist, and communist left, which propose ideas such as the extinction of the State, the abolition of money, the suppression of capitalism, ending with work as something that produces economic value, among others. This is mixed with a contemporary agenda, marked by ecology on the one hand and feminism on the other. Hence the trends that stand out.
For the authors, the blurring of obradorismo as a leftist projectits foreseeable failure as opposition to change and its disregard for the demands of contemporary social movements, allow us to think that these anarchist groups will lack considerable rivals within the left.
Both “keep reservations” regarding the political drift of these nuclei “that could radicalize to the left, be captured by de facto powers or cross that porous border that separates extremisms of different ideological sign, but that share an anti-systemic position.
popular classes and anarchists
Carlos Illades Aguilar explained that one of the weaknesses of the obradorismo is that, although it speaks on behalf of the people and has support, undoubtedly massive and particular in the popular classes, it has not empowered them.
“I do not see a government focused on forms of community or neighborhood self-management that could be a form of neutralization.”
He said that although the State has the obligation to contain these radical groups, the problem is how is it going to do it?
In this sense, he indicated that mechanisms have to be created through which damage can be lessened, hindering their forms of action, without reaching repressive violence and for that the state bodies are incapacitated, since the Mexican security agencies are either permissive or criminals. They do not know how to contain without violating.
Rafael Mondragón Velázquez commented that the arrival of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the presidency has contributed to the emptying of anarchist groups in Mexico, which does not mean that they will disappear, because the structural and direct causes that allow these groups to grow are maintained.
In addition, he recalled that it is a mistake to think that these groups express demands that they want society to attend to, since that goes with a model of democracy in which they do not believe. What these groups try is to make evident a conflict that is at the base of society, through spectacular actions, which have the objective that those who observe them fall into the awareness that the reality in which they live is masked and from them rebel against the established power and take actions that change things.
If the causes that make these groups manifest are not addressed, these groups will grow more and more and their actions will become uncontrollable, he warned.
The university professor stressed that, regardless of whether or not one sympathizes with these groups, it is important to see that they are pointing out a fundamental problem that is everyone’s problem: the apocalyptic consciousness they have, in the sense that the world does not allow for more and that a radical cut must be established in the way in which this world reproduces itself, because if not, the end will come and we will not be prepared.
In this sense, he mentioned that, although international organizations have been talking about phenomena such as global warming, the limitations of the development model or more specifically that Latin America is the most unequal region on the planet for decades, there is a collective normalization of this state of affairs. This contributes to the reproduction of crises in an extended way.
That is what allows these groups to reproduce because each time they make more sense to people.
Faced with this situation, he continued, during the last decades the response to the actions of these groups has been repressive violence, which has helped them grow, because for them this type of reaction from the authorities shows that the democratic ways of solving problems conflict are no longer possible.
crisis on the horizon
In turn, Carlos Illades Aguilar mentioned that currently society and institutions do not offer channels to process their demands, partly because they are anti-system groups, in addition to the fact that today we have a deficient State, which at times is authoritarian and at times non-existent.
The same limitations of the State and of the economic system that produce and reproduce a very large inequality and injustice help to create these groups and already activated, it is very difficult to deal with them because they do not intend to negotiate but to break the circuits of the functioning of society.
He exposed that insurrectional anarchism began to ebb in Mexico around 2016, after a period of greater activism between 2008 and 2013.
This reflux had to do with state action, the conflicts between those same groups and the 2018 elections, when a part of them supported the construction of the independent presidential candidacy of María de Jesús Patricio Marichuy
He recalled that EuroPol issued a report according to which the Mexican anarchists were one of the threats to the world.
Regarding the ecoterrorists, he pointed out that there have been no news of their actions for two years, but before that they have placed small explosive devices in the correspondence of professors or officials of research or educational centers related to nanoscience.
In the case of anarcho-feminists, they are in clear activity and growth.
Although there is a record of their actions since 2014, when the COFIA group, who planted explosive devices in some churches in downtown Mexico City, do not have the same demands as other feminist groups. They are against gender, considering it a form of bourgeois feminism. They are against capitalism, the state and other things.
Rafael Mondragón Velázquez stressed that in the face of the crisis on the horizon of the future, the radical left responds with anger, which explains the growth of the nihilistic tendency (more radical groups), which, although it is not an exclusive phenomenon of the left, is characterized for being in a climate of sadness, resentment, anger and collective anguish.
Political nihilism is one more manifestation of a generalized crisis that poses for society as a whole the challenge of recovering the horizon of the future and the shared project, because without it the street violence unleashed in these protests will turn not only against the general population, but against the very people who implement it, he added.
