SABOT! Culture and Politics

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The eye-catching paintings of Marco Aldaco seamlessly incorporate Mexican imagery with his eclectic and haunting vision. 

Famous for his architecture, little known is that he was an equally accomplished painter, represented by Sotheby’s and beyond. 

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DOES THE LEFT STILL BELIEVE IN REVOLUTION?

An experiment in participatory democracy is taking place in Rojava. It is one that centers gender equality, pluralism, and autonomy. It is one that learns from its contemporaries, and those who came before. It is one that occurs against the backdrop of wicked acts of violence, yet its members bravely resist. Amidst this striking show of resistance, where is the left?

Rojava has a vision, one that has been several years in the making. Formed in 2003, the PYD (Democratic Union Party) has managed to develop a bottom-up system of governance whereby peoples’ councils decide on the matters that most concern the community. Citing the influence of anarchist theorist Murray Bookchin, the party is critical of nationalism and hierarchy in all forms. Having moved away from separatist impulses, the party now instead favors a strategy of dual power.

The PYD’s vision goes beyond a change in material circumstances. It is an attempt at total social revolution. Rooted in a realization of the means by which patriarchal structures uphold other forms of oppression, women are centered in each aspect of the revolution. We see the proliferation of women’s unions and political committees, in depth analyses of patriarchal struggles, and equal participation in the armed struggle.

If this seems familiar, that’s because it’s a model that works. The Zapatistas were feminists before guerillas– putting forth the Women’s Revolutionary Law a full year before picking up arms. Among its protections, it lists the right to education, to health, and to hold leadership positions in the revolution. 20 years after the group’s entrance onto the global stage, the model of feminist centered, democratic dual power has proven fruitful – with clinics, schools, and systems of local governance flourishing. The influence is clear: both harbor strong commitments to communal decision-making, autonomy, and participation of women. Even their slogan, ¡Ya Basta! (Enough!) has been adopted in Kurdish circles (translated as êdî bes e!)

Though the Mexican and Kurdish struggles continue to bear fruit each day, the left is silent – or critical. Elena Poniatowska, renowned Mexican journalist and former advisor to the Zapatistas, vocally denounced their failure to endorse leftist candidate Andres Manuel López Obrador. Even those on the radical left met the ELZN with dogmatic critiques, maintaining that “There are reasons why the EZLN has become the darling of the anti-globalization movement: its rhetoric and its aims present no threat to those elements in this movement who merely seek more national and local control of capitalism.” Similarly, the Kurds have been blasted with critiques of reformism, of nationalism, of “an unchanged social structure.”  These critiques reveal a severe failure of imagination among the left – or an unwillingness to accept that radical change need not always conform to strict dogma. In subjecting these movements to hair-splitting (or often outright wrong) critiques, we misappropriate their limited time and resources towards justifying their very existence to us. 

The Kurds and the Zapatistas are forging democratic structures that stand to influence activist movements worldwide. There are plenty of valid critiques of the movements – both are in their relative infancy, with much to learn. But the left must set aside its obsession with ideological purity and explore new, promising forms of struggle.

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Agostino Arrivabene’s breathtaking works evoke surreal dreamscapes of another world. Fraught with symbolism, the paintings relay a certain dimension of anxiety and suspense. 

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A LOOK AT SUITE HABANA

Fernando Perez grants us a look into the lives of ordinary Havana residents in his erratic, dreamlike film. Without making recourse to spoken language, Perez still manages to impart a tremendous message through a look at their lives that are at the same time as striking as they are almost shockingly ordinary. By eschewing dialogue in most scenes, Perez leaves us tasked with the interpretation – not a simple task, in a film so wracked with ambiguity.

A woman sells peanuts in the street. Elsewhere, a child zeroes in on the chalkboard a moment before writing across it. These scenes are the very definition of quotidian, yet they are utterly mesmerizing – perhaps even more so because they are the only break from the enveloping silence. Without dialogue to guide us, the most of benign of scenes becomes suddenly fraught with contradicting meanings. A character bathes using a bucket – is this a bemoaning look at the failures of urban development, or a scathing reflection on Western indulgence? More broadly, are the uncomfortable living conditions a negative reflection on how Cuba has fallen, or an ode to the quiet resilience of its inhabitants? With Perez’ film, there are no simple answers – but he seamlessly evokes a closer look at the ambiguities of life in present-day Havana. 

Silence is not merely a tool wielded with great force by Perez; it is also a reality. Family members gather to eat and the only sound is that of the silverware clanking against the dishes. People have coffee together and don’t speak, they sip together in silence. People work side by side in a toothpaste factory yet never say a word to each other. Perhaps there is nothing to say when all hope is lost.

The coup de grace comes in the last two minutes of the film when the 14 John Does are asked to describe their dreams. Some have bigger dreams than others, like working in an orchestra or traveling. The great majority have far more mundane and far more limited dreams: “to fix my house” or “to wear a different suit every day” are two of these. The most chilling and the most insightful came last: “Ya no tengo sueños” (I have no dreams anymore) says Norma, the 70 year-old grandmother, as the screen darkens.

Even the title evokes a certain ambiguity. Is Suite a jab at economic inequality, where extravagant hotels sit against scenes of outright impoverishment? Or does Perez rather refer to a musical suite – though the movie is short on dialogue, we manage to find music everywhere, whether outright or nestled in the sounds of the city. Perhaps it is a play on words for sweet – playing on the nostalgia some feel for the Cuba of past. Quite likely, a mix of these, and many more. This is the beauty of a film like Suite Habana. Without saying a word, Perez speaks volumes. 

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FUE EL ESTADO: AYOTZINAPA AND STATE TERRORISM

More than a year after the disappearance of 43 Mexican students, the parents of Ayotzinapa continue to agitate and demand answers. Why kill a group of students in one of Mexico's poorest regions? How could government functionaries hand them over to bloodthirsty cartels? The answer lies in widespread government impunity, and a long history of cracking down on dissidents.

The horrors of Ayotzinapa are not of a new variety. They’re but one in a series of murders, of disappearances, of mass graves and empty condolences. The relentless pace of the violence makes it difficult to avoid desensitization. These horrors must not be read as isolated tragedies – for delving deeper reveals a gruesome continuity.

One turns to the Tlateloco massacre – the slaying of students and civilians in Mexico’s great Plaza. Chants for food, for decent living conditions (in the midst of massive government spending to fund the Olympics) were met with helicopter flares and gunfire. The State claimed the gunfire was in response to shots from a neighboring apartment. It was later revealed that snipers, placed by the Presidential Guard, were instructed to shoot at troops stationed throughout the square – the troops, thinking they were being picked off by students, then opened fire.

We see this story repeated again and again. June 28, 1955, state police murder 17 campesinos in the state of Guerrero. June 7, 1988, the Mexican Army opens fire on an indigenous population, the Ñuu Savi. In 2013, mass graves are found in Michoacan, as officers confess to working in tandem with cartels. There will be speeches, there will be great weeping apologies, but these will always be presented in the context of “a few bad apples” rather than the systemic, reliable abuse of power.

Ayotzinapa is no different. Reports abound of the municipal president’s collusion with the cartels- situating this in the process as some shocking outlier rather than the norm. This glossing over of documented patterns lets the state off the hook and citizens vulnerable to more abuses.

The drug trade did not penetrate the State against its better wishes. The Mexican state relies on the presence of narco-trafficking, benefiting both through generous kickbacks and the resulting instability throughout the region. It is openly acknowledged that the cartels keep police on payroll, and the line between police and outlaws has blurred. Miguel Angel Martinez, second in command under drug kingpin El Chapo Guzman, ("the biggest drug lord ever"), noted that the members of the Sinaloa cartel keep on hand both military and police identification. Killings are undertaken by men in police regalia, leaving wide open the question of whether it was committed by cop or cartel. Meanwhile, cops putting cartel members behind bars hide their faces to protect their loved ones. As Patrick Keefe notes, "In the trippy semiotics of the drug war, the cops dress like bandits, and the bandits dress like cops."

A 2013 Amnesty International report reaffirms a worrisome pattern:

“Members of the army, navy, and the federal, state, and municipal police were responsible for widespread and grave human rights violations in the context of anti-crime operations and when operating in collusion with criminal gangs. The government consistently refused to acknowledge the scale and seriousness of the abuses or the lack of credibility to official investigations.”

Still, the question remains: why students?

The Ayotzinapa Rural Teacher’s College is a breeding ground of dissent. The institute has a rich history of fostering radical class politics. Posters of Marx and Engels hang proudly in the main hall, and the students -or guerillas, as they are called in other circles- have a history of clashes against local governmental forces. Situated in a state where 65% of its inhabitants live in poverty, students who seek attendance at the academy come with visions of a new, more egalitarian Mexico. A vision that conflicts quite starkly with the goals of Ángel Aguirre Rivero, then-governor of the state.

Time and time again, the Mexican government has found that it is easier to stifle opposition -by whatever means- than to engage with it. Only a concerted movement like the one being led in Guerrero today stands to contest the climate of impunity.

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ANIMAL RIGHTS / HUMAN LEFTS

The left has an interesting tendency of distancing itself from animal rights movements. It is frequently suggested that animal advocacy is a distraction from more pressing human issues (economic inequality, catastrophic climate change, etc). In practice, however, these issues are fundamentally tied– and dialogue between the two camps could prove quite fruitful. 

Animal advocacy reminds us of the shortcomings of a strictly class-based analysis, by pointing to the links between speciesism and racism, sexism, or economic exploitation. Leftist economic analysis meanwhile brings to the table a fruitful critique of reformism, and an invitation to strike at the root of animal oppression—by taking the structural forces at play into account. The two camps are delicately yet inextricably linked: speciesism is central to intra-species oppression. Human-animal divisions help to perpetuate systems of exploitation and domination. Factory farms and slaughterhouses are routinely placed in low-income areas, leaving the lower classes to bear the externalities of pollution and subsequent health problems.  Contamination of water sources, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and skyrocketing rates of respiratory illnesses plague neighborhoods near factory farms. Depression and other mental-health repercussions too are attributed to resultant emissions. Ultimately, poor communities of color bear the vast majority of the consequences, whether due to overt prejudice (corporations assuming these communities lack the resources and knowhow to contest their presence) or the enduring ties between race and class in the US (economically disadvantaged areas tend to house people of color, and businesses are drawn to areas with cheap land). 

Slaughterhouses are among the most dangerous industries: by hiring mostly undocumented workers, floor managers have free reign, knowing their workers can’t complain or readily find other jobs. As such, even the most minimal of safety standards are frequently disregarded, and underreporting of injuries is tremendous. The numbers paint a grim picture: statistically, those who work at any meat processing plant for 5 years have almost a 50% chance of sustaining a serious injury. It is clear that our food system has repercussions far beyond the domain of animal activists. In the face of such clear points of intersection, how might idealists -of every stripe-proceed?

This is where animal advocacy stands to benefit from greater exchange with the left. Antonio Gramsci, Marxist philosopher, provides fertile ground on which to continue our analysis. Gramsci claimed that ideas and material conditions could not be read in isolation—each influences, but is not reducible to the other. As such, crucial to an analysis of speciesism and exploitation broadly is its broader economic context. In this view, ideas are never removed from power relationships. As such, we must read the maltreatment of animals as not a matter of personal prejudice, but rather a central feature of our economic system. 

In this reading, calls to cease animal exploitation by changing personal habits push the onus onto the individual to solve structural problems. This is playing into the very hands of the neoliberal project! Through the emphasis on adopting a vegan diet, political anger is channeled towards individual, consumptive impulses and neatly quieted. The desire to create demand for new vegan products on the market is clear - but the commodification of animal bodies will not cease by virtue of increased demand for vegan food. Case in point: Silk, one of the largest dairy-alternative brands, is owned by WhiteWave Foods. WhiteWave also owns Land O Lakes, which has been subjected to scrutiny amidst claims of severe animal cruelty. Buying Silk only grants WhiteWave more capital with which to expand their operations (vegan and non-vegan). That’s not to say that veganism isn’t a valid (and crucial) response to animal exploitation. However, animal advocates must be wary of reducing their activism to consumer choices. 

In refusing to engage with the inevitable suffering behind meat eating, we make closing our eyes to future injustices that much easier. In refusing to examine structural causes behind exploitation, we risk fighting the wrong battles and being ineffective in our practice. Rather than fighting individual battles, the two camps should recognize these struggles as interconnected, and work towards creating spaces of common resistance. 

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MEXICAN ANARCHISM AND THE MYTHS WE KEEP CLOSE

Every age has its anarchism. The credo has a rich and storied tradition in Mexico, its strains of thought at the forefront of the Mexican Revolution, the Zapatista uprising, and countless other movements towards self-actualization. Despite its extensive influence and commitment to radical social change, Mexican anarchist quite often finds itself appropriated to serve authoritative ends. 

Most striking perhaps is the story of Ricardo Flores Magón, intellectual precursor to the Mexican Revolution. Born on September 16th of 1874 in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Flores Magón was exposed from his earliest days to egalitarian ideals - from his parents’ firm repudiation of the autocratic Porfirio Díaz to the ejido system’s communal values. He went on to create Regeneración, a revolutionary paper that did not shy from critiquing the Díaz regime. The papers indictments were tremendously bold in the face of the bloody repression under Porfirio’s rule: the regime censored dissidents through the brutal means of assassination and exile. Magón’s readership began to grow in such numbers that the Díaz regime eventually declared illegal any article written by him. 

Magón’s PLM (Mexican Liberal Party) captured the attention of several prominent minds. Emma Goldman regularly published their manifestos in her journal, and Jack London proclaimed, “We socialists, anarchists, hobos, chicken thieves, outlaws and undesirable citizens of the United States are with you heart and soul...” They and many others would campaign vigorously for his release throughout multiple arrests for acts of sedition. Not all radicals were as supportive, however. After Eugene V. Debs proclaimed that “Mexicans were too ignorant to fight for freedom”, Flores Magón responded with an indictment of nationalism, calling for global solidarity and liberation. Magón’s rhetoric not only incited armed revolt against a despotic regime, but captured the imaginations of anarchists worldwide. 

The national literature paints an utterly different story. In the Mexican canon, Flores Magón is depicted as a patriot-hero -his anarchist proclamations neatly glossed over. Such a bizarre framing speaks to the extent to which the Mexican state retains a grip on historic discourses, framing public perceptions and erasing his true legacy. Flores Magón would quite literally turn in his grave: he lies buried in Mexico’s Rotunda of Illustrious Persons, a cemetery honoring key civic figures. This creative re-imagining of Flores-Magon’s memory (touted, of course, as agitator or activist rather than anarchist) is an appropriation of his revolutionary project to serve the aims of the Mexican state. 

We are then left to wonder: how does one contest narratives that try to erase us? What recourse is left when history is written by the victors - all too often, those with the most firepower? 

The postmodern approach to history points towards a way out. Michel Foucault paints the picture of this approach in noting: “I am well aware that I have never written anything but fictions. I do not mean to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems to me that the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth. One ‘fictions’ history on the basis of a political reality that makes it true, one ‘fictions’ a politics not yet in existence on the basis of a historical truth.” In this reading, we cannot escape our socio-historic context: we are “trapped” in our own knowledge systems and norms, unable to appeal to some great truth outside this context. As such, all history becomes political, with truth and knowledge reduced to mere constructions. 

Everything we write, then, is political. The onus is on us to determine whether this writing will be used to make the world a better or worse place. 

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Disquieting as they are beautiful, Ronit Baranga’s works blur the line between the living and the dead. In granting these objects a sense of agency, Baranga challenges the ways in which we interact with the quotidian.